From: SMTP%"ghrosenb@phil.indiana.edu" 6-MAR-1996 18:41:07.92 To: STAPP CC: Subj: Re: Reply to Hayes 4 From: "Gregg Rosenberg" Subject: Re: Reply to Hayes 4 To: phayes@cs.uiuc.edu (Pat Hayes) Date: Wed, 6 Mar 1996 21:38:55 -0500 (EST) 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, ghrosenb@phil.indiana.edu (Gregg Rosenberg) In-Reply-To: <199603070111.TAA01528@tubman.ai.uiuc.edu> from "Pat Hayes" at Mar 6, 96 07:15:36 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL23] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 6476 Hi Pat, > >> >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! All I meant by "it doesn't matter" is that I could explain it bypassing those terms. Notice I'm treating and

as designating sets of propositions. A proposition might be "The pain in my leg exists." or it might be "The pain in my leg feels sharp." Whether either proposition is actually *asserted* doesn't matter to the entailment question, and whether we decide to treat the second one as a description doesn't either. . > "*the pain in her shin implies activity in area 12 of her amygdala" > > So I am still puzzled. Just substitute: "the pain in her shin exists implies activity in area 12 of her amygdala occurs." (where "implies" is taken to be strict logical implication). By the way, the failure of *this* kind of implication plays no part in the arguments that convince me. It is the failure of the other direction: "The occurrence of activity in area 12 of her amygdala implies that she feel a pain in her shin." Where the sense of "feel" and "pain" in play here is the phenomenal sense. This last qualification is necessary because I think our ordinary language is systematically ambiguous between the phenomenal and functional senses of these concepts. After all, there's really not much need to distinguish them in everyday life. > >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. The ES and MS example is typically taken to show that the two names have different sense, even though they denote the same planet. That's why one can know about the Evening Star, and about the Morning Star, but not that they are the same. One's capacity to identify each is predicated on grasping this sense, but the senses are different. I am accepting that a different sense is associated with each name, despite their designating the same planet. The difference of sense is explained by the fact that each typically designates it via a different aspect. > 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.) You're right. What I *meant* to say here was: What occurs with the "Evening Star" and the "Morning Star" is that they come to designate Venus through different aspects, and these aspects involve its relations to observers here on earth. The aspects are ontological, and help give the names their peculiar senses. I hope this doesn't seem strange to you. The idea that we see different aspects of Venus when it appears in the night sky than when it appears in the morning sky should be trivial. Minimally, we are seeing that it bears different relations to us here on earth at different times of our day. I don't mean an "aspect" to carry any more metaphysical mystery than this. > >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? The basic framework has emerged within 2-dimensional modal logic in the last 5-10 years in response to a whole bunch of semantic puzzles that keep cropping up in ontological discussion. Frank Jackson makes some use of its ontological implications in his recent Locke Lectures, which have been published. Chalmers goes into it in quite a bit of detail in his upcoming book (should be out in a month or so -- much philosophically meatier than his JCS piece. That piece was basically 'philosophy lite.') He has also written a piece on semantic content that I can send you, if you'd like. Michael Lockwood has made similar points, included in his wonderful but underappreciated book, "Mind, Brain, and Quanta." Robert Kirk, in an attempt to defend physicalism, articulates it somewhat in his book "Raw Feels." I even have a paper of my own that I could send called. It's called "Consciousness, The Physical, and Life." If you want a rank ordering: I'd recommend Chalmers piece above all. It goes into the issues more formally and in more detail than the other pieces. Chalmers piece gives by far the best portrait of the semantics in play. My piece is pretty provocative, but I'm not sure how convincing it would be. Jackson's book is really pretty good, but is liable to leave you with questions about the logic underlying it. Both my piece and Jackson's are good for explaining the connections between the semantical issues and the ontological issues. Lockwood's is good too, but he dwells less on the issues of meaning than he should. Kirk's is OK, but a little unfocused. Whether people find the underlying analysis in these pieces very convincing often hinges on one's attitude towards meaning, and the informational content of concepts. I find it compelling because I tend to have strong realist intuitions, and denial of the framework I think inevitably leads to pragmatism. --Gregg -- Honesty in academia _____ / \ | | Gregg Rosenberg | --)(-- C _) D'ohh! Will philosophize for food. | ___\ / | / __) /_ \__/ / \ / \