WikiDiscuss

(This was sent to pc privately by mistake.
I don't know if pc's post was sent to the forums list
or just to me, probably just to me but intended for the
list. pc, if you still have your post you may want to
repost it, as I have not included everything in my response.)

---

> This notion of "universe of discourse" is fraught
> with practical difficulties e.g., are things in
> the physical environment in the universe or not

In some contexts they are, in other contexts they
are not.

> and, if not, how can I then introduce them,

Mentioning something immediately introduces it
into the discourse.

>or ,
> if so, what is excluded?)

There is no general answer. When I say that there
is nothing in the box, air molecules are normally
excluded from the universe of discourse, but once
I mention them, we have to admit that there is
something in the box after all.

> but it also does not
> solve the {mi nitcu lo mikce} problem, which is
> about scope, not range: {mi nitcu lo mikce} does
> not generally even entail (let alone be
> equivalent to) {lo mikce zo'u mi nitcu my}, since
> whatever doctor(s) we pick is not needed for
> another would do as well.

In {mi nitcu lo mikce}, the universe of discourse
contains a single doctor, "Mr Doctor" for those
who don't mind that picture. If you can't picture
doctors as just doctors, and you necessarily must
picture them as an aggregate of many individual
doctors, each considered separately, then you must
take another course, for example (mi nitcu lo nu
da mikce mi}, "I need that someone treats me" or
something like that. Here you are picturing all
{lo nu da mikce mi} as one "Mr Someone-Treats-Me"
that you need, but some people mind doing this
abstraction less than doing the "Mr Doctor"
abstraction. Events are somewhat easier to abstract
than people.

> > You can draw two unicorns into existence, but
> > you can't
> > eat them into existence, so that would be the
> > difference
> > between those predicates.
>
> Category mistake. Pictures of unicorns aren't
> unicorns (in the {lo pavyseljirna} sense) — see
> the fronting problem again if nothing else.

That seems like an ontology issue. Are teddy-bears bears?
CLL says they are, if I recall corrrectly. I say it depends
on the context (maybe that's what CLL says too). The same
with pictures of unicorns. I don't think there needs to be a
special gadri to sort teddy-bears from more central bears,
or drawn unicorns from clay unicorns from flesh-and-blood
unicorns.

mu'o mi'e xorxes