Re: [lojban] Some metaphysical basic info

[And Rosta <arosta@uclan.ac.uk>]

Thanks! I think this is very helpful in orienting people in the discussion and 
in providing points of reference. Hopefully it will in due course help to
clarify our debates; in particular I hope it will help to clarify which issues
each of us think we are and aren't debating. (Plus, the subject is one
that is very exciting in itself, so worth talking about for its own sake.)

I haven't had time yet to provide proper comments, but my first response is 
that we need to distinguish between conceptual schemata and (theories of) 
their ontological basis. Or, to make a different but similar point, to note that 
the major categories of theories you list are theories of different things so not 
mutually exclusive. So first you have Nominalism v Conceptualism v Realism 
(which I guess is a category that includes the prototype theories you list, at 
least at the present level of sketchiness), and then the final set of theories 
are about the true nature of the empirical realm. Or to put it a third and
different way, the prototype theories listed are a subset of models of
categorization, while the antiprototype theories are subset of models
of their ontological status, while the nonindividualist theories are
models of the categorizands.

If any of these remarks are less than helpful, please ignore them; I'm writing
in haste.

--And.

>>> <pycyn@aol.com> 11/06/01 05:35pm >>>
If you were following and and pc's discussion a while back and wondering what 
all the metaphysics was they were talking about, a short intro (capable of 
expansion on request) is at http://members.aol.com/pycyn/metaphysics.html 

Comments sought.