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Re: [jboske] Digest Number 136
On Saturday, Dec 28, 2002, at 22:59 Australia/Melbourne, jboske@yahoogroups.com wrote:
It was good to be absent, it is good to see the list settle down, it is bad that it settled down without a clear answer; but I'm happy (a) that John's now involved (this usually means a solution is around the corner); (b) that the use of sets (= collectives?) is being sniffed at in the gi'uste. 


Message: 1
   Date: Sat, 28 Dec 2002 00:32:48 +0000
   From: "Jorge Llambias" <jjllambias@hidden.email>
Subject: RE: Digest Number 134



I agree, but the same argument applies to piro. If pimu can give
you half of the goo then piro is the whole goo, not necessarily
the total number acting together. So, either every fractional
with inner ro gives collectives, or every fractional with inner
ro, including piro, admits of the substance reading.


Or... there is something else we didn't look at:

pa loi broda?
What is re loi broda? How is re loi djacu distinct from re lo djacu? Is it at all? Does re loi broda mean two scoops of humanity, or is it limited to two groups of people?
Just throwing this in, because I don't honestly think this will lead anywhere. For now, I think "countable innards = collective, uncountable innards = substance" is good...
... but if you slice each person precisely in half, you still have a substance with countable innards. Because hemi-humans are not the product of the universal grinder; but they sure don't belong to any notion of collective of humans, either. Hm. This is bad. We can disambiguate with {poi na se cmima lo nalmulno}, but yeah, we either pragmatically allow this, with only a default 'entire members', or we leave the lojbanmass utterly vague, and start eyeing at the alternatives (like sets for collectives -- no question that their members are entire.) Yeah, this is a problem... 


Message: 2
   Date: Sat, 28 Dec 2002 00:55:23 -0000
   From: "And Rosta" <a.rosta@hidden.email>
Subject: RE: propositionalism redux


OK. And you're saying that two pictures of three snakes
can be pictures of different things, but two branches that
each looks like three snakes must look like the same thing?

When you put it that way, it sounds wrong, doesn't it.
Not so wrong. There's a distinction between an icon which can be said to resemble an individual. and an icon which is so generic, it cannot truthfully be said to resemble one individual, but rather somehow resembles the Unique or the Prototype.
If I draw a picture of a snake with so much detail that it includes an earring, a goofy grin, and a gold tooth, then obviously there is some world such that there is some individual such that I am depicting it. Nothing generic there.
Now, the letter S looks like a snake. Which snake? Not Mr Hissy any more than Ms Sinuous. It looks like an utter abstraction of snakedom. Not an individual. 

A poem, or a good drawing, look like an individual snake.
A branch looks like an abstraction of snakedom. No point positing imaginary worlds and individuals there. 


"The branch
is shaped as if it were three snakes." How do we say that?
le tricypagbu cu se tarmi le tarmi be lo cimei be [lu'ai since / la'e lo'e since]
(assuming for now that cimei is collective and not just lojbanmass --- I don't want no "but actually there's only one snake singing", and I want the Universal Grinder out of this.) 


I also wonder what "se ckaji LEka ce'u broda ci since" means,
given that "ko'a se ckaji LEka broda" normally means "ko'a
broda", but the ci broda is quantified in the subordinate bridi.
Well, the three snakes can potentially be in a different world, right? (As in, made up.) And even if they're in this world, they're Any Snakes. So it seems to me {ko'a se ckaji leka ce'u broda ci since} cannot mean the same as {ko'a broda ci since}, since the latter are particular snakes, not Any Snakes, and certainly not Possible Snakes. 


Anyway, yes, two poems about three snakes can be poems about
different snakes. (I want to avoid talk about pictures because
of their ambiguity.) But to say that two branches that each
look look three snakes must look like the same thing is
somehow wrong. They each have the same property, but "looking
like the same thing" fails to capture that -- it is too strong.
If branches aren't good enough a depiction that you can reasonably say they look like a different 3 snakes --- then I think you're expecting too much of resemblance anyway. 


But don't we want every picture of a snake (opaque sense)
to have the same subject matter?

Only in the sense that if we each eat fish and chips then we
have had the same meal.
Keep coming up with these; that's how we defend the Unique proposal. xod, if you're paying attention, include "the same meal" as an exemplar of Unique.
Your precise problem here (and it is a problem, I can see that much) is eluding me... 


Message: 4
   Date: Fri, 27 Dec 2002 22:00:51 -0500
   From: Robert LeChevalier <lojbab@hidden.email>
Subject: Re: gadri

At 04:01 PM 12/27/02 +0000, Jorge Llambias wrote:

la nitcion cusku di'e
I note in passing that the gismu definitions do treat sets as n-tuples, 
just as Bob's addled recollection leads me to believe. (No, I don't
like what he did. Because I'm stuck trying to clear up the mess. And I 
don't give a fuck if the mess is originally James Brown's.) Why else
use sets in the gismu definitions where he did?

Lojbab attempted to distinguish sets from collectives
... how? Because packing collectives into lojbanmasses wasn't a nice way of doing so... 

[Loglan lue]
Clearly the word was added to refer to mathematical sets (and I believe it 
was added by pc, but that would take more digging to verify).
Not necessarily; the wording seems to me to leave collectives open, and some logicians have conflated math sets and collectives. The routine rejoinder to this is "you can't burn a mathematical set, but you can burn a deck of cards." But if we've survived the conflation of everything in the lojbanmass, I'd need grounds firmer than that to say Lojban can't survive a conflation of collective and set. The gi'uste has done it for years.
Note also that JCB and pc apparently understood the "in mind" aspect of le 
(and le'e) to be +intentional rather than +specific;
I can see a whole lot of confusion here. Intensional, besides meaning Any x, can also be Made-Up x (quantified not only over this world, but over the whole world.) But that's certainly not where {le} has ended up. 

So a collective is girzu. Well, that's progress...


Message: 6
   Date: Fri, 27 Dec 2002 22:17:00 -0500
   From: Robert LeChevalier <lojbab@hidden.email>
Subject: RE: fundamentalism as fundamental (RE: Re: gadri paradigm:2 excellent proposals 


Okay: the intent was to contrast with Nick's variety of pragmatic
fundamentalism, which is manifest also sometimes in you. I suppose
that that can be summed up as "you needn't honour the letter so
long as you honour the spirit".
Which I believe was always the intent in defining the baseline; treating 
CLL as scripture to be taken literally came about only when there was
disagreement whether a particular usage was honoring the spirit. If there was a way to go back to that point of view, I'd love it (that may be a way that Academic Lojbanists can experiment and still remain within the greater 
community of Microsoft Lojbanists).
You'd love it? Even when it results in CLL being pulped? That's not what you were saying two weeks ago.
No, the time for flexible exegesis is past: we have to get the prescription of the language right, not allow everything and nothing. While the baseline is so loosely worded that these kinds of issues can fester, it is not doing its job. And I do not recognise any authority to do exegesis any more than the BPFK: Supplication hasn't worked, Usage gives us Jorge :-) , Logic gives us jboske :-( . The spirit? No, I won't deal with phantoms. I deal with the word, and I expand on it.
That said, of course there will be flexibility and negotiation in the BPFK; how can there not. But we are here to produce something cogent; not to perpetuate holes and confusion. 


Message: 7
   Date: Fri, 27 Dec 2002 23:12:21 -0500 (EST)
   From: John Cowan <cowan@hidden.email>
Subject: Supporting the mustelid

1) Nick is doing exactly what I would do, were I wearing his fur.
John, I appreciate the support (like Robin, I do only do it for the applause); and I'd appreciate it more if I had any confidence that I have a clue what I'm saying... 


2) Nick's views on gadri and jbomasses agree exactly with mine.


... eh, remind me what they are this week? :-1/2


3) As for intentionality, I'm not sure what I think yet.  I must
point out, however, that intentional verbs of imagining don't
*require* that what is imagined is, er, imaginary.  I can just as
well imagine Nick typing at his computer as I can imagine him biting
his prey through the base of the neck.  (Some neck!)
Absolutely so. If we go with worlds, the real world must be included. If we contrast with da'inai, the proper word is da'icu'i, not da'i.
== == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == 
Upon completing His outburst, God fell silent, standing quietly at the
podium for several moments. Then, witnesses reported, God's shoulders
began to shake, and He wept.
[http://www.theonion.com/onion3734/god_clarifies_dont_kill.html]

Dr  Nick Nicholas. nickn@hidden.email   http://www.opoudjis.net