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On Thu, 9 Jan 2003, Nick Nicholas wrote: > >On Thu, 9 Jan 2003, Nick Nicholas wrote: > > >Let's not lose sight of the fact that a collective is not signfied by >any > >particular quantification, but by the presence of emergent phenomena. It > >is numerically equivalent to plurality without emergent properties. > > Hold your horses, though. Right now I am defining *only* pluralities. > Whether they have emergent properties or not is something I'll deal > with later. > > In fact, with respect to some predicates (distributives), it is > clearly nonsense to say that the given property is emergent: if the > Beatles die, all four die. What i am trying to do is be able to talk > about a group of four as distinct from four individuals. Such a group > will necessarily have at least one emergent property (we belong to a > group). But whether a given property is emergent of them or > distributed of them depends on the property. If the property is > distributed of them and not emergent, then the collective is of > course identical to quantification over individuals. The emergent property of "is in a plurality" is a trivial, impotent one that I'm not sure should be discussed at all. It removes the distinct meaning of "emergent property" by allowing us to treat ANY conceivable set as a collective, completely detaching the concept from testable reality. > But again: I'm saying there is no such thing as x is a collective, > but only x is a collective *with respect to* a property. You seem to be conflating "collective" with "plurality", which is the politically neutral term I have introduced to speak of over-unity cardinalities without implying mass, set, or collective. Collective *implies* emergent properties. > Bob, do not tell me there is no such thing as a distributive > property. If 'die' confuses you (because you are generalising it to > "cease to function", rather than leaving it as "cease to breathe"), > then change it to 'are human beings'. "The Beatles are human" implies > "each Beatle is human". So humanity is not an emergent property, but > a distributive one. It's not distributive, it's held (and retained) by the individuals even as they join a collective. And "is a human" is not a property of The Beatles. "The Beatles are human" does not refer to the collective at all, but to the members of the collective; the "are" gives that away. -- The service done to Lojban and the time we have left for other pursuits like the BF is proportional to the speed at which we ditch that "lojbanmass" abomination and base gadri on solid ground! Nick, take off your BF hat (which you should not have yet donned), propose some clean, radical solutions, and then if you must, inveigh against them later at the BF. -- // if (!terrorist) // ignore (); // else collect_data ();