Posted by zeugma on December 8, 2005, at 16:14:13
In reply to Re: Zeugma help!!!!!, posted by zeugma on December 6, 2005, at 21:24:19
well i am not up to writing a treatise on substitutional quantification or even reading one. it seems that the existential quantifier as standardly interpreted offers puzzles enough. and my stomach is killing me so i will write unsytematically and largely to get my mind off my innards.
'the second planet is smoggy' would typically not be said with the nominal phrase read as a definite description. i mean assuming an astronomer were speaking. the phrase would be read as a rigid designator, or name.
now a student who writes on her exam 'the second planet is smoggy' may well be using the nominal phrase as a description. descriptions contain existential quantifiers and these make sense where existence is in doubt- they assert that there is a second planet; an astronomer would hardly see the need for such an assertion. the existential quantifier is IMO canonically used in 'there' senetences, such as 'There is the planet i have been looking for' (neptune say, as uttered by leverrier). here we have a definite description as predicate, but this is not necessary. 'there is good news coming out of iraq' contains no definite description, yet it is clearly a tendentious assertion, the opening move in an argument as to whether this good news exists. here in fact we have a proposition which pairs the putative news (an abstract object) with a complex predicate, namely that the abstract object on display is legitimately paired with the predicate 'is good news coming out of iraq'(note that the object itself would not be 'news,' which seems to me to be part of the predicate, as indicated by its being syntactically dominated by the verb 'is'- the 'there' is the object denoted by the variable governed by the quantifier).
this sort of view does indeed take the reality of propositions most seriously. for this reason kaplan calls his metaphysics 'haeccetism', a latin term used by medieval logicians that means 'thisness.' now in the 'there' construction is evident the desire to get 'thisness' across, to get it into the proposition. hence the use of the quantifier, which i take to be a device to show the existence of such a proposition. however its structure is different from the proposition of direct reference, which contains the object itself (together with whatever predicates one wishes to attach to the object to make an ordered sequence of elements). This is how it works. I can say, 'The President is on TV,' and I can use my words to display the proposition that pairs Bush with the predicate 'is on TV.' (This assumes that I am acquianted with Bush in some way, so that my use of the definite (abbreviated) description is not necessary. He could in fact not be the President, and my words could be literally false (say if he had resigned suddenly) but nontheless I would have gotten something across, much like I can indicate a certain man sitting in the back of the bar as 'the man drinking a martini,' though in fact he is drinking lemonade. I am far from asserting the existence of a man drinking a martini in the back, because if I were my words would not serve the purpose of indicating anyone; but I might well have successfully indicated him and paired him with a predicate (say 'stole my car'); and here it is not the nature of the liquid in his glass that is evaluated for truth, but the pairing of the guy with the criminal allegation. Or, at any rate, this is one way of evaluating, giving it a de re (of the thing) reading.
now if i had said 'the President does not advocate release of documents concerning response to a natural disaster,' the assertion is ambiguous. i could mean that BUSH does not advocate it, in which case the structure is simple; or i could intend the descriptive reading, in which case i would intend the existential quantification to be present as a means of calling attention to the description itself (perhaps i mean that whoever is president of the U.S., Bush, Clinton, Nixon, or Abraham Lincoln, is not going to release such documents as a matter of course; or i could mean indeed that Bush does not, but i intend its force to be existential, just as if i were leverrier discovering neptune, i would excitedly assert that a planet hitherto unknown existed- i.e. making a claim of some, novel importance).
anyway. if these reflections are of any use yo you, alexandra, or anyone else, i'd be pleased, but have to admit i've mostly been indulging my own taste for desert landscapes. it's a private, aesthetic matter.
-z
poster:zeugma
thread:585017
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20051203/msgs/586978.html