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A very entertaining dialogue, Nick. Mind if I butt in?
"What if flying characterises some avatars and not others? I think we have three alternatives: 1. Mr Bird can fly: TRUE. Mr Bird cannot fly: FALSE. 2. Mr Bird can fly: TRUE. Mr Bird cannot fly: TRUE. 3. Mr Bird can fly: NA'I. Mr Bird cannot fly: NA'I. In case (1), we have my statistical Median Bird, which is not your Mr Bird.
But it is. Mr Bird can fly, but he does not fly on every occasion. In particular, he does not fly when he is being penguin. Can Nick walk? Yes. Can he walk when he is sitting down? No, he can't walk when he is sitting down. Can Mr Bird fly when he is being penguin? No, he can't fly when he is being penguin. Mr Bird can (not fly), but saying that he cannot fly would be wrong.
For if you are seeking Mr Bird, (1) would rule out a penguin as being an avatar of Mr Bird."
Not all avatars of Mr Bird fly, just as not all avatars of Mr Nick walk. If I'm seeking Nick, should I worry if I find a Nick that is not in a position to walk, when I was told that he can walk?
"Case 2: I already have a word for your Mr Bird in my language. {loi
cipni}. Like Mr Bird, it is a singularisation --- there's only one of
them. Anything true of an individual bird is true of Mr Bird. When you
talk to a penguin or to an albatross, you talk to Mr Bird."
If by {loi cipni} you mean {pisu'o loi cipni}, then there
are lots of them, not just one, so it is not like Mr Bird.
If you mean {piro loi cipni} then yes, there is only one,
but it is much, much heavier than Mr Bird, who at most is
as heavy as an ostrich on some occasions, hardly ever
heavier than that. {piro loi cipni} OTOH must weigh hundreds
of tons.
*** Somewhere along this line, I must have committed a grievous error. But our Forefathers spoke of Mr Bird as a mass, and masses make a lot more sense as a Trobriander basis of ontology than a lambda expression.
It is true that JCB spoke of mass as something different than
our {loi}. He called our {loi} "set", and never gave the word
"set" to the mathematical set concept. Loglan "set" became Lojban
"mass", and Loglan "mass", I contend, is Lojban {lo'e}. There
is nothing like Lojban "set" in Loglan.
mu'o mi'e xorxes
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