Subject: Tentative summary on Attitudinals

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sun, 1 Jul 2001 16:00:15 EDT

I don't think that this discussion has reached definitive conclusions yet, 
but I want to look at where I think we are.
1) With some hesitation, I hold that we all are clear that an attitude 
indicator (e.g., most of UI) is not the same as a bridi which declares that I 
have that attitude: {ui p} is not the same as {mi gleki le nu p}. Uttering 
the former is evidence for the latter, perhaps, but not equivalent to it (one 
could be true and the other false, for the easiest example).
2) Whenever uttered, an attitude indicator indicates an attitude toward a 
situation, which may be summed up in a sentence to which the attitude 
attaches. But need not be -- attitude indicators are complete utterances 
standing alone. We then may be uncertain what situation evoked the utterance 
and the attitude it presents.
3) Grammatically attached to a sentence which describes a situation, the 
attitude indicator indicates its attitude toward that situation.
4) There are two well-known, one documented, and one hypothesized relations 
between the attitude and its situation, the crucial divider seeming to be 
whether the situation involved is known to occur or not. The standard 
theory, which is well documented and is presented -- somewhat confusedly -- 
in the Book, is that some attitudes require that the situation responded to 
be known to occur, while others require that they not be known to occur 
(maybe, in some cases, that they be known not to occur). I cannot hope for or 
wish for something that I know to occur already, I cannot be happy for 
something unless I know it does occur (in at least the primary sense of 
"happy" -- see later).
The less well-known but documented relation is one that requires the stated 
situation to occur but has the attitude responding to not yet determined 
consequences of that situation. I can learn a fact that makes me hopeful for 
the future, gives me hope, even though I do not, of course, hope for the fact 
itself. Since this situation seems complex, the logical apapratus tends in 
the direction of taking it as a compound, perhaps of an assertion of the 
occurrent situation and a separate (grammatically) attitudinal indicator. 
This needs some further investigation, since it may not cover the case -- and 
may involve more thinking that attitudinal indicators properly permit 
(especially if the two utterances are to be joined by a causal connective, 
for example). 
The hypothetical cases, which arise from taking some of the cases that seem 
to require that the occurrence of the situation not be known as derivative 
from the cases requiring occurrent situations by imaginative projection, 
suggest that some basic attitudes may also be used projectively "I would 
be..., if p were to occur." The identiffication of, for example, "hope" or 
"wish" with "I would be happy, if..." has not been demonstrated to everyone's 
satisfaction, nor has that pattern been convincingly generalized or separated 
as an indicator from bridi presentations about my emotions. So I leave this 
view somewhat in the background, too.
5) The present system does not successfully mark the two types of indicators 
it distinguishes: each of the several groups: aV, eV, iV, oV, uV, CVV 
contains some indicators that require the situation to have occurred and some 
that require that it not. In that sense then, the system is less informative 
than it might have been and requires simple memory to use correctly (we won't 
talk of reformation, since we are under a freeze). The further possible uses 
of indicators make the indicators within the present system ambiguous in a 
partiuclarly dangerous way (whether or not some claim is actually asserted or 
not, some situation holds or not). 
6) Attitude indicators can appear anywhere in a sentence; the different 
positions have been used only for (not very clear) rhetorical effects so far. 
To remove the ambiguities claimed for indicators, the suggestion is that we 
restrict the positions in which an indicator can appear in a particular role: 
responding to an occurrent situation, projecting the situation, responding to 
a projected situation, responding to a possibility opened by an occrrent 
situation. A variety of such plans have been proposed, none to universal 
acclaim -- even if you omit the people who don't see that the other uses than 
those given in the book are real.
7) These systems open up a number of amazing possibilities, which many of us 
literally cannot comprehend -- and thus may resist strongly. In effect, the 
scheme would allow any attitudinal to function in any role. While the 
hypothetical form of many "simple emotions" are easy to comprehend (if hard 
to see as strictly attitudinal), the non-projective form of some of the 
projective ones (hope, wish, assume, beg) are harder. So far, convincing 
cases of these are lacking and , as I noted, the "unintelligibility" of some 
leads to resistance. But no one has come up with a convincing case that they 
cannot occur either.