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On 9/21/06, John E. Clifford <clifford-j@hidden.email> wrote:
Note -- your deliberately hiding this point is getting annoying --
that it is not the sentence but the inference from {mi djica lo
pavyseljirna} to {da poi pavyseljirna zo'u mi djica da}. The first
sentence may well be true in the real world (I've known some people
who at least claimed to want a unicorn), but the second ssentence is
false, so the inference is invalid.
No, in my interpretation of Lojban, there is no model for which the first sentence may be true and the second false. I don't know why you say that I'm hiding this point because I have already stated it many times before.
> > In short, of course I can claim to want a unicorn in a > > domain that contains no unicorns; to claim otherwise is to fly in the > > face of linguistic evidence (try picking up that "a unicorn" with "it" > > in a declarative sentence, for example, let alone by a quantifier). > > That's not that difficult: > A: I want a unicorn. It's something I have always wanted. > B: But what is it? I've never heard of unicorns before. > A: It's a mythical creature. It's similar to a horse with a horn on > its forehead. There are two explanations for this anomolous case and I don't know which is better. One is that the "it" doesn't pick up the reference of "a unicorn" but rather its sense (what is the reference there). The second is that the reference continues in the want world and does not come out to the initial world at all. In fact, both explanations are probably correct, since they fit together so smoothly. Now try a case that clearly is not about the sense: describing the unicorn, say.
"It's a mythical creature. It's similar to a horse with a horn on its forehead" describes a unicorn. You may want to call this an anomalous use of "it" with respect to some theory of interpretation, but it is an ordinary use of English. If the theory calls it anomalous, that means that the theory has some trouble explaining perfectly ordinary usages.
> > > Two things can be the same F and different G's, that's the only > > > significance of relative identity. > > > > But then it is odd to talk about a different kind of identity, since > > it is only about comparing things in different way or or different > > things in the same way. > > It's not my choice of terminology. Well, it is you who in this discussion have chosen to introduce this theory, so you are stuck with some responsibility.
I am happy with the theory. I am not especially attached to the labels "absolute identity" and "relative identity". If those labels irritate you, we could use "identity" and "sameness", or whatever you find more agreeable.
> People seem to be confused by absolute identity. For example, in:
>
> (1) la superman du la klark kent
> (2) ti pixra la superman
> ------------------------------------
> (3) ti pixra la klark kent
>
> People say that (1) and (2) seem to be true, that the reasoning seems
> to be valid, and yet (3) appears to be false. Paradox!
>
> Some people try to get around the paradox with talk of intensional
> contexts and all sorts of contortions with (2) and (3).
>
> Recognition of relative identity allows us to see that (1) (absolute
> identity) is false. What is true is a relative identity claim:
>
> (1') la superman mintu la klark kent lo ka prenu
>
> but this fact is not enough to conclude that {la superman} and {la
> klark kent} are co-referential terms. (2) is still true and (3) is still
> false, and there is no paradox because (1') does not warrant
> intersubstitution of terms like (1) with absolute identity does.
Well, that seems to work -- except for introducing two kinds of
identity where there is only one. What we actually do in this case is
something like tis "Well, they are the same being, but they look very
different, so a picture of one would not be a picture of the other."
Where "they are the same being" is absolute identity, or relative? If
absolute, you have not gotten away from the paradox, because:
(1) ko'a du ko'e
(2) ko'a simlu ko'i
--------------------------------
(3) ko'e simlu ko'i
If ko'a=ko'e absolutely, then if ko'a looks like ko'i, it would follow by
intersubstitution of co-referential terms that ko'e has to look like ko'i
too. If by "they are the same being" you mean {ko'a mintu ko'e lo ka
xadni} or something like that, then you are doing the same thing I'm
doing.
(Pictures are new here and they take a different kind of intensional object -- probably -- see the article you recommended).So we identify the body and differentiate the look and it is the look that counts for pictures. That is< "Superman" and "Clark Kent" are ambiguous, not "is identical with".
I'm not saying {du}, or "is (absolutely) identical with", is ambiguous. I'm
saying it is false of la superman and la klark kent.
> > By the way, it seems to me that the right thing to use for "qua" is a
> > modality (which I can't find, suggesting another screw up) for "by
> > standard." For the case of Clinton, something derived from {te xamgu}
> > seems to be just right.
>
> {ma'i}?
Maybe {sema'i} but I don't know just what may be involved in
association with {manri}. The second place of {xamgu} also looks
useful in the particular case.
{se va'u} then.
But in either case, you will need a restrictive: {la klinton pe se
va'u lo nu...},
i.e. of the referents of {la klinton}, we select those such that...
I think what you may want is different, to restrict not among referents of
{la klinton} but among senses. But the only way to do that is to go
metalinguistic in some sense. You want to make a comment to the audience
such as "[note that this expression is being used with such and such sense,
perhaps not the sense you are expecting]". I think that might be done with
{sei}:
mi sinma la klinton sei merko jatna gi'enai speni be la xilaris
I admire Clinton [US president, not husband of Hillary].
It seems to me that any comment about the sense of an expression
we are using will have to be metalinguistic (at least to the extent that
anything said in the object language can be metalinguistic). If not, it
always ends up being about some referent, even if you want to classify
that referent as "intensional object" or whatever.
mu'o mi'e xorxes