Subject: Re: [lojban] RE:su'u

From: And Rosta <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 06 Feb 2001 20:01:27 +0000

>>> <[email-masked]> 02/06/01 07:45pm >>>
In a message dated 2/6/2001 12:15:11 PM Central Standard Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

> <Could you elaborate on and elucidate this (while in your reply lowering 
> your presumptions of the intellectual capabilities of your interlocutor by 
> about 99%)>

No, on a bet. But, by Indian Logic (Nyaya -- actually its companion 
metaphysics, Vaisheshika) every individual has a unique "essence" (vishesha 
-- distinction) which uniquely identifies it and functions for it in 
intensional contexts (sorry 'bout that!). In Montague grammar (another 
intensional system) that vishesha is a function that picks out in each world 
the object that in this world has a certain name (as it were -- and there are 
variants on all these lines, MG being the mess it is). In other worlds, that 
object may have other names or may not exist at all, but that does not affect 
its essence -- as it wouuld not be affected did it have a different name in 
this world (which itself is a sentence about another world, after all -- or, 
at least, is easiest to treat as such for now).
  
<I don't grasp the distinction that you're describing.>
Well {me le broda} means "is one of the things being described by 'le broda'" 
but in another world -- Hell, in another situation in this world -- the 
critter would not be one of the things there described by "le broda" but 
would still be the same individual with the same individual "essence" (or, 
more arguably, the same process). So the essence can't be determined by the 
way that the thing is referred to, nor by what it happens to do/be, yet it 
must be accessible from these references (else, how would we get to it at 
all?).

> 
> <(I suspect that I might deny the metaphysical validity of the distinction,
> if it requires that individuals cross worlds. -- Which raises the 
> interesting
> question of how to speak a metaphysically invalid language...)>
> 
Assuming "metaphysically invalid" means something like "metaphysically 
false," there does not seem to be a problem, since most (all?) languages are 
metaphysically false to some metaphysics and probably to reality (whatever 
that may be).  
If you don't like other worlds, I can do the same thing with just tenses -- 
and some assumptions about tense location --or, if controlled theorizing is 
objectionable, I can work with hypothetical subjunctives and the like, only 
giving up proofs and easy ways to deal with hard cases. And if you don't 
like the same individuals in different words, Hey, I do Bauddha, too, and can 
work with counterparts or other kinds of connections.
The point is that such things do make sense and so should be expressible 
somehow in Lojban -- but need not be very simple to express, since, the two 
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 indentified
only through their vishesha, and that cross-world identification of individuals
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 degree.

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.