Re: [spoon-discuss] Re: [Spoon-business] Veni, Vidi, Vacancy

[Daniel Lepage <dplepage@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Monday, May 5, 2003, at 12:42  AM, Glotmorf wrote:

> On 5/5/03 at 12:30 AM Daniel Lepage wrote:
>
> > My mistake. That last paragraph should have read:
> > "Penguin" is never defined. There is no such thing as a Penguin. There
> > is "the act of becoming a Penguin", which is defined to have exactly
> > the same effects as "the act of becoming a Toad"; "the act of becoming
> > a Toad" has the effect of causing the object taking the action to end
> > up as a toad; therefore, "the act of becoming a Penguin", having the
> > same effect on the object, also has the effect of causing the object
> > taking the action to end up as a toad.
>
> Now we're back to the logical contradiction.  To say that a player 
> "becomes a penguin" (as opposed to "begins to become a penguin", "has 
> a predisposition to become a penguin", "takes some but not all of the 
> necessary steps toward becoming a penguin") indicates a process that 
> has as its end being a penguin, not a toad.  And since a penguin is in 
> fact defined as something a player can become as the result of the 
> triggering of an IID, as opposed to all the toad-making possibilities 
> that define the existence of a toad, "penguin" and "toad" are two 
> different things.
>
> So the rule that states where penguins come from regulates the 
> existence of penguinship, even if all other effects of toadsmanship 
> carry over.

In the absence of a definition of a penguin, I believe that "becomes a 
penguin" should be interpreted as a single event. The Baron does not 
perform the action "become", targeting emself and the class Penguin; 
rather, e performs the action "become a penguin", which is defined to 
be equivalent to the action "become a toad". "Become a Penguin" is, 
IMHO, no different from the action "Vote" or "Propose".

If "penguin" were defined in any meaningful way in the ruleset, then I 
would agree with you, citing the "Drink a glass of champagne" vs. 
"Drink" a "Glass of Champagne" CFI; but if the object in question is 
not an object, I don't think we can break this up into "become" a 
"penguin"; it is simply "become a penguin". It's like your bit about 
hiring Contract Mining Companies... didn't we decide that in your 
favor? Namely that, in the absence of any sort of mining contractors, 
the statement that players could "pay mining contractors to mine 
things" did not first require that mining contractors be objects?

--
Wonko

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