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Re: [jboske] Re: inner quantifier of e-gadri (was: RE: putative tense scope e...

In a message dated 11/5/2002 6:02:18 AM Central Standard Time, araizen@hidden.email writes:
<<
I don't see this. If 'le broda' is 'ro cmima be le'i ro broda' and the
cardinality of 'le'i broda' is 0, then any statement about 'le broda'
is vacuously true in the same way that any statement about 'ro
pavyseljirna xirma' is vacuously true. It tells us nothing about the
intensionality of 'lo'i pavyseljirna xirma' to say 'roboi pyxy. cu
blabi .ije roboi pyxy. naku blabi'.

>>
Well, why is not every sentence containing reference to the members of the empty set simply false?  In Lojban, {le broda} = {ro le broda} => {su'o le broda}, so, if there are no members of le'i broda (assuming this is the set of le broda), the latter is fals and so also the former.  This is just the logic side of things.  IF {[ro] le broda cu brode} meant {ro da zo'u ganai da me le broda gi da brode}, then the fact that here are no le broda would indeed make for a vacuous sentence, but I don't see any reason to think that this equation is correct.