WikiDiscuss

WikiDiscuss


BPFK Section: Inexact Numbers

posts: 1912


pc:
> You have also dealt with the "no broda" problem
> of negated descriptions by moving to a gappy or
> many-valued truth system (not clear which).

How does logic deal with constants that have no
referents? Can there evn be such a thing? Can you
really evaluate F(a) if 'a' does not refer? I would
have thought that a constant refers by definition.

I think our approaches don't really differ in the
truth system. It's rather that I take {lo broda}
to be a constant, and therefore it must necessarily
refer in order to be meaningful, whereas you don't
take it to be a constant, and so for you the
expression can have meaning (and thus can be part
of a claim) even when there is nothing that brodas.

> As for your comments this time, I take it that
> your claim to do without groups is more than a
> bit disingenuous. I agree that you do not talk
> about groups but you still seem to use them: if
> {lo broda} is at any way related to {ro broda} or
> {su'o broda} — or {ro da poi broda} and {su'o
> da poi broda}, then the logic of the situation
> still requires that it be a single thing, whether
> it is called a group or a mass or a plurality or
> whatever.

I don't see why. When {lo broda} has many referents,
lo broda are many things. {PA lo broda} is a quantification
over those things: {PA da poi ke'a me lo broda}. There is
no recourse here to a single thing that contains them.
How does the logic require that I introduce a group?

Of course, you can talk about the set of those things, or
the group of those things, but {lo broda} does not refer
to that, it refers to the things themselves.

> I didn't realize that I had said that {lo'i
> broda} had a different referent from {da poi
> selcmi be lo broda} (I assume that this has a
> built in namely-rider so that it has a referent
> at all), only different from {lo selcmi be lo
> broda}, unless you are identifying them as well,
> which seems against something you said elsewhere,
> presumably on another topic altogether.

Not sure what you mean. What I said was:

> > The bit you were presenting until recently,
> > where {lo'i broda}
> > and {lo pa selcmi be lo broda} have different
> > referents, is
> > not something I would want.

mu'o mi'e xorxes




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