| I really did try to get this to come over from Word in a readable way, but
Word seems to have a strange idea of what "text" is. Herewith another version, hopefully cleaner -- next step is WordStar's ASCII. (beingcautious) We are a long way from the {su'u} thread indeed now, which was,recall, about how to talk about the -ness or -ing of an individual in Lojbanand then about what these could possibly mean. So we started with an abstract entity, assumed to exist, and asked howto refer to it in Lojban. We now seemto be talking about a well-established category of Lojban grammar, cmene, and asking some or all of thefollowing questions. What do cmene mean? What is the sense of a cmene? How does a cmene attach to its referent? How do we pick out the right referent of acmene (in this or any other world)? What is essential to an individual who isthe referent of a cmene? Is thisconnected to the cmene? Are any of these things properties or arethey sui generis? What happens across worlds under thevarious positions on these issues? Andprobably a few more. Background:a world (for now and contrary to Mad Ludwig in his youth) isa bunch of things,and, as an immediate consequence, a whole bunch of setsof things. A language is a bunch of words, and, as animmediate consequence, a bunch of sets of words, and then, related to those, abunch of strings of words. A languageis supposed to be about a world, we need some connection, an interpretation ofthe language in terms of a world. We start, we think, with one world and assignwords of various sets to various sets of things, including words of one basicset (at least) to things taken individually. I does not matter in this process what class of words we assign to, say,simple sets, except that the grammar must somehow give rise to strings whichwork out to say "x is a member of s" and "s is included int" and the like. Nor does it matterwhich member of this class we assign to a particular simple set, say. From another class we, equally arbitrarily,assign members to individual things, preumably from a set that allows sayingthat the things it points to are members and makes it at least difficult to saythat they have members. [Cowan can takemy talk aboutsets as being about discontinuous individuals, if he wants, withthe corresponding kinds of relations among them.] In ourinitial world, a given thing will belong to some sets and not to others andwill be the unique member of one set. Many of these sets will havewords from the language assigned to them -or longer expressions that play thesame role (as strings come to be analyzed)as words of the appropriate class. Thesingleton of a given object may, for example, be assigned to a word or phrase -or to several such - or to none -- inthe langauge. The sets of the worldform hierarchies by inclusion and some of the higher sets may get& quot;names" as well as the lower ones (and some at any level may not getnames at all). Notice how undisciplinedthe connections are here: we want to say a few things but however we assign thewords, we can then pick from all the strings some with appropriate structuresto say this (given two names of individuals and the name of a two-placerelation, any string that contains the three items will do) and, as long as weare consistent about it, it willwork. Now,suppose we move to another world and suppose (it's easier when doing this) thatthis world can contain things that also are in the first world, but otherthings as well and not necessarily all the things from the first world (indeed,not necessarily any of them - apologies to Plantinga's ontological proof). Wetypically want to be somewhat less arbitrary with our language now: we knowwhat kinds of words go with individuals, what with predicates and so on, so wewill not shift these connections around (there is an alternate approach wherewe keep the same world by shift assignments or connections around, but thatdoesn't improve anything but ontological muddles). Are other types of connections also more restricted - can weassign any member of the set-words class to any old set, and so on? Iif we lookdownward to the members of the set, it seems we can: sets in the new world,will, after all, likely not have the same members as any old -world set, giventhe the two worlds don't have exactly the same things in them. But if we look at the level of the set andhigher, we see that there are limits to this freedom. Theset we call "red," for example, in the new worldmust, like the set red in the old, be disjoint from a number of other disjointsets, called "green,& quot; 'blue," and so on, and fall under anotherset "colored" and that under "spatial," and on up. The structurehas to come over, though theparticular sets are not fixed. (Wewould be totally lost in a world described by "Suppose red were not acolor,..." though admittedly less by "Suppose a whale were not amammal." -the notion of "essential" in this sense is indeedscalar rather than polar.) When wecome to similar questions about individuals and names, we noticewe havealready given the game away a bit. Wetalk about the same thing in both worlds before we have names for it in atleast one and before we have considered what classes it has to be in (whatpredicates it satisfies). That is, wecan identify the individual independently of what we say about itat all, andwe do that because of its uniqueness, its vishesha, say, the means whereby wefind the thing in any world it is in (and find out it is not in the worlds itis not in). Now we have a whole seriesof questions to ask about assigning names and the like to this individual inthe new world. 1. Doesit have to get the same name as in the old world? Usually not: roses and the like, y'know. 2. Doesit have to have the same properties - or some set of identical properties (andthus impose some further restrictions on assigning namesto sets) as in the oldworld? Again, probably not - we canimagine everything changed in hypotheticating. 3. Doeswhatever gets the name this thing had in this world in the next world have tohave (some set of ) the same properties as this thing had in this world in thenext world? Still probably not - forone thing, the name may not be used at all in world 2 or not used for anythingin that world at least (Cowan is a character in world 2 fiction, just as Holmes- a perfectly nice guy in world 2 - is in world 1). But further we want to be able to suppose worlds in which someonecalled Cowan is a master detective, without supposing the Cowan, the one weknow, ever is. Somethinghas gang aglee here. It would seem thatnothing could be made to follow from any hypothetical contrary-to-fact:"If Socrates were and Irish washerwoman, ..." then what? The person who is called"Socrates" is world 1 might well be an Irish washerwoman in world 2,but, lacking in that world all of the characteristics Socrates had in world 1,might do absolutely anything atall, without clarifying the issue the hypotheticalhad in mind. Similarly,an Irishwasherwoman might be named Socrates in world 2 without it telling us anythinguseful (except about, maybe, some Irishman's sense of humor). What we are really interested in, it turnsout on careful examination is: 4. Whatrestrictions are placed on a thing that satisfies in world 2 some descriptionthat in world 1 was satisfied by the holder of thename? Essence, vishesha, is justnumerical identity and a useful sense of a name (it solves the problem of why"Venus = Venus"is necessary while "Hesperus = Phosphorus"is not), but carries no properties with it. On the other hand, the name, per se, carries neither properties nornumerical identity and so is useless for most hypotheticals, which come down tolaws, relations among predicates eventually. The predicate thus comes in somehow - and how else but by description? None ofthis makes a name ordinarily a disguised description - nor a rigid designator,for that matter. But in hyptheticatingcontext, the (well,a) connotation of the name comes to function as its sense,the means to pick out the right person in the new world, so that we can thenargue for or fromsome law or observation, what someone like Socrates in (oftennot very clearly) specified ways would do as an Irish washerwoman. So our intererest is neitehr in the thingnor the name, but in something two removes from either. |