Re: New version of URI Declarations [Usage scenarios]

Pat Hayes scripsit:

> Well, this illustrates the problem, seems to me. Suppose I accept 
> your claim that your URI denotes the moon, so that when I use it I am 
> also referring to the same moon. But I want to point out that you 
> said something false about the moon. Under your proposal, this is 
> impossible. I can't say that, because by calling these assertions a 
> 'declaration', they have been removed from the domain of discussion. 

So they have, but that's unavoidable.  If we take the predicates "is a
natural body", "orbits the Earth", and one more that I can't formulate
exactly but is meant to exclude captured meteoroids if any there be,
then these *define* the moon.  If you contradict any of them, you are not
talking about the moon any more.  (Another basis system could be given,
such "occupied point P at time T" for appropriate choices of space and
time scales; it matters not.)

Note that none of these are essential properties in the Kripkean sense
I was using before; essential properties are not necessary as long as we
confine ourselves to the actual world and don't worry about contrafactual
worlds.

However, once the moon is properly defined (= distinguished from all
other objects to the extent possible or required), I can then make any
number of assertions about it, any of which you may contradict, of course.

> Why should it be that by using a name correctly, given your 
> intentions for using it, that I must therefore agree with everything 
> you say about it? 

Not everything, only the assertions in the declaration (of identity).

-- 
What has four pairs of pants, lives             John Cowan
in Philadelphia, and it never rains             http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
but it pours?                                   cowan@ccil.org
        --Rufus T. Firefly

Received on Friday, 14 March 2008 15:06:54 UTC