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Date: Wed, 19 Oct 2011 07:42:14 -0700 (PDT)
From: John E Clifford <kali9putra@yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: [lojban] {zo'e} as close-scope existentially quantified plural variable
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Mammals as a kind or type or whatever are viviparous, but male mammals don't 
give birth to anything.  The ambiguity is exactly between kinds and avatars (or 
whatever).  

A hate to inject SWH into this gallimaufry, but it does say, inter alia, that 
every language has its own metaphysics and Lojban is sure not an exception, 
being, from Whorf's pov, an SAE language in extremis. That being so, these 
various attempts to load it down with other ontologies seem to me to be both 
misguided and detrimental.  As MB says, we want a clean semantics, and kinds nor 
types nor whatever else is in the air gives that as Lojban is now.  And, of 
course, changing Lojban so that it did have clean semantics with types would 
make it no longer a spoken version of the language of Logic, which is also 
extreme SAE.  Keeping within that frame is one of the reasons I keep insisting 
that kinds, if we ever need such things, are just big bunches, perhaps including 
past and future (and possible) critters -- but not necessarily.


----- Original Message ----
From: Martin Bays <mbays@sdf.org>
To: lojban@googlegroups.com
Sent: Wed, October 19, 2011 12:11:00 AM
Subject: Re: [lojban] {zo'e} as close-scope existentially quantified plural 
variable

* Wednesday, 2011-10-19 at 04:59 +0100 - And Rosta <and.rosta@gmail.com>:

> Martin Bays, On 18/10/2011 04:26:
> >>>> 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 in
> >>>> 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) .
> >> Sorry, I was unclear. I meant that English seems to allow only
> >> reading (2), and that the same might go for Lojban.
> > Ah! Have {lo} *only* able to get kinds, you mean?
> Yes. With anything that looks like a 'mundane' reconceived as a kind.

So how would you rule out interpretation 1 in the above?

> > The "temporal stages of Obama" example could be dealt with by
> > intepreting Obama as the kind 'Obama-stages', I agree, but it could also
> > be dealt with just by using tenses. I'm not sure how to deal with "an
> > unusually exuberant Obama"... but since it's a rare construction, a hack
> > like transforming it to "Obama, who was unusually exuberant" would seem
> > reasonable.
> 
> The point is that English  does allow restrictive modification of
> _Obama_, so does recognize subtypes of Obama.

"It was the exuberant Obama who spoke today rather than the dour Obama
we're used to"? That kind of thing? The hacky solution still seems
reasonable.

> > So if I choose to omit kinds from my universe but otherwise use the same
> > rules, I am likely to be misunderstood by a kind-using lojbanist, even
> > if I avoid using lV. Xorxes just gave a nice example, the other way
> > round: {mi zukte da poi do zukte} makes a sense with kinds that it
> > doesn't without them.
> 
> You may be likely to be misunderstood, but that's because of
> philosophical differences between you, not linguistic differences.
> You don't have to agree on whether{mi zukte da poi do zukte} couod be
> true.

If that counts as philosophy, then it seems we do have to make
philosophical pronouncements if we want to well-specify lojban.

> > The metaphysics affects everything. I don't see that the language could
> > be considered well-specified if it didn't specify the metaphysics (on
> > the broad level we're talking about). Lojban with plural semantics is
> > very different from that without it; the same goes for kinds.
> 
> The language specifies the metaphysics that the language encodes,

Isn't that all we're talking about? Whether having kinds as individuals
separate from properties is something which is determined by the
language?

> but that doesn't tell you how the universe actually is.
>  
> > My question is whether you perceive a "jump" between individual lions
> > and the kind 'lions' of a different kind from that between the kinds
> > 'fierce lions' and 'lions'. I don't think it's actually a precise
> > question about the structure of the partial order... it's rather that
> > I'd split "subtype" into two relations - "instance of" and "subclass
> > of".
> 
> I understand your questions. The answer is a very definite No. There
> are only types, related by the Subtype relation; and there are no
> instances.

Then I don't think I know at all what your "types" are. They seem to be
different from xorxes' kinds, which seem (or at least so my
uncontradicted impression was) to correspond to properties of
individuals at the level below.

> I think it would be good to have other gadri based on a model in which
> there are no types, only instances.

And not worry about interactions?

> >> The objections to that are that it is metaphysically biased,
> >
> > Why is that a problem?
> 
> Avoidance of metaphysical bias was one of Lojban's aims. A fairly
> obvious and sensible one, since the language should not tell the
> speaker how the universe is, but rather should allow the speaker to
> describe how the speaker thinks the universe is.  

This seems to be in direct competition with an aim of lojban with which
I'm more familiar, namely that it be well-specified. Having a thorough
model-theoretic formal semantics seems to me an important part of
satisfying that aim - and it would involve specifying a metaphysics (by
your definition of metaphysics).

But asking whether kinds (in the Chierchia sense, at least) "really
exist" makes no more sense than asking whether 0 is really the empty
set. Kinds are just a convenient linguistic device.

> >>>> "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.
> >
> > Does every mammal give birth to live young?
> 
> At the species level yes (afaik), at the organism level no.

And yet 'mammal' wasn't ambiguous? What in the question was?

Martin

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