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Subject: Re: [lojban] Re: Reasoning by analogy
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From: Jacob Thomas Errington <jake@mail.jerrington.me>
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Date: Tue, 22 Dec 2020 16:28:07 GMT
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On 2020-12-19 18:14, scope845hlang343jbo@icebubble.org wrote:

> Jacob Thomas Errington <jake@mail.jerrington.me> writes:
>
>> Often times when translating from English to Lojban, it turns out that
>> a conjunction such as "just like" winds up being the main claim of the
>> Lojban. In this case, I'd translate as:
> I've suspected that for a while, but had never seen it mentioned
> anywhere, outright.  I'm glad to see it confirmed.  :) The only way I've
> been able to translate sentences such as "I'm stronger than you." has
> been to (like you suggest) express the comparison as the main selbri,
> i.e., {mi do zmadu le ni tsali}.
>
>      "You can learn to walk on your hands just like you learn to walk on
>       your feet."
>
>       lo xance ce'o da lo jamfu ce'o da cu simsa lo ka ka'e cilre fu da
>       fi lo nu do cadzu fi ce'u
>
> Would that be right?  I don't know how to pass multiple arguments into
> an abstraction (or lambda expression) in Lojban... especially when they
> occupy two different levels of (nested) abstraction.

So you want to emphasize that you _learn_ each one the same way? In 
other words, walking on your hands and walking on your feet are similar 
in the way that they are learned to do. We can express this with an 
indirect question.

lo xance lo jamfu cu simsa lo ka ka'e cilre fu makau fi lo nu cadzu fi ce'u

Although I think the indirect question formulation is the most natural, 
I think you could also formulate it in a similar way as your example 
with {da}:

.i da zo'u lo xance lo jamfu cu simsa lo ka ka'e cilre fu da fi lo nu 
cadzu fi ce'u

We don't need to pass in the variable {da}. We need to explicitly bind 
it outside (otherwise it would be implicitly bound inside the 
abstraction), but then we can simply refer to it inside. Then the 
interpretation is that it's the same way of learning that's applying to 
both instances of the abstraction (the one for feet and the one for hands).

For completeness, I want to say that actually passing in multiple things 
to an abstraction isn't really supported in Lojban. I wrote an article 
about a way to do it using a pattern-matching syntax: 
https://mw.lojban.org/papri/Abstraction_Pattern_Syntax It requires the 
experimental cmavo {ce'ai}.

>> I'm not sure if trying to express it using .inaja is right. In
>> principle, if someone knew how to walk on their hands and not on their
>> feet, then the same analogy would also apply to them trying to learn
>> to walk on their feet! So really, I think the main claim here is that
>> hands and feet are similar, but in a very specific way.
> Right, but most people who walk do so on their feet, and few people walk
> on their hands.  So, there is an implication that it's the upright
> walkers who will be learning to walk upside down (on their hands).
>
>     do ka'e cilre cei broda fu da fe lo jai ta'i nu cadzu fi lo jamfu
>     .ije da simsa de
>     .ije seni'i bo broda fu de fe lo jai ta'i nu cadzu fi lo xance
>
> That sort of expresses it, but it still seems kind of clumsy.  Use of
> {ni'i} is perhaps more accurate than {.inaja}.

I'm still not sure whether this means the right thing.

exists X, exists Y:
(you can learn to walk on your feet by X) AND (X is similar to Y) ==> 
(you can learn to walk on your hands by Y)

I'm not really sure I'd be able to interpret this to mean "You can learn 
to walk on your hands the same way you can learn to walk on your hands.

> Also, there's no need to copy me, as I am already on the mailing list.

Sorry about that, I mistakenly clicked reply instead of reply list ^^"

.i mi'e la tsani mu'o


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