From arosta@uclan.ac.uk Tue Feb 13 07:17:58 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: arosta@uclan.ac.uk X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-7_0_3); 13 Feb 2001 15:17:57 -0000 Received: (qmail 16220 invoked from network); 13 Feb 2001 15:17:57 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.26) by l10.egroups.com with QMQP; 13 Feb 2001 15:17:57 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO com1.uclan.ac.uk) (193.61.255.3) by mta1 with SMTP; 13 Feb 2001 15:17:56 -0000 Received: from gwise-gw1.uclan.ac.uk by com1.uclan.ac.uk with SMTP (Mailer); Tue, 13 Feb 2001 15:01:29 +0000 Received: from DI1-Message_Server by gwise-gw1.uclan.ac.uk with Novell_GroupWise; Tue, 13 Feb 2001 15:17:41 +0000 Message-Id: X-Mailer: Novell GroupWise 5.5.2 Date: Tue, 13 Feb 2001 15:17:35 +0000 To: lojban Subject: Re: [lojban] RE: imaginary worlds etc. Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Disposition: inline From: And Rosta Jorge: #One way out of this is to see what happens in the imaginary=20 #worlds where you do come five minutes earlier. In those=20 #worlds, you meet her but pigs don't fly. That's the easy part.=20 #The difficult part is how to select those worlds, because it=20 #is not that difficult to imagine worlds where you do come=20 #earlier but you still don't meet her, somehow you have to=20 #restrict the possible variation of the imaginary worlds from=20 #the real world, which to me seems to mean that all we #did is kick the problem a little further.=20 This is true, but once we've got to the easy part we can linguistically model human reasoning, and until we get there=20 we can't. Thereafter the problem shifts from a linguistic problem to a purely philosophical one. So long as Lojban can quantify over *'relevant'* possible worlds, then the problem for Lojban is solved, and the issue of what defines 'relevant' can be handed over to the philosophers or the psychologists. --And.