[YG Conlang Archives] > [jboske group] > messages [Date Index] [Thread Index] >
On Sat, 11 Jan 2003, And Rosta wrote:
> 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.
Potential worlds are very different from what-if worlds. How can
anyone prove the idea that a McGovern presidency was more possible than an
Irish Socrates? It is true that, within recent memory, there were people
who thought that the former was possible, but perhaps it was never
possible at all.
> (In a work of fiction, is the real world the fictional world?)
Yes.
> --And, still bemused by a whorfian logical positivist!
Where's the amusing contradiction?
--
// if (!terrorist)
// ignore ();
// else
collect_data ();