Message-Id: <m0qnAQF-00005XC@xiron.pc.helsinki.fi>
Date:         Tue, 20 Sep 1994 14:37:00 EDT
Reply-To:     jorge@PHYAST.PITT.EDU
Sender:       Lojban list <LOJBAN%CUVMB.bitnet@FINHUTC.hut.fi>
From:         Jorge Llambias <jorge@PHYAST.PITT.EDU>
Subject:      Re: Chief logician?
To:           Veijo Vilva <veion@XIRON.PC.HELSINKI.FI>
Content-Length: 1894
Lines: 53

[I still haven't received the post by lojbab to which Randall
is responding here]

> On your comments about negation, I have problems with terminology, but
> as far as I understand you I probably disagree flatly.  There is one
> concept of negation (the propositional connective) and then there are
> various other notions which NL's confuse with negation;

I agree.

> I would hate
> to think that you are importing NL confusions (more likely you are
> defining these other notions precisely and using them correctly and
> the only confusion is that you call them "negation" :-) ).

In fact, I think that's exactly what's going on.

For example, does Loglan have {na'e} = non-/other than ?

We can easily distinguish

        ta na blanu tanxe
        It is false that: that is a blue box.

        ta na'e blanu tanxe
        That is a non-blue box

and things like that.

I don't like calling {na'e} negation, and even less calling {to'e} negation
(to'e=opposite). But they are very useful.

> Explain by
> example what you mean by "metalinguistic" negation.

It's the answer to "Have you stopped beating your wife?"

Strictly logically, I think that {na} suffices, but that leaves the
wrong impression in some people.

> Of course I understand how logical connectives applied to arguments
> are eliminated!  The difficulty arises in expanding sentences when
> there is more than one such "argument" in it, and an answer I received
> seems to indicate that you have an official solution to this (good! --
> so far as I know, TLI Loglan does not) but that it goes contrary to
> the natural analogy with implicit quantification (not so good --
> explained fully in another post)

I'm not sure if there really was an official solution, since that
particular case is not explicitly mentioned in the connectives paper.
I agree that the opposite order to the one I suggested may be better.

Jorge