Message-Id: <m0snTPT-0000ZJC@xiron.pc.helsinki.fi>
Date:         Tue, 29 Aug 1995 12:19:29 EDT
Reply-To:     jorge@PHYAST.PITT.EDU
Sender:       Lojban list <LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET>
From:         jorge@PHYAST.PITT.EDU
Subject:      Re: egality etc
To:         lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu
Content-Length: 4313
Lines: 92

And:
> > He meant "more equal"
> > suggesting "superior", which is not precisely closer to the mode.
> First, that's why my Lojban version says "X is more equal to Y than
> Y is to X", which implies "equal" is asymmetric, perverted to
> "superior:inferior".

But in Orwell's phrase asymmetry never comes up. It's similar to
"X loves more than Y", where at no point is it relevant to the
comparison how much X loves Y or Y loves X. The comparison is between
a property of X and a property of Y. Y does not enter in evaluating
the property for X, and X does not enter in evaluating the property
for Y.

> Second, if one group is deviates further from
> the mean in length or social status then that entails that some members
> of the group are superior to others.

Yes, but whereas in that case the superior ones are among the most
deviant, in Orwell's phrase, the more equal (which would be the least
deviant) are supposed to be superior. So I don't think "more equal"
here has anything to do with deviation from the mean.

(At least I always understood that the "more equal" were the pigs,
not the rest.)

> You can read Orwell's epigram
> as saying "All animals are equal, but equality is a matter of degree".

I agree that that is the message, (i.e. all animals are equal, but we
the powerful ones decide how to interpret "equal" in that nice phrase),
and the way Orwell achieves that meaning is by treating "equal" in the
second part as a property like "happy" or "rich" rather than as a
reciprocal property, which is what makes sense for the first part of
the sentence.

> And the Orwell pattern means either "Everyone is of equal status
> to each other but da someone can exceed someone else in status"

Right, which is patently contradictory when expressed like that, it
is nothing more than nonsense. On the other hand, when you say it
like Orwell did, it seems to make some sort of sense.

> or "All groups of people exhibit egality, but some groups of people
> exhibit egality to a greater extent than other groups of people do".

I don't think you can read it like that. The first part doesn't
really say that all animals are equal only to other members within
their class. It is possible to understand "all animals are equal: pigs
are equal to pigs and sheep are equal to sheep. But this is not the
reading that the second part suggests. What would it mean, in that
context, to say that pigs are more equal than sheep? That there is
less deviation among the pigs? Nothing to do with the "superior"
implication that the phrase has.

> > My point is that for the _second sentence_ to make sense, "equal"
> > has to be taken as one-place, because "more" is comparing some
> > people to others, and not a relationship going one way or the other
> > way between a given pair of arguments.
> I don't see why. "Some people are more reluctant than others" doesn't
> turn reluctance into a one-place;

For our purposes it does. It is not comparing the people with what
they are reluctant about. My problem is that you want to use X equals Y
and also at the same time compare X and Y.

"X is more equal than Y" does not suggest (at least to me) that
X is equal to Y. Just like "X is more reluctant than Y" does not
suggest that X is reluctant to do Y. The fact that "equal" may have
a second place left unspecified doesn't mean that Y has to fill
that second place. "X is more P( , ) than Y" does not mean that
P(X,Y) exceeds P(Y,X), it only means that P(X, ) exceeds P(Y, ).

> it just leaves the second place
> unspecified. I'm also not sure that the second sentence is supposed to
> make sense; maybe it's supposed only to sound as though it made sense.

I think so too. The reading of "more equal" as "closer to the mean" is
not the intended one. The intended one is as "better", by analogy with
other "good" properties. "Equal" is a "good" property, but it doesn't
work like other "good" properties like "happy", "strong", "pretty",
"rich", "nice", "good", etc, even though the pigs would have us believe
it does.

> > (a) {dunli} is a suhore-place Lojban predicate.
>                    ^^^^^^
> Have I succeeded in subverting Lojban orthography at last then?

Not at all! I was using "suhore" as an English word, a borrowing
from Lojban. I also usually write "selmaho", "lehavla", etc. in English.

Jorge