[YG Conlang Archives] > [jboske group] > messages [Date Index] [Thread Index] >
Please excuse my being behind on jboske mail. (A couple of days,
but that is an age.)
Nick:
> I preface this by saying that the week of lojbaning I've just had has
> cost me a lot of sleep and a lot of anguish ("were you really put on
> this earth to do this instead of historical linguistics"), so I'll be
> brief
I know the feeling all too well. But I won't pour out my heart to
the list...
> > Date: Sat, 7 Dec 2002 23:44:05 -0000
> > From: "And Rosta" <a.rosta@hidden.email>
> > Subject: RE: Re: lo'edu'u
> >
> > xod:
> >> It seems that if one squints at Americans and only sees one girl,
> >> that's
> >> e-gadri and not o-gadri. We're avoiding some bloody arguments about
> >> the
> >> requirements of objectivity; it's been amusing to watch people dance
> >> around the minefield with words like "veridical", and others get it
> >> flat
> >> out wrong by applying strict standards for e-gadri
>
> Yeah. Look, lo means what we say it means, and so does lo'e, and in
> that of course Wittgenstein was right: meaning is use. But I'm going
> more and more structuralist, which means that to me, the meaning of
> {lo'e} is decided by the meaning of {lo}. When you say {lo merko}, you
> claim some objective knowledge of the membership of {American}.
I don't know how strong a claim you mean to make here. {lo merko}
means "Ex, x is merko". Does that claim some objective knowledge
of the membership of {American}? No, in my opinion. One can quite
legimately deny that objective knowledge even exists. Lojban
shouldn't rule on epistemological issues, and the ruling is
unconnected to the difference between o-gadri and e-gadri.
> The same should hold when you say {lo'e merko}: one should not be
> intrinsically more subjective than the other.
I disagree. {lo'e} is more susceptible to subjective construal
because it is often counterfactual in the sense that you are
conceptualizing the extension of lo'i broda as a single broda
when in fact there are multiple broda.
> People can make erroneous
> generalisations about what {lo'e merko} is, based on a small sample
> size; then again, people can be wrong about the membership of
> {American} too. Namely, if you say {lo'e merko cu mebli nixli}, then it
> is licit for me to correct you;
If you share my worldview it is licit for you to correct me. Or
you may assert that my worldview is 'wrong' in some pertinent sense.
> if you say {le'e merko cu melbi nixli},
> well, that's your cultural judgement, and de gustibus non disputandum,
Not at all. Once the extension and/or intension of le'i broda has
been established, le'i behaves exactly like lo'i as far as
objectivity/subjectivity is concerned.
> What is a typical American is, the way I see it, an agglomeration of
> the properties held by most Americans, objectively. That means global
> squinting. "But noone knows all Americans, surely". True; and I never
> said people will always be correct in their lo'e claims, or even
> ultimately there is such a thing as correctness
>
> But I'm with Jordan: you may be involuntarily locally squinting, but
> surely you are thinking you are globally squinting: surely you are
> thinking you are saying something characteristic of most Americans,
> when you say {lo'e merko cu mebli nixli}
I don't think one is necessarily saying something characteristic of
*most* Americans. I maintain that it is valid for me to squint at
lo'i merko from a perspective I know to be subjective and not
necessarily shared by you or other people in general.
I think we have really got close to exhausting debate on this,
except maybe for the metaphysical neutrality issue.
> The argument of metaphysical constraints is bogus too. {lo} claims
> omniscience: it claims you can make a yes/no determination among all
> things in the universe about what belongs amongst the denotation of the
> word.
I think this is incorrect, but I'm a bit too knackered to argue it.
If it's crucial we can revisit this point.
> Yes, such omniscience is bogus; but it's still something we need
> to be claim, because there's lots of stuff in the world we *can* tell
> whether they're American or not. If it's ok with Lojban to say {lo
> merko}, necessitating a global knowledge of Americanhood, it should be
> ok to say {lo'e merko}, necessitating a global squinting of
> Americanhood,
The metaphysical argument is not bogus, because it concerns the
operation of counterfactual squinting. We may objectively agree
on the extension of lo'i za'u (or no) broda, and on the definition
of brodahood, but the operation of squinting the extension into
a singleton is not something that be laid down as a logical process.
> There's an out here: you can say stuff about {lo merko} without needing
> to know every single American, because you use the sense of the word
> rather than its denotation --- the definition, rather than the
> enumeration ("An American is defined as..."). But I currently don't
> think this extends to {lo'e}. I think lo'e is meaningless without a
> notion of surveying: a reasonable sense of what the actual population
> does, not just a definition
>
> And yes, that means a lot of what will be said with lo'e is
> intrinsically bogus, and subjective opinion masquerading as objective
> fact, and people will be naughty for saying it. But I cannot go from
> that to saying "people are making subjective claims when they say
> {lo'e}, *and they know it*". That's just po-mo'ing {lo'e} away
I am happy, nay eager, to allow that lo'e is no more or less poetentially
subjective than, say, du'e/dukse. I'm absolutely not trying to argue
that lo'e is a special case. Rather, I'm trying to argue that you
seem to me to be trying to make a special case for lo'e. If you
started trying to lay down strictly objective criteria for du'e, I
would be making exactly the same protests. If you are willing to
agree that lo'e is as objective as du'e, then we can end the debate.
> To weasel: people may differ in how they squint, I suppose, but anyone
> seeing Liv Tyler when they squint at {lo'e merko} is, I submit, not
> really getting the point of {lo'e}. And as Adam said, they can
> legitimately be corrected; they can't with {le'e}
They can be corrected with le'e, once the extension of le'i has been
mutually established.
Seeing Liv Tyler when seeing lo'e merko is, I agree, decidedly
weird, albeit pleasant, but considering that one molecule of beer
is du'e beer is also weird, because it reflects a very eccentric
point of view.
> When I squint away the differences between box, one thing they
> obviously can not have in common, or even have a preponderance of, is
> colour
>
> So:
> ..i xu su'o da zo'u da skari su'o tanxe .i go'i
> ..i xu su'o da zo'u da skari so'a tanxe .i na go'i
> ..i xu su'o da zo'u da skari lo'e tanxe .i na'i go'i
>
> 'Typical box' is a phantom; and it cannot have a colour
There is a logic to this, but equally one of the things we do know
about the Box is that it has a colour, even if we cannot say what
that colour is (because it is indeterminate).
I don't think that defining {lo'e} should necessitate our grappling
with these issues. They all follow from a shared understanding of
what {lo'e} basically means. We have similar arguments about the
logic of masses, yet we agree that {loi/lei} are satisfactorily
defined.
> >> It occurs to me that some confusion may be caused by taking "lo'e
> >> cinfo"
> >> to mean not "the typical lion" but "a typical lion", that is an actual
> >> lion which closely resembles in relevant ways the abstract typical
> >> lion
> > Jorge is referring to the statistical mode (sort of like a lion of the
> > type that is a numerical plurality), and John is referring something
> > more
> > like the statistical average (an abstract entity, like a set). I think
> > the
> > CLL defines lo'e as the latter; the former could be le fadni cinfo
>
> And, I think that statement is bogus. The intensional lion statement
> can be satisfied by the most atypical of lions; if you tame lions, and
> the first lion you tame is Persian, as old as Methuselah, dyed purple
> and a vegetarian, the statement will still be true. I don't see what
> mode or average have to do with it. lo'e cinfo as I understand it is as
> abstract as The Average Lion; but its properties are those held by
> modes, not averages. lo'e cinfo does not have 1.3 children; if the mode
> is 7, you can presumably say it has 7 children, although I'd be more
> comfortable with, say 7 +/- 2. But lo'e cinfo is no less abstract than
> The Average Lion with 1.3 children
Yes. I'm afraid I can't remember the context for what you quote me as
saying, and I cannot defend it.
--And.