From:	SMTP%"phayes@cs.uiuc.edu"  7-MAR-1996 00:22:37.80
To:	STAPP
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Subj:	Re: Reply to Hayes 4

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Date: Thu, 7 Mar 1996 02:20:49 -0600
To: "Gregg Rosenberg" <ghrosenb@phil.indiana.edu>
From: phayes@cs.uiuc.edu (Pat Hayes)
Subject: Re: Reply to Hayes 4
Cc: STAPP@theorm.lbl.gov, klein@adage.berkeley.edu, phayes@cs.uiuc.edu,
        A.Sloman@cs.bham.ac.uk, keith@imprint.co.uk, mckee@neosoft.com,
        brings@rpi.edu, patrickw@cs.monash.edu.au

Gregg, Many thanx again for prompt long reply! Indeed I was ignorant of
this new framework, and would be grateful for a copy of the paper of yours
that you mention and of the Chalmers piece you recommend. 

In general, Im suspicious of such new frameworks, as I havnt yet found
anything seriously wrong with the old one (in which terms simply refer),
which has the virtues of simplicity, clarity, formal precision,
mechanisability and (as far as I can tell) adequacy to describe the
workings of any exact science. 'Ordinary' language I happily leave to
linguists. But I will take a look and try to see why people find it
compelling.

...... 
>> No,they are descriptions. Of course the description/assertion distinction
>> makes a difference, because unless we respect it then we arent even making
>> well-formed sentences, never mind any content we might be trying to
>> express!
>
>All I meant by "it doesn't matter" is that I could explain it bypassing
>those terms. Notice I'm treating <F> and <P> as designating sets of 
>propositions.

Yes, but Henry Stapp and I werent treating them this way: this is a change
which you introduced (somewhat summarily) when you set out to explain this
stuff to us all.

 A proposition might be "The pain in my leg exists." or it
>might be "The pain in my leg feels sharp." Whether either proposition is
>actually *asserted* doesn't matter to the entailment question, and whether
>we decide to treat the second one as a description doesn't either. <unless
>one is being overly formal, what we call a description doesn't *have* to 
>correspond to an open sentence in FOL>.

I probably am being 'overly formal'. I find it helps keep my mind clear.

....
>By the way, the failure of *this* kind of implication plays no part in
>the arguments that convince me. It is the failure of the other direction:
>
>"The occurrence of activity in area 12 of her amygdala implies that she
> feel a pain in her shin." Where the sense of "feel" and "pain" in play
>here is the phenomenal sense. This last qualification is necessary because
>I think our ordinary language is systematically ambiguous between the
>phenomenal and functional senses of these concepts. After all, there's
>really not much need to distinguish them in everyday life.

But the implications in this direction are in fact the ones we can
empirically check. If a neurosurgeon stimulates the appropriate part of the
brain, the (conscious) subject *does* report the pain (or whatever other
phenomenal phenomena is appropriate.) So not only are these true, they are
even empirically verifiable.

>
>> >Right. I take an aspect to be something like a mode of presentation. As
>> >such, it is ontological. Aspects may be described, but they are not
>> >descriptions. Different names may accrue to the same thing via different 
>> >aspects.
>> 
>> I have no idea what you are talking about here, Im afraid. In my rather
>> simpler world, theres none of this accruing and aspecting. Names refer, and
>> thats all there is to it.
>
>The ES and MS example is typically taken to show that the two names have
>different sense, even though they denote the same planet. That's why one
>can know about the Evening Star, and about the Morning Star, but not that
>they are the same.

This sounds like Freges sense/reference distinction, which I thought had
long been replaced by the Kripkean accounts of modal meanings. I see no
reason to hypothesise 'senses' which can be 'grasped' via 'aspects'. 

One's capacity to identify each is predicated on grasping
>this sense, but the senses are different. I am accepting
>that a different sense is associated with each name, despite their 
>designating the same planet. The difference of sense is explained by the
>fact that each typically designates it via a different aspect.
>
>>  This is what happens, I take it, with the Evening Star and the 
>> >Morning Star -- they are different aspects of Venus, these aspects involving
>> >its relations to observers here on earth. 
>> 
>> No: the morning star and the evening star (both) ARE the planet Venus.
>> (Unless we take 'morning star' to refer to an appearance in the sky, rather
>> than an astronomical object. But in that case, (morning star = evening
>> star) is just plain false.)
>
>You're right. What I *meant* to say here was: What occurs with the "Evening
>Star" and the "Morning Star" is that they come to designate Venus through
>different aspects, and these aspects involve its relations to observers here
>on earth.
>
>The aspects are ontological, and help give the names their peculiar senses.
>I hope this doesn't seem strange to you. The idea that we see different
>aspects of Venus when it appears in the night sky than when it appears in
>the morning sky should be trivial.

No, Im afraid it simply sounds confused. Several different relations hold
between us, looking at the sky, and Venus. One is that the planet is
visible in the morning, another that it is visible in the evening. Thats
all: no need to use any of this aspect/sense vocabulary, which just seems
to clutter up the discussion to no purpose. (What *is* an 'aspect' ? Can
there be an aspect of an aspect? Can there be an aspect without a thing its
an aspect of? Can there be relations between aspects? etc. etc.: All these
puzzling questions immediately come up, and they all seem to be just
sideeffects of having multiplied entities uneccessarily.)

Look, I can see that if our subjectmatter is *how names come to have their
meanings*, then  we might need to carefully distinguish something like 'the
sense that the naming phrase 'morning star' conveys', or some such. But
thats all to do with us and our language; its not an 'aspect' of *Venus*;
Venus is a *planet*, orbiting the sun, huge, far away, made of rock, with a
murky atmosphere, etc.. How we come to give it one name or another, or what
language we use to talk about it with, has very, very little to do with the
nature of Venus de re, the actual referent. 

Now apply this way of thinking to neural/phenomenal entities; our central
concern, surely, is what they ARE, not what languages we might find
appropriate to use in referring to them.

> Minimally, we are seeing that it bears
>different relations to us here on earth at different times of our day.
>I don't mean an "aspect" to carry any more metaphysical mystery than this.

Well, if thats all it means, then we can just do without aspect-talk and
stick to good old relational logic.
....

>
>The basic framework has emerged within 2-dimensional modal logic 

2-dimensional modal logic?? Thats sounds interesting! Does this mean the
sentences have a 'shape' in some sense, like a diagram?

....
>Whether people find the underlying analysis in these pieces very convincing
>often hinges on one's attitude towards meaning, and the informational
>content of concepts. I find it compelling because I tend to have strong
>realist intuitions,..

Yes, I think I do also.

Thanx again for input.

Pat Hayes

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