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>From: zeleny@zariski.harvard.edu (Mikhail Zeleny)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy,sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: formal semantics (was re: Is semiotics an "informal logic"?)
Message-ID: <1991Nov23.170424.5818@husc3.harvard.edu>
Date: 23 Nov 91 22:04:23 GMT
References: <1415@ariel.ucs.unimelb.edu.au> <1991Nov16.121439.5507@husc3.harvard.edu> <1454@ariel.ucs.unimelb.edu.au>
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In article <1454@ariel.ucs.unimelb.edu.au> 
jcollier@ariel.ucs.unimelb.edu.au (John Donald Collier) writes:

>In <1991Nov16.121439.5507@husc3.harvard.edu> 
>zeleny@zariski.harvard.edu (Mikhail Zeleny) writes:

MZ:
>}Situation theory has the dubious distinction of having been conclusively
>}refuted by G\"odel and Church thirty years prior to its inception.  See the
>}above authors utterly unsuccessful attempt to refute the refutation in
>}Martinich's excellent anthology "The Philosophy of Language"; see also
>}Church's, Tarski's, and Davidson's much better papers reprinted therein.
>}Also avoid the transformational grammarians' attempts at semantical
>}theorizing; above all, read Martin's book, and the recently translated
>}Gamut, "Logic, Language, and Meaning".

JDC:
>I would question whether situation theory has been "conclusively
>refuted". The problem with much of the formal approach to philosophy
>(which Montague tried to remedy) is that it does not deal with real
>problems. Perry and Barwise use causal structrues to connect to the
>world. The problem with much of the nominalistic Platonism that has
>infected much of Western philosophy is that it can be shown that its
>content is zero.  The main problem is the assumption that any
>distinction is one that we can make. Although my paper "How can I
>conceive being a Brain in a Vat" deals mostly with Putnam, I mention
>the role of this assumption in his argument. The paper is in the
>December 1991 issue of the Australasion Journal of Philosophy.

I don't understand much of the above argument, especially the parts about
"nominalistic Platonism" and its alleged assumption that any distinction is
one that we can make, which, of course, is patently false, -- think of the
real numbers.  A local intuitionist has been trying to persuade me that the
content of the correspondence theory of truth is zero; I wonder whether
this is what you are getting at.

JDC:
>The problem with most semantics is that they assume that we can
>determine reference from form alone. Perry and Barwise, through their
>use of causal structures, avoid this problem. The problem is that form
>does not determine content. That can be determine donly by our
>connections to the world. Basically, reference requires a certain
>amount of luck.

Sorry, John, I can't buy that.  You are setting up a straw man, and none
too subtly at that.  Please show me just where Frege or Church claim that
we can determine reference from form alone.  On the contrary, I find that
their work is informed with the realization of the arbitrariness of the
linguistic form (cf. Frege's claim that we can use an arbitrarily produced
sign to mean anything at all) and contingency of the relations of
expressing and denoting (cf. the Logic of Sense and Denotation).  As for
Perry and Barwise, in their "refutation of the refutation" they assume that
situation semantics can be taken seriously, which, of course, reinstates
something akin to the classical subject-predicate analysis, and implicitly
contradicts the spirit of compositionality.  So the things are at standoff;
but, given that the "situationists" (I much prefer the original variety)
require a kind of ontological absolutism, in the form of rigid identity
conditions on the constituents of the situation, I rather prefer the
classical variety.  Briefly, their theory is not intensional enough; and
that's what makes it vulnerable to Putnam's paradox.

JDC:
>In my opinion Putnam is wrong, but his mistake is not either his causal
>theory of reference, or his observation (made by Newman back in the 30's)
>that form does not determine reference, but in his assumption that semantic 
>distinction depend on our capacities. 

I'd get rid of all three.

JDC:
>Frankly, I would rather rely on real conections than the inventions
>fo logicians, but perhaps this comes from my backgound in science.

Careful there: what are "real connections"?  How do you explain the
semantics of Mathematics?

JDC:
>Reference, on my view, is to what we would be connected to if we had
>the proper connections. The connections are the contingent flows of
>information, and concepts are, to use Dretske's term,
>"digitalizations" of this flow. I do not see how formal structures can
>connect us to the world.

I have no idea what you take to be "formal structures"; if you mean good
old abstract entities, surely they can connect us to the world in a purely
contingent fashion.  This is the old problem of participation in the Form
(cf. Plato's "Parmenides"), and I believe the old, flawed answers to be at
least as good as anything conceptualism has been able to come up with.  See
Jerrold Katz' "Language and Other Abstract Objects" and "The Metaphysics of
Meaning" for a good exposition of Platonist linguistics.

'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`
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: Mikhail Zeleny                                                     :
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