🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1gius4INNo68@cat.cis.Brown.EDU> PL436000@brownvm.brown.edu (Jamie) writes:
>>Posted on 14 Dec 1992 at 15:14:53 by Randall Holmes
>
>>>>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.)
>>>
>>>Huh?
>>>I have no idea why you think he showed that.
>>
>>Neither do I.
>
>Oh, good.
>
>> I'm on Jamie's side of this argument; truth (of
>>sentences in a certain language) is not defined in terms of observers
>>or interpreters.  Take my argument and apply it, further, to the truth
>>or falsehood of a sentence which has never in fact been uttered by
>>anyone (it would be self-defeating for me to give a counterexample,
>>but counting arguments show that there are such).
>
>Of course, we can DESCRIBE a sentence which has never been uttered, and
>it STILL will never have been uttered. So you CAN give a counterexample.
>
>I'll take a shot!
>
>Consider the sentence which would come first on an alphabetized
>list of 100-word sentences of English.
>
>(A small prize to whoever can utter it first.)
>
>It is either a true sentence of English or a false one. No one has
>ever interpreted it (I'll wager). With the possible exception of
>one of us, no one ever will.
>
>> I don't agree with
>>Jamie on "types and tokens" (sentences are not equivalence classes of
>>tokens), precisely because the canons which determine truth or
>>falsehood of a sentence could in fact be applied to the so far
>>unuttered sentence which has no "tokens" at all; I think of sentences
>>as abstract objects of the same order as numbers.
>
>I'm not sure what the disagreement is supposed to be. I think I agree
>with the above.
>I allowed that Jimbo could think of *propositions* as equivalence
>classes of sentences, for most purposes. I was then thinking of
>sentences as abstract objects. I usually think of types as
>abstract objects.

Then we don't disagree; I'm willing to talk about concrete instances
of sentences being "tokens" of abstract sentences (used as "types") as
long as it is understood that sentences which have no tokens are
distinct from one another ("types" are not mere equivalence classes).


>
>Jamie


-- 
The opinions expressed		|     --Sincerely,
above are not the "official"	|     M. Randall Holmes
opinions of any person		|     Math. Dept., Boise State Univ.
or institution.			|     holmes@opal.idbsu.edu