Received: from ELI.CS.YALE.EDU by NEBULA.SYSTEMSZ.CS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Wed, 25 Aug 1993 10:31:28 -0400
Received: from YALEVM.YCC.YALE.EDU by eli.CS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Wed, 25 Aug 1993 08:04:30 -0400
Message-Id: <199308251204.AA01969@eli.CS.YALE.EDU>
Received: from CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU by YaleVM.YCC.Yale.Edu (IBM VM SMTP V2R2)
   with BSMTP id 5865; Wed, 25 Aug 93 08:03:06 EDT
Received: from CUVMB.COLUMBIA.EDU by CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU (Mailer R2.07) with
 BSMTP id 9534; Wed, 25 Aug 93 08:05:50 EDT
Date:         Wed, 25 Aug 1993 13:02:25 BST
Reply-To: I.Alexander.bra0125@oasis.icl.co.uk
Sender: Lojban list <LOJBAN%CUVMB.bitnet@YaleVM.YCC.YALE.EDU>
From: Iain Alexander <I.Alexander.bra0125@OASIS.ICL.CO.UK>
Subject:      Re: TECH: QUERY: quantifier scope & cumki
X-To:         lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu
To: Erik Rauch <rauch>
Status: O
X-Status: 
X-From-Space-Date: Wed Aug 25 10:31:28 1993
X-From-Space-Address: @YaleVM.YCC.YALE.EDU:LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET

cu'u la kolin.
> > Until I noticed your subject I thought you were asking a different
> > question - not about the predicative 'it is possible' but about
> > the operators of modal logic - 'it is possible that' and
> > 'it is necessary that'. Somehow the selbri 'cumki' and
> > 'nibli' don't seem right for these.

cu'u la djan. kau,n.
> Well, they are and they aren't.  Loglan, generally speaking, takes a Quinian
> view of such things.  "nibli" is closer to the sentence operator Nec, which
> in Quine takes a quoted sentence, than to the standard modal operator nec.

Don't you both mean {sarcu}?

> At least we know that Nec is logically tractable, which is not true of nec --
> cf. the well-known paradox:

>         nec 5 < 9
>         9 = the number of planets
>         nec 5 < the number of planets

> which is fallacious.  Replacing "nec" with "Nec('...')" prevents us from
> inferring things about the opaque argument, and so such bogosities are
> Nec ~.  :-)

I'm not familiar with the particular system(s) you're referring to,
and I may be misunderstanding what you're saying, but surely it *is*
possible to reason about the argument of nec - you just have to be
careful to apply the appropriate rules.

    nec 5 < 9
    nec 5 = the number of Platonic solids
    nec the number of Platonic solids < 9

mu'o mi'e .i,n.