At 09:40 AM 7/20/01 -0400, Dan Brickley wrote: >I think part of the problem here is our natural tendency to take a >commonsense reading of what FOL "there exists" means, ie. reading >existential quantifier as taking about some form of "existence in the >world". If we try to take a strong reading of "there exists" we'll be >bouncing into a whole family of (what I understand to be) fairly well >known puzzles: how do we talk about pictures that depict Unicorns, >future events that may not come to pass etc. Dan, I think you've touched an important point here. After I posted my comments, I also thought about Unicorns. I think this is leading to the need for some kind of "reference without assertion" -- reification, or whatever. However, I do believe that "there exists" in logic does actually mean that something satisfying the associated description does indeed exist. Without this, much of the maths I learned would collapse. #g ------------------------------------------------------------ Graham Klyne Baltimore Technologies Strategic Research Content Security Group <Graham.Klyne@Baltimore.com> <http://www.mimesweeper.com> <http://www.baltimore.com> ------------------------------------------------------------Received on Friday, 20 July 2001 09:54:07 EDT
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