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Date:         Tue, 28 Nov 1995 16:44:04 -0500
Reply-To: Jorge Llambias <jorge@PHYAST.PITT.EDU>
Sender: Lojban list <LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET>
From: Jorge Llambias <jorge@PHYAST.PITT.EDU>
Subject:      Re: Fuzzy Fallacies
To:         lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu, jorge@minerva.phyast.pitt.edu
Status: OR

> >Fundamentally, in Lojban, when you talk of George being tall, you are
> >*also* saying "by standard x4".  There is always a standard.
>
> Is it possible that some standards would be black-and-white and others would
> be fuzzy?  One standard could be "is over 5 feet" and another might be "the
> degree to which ke'a's height impresses me".

It would be interesting to know what exactly is supposed to go in a
place for a standard. Are any of these right:

        ko'a condi fo mi
        Koha is deep/tall by standard me.

        ko'a condi fo leka ke'a zmadu lo mitre be li papimu
        Koha is deep/tall by standard being more than a length of 1.5m

        ko'a condi fo lo'e remna
        Koha is deep/tall by standard the average human.

It seems to me that they can't all be right, and I'm not sure whether
any of them can be right. Is the standard place a place for the person
making the evaluation, for a property that the evaluated object has, for
an exemplar against which the object being evaluated is compared, or for
something else? I have the impression that I've seen all of these as
examples of standards, but it doesn't make sense to have them all in
the same place.

I believe all standard places should be removed, since there doesn't seem
to be any way of knowing which gismu have them and which don't, other
than looking them up. Why do {condi} and {zasni} have a standard place but
{gleki} and {sutra} don't? It is all very arbitrary, and the different
kinds of standards can always be added as needed.

Jorge