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An Attack on Indexicality

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An Attack on Indexicality

bert1
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Posted 05/05/09 - 09:52 PM:	#11
Is "I am bert1" identical in meaning to "bert1 is bert1"? Consider the following sentences: 1) The pain that Schlitz is experiencing is of no importance compared to the pain bert1 is experiencing because I am bert1. 2) The pain that Schlitz is experiencing is of no importance compared to the pain bert1 is experiencing because bert1 is bert1. (1) Could be true, but (2) is surely false. They are at least different in meaning are they not? Edited by bert1 on 05/05/09 - 10:26 PM
"Like a ungroomed dog in which the desired look is it’s long hair but it has been so unattended to, that combing is impractical, and it might be better if the hair was cut and attended to as it grows back." d_martin

Cuthbert
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Posted 05/06/09 - 12:05 AM:	#12
Similarly, any time after now is in the future. Also, it's now 8:04am on 6 May 2009. But it's not the case that any time after 8:04am on 6 May 2009 is in the future. In the time it took to write the conclusion, 8:04am on 6 May 2009 is in the past.

Schlitz
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Posted 05/06/09 - 09:43 AM:	#13
Incision wrote: Now Schlitz, I'm not eager to disagree with you in phil of language, but it seems neither you nor Aexitintro have addressed Perry's argument, to which I admit sympathy. True, but I can't begin to address Perry's argument since I don't know it, and I can't find a presentation of it in this thread. But I can address the issue of whether or not we can make a language English_-i that's just like English, except minus the indexicals, that has the same expressive power as English. And that's possible. Even though it's a bit of trivia, it does put to use a technique frequently used in philosophy: reduction. That's really the point of my post, except for the part where I write "Perry is wrong. Rock on." Here, I take Aexitintro's presentation of Perry as good, charitable, and precise.

Schlitz
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Posted 05/06/09 - 09:46 AM:	#14
bert1 wrote: Is "I am bert1" identical in meaning to "bert1 is bert1"? Yes, it is, provided bert1 is the speaker of "I am bert1." Properly speaking, "I am bert1" is an open sentence if the reference of "I" isn't fixed by context.

Incision
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Posted 05/06/09 - 09:58 PM:	#15
I might take that as a sign, Schlitz, that you're more worried about the nature of the project than Perry's nuturance thereof. But if you're interested, my post #10 contains a Perry-esque argument, and Makarismos's #3 has a link. Aexitintro, your sample paragraph does eliminate the indexical "I," but crucially retains the indexical "himself." With all indexicals removed: "Perry finds that the person who is making the mess is Perry. Perry's making a mess. Perry's taking action to limit the mess." This reduction seems to fail, because Perry could know that Perry's making a mess without knowing that he's making a mess. (E.g. if he doesn't know that he is Perry -- an unlikely case of course, but see Cuthbert's post for a plainer one.)

bert1
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Posted 05/06/09 - 10:04 PM:	#16
Schlitz wrote: Yes, it is, provided bert1 is the speaker of "I am bert1." Hmm. I'm not sure I understand the significance of this, sorry. Lets take another example (as you haven't explicitly dealt with either Incision's, mine or Cuthbert's!) There are ten people at a party. Someone says "bert1 knows where the host has hidden the Ferrero Rocher." I say, "bert1 is bert1". Everyone else says "So what? We all know that already." Then I say "Sorry, I meant that I am bert1". "Oh!" says everyone, "Then tell us where the Ferrero Rocher are!" Maybe your brief answer does deal with all the examples, but I'm afraid I'm too dumb to see why. Something different is being communicated when I say that 'I am bert1' than when I say 'bert1 is bert1'. That's just obviously true isn't it?
"Like a ungroomed dog in which the desired look is it’s long hair but it has been so unattended to, that combing is impractical, and it might be better if the hair was cut and attended to as it grows back." d_martin

Cuthbert
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Posted 05/07/09 - 12:14 AM:	#17
It's obviously true to me, but if it's not obvious to someone here's an argument: 'I am bert1' is true iff the speaker is bert1. 'Bert1 is bert1' is true even if the speaker is not bert1. The two statements have different truth conditions, so they have different meanings.

Cadrache
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Posted 05/07/09 - 12:24 PM:	#18
Read George Orwell: 1984 The section concerning the topic Newspeak: Notation: Newspeak is a derivitive for the usage in the book. Origins is the application of News Speak. They applied the changes into the Times newspaper. Implied meaning is that this is a new form of giving data. The real meaning behind the term Newspeak is "New Speak." The idea behind this is that reducing the number of words in a vocabulary results in a reduction of different types of thought. The dominant role of a definition creates the meaning behind the definition. Therefore less new thoughts arrive. It also creates a form such that all language becomes generalized. Now more specific definition of Time that implies "present" with a conotation of 'Being at this instant".
"...There was a writer who asked why it was that when we find positive experiences we say that only the physical facts are real, but in negative experiences we believe that reality is subjective. He made an example of those who say that in birth only the pain is real, the joy a subjective point of view, but that in death it is the emotional loss that is the reality." - Tony Ballantyne, Recursion. _____________________________________________ Truth is want. - The internal state of matters. Truth is Need. - The external state of affairs.

Schlitz
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Posted 05/07/09 - 09:43 PM:	#19
Cuthbert wrote: It's obviously true to me, but if it's not obvious to someone here's an argument: 'I am bert1' is true iff the speaker is bert1. 'Bert1 is bert1' is true even if the speaker is not bert1. The two statements have different truth conditions, so they have different meanings. This is an interesting take on things, and your argument is pretty persuasive at first glance. But let me suggest this line: I think we should be able to agree on this observation: 'Bert1 is bert1' is necessarily true, and 'I am bert1' is not necessarily true. Here's where we might begin to disagree- 'Bert1 is bert1' is a logical truth, but 'I am bert1' is true in cases where 'I' refers to Bert 1 and not true in cases where 'I' refers to someone else. The right conclusion to draw is not that they have different truth-conditions, because not both of these expressions have truth-conditions. For any sentence to have truth-conditions is for it to have an interpretation, in the formal semantics sense of the word, and while 'Bert1' and '__ is__' (truth-conditions for logical constants can only be given by considering every possible sentence they could occur in) both have interpretations, which makes 'Bert1 is bert1' fully interpreted, the reference of 'I' is not fixed until that sentence is actually used by someone, whereupon 'I' refers to the guy who used it. A sentence 'I _______.' doesn't have truth-conditions until it's been spoken by someone: 'I am bert1' has one set of truth-conditions if John says it- then, it's true just in case John is bert1, and it has different truth-conditions if I say it- then, 'I am bert1' is true just in case Schlitz is bert1. In this case, it's false. This isn't to confuse truth-conditions with truth-value, but to show that 'I am bert1' considered apart from an actual use of it isn't fully interpreted. It's an interesting result of this approach that every false utterance of 'I am bert1' is necessarily false, and every true utterance of 'I am bert1' is necessarily true. To bert1- this is what I meant by saying that 'I am bert1' and 'Bert1 is bert1' do mean the same, provided the speaker of 'I am bert1' is bert1. bert1 wrote: Maybe your brief answer does deal with all the examples, but I'm afraid I'm too dumb to see why. Something different is being communicated when I say that 'I am bert1' than when I say 'bert1 is bert1'. That's just obviously true isn't it? There is something different being communicated when you tell me 'I am bert1' and 'bert1 is bert1,' but I think this is due to conversational implicature rather than meaning (see plato.stanford.edu/entries/implicature/). If you say 'I am bert1,' you tell me what your name is. If you tell me 'bert1 is bert1,' you express a theorem of my theory of identity- you tell me something I ought to know already, and that is true in virtue of the meanings of the words in the sentence. And it's significant that 'I am bert1' isn't true in virtue of the meanings of the words in the sentence, but I try to sort out the details of this above. Edited by Schlitz on 05/07/09 - 09:50 PM

Cuthbert
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Posted 05/08/09 - 03:43 AM:	#20
On that view I think you'd have to grant that 'I am bert1' has a different meaning depending upon who utters it. So it means the same as 'bert1 is bert1', but only on condition that the speaker is bert1. Otherwise, it means something different. But is that plausible? Surely it's the fact that it means the same thing, no matter who utters it, that enables us to determine whether or not it's true.

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