From arosta@uclan.ac.uk Mon Feb 04 07:19:15 2002 Return-Path: X-Sender: arosta@uclan.ac.uk X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-8_0_1_3); 4 Feb 2002 15:19:14 -0000 Received: (qmail 81206 invoked from network); 4 Feb 2002 15:19:14 -0000 Received: from unknown (216.115.97.167) by m11.grp.snv.yahoo.com with QMQP; 4 Feb 2002 15:19:14 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO com1.uclan.ac.uk) (193.61.255.3) by mta1.grp.snv.yahoo.com with SMTP; 4 Feb 2002 15:19:14 -0000 Received: from gwise-gw1.uclan.ac.uk by com1.uclan.ac.uk with SMTP (Mailer); Mon, 4 Feb 2002 14:53:13 +0000 Received: from DI1-Message_Server by gwise-gw1.uclan.ac.uk with Novell_GroupWise; Mon, 04 Feb 2002 15:19:08 +0000 Message-Id: X-Mailer: Novell GroupWise 5.5.2 Date: Mon, 04 Feb 2002 15:18:45 +0000 To: lojban Subject: RE: Truth Value of UI (was: Re: UI for 'possible' (was: Re: [lojban]Bibletranslation style question) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Disposition: inline From: And Rosta X-Yahoo-Group-Post: member; u=810630 X-Yahoo-Profile: andjamin Sorry. I accidentally clicked on Send before my message was finished. Xod: #On Sun, 3 Feb 2002, Craig wrote: #> If you feel this way, then you at least imply that a footprint has a tru= th #> value! # #If I already agreed that a puff of smoke can have a truth value, do you #think I'll hesitate to claim the same about a footprint? What gives it its #truth value is nothing more than the awareness that it will be interpreted #by someone as meaning anything. E.g. if I tread on the ground and leave a footprint so as to communicate to someone that I have trodden there, the footprint is true, whereas if I carve the footprint with a spatula so as to communicate to someone=20 that I have trodden there, the footprint is false? Well, anyway, I wonder if we should try a different tack. On the one hand we have=20 symptomatics: fire : smoke treading : footprint punch in belly : unh computer crash : Oh fuck happiness : ui nonsymptomatics: mi gleki ko'a ba gleki With the symptomatics, the first of each pair tends to lead to the existenc= e of the second, and the second tends not to exist without having been caused by the first. Consequently, on encountering the second, we can infer the existence of the first. I don't think that this is the case with the nonsymptomatics. It is not the case that whenever someone will be wearing a purple scarf to work on 3 March 2132, someone says to me "Someone will be wearing a=20 purple scarf to work on 3 March 2132". Nor is it demonstrably the case that on the whole, whenever someone says to me "Someone will=20 be wearing a purple scarf to work on 3 March 2132", someone will be wearin= g a purple scarf to work on 3 March 2132. So if someone does=20 say that to me, I won't tend to infer that someone will be wearing a purple= scarf to work on 3 March 2132. I will, however, infer that the speaker is making a claim (about the scarf-wearing), because there is a genuine symptomatic correlation between utterances and intentional speech acts. The relationship between a proposition and its truthconditions is a nonsymp= tomatic one. So even if you want to maintain that the symptomatics have truth values, the original question - about the definition of 'proposition' - can be reanswered as: a proposition has a truth value and a nonsymptomatic relation to its truthconditions. --And.