On Thu, Jan 3, 2013 at 4:47 PM, Ian Johnson <blindbravado@gmail.com> wrote:

No. I think it should mean exactly three. = The difference is that I think "exactly three" should only be con= sidered within context. If we're talking about the house next door, and= I say {ci prenu} =3D {ci da poi prenu}, it should mean that there are exac= tly three people in the context of the house next door, not that there are = exactly three people, in the whole of time and space, real and imagined, et= c..., whatever the scope of "universe of discourse" is.

This answer isn't really {na go'= ;i} so much as {na'i}. I was saying to choose a fixed universe of disco= urse, then decide what an outer quantifier means. In other words I wanted t= o simplify the issue of outer quantifiers by decoupling it from the issue o= f determining the universe of discourse. You're saying that the univers= e of discourse shrinks and expands rapidly from sentence to sentence, and t= hat the idea of holding one constant isn't reasonable. I think this is = troubling in general, partly because everything done in logic depends on a = background universe of discourse. In other words the first thing you do is = say what you're talking about precisely (for example, the real number s= ystem), and then you start saying things about it. Rejecting this idea is s= a'u illogical, but not necessarily irrational nor necessarily damaging.=

I would say situation to situation, not s= entence to sentence, because context isn't determined by what is said, = but by the environment it is said in. Strictly speaking "environment&q= uot; isn't really the right word, but you can't define context as &= quot;context".

And as far as logic wrt Lojban is concerned, Lojban is logical only in = the sense that its grammar is built from predicate logic. Beyond that, it i= s no more nor less logical than any other language.
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My problem with making the "verbosity and precision correlate tightly&= quot; doctrine into law is that precise statements all vanish for being too= verbose. It's like pedantic English, you can be very careful in Englis= h if you try really hard, but we don't speak that way, and those that t= ry are criticized for sounding awkward.

I'm not sure that's true, and I'm not certain th= at's really much of a problem if it is. I highly doubt that requiring m= ore words to be more precise- which, by the way, is already true in the vas= t majority of Lojban as it is- automatically makes higher precision stateme= nts cease to be made.

I phrased that the way I phrased it for a rea= son. Insisting that verbosity and precision correlate tightly makes = it so every precise statement is necessarily verbose. I think part of the p= oint of Lojban is that logic cleanly and succinctly expresses certain ideas= (quantifiers, for example, and in particular ro, su'o, and to a lesser= extent pa), and by reworking ordinary language carefully we can bring ever= yday ideas into that structure.

I don't like the phrase "every p= recise statement is necessarily verbose". I would agree with "mor= e precise statements are necessarily more verbose", however. A tight c= orrelation means that the desired amount of precision would require a highe= r degree of verbosity, but not that every precise statement would be too ve= rbose to actually be used, which is what it seems you are asserting.
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I also don't think your comparison with English is very on= the ball, but that's neither here nor there.

It's an exaggeration, but I think t= he basic point is valid. That is, once you get to a certain level of verbos= ity, your listener tunes out. The threshold is probably higher in Lojban be= cause the grammar is both simpler and less obtrusive, but it's still th= ere.

Well, certainly. I just don't think i= t's as big a problem as you seem to. Also, what I'm suggesting isn&= #39;t a radical change from the way things are: the vast majority of Lojban= does have a strong correlation between verbosity and precision, I'm ju= st saying this correlation should be "all", not "most".=
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mi'e la latro'a mu'o