Re: [engelang] intensions & extensions (Xorban) - engelang messages

On Sun, Sep 16, 2012 at 12:18 PM, Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@hidden.email> wrote:

On Sun, Sep 16, 2012 at 12:53 AM, Mike S. <maikxlx@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Here's another way of looking at it without screwing with the restriction.
> Let's say that "sm-" had two places and meant "x1 is an entity in world x2".

I wouldn't want to do that, because then "sm-" would no longer be
fully tautological. It would start to look a lot like "zst-".

A predicate like "x1 is an entity in world x2" is meant to be
evaluated in a world containing many different worlds, and I'm not
sure it's a good idea to mix this meta-level with the predicates. (I
see you later dismissed the -kV version of smV anyway.)

Yes.

> When x2 is elided then we get the one-place "sm-" meaning "x1 is an entity
> [in some world]" that we already have & use. Then we can say for every
> predicate e.g. xkre with an "extensional" argument, there is another
> predicate e.g. xkr`e without the extensionality such that
>
> ha xkre <=> jana smeka xkr`e
> "if E exists in world A then E is a black".

(New version:
ha xkre <=> jana ha sme ha xkr`e)

> sa sma ha re mlte xkre
> sa sma re mlte ha xkre
> "There is some A such that for all E, if E is a cat then if E exists in
> world A then E is a black."
> Or simply, "In world A, every cat is black."

Is that meant to be "It could be the case that all cats are black"?

Yes. There's nothing barring what I am calling "sma'e ha'e" (recycling the inclusive-we variable since worlds can't speak or be addressed) from being among "sma ha" in this claim. Or more pragmatically it could mean,

It could be the case that all cats are black [if something happens].
It could have been the case that all cats were black [if things had been different].

... since we know that there are non-black cats.

Is
it different from "sa sma fa re mlte xkre"? (which I would translate
as "in some cases, all cats are black" or "sometimes, all cats are
black").

I don't know everything about what fits into "f-" and what I do know I largely learned recently from this email list, but given that they apparently give "ju" the ability to compose predicates (very usefully IMHO) and at least in those cases seem clearly to indicate an realis mood, what I think they are at this moment in time is something essentially very different than the worlds which would fit into "h-". From my point of view, they seem to grab various chunks of space-time that could exist or not in any given world. So "sometimes, all cats are black" seems a plausible translation of "sa sma fa re mlte xkre", if it means that the proposition "all cats are black" actually happened at one point another in "sa'e ha'e" (or whatever default Sv hV is).

> The exact h-transformation is lexically determined, but predictable from
> the meaning. So (again ignoring x1 which *is* extensional) intensional
> places just ignore the "ha":
>
> ha pxro'eke <=> pxro'eke
>
> sa sma ha re mlte pxro'eke
> sa sma re mlte ha pxro'eke
> "There is some A such that for all E, if E is a cat then E is depicted."

What would that be (approximately) in everyday English? "There could
be pictures of every cat"?

Yes.

How would you distinguish:

"There's some world in which every cat (of that world) is depicted"

sa sma ha re ha mlte pxro'eke
= sa sma re ha mlte ha pxro'eke
"In some world, everything that's a cat in that world is depicted in that world"
"It could be the case that every existing cat is depicted."

You'd need to say "ha" twice because pxr-2 is intensional.

Another way is:
sa sma ha re mlte jana sme pxro'eke

"There's some world in which every cat (of this world) is depicted"

sa sma ha re ha'e mlte pxro'eke

I think that would mean "It could be the case that every cat existing in our world is depicted" What would definitely exist in world A is the pictures, not necessarily any cat. To get the stronger meaning:

sa sma ha re ha'e mlte je sme pxro'eke
"There is some world A such that for all E, if E is a cat in this world, then E is in world A and E is depicted in world A."
"There's some world in which every cat in this world exists and is depicted"

ca ma'a xrxe