On Wed, Nov 16, 2011 at 8:30 AM, John E = Clifford <kali= 9putra@yahoo.com> wrote:

As I noted, in L-sets, membership and subsets are not distinct= , i.e. every member is a subset and under certain interpretations, ever sub= set is a member, though some members are more basic, having no members but = themselves.=A0 So, a bunch of things also contains all the combinations of = them.=A0 From this point of view, then, a mass is just the bunch of its low= est level (what it is a bunch of, say): gold is the maximal bunch of gold a= toms, lion is the maximal bunch of lion cells and so on.=A0 More familiar o= bject arise in the intersection of bunches: lions are in the intersection o= f lion and living organisms and so.=A0 And every gold thing is in the inter= section of gold and its particular form.=A0 The only Lojbanic thing I see i= n all of this at the moment is that that maximal bunch ought to be given a separate gadri.

<= br>Well, subsetship (more generally, partship) and membership seem to work = a little differently in Bunt's system.=A0 As I learned from reading here (unfortunately several preview pages missing) it turns o= ut that ensembles are essentially C-sets and L-sets generalized under one t= heory and reducible to either by excluding the other; you get set theory fr= om ensemble theory by excluding L-sets, and mereology by excluding C-sets.= =A0 (IMHO this seems ideal.)=A0 As far as intersections as in "golden = ring", I believe that the "overlapped" ensemble of "con= tinuous" masses like gold and "discrete" collections like ri= ngs would necessarily be empty, but I am not 100% sure on this point.=A0 I = need better documentation.=A0 At worst, I am sure you could construct a mix= ed ensemble that would merge all continuous masses of gold and all discrete= things made of gold to get the needed result for your intersection.=A0 So = maybe, just maybe, Lojban is doing the Right Thing by having predicates gen= erally ignore the count/mass distinction.

=A0

=
There do remain a number of cases to which this general notion does not see= m to apply.=A0 Your case of the real line is one, letters seem to be anothe= r.=A0 Here the approach seems to be to start at the top, work down and then= back up, I think, but I don't know just how that goes.=A0 Even with ca= ses that fit this pattern pretty well, water, for excample, there are some = problems, as you note.=A0 Water molecules don't display the characteris= tic behavior of water (as do not also ice and steam), since they don't = flow, etc.=A0 But then, gold atoms don't shine and are not malleable, s= o this seems a minor problem.=A0 And for generic cases, they probably are n= ot significant, since the far more numerous and visible sub bunches will ta= ke over the "statistics".=A0

I find you idea of an aspect difference among the various uses of kinds= (max. bunches) interesting, though I still tend to think of them in terms of different connections to predicates, a relic of the early= days of plural reference.=A0 And, indeed, even with aspects, some of this = will still come into play with regular bunches, that is to say, bunches whi= ch do not claim to take in all the possible "atoms" (I am used to= your usage here).

I kinda like this result, since it leaves basic things basic but covers= kinds and masses economically from them.=A0 Until some real snag comes alo= ng.

Is there a problem with modeling the e= xtensions of predicates like "water"?=A0 What is clear to me is t= hat no purely discrete system like set theory is up to the job of modeling = water (though some have tried to work within sets by treating "quantit= ies of water" as atoms), but that's where Lesniewski and Bunt step= in.=A0 I am also not too worried about generics;=A0 as I indicated I think= that they are mere appearances calculated from the extension under predica= tion involving some sort of gnomic verb aspect.=A0 They give you all sorts = of perplexing results for sure, ranging from "lo gerku cu mabru" = to "lo remna cu cadzu le lunra", but the basic idea seems to be c= ombing over extension-intrinsic properties, either ignoring time and space = or collapsing them.=A0 Then there are kinds, which generally seem to invoke= intension-intrinsic properties (as in searching for a unicorn) or episodic= events paradoxically affecting the extension (as in dodos going extinct) w= ithout invoking it -- either way, pure kind-predication does not seem to in= volve directly any atom or part of the extension.

I am sure there will be controversy in some of these areas at least unt= il Lojban's semantics are much more rigorously formalized.

-Mike=

=A0