And-Kind

[Nick Nicholas <opoudjis@optushome.com.au>]

So lemee see if I got this.

And's Kind is, as it turns out, Jorge's Intensional article reborn.

Let there be a predicate broda(), with a denotation {x1, x2...}

Let there be another predicate, brodo()

If brodo(x) holds for at least one individual x:broda(x), then brodo 
holds of the Kind-of-broda.

Let me refer to these as Indiv(broda) and Kind(broda).

Kind(broda) is not extensionally defined. If broda can be claimed of 
any entity x, then any relation that x enters into is a relation 
entered into by Kind(broda).

Kinds are related to individuals by avatars. Indiv(broda) = 
Avatar(Kind(broda)).

If x1 is Indiv(broda) and x2 is a distinct Indiv(broda), they belong to 
an identical Kind.

So, if you kill Fred, you kill Mr Human1
If you kill Bill, you kill Mr Human2
Fred != Bill
Mr Human1 == Mr Human2

When we say that x is the same as y, we do not mean that x == y.
We mean that Kind(x) == Kind(y).
If we both ate chips, we did not eat the identically same individual. 
But we did eat the identically individual Kind.

In extensional contexts, if something is true of a Kind, it is always 
true of an avatar of the kind.
In intensional contexts, that equation is not the case.
I also think it is not the case in claims of identity vs. sameness.

The Kind is the de dicto version of the individual.

The Founders confusedly saw there was a need for this, and glommed the 
Kind (along with absolutely everything else) into the lojbanmass. So 
you can legitimately say {mi nitcu loi mikce} meaning you want the 
Kind(doctor), and expect an individual out, but an intensional 
individual. Jim Brown using Trobriander legends as an illustration of 
this was spectacularly something or other --- either ingenious or dumb. 
But Mr Shark, Shark Goo, and Two Sharks are not the same thing (let 
alone Two Scoops of Shark Goo, Mr Two Scoops of Shark Goo, Two Couples 
of Sharks, Two ShapeShifters Who Take Turns Being The Shark but aren't 
necessarily both the shark at any one time [the 'Duet' of sharkdom], 
and so on and so on.)

So the lojbanmass ends up doing: substance, collective, kind. With no 
clear disambiguation between the three (let alone kinds of substance, 
kinds of collective, collectives of collectives, collectives of 
substances) until we opened this debate.

Jordan said "leave it to pragmatics" at the start, and this is *a* SL 
answer. To me, however, a design goal of Lojban is disambiguability. It 
is a non-negotiable goal for me.

I will endeavour to keep loi for as much of this as possible, to 
preserve consistency with SL -- i.e. the substance/collective 
conflation in loi. I think I see why the collective and the kind were 
conflated, and I may end up defending that too --- but it leaves a bad 
taste in my mouth.

In And's schemes, the Kind is syntactically prior. The avatar is 
derived from the Kind by explicit quantification.

In SL, the denotation of loi has always been an utter fuckup --- and 
one that I will never, never forgive. But that lo broda is 
extensionally defined, not intensionally, is one that I think is basic 
to Lojban. When And brought up the equation "is lo broda == su'o da poi 
broda always", we got sidetracked into asking whether {da poi broda} 
can also be an uncountable substance. (It clearly can, and if we 
preserve the equation lo broda == su'o da poi broda, we would need to 
make the sea tu'o loi tu'o broda.) But the real question is, is the 
referent of {lo broda} always quantified by a prenex? Are all our 
claims of entities ultimately extensional?

Propositionalism says yes, by supplying a nested prenex: the referent 
may not be quantified in this world, they reason, but they are 
quantified in some world. But imagining, depicting, and fearing don't 
work well with propositionalism. And when I look for a doctor, it's not 
really that there is at least one indvidual in my mental world that I 
want. The relationship is between me and doctor-kind, not between me 
and any one individual doctor in any possible world. Introducing 
unicorns, which don't exist in this world, only confuse the issue: 
there is plenty of de dicto/de re going on with existing entities.

I think we should allow intensional entities in. I am prepared to call 
them Kinds.

I recognise that English NPs are both intensional and extensional (a 
doctor is both de dicto and de re), and And is followed an honoured 
tradition in making the de dicto reading basic, and the de re derived 
by quantification.

I think the Lojban prescription (as addled as it has been) cannot 
survive {lo broda} being a Kind and {pa lo broda} being an Individual, 
or telling people that when there are two doctors you want you want {re 
lo mikce}, but when you want any two doctors you want {lo mikce remei}.

Therefore, though I now see that making the Kind basic is ontologically 
sensible (after all, we start with the predicate and then stick gadri 
in front of it), and it follows the last three decades of semantic 
thought ---

I still cannot accept it for Lojban. In any solution I propound, {lo 
broda} is the same as {su'o lo broda}, and the Kind is derived. Having 
people used marked expressions to speak of Kinds is a bother. But it's 
a bother they will welcome. People like about Lojban that it makes them 
see ambiguities they didn't see before. When Mark said "no, he's not 
looking for her, he's looking for x such that x is his mother", 
enlightenment was reached. (This is the gosling that looked for her 
mother when newly hatched --- "Are you my mother?" ko'a isn't x:x is 
her mother, which is intensional, but extensional. Confronted with 
ko'a, the gosling would have no idea whether ko'a was her mother or 
not. She'd have found ko'a extensionally (de re), but not x:x is her 
mother (de dicto.)

When Mark said this at Lohgest, enlightenment was reached. It will not 
be reached by having over and covert quantification cover up the 
difference. If people don't learn what the difference is, they will 
still confuse it. It will be reached by marking the difference. To me, 
that means LAhE still.

[Nick Nicholas. French & Italian Studies, University of Melbourne 
]
[ nickn@unimelb.edu.au http://www.opoudjis.net 
]
[There is no theory of language structure so ill-founded that it 
cannot]
[be the basis for some successful Machine Translation. --- Yorick 
Wilks]