Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!bu-cs!buengc!bph
From: bph@buengc.BU.EDU (Blair P. Houghton)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Whig's slip reveals the current Queen of France to be bald.
Message-ID: <2018@buengc.BU.EDU>
Date: 1 Feb 89 21:16:08 GMT
References: <697@csd4.milw.wisc.edu>
Reply-To: bph@buengc.bu.edu (Blair P. Houghton)
Followup-To: comp.ai
Organization: Boston Univ. Col. of Eng.
Lines: 22

In article <697@csd4.milw.wisc.edu> markh@csd4.milw.wisc.edu (Mark William Hopkins) writes:
>     "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."

If so, then I think I'll go learn Esperanto; English will have been rendered
useless.

"Is the current Queen of France bald?" means 'You are to know that I assume
that there is a current Queen of France, and that I wish to know the
state of the pate on said sitting monarch, and that I expect the answer
from you.'

'I wish to know if there is a current queen of France' never enters into it.

The proper answer is:  "non-sequitur; there is no current Queen of France."

				--Blair
				  "...intruders will be destroyed;
				   resistance is useless;  exterminate;
				   Ex-Ter-Min-Nate; EX-TER-MIN-NAATE!"