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From: lee@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu (Greg Lee)
Newsgroups: comp.ai,sci.lang
Subject: Re: Fun with the semantics of paradox
Message-ID: <3201@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu>
Date: 4 Feb 89 13:41:36 GMT
References: <505@aipna.ed.ac.uk>
Organization: University of Hawaii
Lines: 35

From article <505@aipna.ed.ac.uk>, by rjc@aipna.ed.ac.uk (Richard Caley):
" In article <3038@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu> lee@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu (Greg Lee) writes:
" >From article <479@aipna.ed.ac.uk>, by rjc@aipna.ed.ac.uk (Richard Caley):
" >" ...
" >" 	"The current king of France is bald."
" >Russell said it was
" >false.  I agree with Russell.
" 
" Obviously this is a matter of opinion, but I can't agree it is false
" since I would not say that
" 
" 	"No he isn't"
" 
" Is the natural responce.

I agree that that is not the natural response.  Neither is "No, there
isn't." This has to do with syntactic constraints between assertion and
reply in conversations -- to a first rough approximation, a reply
must correspond to the main clause in what it is a reply to.  If we thus
distinguish between the sentence *being* false and the circumstances
that determine whether we can give a *reply* to the effect that it is
false, we can avoid resorting to a peculiar third truth value (in this
specific case, anyway).

So, I say, the sentence means the same as "There is a (unique) current
king of France, and he is bald," but it has a different structure and so
is not syntactically equivalent in that the two sentences admit of
different replies.

The description of such examples in terms of presuppositions and third
truth values is a pre-theoretical taxonomy.  It doesn't tell us what is
really going on, but just supplies a terminology for enumerating the
facts.

		Greg, lee@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu