[lit-ideas] Re: In Search for the African Language
- From: Teemu Pyyluoma <teme17@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 2 Aug 2004 08:18:23 -0700 (PDT)
--- Michael Chase <goya@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> R. Paul is quite right to bring up Meinong, whose
views - remakably like those of Avicenna - are
extremely pertinent here. Meinong would say that a
phrase about an object normally taken to be
non-existent - for instance, "the mountain I'm now
thinking of is made of gold" can be a *true* statement
about a non-existent object. But like Avicenna,
Meinong distinguishes between "Sein statements", which
predicate existence, and "Sosein statements" which do
not. A Sein-statement is an affirmative statement that
can be existentially generalized : from Swahili is
difficult" we can infer "the Swahili language exists".
> [...] But Russell *denies this distinction between
Sein-statements and Sosein statements* : in his theory
of description, every statement is either a
Sein-statement (i.e. one that affirms or presupposes
the existence of the object in question) or the
negation of a Sein-statement; for Russell *there are
no
Sosein-statements*. <
Just out curiosity: So is "my yet to be born son" a
sein or sosein statement, or a negation of a sein
statement? How about "father of my yet to be born
son"?
Or to give an everyday example, "next year's estimated
budget deficit".
For what its worth, if we really want to insist that
statements always denote something, and I don't think
we should but still, I can't see how we can escape
postulating something they denote. Saying that this
something is not an object is not helpful, and
certainly doesn't force us to admit that that
something doesn't exist.
Furthermore, if people speak about "African Language",
the phrase "African language" is somehow intelligeble
to them provived they understand each other. They will
be wrong ofcourse, or rather imprecise, but that's an
empirical and not a logical fact.
Cheers,
Teemu
Helsinki, Finland
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - 50x more storage than other providers!
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail
------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
Other related posts:
