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[Excuse my switching your encoding from Unicode. Outlook works better
for me in Western European.]
Nick:
> And:
> > > But even though I look at John revering Quine and think "that's so
> > old
> > > hat", I cannot accept an intensionalist model. Even if it's more
> > > realistic cognitively (and it may well be --- we start with Kinds,
> > and
> > > go to individuals as avatars of Kinds.) Lojban was begotten of the
> > > prenex --- and extensionalism --- and I want it to stay there. As in,
> > > to the extent of defection or schism. :-( Sorry
> >
> > I'm not sure quite what you mean. You can probably formulate
> > ExSol 4.0 in such a way that Kinds aren't treated as more basic,
> > and ExSol is essentially neutral wrt extensionalism/intensionalism
> > So if you're saying that you want it to be possible to do everything
> > purely extensionally, I have no problem with that. But if you're
> > saying you want to make it impossible to do things intensionally
> > (except when using {nu}!) then I don't understand why. I still
> > opine that Lojban strives to avoid bias and undue limitations on
> > speakers' choices, and there is definitely a sense in which
> > Lojban aspires to make everything sayable
>
> And, I am not John. :-) I want to do everything extensionally, because
> I believe that is Lojban nature (we are bound to the prenex). But I
> also agree that the intension must be possible, and would rather kludge
> that by just switching the damn quantification off
Unfortunately, kinds are only one instance where quantification can
be switched off. The reason why switching off quantification sort
of works for kinds is that there is only one of them. So a rigidly
extensionalist treatment would still insist on quantifying over
Mr Broda ("x1 is Mr Broda").
So I wish there to be a way to switch off quantification -- and tu'o
is acceptable for that in a kludgesome solution, though any sort of
overt zi'o is rather galling for reasons we all feel. But tu'o alone
is not sufficient to give us kinds. A KS is at liberty to propose
a new gadrow for kinds, and that might be a more workable solution.
--And.