Date: Sat, 20 Dec 1997 13:25:14 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199712201825.NAA24531@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: Logical Language Group Sender: Lojban list From: Logical Language Group Subject: djuno and ce'u X-To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan Status: OR X-Mozilla-Status: 0001 Content-Length: 7756 X-From-Space-Date: Sat Dec 20 13:25:17 1997 X-From-Space-Address: LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU >> but thatmay be because I do not understand ce'u, NOT because I don't >> understand ka. > >If you don't understand ce`u then I don't see how you can understand ka. I understand what the effect of ce'u is in the examples wherein it appears in the Book. I have not been able to extract a concept of ce'u that allows me to consider whether it might apply to some other situations and have a lot of confidence. But of course once we go beyond the Book, there is no prescription. >> >I suggest: >> > >> > mi zanru le ka ce`u nu melbi >> > >> >for the meaning you want. >> >> No. having thought of it, I think the ce'u-in-all-places is more >> valid, because I think of ka bridi as multi-aspectual. > >I think both are possible, and subtly different. Which one is more >appropriate depends, I feel, on why exactly you approve of it. My default, unless there is a place structure reason to favor selecting one place (as in x3 of zmadu) is to favor no place (or all places). This seems quite Lojbanic to me. It may be a different generalization of ce'u+ka than John seems to have, but I don't think that the Book goes into it at this level of detail. >> What is not clear to >> me is whether ce'u in all places is ENOUGH, or whether we need ce'u in all >> places plus all possible tcita sumti. > >How do you mean "all possible tcita sumti"? All possible sumti? Yes. But remember that in addition to all enumerated places of a bridi, there are an infinite number of possible tense and BAI and FIhO tagged sumti that can be attached to a bridi, and all of them could be ce'u-filled as well. When I think of properties of a RELATION (which is the core meaning of ka) I am by implication thinking about all of these. This is not particularly easy to do in English, and I think the transferrence to single ce'u ka is based on thinking in English. But I suspect that poets who talk of the "universal ideas" that tend to be capitalized, like Truth and Beauty are not thinking about single-ce'u kas. >> It sounds like you are saying that we have another bloogy sumti raising here >> and that nu is no better than du'u. Are you saying that we need >> >> mi zanru lenu ledu'u broda cu jetnu >> or of course >> mi zanru tu'a ledu'u broda >> ? > >Well, yes. But I think > > mi zanru lenu ledu'u broda cu jetnu > >is pretty much equivalent to > > mi zanru lenu broda It is a semantic inference. And in Lojban, semantic inferences are not (generally) prescribed. On the other hand >> If I approve of something, then I approve of it being a true >> proposition. > >That's not *necessarily* so, unless you mean it as a claim about >your personal approval criteria. This sounds like a contradiction of what you just said above about their supposed equivalence. >> >x2 of djuno = fact = true proposition. >> >du`u = proposition. >> >> But then here it seems that you are saying that the x2 of djuno must >> similarly be marked: >> >> mi djuno lenu ledu'u broda cu jetnu >> >> because you have said that a mere ledu'u is not a true proposition. >> But then a lenu ledu'u is not a true porposition either. > >{djuno ko`a} entails that ko`a is (a) a proposition, and (b) true. > >There is nothing wrong with {ko`a djuno le du`u broda}, but it claims >that (a) ko`a believes le du`u broda, and (b) le du`u broda is true. > There is nothing about the nature of Lojban that requires x2 of djuno to be a true proposition. There seems to be something about your interpretation of djuno (or maybe even the English "know") that presumes that something known is "true". The only basis internal to the language that I can see for such an assumption is that the x4 place, epistemology, combined with the x2 place, resembles that of jetnu. Otherwise you are projecting the semantics of English or something else onto the Lojban. I of course believe that there is no prescribed semantics for any of the places - the semantics is inferrable from usage and syntax. The syntax is prescribed and in some cases there are prescriptions for usage. But I resist extending those prescriptions by analysis without actual usage. Anything decided beyond the prescription must be description. >[Yes yes yes I realize that (b) might in fact be a presupposition rather >than a claim, but that's another story.] No it isn't. It's a major point. se djuno != jetnu. There are two other places involved, one of which, the knower, is prone to subjectivity. >> How does zanru differ from djuno? If I know something, then I know >> that it is a true proposition. > >Not exactly: If you know something, then (a) it is true, and >(b) you believe it to be true. This is not even true for English. To be seasonal, many people "know" that "Christ was born on Christmas Day", even though there is considerable evidence even in the scriptural accounts that suggest otherwise. The scholars who interpret otherwise, and who know the history of the association of Christmas with Dec. 25, "know" that Christ was NOT born on Christmas Day. Neither of these is a "presupposition", but is belief supported by epistemologically valid evidence according to their particular epistemologies. But supported by evidence does not equal truth even within a single epistemology (and English of course does not acknowledge as Lojban does that truth is always based on epistemology). >I am not sure why {djuno} was made to be like {know} rather than >{believe}, but that's pretty clearly how things are now. I am not sure what you mean. We have "krici" for believe, which is identical in the first 3 places to djuno, but requires no epistemological place, because no epistemologically based evidence is required for belief. I think we have to clarify that there are many more than two distinctions possible in Lojban regarding "truth". The following take du'u fatci truth in the absolute jetnu true according to some epistemology se djuno known based on epistemology (but may not be true by other epistemologies - and the knower may be aware of this) se jinvi opined based on grounds se krici believed based on no grounds The following takes text or sedu'u bridi proposition text It seems to me that "approval" implies "truth" and "known" unless there is contextual counter-implication that the discussion is hypothetical. >> Whne I use ka (without ce'u) I am focussing on relationships, not on things. > >See my remarks about distinguishing prescription from personal >usage habits. > >> The properties (ka) of a proposition, are to me the relationships that make >> the proposition meaningful. > >That sounds interesting, but I don't understand it. Could you >try to say it again? See what I said above. Lojban predicates are in general multi-place. When one thinks about lo ka klama, one should be thinking about all 5 places by default, or otherwise someone is thinking about some kind of zi'o-filled derivative of klama. All of the relationships of the various places to each other and to the whole are part of what makes klama meaningful. I won't go so far as to say that single ce'u predicates are in effect putting zi'o in the unfilled places (which is NOT the LOjbanic assumption), but the way you are talking about ka seems that way to me. ---- lojbab lojbab@access.digex.net Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc. 2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273 Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: ftp.access.digex.net /pub/access/lojbab or see Lojban WWW Server: href="http://xiron.pc.helsinki.fi/lojban/" Order _The Complete Lojban Language_ - see our Web pages or ask me.