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The idea of a unicorn is real but I refuse, by an obnoxious committment to
empiricalism, to believe in any imaginary worlds where unicorns roam
around. Since I have philosophical problems imaginary worlds, I prefer to
discuss the concept of the Unicorn.
Natlangs often conflate the ideas to which words refer, and the phenomena
to which the ideas refer. I am detecting a hierarchy of symbols, at least
one deep, between a word and its corresponding phenomena.
I have not yet worked out the full theory, but my axioms are
ca'e la'e ro valsi cu sidbo
ca'e la'e piso'o loi sidbo cu zasti
This may give nearly identical results to Imaginary World theory, while
satisfying positivist epistemology concerns.
Also, upon rigorously objective inspection, the student should eventually
see little difference between "horse" and "unicorn". The two conclusions
at the end of such an analysis are pure solipsism, or a universe of
particles and potential fields. Not a horse in sight in the latter, and in
the former, all the unicorns you like.
But hold on a moment.
The fact that these discussions have been raging for seven years or more
indicates that an entirely new approach is needed. Nick doesn't want us to
be 'community of self-flagellators'; I agree. So let's start dispensing
with some extremely basic questions.
Why are we so concerned with existence? Is this some sort of a corruption
of logic by the hallucinations of mad metaphysicists, ranting gibberish
about being and nothingness and nonbeingness? What do we mean by
existence: empirically provable, or just assumed to exist for the sake and
context of the discussion?
I propose that "existential import" in Lojban mean the latter; that claims
by default refer to whatever hypothetical universe the discourse is taking
place in -- full of Unicorns and Sherlocks as easily as they might be
forbidden. And that we reserve da'i and da'inai to import the results of
the discussion to the empirical universe, or inhibit the same.
Specifically, I propose that {da} mean {da da'icu'i}, not {da da'inai} as
we seem to have been torturing ourselves over.
--
"In the Soviet Union, government controls industry. In the United
States, industry controls government. That is the principal
structural difference between the two great oligarchies of our
time." -- Edward Abbey