From arosta@uclan.ac.uk Tue Feb 20 09:09:54 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: arosta@uclan.ac.uk X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-7_0_3); 20 Feb 2001 17:09:43 -0000 Received: (qmail 7004 invoked from network); 20 Feb 2001 17:09:36 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.27) by l10.egroups.com with QMQP; 20 Feb 2001 17:09:36 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO com1.uclan.ac.uk) (193.61.255.3) by mta2 with SMTP; 20 Feb 2001 17:09:35 -0000 Received: from gwise-gw1.uclan.ac.uk by com1.uclan.ac.uk with SMTP (Mailer); Tue, 20 Feb 2001 16:53:00 +0000 Received: from DI1-Message_Server by gwise-gw1.uclan.ac.uk with Novell_GroupWise; Tue, 20 Feb 2001 17:09:30 +0000 Message-Id: X-Mailer: Novell GroupWise 5.5.2 Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2001 17:09:09 +0000 To: pycyn , lojban Subject: Re: [lojban] RE: Orcutt (again?!) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Disposition: inline From: And Rosta I'll have to ponder this more fully before I can attempt to do it justice in a reply, but let me clarify my scenarios. When John believes George Eliot was a man, he knows GE wrote Middlemarch, etc, or at least is a famours English novelist, but doesn't know GE was a woman, so is=20 assuming the gender implied by the name. There still seems to me to be a distinction between knowing what a word means and knowing stuff about the (members of the) category it denotes. This is clearest at the stage prior to knowing what the word means. For example, I know that 'ash' is a kind of tree, but I couldn't pick out an ash from a lineup; I know that nobelium is an element, but nothing more than that; and I know that Epaminondas was a Spartan (or at least some=20 Greek or other) but nothing more than that. This seems to be a qualitatively different sort of ignorance than my not knowing in which year Franklin Delano Roosevelt was born. Likewise, if I held erroneous beliefs, e.g. that bronze is an element -- beliefs that would be falsified by a dictionary definition of bronze. I don't necessarily want to say that one can in practice determine=20 which properties are and aren't 'definitional'; but I'm trying to=20 articulate a kind of folk-philosophical intuition that definitionality exists and applies to names. I'm sorry to be groping around in the dark so publicly. I'm happy to take it off list, if asked. >>> 02/20/01 02:43am >>> In a message dated 2/19/2001 5:56:55 PM Central Standard Time,=20 a.rosta@dtn.ntl.com writes: > Eliott cases] is that intensional contexts were (arguably) one reason for > wanting names to have senses, and another reason for wanting names to hav= e > senses is shown by the Maggie Fatcher, George Eliot examples, which attem= pt > to be part of an argument that (a) there is a distinction between > knowledge/belief > about (all members of) a category and knowledge/belief about what > characterizes its intension (=3D "knowing what word X means"), and (b) th= is > distinction applies also to names.> >=20 I missed this point (these points?) in reading through the latest=20 accumulation. Let's see. In this world, "George Eliot" refers to Mary Anne= =20 Evans (to the standard referent of that name), who is female and wrote=20 Middlemarch, etc. "George" is conventionally a male's name (or was in the= =20 19th century anyhow -- I think the conventions are now a lot weaker) and so= =20 part of the connotation of the name is "male," though not part of its sense= =20 (any more than "Farmer" is part of its sense, though occasionally for some= =20 folks -- the third English king of that monicker, for example -- part of it= s=20 connotation, and always part of the etymology, allowing the usual jokes --= =20 which need looking at). There pretty clearly worlds in which the person who in this world is George= =20 Eliot is male and worlds in which the person called "George Eliot" is male= =20 and yet wrote Middlemarch (even the very Middlemarch we have in this world)= .=20=20 And yet others in which the person so-called, while male, did not write any= =20 thing at all. And so on. I wonder what we can translate the ignoramus's=20 belief as. I suspect that xorxes is right as usual, that the unknower is=20 going just on the name and relying on some such rule as "Anyone named=20 'George' is a guy." So, here the name is really a disguised description {l= e=20 se cmene zo djordjeliyt}. And the sense of that is on its face (except for= =20 the "selected" part, which is not important for this case -- well, maybe it= =20 is, if no one has selected a George Eliot that fits into his world). The=20 Margaret Thatcher case is different, because it is important for the=20 conspiracy theorist that virtually everything true of Margaret Thatcher's=20 public life continue to be true but that some bits of biology (and so of he= r=20 private life) are not. So again, we have not the sense of the name but a=20 description -- definitely with {le} since the natural way to put this is "t= he=20 woman who was PM from whenever to thenever and ....". I tend to think that= =20 the senses of names are going to turn out to be pretty uninteresting thin= gs=20 about conventions and the like and the interesting things about the uses of= =20 names in intensional contexts is going to be about what descriptions they a= re=20 doing duty for -- or, to put it another way, what connotation the believer = is=20 taking as the sense of the name (even though it really isn't its sense). = =20 This seems to have some effect upon exportation as well: the ignoramus=20 probably does not belief of George Eliot that she is a man, because the sen= se=20 of the expression "the person conventionally named 'George Eliot'" does not= =20 apply to George Eliot (she was so named in an unconventional manner). On t= he=20 other hand, the conspiracy theorist's use exports, since the description do= es=20 apply. (??) So I guess we are dealing with essential properties (of what, though) and=20 accidental ones. Hans believes that whales are fish (because, as a German= =20 native speaker, he calls them "Walfisch," which says they are fish [trying= =20 to make the case like George Eliot's above]) His point rests solely upon=20 what the thing is called (well, maybe some incidental facts -- are they=20 really? -- like that they are aquatic). So maybe not about the category at= =20 all. The professor believes that whales mate for life (based on inadequate= =20 research, say, or, better, a kind of romantic notion of natural moral purit= y=20 -- not unheard of, though now less common than conspriracy theories). So, t= he=20 sense OH!=20 If the subjects are not exportable, in what way is it that the belief is=20 wrong? And what are the conditions under which they are exportable. Maybe,= =20 if we want to call a belief wrong, we have always to put its subject(s?) in= =20 the prenex position. For, if "George Eliot" is not exportable, than the=20 ignoramus's belief that George Eliot is a man is not wrong, but just not=20 about this world. Which is, come to think of it, why names are usually tak= en=20 as rigid designators, even though that does not make sense for a bunch of=20 other cases. And what about categories? Usually not rigid and not so easi= ly=20 exported anyhow.=20=20 I still don't exactly see where the {ckaji} comes in. "th" was treated as "t" in forming Lojban words (I think -- maybe even some= =20 ds?), but for many native speakers of English (not the most educated,=20 traditionally) and apparently also for Russians, "f" seems a more natural=20 phonetic equivalent. (Haven't we been here before?)