🚀 go-pugleaf

>From: zeleny@husc10.harvard.edu (Michael Zeleny)

>Hey, 115 grains of jacketed hollowpoint at 1365 feet per second works
>fine against a headache; however I would advise other techniques, in
>the absence of an independent motivation.

Thanks, doc.

>Well, the difference is, if you reify the predicates, you stratify the
>properties.  This is known as type theory.  On the other hand, if you
>do not reify predicates, you stratify the syntax.  This is known as
>vacuous word games, excuse me, the New Foundations.

Oh. Well, yes, there's THAT difference.

>>I'm not sure I agree, by the way, that a predicate is meaningful if and
>>only if it expresses a property.
>
>Well, make up your mind then.

I'll try.

>>I can think of a couple of types of example. For one, one might agree
>>that a predicate is meaningful even though one thinks it should be
>>paraphrased out in a good, logical language. I suppose "yummy" might be
>>like that.
>
>Why would "paraphrasing out" eliminate the expression of any property?

Well, suppose someone suggested that "X is yummy" should be
paraphrased as "MMMMM, X!" Along the lines of emotivism.

As well you know, Simon Blackburn thinks that MANY predicates
should be paraphrased out that way. He thinks these predicates
express NO property, and yet that they are meaningful.

Even if you hate Blackburn, there are more respectable examples.
De Finetti was an expressivist about probability predicates, for
example. Allan Gibbard has a pretty good expressivist theory of
normative judgments.

>>"occurred yesterday" DOES express a property. So perhaps that isn't a
>>counterexample at all. But it expresses different properties on
>>different occasions.
>
>So what?

Ok, ok. So indexicals do express properties.

I suppose what I was thinking was that there is no property of
Yesterday Occurrence. Nevertheless, "Occurred yesterday" does
express a property on each occasion of utterance.

>Perhaps all words are best thought of as indexicals; this, after all,
>is one lesson of pragmatics.  However, I fail to see in what way this
>view would vitiate my claim that predicates are meaningful, iff they
>express a property.

Perhaps they are.

So I'm left with the Expressivist example.

Why don't you think that's a counterexample? Is it,
(a) because Expressivism is false,
(b) because a predicate with an Expressivist analysis is meaningless,
(c) because a predicate with an Expressivist analysis nonetheless
    expresses a property,

or something else?

Jamie