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--- In jboske@yahoogroups.com, "Jorge Llambías" <jjllambias@...> wrote: > > On 10/6/06, John E. Clifford <clifford-j@...> wrote: > > Well, unless it is a lingusitic item (and even then I have some > > doubts) a broda type doesn't count as a broda at all -- because it > > isn't one. > > My understanding was that the broda lattice consists of all things > and only those things that at least in some context count as a broda. > The "subsume" relationship that defines the lattice holds only between > brodas, one broda subsumes another broda. Something that is not > a broda cannot subsume a broda. Where then would Mr. Broda be -- or Mr. Dog in that case, or the breeds, etc.? Sticking with dogs, since a broda might be anything, dog breeds are compposed entirely o0f dogs but are not (almost for that reason) dogs, nor is Mr,Dog -- composed of, subduming, having among it, ultimately only dogs. To say one dog subsumes another dog is strange talk unbdeed, although -- as all those less one hair cases show -- a dog may fall under another dog (just how another is a harder question). But that is hardly the general case. You can, if you want say that there is nothing but dogs in a dog breed, but that does not make the breed a dog or even dog. When it is counted as one it has moved to another lattice or some such transformation. > > I should have thought that it was essential when talking about breeds > > and of the dogs in them that they be in the same lattice, else in what > > sense is an individual dog in a particular breed? > > When we relate breeds with specimens in the same context, we take the > breeds from the breed lattice (which does not contain specimens, because > a breed can only subsume a breed) I am not clear just how you are misusing "subsume" but I do not see how on any reasonable interpretation one breed could subsume another (and I really don't like saying one sp-ecimen subsumes another , although I do understand the point). Subsumption is a vertical relation in a lattice, breeds in a breed lattice are presumably all on a level (and, if there are no specimens, there is just that level, not a lattice at all). I really am now as unclear what the world you are saying and how you read what I was saying to be anything like it as I have been in the past about your strange metaphysical semantics. Ido hope (as alweays) that you will explain this time. and the specimen from the specimen > lattice (which does not contain breeds, as a specimen only subsumes > a specimen). The object language relationship "x1 is a specimen of breed > x2" holds between two things in the domain of discourse. In that discourse, > those two things will not be related by "subsume", which is a metalinguistic > relationship. Well, if the specimens are specimens of that breed, then they must be related in some way that correspond pretty nigh exactly to subsumption (though I wouldn't call it that). I take it that what you mean is that, when talking about dogs (rather than talking about talking about dogs) we take the items out of their lattice context and relate them in various ways without mentioning the lattice characteristics -- even when the relation is in fact lattice based. I am not clear why you want to do this, but I don't see any particular problem with it: we have a meaning postulate "x *is a specimen of* y just in case y subsumes x" (or "x is among y", etc, with other terms you may want to use). That is, the lattice is not referred to even if it lies behind what is referred to. >(These two things will happen to both be in the metalinguistic > dog lattice because each could count as a dog in some discourse, but in > most normal discourses, in a discourse that is not about language, only > one of them could count as a dog.) Well, only dogs ought to count as dogs metalinguistically as well. Breeds of dogs are breeds of dogs, i.e. several dogs viewed in a certain way. To be sure, Labrador Retrievers are dogs and Labrador Retriever is a breed of dogs and, hence, distributively dogs. Calling everything on the lattice a dog just confuses esswential differences.