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[lojban-beginners] Re: tanru/lujvo for [name] type of thing?


Am Mittwoch, 12.02.03 um 15:50 Uhr schrieb Jorge Llambias:



la ian cusku di'e
After spending half a day on thinking about this definition (damn, I should rather work on my thesis lol), I came up with: 

lu luman zei nunzga li'u cu bridi
	le si'o gasnu le logji telsei be da bei de be'o
		gi'e snigau fi da kei
	le zgana se zukte ku
		ce'o le sniselgau be fi da ku
		ce'o le nu'o sniselgau be fi de ku
		ce'o le zgana poi ciste fi lo luman zei nunzga


These words are always confusing, but the way I understand it
the x1 of bridi is not (typically) a single word: it is either
a full proposition or a full sentence. (It is defined as a text
Hmm, luman zei nunzga is meant to imply zo'e luman zei nunzga zo'e zo'e zo'e 
so it's not just like a word.


but often used, in English, as "proposition".) The x2 of bridi
(the "selbri") is used (at least in English) to refer to the text
of the nucleus of the sentence. So we say for example that
in the bridi "mi klama le zarci", "klama" is the selbri and
"mi" and "le zarci" are the terbri. In English we often
treat every argument of {bridi} as text. The gi'uste definition
marks only x1 as text. When you talk of "le zgana se zukte" in
the definition, presumably you don't have a particular observation
in mind, and the same goes for the other arguments.

Anyway, I think I understand what you mean even though
I don't think using {bridi} like that works for a formal
definition. Also, do you really need the x3 place?
It actually seems a little bit displaced, since it is meant for a symbol that the operation does not supply. But other observations can refer to the unmarked space of the first observations, so I will need to supply a "link". So when X3 is used it actually implies a further observation that sets the mark. See below.
Maybe I should try to define x3 by using "nu'o se luman zei nunzga", but then I need to change the place-structure so I can make the link to "de" which is no problem with sniselgau. 


With this definition I can then say e.g. (if I have not screwed up):

.i brode cei luman zei nunzga

.i zo censa selbo'e fi le skeci'e na.e le lijdyci'e po'e
(holy vs. (unholy or secular or whatever) is a difference that science is blind to and religion alone can make) 

I suppose you mean {fo} rather than {fi}.
Crap, I often count fa fe fi from the X2 place (X1 is out of sight on the left side of the bridi and jbofi'e did not know what I was talking about so it did not show me what the place structure was supposed to say). 


What would go in x3? "Unholy"? That sounds wrong. "Neither
holy nor unholy"?
Well, here we see how sense is made from this first observation. The first observation made a distinction and named one side of the distinction as "holy". Now, additional observations can be linked to either side of this observation, and your observation just draws a distinction in the unmarked space of the starting observation and marked it "unholy", then a further distinction is drawn (between "sounding wrong" and something unnamed) and then you ask for the name of a side of still another distinction with the other side named "neither holy nor unholy".
When we try to make sense of something we just draw a distinction and seperate this something from everything else and give it a name (e.g. "FNORD"). But that does not really make sense yet. All we got is "FNORD is different from something else". So we go on with our observations and say e.g. "FNORDs are very schmiedrig" (so we added an observation drawing a distinction between being "schmiedrig" and something else and linked it to our previous observation). One single observation only really tells us "FNORD", but this type of operation is the most basic element of all sense-making systems. Just imagine how you explain "Apple" to E.T.("Apple. Fruit. You Eat it. No, not into your nose. Put it in your mouth. No, that's a ball. Balls are made from rubber. You can't eat rubber...") 


Couldn't we just say:

 le ka censa cu se zgana fi le skaci'e na.e le lijdyci'e
 Holyness is observed not by means of science but of religion.
Of course we could just say that. We do it like this all the time. But when you say it this way you imply that you already know what you are taling about. But the theory of social systems tries to explain how science and religion can make sense of things even though they start out with operations that just say "FNORD" (or actually "True" or "Holy") and need to explain what this "FNORD" (or "True" or "Holy") means, and why people should listen to this. And both science and religion (and politics and art and economy etc.) got their problems with this. And you can explain many of those problems when you look at them from a system theory perspective (and those explanations are often quite different from those everyday explanations). 


I'm not sure why you want the observation act as one of
the places in your basic predicate, and I'm not sure I
understand what goes in the place for the "non-distiguished".
As I said before, X3 is needed as a link. When you want to represent just one brode you don't want to put anything in there. Actually both the "marked" and the "unmarked" need to be further distinguished to make sense of it. And I think you might see the problem: there really is no end to this, you always just get another difference and another "FNORD" that also needs to get explained. That's why scientists and preachers (and everybody else) never run out of stuff to talk about ;-) 


.i la saske cu velbo'e zo jetnu po'o enai zo melbi
(science is a system that marks things as being "true" and not as "beautiful") 

Would x3 be zo jitfa?
Can be and often is. Brode is just an event, so the velbo'e is made up of lots of brode and keeps producing more brode all the time (and reproduces itself by doing so). That's actually why it was a good Idea to define X1 as an event. 


Another way of saying it might be:

la saske cu pajni le du'u xukau jetnu enai le du'u xukau melbi
Science determines whether something is true, not whether it is
beautiful.


Explain "pajni" ;-)
.i la brode ganlo ciste goi ko'a cu velbo'e da poi ko'a ka'e velbo'e ke'a ku'o de poi ko'a na ka'e velbo'e ke'a .ijanai ko'a velbo'e lu'e ko'a
(The operationally closed system observes the difference of observations it can make vs. those it can not make. If it can't do that It can't refer to itself) 

Shouldn't you have {le terfrica be da poi ... bei de poi ...}
in the x2? In other words, in a closed system the difference
between observables and non-observables is observable.
Both sides are observable. But only one side of an observation gets marked in communication. "Apples vs. Oranges" is already two observations that are linked. I included the X3 so I can make this type of link to observations of the unmarked state of this observation. Your sentence is actually a step further than my sentence. I described an observation and a link to another observation and your observation draws a difference between the difference of in my sentence and something else (and it should actually be "lu'e le terfrica" or better even: "lu'e le velbo'e"). But Yes! You can say that. Velbo'e are like that ;-)
And your observation is actually a step between my observation and: le velbo'e cu velbo'e lu'e ri (without pois): 

.i le velbo'e cu velbo'e da de
.i le velbo'e cu velbo'e lu'e le velbo'e be da bei de
.i le velbo'e cu velbo'e lu'e ri
The symbol for the system is the symbol for it's observations of what it can observe vs. what it can not observe. And that symbol only works when this observation of observations is stable and repeatable and rather independent of the systems environment. 


Otherwise you are saying that closed systems observe what
they observe against what they don't observe, but every system
supposedly does that, doesn't it? I may be misunderstanding
your x3.
Not everything that is called a system really is an operationally closed system (that's especially true for most "system" talk in the humanities). Not every closed system can observe that it only observes what it can observe and at the same time be able to observe that there are things it can not observe. Show me a non-social or non-mental system that can develop a symbol for "transcendent" and use this symbol in the process of identifying itself. The definition of brode allows this.
From the definition of brode in lojban this is so obvious. But from the definition the velbo'e is already operationally closed.
Luhmann started the explanation of his Theory with a different brode. He started with the difference System/(Environment) (He actually started out with: "This theory assumes that systems exist", so he started with a "FNORD", and he knew it lol) and then explained what a system needs to be able to do to keep itself different from it's environment. So, when he got to explain systems that can keep up this difference by themselves need to be operationally closed, he had not got this definition of the operation yet. And when he introduced this definition (which is taken from G. Spencer Brown's Law of Form), he did it in natural language. And it's really not that easy to see this in natural language. I think most students who only study Luhmann for 2-3 hours each week for a semester never get this.
In most philosophical and sociological theories (and in everyday life) the things that are said and the things that are talked about get mixed up. So the concept of closure does not come seem natural. Especially the term observation does not sound like operational closure to most people. And closed systems from engineering or physics don't really fit in with sense-making systems.
I am a bit of a Luhmann freak and I have even taught Systems Theory for a semester (the best student-job I ever had), but even I was surprised how simple and cheap this looks when you build just ONE definition in Lojban. I have not really started yet, and already made so much look so simple. I think learning Lojban and then studying Theory of Social Systems in Lojban might be much easier and quicker than learning the theory in your own natural Language. 


mu'o mi'e xorxes


Bye,
   Jan.

--
Jan Pilgenroeder
Theaterstr. 59
52062 Aachen