From nobody@digitalkingdom.org Tue Jul 11 14:11:06 2006 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-list); Tue, 11 Jul 2006 14:11:07 -0700 (PDT) Received: from nobody by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.62) (envelope-from ) id 1G0PVI-0001eV-TT for lojban-list-real@lojban.org; Tue, 11 Jul 2006 14:10:49 -0700 Received: from web81311.mail.mud.yahoo.com ([68.142.199.127]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with smtp (Exim 4.62) (envelope-from ) id 1G0PVH-0001eN-Q0 for lojban-list@lojban.org; Tue, 11 Jul 2006 14:10:48 -0700 Received: (qmail 23213 invoked by uid 60001); 11 Jul 2006 21:10:46 -0000 DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws; s=s1024; d=sbcglobal.net; h=Message-ID:Received:Date:From:Subject:To:In-Reply-To:MIME-Version:Content-Type:Content-Transfer-Encoding; b=TLBWOC91I/5QjlZaoukOaILqT5aTwlu689HWpJfCeCXDYk6o36SpA0L9YbwD3wG0jffyxDnf1MEPRP6MpS2ITNToTOCWcuM/mHJcTACxLLazxvdxdGeom0c0h72EBHakfxXZQoyCg34DhfrdawKxEmK5D+4kHkjRrNtDMO2uwFI= ; Message-ID: <20060711211046.23211.qmail@web81311.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Received: from [70.237.228.212] by web81311.mail.mud.yahoo.com via HTTP; Tue, 11 Jul 2006 14:10:46 PDT Date: Tue, 11 Jul 2006 14:10:46 -0700 (PDT) From: John E Clifford Subject: [lojban] Re: A (rather long) discussion of {all} To: lojban-list@lojban.org In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Spam-Score: -0.7 (/) X-archive-position: 12117 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: clifford-j@sbcglobal.net Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-list@lojban.org X-list: lojban-list --- Maxim Katcharov wrote: > On 7/11/06, Jorge Llamb�as wrote: > > On 7/11/06, Maxim Katcharov wrote: > > > > > The issue I have still stands. We're claiming > > > something about something, yes? > > > > Not about some one thing, about many things, yes. > > > > > That something, to me, is the students > > > treated as a single entity. How are you claiming it about the multiple > > > things? That it's true of them when you're considering them as a mass, > > > but not when they're apart? > > > > I don't need to consider them as one thing to make a claim about them. > > You must be absolutely uncanny at memory games like match the cards, > simon, etc. The average human has trouble keeping 10 numbers floating > in their head for more than some seconds without losing some, I find > it amazing that you can keep 100 individual student-entities in the > conscious mind long enough to relate each directly. > > A logical language should be a reflection of thought, and not a > general approximation. It's true that when we say "dogs" we mean "at > least 2 dogs", but this is an effect, and not the thing that affects. You have a strange notion of a logical language (see screed everywhere available) and also a strange idea of how language works. the notion that language reflects in any very direct way what goes on in the mind went out a couple of centuries ago, when it was shown that there were no such correlations -- either between conscious thought and speech or between brain events and speech. If your whole poit comes down to "we can't deal mentally with thirty things directly but only by constructing a mental box to act for them collectively" I would say that I wouldn't be surprised that is true. But I don't see that that means there really is -- as opposed to is in my mind -- a box that acts for them collectively. I do a lot of arithmetic on my fingers and toes, but fingers and toes are not mathematical objects, not part of arithemetic. > > > > You may, if you want to, consider them as one thing. It makes no difference > > for this particular case. It only makes a difference when we want to > > combine distributive and non-distributive claims in the same sentence. > > > > > Perhaps a ..."visual" explanation of the model of thought that I'm > > > using would help. Imagine that you have singular 'things' (identities) > > > floating around up there, and relationship-strand-things connect them > > > to each other/abstractions. So when you think of "humanity", a certain > > > singular thing is brought up, and you know by following some very > > > strong strands that it's composed of many humans, and so on. When > > > someone says "the students", a single thing is created, and then > > > perhaps they tell you that there were 100 of them, and a strand is > > > spun from that thing to that number. > > > > > > Now, when you tell me that something is predicated of 100 singular > > > things, and nothing else is involved, but that none of those 100 > > > things has a little strand (or a series of strands) connecting it > > > somehow to the building, I have to wonder what the heck's being > > > related. And really, speaking of these 100 singular things seems > > > aburd: unless you're a savant, I doubt that you're capable of keeping > > > that many things simultaneously in your mind in the first place. My > > > brain seems to go with two: the fact that they're students, and the > > > fact that there are 100 of them. > > > > How does your mind manage to process: > > > > ro le panono tadni cu dasni lo mapku > > > > then? > > There are 2 identities (X and Y), both are plurals. X is the students, > Y is the hats. X, the thing that is the students has 100 of them. They > are related with 'wears' non-distributively (which I know to mean that > if a new identity was a 'component' of X, then it would follow that it > would be wearing some component of Y). Furthermore, I assume that the > non-distributive relationship is 1to1: during the time that we care to > communicate about, students probably aren't switching 2 hats amongst > themselves, and each student has their own hat. I would have thought that "wears" is precisely distributive. "Wears" is true of the students, just in case it is true of each student individually (and similarly for hats -- putting the two together correctly is harder, but the process is about as you describe.) > > > > I don't think the kind of pictures we can raise in our minds are relevant. > > > > Analogies are quite effective, and so is visualization. This isn't > just a picture, but something that approximates what I imagine goes on > in my mind. I think that this sort of thing could be helpful, since it > seems that other options have been exhausted. > > How do you imagine your mind to work? > > > mu'o mi'e xorxes To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to lojban-list-request@lojban.org with the subject unsubscribe, or go to http://www.lojban.org/lsg2/, or if you're really stuck, send mail to secretary@lojban.org for help.