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Martin Bays, On 17/09/2012 00:01:
* Sunday, 2012-09-16 at 16:12 +0100 - And Rosta<and.rosta@hidden.email>:Martin Bays, On 16/09/2012 01:28:Can you give me an example of a predicate which would hold of the massification of all cats (say) but not of the myopic singularisation?What John said. Also "has millions of heads" versus "has one head".But you do have them both satisfying mlt_, yes?
Yes.
Assuming so, it seems I'm still far from understanding your meaning of la Ra Pa. Let me try again! * Saturday, 2012-09-15 at 14:17 +0100 - And Rosta<and.rosta@hidden.email>:Martin Bays, On 15/09/2012 03:59:So with "la mlta Pa", we're forced by the presupposition to interpret it in a (quantifier-domain restricting) situation containing just one of the various cat-types. Depending on the context (including the hints given by P), this could naturally be "cats in general", or "black cats in general", or "this cat here", or "the noon-yesterday-stage of this cat here", or various other things. Is this right?Yes, but it's not the main part of the story, for me. The UoD may be one which the only cat is Tiddles, e.g. a story world, but (now that I've given the matter more thought) I don't see the UoD as shrinking as appropriate to ensure that there is only one. That is, if Tiddles is sitting on the windowsill, and I say "la mlta li [windowsill]i [sitting on]aki", I don't think I am temporarily shrinking the UoD to contain only Tiddles; rather, I think I'm performing some sort of singularization -- myopic singularization, massification, whatever suits the context -- on all catdom in the UoD.So in light of the above, and in the hope of inducing clarity, I guess the first question I want to ask is: what happens to these various singularisations when you apply one of the singularisations? For example, if both the massification and the myopic singularisation satisfy mlt_, and you myopically singularise everything which satisfies mlt_, then the massification is going to be part of what you're singularising.
No. I think the options for the extension are: 1a one feline thing, which looks like a single cat 1b one feline thing, which looks like a bunch of cats 2a many separate feline things, which look like single cats 2b many separate feline things, which look like bunches of cats l- gives 1a/1b; r-/s- give 2a/2b.
So will all the intermediate massifications. So e.g. the weights of the things you're singularising varies from a hundred grams or so for a kitten to billions of kg if you take the entirety of current catdom. So why would you have it weighing on the order of a kilogram? (Of course I don't expect you to be able to give precise rules for answering questions like "[what is the weight of] la mlta"! I'm looking only for general ideas.)
If all cats are in fact the same cat, its weight fluctuating a bit between one appearance and another, its typical weight is a few kilograms. Or you could state its weight as the range within which it fluctuates.
I suppose the answer must be along the following lines: the myopic singularisation is itself performed with respect to a choice of individuating criterion. In this case, you happened to pick the one which looks at individual cats. But you reserve the right to instead e.g. singularise species (in which case you would presumably decline to answer a silly question like "what's its weight?").
Is it silly? "Homo Sapiens stands up to 2.5 metres tall."
So now I'm imagining something along the lines of taking the mereological sum, but then dividing up that sum into "individuals" according to some criterion, and assigning the m.s. those properties which hold "generically" of those pieces... but perhaps this is wildly inaccurate?
It's not sufficient. For example, you wrote the email I'm responding to, but if I divided you up into individuals by some criterion that makes you many individuals, I wouldn't expect that the property of having written the email holds generically of the individuals. Yet still, you did write the email.
Then there's the complementary question: if these myopic singularisations satisfy mlt_, then (one would naively expect) they'll end up in massifications. How does that work, or is it just disallowed?
If you mean they'll end up in a massification of mlt, it's not one of the options. --~And.