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Date: Sat, 05 Nov 2011 18:41:29 +0000
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 05/11/2011 17:22:
> * Saturday, 2011-11-05 at 12:06 +0000 - And Rosta<and.rosta@gmail.com>:
>
>> I think the essential difference between us is indeed the
>> semantic-metaphysics. On one view, the universe comes with
>> a ready-made set of individuals, to which predicates apply;
>> propositions make claims about those individuals. On the other view,
>> the universe is one blob that can be split into uncountably infinitely
>> many subtypes, defined by differentiation criteria.
>>
>> Here's a solution (v) then: have a couple of cmavo that mark these two
>> views, the Ready-Made and the Blobular. I really think that would
>> work.
>>
>> Obviously you're a Ready-Madeist, while me and xorxes are
>> Blobularists. Traditional logic (i.e. what John Clifford calls
>> Traditional Western Logic) and formal semantics is Ready-Madeist.
>> Cognitive and natural-language-inspired approaches to semantics are
>> Blobularist.
>
> One of the main strengths of lojban, and a crucial difference between it
> and natural languages, is the ability it gives us to precisely specify
> the scope of quantifiers in a sentence. The rules aren't wholly
> specified, but that's a temporary problem.

Setting aside the unfinishedness of the rules, quantifier scope is unambigu=
ous in Lojban, regardless of whether the sentence is uttered in Ready-Made =
or Blobular. That is, the logical form is unambiguous. If we inhabit a blob=
ular universe, then the applicability of the logical form to the universe i=
s ambiguous, precisely because logical forms can be applied only post-diffe=
rentiationally.

> The question then is how to use these powerful mechanisms in actual
> communication. Because of the quantifier-switching phenomenon we've been
> discussing, these mechanisms are useful only if the listener understands
> which levels the speaker means to refer to - where I define 'level' as
> whatever it is that we go up one of when we get from an AE sentence to
> a witness for the corresponding EA sentence.
>
> The obvious way to solve this problem (and the one I had been assuming
> until xorlo came along) is along the lines of your "Ready-Made view"
> - certain predicates isolate certain levels. e.g. if lions cinfo then
> lionkind (if that's at a level above) doesn't, and nor do lion-stages
> (if a lion is at a level above its stages). This doesn't mean we have to
> decide once and for all what constitutes a lion, as "Ready-Made" might
> suggest, just that we have to specify cinfo well enough that there can
> be no ambiguity between levels.
>
> To reiterate the point: allowing cinfo to be ambiguous between levels
> is, by the definition of 'level', effectively equivalent to allowing the
> logical structure of sentences which involve quantifying over cinfo to
> be ambiguous. Since ambiguity in logical structure is a no-no in lojban,
> so should be such effective ambiguity, and hence so should be such
> level-crossing ambiguity in the meaning of cinfo.
>
> I am (still!) surprised that this could be controversial.

Ready-Made is not a *solution* to the communication problem, because it is =
inapplicable to a blobular world. How do blobularists communicate about a b=
lobular world?

A Ready-Madeist may be aghast at the Blobularist universe, but the Ready-Ma=
deist can do nothing about that. The Blobularist universe is a fact, and ba=
nning linguistic representations of it is hardly acceptable.
 =20
> So where does this leave Blobularism? I fear it leaves it needing to
> find a way to specify the levels its carving the Blob to. Sorry.

First of all, if you want to insist that Blobularism has to specify levels,=
 then why not also insist that Ready-Made must too? Otherwise you'd be requ=
iring that almost all sentences expressible in Blobularist Lojban would be =
unexpressible in Ready-Madeist Lojban.

Second, why must the levels be specifiable? The idea is nonsensical to Blob=
ularism, because even the number of levels is uncountably infinite. Ready-M=
adeists horrified by that can take refuge in Ready-Madeist Lojban.

>>>> If Barbie-like Beret is a malkind, then (B) is derivable
>>>> from (A) only if it is also the case that all frenchmen wear the same
>>>> beret; if they all wear different berets, you can't derive (B).
>>>
>>> Hmm? Doesn't (A) imply that all french people wear Barbie-Beret?
>>
>> Only metatruly. Under Blobularity, you first have to apply
>> differentiation criteria to the universe before you can make claims
>> about it.
>
> Yes. And again: the problem is that we need to be able to *communicate*
> what differentiation criteria are being used (at least to an extent
> which rules out cross-level ambiguity), because otherwise we have
> effective ambiguity in logical form.

That effective ambiguity is an inescapable fact of the Blobularist universe=
. That sort of predifferentiational disambiguation is impossible.
 =20
>>>> So it seems to me that either (A) doesn't entail (B) malkindfully or
>>>> that xorxesianism is not malkindful.
>>>
>>> I don't see what you've done here.
>>
>> I hadn't realized you were talking about metatruth rather than truth.
>> Truth would be assessed relative to a post-differentiational universe.
>> Metatruth is assessed relative to the set of all possible
>> post-differentiational universes: claims X and Y are
>> metatruth-conditionally equivalent if there is a predifferentiational
>> Blobular universe such that there are differentiation criteria that
>> yield from it a postdifferentiational universe of which X is true and
>> there are differentiation criteria that yield from it
>> a postdifferentiational universe of which Y is true.
>
> Yes; and the issue is that, informal conventions and contextual hints
> aside, two sentences which are metatruth-conditionally equivalent
> communicate the same information.

Two such sentences *encode* different information. Two such *utterances* ma=
y communicate  the same information, but firstly utterances do have a pragm=
atic context -- that's how language works, and a context-free language woul=
d be impossibly impoverished -- and secondly it's not an issue, it's a sett=
led fact.
 =20
>>>>>> Sure, we know what the difference between one lion and two lions is.
>>>>>> But there are these cases where you can't tell the difference. And
>>>>>> I think that these cases in which the speaker can't tell the
>>>>>> difference should be generalized into a case where for whatever reas=
on
>>>>>> the speaker doesn't tell the difference.
>>>>>
>>>>> But do we really need to create a new entity to do that? In examples
>>>>> like the "lion(s) in your garden every day", we can just give a vague
>>>>> count - {su'o cinfo}, in that case.
>>>>
>>>> Yes, but it looks like one lion, not like a group of one or more
>>>> lions.
>>>
>>> Then {pa ju'o ru'e cinfo}?
>>
>> That doesn't sound like a very Baysian solution...
>
> If you think there's only one lion but you're not sure, you should just
> say so.

Okay, but in the case under discussion, you've got something that looks lik=
e one lion but might be several. The speaker is sure it looks like one lion=
 and sure that it mightn't be one. All the available diagnostics point to i=
t being one lion, but not enough diagnostics are available. If you were to =
draw it or describe it, it would be like drawing or describing one lion. St=
ill, I suppose Ready-Madeism would have to just use {su'o cinfo}.

--and.

--And.

--=20
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