Subject: Re: Approach to Attitudinals

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sun, 10 Jun 2001 21:14:59 EDT

In a message dated 6/10/2001 5:46:12 PM Central Daylight Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

> I don't see the need for "Presupposing the attached bridi is true" for
> those points A and B. The attitudinal that is attached to .i can always
> refer to the idea of the sentence, without asserting that the sentence is
> true (or false!) Some attitudinals will suggest to a reasonable listener
> that the sentence is true, others that it is false. Still, the actual
> 

This is the foundation of the original discussion -- that some attitudinals 
affect truth value and some do not.  That way of putting it turned out to 
mean that some presupposed (in the technical sense: the sentence was at least 
pragmatically defective if the presupposition was not met) that the bridi was 
true and, indeed, in practice the whole sentence asserted it, while other did 
not presuppose this and were directed toward its becoming true or towards its 
truth in some idealized world.  I could not well skip over that, but thiswas 
befoe the new pattern -- which has not yet emerged to the point where I can 
see what it is based one and whether it has any connection with this older 
one.

> 
> It could be argued that an emotion isn't really felt about a bridi, but
> about one part of the bridi; that's the word you attach the attitudinal
> to under this new approach. But I won't participate in any such argument 
> 

Emotion presumably attaches not to bridi at all but to the situations the 
bridi describe. And within that situation they may focus on one aspect rather 
than another and thus be expressed by vocable attached to words for that 
aspect.  But they may also be unfocused, attaching to the whole situationand 
so best expressed attached to the whole bridi.

<This new approach is so beautiful and simple that I think I shall adopt
it, regardless that it violates the Book in some cases.>

I expect that we will all be using attitudinals in ways that violate the book 
(indeed, any consistent use will violate some part of chapter 13), but I 
can't recommend the system being touted until I understand what it says 
better, and I fear that may amount to saying "until I see how it fits into 
familiar frameworks," like the one I presented or, some general discusion fo 
aprticular cases of emotion or precation or whatever.