Re: TECH: QUERY: quantifier scope & cumki

[John Cowan <snark!cowan@GVLS1.VFL.PARAMAX.COM>]

la matius. cusku di'e

> Thanks for the explanation, however the original question also asked what
> (or rather who it seems from the above) "Quine" is as well... Don't suppose
> you could enlighten me on that too?

Sorry, missed that part.  The American philosopher W.V.O. Quine, an early
supporter of the Loglan Project.  His book >The Pursuit Of Truth<
reads like it was translated literally from Lojban (not really, but a lot
of his concepts like "observation sentences" track ours with eerie
exactness).  I have found his >Set Theory And Its Logic< and his introductory
logic book (not sure of its title offhand) extremely valuable in figuring out
Lojban theory.

His most accessible book is probably >Quiddities: An Intermittently
 Philosophical
Dictionary<, from which I occasionally give myself the pleasure of quoting
on this list or conlang.  Outside philosophical circles, he is probably best
known for the paradoxical sentence

        "Yields a falsehood when preceded by its quotation" yields a
        falsehood when preceded by its quotation.

which Douglas Hofstadter (of >Goedel, Escher, Bach<) shortened to:

        "Yields falsehood when quined" yields falsehood when quined.

where "to quine" means "to precede something by its quotation".

--
John Cowan      cowan@snark.thyrsus.com         ...!uunet!lock60!snark!cowan
                        e'osai ko sarji la lojban.