Propositions

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Date: Tue, 10 May 94 19:34:12 -0700
From: John McCarthy <jmc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Message-id: <9405110234.AA19792@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
To: sowa@turing.pacss.binghamton.edu
Cc: cg@cs.umn.edu, interlingua@ISI.EDU, sowa@turing.pacss.binghamton.edu
In-reply-to: sowa's message of Tue, 10 May 94 21:18:28 EDT <9405110118.AA10365@turing.pacss.binghamton.edu>
Subject: Propositions
Reply-To: jmc@cs.stanford.edu

1. There is no special difficulty about propositions provided you
don't demand a characterization of what a proposition is.  The
philosophical problems are to be evaded by limiting ambitions.  We
need to decide what properties of propositions as distinct from sentences
are desirable and attainable.

2. It seems to me that my 1979 "First order theories of individual concepts
and propositions" was ok as far as it went and could serve as a basis for
Interlingua.  What it didn't do, because I didn't know a good way of doing it,
was to handle quantifiers with propositions in a good way.
Quantifying in presented know problem, but it was hard to say what
specializations you believed when you believed and existential.