[lojban] Re: A (rather long) discussion of {all}

[John E Clifford <clifford-j@sbcglobal.net>]

--- HeliodoR <exitconsole@gmail.com> wrote:

> >
> > 2.      In every situation (a discourse
> carried
> > on in a given environment), for any object or
> > group of objects, there is a description 
> that
> > applies (and will be seen to apply) to
> exactly
> > that object or group.  Further, this
> description
> > does not rely on the flow of discourse  and
> > relies on the environment only for ostention;
> > that is, it relies only on overtly mentioned
> > properties and deixis.  It thus avoids the
> > difficulties that make Lojban descriptions so
> > fallible.  And, being not relativized to the
> > discourse, it can introduce things that are
> not
> > already relevant to this discourse.
> 
> 
> I doubt it. I doubt it very much.
> Here's a link about a theory or metaphysical
> POV called nominalism:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominalism
> Consider one of the simplest possible groups:
> how do You explicitly
> describe {lo cribe} to a nominalist who doesn't
> quite believe that there
> are nearly identical things as bears? 

I think you would say {lo cribe} or "bears" or
whatever is appropriate in the language in use.
As nominalists have had to point out time and
again, Nominalism is a metaphysical position,
about what lies beneath the ordinary world, not
one about the ordinary world.  So a nominalist
has no trouble with bears.  He might have trouble
with a set of bears and he certainly would have
trouble with bearness, some property that all and
only bears have.  That is, he deals with the
ordinary world like an ordinary person, but, if
you ask him, how it is that all these things are
bears (and those over there aren't), he will say
something like "They look enough alike that
conventions allow us to call them all by the same
word."  But, he would add, that doesn't mean that
there is any real thing they have in common.
 
> How do
> You explain what You
> have in mind?

Assuming that I have bears in mind, I wouldn't
need to explain, if our nominalist knoows about
bears.  If he does not, I would draw him a
(visual or verbal) picture.  Being a nominalist
doesn't make one stupid.

> I think the differences of personal
> point-of-views prevent us from
> talking about one "objective reality".

This is another metaphysical point: is the world
that I experience the same as the one you do,
given that my experience off the (or "a") world
is different from yours?  And that we cannot
actually compare our experiences even, except
verbally (and visually) where we cannot check
that we mean the same things by what we say.  Of
couse we can talk about objective reality -- to
question whether there is such a thing, if
nothing else.  The problem is when we think there
is such a thing and someone asks us what it is
(or even is like).
 
> However, I agree with the rest of the proposal.
> Only some intuitive use
> of the rules should be presumed, or axioms
> should be settled about
> the perception of "reality".

I am not sure how this fits in with MK's
proposal, which seems to be almost entirely
linguistic, making vanishingly small metaphysical
commitments (beyond what might be involved in
using a certain language, if any are).



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