WikiDiscuss

pc:
> I: But the inference from a particular object to the generalization "some
> object of that sort" holds generally. Thus I take it that you are now saying
> that {lo broda} refers not to an object but to a kind.

{lo broda} does not refer to an instance, that's right. I thought that
was clear from the beginning.

> I don't think that
> that position is sustainable without revising the semantics of every word in
> Lojban — including names and {le} descriptions.

I think it is.

> And, of course, what I need
> is not a kiind of thing but a thing of that kind, so the changes merely makes
> the claim false and leaves us with the problems of saying what we want all
> over again.

When you see John, you are actually seeing a stage of John, but
we don't need to revise {viska} to "a stage of x1 sees a stage
of x2".

> K: Well, time does affect individuals differently from space, at least as far
> as language usually goes — we tend to say that the individual is the same
> whole over time, but has spatial parts.

Similarly Mr Individual is the same whole over instances, just as
John is the same whole over stages.

> It is rather hard to build spatial
> analogs of the time situation for ordinary objects, but temporal analogs for
> spatial ones are relatively easy: the tomorrow slice of John is here, the
> today one is not, fits perfectly with John's left hand is raised but his
> right hand is not. So also, Mr. Rabbit's a manifestation is eating, his b is
> not. But — unlike the case of John — the references here to Mr.Rabbit play
> no significant role; the work is all done by the manifestations.

When you don't care which manifestation is doing the work, all the
reference you need is to Mr.Rabbit.

> It is they
> that fit in with the rest of the Lojban metaphysics of objects and
> properties, not of kinds and manifestations (though, of course, we can
> replicate the results — with a little strain — in that language).

I don't think we need to embed any metaphysics in the language.
The "Mr" talk is just one way of understanding how {lo broda}
behaves logically as a constant term, like {la djan}.

mu'o mi'e xorxes

__
Do you Yahoo!?
Friends. Fun. Try the all-new Yahoo! Messenger.
http://messenger.yahoo.com/