On Friday, February 28, 2003, at 09:17 AM, John Cowan wrote:
Martin Bays scripsit:Oh dear. If I've understood your meaning of "any" correctly - you need adoctor, and what's more you need a doctor precisely because of itsdoctorishness, and don't care about specific identity or other properties - then this is precisely the kind of circumstance in which I'd use lo'e. I need "the typical" doctor - I need "the result of squinting over the setof all things which doctor". I'm guessing that's wrong. Anyone feel like explaining why?Because "lo'e mikce" is an abstraction bearing only the typical features of doctors. As Woldy says, the typical lion is neither male nor female, though all actual lions are one or the other. If you want lo'e mikce, you will notget much doctoring from it.
The typical lion's sex is unspecified, but is either male or female. If a pride of lions climbs in to my Ford Windstar, I can separately consider each lion as it enters and classify each lion as being typical or atypical. A lion which can not be easily classified as male or female would be an atypical lion. So Woldy's "typical" lion would be classified as atypical.
One might also consider the extent to which each lion in the pride is typical, comparing each to the one-in-mind typical lion. My one-in-mind lion happens to be male, so a female lion would be less typical than a male lion, all other traits being equal.
-Steven