Message-Id: <m0rBvIc-00007EC@xiron.pc.helsinki.fi>
Date:         Mon, 28 Nov 1994 01:52:49 +0000
Reply-To:     ucleaar <ucleaar@UCL.AC.UK>
Sender:       Lojban list <LOJBAN%CUVMB.bitnet@FINHUTC.hut.fi>
From:         ucleaar <ucleaar@UCL.AC.UK>
Subject:      Re: lohe, lehe & ka
To:           Veijo Vilva <veion@XIRON.PC.HELSINKI.FI>
In-Reply-To:  (Your message of Sun, 27 Nov 94 16:14:55 EST.)
Content-Length: 2598
Lines: 65

Jorge:
> > If you agree that "lohe" works as a kind of default universal quantifier
> > (i.e. not falsified by exceptions), and you still think "lohe" will
> > serve for your "xehe", then I would be glad to go along with you
> > for the time being.
> Not only not falsified by exceptions, but not even required to be verified
> by a single instance. The claim with {lo'e}, at least the part relating
> to it, is not necessarily instantiatable. {lo'e cinfa cu xabju la afrikas}
> claims nothing about particular instances of lions.

I agree.

> > But I foresee problems: "I'm looking for a book (to prop open the
> > door with". If you use "mi sisku lohe cukta", I would interpret
> > this as implying "every average unexceptional nondeviant book is
> > sought by me".
>
> I wouldn't. For me it doesn't claim anything about any particular
> instance of book. You would then interpret it as a claim about myriads
> of events, one for each unexceptional book?

It doesn't *claim* anything about any *particular* instance of book.
It *implies* something about instances of book *in general*. This is
because "lohe" gets its properties by "averageing out" (usually with
modal rather than mean average) the properties of its instances.

> > But this is not so: there are zillions of books
> > not sought by me, and it would be inappropriate to insert in the
> > Encyclopaedia Britannica entry for Book the information that I
> > was looking for one to prop open my door.
>
> Who says you have to write in the entry for Book everything that can be
> claimed about {lo'e cukta}?  Does the entry for London tell about what
> happened in one of its buildings on May 27th just after lunch?

Well if that is a fact about London, it would go in the ideal encyclopedia.

> > The problem is that *all* the properties of class generics are emergent.
> > If lo dodo was called Fritz, then loi dodo was called fritz, but
> > class-generic dodo wasn't called Fritz.
>
> loi dodo was called Fritz, but piro loi dodo wasn't.

I find this stuff very mindboggling, but I recall from long ago
John Cowan explaining this. I think (tentatively) that piro loi
dodo *is* called Fritz.

> Unless you mean that if I eat an apple, I'm eating the whole mass of
> apples?

I think that's how it is.

> What's the difference then between eating the whole mass and
> eating half the mass?

ro lo plise versus pimu ro lo plise, I guess.

> I disagree that all properties of the members
> are properties of the mass, if that is what you are saying.

Well I am saying this, but in my defence I do think it Came From On
High.

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And