1 E.g. Valberg, J. J. “Some Remarks on Action and Desire”, Journal of Philosophy, LXVIII, 15, August 6, 1970, pp. 503–519.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Ibid., p. 509.

3 Idem.

4 Idem.

5 Ibid., p. 510.

6 Cf. idem.

7 Reading “is a book” for “B” and “Zachary-wants-it-to-be-true-that . . .” for “W_z “. It is clear that in (1) “wants” is a dyadic predicate, and in (2) is a semantically undetachable fragment of the sentence-operator “W_z’ It is far from obvious how to interpret (even partially) model theoretically the operator “W_z”. We might say that W_z expresses a function θ from persons, to sentences (or the propositions they express), with “wants-to-be-true” semantically primitive. What would be the full conditions on [θ (s) = δ ] (“s” ranging over persons and “⋔” over sentences) is hard to say; but at least it would be necessary to honour the differences between the various optative operators, “hopes-to-be- true”, “wishes-were-true”, etc. For example, wanting differs from wishing and hoping by virtue of being future-directed. I can hope that you have already done so-and-so, and wish that you had done so-and-so (though past wishings seem always to be counteractual).

It might be possible to defend a “getting” operator (“getting what you want”) I such that I (θ(s)) = Ω where Ω is a set whose members are those sentences defining the conditions on g-wanting that happen to have been met; otherwise such sentences would be omitted from Ω.

However, one wonders about the rationale of the semantic primitive “wants-to-be-true”. For any predicate, F, there is a semantic primitive “wants-to-be-F” expressing, say, a function from persons to things that are F. Given that our language contains a countable infinity of predicates, F, there will be countably many semantically primitive want-operators, “wants-to-be-F”. But it is problematic whether such a language is learnable (Donald Davidson, “Theories of Meaning and Learnable Languages”) so, it becomes necessary to motivate the one primitive “want”-predicate, without in so doing committing ourselves to a kindred position on the others. Perhaps this could begin by observing that the current model seems to obliterate most of the distinction between p-wantings and g-wantings.

No doubt, a more promising partial interpretation of “W_z” would be to associate with it a function θ^• from persons to ordered pairs of sentences and the truth-value T. Thus θ^* (s) = < ϕ T >;, and “W_z” might be read “Z wants—to be true.” However these are (important) complications that we cannot here go into.

8 Idem.

9 There may be some difficulty with objects extinguished by the passage of time. Can I want Caesar's wine or wife, knowing what I do of the historical record? And while it is perfectly true that “Zachary wants an of” is untrue, that is probably explained most naturally on grammatical grounds.

10 This point, of course, is unaffected even if the sketch of categories given here proves unacceptable.

11 Strictly speaking, ω-inconsistency is defined only for (numerical) predicates of languages that can express formal number theory. But there is no harm in speaking in this extended way.

12 Such, we could call the pig-in-a-poke aspect of the modalities. It is a particularly prevalent property of belief. E.g. it is doubtful that more than a few hundred theologians understand the Nicene Creed. But millions profess to believe it, and do. If is the sequence of statements, first to last, of the Creed, then the rather forbidding “I believe the Nicene Creed but I don’t understand it” emerges as the harmless “B₁() I don’t understand )”, with “B₁” read: “I-believe-to-express-some-or-other-assortment-of-t rue-statements.”