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xod:
> > > > Um. "ka'e" and "ca'a"? Those are elliptical by default anyway---so
> > > > nixon is a ca'a nu and mcgovern is a ka'e nu
> > >
> > > To elaborate, this means both of them fasnu also. But Mcgovern na
> > > ca'a fasnu
> >
> > Adam also pushed this line, as did I at one time, and even John
> > took it, for everything except nu
> >
> > But last time it came up, the general view seemed to be that ka'e
> > covers not all imaginable worlds but only worlds that are somehow
> > potential alternatives to this one. That is, ka'e is taken to
> > be equivalent to su'omu'ei, and {su'omu'ei broda} means something
> > like "in some relevant worlds that are variants of this world but
> > in which zo'e is the case, broda"
> >
> > So actually, yes McGovern was a ka'e, but Sherlock Holmes isn't
> > and not all johannine nu are ka'e fasnu
>
> No good! There is only one reality, all others are (equally) unreal
> President McGovern, Irish Socrates, and the one where I drank hot
> chocolate last night are all equally false. The Verification Principle
> shows this
It's not a matter of how unreal the unreal worlds are; it's a matter
of how different they are from the real word, to put it in crude
terms. When we model conditional reasoning, and reasoning about
potentiality and the future, we need to deal with 'potential' worlds
(one of which sometimes might be the real one), i.e. those
imaginary worlds that are relevantly similar to the real world.
(In a work of fiction, is the real world the fictional world?)
--And, still bemused by a whorfian logical positivist!