{"id":2528,"date":"2021-07-22T13:01:51","date_gmt":"2021-07-22T13:01:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2021\/07\/22\/some-questions-about-thinking-relations-and-relational-expressions\/"},"modified":"2021-07-22T13:01:51","modified_gmt":"2021-07-22T13:01:51","slug":"some-questions-about-thinking-relations-and-relational-expressions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2021\/07\/22\/some-questions-about-thinking-relations-and-relational-expressions\/","title":{"rendered":"Some Questions about Thinking, Relations, and Relational Expressions"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bill, you said by email earlier that the sentence \u201cJake is thinking of Zeus\u201d would be true if Jake was indeed thinking of Zeus.<\/span><\/p>\n

BV: That's what I said, although I would put 'is' where you have 'was.' Is what I said  a shocking thing to say?<\/span><\/p>\n

I have questions for you about the terms \u2018obtains\u2019 and \u2018satisfies\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n

(1) If \u201cJake is thinking of Zeus\u201d is true, and assuming there is no such thing as Zeus, then does the relation \u201c\u2013 is thinking of \u2013\u201d obtain? According to what you said earlier, a relation cannot obtain if any its relata do not exist. But we normally think of a relation obtaining precisely in the case where the sentence which asserts the relation is true. What do you think?<\/span><\/p>\n

BV: We cannot assume that thinking-of<\/em>  is a relation if every relation is such that its obtaining entails the existence of all its relata.   For in the case of Jake and Zeus only one of the relata exists, and it's not Zeus. And yet it is true that Jake is thinking of Zeus. I conclude that the sentence 'Jake is thinking of Zeus,' although grammatically relational, does not express a relational proposition. <\/span> The sentence needs a truth-preserving analysis that does not commit one to the existence of nonexistent things.  <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Here are two different candidate analysantia<\/em>. 'Jake is thinking Zeus-ly.' 'Jake is a Zeus-entertainer.' Neither of these sentences is grammatically relational, and both seem to preserve the truth of the analysandum<\/em> without commitment to nonexistent things. I do not endorse either analysans<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n

(2) Is the relational expression \u201c\u2013 is thinking of \u2013\u201d satisfied<\/em> when \u201cJake is thinking of Zeus\u201d is true? For example, is it satisfied by the two things Jake and Zeus respectively? If not, why not?<\/span><\/p>\n

BV: No. Why not? Because Zeus does not exist. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bill, you said by email earlier that the sentence \u201cJake is thinking of Zeus\u201d would be true if Jake was indeed thinking of Zeus. BV: That's what I said, although I would put 'is' where you have 'was.' Is what I said  a shocking thing to say? I have questions for you about the terms … Continue reading “Some Questions about Thinking, Relations, and Relational Expressions”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[100,408,212],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2528","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-intentionality","category-language-philosophy-of","category-relations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2528","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2528"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2528\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}