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Date: Sat, 27 Jul 91 07:09:53 EDT
From: ian@cambridge.oracorp.com (Ian Sutherland)
Message-Id: <9107271109.AA19585@>
To: info-hol@ted.cs.uidaho.edu
Subject: Re:  More on the choice function

R.B. Jones writes:

>         The choice operator is not nearly as pathological as you suggest,
>         it has no special status in the semantics and it is completely
>         deterministic in the sense that the body completely determines the
>         value.

I believe what Josh meant to say is that the value of

        @x. P x

is not determined by P because it depends on some "hidden"
well-ordering that can't be referred to in the language.  This is not
true of

        !x. P x

whose value is completely determined by P regardless of the value of
the "hidden" well-ordering.  I must say that I don't see why this
bothers Josh so much :-)
