From lojbab@xxxxxx.xxxx Thu Dec 2 11:19:44 1999 X-Digest-Num: 300 Message-ID: <44114.300.1635.959273825@eGroups.com> Date: Thu, 02 Dec 1999 14:19:44 -0500 From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" From: "Jorge Llambias" >la i,n cusku di'e >>lambda x: E(x) >> >>i.e. the function which assigns truth values to the expression E(...) >>given any >>value of the {kau}-tagged variable x. >> >>This implies you know the whole story - who came and who didn't come >>(given the long-ago-snipped example). > >I don't think you need to know who didn't come if >you know who came. You could deduce it, but that's >another story. The problem is that the predicate "know" >is especially confusing to treat these issues. If we change >to "John told me who came" it is more clear that he didn't >necessarily tell me who didn't came. > >Would it be correct to say that he told me the function? >Or did he tell me what is the function, which is again >substituting one indirect question with another? Given the need to cover both "told" and "know", I think that what John would know or tell would be "a description of the set", which might be an enumeration of all members or a statement of their critical defining property(ies). Even so, you still have John's cognition as a limitation. If John forgot one person in his enumeration of who came, is it still true that "John told me who came"? So we might have to switch that from a set to a mass description to accurate capture the way such phrases are used in natlangs. lojbab ---- lojbab ***NOTE NEW ADDRESS*** lojbab@lojban.org Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc. 2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273 Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: see Lojban WWW Server: href=" http://xiron.pc.helsinki.fi/lojban/ " Order _The Complete Lojban Language_ - see our Web pages or ask me.