Subject: Re: [lojban] Imaginary worlds (was su'u)

From: And Rosta <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 13 Feb 2001 15:07:48 +0000

jOHN:
#And Rosta wrote:
#> Is the Statue of Liberty made of marble?
#
#Well, perhaps in a possible world in which marble, rather than being
#calcium carbonate, is in fact copper.

O that's right; I'd forgotten it's green.

#> My (excellent) answer is that it 99% is; i.e. it satisfies 99%
#> of criteria for SoL-hood (including having no close rivals
#> for SoLhood), but falls down on the "made of marble"
#> criterion.
#
#Well, I would rather say that it is the *counterpart* of the
#S of L, but not the same as it.

I have no problem with that. I don't want to say that the
granite SoL is the same as the RealWorld SoL; I
want to say that the RW SoL has 100% SoLhood and
the granite SoL has '95%' SoLhood. Indeed the two
SoLs are counterparts, but the rationale for their
being counterparts is their relatively high scores on
SoLhood.

#Question: Suppose that Barbara Bush had dedicated herself to
#raising puppies rather than children. Would you be willing
#to have a p.w. in which the President of the United States
#was (even 95%) a black Labrador?

I certainly would not, but I would be willing to have a world
in which the primary candidate for GWhood is a black
labrador.

In the RW, nobody has 100% HenryHiggins-hood, but
nonetheless Daniel Jones is the primary candidate for
HenryHiggins-hood. (HH from Pygmalion, DJ first professor
of phonetics at University College London.)

--And.