Of course. (I might be just getting a little imaginative here.) But the meaning of the proposition expressed (assuming I had actually keyed "I am here and not there") by the sentence I wrote in my profile is not a function of where it is. Like I said, it is in a kind of "abstract-non-local space." I had *said* it when I first wrote it down in my profile.

But what he says is technically correct, right? "Here" in this context means "wherever Rush Limbaugh is." And it is trivially true that Rush is wherever he is.

If you want to say something then you need to know the rules for using language in order to do so. We can express our intentions through language. But that doesn't mean that intention are a part of the rules for the use of language, does it?

Take this (rather silly) scenario:

You and I are walking through a jungle. You are walking in front of me. You turn around to see how I am doing and see that there is a tiger approaching me from behind me. You say (while pointing toward the tiger) "There's a large monkey behind you!" I turn and start walking in the direction you are pointing because I want to see this large monkey. The tiger eats me.

I think we would both agree that the sentence "There's a large monkey behind you" makes perfectly good sense. There is no violation of the rules of grammar.

Did you express what you intended to by the use of that sentence?

If you saw this as an opportunity to get rid of someone who was always pestering you with questions, then you intended me to think there really was a monkey behind on the very good chance that the tiger would finish me off. You lied.

If you were trying to warn me about a life-threatening situation, then you failed to express that warning with the use of that sentence. Then why did you use that sentence?

Perhaps you had a brain fart and accidentally said 'monkey' instead of 'tiger'? Unfortunately for me, what you were saying still made sense because you had broken no rules.

When you had that brain fart you could have said 'fierce' instead of 'tiger'. Then you would have broken a rule that results in what you saying having no sense: 'Look there's a large fierce behind you.'

Or, perhaps, you didn't understand the meaning of 'monkey'. You thought 'monkey' meant what competent users of the language think 'tiger' means. In that case, you did violate a rule of usage. You didn't use 'monkey' according to the rules laid down for its use. Unfortunately for me, what you said still made sense.

If you had thought that the word 'fierce' meant the same as 'tiger' then you would also have been violating a rule. But, again, this time the result would have been nonsense.

I'm not sure you have expressed a proposition at all. 'Here' and 'there' are simply unbound variables like 'this' and 'that'. I would be inclined to say that all you have said in reply to the question of "Where are you?" is "x and not y". One might simply take you to be saying "I am located at x and I am not located at y", which isn't a sentence, formally speaking. At a stretch, you might take that to be semantically equivalent to "There is an x such that I am located at x, and there is a y such that I am not located at y", which would at least be a sentence, if a metaphysically trivial one.


This is slightly pedantic even if it does get at the quibble, but I think it was you who brought up meaning and reference in any case (haven't read back through the thread carefully). Surely 'here' means the same thing regardless of context, its meaning being given by the rules, conventions and habits governing its proper use. However, while the meaning of 'here' is fixed, context does determine the referent.

I'm not sure you have expressed a proposition at all. 'Here' and 'there' are simply unbound variables like 'this' and 'that'. I would be inclined to say that all you have said in reply to the question of "Where are you?" is "x and not y". One might simply take you to be saying "I am located at x and I am not located at y", which isn't a sentence, formally speaking. At a stretch, you might take that to be semantically equivalent to "There is an x such that I am located at x, and there is a y such that I am not located at y", which would at least be a sentence, if a metaphysically trivial one.

This is slightly pedantic even if it does get at the quibble, but I think it was you who brought up meaning and reference in any case (haven't read back through the thread carefully). Surely 'here' means the same thing regardless of context, its meaning being given by the rules, conventions and habits governing its proper use. However, while the meaning of 'here' is fixed, context does determine the referent.

Exactly. That is why it is an indexical expression. The same is true of "I".

.

Actually, I want to go back to the really good question you asked me yesterday. You asked exactly what needs to be asked, I think.

I've been throwing a lot of questions your way lately.
Here's another:

What was the really good question I asked you yesterday that you are referring to?:bigsmile:

You are working from a Russellian take on "this" or "that" as having a logically fixed meaning. This is obvious when you said, "I am located at x and I am not located at y" where "x" and "y" are unbounded variables. But I simply don't care. You guys are missing the point entirely. My example has nothing to do with the meanings of "here, there, this, or that." I am talking about a potential paradox between sentences vs. propositions. Propositions exist in abstract space. Sentence-types exist in abstract space. Sentence-tokens do not. And propositions are expressed by token utterances of sentence types....

My concern is that in some cases the actual proposition expressed by sentences doesn't always match up with what the sentence appears to be saying. Go back and read my BUS EXAMPLE. This illustrates the problem rather well. Ignore what I said about the "online" example.

"I am located at x and I am not located at y" is a sentence type!!!

It is pedantic, and it doesn't actually get at the "quibble."

This one, which I am not sure yet is any objection to what I've been saying, but it might be a clue to where we seem to be heading:

You said:

Was the speaker merely uttering the sentence in order to practice saying it? In that situation it makes perfectly good sense that another could misunderstand and think the speaker was making a reference when he had no intention to.

I replied:
"Do you mean like, as if one person came upon another's "rehearshing for a role" for a character to be played in a play and not know that that is what that person was actually doing, that is, rehearsing instead of asserting something about the world? Wouldn't the listerner just be wrong then?

Oh, I see what you're saying. You want to know, not merely whether the listener misconstrued the speaker's intentions. You want to know whether the lister understood anything about what the speaker said, since the listener misconstrued the speaker's intentions.....good question!! Let me think about that."

Does that sound right to you? Is that what you're driving at?

What on earth does your bus example indicate apart from the fact that a single sentence can express two different propositions?

"The present King of France is bald" expresses a proposition about Louis XVI when uttered in 1790, and it expresses a proposition about Louis XV when uttered in 1743.This is hardly a paradox! Hell, Strawson dealt with this 60 years ago. ('On Referring', Mind, 1950)

Imagine I am standing in the middle of a room of objects and I say, "It is red and this is not green" making no gestures. Some utterances of meaningful sentences fail to have a truth value, this is an example. As is I am located at x and I am not located at y, and, for that matter, the present King of France is bald.

If I have correctly unravelled your meaning from what you have to admit is a very convoluted exposition, I would think my point rather stabs at the heart of the issue.

So too is the meaning of sentence-types fixed; the meaning of "I am hungry" is given by the rules, conventions and habits governing the use of this sentence.

In other words, the meaning of sentence-types tell us the conditions under which sentence-tokens are true. Usage differs, meaning does not. That is how we explain your supposed paradox.

(You say something very confusing here: "Propositions exist in abstract space. Sentence-types exist in abstract space. Sentence-tokens do not." Putting aside all the nonsense about 'abstract space', I'm sure you don't mean to say that propositions are to be identified with sentence types. That would be silly. Perhaps, it is better to use 'sentences' to refer to the purely syntactic entities, while using 'utterance' to refer to the use of a sentence. This certainly seems to be a more common jargon.)

Heck, I threw that out there as a possible example of what you were talking about. And I did that in order to find out what is troubling you.

So far all I can gather is that you think that a competent user of English is making an apparent reference to something, 'the tiger' , but is really referring to nothing.

I went back and reviewed this discussion and I got the impression we were talking past each other - at least to a degree.

For what it is worth. in the example I provided (the speaker practising how to pronounce the words in the sentence), I don't think the speaker is actually playing the language game yet. He is simply preparing to play.

Really? That's it? I thought you nailed me "Wittgenstein-style" with some kind of consequnce for my presupposition, that we can figure out what a speaker really said by means of figuring out what appear to be the speaker's intentions by using this or that sentence, is false. According to how I set up your example, I would be wrong--since I do, in fact, think we can understand what someone else says by means of understanding what appear to be his intentions in uttering this or that sentence.

I'm pretty sure you missed that. But I thought that's what you were driving at, namely, if I am right, then communication is not possible at least for some cases.

Knowing what appear to be a person's intentions is part of knowing the context so that we can determine what someone really said by this or that utterance.

anyway...I hope I haven't made things worse...

Can it? Are you talking about sentence types or sentence tokens, or what?

(Utterance at Time1) "You are hungry" is a sentence token of some sentence type.

(Utterance at Time2) "You are hungry" is a different sentence token of the same sentence type.

Neither token utterance expresses the same proposition if "you" is picking out different people in each respective context. The same sentence-type, of course, is used to express different propositions. But the same sentence-type does not express the same proposition, nor does the same-sentence type always express a different proposition either. This is the error. We use the same sentence-type to expresses different propositions by our different token utterances of the same sentence-type.

(context1) [You are hungry] is a sentence type which is the same sentence type as in,

(context2) [You are hungry]

They have the same meaning in both contexts, but not the same truth-conditions. But of course, we don't know what the token utterance

"You are hungry"

is saying unless you first know what the context is--such as, who is saying it: which is precisely the meaning, the character, or the "rule" that we are lacking here in the case of the bus. So in the case of the bus, it's not clear what the rule is, since it is not clear who is making use of the indexical "you."

[If you can read this, you are not using public transportation like you should be]

This sentence-type has the same meaning because it is the same string of words but, of course, the sentence doesn't have the same truth-conditions. And maybe that's the solution--but it is a solution whose truth-value is indeterminate. So I'm curious, what sentence gets painted on the back of the bus? Is it a sentence-type, or a sentence-token?

Considered as a sentence-type, the indexical "you" doesn't seem to have an definite referent because we don't know to whom the sentence is even applying, so it seems truth-valueless. Considered as a sentence-token, the sentence on the bus is both true and false at once.

So the sentence on the back of the bus is either truth-valueless, or it is contradictory.

But maybe "you" stands out "essentially" as an indexical from the sentence type so that anybody can "read themselves into it." Maybe that's it. But is that the appropriate rule of making use of "you"? To "read yourself into it", no matter whom or what mentions the indexical "you" or whenever "you" is mentioned or written? That can't be right. Don't we need a speaker? What is that alleged "rule of use" for "you"? We know what it is for "I." The meaning of "I" is "referring to whomever is making use of it." And for Kaplan, the rule of use (meaning or character) for "you" is the function whose value, for each context, is the person who is addressed by the speaker in that context. But in the bus example there is no *speaker*, hence, there doesn't seem to be any context at all.

So who is *making use* of "you"? Nobody, it seems, except for the reader. Is that problematic? I think so. If George gets a memo from his boss, and the written memo is addressed to the ambiguous "you," do I have the freedom to pick up that memo and "read myself into the 'you'"?
It doesn't seem so. So what is the appropriate "rule of use," here, for "you"?

"You"--in this case--is just a kind of "dangling indexical" and has no specific function it seems. So I don't know what to do with it.

Perhaps the advertizers intention to refer to all those who drive vehicles? But now "you" is acting like a definite description, namely, "all those who drive vehicles." So that doesn't seem right ether. I can't figure this out.

Before we go on, would you please tell me, which one is on the back of the bus? Is it a sentence-type or is it a sentence-token? And what does the meaning or semantic character "you" have in this case? I know that this is what I am wrestling with. So please don't just dismiss my example without even thinking about it.

But of course, you know that the "The present King of France" is a definite description, not a name--it might be an indexical description, but I'm not even sure this is correct.

The meaning of "The present King of France" is fixed, yes, but is the referent fixed? Did Russell think this was a reference-fixing description at all,...since I thought the role of reference-fixing was taken over by his use of logical quantifiers? (And Strawson thought the role of fixing-the-referent was undertaken by the person who was *pointing* to the object fixed.) Either way, Russell is wrong about various issues here.

And this is all Russell's theory anyway (which I don't think is correct). In fact, I am confident it is not, because it is debatable whether the proposition Russell thought was expressed by this sentence is even the proposition expressed.

Do you think the same sentence type indicated by the token utterance "it is raining outside" expresses the same proposition in all times and places? Of course not, because it is not clear that

<it is raining outside>

expressed in New Jersey 2 years ago

is even the same proposition as

<it is raining outside>

expressed in San Francisco by a person today 4pm Pacific Time.

So even though you've told me that the same proposition is expressed on two different occasions in your above example, you still haven't told me why this is the case. But worst of all, it is totally irrevelent to the problems facing the example I actually gave.

But is the sentence "If you can read this, you are not using public transportation" on the back of the bus truth-valueless then? It would have to be, according to this example. So is that the solution? That the sentence just fails to say anything at all? That might just be solution.

So it is not clear whether the semantic value of "the present" is imbedded in the actual proposition expressed, or if it lies oustide of the actual proposition expressed. Read Jeffery King's most recent works on tense and propositions.

In your Russellian model, you've provided a time and place context for "The King of France is Bald" to be truth-valuable at all by taking the semantic value indicated by the "present" part and prefixing it to the proposition allegedly expressed by your sentence. Russell said it was false here and now because no entity satisfied that description now. So the "the present," of course, acts as a modifying operator on the proposition.

<The King of France is Bald>

But it is not clear that this is the same proposition expressed years ago by someone's utterance "The present King of France is bald" as someone's utterance today "The present King of France is bald." Therefore, it is not clear that,

<The King of France is Bald>

is the same proposition expressed today as was expressed back then. You just assume that it is by taking the semantic value indicated by "the present" and prefixing it to the proposition <The King of France is Bald>. But I find this problematic because it doesn't work for cases such as,

<it is raining outside>

So there is a debate about which semantic value of the sentence uttered gets included (or excluded) in the actual proposition expressed.

I don't deny I could be incorrect. But what I deny is that you've succeeded in offering any objections because you insist on using Russell's Theory of Definite Descriptions to allegedly refute what I am saying about propositions vs. sentences. Nor is Russell's theory of definite descrptions the same as Russell's Description Theory of Proper Names. They are different. So again, I would prefer thinking through this instead of just having you repeat what other philosophers say without telling me why you think their analyses are even correct from the start. So what's the purpose? Is it just to "show me up" with what you know? But I don't even care what you know.

In this example, that seems correct to me, but you still haven't explained anything. How exactly do we deal with present and past tense? And how do we deal with the fact that the sentence is on the bus, and no individual seems to have uttered it?

Though

[I am in location x and I am in location y]

indicates a sentence type, it is not clear that it is a sentence type. So of course sentence types exist "abstractly." Sentence types are not physical things. And what I just "jotted down" here is an instantiation of a sentence type. That's all I mean here.

I think part of the confusion is that you and I are taking "sentence-type" differently. You think that term merely applies to syntactic structure alone. I only partly agree with that. The difference may have something to do with the differences in our ontologies.

Right. Isn't that exactly the violation here? So isn't the speaker making use of "the tiger" as if it pointed to something, when he doesn't intend for it be pointing to anything? Isn't that the violation? Using "the tiger" as a (indexically) referring term when you don't intend to refer to anything?

The rule of use for "the tiger" might look like this:

Do not assert a declarative sentence using "the tiger" as a referring term (which it is, but indexically so), when you don't have any intentions of referring to anything.

Really? That's it? I thought you nailed me "Wittgenstein-style" with some kind of consequnce for my presupposition, that we can figure out what a speaker really said by means of figuring out what appear to be the speaker's intentions by using this or that sentence, is false. According to how I set up your example, I would be wrong--since I do, in fact, think we can understand what someone else says by means of understanding what appear to be his intentions in uttering this or that sentence.

I'm pretty sure you missed that. But I thought that's what you were driving at, namely, if I am right, then communication is not possible at least for some cases.

Knowing what appear to be a person's intentions is part of knowing the context so that we can determine what someone really said by this or that utterance.

In any case, I think offering counter-examples to a clever advertising device may be a a case of over philosophising.

There remains the question as to which interpretation should be accepted, but this is hardly a paradox, it is merely a matter of unravelling ambiguities.

Which interpretation do we choose, or, indeed, do we get the right to choose at all? To go a bit postmodern for a moment, "The birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author," so to speak. If communication is our goal, as it seems to be in the bus example (unless you take advertisements on buses to be a form of avant garde literature), then clearly the death of the author is too high a price to pay, and intended meaning should be sought after.

Seeing as we both seem to be misrepresenting each other (I'm certainly not advocating any sort of Russellian view), I shall give a brief rundown of how I see it, specifically of how I see there being no paradox.

Clearly, a token utterance of a sentence is open to a number of interpretations, even to a single listener.

It should be clear that when spoken in a given situation, "If you can read this, you are not using public transportation like you should be" could be taken as a universal claim: "Anybody who can read this is not using public transport, and they should be."

It could be interpreted as an existential claim: "Somebody who can read this is not using public transport, and they should be."

Or indeed it could be interpreted to be a claim about a particular: "If Extrain can read this, he is not using public transport and he should be."

An utterance certainly gives a sentence context, but that doesn't mean it removes all ambiguity, instead we see that it is possible to interpret the utterance as asserting a number of different propositions.

The appropriate line to take, would be that while sentences are not truth bearers, nor are spoken instances of them, which is demonstrated, I think, by cases of ambiguity such as this one. The propositions that an utterance might be interpreted as asserting, clearly do, however, have a determinate truth value.

Clearly it doesn't make any sense to speak of utterances, or instances of sentences, when dealing with written form. Seeing as we're about to delve into literary theory, I'll let Shakespeare make the point:

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

If you take indexical expressions to merely be expressions whose reference shifts from context to context, then "The present King of France" is definitely an indexical expression.

You have misread me: '"The present King of France is bald" expresses a proposition about Louis XVI when uttered in 1790, and it expresses a proposition about Louis XV when uttered in 1743.' I told you that two different propositions were expressed, on two seperate occasions, by the same sentence. We are in agreement.

It's ambiguous. There are a number of possible readings, some true, some false. Presumably the author has an intended reading, which may well be true; although, I'm apt to presume the the intended reading is that people should use buses instead of cars.

"If you can read this and you are driving a car, then you are not using transportation like you should be."

That would work, because "you" is specifed by the description "all and only those people who can read this (the sentence) and are driving a car."

But that's exactly what the individual should have put on the back of a bus. Not,

"If you can read this, then you are not using transportation like you should be."

Puzzel solved. But the orginal sentence says nothing.

I'm tired of this.

Well, don't you have to take into consideration that the ad person needs to come up with something catchy?

I don't think advertisers give a damn about the truth. They want to say something that will persuade others to buy or do something. It is just a form of propaganda.

It would be interesting to study how language is used in advertising.

--one philosopher accusing another philosopher of over philosophizing?-- That's too funny.

So is this your appropriate response to philosophers who spend hours analyzing the paradox which says,

"This sentence is false"?

This is ambiguous, it is paradoxical, and there are various proposed solutions to it put on the table for consideration.

But I've never heard of a practicing philosopher of language say, "Oh, this sentence is ambiguous and has many interpretations, so let's just leave it at that."

Nor have I heard someone say, "Let's just go after the intendend meaning of the Author, so we don't "kill" what he had to say." Philosophy of Language is not the same discipline as analyzing author's intentions in writing a text, anyway.

...

The question here is not, "Does this sentence have various intepretations?"

Unequivocally, the answer is yes.

The question here is, "Which interpretation is the correct one?"

Then unravel the ambiquity with a satisfactory solution! Don't just say "it is ambiguous, so there are many interpretations," and then walk away. That' not fair to anyone. If you don't want to talk about this, truly, you don't have to. You can walk away and it wouldn't bother me a bit.

huh? Of course you are giving a Russellian view. That's what offering various interpretations such as "All," "Some," "For all x, if x is an F, and for all y, if y is an F then y=x, and x is a G," does. Though this identifies the amgibuity concerning the utterance, it doesn't resolve what it says. Sentences on paper still say things, yes? So do sentences on buses. And I don't remember the sentence, as I had presented it, saying anything using quantifiers. Anybody could have *read* it that way. In fact, that's just how everyone does read it. So I don't see any particular geunius solution going on here.

Yes. But that doesn't mean the listener's interpretation is correct.
The point in this example is that any intepretation that we give is incorrect. That's why it is so strange.

"Anybody" is ambiguous as it is. Do you mean "all"? "At least one"? The former makes it false. The latter just existentially quanitifies it. But I don't remember the utterance saying, "If at least one person can read this, that person is not using public transportation." If it did, we still would not have the solution, because this sentence is both true and false at once.

And the point of the example is to figure which proposition is being expressed. I would be satisfied, perhaps, if you said something like, "Though there are many different interpretations of what the sentence on the back of the bus is saying, none of them are correct, and so the sentence does does not express any proposition at all. Since what the sentence expresses, if it expresses anything at all, lacks a determinate truth value, the sentence says nothing at all."

Why don't you say something like this? I would be much happier if you did, than having to deal with your post-modern-Russellian view of it. We are not analyzing literature. We are in a philosophy of language thread discussing the topic "numbers vs. words." You seem to be in the wrong forum of you continue to insist on analyzing language this way.

Again, taken in the context of a class on Shakespeare, this is fine. But taken in the context of Philosophy of Language, this is not.

That's fine if you want to take it that way. I just said I don't think I agree with it, unless you are prepared to tell me how this is supposed to work for the example at stake.

The problem is that this kind of "analysis" doesn't have anything to do with my example at all. We are not dealing with "indexical descriptions" whatever those are. We are dealing with the indexical pronoun "you."



...And I explicitly told you that you haven't told me why this is so. So we are not necessarily in agreement at all.

And again! What does this have to do with the indexical pronoun "you." Can you tell me the appropriate "rule of use" here for the indexical?

Is "You" and indexical description? Can you tell me what that description is? Please don't just "paste" "The King of France" onto my example and say, "RESOLVED". I don't see this pretended resolution at all.

You think? But his choice of words are not only ambiguous, they also fail to say anything. That is why the slogan is stupid.

Good. This is applicable.

Now we have an example lacking a context. And it is not clear to whom-- the entire class, or a subset of a class of team players, or just one individual--the manager is referring. But you've just identified the contextual problem needing a resolution.

The written or spoken word is always given by a context, and in the case of my example, the written-word on the bus. So what is that context? The advetizer meant to say something by his use of the indexical pronoun "you." But clearly, he is misusing it, especially if he decides to put that on the back of the bus. The consequence is that he fails to say anything with any definite meaning, or any given referent. He just says "IF YOU CAN READ THIS." So what is the meaning of sentence, and what does it say? Clearly, the advetizer meant to say that people should be using buses instead of cars, and this is the implied meaning, but it is not the actual sentence meaning. Therefore, he totally failed to say anything at all by his choice of words.

Sorry, just a brief response right now.

When someone asserts something sincerely that is a criterion of identity for ascribing a belief to them.
But criteria of identity are defeasible. If someone is lying they are not being sincere. They are attempting to deceive. And they can only deceive successfully if they use language correctly.

Have you read up on Wittgenstein's concept of criteria?

There doesn't seem to me to be anything awry with the expression "The tiger is fierce". If, the context of where it is used there is uncertainty over what the speaker is trying to say with that expression, then we simply have to ask them.

It may turn out that there has been a rule violation. But then, you've already told me that the speaker knows the correct usage for 'the tiger'. And you also say he is not using it to refer to something. What is he using it for?

In your scenario you've given us no way to determine what his intentions are. Or did I miss it?

So how can we use those intentions to understand why he is uttering that particular sentence?

If you would forgive me, I'd like to take a stab at a philosophical method closer to your liking: I've never heard a practising philosopher of language say, "I've never heard anybody say that before! I shall point this out in misplaced triumph." Though, I should have thought pointing out one's own ignorance is hardly the way to go about an argument.

You are assuming there is a privileged interpretation. I don't see why you should be so incredulous that I suggest leaving it at, 'It is ambiguous'. The thing that is characteristic of ambiguous sentences is that there is no privilaged interpretation.

I think you make too little of my dead author metaphor, or rather, Barthes' metaphor from his essay, "The Death of the Author", which despite your protests, I think is very much relevant in this area of the philosophy of language.

We are talking about interpreting a written message are we not? It seems only natural that one should turn to literary theory. Barthes says, "Writing is the destruction of every voice, every point of origin", isn't this the thing you were clucking about when you complained "Don't we need a speaker?" a few posts above? The answer is, no, we don't need a speaker. There are lots of different interpretations, none is the one 'true' interpretation, handed down from the authorial God in charge of writing things on buses.

You won't get rid of me that easily, buddy. Why should any interpretation of the slogan on the back of a bus be the correct one? The guy who writes it can't be the one to tell me what proposition it asserts, that is humpty-dumpty semantics.

Before you once more object to me using literary examples in a discussion about philosophy, I'm going to do it again:
"Alice considered a little. `I like birthday presents best,' she said at last.
`You don't know what you're talking about!' cried Humpty Dumpty. `How many days are there in a year?'
`Three hundred and sixty-five,' said Alice.
`And how many birthdays have you?'
`One.'
`And if you take one from three hundred and sixty-five what remains?'
`Three hundred and sixty-four, of course.'
Humpty Dumpty looked doubtful. `I'd rather see that done on paper,' he said.
Alice couldn't help smiling as she took out her memorandum book, and worked the sum for him:
[CENTER]365
1
----
364
---- [/CENTER]
Humpty Dumpty took the book and looked at it carefully. `That seems to be done right --' he began.
`You're holding it upside down!' Alice interrupted.
`To be sure I was!' Humpty Dumpty said gaily as she turned it round for him. `I thought it looked a little queer. As I was saying, that seems to be done right -- though I haven't time to look it over thoroughly just now -- and that shows that there are three hundred and sixty-four days when you might get un-birthday presents --'
`Certainly,' said Alice.
`And only one for birthday presents, you know. There's glory for you!'
`I don't know what you mean by "glory",' Alice said.
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. `Of course you don't -- till I tell you. I meant "there's a nice knock-down argument for you!"'
`But "glory" doesn't mean "a nice knock-down argument",' Alice objected.
`When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, `it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less.'
`The question is,' said Alice, `whether you can make words mean so many different things.'
`The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, `which is to be master -- that's all.'"

You don't have to subscribe to Russell's views to make use of formal logic. Indeed, I merely noted that 'here' and 'there' are unbound variables in "Ostensibly here and not there", throwing in an x and a y for good measure, before you were telling me how dearly I hold Russell's theory of descriptions. Please forget I ever said it if you are going to continue to mistakenly identify what I am saying with Russell.

Why do you say this? I thought we had agreed that the sentence was ambiguous, meaning there is a number of competing interpretations none of which can be characterised as being incorrect.

I hardly dare say it lest I am accused of being a closet Russellian, but one (again I stress, I do not hold that the sentence must be analysed either this way, or as an existential claim, merely that it can be) perfectly plausible interpretation is to give a generalised reading of the 'you':"For all x, if x can read this, x is not using public transport...".

It seems silly for a reader on a bus behind the ad to take the "you" being addressed in an advertisement chiding people for not using public transport to be himself, which rules our reading of that kind. Though an appropriate response all of this might be, "Dude, it's just an advert for public transport." This is what I meant when I said you were over philosophising; nobody is in a frightful state of confusion when they read those advertisements.

What do you mean the sentence is both true and false?

You made reference to the liar's paradox above, is that what you are alluding to? If so, "If you can read this, you are not using public transportation" does not fall into the same trap as the liar's paradox:

A = "If you can read this, you are not using public transportation" "If you can read A, you are not using public transportation"
Preschool logic tells us that the truth value of A doesn't come in to the matter.

"If you can read A, you are not using public transportation" is a truth function of "You can read A" and "You are not using public transport." It is true if and only if "You can read A" is false, or "You are not using public transport" is true. Now clearly, the truth of the antecedent is not dependent on the truth of the whole sentence as one can read something whether it is true or not.

Contrast this with the liars paradox:
B = "this sentence is false"
"B = false"

Otherwise, I have no idea what you are talking about.

We are analysing a 'text' on the back of a bus. I really don't see what your objection is. If it assuages your discomfort at all, I'm sure you will be happy to know that a great deal of postmodern literary theory is rooted in the thought of the french linguist, Ferdinand de Saussure. In any case, the fact that I mention postmodernism hardly qualifies me as a postmodernist (or does it! (that's a little postmodern humour for you)), any more than mentioning quantifiers qualifies me as a Russellian. Indeed, I'm a philosophy student at a very much analytically oriented department; I fall entirely within that framework.

The reason I do not say, "Though there are many different interpretations of what the sentence on the back of the bus is saying, none of them are correct, and so the sentence does does not express any proposition at all. Since what the sentence expresses, if it expresses anything at all, lacks a determinate truth value, the sentence says nothing at all." Is because firstly, I do not see all of the interpretations suggested (a list I, by no means, take to be exhaustive) as being 'incorrect', in fact, I might even be so inclined as to reject your entire notion of a 'correct' interpretation.

Secondly, I see no way in which this statement could express something of an indeterminate truth value, and you have said nothing to make me think otherwise. Indeed, I'm not even sure why you think it might be of indeterminate truth value.

Don't be such a spoilsport. Even philosophers can enjoy Shakespeare. Being well read may even furnish you with useful examples, or at least seeds for the imagination.

I'm sorry, but if this doesn't address your point, then you aren't expounding it very clearly. You complained about an alleged "paradox" of a sentence being both true and false, and banged on about the word 'you' a lot. I told you that a sentence (and, indeed, its linguistic sub-units) is meaningful in so far as there are rules, conventions and habits governing its proper use,

e.g. 'the present king of France' may be used to refer to a unique monarch of the French nation at the time of its utterance, 'you' may be used to refer to a second person/people (obviously I don't take this to be an exhaustive list of rules). These rules effectively tell us the rules under which the use of a sentence is true or false. They tell us that "The present king of France" was used at times to refer to different kings. They tell us that 'you' is used to refer to many different people, even in the same sentence. I said, that while sentences have fixed rules for how they may to used to say things, what they say depends on their particular use, or in the case of the written word, interpretation. Some interpretations may give a set of true propositions, some may not. No paradox.

"If you can read this, then you are not using public transportation." Are you saying that you don't understand this sentence? Surely you grasp that the idea is to have people driving in cars behind the bus read it? There really is nothing more to understanding it that that.

If he failed to say anything, then why might people think, "Quite right, I'm not using public transport," when they read it?