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On Friday, Dec 27, 2002, at 23:14 Australia/Melbourne, jboske@yahoogroups.com wrote:
Message: 2 Date: Thu, 26 Dec 2002 13:39:15 +0000 From: "Jorge Llambias" <jjllambias@hidden.email> Subject: RE: big rethink on Unique and other gadri
If it is generally the case that {piroX} = {X}, then yes, 1d would be {piroloi}, assuming of course that SL accepts that {piro X} = {X} and not "every portion of X".It would be good to have that clarified, but that seems to be what is consistent with CLL. Similarly {piso'i} is "a large portion" and not "many portions".
Um.If that is so, then {pi ro loi broda} is not true when {ro lo broda} is true.
... and {pi ro loi} can do collectives after all? (My real worry was individuals vs. collective; substance I thought was taken care of with tu'o anyway.)
Very persuasive examples. Some of them might be kludged with {lo'ei}:He's looking for every Danish mermaidko'a buska lo'ei danko fipni'u romei
As I'll say below, you really shouldn't use buska.
Message: 3 Date: Thu, 26 Dec 2002 11:08:17 -0600 From: Jordan DeLong <fracture@hidden.email>Subject: Re: RE: fundamentalism as fundamental (RE: Re: gadri paradigm:2 excellent proposals
The definition for Unique makes sense, but it's not a very precise way of looking at things. Under the way you define it, the exactproperties of the Unique-thing are completely up to the speaker---basicallyanything can be predicated of it.
That's not the way the English Generic this is based on works, though, is it. A claim does have to be true of at least one avatar to be true of the underlying individual: if John mows the lawn, at least one avatar of John has done so; if Nick is nice, at least one avatar of him is; if lion-dom lives in Africa, at least one lives in Africa.
The prototype is benignly subjective: it's a defining generic, so it is humpty-dumptied, but you can't humpty-dumpty it too much, or communication breaks down. The Unique would have to be subject to the same constraints.
*Perhaps* the claims makeable of the Unique are a superset of those makeable of the Prototype? So the Unique is an instantiation of the Prototype?
Why "le" ka'ai?Because it doesn't matter.
And we can make it not matter, for that specific context. All part of Microsoft Lojban.
We could also create a new selma'o and a new rule in sumti-tail for this which takes KAhAI subsentence /KEI/.
We don't like new selma'o. If there will be any grammar changes, I'd rather the afterthought prenex.
The approach that xorxes' lo'ei does, is to use the predicate rather than coding it into the logical structure. So Want(mi, \x: box(x)) with no quantifications. I suggested in another mail a while back that maybe "I want a box" means (x)(Box(x) -> I want x), but I don't think that's accurate because I could want two boxes, or three boxes.
Indeed. The Any-x is very much countable, and the {lo'ei mikce remei} is not a productive path to go down (I think Jorge's about to give up on it) --- especially when we know that lojbanmasses give you moosh, not two individuals. The Any-x is countable in propositionalism: {mi djica lenu re da poi mikce zo'u: da co'e} => {mi djica tu'a re mikce}. It should be countable (as well as massifiable and whatever else) in non-propositional contexts too, if we allow it there.
Message: 5 Date: Thu, 26 Dec 2002 11:18:17 -0600 From: Jordan DeLong <fracture@hidden.email> Subject: Re: Re: big rethink on Unique and other gadri On Wed, Dec 25, 2002 at 06:20:02PM +0000, Jorge Llambias wrote:la nitcion cusku di'e[...]After all (as I found in CLL to my delight), prenexes by default go to the innermost, not the outermost bridi --- so the default interpretation of {mi nitcu lenu mi tavla lomikce} *is* "I want to talk to a doctor, any doctor", not "there's thisparticular doctor I want to talk to".Yes, and you can say {mi nitcu tu'a lo mikce} for short. If you are satisfied with that, you don't have a problem to solve.Ok, good point. So this issue isn't really an issue afterall.
... If propositionalism covers everything. Like I said, by the time you get to depiction, I doubt it does.
Message: 7 Date: Thu, 26 Dec 2002 18:48:26 -0000 From: "And Rosta" <a.rosta@hidden.email> Subject: propositionalism redux
3. Depicting (e.g. "This depicts a snake"). As Nick suggests, we can treat this as "There is something that in some world (not necessarily the local world) is a snake and that in the local world this depicts".
Of course (weaseling), depiction need not be intended as depiction of any one individual anyway, real or imaginary. It can be just a construct based on the prototoype...
There was already a need for a way to do this in Lojban,
so that we could talk about imaginaries such as Sherlock Holmes
without having to abandon the distinction between the local world
and worlds that from the perspective of the local world are
fictional. The two ways that have been proposed for doing this
are {da'i} and {ka'e}/{nu'o}. Both are unsatisfactory for two
reasons. The first reason is that they mean, or should mean,
something else. {ka'e}/{nu'o} pertain to Possible Worlds.
How is this a problem? Because fictional worlds are not the same thing as possible worlds?
{da'i}
is in UI and therefore has something to do with illocutionary
meaning.
A constraint already violated with {kau}, and indeed with several UI before that (since UI is a dumping ground for odds and sods.) An illegitimate objection, especially for Microsoft Lojban.
The second reason is that they don't allow us to distinguish "For every x there is some world w such that in w x is broda" and "There is some world w and for every x that in w is broda". For example, "For every Danish mermaid, I will write a poem about her", normally wouldn't mean I will write an infinite number of poems, one for every imaginable Danish mermaid.
(a) we can easily make the second the Gricean default; (b) of course we will need to introduce machinery for possible-world reasoning into Lojban. Although...
What we need is a selbri, "x is world of which y is true".
It could be a lujvo, but I'll define a NU, {jei'u}, to do
the job: "x1 is a world of which the abstraction is true".
.. it is only because you've been working in Academic Lojban for so long that you can do this so blithely. And, you know the fundies see you invent cmavo and think you're a crackpot. Try using the lujvo for a while, as a political move; you'll make it harder for the fundies to dismiss you. (And you know they're dismissing you.) In fact, stick close to English for a while, and use {munje} and {vasru}. (This goes for Jorge's loi'ei too.)
This then gives us: da ro de poi da je'u de is Danish mermaid zo'u I will write a poem about de
su'o da poi munje ku'o ro de poi gugdrdanska fipni'u zi'e poi da vasru de zo'u: mi te pemci de
This solution is not always satisfactory, though. Consider: This branch has the shape of three intertwined snakes. It is not enough to say there are in some world three snakes that have the shape of this branch. That statement would presumably be true whatever the shape of the branch.
Eh?You gotta mold the snakes into the shape you want in some world or over. I simply cannot see the problem with:
su'o da poi munje ku'o ci de poi since zi'e poi da vasru de zo'u: le ti tricyspi tarmi simsa lu'o ci de poi gunma torni [vi da]I agree that the hangup on the depiction actually being a depiction of individual, real or imaginary, is probably bad; but this is not your killer counterexample. You can make it the Unique; I like the referent of the Prototype, since we are dealing in mental constructs (and as a Kind, even if individuated, the Unique is not a mental construct)...
4. Psych-predicates. "John reveres the authors of the American constitution but John doesn't know who authored the American constitution."
Of course, it's a bit disingenous to make a special case of psych evaluation preds, because this is a classic extension/intension problem that obtains just with djuno:
la djan djuno ledu'u ro finti be le merko flajicmu cu morsi kandyselskapi nakni
.i la djan na djuno ledu'u ma kau finti le merko flajicmu
5. "mi djica LEnu broda" means "I want that LEnu broda be actual (be
fasnu)". But which nu broda? -- *Any* one nu broda. How do we
express this? There is no propositionalist solution. One solution
is to kill quantification by singularizing nu broda (e.g. by
{piroloinu}.
Or by your Unique, since Prototype is now out of bounds for this.
A better solution is to use a predicate that means "I want that p be true", which has the benefit of allowing nu to behave like all other predicates in having an extension that varies from world to world. Thus: "mi -wants LEdu'u broda".
You mean, mi djica ledu'u su'o da zo'u: da nu broda ? God I hope you're wrong...
Message: 8 Date: Thu, 26 Dec 2002 18:48:28 -0000 From: "And Rosta" <a.rosta@hidden.email> Subject: RE: big rethink on Unique and other gadri
The pisu'o default on loi is unfortunate, then, not just because
piQ looks to be generally mabla but because we have the strange
situation whereby:
{loi} means "a fraction of loi"
{piroloi} means "loi"
So all {piro} does is cancel the implicit {pisu'o}.
Gricean salvator again. Don't read in any implicit quantifier where it makes no sense. And do no such reasoning, unless you insert all explicit quantifiers: {loi} by itself has no meaning, unless it's quantified.
Message: 10 Date: Thu, 26 Dec 2002 20:43:56 +0000 From: "Jorge Llambias" <jjllambias@hidden.email> Subject: Re: propositionalism redux la and cusku di'eThe contention: that "any-x" and Intensional/opaque readings readings reduce to quantification within the scope of some world-straddling predicate; or, that Any-x and Intensional readings can be captured without the use of intensional gadri.My gut reaction to propositionalism is that it may be correct in the sense that it satisfactorily accounts for the underlying meaning of what we want to express, but that it is wrong in the sense that it is not the way I want to express myself.
Herewith, the flame. This isn't necessarily about this in particular, it's in general. In fact, I've toned it down enough that it's not really a flame any more...
Standard Lojban does not exist for your amusement; it is a community venture, with community norms. I know you think sisku sucks, which might be why you kept using buska in your examples. But I am not interested in discarding sisku; the fundament stands unless proven unworkable, and sisku is much too long established to countenance such a change. What you personally want to express yourself with is neither here nor there, as far as Standard Lojban is concerned. I don't think it is even legitimate as an argument in Academic Lojban. The essentialists and the fundamentalists will retort that you're being malrarbau, and I do not know of a good response to that. Yes, a Lojban with {terpa leka} and {djica ledu'u} would be terribly icky, and we'll kludge from here to eternity before we have to accept that as a solution. But {sisku leka} is fact and should not be negotiable. If that's not 'find', fine; but that's the official gismu. Same as with xruti. We simply cannot throw everything open again.
The BPFK will be a fundamentalist venture, which will presuppose things such as sisku. This was stated overtly, and the vote was taken and passed. But if the BPFK is to be fundamentalist, then arguments like "I don't like it aesthetically" are illegitimate to it. So are "I don't like a prenex-bound model of logic" (yeah, but Lojban *is* prenex-bound, so propositionalism is completely legitimate within Lojban).
So is your Origen's** defense of "I was using this intensional lo'e before the CLL defined it, and they refused to listen to me when they formulated CLL." You lost that battle, though, and Basil of Cappadocia came along and invented the Trinity, and the Trinity is non-negotiable however novel it is. And if you stay with Standard Lojban, you will have to relearn stuff, same as everyone else. The board, and I as chair of the BPFK, have made and are prepared to make compromises to achieve a baselined standard Lojban; we were perfectly within our rights, after all, to say "not a jot, not a tittle of the wordlists changes." The way politics works, however, you have to make compromises too, when you take part in the same political venture. We didn't make the compromises selflessly after all; we made the compromises to extract compromises. Otherwise there can be no one output of the BPFK. And I cannot preside over that outcome.
On your own time (and jboske regrettably still counts as 'your own time'), you can do what you like. You won't be able to in BPFK. None of us will.
**Origen: the greatest Christian theologian of the 2nd century AD. Unfortunately for him, Christianity was codified in the 4th century, and Origen didn't have enough divine inspiration to anticipate everything Basil of Cappadocia came up with. Where Origen conflicted with Basil, Origen was deemed heretical. Sucks being an early adopter, sometimes. ;-)
... Argh. Now I feel like crap. because Jorge liked my gadri summary. But obviously I am getting aggro because I'm seeing myself and Jorge in incompatible missions --- fundie vs, revisionist; so our respective keywords set the other off. This cannot happen in the BPFK; it needs to stop. We're working on Microsoft Lojban together, or not working together at all.
These examples make me want to define a new cmavo
{loi'ei} = {lo poi'i da jei'u ke'a} (with an implicit {su'o da}
somewhere in the prenex), so that they become:
mi ba te pemci ro loi'ei danko fipni'u
ti pixra ci loi'ei since
Gimme a UI, please...
Message: 13 Date: Fri, 27 Dec 2002 01:02:00 -0000 From: "And Rosta" <a.rosta@hidden.email> Subject: RE: propositionalism redux
It is not enough to say there are in some world three snakes that have the shape of this branch. That statement would presumably be true whatever the shape of the branchI'm not sure I see the difference between a picture depicting three snakes and a branch resembling three snakes.A depictee can be the 'subject-matter' or the 'iconically signified': "This picture is about X" (subject matter) "This picture looks like X" (iconically signified) Texts usually don't iconically signify, but do have subject matter. Branches don't have subject matter, but do iconically signify. Pictures typically iconically signify their subject matter. So 'picture' is ambiguous.
Yeah, so there's a difference in there being an intended referent for subject matter and an overt one for icons. I don't get how that affects whether imaginary-world quantification is sufficient or not to handle it. Sure, subject matter can include stuff you completely make up, with no referent in this world; but if you read enough fiction, so can icons. A tree branch can look like an elf too. In fact, it's the book rather than the branch that is likelier to have an individual referent: the book is about a specific elf, the branch looks like Any elf.
So maybe depiction is intensional in the Any-x sense after all. *** "Relax."--"yIleS." [Three seconds pause.] "Stop Relaxing!"--"yIleSHa'!" --- the Conversational Klingon tape. http://www.opoudjis.net Dr Nick Nicholas. nickn@hidden.email nIchyon jIH. nIchyon SoHbe'. nIchyon ghaHbe'. nIchyon tlhIHbe'. nIchyon jIHqu'.