Subject: Re: [lojban] Set of answers encore

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sat, 6 Oct 2001 17:19:00 EDT

In a message dated 10/5/2001 7:42:30 PM Central Daylight Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

> > I'd go so far as to say I think it is just flat hopelessly wrong. As
> > noted, under really minimal real-world conditions it is always true.
> 
> I still feel that there has to be a solution -- there has to be a way
> to talk about beliefs extensionally, because often we have no access
> to others' intensional beliefs and wish to make claims only about
> extensional beliefs.
> 

As I should have remembered when the whole issue came up, there is no 
solution. That is why there is intensional logic in the first place -- we 
want to muck about in there but we can't do it extensionally. 

<Taking questions as a primitive notion is progress of a sort. I'll
leave discussion of that to another message.>

It turns out that insofar as this works at all (not very far, alas, as I have 
played with it) it works because of a small but significant intensional spot 
in the midst of the definition of "answer." so, far from being primitive, 
"answer" (and so "question) are in need of further analysis at this point. 
But, happily, can be used for the question part without creating any problems 
within that range. (The fact that they work for {djuno} and {krici} and the 
like should be a warning about this intensional component).