From @YaleVM.YCC.YALE.EDU:LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET Wed Aug 25 07:56:01 1993 Received: from ELI.CS.YALE.EDU by NEBULA.SYSTEMSZ.CS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Wed, 25 Aug 1993 15:34:59 -0400 Received: from YALEVM.YCC.YALE.EDU by eli.CS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Wed, 25 Aug 1993 15:34:50 -0400 Message-Id: <199308251934.AA26743@eli.CS.YALE.EDU> Received: from CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU by YaleVM.YCC.Yale.Edu (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 8373; Wed, 25 Aug 93 15:33:12 EDT Received: from CUVMB.COLUMBIA.EDU by CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU (Mailer R2.07) with BSMTP id 5151; Wed, 25 Aug 93 15:35:51 EDT Date: Wed, 25 Aug 1993 11:56:01 -0400 Reply-To: John Cowan Sender: Lojban list From: John Cowan Subject: Re: TECH: QUERY: quantifier scope & cumki X-To: Lojban List To: Erik Rauch In-Reply-To: <9308240819.AA28670@gvls1.VFL.Paramax.COM> from "Matthew Faupel" at Aug 24, 93 09:18:25 am Status: O X-Status: la matius. cusku di'e > Thanks for the explanation, however the original question also asked what > (or rather who it seems from the above) "Quine" is as well... Don't suppose > you could enlighten me on that too? Sorry, missed that part. The American philosopher W.V.O. Quine, an early supporter of the Loglan Project. His book >The Pursuit Of Truth< reads like it was translated literally from Lojban (not really, but a lot of his concepts like "observation sentences" track ours with eerie exactness). I have found his >Set Theory And Its Logic< and his introductory logic book (not sure of its title offhand) extremely valuable in figuring out Lojban theory. His most accessible book is probably >Quiddities: An Intermittently Philosophical Dictionary<, from which I occasionally give myself the pleasure of quoting on this list or conlang. Outside philosophical circles, he is probably best known for the paradoxical sentence "Yields a falsehood when preceded by its quotation" yields a falsehood when preceded by its quotation. which Douglas Hofstadter (of >Goedel, Escher, Bach<) shortened to: "Yields falsehood when quined" yields falsehood when quined. where "to quine" means "to precede something by its quotation". -- John Cowan cowan@snark.thyrsus.com ...!uunet!lock60!snark!cowan e'osai ko sarji la lojban.