Message-Id: <m0t0QuU-0000ZUC@xiron.pc.helsinki.fi>
Date:         Wed, 4 Oct 1995 06:17:43 -0400
Reply-To:     Logical Language Group <lojbab@ACCESS.DIGEX.NET>
Sender:       Lojban list <LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET>
From:         Logical Language Group <lojbab@ACCESS.DIGEX.NET>
Subject:      Re: tense conversions
To:           Veijo Vilva <veion@XIRON.PC.HELSINKI.FI>
Content-Length: 1665
Lines: 31

>> But someone making such a claim is not lying, because claims about the
>> future are not lies.  This is a fact about claims, not about the future.
>> To lie is to say what you know is not true, and since you don't know the
>> future (even though the world-line model presumes that the future is
>> knowable), any claim with "ba" or "pu'o" cannot be a lie unless it
>> claims something that you now know to be impossible.
>
>It's about 'lying', not about tenses. In discussion above we (I, at
>least) use formal logic meaning of 'lie' - 'to express something that is
>not true', independent of knowledge, intentions etc..


I agree that statements about the future may be pragmatically acceptible
even though they could be false predictions.  By our conventions, a question
is logically false if the answer is negative.  Similarly the antecedent of
a conditional canbe false, but it is not a lie to state that antecedent.

Thus I am inclined to accept the ruling that it doesn't matter whether the
ball actually falls off the table (BTW it still falls if it is caught before
it hits the ground - you'd have to prevent it from going of the edge %^).
What matters is that the speaker is intensionally viewing the falling-off-of-
the-table as a complete event.

I think that this interpretation is necessary, because in the case of an
open-ended event (one with no defined beginning or end), you can still think
of it as a complete event.  i.e., one could talk about God's actions
"pu'o lo munje" before the creation of the universe, without implying that
the event which is the universe ever completing or terminating.  (I meant
"pu'o munje" with no "lo").

lojbab