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Date: Mon, 17 Oct 2011 01:32:49 +0100
From: And Rosta <and.rosta@gmail.com>
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Subject: Re: [lojban] {zo'e} as close-scope existentially quantified plural variable
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Martin Bays, On 16/10/2011 06:05:
> * Sunday, 2011-10-16 at 02:56 +0100 - And Rosta<and.rosta@gmail.com>:
>
>> Martin Bays, On 15/10/2011 21:04:
>>> * Saturday, 2011-10-15 at 01:49 +0100 - And Rosta<and.rosta@gmail.com>:
>>>
>>>> Martin Bays, On 14/10/2011 23:59:
>>>>> * Friday, 2011-10-14 at 11:39 +0100 - And Rosta<and.rosta@gmail.com>:
>>>>>> Martin Bays, On 13/10/2011 05:33:
>>>>> But once we perform this resolution to the level of mundanes, we
>>>>> find that different interpretations of {lo} resolve to different
>>>>> logical forms. For example, {na ku lo cinfo cu zvati lo mi purdi}
>>>>> has at least the two following meanings in terms of actual lions:
>>>>> 1. {lo cinfo} is interpreted as a plurality of mundane lions, giving
>>>>> roughly:
>>>>>        For L some (contextually relevant) lions: \not in(L, my garden=
)
>>>>> (which probably means that there exists a lion among L which is not i=
n
>>>>> my garden)
>>>>> 2. {lo cinfo} is interpreted as the kind Lions, giving
>>>>>        \not in(Lions, my garden)
>>>>> which is then resolved existentially, giving
>>>>>        \not \exists l:lion(l). in(l, my garden) .
>>>>>
>>>>> So subtleties aside, we have a straightforward ambiguity between
>>>>>        \exists l:lion(l). \not in(l, my garden)
>>>>> and
>>>>>        \not \exists l:lion(l). in(l, my garden) .
>>>>>
>>>>> This seems toljbo to me.
>>>>
>>>> But for any X, "it is not the case that X is in my garden" is no more
>>>> and no less ambiguous, whether X is lionkind, or water, or Barack
>>>> Obama.
>>>
>>> I don't see the english as being relevantly ambiguous in any of those
>>> three cases. "It is not the case that lions are in my garden" means "no
>>> lions are in my garden" (or possibly "at most one lion is in my
>>> garden").
>>
>> I don't know if the Lojban or the English is ambiguous (-- the English
>> certainly seems not to be, and I don't see why Lojban should be
>> different
>
> So you're really not willing to consider the effective ambiguity when we
> flatten everything to the level of actual lions, as derived above, to
> count as an ambiguity? Or even as a problem? I really do find this very
> strange.

Sorry, I was unclear. I meant that English seems to allow only reading (2),=
 and that the same might go for Lojban.

>> ); my only point was that lo + countable is not more ambiguous than lo +=
 mass or le or la.
>
> (what does countability have to do with anything? Would anything change
> if we were dealing with an uncountable set, say with {lo namcu}?)

Countables have intrinsic boundaries, and that makes it relatively easy and=
 natural to distinguish one mundane countable from another (of the same typ=
e). With uncountables, such as chlorine, it's relatively easy and natural t=
o not distinguish one mundane from another, and hence the kind--mundane dis=
tinction too seems absent too.

>>> This seems to me a good reason not to have Obama-stages!
>>
>> Natural language (or english, at least) does
>
> Does it really? My impression from xorxes' explanation of them (and I've
> never come across the concept outside of this mailing list) is that
> they're an alternative way of handling tenses, eventually mostly
> equivalent to the straightforward "possible worlds" approach (where
> there's one obama, but many of his properties (including his existence)
> vary from world to world). I don't see how english could force you to
> use stages.

I meant 'stages' not in the strict semantic sense but rather the looser sen=
se that I'd understood it to have in this discussion, namely "subtype of a =
type that has intrinsic boundaries". "Obama" is a type that has intrinsic b=
oundaries, but English allows us to speak of subtypes of Obama too, as in "=
the young Obama" or "(the) two Obamas" or "an unusually exuberant Obama".

The main difference between 'Obama' and 'lion' -- as far as accounting for =
their differing grammatical behaviour goes -- is that Obama is naturally se=
en as being a singleton at any one point in time. But where that difference=
 diminishes, as with 'Father Christmas' or 'Elvis' or 'Mickey Mouse', so to=
o does the difference in grammatical behaviour, so that it is quite usual t=
o speak of "two Father christmases, two Elvises, two Mickey Mouses, a Fathe=
r Christmas, a Mickey Mouse".

>> , but the key point is that it's a metaphysical choice. You can choose
>> to reject Obama-stages but accept lion-subtypes, but that must be your
>> choice, not Lojban's. Lojban should be metaphysically neutral. Well,
>> maybe you don't think it should be neutral,
>
> Probably not. I'm not entirely sure what you mean by metaphysics here,
> but I'm taking it to refer to the question of what we put in the domain
> of our universe when doing model-theoretic formal semantics.

That's right.

> I think
> that the nature of lojban does impose some restrictions there - for
> example, (roughly) there should be for each expressible unary predicate
> precisely one object satisfying the corresponding ka. Lojban requires
> this.
>
> Ignoring domain-switching technicalities, xorxes would want it to also
> contain, for each (appropriate?) unary predicate, another entity,
> a kind, which satisfies the predicate itself.
>
> In both cases, it's the language which is imposing this "metaphysical"
> requirement. You can try to interpret expressions in the language
> without following the requirement, but you're going to get bizarre
> results which weren't those intended by the designers.

I was intending to make two points, but not distinguishing them clearly. Th=
e first is that the metaphysics entailed by the semantics of lV is an espec=
ially permissive one, making the fewest possible distinctions and prejudgem=
ents. If a language aspired to metaphysical neutrality and had to pick one =
metaphysics, it should pick that one. The other point is that this is just =
the metaphysics of lV; somebody wanting a different metaphysics could use d=
ifferent gadri. So Lojban could achieve metaphysical neutrality by offering=
 a menu of different gadri.

>>>> And the exercising of that choice is metaphysical rather than
>>>> linguistic. Lojban is metaphysically neutral.
>>>
>>> But the definition of xor{lo} is such that the existence of kinds is
>>> required to make sense of many statements which are, in the final
>>> analysis, about mundanes. So the metaphysics (if that's what it is) is
>>> more-or-less hardwired into the language.
>>
>> Are they really, in the final analysis, about mundanes? Is there
>> anything in xorlo that forces the kind--mundane distinction to be
>> recognized? As far as lo goes, there is no kind--mundane distinction.
>> For every individual X and Y there is an individual Z thatX and Y are
>> subtypes of; for every individual Z, there are individuals X and
>> Y that are subtypes of Z.
>
> Where an Obama-stage is a proper subtype of Obama? What's a proper
> subtype of an Obama-stage?

Does 'proper subtype' mean "X is a proper subtype of Y iff X is a subtype o=
f Y and X is not a subtype of a subtype of Y"? If so, then I think the noti=
on is not applicable; any putatively proper subtype can be reconstrued as a=
n improper one.

> Or do you not have discrete levels at all? Just the whole sort of
> general mish-mash?
>
> If you do have discrete levels, replace "final analysis" with "analysis
> at a particular level".
>
> If you don't... then I'm amazed that we can have a conversation in any
> language!

I probably don't understand your question. Imagine a biological taxonomy, o=
f genera, phyla, and so forth. If you can't see the root or the leaves of t=
he taxonomic tree, you can't really identify levels.

>>>>> Worse, we have no obvious way to disambiguate to case 1 (with its
>>>>> subtleties included).
>>>>
>>>> If it's a problem, it's not a problem specific to kinds or to {lo}.
>>>
>>> Do you seriously not consider such undisambiguable ambiguity a problem?
>>
>> I think it's not an actual ambiguity. It's a kind of potential
>> ambiguity, in that if Z is referred to as an individual, in any
>> further inferentially derived propositions in which X is instead
>> conceived of as a generalization over subtypes there may be a scope
>> ambiguity.
>
> Yes, something like that. An ambiguity which it takes a few steps to get
> to.
>
>> This is not a linguistic problem.
>
> It's a problem which could be fixed by changing the language. In that
> sense at least, it is a linguistic problem.

Translating one metaphysics into another will generally yield problems. Tha=
t cannot be fixed by changing the language. I surmise that you would like j=
ust one metaphysics for the language, and you would like it to be much more=
 restricted than the most permissive sort. The objections to that are that =
it is metaphysically biased, that the metaphysics conflicts with the one th=
at others might want, and that it is hard to implement as the basis of the =
semantics of default gadri.
 =20
>> "Not every mammal gives birth to live young" -- false for kinds, true
>> for mundanes; but that doesn't mean "mammal" is ambiguous.
>
> So you'd say the statement is simply false, with the kind 'porcupines'
> as a witness?

I don't understand the question.
 =20
>> but you'd still be wanting a way of unambiguously showing that
>> something isn't a kind. There aren't any ready-made candidates for
>> that, but afaik the lVi gadri are essentially undefined, little used,
>> and little needed, so you might argue that use for them.
>
> That's actually not a bad idea. So {loi cinfo} would be some plurality
> of actual lions, working like xor{lo} but not allowed to get a kind.
> Given the plural reference, this isn't even all that far from the
> historical meaning of lVi.
>
> So then I'd understand {lo} as being simply ambiguous between {loi},
> {lo'e} and {loi ka}; xorxes would complain that that's almost but not
> quite accurate, because sometimes the {loi ka} version blocks the
> others; meanwhile, I would be amazed by his ability to dynamically
> switch kinds in and out of his domains to make quantified statements
> make sense - but from a distance, happy in my constantish kindless
> universe.
>
> Sounds good.

Have you thought about rules for default outer quantifiers  and scope inter=
actions with negation, and so forth?

--And.

--=20
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