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

From: John Cowan <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 10 Feb 2001 13:29:57 -0500 (EST)

And Rosta scripsit:

> > We can if you
> > like replace all talk of Socrates with talk of the Socratizer, where
> > "x1 is a Socratizer" is a predicate that is (intensionally) true of
> > Socrates and nobody else. But does this really change anything?
> 
> Yes it does.

If you mean "Yes, because I can't understand (I) except by taking it
as a synonym for (II)", then I understand. If you mean that (I) has
graspably different consequences from (II), then I have not yet
grasped them.

> I forget what rigid designation is.

The predicate "married to Gale McGhan" non-rigidly designates me, since
there are many possible worlds in which it isn't true. But "first son
of Thomas Cowan and Marianne Schultz" rigidly designates me, since it
refers to me in every possible world in which I exist at all, and where
I don't exist it designates nobody.

I could have married someone else and still been me (hard as that is to
believe after 20+ years), but the first son of some other parents could
*not* have been me -- that would be somebody else altogether.

> At any rate, I see no difference
> between Socratizer and Cat and Gold. It's also the case that Socratizer
> is, like all (?) categories, fuzzy, so one can find worlds in which
> something sort of is Socrates/Socratizer but isn't completely.

Sharp/fuzzy, of categories, is quite different from rigid/non-rigid,
of designations. But in fact I think all of these categories are sharp.
Socratizer holds of *that* particular person and nobody else; Cat
holds of the cat individual and nothing else; Gold holds of aggregates
of atoms with 79 protons and nothing else. Linguistician, now *that's*
a fuzzy category.

> I was just seeking an example
> of something that is a mere label, but am not committed to arguing that
> mere labels exist.

Aaaak. I may start using this as my .signature.

-- 
John Cowan [email-masked]
One art/there is/no less/no more/All things/to do/with sparks/galore
--Douglas Hofstadter