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Re: [jboske] [WikiDiscuss] Re: BPFK gismu Section: Parenthetical Remarks in Brivla Definition



On 9/16/06, pycyn <clifford-j@hidden.email> wrote:

It has to be admitted right now that the way that CLL, for example,
talks about {lo ka (ce'u) broda} also gets a couple of notions
somewhat confused: sometimes identifying it (apparently) with \xBx and
sometimes (though it rarely says explicitly) with ^\xBx, i.e., with B
and ^B.

"\xBx" is a term, so I can understand what you mean when you say
that CLL sometimes identifies lo ka ce'u broda with \xBx.

If "^X" means " the intension of 'X' " then I can understand what you
mean by saying that CLL may identify lo ka ce'u broda with ^\xBx
or with ^B.

But I don't understand what you mean when you say that CLL
sometimes may identify lo ka ce'u broda with B, because "B" in all of
this seems to be a predicate, not a term.


> I'm still not quite sure what an intensional object is. I can understand
> what the intension of an expression is (the property of the expression
> that one uses in order to figure out what its extension is, the sense or
> meaning of the expression), but that can't be what you have in mind
here,
> because when we want something we don't want a property of an
> expression, we don't want a sense or a meaning.

Well, that depends upon what you take the relation of wanting to be
between. One end is clearly a person, a wanter. The other end
appears to be an object or an event.

Yes.

But when we apply this answer in
its most literal way, it turns out paradoxical: we can only say we
want specific things, as it were, not just anything that happens along
of the right sort,

That's only problematic if you don't allow the specific thing to be a type
(or whatever you want to call it, see below).

and we can't say we want things of sorts that don't
exist at all,

Why not? We can say all sort of things about things that don't exist
at all. "X wants Y" does not entail "Y exists". That's not paradoxical.

and if we say we want one thing, we also have to admit
we want everything identical with that thing (even though the identity
is unknown to us) and so on.

We have to admit it as soon as we become aware of the identity, not
before. If we know that we want X, and we know that X=Y, then we know
that we want Y. The "problem" here is taking relative identity for absolute
identity. The reasoning:

(1) X = Y
(2) Z wants X
--------------------
(3) Z wants Y

is perfectly sound. When (2) is true and (3) is false, then (1) must be
false, and if we are tempted to say it is true then we must be using "X"
and "Y" to refer to something different in (1) than in (2) and (3).

> For me, the relationships between:
>
> the "a" I just wrote - the "a" that is the first letter of the alphabet
> the flag on the mast with a hole in it - the flag of this country
> the liquid in this glass - the liquid that freezes at 0 C and boils
at 100 C
> the V3i that my friend bought - the V3i manufactured by Motorola
> the ant I found crawling on the table - the ant first noticed in
> California in 1908
> John's running, which I'm seeing now - John's running, which occurs
> every Tuesday
>
> are all the same relationship.

None of these things are relationships, so I assume you mean the
relationship between the first of them and the second in each case.

I thought that's what I said: "For me, the relationships between: <list>
are all the same relationship."

They seem to be cases of reference to a specific member of the
extension of some predicate and a reference to a more extended
referent class – what one depending upon what you want to say about
these items (and sometimes a very amorphous set altogether, if what
you want to say is sufficiently vague. But there don't appear to be
two different sorts of things here, just the extension of a predicate
under various circumstances.

Right. So if I say "this is a picture of the ant first noticed in California
in 1908" there shouldn't be any intensional context problem with it as long
as we are able to figure out the pertinent extension of the predicate under
the circumstances.

I see that they all have something in common, but I don't see it as
being some special as to deserve a label and a lot of metaphysical
talk about it. Working out what are the circumstances under which the
expression we use (suppose we use something like {lo broad} for all of
them) works in one way rather than another is an interesting question;
whether to call it a token or a type is not (unless that is a
shorthand – or muddled – way of asking the circumstances question).

I agree, of course. The label in itself is inconsecuential, but it seems to
be pretty standard, so why not use it?

To summarize:
Intensional contexts can be characterized by three "anomalies"
(according to <http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/intensional-trans-verbs/>):
(1) failure of interchange of identicals
(2) ambiguity between "specific" and "unspecific" reading of the object
(3) failure of existential commitment

(1) is resolved by not confusing relative identity with absolute identity.
Two things can be the same F while remaining two separate logical objects.
(<http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/identity-relative/>)

(2) is resolved by allowing that the referent of an expression can vary
with context in the type-token axis. The "specific" reading corresponding
to the "token" reading, and the "unspecific" reading to the "type" reading.
(<http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/types-tokens/>)

(3) is resolved by not confusing membership in the universe of discourse
with existence. Members of the universe of discourse are not required
to satisfy the predicate {zasti}. Mentioning something does not commit
one to its existence.

mu'o mi'e xorxes