tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3721325436856911698.post3946054133222108403..comments2023-11-02T04:47:48.720-07:00Comments on A Novel Proposition: A Comment on Dan's Proposal, and a Question about FregeChris Tillmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07039880090804518326noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3721325436856911698.post-65359762298622859412008-10-07T17:24:00.000-07:002008-10-07T17:24:00.000-07:00Hi Adam,I don't see this concern as much of a ...Hi Adam,<BR/>I don't see this concern as much of a worry. The property "being the first of the fusion" is misleading. I never intended my proposal to be reduced back to mere ordering. Consider:<BR/>J) John loves Jane<BR/>The constituents of this proposition are John, loving and Jane. Loving (being a two place relation) has two "slots" open to it (or in Fregian terms, is doubly unsaturated). Let's call the first slot 'A'(the loving slot) and the second slot 'B'(the being loved slot). My proposal would be to have the consituents of the proposition be the following properties:<BR/>1) Being John&occupying A<BR/>2) Being Jane&occupying B<BR/>A and B are semantic objects, not syntactic objects. Suppose it was an english convention that, contrary to what we're used to, the proposition expressed by (J) was actually expressed by (J'):<BR/>(J') Jane loves John.<BR/>The proposition expressed by (J') would still be the fusion of (1) and (2). All that changed is our convention concerning the syntactic ordering of our terms. The same with your German sentence, all that has changed is the linguistic conventions which determine what properties are expressed.Danhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02122784992711602521noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3721325436856911698.post-6734953250462768892008-10-07T14:55:00.000-07:002008-10-07T14:55:00.000-07:00Adam,Very interesting. Perhaps we should look at:...Adam,<BR/><BR/>Very interesting. Perhaps we should look at:<BR/><BR/>(2) Dan is a philosophy student. <BR/><BR/>(3) Dan-eun chul-hak saeng-ibnida. <BR/><BR/>in two distinct ways.<BR/><BR/>The first way is in terms of the two sentences <I>meaning the same</I> thing; the second as <I>expressing the same</I> thing. We might want to treat these as being distinct.<BR/><BR/>We might treat the meaning as something functional. So if we take 'means' to be a form of the copula, then we can do a Sellarean analysis of (2) and (3) playing the same role. Just like<BR/><BR/>Bonjour (in French)<BR/><BR/>and <BR/><BR/>Gutentage (in German)<BR/><BR/>have the same meaning (role). But we have made no appeal anything being expressed.<BR/><BR/>Perhaps in the case of (2) and (3) we have the same 'role' being played by entities which end up having distinct 'structures'. So we have distinct token-classes of the same type. Each sentence may play the same roles, but in different ways.<BR/><BR/>I think this would not make it so very weird to think that (2) and (3) express different thoughts, even if they are 'equal' in their role.Wes McPhersonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07419648634722401067noreply@blogger.com