Subject: RE: Imaginary worlds (MORE VERBOSE)(but hoepfully cleaner)

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sun, 11 Feb 2001 09:54:24 EST

I really did try to get this to come over from Word in a readable way, but 
Word seems to have a strange idea of what "text" is. Herewith another 
version, hopefully cleaner -- next step is WordStar's ASCII.

(beingcautious) We are a long way from the {su'u} thread indeed now, which 
was,recall, about how to talk about the -ness or -ing of an individual in 
Lojbanand then about what these could possibly mean. So we started with an 
abstract entity, assumed to exist, and asked howto refer to it in Lojban.  We 
now seemto be talking about a well-established category of Lojban grammar, 
cmene, and asking some or all of thefollowing questions.
      What do cmene mean?  What is the sense of a cmene? 
      How does a cmene attach to its referent? 
      How do we pick out the right referent of acmene (in this orany other 
world)?
      What is essential to an individual who isthe referent of a cmene?  Is 
thisconnected to the cmene?
      Are any of these things properties or arethey sui generis?
      What happens across worlds under thevarious positions on these issues?
Andprobably a few more.
Background:a world (for now and contrary to Mad Ludwig in his youth) is a 
bunch of things,and, as an immediate consequence, a whole bunch of sets of 
things.  A language is a bunch of words, and, as animmediate consequence,a 
bunch of sets of words, and then, related to those, abunch of strings of 
words.  A languageis supposed to be about a world, we need some connection, 
an interpretation ofthe language in terms of a world. We start, we think, 
with one world and assignwords of various sets to various sets of things, 
including words of one basicset (at least) to things taken individually. I 
does not matter in this process what class of words we assign to, say,simple 
sets, except that the grammar must somehow give rise to strings whichwork out 
to say &quot;x is a member of s&quot; and &quot;s is included int&quot; and 
the like.  Nor does it matterwhich member of this class we assign to a 
particular simple set, say.  From another class we, equally 
arbitrarily,assign members to individual things, preumably from a set that 
allows sayingthat the things it points to are members and makes it at least 
difficult to saythat they have members.  [Cowan can takemy talk about sets as 
being about discontinuous individuals, if he wants, withthe corresponding 
kinds of relations among them.]
In ourinitial world, a given thing will belong to some sets and not to others 
andwill be the unique member of one set. Many of these sets will have words 
from the language assigned to them -or longer expressions that play the same 
role (as strings come to be analyzed)as words of the appropriate class.  
Thesingleton of a given object may, for example, be assigned to a word or 
phrase -or to several such - or to none --  inthe langauge.  The sets of the 
worldform hierarchies by inclusion and some of the higher sets may get&
quot;names&quot; as well as the lower ones (and some at any level may not 
getnames at all).  Notice how undisciplinedthe connections are here: we want 
to say a few things but however we assign thewords, we can then pick from all 
the strings some with appropriate structuresto say this (given two names of 
individuals and the name of a two-placerelation, any string that contains the 
three items will do) and, as long as weare consistent about it, it will work.
Now,suppose we move to another world and suppose (it's easier when doing 
this) thatthis world can contain things that also are in the first world, but 
otherthings as well and not necessarily all the things from the first world 
(indeed,not necessarily any of them - apologies to Plantinga's ontological 
proof). Wetypically want to be somewhat less arbitrary with our language now: 
we knowwhat kinds of words go with individuals, what with predicates and so 
on, so wewill not shift these connections around (there is an alternate 
approach wherewe keep the same world by shift assignments or connections 
around, but thatdoesn't improve anything but ontological muddles).  Are other 
types of connections also more restricted - can weassign any member of the 
set-words class to any old set, and so on? Iif we lookdownward to the members 
of the set, it seems we can: sets in the new world,will, after all, likely 
not have the same members as any old -world set, giventhe the two worlds 
don't have exactly the same things in them.  But if we look at the level of 
the set andhigher, we see that there are limits to this freedom.  The setwe 
call &quot;red,&quot; for example, in the new worldmust, like the set red in 
the old, be disjoint from a number of other disjointsets, called &quot;green,&
quot; 'blue,&quot; and so on, and fall under anotherset &quot;colored&quot; 
and that under &quot;spatial,&quot; and on up.  The structure has to come 
over, though theparticular sets are not fixed.  (Wewould be totally lost in a 
world described by &quot;Suppose red were not acolor,...&quot; though 
admittedly less by &quot;Suppose a whale were not amammal.&quot; -the notion 
of &quot;essential&quot; in this sense is indeedscalar rather than polar.)  
When wecome to similar questions about individuals and names, we notice we 
havealready given the game away a bit.  Wetalk about the same thing in both 
worlds before we have names for it in atleast one and before we have 
considered what classes it has to be in (whatpredicates it satisfies).  That 
is, wecan identify the individual independently of what we say about it at 
all, andwe do that because of its uniqueness, its vishesha, say, the means 
whereby wefind the thing in any world it is in (and find out it is not in the 
worlds itis not in).  Now we have a whole seriesof questions to ask about 
assigning names and the like to this individual inthe new world.  
1. Doesit have to get the same name as in the old world?  Usually not: roses 
and the like, y'know.
2. Doesit have to have the same properties - or some set of identical 
properties (andthus impose some further restrictions on assigning names to 
sets) as in the oldworld?  Again, probably not - we canimagine everything 
changed in hypotheticating.
3. Doeswhatever gets the name this thing had in this world in the next world 
have tohave (some set of ) the same properties as this thing had in this 
world in thenext world?  Still probably not - forone thing, the name may not 
be used at all in world 2 or not used for anythingin that world at least 
(Cowan is a character in world 2 fiction, just as Holmes- a perfectly nice 
guy in world 2 - is in world 1).  But further we want to be able to suppose 
worlds in which someonecalled Cowan is a master detective, without supposing 
the Cowan, the one weknow, ever is. 
Somethinghas gang aglee here.  It would seem thatnothing could be made to 
follow from any hypothetical
contrary-to-fact:&quot;If Socrates were and Irish washerwoman, ...&quot; then 
what?  The person who is called&quot;Socrates&quot; is world 1 might wellbe 
an Irish washerwoman in world 2,but, lacking in that world all of the 
characteristics Socrates had in world 1,might do absolutely anything at all, 
without clarifying the issue the hypotheticalhad in mind.  Similarly, an 
Irishwasherwoman might be named Socrates in world 2 without it telling us 
anythinguseful (except about, maybe, some Irishman's sense of humor).  What 
we are really interested in, it turnsout on careful examination is:
4. Whatrestrictions are placed on a thing that satisfies in world 2 some 
descriptionthat in world 1 was             satisfied  by the holder of 
thename?  Essence, vishesha, is justnumerical identity and a useful senseof 
a name (it solves the problem of why&quot;Venus = Venus&quot; is necessary 
while &quot;Hesperus = Phosphorus&quot;is not), but carries no properties 
with it. On the other hand, the name, per se, carries neither properties 
nornumerical identity and so is useless for most hypotheticals, which come 
down tolaws, relations among predicates eventually. The predicate thus comes 
in somehow - and how else but by description?
None ofthis makes a name ordinarily a disguised description - nor a rigid 
designator,for that matter.  But in hyptheticatingcontext, the (well, a) 
connotation of the name comes to function as its sense,the means to pick out 
the right person in the new world, so that we can thenargue for or from some 
law or observation, what someone like Socrates in (oftennot very clearly) 
specified ways would do as an Irish washerwoman.  So our intererest is 
neitehr in the thingnor the name, but in something two removes from either.