I think the distinction he was trying to make is not that of
"noun/verb" but of "medium/message" or "substrate/pattern", which
is a useful one. Noun/verb/adjective is an artificial distinction
based on conventions of language (natural languages, that is;
Lojban has no such concept), but "hardware/software" is a real,
fundamental distinction. Most of the talk here about identity is
just arguing definitions for the natural-language "I", and there
are two axes of argument: one, does it refer to hardware or to
software (to which I think most here will agree upon the latter),
and the second axis, does "I" refer to the particular instantiation
of the pattern (in Lojban "le sevzi") or to the abstraction of the
pattern independent of particular instances ("le ka sevzi"). The
answer to that is again just a matter of language convention, not
the subject of rational debate.
-- Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lcrocker.html> "All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past, are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC