Graeme (R.) Forbes

[Graeme Forbes] In I, I summarize the semantics for the relational/notional distinction for intensional transitives developed in Forbes. In II-V I pursue issues about logical consequence which were either unsatisfactorily dealt with in that paper or, more often, not raised at all. I argue that weakening inferences, such as 'Perseus seeks a mortal gorgon, therefore Perseus seeks a gorgon', are valid, but that disjunction inferences, such as 'Perseus seeks a mortal gorgon, therefore Perseus seeks a mortal gorgon or an immortal gorgon', are invalid. Since 'a gorgon' and 'a mortal gorgon or an immortal gorgon' are extensionally and intensionally the same quantifier, it is not completely trivial to arrange the semantics of intensional transitives so that this classification of the inferences is obtained. ; the latter will be incorporated into a forthcoming monograph, Attitude Problems.) /// [Jennifer Saul] This paper discusses the question of which verbs are intensional transitives. In particular, I ask which verbs Forbes should take to be intensional transitives. I argue that it is very difficult to arrive at a clear and plausible understanding of what an intensional transitive is-making it difficult to answer these questions. I end by briefly raising some questions about the usefulness of the category of intensional transitives.

[Graeme Forbes] In I, I summarize the semantics for the relational/notional distinction for intensional transitives developed in Forbes (2000b). In II-V I pursue issues about logical consequence which were either unsatisfactorily dealt with in that paper or, more often, not raised at all. I argue that weakening inferences, such as 'Perseus seeks a mortal gorgon, therefore Perseus seeks a gorgon', are valid, but that disjunction inferences, such as 'Perseus seeks a mortal gorgon, therefore Perseus seeks a mortal gorgon or an immortal gorgon', are invalid. Since 'a gorgon' and 'a mortal gorgon or an immortal gorgon' are extensionally and intensionally the same quantifier, it is not completely trivial to arrange the semantics of intensional transitives so that this classification of the inferences is obtained. (This paper is an abridged version of Forbes (2001a); the latter will be incorporated into a forthcoming monograph, Attitude Problems.) /// [Jennifer Saul] This paper discusses the question of which verbs are intensional transitives. In particular, I ask which verbs Forbes should take to be intensional transitives. I argue that it is very difficult to arrive at a clear and plausible understanding of what an intensional transitive is-making it difficult to answer these questions. I end by briefly raising some questions about the usefulness of the category of intensional transitives

A verb is transitive iff it usually occurs with a direct object, and in such occurrences it is said to occur transitively . Thus ‘ate’ occurs transitively in ‘I ate the meat and left the vegetables’, but not in ‘I ate then left’ (perhaps it is not the same verb ‘left’ in these two examples, but it seems to be the same ‘ate’). A verb is intensional if the verb phrase (VP) it forms with its complement is anomalous in at least one of three ways: (i) interchanging expressions in the complement referring to the same entity can change the truth-value of the sentence embedding the VP; (ii) the VP admits of a special “unspecific” reading if it contains a quantifier, or a certain type of quantifier; and (iii) the normal existential commitments of names and existential quantifiers in the complement are suspended even when the embedding sentence is negation-free.

In a recent article in Analysis, Graeme Hunter and William Seager (1981) attempt to rescue counterpart theory (CT) from some objections of Hazen 1979. They see these objections as arising from ‘uncritical use of the translation scheme originally proposed by Lewis’, and intend to meet them by refraining from use of that scheme. But they do not offer a new scheme; they say ‘…it is no more necessary to have one to capture the sense of modal idiom than it is to capture the sense of quantificational idiom…Appeal to truth value is the single most important criterion of correct translation’ (Hunter and Seager 1981:72). Thus, where the scheme of Lewis (1968) translates a truth by a falsehood or conversely, Hunter and Seager simply produce a sentence which they claim to be a better translation, without articulating any structural principles they employ to arrive at their candidate. A friend of CT should not be happy with this procedure. Let Lm be first-order modal language and Lc be the language of counterpart theory. Sentences of Lc are intended to interpret or elucidate the meanings of Lm-sentences in the strong sense that they should be the outputs of an adequate theory of meaning, which we can formulate as a model theory, for Lm, written in Lc plus set theory. The interest of CT resides in its potential to provide an alternative approach to the model theory of modal logic, and from the clauses of any such alternative model theory we should be able to read off a translation scheme for Lm into Lc, just as we can in the standard case. If CT’s motivation is sound, which Hunter and Seager do not dispute, yet there is no translation scheme and so no counterpart-theoretic model theory, one might suspect some defect in the original language Lm. And in fact, Hunter and Seager find certain Lm-sentences multiply ambiguous with respect to Lc; but if a counterpart-theoretic model theory is possible, to say..