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Date: Tue, 9 May 2006 22:05:21 -0600
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From: "Maxim Katcharov" <lojban-out@lojban.org>
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Subject: [lojban] Re: Usage of lo and le
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On 5/9/06, Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 5/9/06, Maxim Katcharov <maxim.katcharov@gmail.com> wrote:
> > I understand this and see the utility. But I also see a major problem:
> > this approach makes it so that Lojban has no way to refer to all bears
> > specifically (specifically as in the opposite of vague in "in Lojban
> > you can express things as specifically or vaguely as you'd like").
>
> I did a Google search for "the price of infinite precision" and among
> other things came up with this: <http://satirist.org/whale/2001/09/24-clue.html>
> What is that about, does anyone understand?
>
> Anyway, you can be as precise as you want to, if you are willing
> to pay the price.

Well, the point is that you /can/ be as precise as you want to. In the
pen example, I restrict fully, right down to that single pen that I'm
thinking of, using {ro __ ro vica cu penbi}. There's no need to be
"infinitely" precise here: three words (ro, vi, penbi) do the job
completely. In fact, if you do choose the road of restricting it
yourself by using an inner ro, I doubt that you have much to worry
about in most cases. But if a hard case comes along, well, you'd
probably let context do it, but at least you /have/ a way to properly
and fully restrict, if you want to.

>
> The idea that a relevance-independent absolute {ro} makes sense at all,
> in any case, is doubtful. Even for natural kinds, let alone for things with less
> clear prototypes. Would you say, for example, that every bear was born
> to a bear? If yes, how can that be? If not, how can that be?
>

Of course it's useless when it's something so general. But I'm
probably not going to be making any statements about all bears (and if
I was, I'd probably be using "the definition of bear is..." instead).
But what if I want to restrict down to "all bears that are in that
cage", or "all buildings on my street"? This sort of
complete-restriction is used all the time!

I don't understand what you mean by "relevance-independant".

> > What if context overwhelmingly favors three bears? For example, three
> > bears are chasing us -- I say {__ __ ro cribe}, and obviously I mean
> > all these three bears, right? But what if my intent is to say "all
> > bears can't climb trees"? (however wrong I may be.) I have no proper
> > (and consistent) way to say this, because in this case using an inner
> > {ro} clearly would default it to "all of the bears chasing us here-now
> > can't climb trees", which is not what I want to say.
>
> Some strategies that you might use: {lo ro sai cribe} (a more intense {ro}
> than might be expected), {lo ro cai cribe} (an extremely intense {ro}),
> {lo ro cribe poi zasti}, {lo ro cribe poi zasti gi'a xanri}, etc.
>

Well, aside from the sheer strangeness of "an extremely intense 'all'
", there can still be examples provided where that "intense all" still
wouldn't, by context, mean "all bears". It seems like a very imprecise
way to do it. In your last example, the zasti and xanri restrictions
wouldn't do much if that "ro" doesn't restrict to them completely. I
really do think that my suggestion, {L_ cribe} = "all bears in
context" (instead of defaulting to unacceptable {ro} or ambiguous
{su'o}) is a good one for consideration.


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