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--- In jboske@yahoogroups.com, Jorge "Llambías" <jjllambias2000@y...> wrote: > > In my view, lo'e kumte is sometimes female and sometimes male, sometimes > it has one hump and sometimes two (and other times none). In many context > the question is irrelevant. It is like asking "what does John Cowan hold > in his hand?". It varies with context, and in many contexts it is > irrelevant. This is not quite the message I meant to be responding to, but it's close. Also, I'm still in the process of catching up on this discussion; maybe this has already been dealt with. Instead of saying that Mr. Bird is "sometimes" carnivore and sometimes herbivore, sometimes male and sometimes female, it would seem to me that what makes for a "prototype" are exactly those characteristics which *are* constant across "almost all" instances of the critter. So Mr. Bird has no specific size (though its size is limited to between an inch or so and 10-odd feet), nor a gender, nor a diet, but does have feathers, a beak, two wings, is warm-blooded, etc. This kind of thing will work in non-instantiated situations (naturally, if I "see" Mr. Bird then that could make "being seen by me" a characteristic, and it isn't, as has been noted). When I Want "a bird", then I'm wanting something warm-blooded, two-winged, scaly-legged, blahdiblah, but not with any particular gender, etc. When I see "a bird," that's an instantiation and necessarily enumerable; that's "lo cipni" not "lo'e cipni". I don't fully follow Nick's Four Settings of Wanting, Seeking, Fearing, Depicting; somehow I can't believe that those are the only situations where intension/prototype is required (what about "I like birds"?). Maybe all cases fall into categories with those... the exact distinction between them needs clarification. But taking the view above, that "lo'e cipni" is some notional critter embodying those qualities, and only those qualities, that are attributed to "all" birds (in scare-quotes), let's see, how does that fit? When I Want lo'e cipni, that works... Same for Seeking, and I think Fearing, though Depicting is necessarily fleshed out with other features. I'm still at the low end of this discussion, so bear with me... ~mark