🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1gahkjINNd44@cat.cis.Brown.EDU>, PL436000@brownvm.brown.edu
() writes:
|> Oh, sure, just because Randall is a more respected member of the
|> newsgroup, answer him and not me. Even though *I* said it first.
|> I'm crushed.
|> 
|> Anyway. I think what Randall showed is not that a sentence in itself
|> is true, you're right. IF "a sentence in itself" is understood to
|> mean an UNINTERPRETED sentence. But what does seem correct is that
|> a sentence can be thought of as interpreted in a context in which
|> there is no one to interpret it. THAT is what Randall showed.

No, Randall showed that a conviction\belief can be true even if
non-checkable. (It does make asignment of truth value in those
cases rather arbitrary, though.)

What is a sentence?

If you mean by sentence an expressed and understood statement,
even though not checked for truth-value or other content, you
are right above, and I apologize.

If you mean something else, like just the sound floating in the
air, or the semblance of letters on a piece of paper, you´re
wrong. Randall has shown nothing of the kind you then imply.

But I might just INTERPRET your sentences wrong, of course. I did
assume we were speaking English, and that ... what am I doing?
You´re gonna interpret this - right? Who knows if you do not
interpret according to a code only you know, and read what I have
written above as - SHOOT ME!  Ouch - what have I started?!

|> And then it DOES follow that sentences can be thought of as true or
|> false independently of interpreters.
|> But not, obviously, independently of interpretations.

Well, as indicated above, interpretation can be diverse.
Should we not then go for _intended_ interpretation, at
least in some fashion.

But what becomes truth then, is not the sentence at all,
but the interpreted _meaning_.

|> >You place the truth in sentences, not in beliefs of persons.
|> >I really find that nonsensical. If I just "interpreted" the
|> >lamp before me in the right fashion, it would too, according
|> >to paralell arguments, be "true" or "false" about another
|> >thing entirely.
|> 
|> Right. More strictly, relative to an interpretation of the lamp,
|> it COULD be true or false. Whether there were an interpreter there
|> to do the interpreting or not.

But then, as said above, it wouldn´t be the lamp that was true
or false, would it. Not even the lamp _qua_interpreted_ either.
The truth would be ...

|> Jamie

Hope you´re not the Jamie that Aerosmith sing[?] about.


Saa kan vi se om du kan si om denne norske setningen er sann:
"En daare kan spoerre mer enn ti vise kan svare."

Om verden staar til paaske,
                         Solan