🚀 go-pugleaf

>From: turpin@cs.utexas.edu (Russell Turpin)

>Does everyone in this discussion have the same notion of
>property?  Perhaps just to make sure, or to enlighten me, one of
>the participants would be kind enough to tell me what this notion
>is.

This is a good point.
Unfortunately, I don't know how to say what a property is.

I am assuming that Zeleny and I are working with roughly the
same conception.

>If I were asked whether every meaningful predicate expresses a
>property, my first answer would be "yes, of course." Even an
>expressive or attitudinal predicate such as "yummy" expresses a
>property that some things have, namely, eliciting the attitude or
>expression from the concerned speaker.  (Of course, to say this I
>must either reify the predicate or relativize my logic.  Is this
>Zeleny's point?)

Here I am not sure what "expresses a property" means, even given
a definite conception of a property.

There are (at least) two possible views about "yummy" to distinguish.

First, let's call this view "Strict Subjectivism," one might say
that "X is yummy" means "X elicits the 'yummy-reaction' in me."
Strict Subjectivism fairly clearly does have it that "yummy"
expresses a property. It designates a property, though as Russell
says, a relational one. To say that something is yummy is to
describe it.

But second, let's call this "Expressivism," one might say, following
Ayer, that "X is yummy" does not express any proposition at all. It
does not describe. It "evinces" an attitude (this is what I have
meant by saying that a sentence "expresses" an attitude, but I will
use "evince" for this function and save "express" for the function
of designating or referring to a property in the more realist sense).

As I was understanding the issue, Strict Subjectivism does say
that "yummy" expresses a property, but Expressivism does not.
It says that the meaning of "yummy" is not that it expresses
any property at all. As Ayer said of "good," its function is
more like that of a special tone of voice, or a funny kind of
exclamation point.

I hope this will clarify the issue. I am close to giving up on
the topic.

And I suppose Randall has vanished at least temporarily.
It was a quite different question I asked him that led to
the present discussion.

Jamie