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* Monday, 2012-09-17 at 01:22 +0100 - And Rosta <and.rosta@hidden.email>: > 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. > > > * Saturday, 2012-09-15 at 14:17 +0100 - And Rosta<and.rosta@hidden.email>: > >> Martin Bays, On 15/09/2012 03:59: > >> 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. What do you mean by "the extension"? The extension of mlt_ in the UoD? So you're going back to having the UoD somehow contort to adapt to the choice of quantifier? If so, how does that work? If not, then what? > > 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." Perhaps, but I meant something more like "the myopic singularisation of the species Panthera tigris, Puma concolor and Felus catus weighs ?? kg" (where species is meant in the kind of sense you've suggested, whereby a cat species itself satisfies mlt_). > > 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. And that's really because the myopic singularisation of those individuals did? Not a massification, say? (In case it wasn't clear, by the way, I bandy these terms about as if I know what you mean by them not because I do, but in the hopes of eliciting responses which might lead me to.) > > 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. OK. So why not? What can go in such a massification?
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