On Thu, Jan 3, 2013 at 12:19 PM, Ian Johnson <blindbravado@gmail.com
<mailto:blindbravado@gmail.com>> wrote:
The problem with this is that we don't have mechanisms for
explicitly handling the universe of discourse. Anything you talk
about is automatically bound within the hidden variable "the
universe of discourse", and you can only indirectly influence what
is in this domain. "Everything that has ever been at any location in
the universe at any point in time" is implicitly "Everything that
... and is also in the universe of discourse" by default.
Another example of this is the approach to what outer quantifiers
should mean. Assuming we've come to some agreement on what the
universe of discourse is for the moment, should {ci da} mean
"exactly three things" as the CLL proclaims? The way I understand
what you're saying, you would think that it shouldn't, and instead
there should be another PA for "exactly", and without that addition
{ci da} should be something like "at least three, and probably not
tremendously larger than three". At least as an outer quantifier; in
{lo cacra be li ci} it would be more like "close to three, possibly
with some error on either side". Am I right here?
No. I think it should mean exactly three. The difference is that I think
"exactly three" should only be considered within context. If we're
talking about the house next door, and I say {ci prenu} = {ci da poi
prenu}, it should mean that there are exactly three people in the
context of the house next door, not that there are exactly three people,
in the whole of time and space, real and imagined, etc..., whatever the
scope of "universe of discourse" is.