Subject: Re: [lojban] po'u considered harmful

From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 14 Jan 2002 14:39:37 EST

In a message dated 1/14/2002 11:51:05 AM Central Standard Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

> As I've just written in reply to pc, I struggle to see how you can be
> a referent of "lo merko", but I can make sense of a definition according
> to which a certain bound variable is referent of "lo merko". I suppose
> the next step is that that variable can be identified with you, with the
> proposition being true.
> 

I didn't get Cowan's original, so I am not perfectly clear about the context 
here, but it seems to me in any case that the referent of {lo merko} cannot 
be a bound variable (or a free one for that matter) except in totally weird 
and restricted cases. Variables are linguistic entities and American things 
are pretty generally not (though there are far too many that are, still those 
are almost universally not variables). What I take And to MEAN (dropping my 
usual policy of holding him to what he says) is that {lo merko} refers to a 
select American or Americans otherwise unspecified, and not to the whole 
reference class of {merko}. Thus, {mi du lo merko} and {mi me lo merko} are 
not the same as {mi merko} but presuppose that some previous selection has 
taken place if they are informative at all, namely that I am (one of) the 
American(s) selected by {lo}. Actually, I am not sure this is And's point 
(it doesn't fit perfectly with what he says) but it is all the sense I can 
make of his rejection of what seems an obvious point.

<But if the notion "referent" is to be crucial to the definition of {me},
we need a clear explication of what is meant by "referent".>

I suppose that a referent is just the (class of) thing(s) referred to by a 
referring expression.

<I'm not sure whether it's haecceity or quiddity that I want it to be. I do 
want
it to be the case that two different individuals (e,g, 1980 vintage And, &
1990 vintage And) can have the same 'haecceity' ('And') -- since that 
conflicts with my understanding of 'haecceity', perhaps I mean quiddity. 
IIRC you came up with some relevant Sanskrit term (visheka?).>

I can not remember about the temporal limits of haecceity and quiddity and am 
not sure the question ever came up for visheshas (Indians aren't too good on 
temporals generally, but it should have turned up in some of the paradoxes). 
In any case, I gather that you want a temporal limit rather than a 
transtemporal (even extratemporal) continuity: atman not pudgala, in Buddhist 
lingo (except that there ain't no atman, which fits your point well enough). 

<We seem to be using 'referent' in crucially different senses. But taking
what you say, if the referent of 'lo gerku' is dogs, then it would seem
that "X me lo gerku" would mean either "is each dog" or "is all dogs",
whereas I wan;t it to mean "Ey y is dog & X has property of being y".>

I think we are in more difficulty about {me} in that you are trying to read 
what I am saying in your terms rather than mine (well, the official one, 
which I don't much care for). On that reading, {me} means "is one of the 
referents of" so, if the referents of {lo gerku} are dogs, the {ko'a me lo 
gerku} is just equivalent to {ko'a gerku}, not to either (if they really are 
different) of your versions.