On Wed, Nov 16, 2011 at 10:37 PM, John E Clifford
<kali9putra@yahoo.com> wrote:
I haven't quite figured out yet how C-sets and L-sets can be combined in one theory, aside from just running both, with different symbols, say. But then I don't see what the interaction between them would be. I'll work on this.
Well Bunt claims to combine them in his theory, has proved consistency and equivalency with Zermelo-Fraenkel -- all this with natural language semantics aforethought. Unfortunately I don't have any good links. I have been studying Bunt's stuff off scraps I find on the Internet. I suggest the link on Google Books I gave above; it explains ensembles pretty well even if there are pages missing. I will try to write a short sketch myself on ensembles in the near future when I have time, but the literature out there is better than what I can write.
I don't find either "Dogs are mammals" or "Man walked on the Moon" in any way odd.
As I tried to convey in my reply to Pierre Abbat, it's just a little odd that that in the former case we have a necessary universal situation and in the latter case we have a marginal existential situation, and yet in Lojban both have (or are allowed to have) exactly the same logical form. Maybe not odd, but curious at least.
But I do worry about introducing intensions into all this. To be sure, looking for a unicorn clearly takes out of the present domain of discourse to another and that move may be inherently intensional, the -- by fiat, to be sure -- the intensional part falls into {tu'a} and the like, not into the {lo}_expression_. In short, kinds -- if that is what is involved here and in cases like extinction or creation -- seem to me to be exactly about extensions, just maybe not this extesnsion.
{tu'a} is a bit old school isn't it? We are already introducing an intension whenever {lo} refers to a kind, as in {lo grezunca'a cu se finti la .caklis.} or {lo ciprdodo cu jutmro} or {ko'a sisku lo pavyseljirna}.