Message-Id: <199509251508.LAA28861@locke.ccil.org>
Date:         Mon, 25 Sep 1995 15:22:21 BST
Reply-To: Don Wiggins <dwiggins@BFSEC.BT.CO.UK>
Sender: Lojban list <LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET>
From: Don Wiggins <dwiggins@BFSEC.BT.CO.UK>
Subject:      Mu
To: John Cowan <cowan@LOCKE.CCIL.ORG>
Status: OR

> > "Mu" means 'I deny the premise of your question', i.e. I don't  beat my wife
> > (the set of events of I beating my wife is null).  Mu as I read about it
> > is supposed to be of Oriental origin and would be the appropriate response
> > to .i piro loi pavyjirna cu blanu vau
> >
> Except to say that _piro loi pavyseljirna_ probably has no
> presuppositions, the massification of the empty set is probably just the
> empty mass..  It is almost certainly not blue, however.

Aha!  To disprove ".i piro loi pavyseljirna cu blanu", one must needs to
come up with a counterexample - where is this unicorn which is not blue? ;-)

There is an inherent problem with proving assertions (hypotheses?) of this
nature.  The Medieval example was "All swans are white".  The scholar would
'prove' this by reasoning that since no one had ever seen a swan that was not
white, it was true that all swans are white.  Many years pass.  Australia
is discovered, along with the orange beaked, black swans native to that
continent.  The counter-example annihilates the assertion.

The presupposition that I imagine goes with _piro loi pavyseljirna_ is that
there is at one least one unicorn.

co'o mi'e dn.