From lojbab@lojban.org Thu Feb 08 05:46:13 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: lojbab@lojban.org X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-7_0_3); 8 Feb 2001 13:46:00 -0000 Received: (qmail 97571 invoked from network); 8 Feb 2001 13:46:00 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.26) by m8.onelist.org with QMQP; 8 Feb 2001 13:46:00 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO stmpy-5.cais.net) (205.252.14.75) by mta1 with SMTP; 8 Feb 2001 13:46:00 -0000 Received: from bob.lojban.org (209-8-89-78.dynamic.cais.com [209.8.89.78]) by stmpy-5.cais.net (8.11.1/8.11.1) with ESMTP id f18DjpE24720; Thu, 8 Feb 2001 08:45:51 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <4.3.2.7.2.20010208084153.00acb990@127.0.0.1> X-Sender: vir1036/pop.cais.com@127.0.0.1 X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 4.3.2 Date: Thu, 08 Feb 2001 08:49:45 -0500 To: And Rosta , lojban Subject: Re: [lojban] RE:su'u In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" At 05:59 PM 02/07/2001 +0000, And Rosta wrote: >I think you're talking about a kind of etymological arbitrariness, >in the sense that Dog, Woofwoof and Fido are not fully arbitrary names >to choose for your pet dog, but Epaminondas is. > >But that is not the issue we were discussing. The issue is which of >the following is 'right': > >(I) The relation between a name and its referent (e.g. between "jimc" and >you) is a mere labelling, like the relationship between you and what >I believe Americans call the Social Security number. (And note that >a Social Security number needn't be arbitrary.in your sense: for example, >you might have been born 03/04/1960 and have an IQ of 155 and have >a Soc Sec No. 03041960155.) > >(II) So-called names don't actually have referents. "Jimc" does not >refer to you. Instead it denotes 'jimcness, jimchood', a predicate >'jimc(x)'. So when I say "jimc is at UCLA", what this means is that >something that has jimcness/jimchood -- x such that jimc(x) -- is at >UCLA. This, I think, is what pc meant by disguised descriptions. >Note that if there were somebody else also called "jimc", this would >denote a different essence from the one denoted by your name -- names >are quite ordinarily infinitely-many ways homonymous. It sounds like you are making a non-veridical/veridical distinction here. I is a mere label assigned by the speaker, hopefully allowing communication, like "le" descriptions. II refers to something that actually has a property associated inalienably with the name (which makes me think we are talking about the ineffable name of God, or something, because I cannot think of any property of a thing which is inalienably associated with a name). The other possible sense of II is that it is what USED to be indicated by "me" before we reverted to the set-based definition preferred by some logicians. In ye olde era, "me la kraisler" referred to something associated with the name Chrysler in some property (so the the place structure of a "me [name]" predicate matched that of the culture words: "x1 pertains to [name] in aspect x2". I think we decided that srana covered this latter adequately, but perhaps someone remembers otherwise. lojbab >(I) is what we think is the Lojban view. (II) is the only view I find >coherent. PC says Lojban needs both (II) and (I), but I haven't understood >the rationale for (I) yet. > >--And. > > > >To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscribe@onelist.com -- lojbab lojbab@lojban.org Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc. 2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273 Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: http://www.lojban.org