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la nitcion cusku di'e
My solutions, having been conceived of in 3-D space, have assumed that all entities have at least 2 (and presumably transfinite bits); that atoms had a cardinality as the inner and a count as the outer; and that collectives had a cardinality of bits on the inner and a size on the outer.
That is pretty much how I understood it too.
About the "size" of collectives, just to make sure we understand
the same thing:
{.25 lei 12 plise} is "some collective of 3 of the 12 apples",
i.e. no apple goo stuff or things like that, right?
It would be equivalent to {piro loi 3 le 12 plise}.
On the other hand, {.25 le pa plise} is a chunk of the apple, i.e.
something like {.25 loi ro spisa be le pa plise}, a mass consisting
of a quarter of all bits of the apple.
But what about {.25 le 12 plise}? Is that a quarter of one of
the 12 apples? ={.25 lo pa le 12 plise}, or something else?
I contend that for anything 3-D, there are always 3-D bits: it is the nature of 3-D space. But my colleagues want to consider the possibility of not considering the entity as having bits, but of thinking of it in the same way as fondness. I think this is malrarbau codswallop, but Lojban has to be metaphysically parsimonious, and we've got to be able to speak of fondness anyway, so fine, they can have it. I have my way, and speak of piro loi ci'ipa djacu They have their way, and speak of tu'o loi tu'o djacu (there are no bits --- here tu'o means 'no number', not just 'no prenex'), or pa lo pa djacu (which is tantamount to tu'o [un-prenexed] lo pa djacu, but restricted to this world --- so, pa lo pa djacu-in-this-world, or pa lo pa ca'a djacu.) Does this work?
I think it does, as long as we clarify that fractions of collectives
are not about goo, and some minor points about the working of
piPA. All this still leaves Kind out of the picture
though, but I can keep using {lo'e} for it in that case.
mu'o mi'e xorxes
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