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4 solutions to collective/substance



Not that I want to reawaken the beast of jboske --- I don't, and I am hysterically overcommitted these days. But I've been thinking lately about the collective/substance dichotomy, which I have been attempting to manage within the confines of the Lojbanmass.

The solution I had proposed in January is somewhat leaky, and I'd like to offer the following four that I came up with on the train this morning (before I forget or get snowed under again) as possible solutions, graded by explicitness I guess. This is a Perl-esque take to the issue ("there is more than one way to do it"), but I'm not sure any one way is intrinsically better.

So.

1. (My original solution.) We exploit the fact that any physical objects in this universe are of finite cardinality, whereas the cardinality of (bits of) the substance of those objects, being tantamount to the cardinality of the subspaces enclosed within some of those objects, is necessarily infinite --- in fact transfinite --- aleph-1 for well-defined curves, aleph-2 for fractal spaces.

So: Collective: loi so'a remna ; loi su'e ci'i(no) remna ; loi me'i ci'i(no) remna
Substance: loi ci'ipa remna


This is ok if all you're referring to is the 3D physical universe. As Jorge has pointed out, it collapses for populations of individuals which happen to be of transfinite cardinality --- real numbers themselves, for instance, which are not meaningfully a substance, though I tried to finagle that they are. Such cases call for backup.

2. The Universal Grinder always increases the population of the denotation. There are always more possible bits of human goo than there are humans. And there is an upper limit to a population of atoms; whereas substances are infinitely subdivisible, so they know of no real upper limit of cardinality.

So: Collective: loi su'e (ro) remna
Substance: loi za'u (ro) remna

That's a playful use of za'u: "you think you've got them all? Well, here's some more --- *slice slice*". It may even be too close to du'e to work.

3. If a is an atom of x(), then it is the least entity for which the predicate x() is true. In aphoristic terms:

lo xadba be lo remna cu na remna
lo xadba be lo djacu cu ja'a djacu

(What this means for lo xadba be lo vomei be loi remna, and whether lei re remna cu remna is true, I haven't elaborated yet.)

So we can be bloodyminded and say:

Collective: loi remna ku poi remna
Substance: loi remna ku poi na remna

(Human goo isn't human; it's goo.)

4. The ultimate and real solution, of course, as Jordan will gloat if and when he sees this, is to hang the articles and quantifiers and use a predicate:

Collective: loi ro poi selci ku'o remna
Substance: loi ro poi nalsle ku'o remna

In fact, I think this even allows a distinction between (my) bits of substance, and And's/xod's capital-S Substance:

capital-S Substance: loi tu'o poi nalselsle ku'o remna

***

Comments on the relative merits of these solicited. Eventually, I will have to redo the Kludgesome Solution to account for all that was said here in January --- though maybe the Ontology will have to wait. In fact, there is now added pressure for me to do so, in the guise of getting Alice baseline-compatible: we've agreed here that the Kind needs to enter Lojban distinct from loi, and the Johannite faction believes it should be kept distinct from lo'e; if it is, I of course have to give Jorge something else. But all this ain't gonna happen this month, folks. :-)

---
DR NICK NICHOLAS. nickn@unimelb.edu.au
FRENCH & ITALIAN, UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA.
In Athens, news spreads fast: they know everything as soon as it happens,
sometimes before it happens, and often without it happening at all.
--- Jean Psichari, _My Voyage_. http://www.opoudjis.net