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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9579461" data-attributes="member: 42582">Here's a simple example: The chair is to the left of the table.Now you could argue that that sentence - although a perfectly well-formed sentence of English - is, in its "deep structure" - elliptical. That its actual semantic content is The chair is to the left of the table from my perspective. But there are some costs to that account: (1) it entails that the sentence "The chair is to the left of the table" entails that I exist - which is a bit counterintuitive'; (2) it makes the sentence conceptually far more complicated than it seems to be from its surface grammar: as well as concrete objects and spatial relations between them, it also uses complex perspectival notions and reports on complex perspectival states of affairs.Here's another: Its unlawful to walk down the street carrying a katana. That is generally true in my jurisdiction (Victoria, Australia). There are other places where its probably false. Does the actual semantic content of the sentence include a hidden clause or index that links it to a jurisdiction?Here's another: There's no milk in the fridge. That might be true uttered by me looking bereftly into my milk-less fridge; but there are other contexts in which it is false. Again, there are serious scholars who argue for ellided clauses or hidden indices, but those views have costs of the same sort that I set out above for "The chair is to the left of the table".You produce some sentences about the outer planes, assert without argument that they have no reflexive components, no hidden indices, etc and then conclude that "I certainly don't see how perception could affect the truth-value of any of these statements". I'm sure the autobiographical statement is true. But that doesn't mean that the dogmatic assertion has to be.</blockquote>

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