From @YaleVM.YCC.YALE.EDU:LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET Thu Nov 4 10:50:00 1993 Received: from ELI.CS.YALE.EDU by NEBULA.SYSTEMSZ.CS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Thu, 4 Nov 1993 16:00:43 -0500 Received: from YALEVM.YCC.YALE.EDU by eli.CS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Thu, 4 Nov 1993 16:00:23 -0500 Message-Id: <199311042100.AA05391@eli.CS.YALE.EDU> Received: from CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU by YaleVM.YCC.Yale.Edu (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 6442; Thu, 04 Nov 93 16:00:14 EST Received: from CUVMB.COLUMBIA.EDU by CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU (Mailer R2.07) with BSMTP id 5605; Thu, 04 Nov 93 15:58:12 EDT Date: Thu, 4 Nov 1993 15:50:00 EST Reply-To: protin@USL.COM Sender: Lojban list From: Art Protin Subject: Re: TECH: more thoughts on zi'o To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu Status: RO X-Status: Thank you all who responded. I now have a better understanding of zi'o. Now, the challenge is to convince me, if you care, that klama with a zi'o in any place is meaningful. I doubt it. I rank that up there with various absurd metaphysical arguments about a chair that is not a chair. Richard Kennaway stepped up to my previous challenge with: >>(Tell me again John why the loglan predicate "bluer-than" is >>impossible to use with negation.) > > In Institute Loglan, omitted places were at one time considered > to be existentially quantified over. (I don't know whether > this is still the case.) The negation of "x bluer-than" would > be "it is false that there exists a y such that x is bluer than > y", which is probably a stronger claim that intended. This is > shown more clearly by e.g. "slower-than". "It is false that > there exists a y such that x is slower than y" means not that x > is faster-than something (which one might have wanted it to mean), > but that x is at least as fast as everything (which one would > rarely wish to express). Though, I don't understand why the most useless and counterintuitive rules of precedence were chosen for combining the ellipsis and the negation. I would have bound the negation tighter than the existential quantifying. For example "not bluer-than" becomes "there exist a y such that it is false that x is bluer-than y". If this is supposed to be the distinction between "scalar negation" and "logical negation", I believe that "scalar negation" is much more useful to me. If that is the distinction between scalar & logicial negation, I believe that what I can say with logical negation is a proper subset of what I can say with scalar. If that is not the difference, then I am more comfortable with the use of logical negation but still fuzzy about the distinction. I find that a great many interesting distinctions can be expressed if both the listener and speaker can binding the negation at various levels of the structure being expressed. Double negatives only cancel if there is nothing intervening. "I saw nothing on the road ahead" is significantly different from "I did not see anything on the road ahead". I expect that all implied components of my speech will be understood in the full context of what I have said. This rule is violated by the existential quantification occurring before the negation. The negation was stated. The existential quantication (EQ) was implied. The implied EQ must applied to the entirety of what was explicitly stated. thank you all, Art Protin PS. I sorry if this rambles a little. Arthur Protin STANDARD DISCLAIMER: The views expressed are strictly those of the author and are in no way indictative of his employer, customers, or this installation.