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Re: [lojban] Set of answers encore


la pycyn cusku di'e


Suppose that {brode} and {brode} refer to exactly the ame
things in fact, "has a heart" and "has a liver," say (I'm sure la pier will
tell me this examples is hopelessly out of date and it probably is, but
suppose).  The {ko'a broda} and {ko'a brode} will be true or fasle together
for every referent of {ko'a}.  That means that le du'u koa broda} and {le
du'u ko'a brode} always have the same truth value, for a given referent of
{ko'a}. And so theya re equivalent and interchangeable in any context where
only the truth value matters.


Well, yes, but is there any context at all where only the truth value
matters? I can't think of any.


But there are contexts where the truth value
is not all that matters: {mi jinvi...} for example.  There you cannot
exchange items with the same truth value and be sure to keep the truth value 
of the whole the same.


But is there any case at all in which you can?


Why not?  The standard answer is that in those
contexts (intensional contexts) the referent of the expression {le du'u ko'a 
broda} is no longer the basic referent, its truth value,


I guess this is the basis of our disagreement. I don't think
that {le du'u ko'a broda} ever has a truth value as its referent.
It has a proposition (or something like that) as a referent.


but its regular
sense -- roughly the rule by which one determines its truth value in a given world. Clearly, looking for a heart (pump in the blood system) is different 
from looking for a liver (filter in the blood system),


But heart and liver don't have the same referent. You should
compare looking for one with a heart and looking for one with
a liver. Which would be the same if the be-hearted are the
be-livered (using the transparent sense of 'looking for').
'Being next to one with a heart' would be the same as 'being next
to one with a liver'.


so the rules are
different and thus the two expressions are no longer interchangeable.  The
reason for this rule is that, without it, you get absurdities like moving
from "Jim believes that 2+2 =4,"  to "Jim believes that Casaubon showed the
Smargdarine Tables were a third century pseudograph" on the grounds that they 
are both true.


Hopefully nobody wants to do that.


The rule slows the errors down quite a bit.  It is debatable
whether this means that {du'u ko'a broda} has a different extension from
{du'u ko'a brode} or whether it means that in some cases it is not the
extension but the intension that counts (I find the latter easier to deal
with).


I the former. I don't like what the intensional contexts view
does in Lojban to simple predications like "I'm looking for my
umbrella".

mu'o mi'e xorxes



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