Re: Classification and 'to be'

Pharamond Curtis wrote:

> The dog is white.
> The dog is an animal.
>
> This doesn't work well with other copulative verbs.  Take a look:
>
> The dog looks white.
> *The dog looks an animal.
This is because, semantically, "look" is coded only for qualities, notfor substances,
while "be" is either.  So very Lockean.

Which leads to another question:  how do people handle metaphysical
questions in their conlangs?  John Locke, in his _Essay on Human
Understanding_, partitioned the world and the relationships therein
into several categories:

(a) ideas
(b) perception
(c) substance
(d) identity
(e) action
(f) language, and
(g) knowledge

According to him, each of these facets represent differently varying
subsets to the human experience.  Now what I'm curious about is whether
any conlang out there has fundamental metaphysical distinctions being
made, and if so, what are they and how do they relate to one another?

> If you allow me to use your idea, I could use another word, say _ge_,
> when saying, "The animal is a dog."  That leaves the question of what to
> do when the predicate nominative is neither a subset or a superset of
> the subject.  For example, what if "Megatron is Galvatron," and,
> "Galvatron is Megatron" are both true?  I think I would allow users of
> my language to take their pick: _se_ or _ge_.
Looks like _somebody_ has been reminiscing on their 1980's childhood
experiences. :)

The problem with the above is that Megatron and Galvatron are the same
person, but the first is only the original, "unmetamorphosed" version of the
second.  According to Locke, IIRC, Megatron would be the same _person_
as Galvatron, but not the same _man_, in the sense that Megatron's mechanical
parts were reused to create Galvatron after the big interlude with that robot-killer-
planet thing whose name I have forgotten changed him.  But then Locke was also
a Christian who believed in the presence of a soul, so does this indicate that
Megatron/Galvatron had a soul (for in speaking of humanity, that is in his terms what
defines personhood apart from manhood)? How weird, how very, very weird! :)

(You must understand the incredible irony of talking about metaphysics and
children's cartoon characters in the same breath -- very very strange)

=======================================================
Tom Wier <artabanos@...>
ICQ#: 4315704   AIM: Deuterotom
Website: <http://www.angelfire.com/tx/eclectorium/>
"Cogito ergo sum, sed credo ergo ero."

We look at [the Tao], and do not see it;
  Its name is the Invisible.
                 - Lao Tsu, _Tao Te Ching_

Nature is wont to hide herself.
                 - Herakleitos
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