John E Clifford, On 10/09/2012 17:12:
> I assume you mean each person is unlikely to dislike his/her own
> mother rather than that it is likely that some persons does dislike
> their own mother. ra prna se mmteka na [likely to dislike] ake. The
> brackets because I don't know how you would handle "unlikely" (a
> modal of the statistical sort, I would say) and I am too lazy to run
> upstairs and check the word for "dislike". I can imagine all sorts
> of problems with this, mainly of the "suppose he has more than one
> mother and likes some and not others" variety, which needs more
> sociological treatment than logical ones.
That's why I thought you'd go for "re mmteka".
but s covers these problems just fine.
> I always thoguth that english was your native language, yet you seem
> able to read what you say about your widget and not get immediately
> puzzled by what it means. If it makes sense to you, please explain
> it to me.
Experience has proved this to be impossible. Clearly the idea is transmissible, since Jorge and I always understand each other and agree when we discuss it, but the idea is not transmissible to you.
> If it doesn't, then that is the evidence that it makes no sense.
The balance of the evidence doesn't warrant that conclusion.
I agree that you two have come more or less to agree on forms of words, but when it comes to spelling out what those words mean in a practical sense (what makes a given sentence true, for example -- and why all the other words than 'bunch' need to be in that explanation) , this has been a miserable failure. And, after a couple of decades, i wish you would just go away and hide it, since I see no progress with it. Xorban, as it is presented schematically, is shaping up nicely, but it does this without any reference to the peripheral nonsense that takes up so much space. Leve it be; it is more than good enough
(once it is finished a bit ore along natural lines).
> As for your complaint about my way of doing things, I don't see what
> I do that is non-standard or that somehow requires special rules.
Which complaint? I haven't complained about your way of doing things. (If I were to complain, it would be over the excessive use of top-posting, and the flogging a dead horse over this relatively trivial l quantifier issue. But I didn't complain about you doing something nonstandard or requiring special rules.)
You seem to think I am doing a type II project, which you take as requiring special rules and devices, but which looks to me just like first semester logic.
> Yes, I want to know what makes a sentence true (when that is the
> relevant issue), but surely you want that too. What is the point of
> sying something if there is no way of finding out whether it is true?
> (I leave out theological questions for the nonce.)
I do want to know what makes a sentence true. But that lies outside the scope of the formal codified language design as I envision it.
So, you want an uninterpreted calculus. No problem. But what has that to do with a language, which is meant to communicate, e.g., to tell people what is true?
--And.