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John E Clifford, On 08/09/2012 19:35:
I don't particularly care for a rigid definition of cathood. but I would like a consistent set of rules about la mlta xkra. Talking about pointers to encyclopedia entries presupposes a whole lot more about what is outside the language than I have ever pushed for. I have not asked for the conditions on a thing being a mlt (what I take to be what you mean by "the contents of that entry") nor what things are actually in the extension of mlt (another possible meaning), except, if it occurs, la mlta. Now, my question is really, is what makes la mlta xkra true in fact a mlt in whatever is the normal sense of that (about the details of which I do not care)?
I don't know how much weight you're placing on that "normal". The answer I'd give to your question would be Yes, but that's because by definition the sense of mlt encompasses what is xkr in "la mlta xkra"; but that might then include stuff that's within the sense of mlt but not within the "normal" sense of mlt.
I want to create a loglang that expressly doesn't answer questions of this sort, at least not in any formal way free of contradictions, squintings and so forth.So, then, how do we tell if la mlta xkra is true? We squint, apparently, but at what? I don't even know where to look.
You take the logical form, add in the content from the encyclopedia entries (from l-, mlt- and xkr-), and see how closely the proposition matches the world. That won't be a formalizable process (in the sort of loglang in question).
I suppose my fear is that you will peddle this whateverthefuckitis as a logical language, where as it is not at all logical (in the logicians' sense) and, at a guess, not really a language, since it cannot convey basic messages with any assurance to the speaker that he said what he meant or to the listeners as to either what the speaker said or meant.
I agree it's not a logical language in the logicians' sense. I don't agree with you that it's not a language, since your description of how a language isn't is in fact a description of how languages are. I try to avoid the term "logical language", because the loglang I envisage is neither merely logical in the everyday sense of "regular, rational" nor logical in the logicians' sense. Instead, I use the term "loglang", and usually accompany it by a definition (unambiguously encoding logical form, i.e. predicate--argument and operator--variable structure).
I've given you one plausible interpretation, that l is an ever leftmost quantifier that picks out a bunch of items and sticks with thm throughout its scope.I don't see problems with it. Crucially, if Y is true of something that is that bunch, then Y is true of everything that is that bunch -- given that it's a single bunch.This seems to me a rather different point than what has been said formally. The formalism has been la Ra Pa <=> re RePe and la Ra Pa <=> se Re Pe. But what you are saying seems to be la Ra Pa <=> re e=a Pe and similarly for s.
I don't understand what your "re e=a Pe" means, or how it differs from "re Re Pe". We seem to agree that in "lA bcdA fghA", A is a single thing, and is a bunch of bcds, and we also seem to agree that maximal leftmost scope is fine, but for a case where it contains a variable bound by something outside the scope of lV. So if we disagree about anything it must be on what a bcd is. Or am I missing something?
There's a slightly different quantifier that I'd been meaning to mention, but have kept on forgetting. It's an existential quantifer with scope over the whole discourse: "Once upon a time, there was a poor woodcutter. He lived in a hut with his dutiful daughter." In Livagian I treat it as a separate quantifier in its own right. Yeah, this is just the l that I take this the present l to be (as it is in Lojban, rightly understood), the Montagovian constant.
Excellent -- at least then I am clear about what you want lV to be, and we agree that it is something that is necessary. --And.