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RE: Re: Link on (Intensional) Masses

Message: 5
Date: Mon, 13 Jan 2003 20:28:52 -0000
From: "And Rosta" <a.rosta@lycos.co.uk>
Subject: RE: Re: Link on (Intensional) Masses

Nick:
--- In jboske@yahoogroups.com, "And Rosta" <a.rosta@l...> wrote:

My answer to that is that I can say {da poi -is-Nick} or {da poi
-is-gold} (is that which is Nick, is that which is gold), where
da is a bit of spacetime -- what I take to be an extensional thing
{da poi -is-xodium} would yield false


What I'm talking about is an extensional thing that is simply a
realization of a Kind. So yes, the quantification is the same,
but one claims a world-specific existence and the other doesn't


I don't get you. Sherlock Holmes also yields false in {da poi
-is-Sherlock} in this world. So, what, we've got intensions that
correspond to existences, and intensions that don't?


No. We have the Kinds, Mr Nick, Mr Sherlock, Mr Gold, Mr Xodium.
And we have the predicates "is that portion of the world that
manifests Mr Nick/Sherlock/Gold/Xodium, such that the remainder
does not manifest it". Those predicates have the same countability
properties as Kinds, but they make world-specific existential
claims. A Kind exists in every world it is manifested in, but
the manifestation exists in only its own world.

So this manifestation is the space taken up in this world by the substance, which can be null.

Having thought about it a bit more, I'm not sure if English
makes this distinction, but I think Lojban should be able to.

And, please don't blow up with what I'm about to ask.

In what way is {piro loi solji}, the maximal quantity of Gold, not this manifestation? You yourself have said that my conservative interpretation of piroloi makes piro X identical to X. That is indeed my intent, and if you accept that sense of piro, then isn't this what you want for Substance?

BTW, in case it's not clear, the reason why the distinction
doesn't really apply to things like Mr Single Dog is that
its manifestation lacks the property of being a single
dog: instead it is a very scattered collective of dogs.

OK... But this looks like a very, very fine distinction. I'd have to grok it before I grant it.

--
Dr Nick Nicholas, French & Italian, Uni. Melb. nickn@unimelb.edu.au
http://www.opoudjis.net
"Must I, then, be the only one to be beheaded now?" "Why, did you want
everybody to be beheaded for your consolation?" Epictetus, Discourses 1.1.