From jimc@MATH.UCLA.EDU Wed Feb 07 09:18:51 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: jimc@math.ucla.edu X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-7_0_3); 7 Feb 2001 17:18:21 -0000 Received: (qmail 66904 invoked from network); 7 Feb 2001 17:17:22 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.26) by l10.egroups.com with QMQP; 7 Feb 2001 17:17:22 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO bodhi.math.ucla.edu) (128.97.4.253) by mta1 with SMTP; 7 Feb 2001 17:17:22 -0000 Received: from localhost (bodhi.math.ucla.edu [128.97.4.253]) by bodhi.math.ucla.edu (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id JAA01026; Wed, 7 Feb 2001 09:17:20 -0800 (PST) Date: Wed, 7 Feb 2001 09:17:19 -0800 (PST) X-Sender: jimc@xena.cft.ca.us To: pycyn@aol.com Cc: lojban@yahoogroups.com Subject: Re: [lojban] RE:su'u In-Reply-To: <9f.10dffb74.27b2702b@aol.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII From: Jim Carter X-Yahoo-Message-Num: 5344 At my peril I get entangled in a battle of professional philosophers :-) On Wed, 7 Feb 2001 pycyn@aol.com wrote: > ... This is the Humpty-Dumpty problem about names: HD insists his name > has a meaning (sense), whereas Alice thinks it only has a referent. Put > another way, does the vishesha of an individual pick out that individual in > each world it is in as a fundamental fact or because the individual has in > that world some other property which is common to that individual in all > worlds (are names arbitrary or desguised descriptions is another related way > of putting this all). Computer programmers *know* that names are arbitrary. The disguised descriptions are there, but are stored with the referents (in interpreted languages such as PERL) or in volatile tables keyed by the name (during compilation). Only in one language (to my knowledge), Fortran, does the name implicitly describe the referent: names beginning with ijklmn are implicitly integer type while all others are floating point. This usage is considered an anachronism and was superceded by explicit type statements back in 1966. Here's another example: non-anthropoid animals do not come equipped with names and get along perfectly well without them. Even so, they are individuals and in many species the individuality is important to them. When animals have names, the names are given by humans and are arbitrary as judged from the animal's perspective. James F. Carter Voice 310 825 2897 FAX 310 206 6673 UCLA-Mathnet; 6115 MSA; 405 Hilgard Ave.; Los Angeles, CA, USA 90095-1555 Email: jimc@math.ucla.edu http://www.math.ucla.edu/~jimc (q.v. for PGP key)