From robin@bilkent.edu.tr Wed Mar 05 16:24:08 2003 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-list); Wed, 05 Mar 2003 16:24:09 -0800 (PST) Received: from manyas.bcc.bilkent.edu.tr ([139.179.30.24]) by digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.12) id 18qjB3-0005cm-00 for lojban-list@lojban.org; Wed, 05 Mar 2003 16:24:01 -0800 Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by manyas.bcc.bilkent.edu.tr (Postfix) with ESMTP id 951A7321FB for ; Thu, 6 Mar 2003 02:23:24 +0200 (EET) Received: from bilkent.edu.tr (ppp109.bcc.bilkent.edu.tr [139.179.111.109]) by manyas.bcc.bilkent.edu.tr (Postfix) with ESMTP id 84572321CF for ; Thu, 6 Mar 2003 02:23:22 +0200 (EET) Message-ID: <3E669565.4030902@bilkent.edu.tr> Date: Thu, 06 Mar 2003 02:25:09 +0200 From: robin User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.1) Gecko/20020826 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: lojban-list@lojban.org Subject: [lojban] Re: The Any thread References: <200303052208.RAA00948@mail.reutershealth.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed X-Virus-Scanned: by AMaViS snapshot-20020531 X-archive-position: 4383 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: robin@bilkent.edu.tr Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-list@lojban.org X-list: lojban-list John Cowan wrote: > Craig scripsit: > > >>Umm... no. "I need a doctor." I have a need which will be filled if I am >>attended to by Dr. Foo. However, I could equally well accept the services of >>Dr. Bar, so I don't actually need Dr. Foo. I need a doctor, according to my >>view of lo, is "mi nitcu lo mikce". However, "zasti falo mikce poi mi ke'a >>na nitcu" is still true - I don't actually need Dr. Foo since Dr. Bar can >>treat me. > > > Thinking about doctors, IMHO, just confuses the issue. Take "I need a box > with dimensions 2m by 2m by 2cm." You can need such a thing perfectly well > even if there is no such box anywhere. This is why needing involves an > implied proposition: you cannot, e.g. see such a box unless there is such a > box (neglecting visual illusions, where you see the *appearance* of a box > but not the box itself). > That's exactly the point I was trying to make about the semantics of "nitcu" and "pendo" being different. You can nitcu something even if that something does not exist, or perhaps could never exist (e.g. I want to do something which requires the existence of the proverbial golden mountain). You cannot be a pendo of something unless there is something to be a pendo of (although it doesn't have to exist in a physical sense - you can still say "I've got a friend in Jesus" even if Jesus never lived, or lived but was not resurrected - the point is that you have some specific entity in mind who is your friend, which is qualitatively different from needing a box which may or may not exist). This has nothing to do with the semantics of "lo". robin.tr -- "The raisins may be the best part of a cake, but that doesn't mean that a bag of raisins is better than a cake." - Wittgenstein Robin Turner IDMYO Bilkent Univeritesi Ankara 06533 Turkey www.bilkent.edu.tr/~robin