Do I believe the multiplication table?

Most entries, like 8x8, in the multiplication table I know off the top of my head. But some may require a quick calculation. If you ask me what 7x8 is, I may do 49+7=56, and if you ask me what 6x9 is, I might do 70-6=54.

But is there really an important distiction here? You ask me what 8x4 is. Just about right away, 32 comes to mind. But what if, in fact, my mind (or brain?) unconsciously calculated it: 64/2=32? After all, I am more confident of my knowledge of 8x8 than of 8x4, and I think it comes to mind faster and more naturally. And even in my 7x8 calculation, there were unconscious elements. I don't have to consciously think: 7x8 = 7x(7+1) = 7x7 + 7x1 = 49+7 = 56. I just consciously think: 7x7=49, 49+7=56. So along with the conscious processing, there is unconscious application of the distributive law. And hence it is quite a reasonable hypothesis that when I am asked about 8x4, I might indeed be making a quick unconscious calculation. And that would help explain why I can call to mind 8x8 faster than 8x4. Furthermore, if the brain is at all like a computer and if the brain is where memories are housed, information is stored in some encoded and maybe even compressed form. There will thus always be a computational process of some sort when making stored data usable.

Actually, in the above I wasn't completely correct. I think I actually do have 7x8 and 6x9 memorized. But normally (though not now, since the examples are fresh in mind) recalling them from memory takes more time and effort, and I feel it is less reliable than doing the quick calculations. However, one could easily imagine that I don't have them memorized at all, and in the following I will counterfactually assume that.

Now, it is tempting to say that I don't believe that 7x8=56 if I have to actually compute it. But if computation is involved in almost all processes of recall, then it seems we believe very little at all, except the things we're occurrently thinking. And that's absurd. For one, it seems plausible that beliefs are needed for justification, and so if we have so few beliefs, and yet many of our beliefs require many other beliefs for their justification, then fewer of our beliefs end up justified than is right.

Perhaps, then, we should say that there is a difference between calling and recalling to mind. But that distinction is going to be hard to draw.

So maybe what we should say is this. When calling something to mind would involve an unconscious process, then we have a case of belief, but when the process would be conscious, there is no belief until the proposition is called to mind. Now the idiot savant who can do very big arithmetical calculations unconsciously counts as believing all the answers ahead of calculation. That doesn't seem intuitively right. However, whether we call it a belief or not, I do think we should not in any important way distinguish the case of unconscious arithmetical computation from more ordinary cases of recall. And once we realize that unconscious computation can be very complex, we really shouldn't distinguish conscious from unconscious computability in any normatively important way.

Here are some potential consequences. First, we might be pushed to some sort of reliabilism, perhaps of a proper function sort. For there ought to be a distinction between justified and unjustified belief, and if we do not distinguish belief from what one has a skill to compute, then we need a similar account of the justification of the outputs of that skill. But that account, very likely, will involve the reliability of the skill. Second, if we want to maintain some distinction between non-occurrent belief and skill at generating occurrent belief, this distinction is likely to be a vague one, involving the amount of computation. In particular, I suspect that the distinction may not match up with what we want to say about knowledge. So it may be that knowledge doesn't entail belief—maybe knowledge merely entails the possession of a skill of calling to mind.

I am not particularly attached to the conclusions. I just want to provoke some discussion about the phenomena.

Do Aquinas and Scotus disagree on univocal predication of God?

Duns Scotus defines univocal predication as follows: P is univocal provided that Px&~Px is always a contradiction, and hence P can be used in multiple lines of a syllogism. Famously, Aquinas says that no positive term can be univocally predicated of a creature and of God, while Scotus says that some can be univocally predicated, for instance "being". I suggest, however, that the disagreement could be merely verbal, due to the two philosophers using the word "univocal" differently.

For here is a way of developing Aquinas' position. When I attribute wisdom to God and when I attribute wisdom to Socrates, the truth grounds of my attribution are different but related. In the case of God, the truth ground of my attribution is the simple God, who is identical with wisdom. In the case of Socrates, the ground is Socrates' accident of wisdom inhering in Socrates. We have a ground or truthmaker heterogeneity here: the same claim is true for different reasons. If the grounds were completely different, the word "wisdom" would be equivocal. However, the grounds are not different but analogically related, and hence "wisdom" is analogical.

Now, let us plug this into Scotus' definition. "Wisdom" will be univocal in Scotus' sense if and only if it is a contradiction to suppose of x that x is wise and that x is not wise. But on Aquinas' view, as I read him, this is a contradiction. For either x is God or x is not God. If x is God, then "x is wise" and "x is not wise" are claims that are true if and only if, respectively, x is or is not identical with wisdom, and hence x cannot both be wise and non-wise. If x is not God, then "x is wise" and "x is not wise" are claims that are true if and only if, respectively, x has or does not have wisdom, and hence x cannot both be wise and non-wise. In either case, a contradiction ensues from supposing that x is wise and not wise.

The analogy thesis on my reading is about the grounds of the predication. What grounds there must be for the predication to be true differs depending on whether the subject of predication is divine. But this does not allow for a contradiction.

Consider the following predicate H: "if ___ is an animal, then it is a healthy animal, and if it is urine, then it is indicative of health, and if it is food then it is productive of health, and ..." This is meant to be an expansion of Aquinas' and Aristotle's favorite example of an analogical predicate, "is healthy". But now notice that while the grounds of "x is H" differ depending on what x is, nonetheless no x can both satisfy H and not satisfy H. That a horse is healthy and that its urine is healthy tell us different things about the horse and urine, respectively, but in the case of the horse, only one thing is said by attribution of H, and in the case of urine, only one thing is said by attribution of H.

Granted, we might expand the example and allow that there are two senses of "The horse is healthy". In the primary sense, it means that the horse is in good physical condition, while in the secondary sense, it means that if the horse were made into food, that food would be healthy. I am not aware of Aquinas allowing such a case, however. So it is quite possible that Aquinas thinks that in analogical predication, only one kind of ground is allowed for each particular subject of predication. And if so, then the predicate satisfies Scotus' definition of univocity, and can be used as the middle term in a syllogism.

Tensed propositions and conversation

According to the doctrine of Tensed Propositions (TP), which is accepted almost all presentists, when I say "It is night" at noon and when I say it at midnight, I express the same proposition, which is true at midnight and false at noon. The opponents of TP are apt to say that "It is night" is indexical, and as said at noon and at midnight expresses different propositions. TP is compatible with there being untensed propositions, like <It is night at t₇>, but typical tensed sentences in English express tensed propositions.

Here is an argument against tensed propositions:

1. (Premise) To be in agreement with what someone has said is to accept the proposition that she expressed.
2. (Premise) If p is a tensed proposition, then x's accepting p at t₁ and y's accepting p at t₂, where t₁ and t₂ are different, does not constitute agreement between x and y.
3. There are no tensed propositions.

Argument for (1): To agree is to accept what was said. But what was said was the proposition that was expressed.

Argument for (2): Suppose I say: "It is now exactly 7 p.m." and twenty seconds later you sincerely say: "It is now exactly 7 p.m." If there are tensed propositions, then both of our utterances express the same tensed proposition. But surely your assertion expresses a disagreement with me. The point generalizes to all tensed propositions. Granted, sometimes, especially if t₁ and t₂ are within a relevant time period (say, on the same day, and p is about "today") x will be right in believing p if and only if y is right in believing p, but nonetheless x and y's agreement does not consist in mutual acceptance of p.

Even if one does not think that (1) is always true, it is very plausible that typically in communicating we are trying to communicate a proposition. But also typically, our sentences are tensed. So if TP is true, then typically we are communicating tensed propositions. But it seems essential to communicating a proposition that agreement should be constituted by mutual acceptance of that proposition. But in the case of tensed propositions that isn't what agreement is constituted by (maybe it's constituted by accepting the second-order claim that the proposition was true when it was expressed). So it can't be that our typical communication involves tensed propositions. Hence, TP is false.

Josh Rasmussen said that arguments along these lines came up independently in conversation with Peter van Inwagen.

Unconsciousness and the problem of evil

Suppose there is no afterlife, and God offers you a deal. He'll put you in a coma for a year, but give you two extra years of conscious life to compensate. Pretty good deal, you go for it. Moreover, God surely has the right to do the year of coma plus two years of conscious life thing even without asking you. We have no rights of autonomy before God. He may need a good reason to do it, but it does not have to be a very serious reason. Your family's learning to appreciate you a little might easily suffice.

Elevate this to a principle:

1. God does not need a very serious reason to make you unconscious for a year when he gives you two years of conscious life to compensate.

Suppose now that God has already promised you eternal life in part to compensate for various evils that might befall you. In that case, it seems to follow that he does not need a very serious reason to make you unconscious for a year. This makes the task of theodicy for comas much easier. We can just partition the infinite number of years in the afterlife in such a way that different bits of it compensate for different bits of unconsciousness in this life.

Here's another way of putting the point. If you are going to have an infinite conscious future, your infinite conscious future is no less for your sleeping through a year. Granted, that exact year that you slept through has been missed. But the subsequent years are different for your having slept, and you wouldn't have had those years had you not slept through that one.

Now, one might think: Therefore we have the right to make others unconscious without a very serious reason, if we think everybody has eternal life. But that does not follow. First, we can have rights of autonomy against each other that are not rights against God. Second, by making a person unconscious for a year, we typically do decrease the amount of her conscious earthly life. Of course, so does God if he makes a person be unconscious for a year. But what is most problematic in decreasing the amount of someone's conscious earthly is that it decreases the time available for the tasks that God calls the person to. But God can easily take all that into account (e.g., by increasing the intensity of grace during the other years).

If this is right, it makes it much easier to generate a theodicy for comas. But I think the same reasoning may apply to anything that is less bad than being unconscious for life. For instance, it is clearly better to be conscious but mentally challenged than to be unconscious for life. And many pains are better than being unconscious for life.

Haecceities and presentism

The following argument is valid:

1. (Premise) If there are no haecceities, then there are no propositions de re about non-existent individuals.
2. (Premise) If presentism is true, then Seabiscuit is a non-existent individual.
3. (Premise) That Seabiscuit was essentially a horse is a proposition de re about Seabiscuit.
4. Therefore, if presentism is true, there are haecceities.

If we add that there are no haecceities, we can conclude that presentism is false.

However, I think (1) is false, because I think contingent entities are wholly individuated by the histories of their origins, where their histories are described in wholly general terms (i.e., without de re reference to any individuals). Consequently, if H is such a history of Seabiscuit, the proposition in (3) can be expressed: "Necessarily, if H is instantiated, it is instantiated by a horse."

My Best Friend

I just finished watching My Best Friend while running on the treadmill. I really liked it. It's like a romantic comedy, but about philia, not eros. Touching.

Non-cognitivism and probability

I was looking at a paper of Pruss in the latest issue of Faith and Philosophy, and he ends it with an interesting remark. He says that probabilities are in general a problem for non-cognitivist accounts. For instance, he says, that if emotivism is right, then it's hard to assign a sense to abortion's being wrong having such-and-such a probability.

I was thinking about this, and it could make a useful template for anti-non-cognitivist arguments. For instance, suppose you think that necessity claims are an expression but not assertion of ungiveupability. But what sense, then, would there be in saying that the evidence indicates with moderate probability that necessarily freedom requires alternate possibility?

Acting under the guise of the good

Suppose you pay me a thousand dollars to do something evil, and I lie to a friend to earn that thousand dollars. Why did I lie? Because it was evil. Why was I doing something evil? Because it would earn me a thousand dollars. This shows that it is possible to do something evil because it is evil. However, note also that this example does not challenge the doctrine that one always acts under the guise of the good. For one lies because it is evil, yes. But, if we give more detail, we need to say: because the evil of the lie is instrumentally good. So, interestingly, the doctrine that one acts under the guise of the good is quite compatible with intending something under the description "is an evil", and choosing it because it is an evil, as long as that is not a description of the ultimate end.

Augustine's view of evil

According to Augustine, a predication of an evil—say, the Sam is blind—is made true by a conjunction of two states of affairs. The first of these is a purely negative state of affairs, that the subject lacks a feature F. The second of these is a positive state of affairs, that the subject is of a sort that ought to exhibit F. Thus, Sam lacks sight but has the property of being of a sort that ought to exhibit sight.

If memory serves me (and if it doesn't, then it's still an interesting view), Augustine will then say this about Sam's blindness. Consider Sam*, a person much like Sam, except that he isn't of a sort that ought to have sight. Then, just like Sam, Sam* lacks sight. But Sam* also lacks the positive property of being of a sort that ought to exhibit sight. Therefore, Sam is better off than Sam*, despite the fact that Sam has an evil while Sam* does not. Now the problem of evil doesn't come up in regard to Sam* not having sight. And Sam is better off than Sam* in respect of sight, so why should it come up with regard to Sam?

Or let's put it differently. Take Sam*, and give him a new purely good property. How can Sam* become worse off simply by virtue of acquiring a new purely good property? Well, then, if we give Sam* the good property of being such that he ought to have sight, he doesn't become worse off. But then he's just like Sam. So the problem of evil shouldn't come up with regard to Sam.

Here's a problem with this reasoning. Suppose Sally believes that she lacks some very minor good G. Now, we give Sally the good G. By the above reasoning Sally should be better off. But perhaps not. For now Sally has a false belief that she previously didn't have. And the disvalue of that false belief may outweigh the minor good G.

However, we might distinguish between narrow and broad well-being. Things that do not causally interact with one or aren't intrinsic properties of one only belong to broad well-being. For instance, that my friends aren't saying bad things about me behind my back only contributes to my broad well-being. But that I am healthy is a part of my narrow well-being. So here is a suggestion. Now, narrowly, Sam* is narrowly no better and no worse off than Sam. And if Sally doesn't narrowly become worse off for being wrong about G. So maybe with regard to narrow well-being the principle that gaining a good by itself doesn't make one any worse off is true.

If this is right, then Augustine's arguments may work with regard to the problem of evil specialized to narrow ill-being. But that still leaves the problem of evil in the case of broad ill-being. However, maybe with the latter we may suppose that for all we know we really are very well off broadly speaking, because our broad well-being may include things very far beyond us.

Reduction and translation

These are very rough notes for myself.

The translatability of B-talk to A-talk as either a necessary or a sufficient condition for a reduction of Bs to As is generally rejected. Translatability can be symmetric, so it obviously can't be a sufficient condition. And it is generally thought that translations are so hard to come by, even in cases where it is very plausible that there is a reduction, that we shouldn't ask the reductionist for a translation. As an example, it seems pretty plausible that being oval is not a fundamental property. But the hopes of a reduction of being oval to more fundamental geometric concepts are pretty slim. We can start: An oval is a convex domain with a twice differentiable boundary approximating a non-circular ellipse. But if we try to explain the respects in which the oval approximates the ellipse, I expect at some point we would have to throw up our hands and say: "In the way definitive of an oval!"

It should not surprise us if there were no good translations. Words are rarely precisely redundant, and I suspect that cases of non-trivial synonymy are pretty rare. Certainly, few of the things listed in a thesaurus are genuine synonyms, i.e. words expressive of the same concept. Similarly, translation between different languages is rarely exactly right. For instance, "Il neige" and "It is snowing" are unlikely to express the same proposition. Here is one reason to think this. The boundaries of "neiger" and "to snow" are vague, and the behavior of the corresponding concepts near the boundaries will be determined by use. But different linguistic communities occupy different physical and social environments, and it is unlikely that the boundaries will be exactly the same. The same is likely to be true for most ordinary sentences, though the effect is probably decreasing with globalization.

However, I think there is a somewhat neglected option for translation. Instead of translating to an actual language, one can translate to a counterfactual language. And for purposes of testing hypotheses about ontological commitment, that should be enough.

We could imagine a community that has practices that outwardly and normatively resemble our practices of artifact production, use and possession. But they never say anything that commits them to the existence of these. They have other ways of talking. Maybe they say "It is chairing here" in circumstances that correspond to those in which we say "There is at least one chair here." They also describe the intensity of a chairing with a non-negative integer: "It is chairing here with intensity three" corresponds to our "There are three chairs here." They have some ways of talking that correspond to our possession practices. "It is Smithly chairing here with intensity three" corresponds to our "Smith owns three chairs here." They also have ways of talking that correspond to our talk of clear identity. Thus, they say "It is t₀ly chairing with intensity two at t₁" correspondingly to our "Two chairs that existed at t₀ exist at t₁."

Now here is a move that I like. It might turn out that some of our sentences have no corresponding sentences in that community. This will be a problem for the reductionist, unless those very sentences are ones that lead to logical problems in our community. For instance, it might turn out that one cannot translate all diachronic identity sentences about chairs. But that could be an asset if the untranslatable sentences are precisely the ones that lead to ship of Theseus problems. And this could, further, provide an asymmetry that could help fix the direction of reduction: in our language we can get paradoxes, while in theirs maybe we can't. We could, then, simply say that the untranslatable sentences (or maybe now we should call them "quasi-sentences") in our language are nonsense.

Tables and chairs

Like many philosophers, I don't believe that tables and chairs are fundamental objects. Like a much smaller number of philosophers, I like to say that I don't think tables and chairs exist. I have good reasons for my denial. For instance, it does not appear that there is an exact moment at which a table comes into existence. I take four wooden rods, each two feet long, and stand them on their ends outlining a rectangle. On this precarious perch, I put a sheet of plywood. That's not a table. I put some glue between the rods and the plywood. Initially that's still not a table, since the glue hasn't gripped. But once the bond is strong enough, what I have is a (poorly engineered and ugly) table. But then there must be a time such that a nanosecond before it the bond wasn't strong enough to make for a table and a nanosecond later it was strong enough.[note 1] This is very implausible.

So what should I say? Here are three options:

1. Say in contexts both ordinary and philosophical that there are no tables or chairs (and hence if someone asks me if there are any chairs in a conference room, answer in the negative, and then explain further).
2. Say in ordinary contexts that there are tables and chairs, but deny it in philosophical contexts.
3. Say in all contexts that there are tables and chairs, but in philosophical contexts emphasize that they are not fundamental.

Option (1) would be practically the toughest and (3) would be practically the easiest. Option (3), however, is not satisfactory as the arguments against tables and chairs existing do not seem to be just arguments against their fundamentality.

In the absence of (3), it would be nice too be able to defend (2). But it seems like plain dishonesty. I think, though, it can be defended.

First of all, ordinary folk already make something like this distinction. If you ask someone: "Are there any potholes on your way to work?" they may answer in the positive. But if you press them and ask whether potholes are really existing, if they aren't rather a matter of there not being asphalt there, I expect you will be told something that sounds contradictory like: "Potholes don't exist, but they're there." If this is right, there is in ordinary language a distinction between real existence and just existence in a manner of speaking.

Suppose that a community of English speakers started saying "There is a xyzzy" whenever there was a full moon, and mosquitoes were biting somewhere in Minnesota, and there was a Democratic president in the US. And they even had identity conditions for xyzzies. They would say that there can only be one xyzzy at a time, and that a xyzzy at t₀ is the same xyzzy as the one at t₁ provided that either the same Democrat is president at both times or the two presidents are related by a chain of president to vice-president relations. If we were members of the community, we'd have to say that this summer there was a xyzzy. But I think we'd want to deny the existence of xyzzies. Why? Because the right thing to say is that the logical grammar of "There is a xyzzy" does not match its surface grammar. The surface grammar is "There exists an x such that x is a xyzzy." But the deep logical grammar is "There is a Democratic president, there is a full moon and the mosquitoes are biting somewhere in Minnesota."

I think the same sort of thing should be said about tables and chairs. The surface grammar can involve existence claims (and predications and the like). But the deep logical grammar is different. And in cases where the surface grammar does not match the real logical grammar, we do in fact have two usages: an ordinary usage and a philosophical usage that mirrors the deep logical grammar. This is what we do for holes and this is what we would do for xyzzies. We also do this for some claims that aren't existential. For instance:

4. That overgrown graveyard isn't really spooky. It's just that you are spooked by it.
5. Actually, nobody is annoying. It's just that we are annoyed by some people.

The second sentence in each pair is a way of noting that the deep grammar of "... is spooky" or "... is annoying" is in fact something like: "x is spooked by ..." or "x is annoyed by ...". The use of "really" or "actually", as well as the paradoxicality of the first sentence in each pair, signals that we are doing something other than going with the surface grammar.

Now, to make sense of this, one does, I think, need some view on which there is something like an Aristotelian focal sense of existence (in the tables and chairs case) or predication (in the spookingess and annoyance cases), and in philosophical senses we focus in on the focal sense. Here then would be an example based on Aristotle's own example of focality:

6. There is no such thing as healthy food. There is only food that makes one healthy.

It's tempting to say that (6) is confused: "That's what I mean by healthy food, silly!" But (6) isn't a confusion. It is signaling that food isn't healthy in the focal sense of "healthy". That we can correctly speak of food as healthy in a non-focal sense is not being disputed. But it is denied that there is a property (in a sparse sense) that both the healthy woman and the healthy dinner have in virtue of both being healthy.

A spin on the problem of evil

Here is a way of looking at the inductive problem from evil.

Start with this. Let E be the bare claim that there is at least one evil. Let T be theism and N be naturalism, and suppose those are the only two relevant options. Then, I think one can argue that P(E|T)>P(E|N). Why?

• The existence of teleology or proper function is certain on T (at least God will have a proper function, viz., of being his perfect self). Plausibly, evil requires teleology or proper function (evil is a way of something's going wrong) and teleology and proper function are unlikely on N.
• Alternately: evil requires consciousness, and consciousness is much more likely on T than on N.
• It is likely that God would create a large number of significantly free persons, and it is likely, given a large number of significantly free persons, that at least one would do wrong in some way. On the other hand, it is not all that likely that there would be a morally responsible being if N were to be the case.
• Many significant goods, like courage, forgiveness and perseverance, require at least some evil. Thus it is unlikely that God would strive to create a world where evils would be certain not to occur.
• There is some plausibility in significant contrast stories on which experiencing a minor evil can enhance one's enjoyment of goods. On T, this renders evil more likely, while N doesn't care about us enjoying things.

These considerations do not yield a theodicy. But they do show that P(E|T) is not low while P(E|N) is low. Hence, the bare fact of evil is evidence for theism over naturalism.

This is how the inductive problem from evil should be seen. The mere fact of evil is evidence for theism, but we need to ask whether this evidence for theism is strengthened, left unchanged, weakened or even flipped the other way around when we look at the details of the sorts of evils we observe. For each of these four options is in general possible when we start with some general piece of evidence and then look at the specifics.

Nonetheless, it will make a difference to how we think of the specifics if we start with the idea that the general fact of evil supports theism, and we ask whether this support remains or flips when we look at the specifics.

Small talk

I've always found small talk challenging. Talking about anything other than technical or academic subjects is hard. I think I've just figured out small talk, though. The primary aim of small talk is not the communication of propositions. Rather, small talk for humans is like grooming for less verbal primates.

Assertion and belief: Another example

Either if N is a supermanifold, then there is a space ΠT*N of the cotangent bundle with reversed parity and it has a natural structure of a P-manifold, or it is not the case that if N is a supermanifold, then there is a space ΠT*N of the cotangent bundle with reversed polarity and it has a natural structure of a P-manifold.[note 1] I just asserted a proposition which I don't believe. Indeed, I don't even grasp this proposition. But, nonetheless, the proposition is surely true, because it is a tautology. (I suppose there is the possibility that the sentence doesn't make sense. There, I take it on Alexandrov's authority[note 2] that it makes sense.) I did not violate any duties of sincerity in asserting the sense.

Hence, sincerity in assertion does not require belief.

If s is the first sentence of this post, I can correctly say: "s but I do not believe that s." And so some Moorean sentences are unproblematic.

Are questions requests?

Until I came up with this argument, I used to think questions were just requests for answers. But I now think this is harder to defend than I thought. Take the question:

1. What naturally stripy equine is not a zebra?

What request is made? A naive suggestion is:

2. Please name a naturally stripy equine that is not a zebra.

But unless the speaker invokes relevant authority, it is intrinsically morally permissible to do something other than what is requested. So, if (1) is just the request (2), it should be intrinsically morally permissible to say "A donkey" or to do a hundred push-ups, just as it would be intrinsically permissible to say "A donkey" or to do a hundred push-ups when requested non-authoritatively to climb a wall. Of course, rules of etiquette require that when a reasonable request is made, a failure to fulfill the request be apologized for ("Sorry, I'll do push-ups instead" or "Sorry, I'll utter 'A donkey' instead.") But this is an easily defeasible duty, clearly more easily defeasible than the duty not to lie (which I think is not defeasible, though that's more controversial).
In fact, one can argue even further that (2) isn't actually, though it seems to be, a request for the naming of a naturally stripy non-zebra equine. For the duty not to lie applies to answers to it, too. Thus, rather than (2) being a more perspicuous way to say (1), it is (1) that is the more perspicuous.
Perhaps, instead, the request is this:

3. Please assert a proposition stating what a naturally stripy equine that is not a zebra is.

And this creates a context in which the correct answer "An okapi" is an abridgment of the sentence "An okapi is a naturally stripy equine that is not a zebra", while "A donkey" is the lie "A donkey is a naturally stripy equine that is not a zebra." Of course, a non-authoritative request can be ignored. I could do push-ups instead of answering. But if I say something like "A donkey" or "An okapi", the context makes that be my assertion (just as when I am not standing on a stage, and am conversing with friends, the context makes my utterance of "Donkeys are equines" be my assertion), so the duty to avoid false assertions prohibits me from saying "A donkey", but allows me to say "An okapi".
I think (3) is a tenable move for the request account of questions. But the account may lead to something controversial. Suppose you incorrectly but justifiably believe that okapis are the only naturally stripy equines. Moreover, you don't know what the word "zebra" means. You are asked (1). You think to yourself: "The question presupposes that there is an answer to it. There is only one kind of naturally stripy equine—it's an okapi. So, whatever the word 'zebra' might mean, given the presupposition, 'An okapi' must be the correct answer." And so you say: "An okapi." But on account (3) of the answer, you are expressing the proposition <An okapi is a naturally stripy equine that is not a zebra>. But how can you express that proposition when you don't possess the concept of a zebra?
I don't think this is insuperable. Maybe it's perfectly fine to assert propositions that you don't grasp. If it is, then we have another argument that "s but I don't believe that s." But at least this is going to be controversial.
Another possibility is that we should instead take (1) to be:

4. Please assert a proposition stating what entity, considered as a kind, verifies the open formula: 'x is a stripy equine that is not a zebra'.

So when you say "An okapi", without knowing what "zebra" means, you are asserting:

5. The formula you just quoted is verified by an okapi.

It is, though, a bit awkward to take the answer to the simple question to be metalinguistic.