From: zeleny@husc10.harvard.edu (Michael Zeleny)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech,sci.logic
Subject: Re: No Reification Here
Date: 29 Dec 92 22:06:04 GMT
Article-I.D.: husc3.1992Dec29.170606.18889
Organization: The Phallogocentric Cabal

In article <1hq9rvINNiq@cat.cis.Brown.EDU> 
PL436000@brownvm.brown.edu (Jamie) writes:

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

MZ:
>>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.

J:
>Thanks, doc.

MZ:
That'll be $50, or a copy of Tarski, Mostowski, and Robinson.

MZ:
>>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.

J:
>Oh. Well, yes, there's THAT difference.

No kidding.

J:
>>>I'm not sure I agree, by the way, that a predicate is meaningful if and
>>>only if it expresses a property.

MZ:
>>Well, make up your mind then.

J:
>I'll try.

J:
>>>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.

MZ:
>>Why would "paraphrasing out" eliminate the expression of any property?

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

Is anybody still taking emotivism seriously?

J:
>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.

Is anybody still taking Simon Blackburn seriously?

J:
>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.

It remains to be shown that expressivism, as exemplified above, is
bereft of an ontology of properties.

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

MZ:
>>So what?

J;
>Ok, ok. So indexicals do express properties.

Quite so.

J:
>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.

Does not do anything for your claim then, does it?

MZ:
>>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.

J:
>Perhaps they are.
>
>So I'm left with the Expressivist example.

You will need to say more about it.

J:
>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?

At the moment, I do not quite know what it is.

>Jamie

cordially,
mikhail zeleny@husc.harvard.edu
"Le cul des femmes est monotone comme l'esprit des hommes."
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech,comp.ai.philosophy,sci.lang