Subject: Re: [lojban] RE: Imaginary worlds (MORE VERBOSE)(but hoepfully cleaner)

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 14 Feb 2001 09:16:14 EST

In a message dated 2/13/2001 1:52:20 PM Central Standard Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

> But can I ask one clarifying 
> question? Regardless of whatever imaginary world you may be considering, 
> when you express an utterance it is evaluated in only one world which may 
> be real or imaginary, right? A given statement is either true or false, 
> things exist or they do not exist. Right?
> 
> The problem with "imaginary worlds" is that merely posing them suggests to 
> some people including myself, that the invocation of possible worlds 
> invokes ALL possible worlds at once, so that therefore unicorns both exist 
> and not exist at one time, and all truths dependent on the conditions and 
> existences of the world are indeterminant (i.e. only logical 
> 

Yes, a statement is evaluated at one world at a time. Talking about them 
brings them all about (whichever ones you have in mind to have, anyhow) but 
when it comes to evaluation, all but one are buried in quatifications like 
"possible" etc. So, in this world it is presumably possible that unicorns 
exist (they do in some possible worlds) and also that they do (others, 
including this one, don't have ''em) but the claim that both situation si 
possible is evaluated just in this world.