From arosta@uclan.ac.uk Tue Feb 06 12:03:49 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: arosta@uclan.ac.uk X-Apparently-To: lojban@egroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-7_0_2_1); 6 Feb 2001 20:02:20 -0000 Received: (qmail 71623 invoked from network); 6 Feb 2001 20:02:19 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.27) by l7.egroups.com with QMQP; 6 Feb 2001 20:02:19 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO com1.uclan.ac.uk) (193.61.255.3) by mta2 with SMTP; 6 Feb 2001 20:02:19 -0000 Received: from gwise-gw1.uclan.ac.uk by com1.uclan.ac.uk with SMTP (Mailer); Tue, 6 Feb 2001 19:46:00 +0000 Received: from DI1-Message_Server by gwise-gw1.uclan.ac.uk with Novell_GroupWise; Tue, 06 Feb 2001 20:01:44 +0000 Message-Id: X-Mailer: Novell GroupWise 5.5.2 Date: Tue, 06 Feb 2001 20:01:27 +0000 To: Pycyn , lojban Subject: Re: [lojban] RE:su'u Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Disposition: inline From: And Rosta >>> 02/06/01 07:45pm >>> In a message dated 2/6/2001 12:15:11 PM Central Standard Time,=20 arosta@uclan.ac.uk writes: > your presumptions of the intellectual capabilities of your interlocutor b= y=20 > about 99%)> No, on a bet. But, by Indian Logic (Nyaya -- actually its companion=20 metaphysics, Vaisheshika) every individual has a unique "essence" (vishesha= =20 -- distinction) which uniquely identifies it and functions for it in=20 intensional contexts (sorry 'bout that!). In Montague grammar (another=20 intensional system) that vishesha is a function that picks out in each worl= d=20 the object that in this world has a certain name (as it were -- and there a= re=20 variants on all these lines, MG being the mess it is). In other worlds, th= at=20 object may have other names or may not exist at all, but that does not affe= ct=20 its essence -- as it wouuld not be affected did it have a different name in= =20 this world (which itself is a sentence about another world, after all -- o= r,=20 at least, is easiest to treat as such for now). =20=20 Well {me le broda} means "is one of the things being described by 'le broda= '"=20 but in another world -- Hell, in another situation in this world -- the=20 critter would not be one of the things there described by "le broda" but=20 would still be the same individual with the same individual "essence" (or,= =20 more arguably, the same process). So the essence can't be determined by the= =20 way that the thing is referred to, nor by what it happens to do/be, yet it= =20 must be accessible from these references (else, how would we get to it at=20 all?). >=20 > <(I suspect that I might deny the metaphysical validity of the distinctio= n, > if it requires that individuals cross worlds. -- Which raises the=20 > interesting > question of how to speak a metaphysically invalid language...)> >=20 Assuming "metaphysically invalid" means something like "metaphysically=20 false," there does not seem to be a problem, since most (all?) languages ar= e=20 metaphysically false to some metaphysics and probably to reality (whatever= =20 that may be).=20=20 If you don't like other worlds, I can do the same thing with just tenses --= =20 and some assumptions about tense location --or, if controlled theorizing is= =20 objectionable, I can work with hypothetical subjunctives and the like, only= =20 giving up proofs and easy ways to deal with hard cases. And if you don't=20 like the same individuals in different words, Hey, I do Bauddha, too, and c= an=20 work with counterparts or other kinds of connections. The point is that such things do make sense and so should be expressible=20 somehow in Lojban -- but need not be very simple to express, since, the two= =20 cases mentioned aside -- and modal logic generally, nobody uses them much. ##################################################### The position I'd like to take is that individuals in any world can be inden= tified only through their vishesha, and that cross-world identification of individ= uals can be done only by them having the same vishesha or by their having visheshas that are similar to each other to some relevantly criterial degre= e. By "metaphysically invalid" I meant something like "makes no sense, however much you think about it" (or "makes less sense the more you think about it"= , maybe).. Anyway, thanks for the reply. --And.