Re: [lojban] {zo'e} as close-scope existentially quantified plural variable

[John E Clifford <kali9putra@yahoo.com>]

"There aren't any" is ambiguous in these situations.  I try to use it only when 
I mean there are none in the domain.  But it can also mean "there don't exist," 
that is, the intersection of zasti and cipnrdodo is null.  In this latter sense, 
your sentence presents no problem: they are in the non-existents' part of the 
domain.  In the former sense, however, a suitably expressed Lojban sentence, 
with {lo [flying] cipnrdodo}  as the first subject and the second part being  
{no da ca ca'e cipnrdodo} would be contradictory, i.e. really really false.

As for taking one kind of model as a special case of the other, the best you can 
hope for is something close to an isomorphism.  In the first, it is important 
that the items in various worlds are actually identical, the very same thing in 
each world in which it occurs (svatman).  In the other it is equally important 
that things in one world never occur in another one but are, at best, joined 
with things in other worlds by various kind of causal, etc. chains (karma, 
say).  The first makes it possible to say"suppose Socrates were an 18th century 
Irish washerwoman" but make it impossible to draw meaningful conclusions from 
that supposition, the second makes the hypothetical hard to state, but, assuming 
that being Socrates is something more than a unitary haeceity, might be able to 
make some plausible predictions.



----- Original Message ----
From: Martin Bays <mbays@sdf.org>
To: lojban@googlegroups.com
Sent: Fri, October 21, 2011 10:08:01 PM
Subject: Re: [lojban] {zo'e} as close-scope existentially quantified plural 
variable

* Friday, 2011-10-21 at 15:43 -0400 - John E. Clifford <kali9putra@yahoo.com>:

> I'm not too clear on what you thought I was proposing, though it must
> not be too far from what I have in mind.  I am not sure that Hans'
> paper will help you much, for, while I taken over some things from him
> in terms of dynamic domains and alternate domains, I have developed
> somewhat differently, as Lojban seems to require.

I would be interested to hear about what you've developed.

> Particular quantification is the old term for existential
> quantification, with the advantage that it does not appear to claim
> more than something is in the domain, in particular, does not appear
> to claim it is the extension of "exist" {zasti}.

Ah! Then yes, please read 'particular' whenever I write 'existential'.

> Sorry about the mumble there; I am just never sure which procedure
> works best: a supply of things that turn up in different guises in
> each world or a different set of things for each world, somehow
> sometimes linked between worlds.  Neither is perfect, but each has
> it's uses. (Hindu v. Buddhist, as so many things are).

Well, the former is essentially a special case of the latter - namely
where the links consist of a coherent family of bijections. I'm not sure
what the latter would help with.

I don't yet understand how you deal with the flying dodos. Slightly more
specifically, how you'd handle "flying dodos look silly, but there
aren't actually now any flying dodos".

Martin

> On Oct 21, 2011, at 15:00, Martin Bays <mbays@sdf.org> wrote:
> 
> > * Friday, 2011-10-21 at 08:46 -0700 - John E Clifford 
<kali9putra@yahoo.com>:
> > 
> >> If you want to say that flying dodos look silly, then your domain of 
>discourse 
>
> >> (at least in Lojban) contains flying dodos.  {lo} expressions always imply 
>the 
>
> >> particular quantification on their defining predication.  Not that such 
>things 
>
> >> need exist, of course (part of the reason I use "particular" rather than 
> >> "existential" for that quantifier)
> > What's particular quantification? I'm not familiar with the term.
> > 
> >> It is not clear that this is a different approach to tense and
> >> intensions, though it may be a different approach to domains of
> >> discourse (looking at Kamp again).
> > 
> > Discourse representation theory? Should I just read about that if I want
> > to understand you? I think I do have Kamp's paper on my harddrive.
> > 
> >> The properties these nonexistent things may have probably derive from
> >> the ones they have in worlds where they exist (not necessarily the
> >> same things, mind you, but the things at the other end of some sort of
> >> projection)
> > 
> > Not really with you here.
> > 
> > Well, it seems that I didn't understand correctly your solution. I don't
> > see much wrong with the solution I understood you as proposing... but
> > I'm happy to have multiple working solutions before having to pick one!

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