From cowan@LOCKE.CCIL.ORG Sat Mar 6 22:45:19 2010 Date: Mon, 22 May 1995 12:44:32 -0400 From: John Cowan Subject: Components of a mass (was: Quantifiers) To: Bob LeChevalier X-From-Space-Date: Mon May 22 19:05:19 1995 X-From-Space-Address: LOJBAN%CUVMB.BITNET@uga.cc.uga.edu Message-ID: la xorxes. cusku di'e > I beg to disagree. {re lu'a le nanmu ku joi le ninmu ku joi le verba} > can't be "the man's ear and the woman's nose". The mass is composed of > three elements: the man, the woman and the child, and you are selecting > two of them. Neither the man's nose, nor the man's going to the market, > nor the man's grandparents are members of the mass. Otherwise, where do > you stop? Please don't invoke inalienable possession or anything like that. > Those are possessions of the mass, not its components. Masses don't have discrete "elements", they have components. (Sets have discrete elements.) The whole purpose of this distinction is that you can synthesize a mass in one way and analyze it in another. The mass of my cats can be dissected into the Max-component and the Freddie-component; but an equally meaningful dissection is into the heads-component, the legs-components, the trunks-component, and the tails-component. (Each of these components may themselves be viewed as masses, of course.) -- John Cowan cowan@ccil.org e'osai ko sarji la lojban.