From jorge@PHYAST.PITT.EDU  Sat Mar  6 22:45:20 2010
Date:         Tue, 23 May 1995 14:37:35 EDT
From: jorge@PHYAST.PITT.EDU
Subject:      Re: Components of a mass (was: Quantifiers)
To: Bob LeChevalier <lojbab@access.digex.net>
X-From-Space-Date: Tue May 23 19:11:50 1995
X-From-Space-Address: LOJBAN%CUVMB.BITNET@uga.cc.uga.edu
Message-ID: <bpGkn8kaHQG.A.z8E.Au0kLB@chain.digitalkingdom.org>

la djan. cusku di'e
>  > Masses don't have discrete "elements", they have components.

pe'i ro lo se gunma be loi nanmu cu nanmu

>  > (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.

There is a much more crucial distinction between sets and masses. Masses
have the same type of properties of their components, while sets have
totally disparate properties.

>  > 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.)

You can of course dissect them like that. You can dissect the whole mass
of them, or even just one of them. What you get after such butchering
are {pagbu be lei do mlatu}. But {lei do mlatu cu gunma re da no'u la maks
e la fredis}

la dilyn cusku di'e
> For physical objects, there's a possible way out that you mentioned
> (considering dividing the matter up arbitrarily); but I don't think
> even that works terribly well.  After all, a cat is much more than the
> collection of atoms contained in it.

Precisely. And if you get down to that level things become absurd.
Molecules are constantly entering and leaving the cat, are they part
of the mass? I think it is a mistake to confound material composition
with referential composition. {lei ci remna} has one referent, formed
by three components, to which we could eventually refer individually.
The material composition of those referents may or may not be of
interest, as well as what material parts of them we may want to
individuate (e.g. the nose). But material composition is not any more
to be evidenced by reference than spiritual composition, or the
composition of properties, or whatever. {le remna joi le ri nazbi}
"the man and his nose" is a different entity from {le remna} alone,
even if materially they share the same atoms.

> If it's true, as you say in the refgrammar, that "every property of a
> piece is also a property of the whole",

I don't agree with that.

> and it's also true that
> arbitrary slicing is allowed, you end up with some very odd things
> indeed--for instance, it would have to be true that {lei mlatu cu
> rebla}, which seems like nonsense to me.

And other nonsense like {lei mlatu pu zvati le solri}, since certainly
some of the energy of their atoms came from there.

> What you say in the
> refgrammar ("Using the mass descriptor "lei" signals that ordinary
> logical reasoning is not applicable") seems like an utter cop-out to
> me.  We can do better than that in defining the meaning of masses,
> can't we?

Certainly we can. I don't see anything illogical about masses.

> Intuitively, it seems to me that it's _not_ true in general that the
> properties of the individuals extend to the mass, but rather that a
> property of the mass has to involve all the individuals in some way.
> Are there problems with this?

That's what I think, too.

Jorge