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




Am Donnerstag, 13.02.03 um 22:20 Uhr schrieb Jorge Llambias:

la ian cusku di'e

.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)

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".

I'm afraid I'm confused. I was talking about the ellipsized
x3 in your first sentence. Presumably you meant to say that
for every possible observation, the tag "holy" can be applied
not by science but only by religion. But "unholy" and "neither
holy not unholy" are also religion-only tags, aren't they?

Yes.

Is x3 for tags that in a given observation could be applied
but are not?

Yes, but not with the same brode (and not neccesarily the same velbo'e). It's just a link I need to supply, so I can refer to the unmarked state. I think I might want to supply a further place for the form (see a previous post by me) of the observation. But I am not sure about that yet.

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" ;-)

What do you mean by "explain"? ;)

Well, "pajni" takes for granted that someone can determine something. If you want to explain how this determination is done, then you need to describe it in a different more basic way.


.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.

That answer I gave to you was not good...

My sentence was just an attempt to translate your English.
You said "the operationally closed system observes the difference
of observations it can make vs. those it can not make". That
does not seem to correspond to your lojban, which seems to say
that "the system tags what it [further divide and then] tags [one side of], and it could but doesn't tag
what it can't [further divide and then] tag [one side of]".

Look at the square brackets I put in your utterance (further does not necessarily mean afterwards, it could also have happened before, the tense is really unspecified).

Don't just translate velbo'e as observe. Look at what the lojban definition says. The Sentence says: The closed system draws a difference and creates 2 sides. Side 1 gets marked. It is a space that the system can draw a distinction in. Side 2 could also be marked (with a further observation). But this space is something the system can not further observe in. We can say "the unthinkable", but we can think (or say) the unthinkable.

luman zei nunzga does not just mean "See an apple and say Apple". I would not need to define a new brivla to say that. luman zei nunzga means "I see (or think about, or know, or can call by it's name... it's not limited to seeing, and in System Theory hardly ever is used to explain seeing) many things, I make a distinction and pick only part of those things, and call this part by a name (e.g. Apple). I could have also picked the other part to call by it's name (e.g "Not the Apple"), but I did not"


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 ;-)

I'm afraid I'm still in the dark as to the use of x3.

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.

Is x3 the symbol for something that the system cannot observe,
or the symbol for something that the system could but does not
observe? You seem to go from one to the other.

In these 3 lojban sentences I left out the relative clauses, but I implied them in the english explanation.

For a given observation (let's say that I observe an apple)
and a given tag (let's say "apple") what can I say?
{le nu mi zgana le plise cu brode zo plise ma}
My observing the apple is a Luhmann-observation with tag "apple"
and tag-of-non-observed what?

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.

Are you saying that velbo'e only applies to closed systems? Is
science a velbo'e? Can it observe that there are things it
cannot observe?

Velbo'e are a special kind of closed system. That example actually talked about brode-type-of-closed systems (the closed part is redundant) but I had generic closed systems in mind. But that's not correct. The Lojban sentence was still ok though.

MODERN Science is a sub-Velbo'e of society (and society is a special sub-velbo'e which is made up of selbo'e that are communicated). And it's operationally closed. But this operational closure of Sub-Systems of society is quite new. In old times the king or the pope had a saying in what was valid truth. And scientists tried to figure out religious truths. In the modernization process the structure of society has changed and today the pope can't determine scientific truth anymore and science does not try to figure out god no more. The economy or the governments can influence what research gets funded but they can't control what science comes up with (and if they try to do that, they may get into trouble). Different sub-systems of society are different velbo'e that use different brode and are structured in different ways. Science uses the difference True/False a lot and got scientific Methods and Theories, Economy uses the differences like Have/don't have or Buy/Don't buy, Art uses still different differences that don't make much sense to science and economy (but Economy can still deal with Art-Objects, but only in it's own specific way -- e.g. Buy/Sell). This operational closure of the sub-systems is not perfect, though.

Bye,
   Jan.

--
Jan Pilgenroeder
Theaterstr. 59
52062 Aachen