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John: > Invent Yourself scripsit: > > > We might define carnivorous as "never eats plants", or as "has internal > > organs designed for eating meat and will get sick if it eats plants". If > > the former ranges over all incarnations of Mr. Bird then we have trouble. > > But it's easy to see that Mr. Bird appears in the form that satisfies the > > latter. > > Correct, which agrees with my theory: "never" = "noroi", which has a > contradictory negation in it: "it is false that at any time etc. etc." > > Affirmative statements about Mr. Bird are true iff true of any bird; > negative statements about Mr. Bird are true iff true of every bird. In English, I would say "I never drink alcohol" is true (I would certainly say it and mean it to be) and "I have never drunk alcohol" is false. The explanation is that the first means "Within contextually given temporal parameters, I never drink alcohol". If Lojban allows this, then "Mr Bird is carnivorous" is true on a reading as "Within contextually given spatiotemporal parameters, Mr Bird is carnivorous". --And.