From jcowan@reutershealth.com Mon Feb 12 11:44:11 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: jcowan@reutershealth.com X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-7_0_3); 12 Feb 2001 19:44:10 -0000 Received: (qmail 15664 invoked from network); 12 Feb 2001 19:44:10 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.142) by l10.egroups.com with QMQP; 12 Feb 2001 19:44:10 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO mail.reutershealth.com) (204.243.9.36) by mta3 with SMTP; 12 Feb 2001 20:45:15 -0000 Received: from reutershealth.com (IDENT:cowan@[192.168.3.11]) by mail.reutershealth.com (Pro-8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id OAA13310; Mon, 12 Feb 2001 14:45:40 -0500 (EST) Message-ID: <3A883D0E.5090400@reutershealth.com> Date: Mon, 12 Feb 2001 14:44:14 -0500 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux 2.2.16-22 i686; en-US; 0.7) Gecko/20010119 X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: And Rosta Cc: lojban Subject: Re: [lojban] RE:su'u References: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From: John Cowan And Rosta wrote: > [BTW, don't you think your parsimony in quoting is sometimes > excessive? Indeed. :-) > and -- more controversially -- cross-world identification of > individuals work only under (II). So it does, but then I think that cross-world identification is a red herring. We create a possible world by specifying some sort of pivot (e.g. Nixon is the pivot in "Suppose Nixon had not become president in 1972") and varying the values of propositions involving the pivot. This being so, we need no method of identifying Nixon in this possible world, because the whole point of the p.w. is to speculate about what might have happened to *him*. Similarly, I think that pc's identification functions are not necessary. > If properties that rigidly designate are taken as defining properties > of intensions, then the fuzziness enters the picture in that intensions > are fuzzy (in the sense that 'membership' -- saisfaction of the > criterial properties -- is a matter of degree). I think this is true, but I think the antecedent is in fact false -- I can't say just how, though. > #Socratizer holds of *that* particular person and nobody else; > But, I contend, in other worlds, Socratizer may hold of person > X to 95%, of person Y to 5%, and of nobody to 100%. I have no trouble with the notion that Socratizer holds of nobody in some p.w.'s. The 95%/5% distinction, though, muddles me. Can you really imagine, as opposed to merely describing ("an easy contrivance") a possible world in which you are five percent John Cowan? > How about 'mud'? Oh, yes, "mud" is fuzzy. I didn't mean that there are no fuzzy categories, merely that your examples (Socratizer, Gold, Cat) are suboptimal --- and a fortiori, that there are sharp categories. > So in a world in which a blue liquid is composed of > atoms with 79 protons (-- not at all far fetched for a > Star Trek episode), this blue liquid is gold? At first I was going to deny that there is any such p.w., but now I think that yes, this blue liquid is gold. This may entail changes in the membership of "blue" and "liquid", both of which are fuzzy. IOW, it's just a prejudice that it's necessary for gold to be a yellow metal. > Anyway, that Aaaak is a bit unfair. After all, if I'm trying to explain a > philosophical position that I myself disagree with, I have no choice but > to give examples of things that some people, but not necessarily me, > believe to exist. Fair enough. I have had similar problems explaining natural-rights theory to people; they tend to assume that I must believe in it if I can explain it. -- There is / one art || John Cowan no more / no less || http://www.reutershealth.com to do / all things || http://www.ccil.org/~cowan with art- / lessness \\ -- Piet Hein