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CSP: Certainly they are. But they are processing their data with another computer. |
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Smith: Apropos of your distinction between True1 and True2. . . . Don't you think that the meaning of a sentence is the set of possible worlds in which this sentence is true? |
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CSP: If I interpret your question rightly, a possible world is a cultural construct. Well, my encyclopedias areif you likebooks describing a possible world. Some of them, the very local oneslet me call them microencyclopediasare maximal, complete, and coherent descriptions of a very. elementary world. Othersthis is the case of E.15are the partial and contradictory description of a very complex world, such as the one Antipodeans suppose they live in. Thus, when you speak of reference in a possible world, I assume that you are not speaking in terms of True2 but, rather, in terms of True1. True in a possible world stands for "recorded in an encyclopedia." This has nothing to do with what is the case. But I would like to make clear an important point. To speak of the set of all possible worlds in which a sentence is True1 seems to me too simplistic. How can you know everything about all possible possible worlds? I guess that, in order to say that, you do take possible worlds as nonfurnished. But each possible world described by one of my encyclopedias is a furnished world. Obviously, empty worlds are perfect because it is impossible to detect their imperfections. Furnished worlds are chaotic. Any new information I receive obliges me to define most of my worlds againand sometimes new pieces of information do not fit the previous ones and. . . . You know, it's a jungle in there! |
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Smith: But there are cases in which the grammatical structure of a sentence is determined by its referent. |
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Smith: If I say It eats meat, then you understand that it must be a living being but not a human being. This living being is the referent of my sentence, not its meaning. And I was obliged to say it because my referent was an animal. |
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CSP: First of all, on this planet nobody utters It eats meat out of context. They would say so only in the course of a longer discourse. Thus, if you produce such a sentence, I look backward in my files to check if and when you had mentioned an animal. When I discover this (let us suppose, a cat), I interpret the sentence as The cat my partner was speaking of is chewing and swallowing some flesh of an animal. |
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Smith: You are not familiar with the external world, but you probably have in your memory images or other records of cases like the fol- |
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