Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!markh
From: markh@csd4.milw.wisc.edu (Mark William Hopkins)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Whig's slip reveals the current Queen of France to be bald.
Message-ID: <697@csd4.milw.wisc.edu>
Date: 1 Feb 89 03:51:31 GMT
Sender: news@csd4.milw.wisc.edu
Reply-To: markh@csd4.milw.wisc.edu (Mark William Hopkins)
Organization: University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Lines: 61


     This unsettling news item is shocking for two reasons actually.  First,
it reveals that a particular woman is in the unfortunate situation of having
no hair of her own.  Second, it quietly slips in the revelation that France is
still a monarchy ruled in 1989 by a queen.

     The interpretation of this sentence reveals the underlying structure of
its assertions:

     there exists a person x such that:

	 *  x is the Queen of France
   and   *  x is bald.

Now, even in mathematical texts one will see such statements often abbreviated
to forms such as the following:

       there exists a Queen of France x such that: 

	  * x is bald.

or

     there exists a bald person x such that:

	 *  x is the Queen of France.

where one or more assertions are placed in with the quantifier, and it is
widely accepted that these all mean the same thing.

     The meaning does not change, but the emphasis does.  These sentences
put different facts in the foreground to be directly asserted or in the
background to be assumed.  The same underlying meaning still allows you the
flexibility to shift different assumptions back and forth between foreground 
and background.

     This process is to some extenj continuous:

	 A certain person is the current Queen of France and is bald.

	 The person who is the current Queen of France is bald.

	 The current Queen of France is bald.

As we read from top to bottom the assertion "x is the Queen of France" gets
put more and more into the background.

     How much we place assumptions in the background depends on how much we
regard its assertion to already be an integral part of the network of 
assumptions that the speaker believes the hearer to share.  It's very a 
convenient way of getting points across succinctly but can be easily abused,
and usually is, by people when they argue dishonestly.  Most people, in fact,
will argue dishonestly by bringing extra assumptions in the "back door" by 
using unwarranted background assumptions.  It works pretty well pretty often
because many people do not know how to respond to assertions that have not
been directly made.

     "Is the current Queen of France bald?" means "Is there a person who is the
current Queen of France and is bald?"  Their only difference is that the 
second makes explicit the assumption implicitly made in the first.  So the 
answer is: "No, there is no queen of France."