From: SMTP%"phayes@cs.uiuc.edu" 6-MAR-1996 17:14:07.00 To: STAPP CC: Subj: Re: Reply to Hayes 4 Message-Id: <199603070111.TAA01528@tubman.ai.uiuc.edu> X-Sender: phayes@tubman.cs.uiuc.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Wed, 6 Mar 1996 19:15:36 -0600 To: "Gregg Rosenberg" From: phayes@cs.uiuc.edu (Pat Hayes) Subject: Re: Reply to Hayes 4 Cc: STAPP@theorm.lbl.gov, klein@adage.berkeley.edu, phayes@cs.uiuc.edu, A.Sloman@cs.bham.ac.uk, keith@imprint.co.uk, mckee@neosoft.com, brings@rpi.edu, patrickw@cs.monash.edu.au Hi Gregg, thanx for quick reply! ..... >> For example, you say: >> >> >So I claim: if =/=>

, then not P=F. >> >> which to me seems illformed:

and are descriptions, not assertions, >> so it is meaningless to put an implication sign between them. > >I'm not sure the description/assertion distinction really makes a difference >here. What matters is that and

are sets of propositions, No,they are descriptions. Of course the description/assertion distinction makes a difference, because unless we respect it then we arent even making well-formed sentences, never mind any content we might be trying to express! Consider a simplifed example. Suppose

is "the pain in her shin" and is (Im making this up) "activity in area 12 of her amygdala". The discussion between Henry and I, as I understood it, was about whether or not it was coherent to make a claim like: "the pain in her shin IS activity in area 12 of her amygdala" (Henry says no, I say yes), where I have used "IS" to be the English word for "=", ie to mean identity. However, the following (your =/=>

) just isnt a grammatical English sentence: "*the pain in her shin implies activity in area 12 of her amygdala" So I am still puzzled. ......... > >Right. I take an aspect to be something like a mode of presentation. As >such, it is ontological. Aspects may be described, but they are not >descriptions. Different names may accrue to the same thing via different >aspects. I have no idea what you are talking about here, Im afraid. In my rather simpler world, theres none of this accruing and aspecting. Names refer, and thats all there is to it. This is what happens, I take it, with the Evening Star and the >Morning Star -- they are different aspects of Venus, these aspects involving >its relations to observers here on earth. No: the morning star and the evening star (both) ARE the planet Venus. (Unless we take 'morning star' to refer to an appearance in the sky, rather than an astronomical object. But in that case, (morning star = evening star) is just plain false.) In cases like that, the aspect >becomes part of the prior identification conditions on what the name >designates, giving the name its prior sense. Any argument that the name >identifies the same thing as some other name, such as MS=ES, must >satisfy some conditions. Among these conditions is that the facts >about the identified thing entail that it has the aspect that gave the o >riginal name its sense. > ........... > >> I'd appreciate some clarification. > >I hope this helped some. Afraid not. It seems that you are speaking from within a framework of ideas with which I am quite unfamiliar. Can you give me a reference to where I could find out more about it? >I'm going to be leaving town in the next couple of days (weather >permitting), so you may not hear from me again for awhile. > Oh well, thats a pity. Have a good time, wherever you are going! Pat Hayes ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Beckman Institute (217)244 1616 office University of Illinois (217)328 3947 or (415)855 9043 home 405 North Mathews Avenue (217)244 8371 fax Urbana, IL. 61801 Phayes@ai.uiuc.edu ----------------------------------------------------------------------