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Jorge:
> I agree with most of what Jordan has said on this issue
> Imaginary worlds with unicorns are just like the real world
> with horses, quantifiers work the same in both cases
Well I agree with that, too.
> I maintain that in a world with no unicorns, all of the
> following are true:
>
> All unicorns are white
> All unicorns are purple
> 0% of all unicorns are male
> 50% of all unicorns are male
> 100% of all unicorns are male
> 200% of all unicorns are male
>
> Any percentage of zero is zero, so there is no problem with
> any of the above, since zero unicorns are male in the real
> world, and they all say that. The statements are utterly
> uninteresting, but true all the same
I was going to disagree with this -- and in fact have just
deleted a paragraph laying out the argument.
Instead, I will say this:
I see no difference between "100% of" and "all".
I see no difference between ">0% of " and "some".
If you will agree that "Some unicorns are white", "su'o pav
cu blabi" (not "su'o da ge pav gi blabi") is also true,
then the argument boils down to whether it is possible to
have a fraction of nothing. It is possible in maths, but is
it possible in the-world-as-we-conceptualize it?
> "All trespassers will be shot" can be true in the real world,
> even if there is no trespasser ever.
That's a strange statement, because the future tense is irrealis
and takes us into possible futures.
Let's change the example to "All trespassers were shot", which
is supposed be true even if there were no trespassers. Well,
it would be so weird to say that that I really have no intuitions
about whether it ought to be true or false. It certainly seems
meaningless if there were no trespassers. So either it is
false but meaningless, and it is the meaninglessness that
implicates that there were trespassers.
> This statement is interesting
> for as long as we don't know whether there will ever be trespassers
> If we find out that there never will be any trespassers, the
> statement becomes trite. If we find out that there will be some
> trespasser, then we know that it entails "some trespasser will
> be shot". But we can't reach this conclusion unless we know that
> the set of trespassers is not empty
Yes.
>
> I don't think we have ever discussed whether {100ce'i} means {ro} or
> {piro}. I'm agnostic for the moment on that question
Let's postpone that. I'm having a hard enough keeping up with the
one topic of discussion.
--And.