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So lemee see if I got this.
And's Kind is, as it turns out, Jorge's Intensional article reborn.
Let there be a predicate broda(), with a denotation {x1, x2...}
Let there be another predicate, brodo()
If brodo(x) holds for at least one individual x:broda(x), then brodo
holds of the Kind-of-broda.
Let me refer to these as Indiv(broda) and Kind(broda).Kind(broda) is not extensionally defined. If broda can be claimed of any entity x, then any relation that x enters into is a relation entered into by Kind(broda).
Kinds are related to individuals by avatars. Indiv(broda) = Avatar(Kind(broda)).
If x1 is Indiv(broda) and x2 is a distinct Indiv(broda), they belong to an identical Kind.
So, if you kill Fred, you kill Mr Human1 If you kill Bill, you kill Mr Human2 Fred != Bill Mr Human1 == Mr Human2 When we say that x is the same as y, we do not mean that x == y. We mean that Kind(x) == Kind(y).If we both ate chips, we did not eat the identically same individual. But we did eat the identically individual Kind.
In extensional contexts, if something is true of a Kind, it is always true of an avatar of the kind.
In intensional contexts, that equation is not the case. I also think it is not the case in claims of identity vs. sameness. The Kind is the de dicto version of the individual.The Founders confusedly saw there was a need for this, and glommed the Kind (along with absolutely everything else) into the lojbanmass. So you can legitimately say {mi nitcu loi mikce} meaning you want the Kind(doctor), and expect an individual out, but an intensional individual. Jim Brown using Trobriander legends as an illustration of this was spectacularly something or other --- either ingenious or dumb. But Mr Shark, Shark Goo, and Two Sharks are not the same thing (let alone Two Scoops of Shark Goo, Mr Two Scoops of Shark Goo, Two Couples of Sharks, Two ShapeShifters Who Take Turns Being The Shark but aren't necessarily both the shark at any one time [the 'Duet' of sharkdom], and so on and so on.)
So the lojbanmass ends up doing: substance, collective, kind. With no clear disambiguation between the three (let alone kinds of substance, kinds of collective, collectives of collectives, collectives of substances) until we opened this debate.
Jordan said "leave it to pragmatics" at the start, and this is *a* SL answer. To me, however, a design goal of Lojban is disambiguability. It is a non-negotiable goal for me.
I will endeavour to keep loi for as much of this as possible, to preserve consistency with SL -- i.e. the substance/collective conflation in loi. I think I see why the collective and the kind were conflated, and I may end up defending that too --- but it leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
In And's schemes, the Kind is syntactically prior. The avatar is derived from the Kind by explicit quantification.
In SL, the denotation of loi has always been an utter fuckup --- and one that I will never, never forgive. But that lo broda is extensionally defined, not intensionally, is one that I think is basic to Lojban. When And brought up the equation "is lo broda == su'o da poi broda always", we got sidetracked into asking whether {da poi broda} can also be an uncountable substance. (It clearly can, and if we preserve the equation lo broda == su'o da poi broda, we would need to make the sea tu'o loi tu'o broda.) But the real question is, is the referent of {lo broda} always quantified by a prenex? Are all our claims of entities ultimately extensional?
Propositionalism says yes, by supplying a nested prenex: the referent may not be quantified in this world, they reason, but they are quantified in some world. But imagining, depicting, and fearing don't work well with propositionalism. And when I look for a doctor, it's not really that there is at least one indvidual in my mental world that I want. The relationship is between me and doctor-kind, not between me and any one individual doctor in any possible world. Introducing unicorns, which don't exist in this world, only confuse the issue: there is plenty of de dicto/de re going on with existing entities.
I think we should allow intensional entities in. I am prepared to call them Kinds.
I recognise that English NPs are both intensional and extensional (a doctor is both de dicto and de re), and And is followed an honoured tradition in making the de dicto reading basic, and the de re derived by quantification.
I think the Lojban prescription (as addled as it has been) cannot survive {lo broda} being a Kind and {pa lo broda} being an Individual, or telling people that when there are two doctors you want you want {re lo mikce}, but when you want any two doctors you want {lo mikce remei}.
Therefore, though I now see that making the Kind basic is ontologically sensible (after all, we start with the predicate and then stick gadri in front of it), and it follows the last three decades of semantic thought ---
I still cannot accept it for Lojban. In any solution I propound, {lo broda} is the same as {su'o lo broda}, and the Kind is derived. Having people used marked expressions to speak of Kinds is a bother. But it's a bother they will welcome. People like about Lojban that it makes them see ambiguities they didn't see before. When Mark said "no, he's not looking for her, he's looking for x such that x is his mother", enlightenment was reached. (This is the gosling that looked for her mother when newly hatched --- "Are you my mother?" ko'a isn't x:x is her mother, which is intensional, but extensional. Confronted with ko'a, the gosling would have no idea whether ko'a was her mother or not. She'd have found ko'a extensionally (de re), but not x:x is her mother (de dicto.)
When Mark said this at Lohgest, enlightenment was reached. It will not be reached by having over and covert quantification cover up the difference. If people don't learn what the difference is, they will still confuse it. It will be reached by marking the difference. To me, that means LAhE still.
[Nick Nicholas. French & Italian Studies, University of Melbourne ] [ nickn@hidden.email http://www.opoudjis.net ] [There is no theory of language structure so ill-founded that it cannot] [be the basis for some successful Machine Translation. --- Yorick Wilks]