[YG Conlang Archives] > [engelang group] > messages [Date Index] [Thread Index] >
Martin Bays scripsit:
> So we're forced to introduce a new operation - myopic singularisation.
> You seem to have this applying to individuated sets, although it's not
> clear to me that the individuatedness is important.
It does matter. The MS of John Cowan is just John Cowan, because of
the identity of indiscernibles.
Notation: A temporal English word followed by * means its spatio-temporal
equivalent. Thus "always*" means "always and everywhere", "when*" means
"when or where", etc.
> In any case, the result is a new kind of thing. In particular, it is
> illegal to take the sum of a cat and a myopic singularisation of cats.
Not so much illegal as uninteresting. That sum usually* has 2 heads,
8 legs, etc.
> (i) how are their properties and relations related to those of the
> individuals they originated with?
I don't know how to specify it formally, but informally it works
like this. Consider the MS of the set {Barack Obama, John Cowan}.
This entity always* has a head, never* has a tail, and is sometimes*
brown-skinned and sometimes* pink-skinned. The MS of the set {x |
x is a cat} almost always* has four legs and a tail, is never* green,
but otherwise has different colors at different times*.
Define a "Sun-life" as the brightest object in the sky between a sunrise
and the following sunset at a fixed observation point. The MS of the set
of Sun-lives between a summer solstice and the following winter solstice
is always* yellow-white, always* the brightest object in the sky, and
always rises at a different place (declination) at sunrise.
> (ii) Can MSs be summed with each other? Can I take an MS of dogs and
> an MS of cats, and bunch the two together?
Certainly. That object always* has claws and teeth except when* they
have been removed. It almost always* has a tail. It sometimes* barks
and sometimes* meows.
> (iii) Relatedly: can we myopically singularise myopic
> singularisations? Do you want to leave open the possibility that any
> thing might be considered to be an MS of some other things?
It makes no difference whether you MS two MSes or the union of the
underlying sets. The MS of all the half-yearly Sun-life MSes is the
MS of all the Sun-lives, which may be considered the single object
"the apparent Sun".
--
John Cowan cowan@hidden.email http://ccil.org/~cowan
I must confess that I have very little notion of what [s. 4 of the British
Trade Marks Act, 1938] is intended to convey, and particularly the sentence
of 253 words, as I make them, which constitutes sub-section 1. I doubt if
the entire statute book could be successfully searched for a sentence of
equal length which is of more fuliginous obscurity. --MacKinnon LJ, 1940