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 suppose that all that comes within the "normal" sense of mlt are cats, individual furry bodies (well, Sphinxes aside) that meow and purr, typically, and so on. I can't think what else could be in there and still be in a sense of mlt, normal or otherwise, though there might be some related predicate. And maybe that is what you want is that every predicate of
Xorban is closely related in a systematic way to an ordinary predicate. But I just don't see the point of this change.
>> 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).
Neato. Now what is the encyclopedic entry on lV?
> 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).
If all you want is predicate-argument and operator-variable structure, then what exactly is your problem with Lojban, which has that. The obvious answer is that it is not consistent in its use of variables, replacing them sometimes by repetitions, sometimes by pronouns, and so on. Of course, that is a part of the language part of
logical language -- or of a loglang, for that matter, since it is very easy to lose track of who is a and who is e a couple of paragraphs in (or even predicates). So far, the Xorban design is doing nicely on being consistent (if occasionally obscure) but not so good on being speakable (a common problem in loglangs, although more often for parentheses than variables).
>>> 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?
Well, I am having second thoughts about that leftmost scope idea and seeing other problems with it, especially for some of the predefined cases of Xorban. But I may be wrong about those worries and and even find a qorkaround for leftmost rules generally. My main problem comes from your explanation for the equivalences between the lV sentence and both the rV bound
and the sV bound, with the same restriction and the same predicate. You seem to suggest that, given la bcda fgha, re bcde refers only to the bcds among la bcd and similarly for si bcdi. That is the peculiarity that I was trying to point out in my rewrite (and actually, I am not sure whether it is a=e or e[epsilon]a that is involved). That does seem to be what you say and I don't see how to make the equations work otherwise.
> 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.
see above.
--And.