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Nick:
> I have made an emotional response, and I have dismayed both reformists.
> I do not retract my response, however.
>
> I feel I cannot, because there are certain traits of Lojban design that
> I hold to be definitional to the language, and therefore non-negotiable
> --- and held throughout the preceding round of this debate. An
> extensionalist understanding of {lo} as {da poi} is one such
> definition.
You have not shown that this is in conflict with XS. I listed what I
believed to be the totality of changes to CLL, and abandoning {lo} =
{da poi} is not one of them: {PA lo broda} continues to be equivalent
to {PA da poi broda} and {PA broda}, all with their meaning wholly
unchanged.
No extensionalism is lost. The intensionalist meanings are all attributed
to forms (with quantifier tu'o) that have no defined meaning in CLL and
patently make no sense within extensionalism.
> I accept that Quine is old fashioned, and Montague is more
> in tune with natural language gadri (when Monty makes sense); and that
> in a real sense the intension is more basic than the extension. I also
> accept that Bob, when he fumbles for a reason to reject {lo} = {da
> poi}, is probably thinking intensions without realising it. I further
> accept that my past usage, and that of everyone else, pretty much, as
> treated intensions as {lo} without realising it, and that making {lo}
> intensional would make all that past usage legitimate, bring Lojban in
> line with natlangs, and make it easier to learn.
>
> And it would no longer be Lojban as I understand. Which (to embarrass
> him into saying something about it :-1/2 ) is the Woldemarian
> extensionalism of CLL.
>
> This is not a minor and welcome fix, as I believe a cmene fix would be.
> This is a reversal of any understanding we have of Lojban; it annuls
> its basic semantic underpinnings. Our usage may not be affected; but
> our understanding of the theory of Lojban is tipped over. And I cannot
> accept it.
As I say, XS removes none of CLL's extensionalism. It adds intensionalism
only to what formerly had no meaning.
You describe it as some kind of momentous upheaval, but the changes involve
only 2 default quantifiers and internal PA after lo. Of these, the only
one relevant to what you've been saying is the change from {(su'o) lo} to
{(tu'o) lo}.
So why all this enormous brouhaha and handwringing over destroying the
philosophical foundations of Lojban, when in terms of CLL changes, it
boils down only to whether bare lo is su'olo or tu'olo?
> Is this because I have a personal stake in having my own solution
> prevail? Perhaps, although my solution is yet to be articulated --- and
> if I continue to feel as I do now, may never. Am I letting my personal
> feelings exacerbate this? Probably: I've been defending And and Jorge's
> right to speak, apparently expecting in return a deference I have not
> proven I deserve.
AFAIAC, I've been showing you deference. I've desisted from proposing
on BF any changes that are mere improvements without any element of
fixing something broken or unclear.
But your response on this issue has been extraordinarily disproportionate:
a proposal to change (su'o)lo to (tu'o)lo does not amount to discarding
the entire gadri system and starting over, and I cannot fathom how anyone
with a minimum of good sense and good will -- which surely ought to
include you -- could say (or very strongly imply) on the phpbb that it
does.
> But I do not recant the fact that Lojban has certain axioms; not
> everything is negotiable. I count extensionalism as such an axiom, and
> though I am reluctant to use my veto in general, on this, I feel
> compelled to. I will not give reformists everything, and I will not
> give them this; that is more change that I can justify to myself. If
> that's irrational, so be it; but rationality is not the only criterion
> we are working with --- if it were, we would accept all optimisations
> without question. The onus may still be on me to prove that a fully
> extensionalist system will work; but a fully intensionalist system, I
> repeat, is not Lojban as it is defined, *no matter what usage has
> done*. (I reiterate, to Jorge's use of my own usage against me, that on
> this issue, usage doesn't count for anything with me, the gadri system
> being so alien from English to begin with, and so poorly documented and
> understood.) And extensionalism is not a trivial detail of the
> definition of Lojban, but its cornerstone.
This makes no sense. You yourself proposed a LAhE for Kind, so you were
willing to allow intensionalism into the language. Your objections
cannot be conservative ones, for XS does not change any extensionalism
to intensionalism; it adds intensionalism into empty gaps.
If I had not explicitly listed the changes to CLL in my original message,
your response would have been more excusable, though I still think that
the appropriate thing to do would have been to ask for clarification.
But I *did* list the changes, and it seems that you willfully ignored
what XS actually says, blowing it up instead into some phantom bugbear.
--And.