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John: > And Rosta scripsit: > > > Is the detective Sherlock Holmes less of a detective than the detective > > Alan Pinkerton [or some other RL detective]? > > I think this question smells of essentialism, and I wish to reformulate > it as follows: Does the state of affairs "Sherlock Holmes detects" constitute > less of a *detection* than the state of affairs "Alan Pinkerton detects"? > To which I answer No Then you're avoiding the question, which was trying to get at why or whether you want to say that real and imaginary events are equally events but real and imaginary detectives are not equally detectives. By 'event' I here mean 'event', not specifically 'nu'. > > But all Nick meant was that "ro nu broda cu fasnu", i.e > > "every nu-event happens". The "truly in the world" bit is just > > implicit in all nonintensional predicates. The disagreement is > > about whether nu should be allowed to be an intensional predicate, > > given that Lojban has no others > > I think that fasnu is something of a meta-predicate, which says about > events (construed as abstractions, not as points in space-time or the > like) that they belong to the real world or don't belong to it. So for you, x1 is not the event itself -- the flux in the configuration of matter and energy that we call, say, 'sneezing'? > Its role are analogous to the role of ckaji, which is a meta-predicate > saying whether something has or doesn't have a certain property This is not how I had understood fasnu. Indeed, would the need for your interpreted of fasnu arise if you didn't treat nu as noematic? > The property "\x.x is a unicorn" exists (that is, can be the value of a > quantified variable) independently of whether it se ckaji anything > Just so, the event "Sherlock Holmes detects" can be the value of a quantified > variable independently of whether there is a Sherlock Holmes and whether, > if so, he detects I understand this is how you wish it to be. I still haven't worked out why nu gets singled out in this way for special treatment. I would have thought that fasnu would simply be the most general category for identifiable patterns in the swirl of energy-matter in the world, while nu would seem redundant to du'u unless it means "a pattern in the swirl of energy-matter whose existence is sufficient to make the bridi true of the world". You probably have some reason for wanting things to be the way you want them to be, but I don't grock it and so far it seems to me to be a gratuitous inconsistency. --And.