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Re: [engelang] Xorban: Semantics of "l-" (and "s-" and "r-")



Martin Bays, On 16/09/2012 01:28:
* Sunday, 2012-09-16 at 00:44 +0100 - And Rosta<and.rosta@hidden.email>:
The evidence is that if Tiddles is on the windowsill and Felix is
by the fire, this can be described as "la mlta li je [windowsill]i
[fireplace]i [sat at]aki".

Uhoh. Did you really mean that?

No I didn't, I meant "li gi [windowsill]i [fireplace]i", but didn't
think about it enough to realize that.

OK! But I'm afraid I haven't been following development closely enough
to know how g_ works, beyond having the vague impression that it's a bit
like joi. Is "li gi Pi Qi" different from "li ja Pi Qi"?

li gi Pi Qi is the union of Pi and Qi.
If so, how am I to understand "li je [windowsill]i [fireplace]"? Not
a singularisation of all the things which are both windows and
fireplaces, because there are no such things. Nor a singularisation
of all pluralities which contain windows and fireplaces, because that
would be the totality of the universe.

It's generous of you to suppose that I actually meant "je"...

Even tho I didn't mean "je", I think it would be a singularization of
all the things which are both windows and fireplaces. A group
containing windows and fireplaces is, if properties of parts inherit
to the whole, both fenestral and focal.

Oh, but they can't do that. You don't want a group which comprises
a fireplace, a window and a cat to be part of "la mlta", surely?

Demonstrating that sometimes properties of parts don't inherit to wholes doesn't demonstrate that properties of parts never inherit to wholes.

The USA borders on Canada, even tho Texas doesn't.

So at this point, I'm reading "la Ra Pa" as actually meaning: Pa
where a is the mereological sum of all e which satisfy Re in the
situation a = (+) { e | Re } , with the presupposition made that the
situation does contain this sum and that this sum itself satisfies R
(in other words: a is the unique maximal element of { e | Re }).

Or in notation: "la Ra Pa"  -->    P(\iota x. (R(x) /\ Ay. (R(y) ->
y<=x)))

Does this miss anything?

"Mereological sum" sounds to me like a massification rather than
a myopic singularization, but maybe mereology has a broader sense than
I realize. If not, then something broader than "merological sum" is
required.

Hmm. I was hoping these were the same thing.

Can you give me an example of a predicate which would hold of the
massification of all cats (say) but not of the myopic singularisation?

What John said. Also "has millions of heads" versus "has one head".

--And.