Message-Id: <199508272017.QAA14334@locke.ccil.org>
Date:         Sat, 26 Aug 1995 15:39:39 EDT
Reply-To: jorge@PHYAST.PITT.EDU
Sender: Lojban list <LOJBAN%CUVMB.BITNET@PSUVM.PSU.EDU>
From: jorge@PHYAST.PITT.EDU
Subject:      Re: lo la orwel selspuda be la xorxes
To: John Cowan <cowan@LOCKE.CCIL.ORG>
Status: OR

And:
> > > Which means "The whole of persondom is mutually socially-equal,
> > > but some of it is more mutually socially-equal than something
> > > else is".
> > I think that is more likely for "some are more equal than others"
> > than your version.
> Ah yes, but is it what Orwell would have used if he'd been writing
> Lojban?

Yes, definitely!  :)

> > You understand it as meaning "for some X and some Y: X is equal
> > to Y more than Y is equal to X".
> > But the English version does not use "equal" as a two place
> > predicate. It uses it as a one place predicate, and says that
> > everyone satisfies it, but some do so more than others.
> I realize now that I may always have misunderstood the Orwell quote.

Probably not.

> I've always understood it as paradoxical (as reflected in my rendition),
> with "equal" being perverted in meaning, but on your reading it allows
> for the mass of humanity to be on a fairly equal level, but for some
> parts of humanity to be further away from that average level - "people
> are on a par with each other to a greater or lesser extent".

Which is still perverted in meaning. I didn't mean to say that the way
I interpreted makes more sense. I think that the idea is to use
the pattern "Everybody is X, but some are more X than others", which
makes perfect sense for some properties, but not for "equal".

> The English version uses "equal" as a two-place, not a one-place
> predicate.

Not on the surface: It says "all people are equal", and not "all
people are equal to everyone else". I agree that the meaning is
practically the same, but for the second part to work, it needs
a one-place predicate.

> "Equality" is meaningless unless its a suore-place predicate.

Not really. Just like "...are brothers" is not meaningless as a one
place predicate. The x1 has to be a mass, but it is still one-place.

> The adjective has no prepositional complement (to); instead it is
> used in a "reciprocal" construction which requires the subject to
> refer to a set such that Ax,Ay if x and y are in the set & x is not y,
> then predicate(x,y). (I am highly skeptical that the equivalent job
> should be done by a predicate, simxu, in Lojban.)

Why not? What else could {simxu} be used for?

In any case, you have to stretch "some are more equal than others"
in order to get it to mean that some are such that their equality to
another is more that that one's equality to the first. I just can't
get that meaning from "some are more equal than others". The fallacy
lies in taking "equal" as a predicate that applies to individuals, but
not in taking it as a one place predicate, which is the only way that
"some are more X than others" can work.

Jorge