On Thu, Feb 24, 2022 at 8:47 AM ais523 via agora-discussion
<agora-discussion@agoranomic.org> wrote:
>
> On Thu, 2022-02-24 at 08:21 -0800, Kerim Aydin via agora-discussion wrote:
> > On Thu, Feb 24, 2022 at 7:50 AM ais523 via agora-discussion
> > > Although this reasoning would solve a few problems if it worked, I'm
> > > not convinced it matches the language of the rule in question. "When
> > > the sun is up, a plant is an entity that photosynthesizes", to me,
> > > implies that all plants photosynthesize when the sun is up, rather than
> > > implying that all things that photosynthesize when the sun is up are
> > > plants. (That is, my reading of the sentence is identical to "When the
> > > sun is up, a plant is an entity and it photosynthesizes".) Your reading
> > > seems awkward to me because it's attempting to define something in the
> > > middle of a sentence, with the definition given at the start and end, a
> > > word order which is completely unnatural, whereas my reading has the
> > > part of the sentence before the comma modifying the part afterwards,
> > > and thus is much more natural.
> > >
> > > Is there any reason to favour your interpretation of the sentence over
> > > mine?
> >
> > Can't stick around for formal procedures (and sorry to duck and run -
> > this is interesting and I don't mind if it's Motioned further) but I
> > think if we make it "When exposed to light, a plant is an entity that
> > phtosynthesizes" it's pretty clear for my interpretation, because it's
> > the plant being subject to the verb "exposed", rather than an
> > independent state ("the sun").
>
> I disagree even with this example; I still interpret it as "When
> exposed to light, a plant is an entity and it photosynthesizes", rather
> than as a definition of 'plant' (although the sentence is now starting
> to strain the bounds of grammar in both interpretations – this
> interpretation seems dubious but the interpretation as a definition
> even more so). Even "A plant is an entity that photosynthesizes when
> exposed to light", I interpret as ambiguous, rather than clearly
> following your interpretation.
>
> For what it's worth, I think the problematic word here is "is" rather
> than "that". Even simplifying the sentence to "A plant is an entity",
> the same ambiguity still exists (are all plants entities, or are all
> entities (and only entities) plants?). There's probably an interesting
> discussion somewhere in here about "biased ambiguities" in which there
> are two technically correct ways to read a sentence in a rule, but one
> is more much more obvious/reasonable than the other – can the fact that
> the wording is "biased" towards one interpretation rather than the
> other override the rule 217 tests, or does the existence of any
> ambiguity at all cause us to apply them?Very helpful - "is" is indeed the problem (isn't it always). I think my judgement could be rephrased like this: The sentence "When the sun is up, a plant is an entity with active photosynthesis" is ungrammatical no matter how you slice it, so it needs judicial/interpretive "correction". This is different than the situation of eg. CFJ 3575, where a misplaced comma created a single clear alternate (though wholly unintended) reading. If a student handed in an essay with that sentence, I would, with only a moment's thought, correct it to "A plant is an entity with active photosynthesis when the sun is up" (matching my current judgement) wholly based on grammar not context, and not think for a moment of any other reading. The question is whether that is just my personal bias for the correction, whether I'm letting context/desired outcome guide me too much in that, and even if it is my bias, whether this correction is generally reasonable versus other candidate readings - noting of course that if it's a truly split reading and there's no strong single candidate for "most reasonable", the judge's job is to make the choice.
