Holmes, etc.

["Kelly J. Salsbery" <salsbery@mailbox.syr.edu>]

Randall Holmes writes:

>>

I think you are still cheating.  Of course, everything in the world
including any single one of those men is an element of some set with
three elements:  all that your sentence says is that each of the men
you have in mind (however many there are!) is an element of some set
with three elements (which is vacuously true if there are three
distinct objects in the world).  It really is a nontrivial logical
maneuver to construct a predicate which applies to each of the objects
currently referred to by "le mrenu"; it is also useful, as I have
tried to point out.

The fundamental error is thinking that "le mrenu" can refer to the
whole collection of people it designates in any one occurrence; but
this is not the case.  Any sentence with le mrenu is a conjunction of
sentences each of which says something about one of the designated
men.  There is one pre-ME construction which allows one to express a
fact about the collection of designated men:  we can say something
like "le te mrenu" and tell how many there are.  But that is the only
loophole.

                                        --Randall

>>

I think I must have missed something important here.  Is he denying that
one can have plural referring expressions or plural predicates.

It seems clear that there are some in English, so why not an analog in 
lojban.  Perhaps the issue is idiosyncratic to your dispute with hime about the
Loglan  'ME'.  I don't know.

Still pondering.

-- Mr. Kelly J. Salsbery

Dept. of Philosophy

Syracuse, NY 13210

salsbery@mailbox.syr.edu