From lojban-out@lojban.org Fri Jun 02 13:44:31 2006 Return-Path: X-Sender: lojban-out@lojban.org X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (qmail 65103 invoked from network); 2 Jun 2006 20:42:07 -0000 Received: from unknown (66.218.66.217) by m22.grp.scd.yahoo.com with QMQP; 2 Jun 2006 20:42:07 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO chain.digitalkingdom.org) (64.81.49.134) by mta2.grp.scd.yahoo.com with SMTP; 2 Jun 2006 20:42:07 -0000 Received: from lojban-out by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.62) (envelope-from ) id 1FmGSP-0003FA-I0 for lojban@yahoogroups.com; Fri, 02 Jun 2006 13:41:21 -0700 Received: from chain.digitalkingdom.org ([64.81.49.134]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.62) (envelope-from ) id 1FmGQM-0003DD-1i; Fri, 02 Jun 2006 13:39:16 -0700 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-list); Fri, 02 Jun 2006 13:39:02 -0700 (PDT) Received: from nobody by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.62) (envelope-from ) id 1FmGPr-0003Cc-Nf for lojban-list-real@lojban.org; Fri, 02 Jun 2006 13:38:43 -0700 Received: from web81301.mail.mud.yahoo.com ([68.142.199.117]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with smtp (Exim 4.62) (envelope-from ) id 1FmGPp-0003CU-Ae for lojban-list@lojban.org; Fri, 02 Jun 2006 13:38:43 -0700 Received: (qmail 3046 invoked by uid 60001); 2 Jun 2006 20:38:37 -0000 Message-ID: <20060602203837.3044.qmail@web81301.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Received: from [70.237.215.142] by web81301.mail.mud.yahoo.com via HTTP; Fri, 02 Jun 2006 13:38:37 PDT Date: Fri, 2 Jun 2006 13:38:37 -0700 (PDT) In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Spam-Score: -0.6 (/) X-archive-position: 11709 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Errors-to: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: clifford-j@sbcglobal.net X-list: lojban-list X-Spam-Score: -0.6 (/) To: lojban@yahoogroups.com X-Originating-IP: 64.81.49.134 X-eGroups-Msg-Info: 2:3:4:0 X-eGroups-From: John E Clifford From: John E Clifford Reply-To: clifford-j@sbcglobal.net Subject: [lojban] Re: A (rather long) discussion of {all} X-Yahoo-Group-Post: member; u=116389790; y=j2OmqMbB0zMXGVO6C5EAHJ9yvzYZfWWI4VYVB_YsLj4nI08Mlg X-Yahoo-Profile: lojban_out X-Yahoo-Message-Num: 26129 Well, it is nice to find that I am not the only person who can get involved in interminable discussions with xorxes. But I now find myself sympathizing with those who do not participate, for reading the sixty-odd salvoes fired while I was away is very frustrating (yet I can’t bring myself to just skip them). Part of the frustration is in seeing people arguing past one another, abusing language (both English and Lojban), and so on – and not being able to jump in and set them straight. Since I generally agree with xorxes in this discussion (mirabile dictu), I tend to see the flaws in Maxim’s position most clearly, but I am sure the other participant is guilty as well. Herewith some comments as I have been catching up (not that I am done yet, so excuse me if some things I say are dealt with more recrntly than where I read the problems). The shuffling around about “context,” which is often used, it seems to me, as a way not to deal with issues by taking the term in one sense when it clearly was meant (to the Gricean collaborative interlocutor) in another, is unfortunate. The split between context and setting does not seem to illuminate much and also seems to leave out important factors (background knowledge, for example, which is neither in the words nor the physical environment). Yes, to humor Maxim, it would be strategic to try, when relevant, to use “setting,” but, on the other hand, there is the general obligation to understand what your fellow discussant is saying and respond to that, even if the wording is not up to your standard. “Ambiguous” does not mean “capable of more than one interpretation;” it means “having more than one meaning,” which is similar in most cases, but not the same. It, like vaguenss, is situational: an expression may be ambiguous or vague in one situation and not in another, even though the “ambiguous” one may be capable of several interpretations in both (the capability just not being called upon in one). Vagueness is just not being precise enough – for whatever the prupose at hand is. When you are planning what to do against a threat, saying the threat is an animal may be vague, but it is not ambiguous between dogs and elephants, even if those are the possible animals involved, since “animal” doesn’t mean “dog” nor “elephant” (nor is it capable of these interpretations). (The dictionary citations start out talking about interpretations but have to get down to meanings almost immediately, since “interpretation” gets them off into poetry, which is not strictly ambiguous.) Ambiguity is about meaning, not reference. In a similar way, {lo broda} is not ambiguous between brodas predicated of collectively and brodas predicated of distributively; it just refers to the brodas. How they are predicated of depends upon what the predicate is and how it is related to them. (I agree with Maxim that the place for the information about how a bunch of things is predicated of does not belong in the gadri but in some attachment ot the sumti or the predicate or somewhere in between (like “together” and “individually” in English). As far as I can tell, xorxes does not disagree. But the fact is that there is no way to do this in Lojban (yet) and so we must hobble on with what we have, despite the gaps and problems it leaves. If it is important to note that the predication is collective and that is not obvious from context, then use {loi}, otherwise {lo} is sufficient. To be sure, the rpredication will, in fact, be one way or the other, but we don’t have to say so – anymore than we have to say that the dog biting us is black if want someone to get it off us. finding a good way to deal correctly with predication type seems to me an issue worth discussing, as the present one does not.) {lo broda} refers to brodas (I would say “a bunch of brodas” but xorxes gets all metaphysical about that expression, even though it does not force the entity interpretation in English and the logic of both interpretations is the same). An internal quantifier says how many brodas are involved (I know that CLL says that it says how many brodas there are, but CLL was out of datr several years before it got published and we are just not correcting it.) In {lo ro broda} that number is everything that counts as a broda. This does not mean that {lo ro broda} means “all the relevant brodas” (or some such), since that suggests that there are irrelevant brodas that aren’t coverd. But there aren’t. To be sure, we can bring in – create within the world of the conversation, if you will – more brodas, but they aren’t there until we do. I take it that one of Maxim’s problem is how to inform the partners in this conversation that we have created these new objects of discussion. His suggestion for one extreme case: using {lo ro broda} to bring in all the brodas that are or might be or …, does not work, since, as he admits, 1) there does not really seem to be such a supply of brodas to bring in and 2) even if there were, it is (almost?) never what we want to bring in. The question is legitimate, but the answer seems to be that we do it in Lojban as we do in English (etc.) : we say something that we thinmk will trigger the understanding of the others. If it does not, we say something else, usually more precise. And we keep at it until we get the result we want (or say “To Hell with it!”). Mayhap a logical language ought to have a better device, no better device has yet emerged, unless it is to start off using the expression we would have used that achieved the desired result. But that is hard to predict, so we work through the possibilities in order, since saying more than is needed is a uncooperative as saying too little and stopping. There is a kind of object-meta muddle going on here, the above bit about the meaning of {lo ro broda} (and, I suppose, even of {lo broda}, though less so) being an example. What {lo ro broda} means is “all brodas.” Within the conversation that is all the brodas within the conversation, but we can only say it this way from outside the conversation, where (in a larger conversation, as it were) we recognize that there are brodas that are not covered -- one capable of being brought into the conversation, perhaps. But this does not imply that {lo ro broda} means “all the brodas in the conversation.” Indeed, it cannot, since “in the conversation” is meaningless within the conversation, where meaning is first determined. That is, you cannot refer to the object language in the object language (in any transparent way, anyhow) and so cannot bring metalinguistic comments down into the determination of meaning within that language. Sets, masses and the like. I agree with xorxes that C-sets have no role to play in Lojban outside of discussions of set theory (something that has yet to occur) and that {lo’i} and the like either have no role to play correlative with their length or have some use not yet established (I would suggest corporate entities, if {loi} can’t be shifted over to them once the predication issue gets dealt with). The same seems to me to apply to “mass,” although in this case because the word may mean any of several things and is actually ambiguous in most uses in the word lists and CLL. For most of the uses of set-language and mass-language, reference to (a bunch of) brodas is sufficient, if the corresponding logic is understood and applied. Indeed, reading both “set” and “mass” in this way is about the only one that makes sense of many of the things said. The use of “set” was a response to the need to deal with plurality when there was no better means available (or at least known) in logic. The use of “mass” is too muddled to account for but most of the apparent factors have been pulled out in the notion of collective predication once the fuller logic became available (known). Outer quantifiers. I am conflicted on this. CLL makes it clear that, just as the primary referent of {lo broda} is all brodas, in context {lo broda} refers to some (not necessarily all) of those brodas. I now think that {lo broda} primarily some brodas (no necessarily all) and that {lo robroda} in context refers to all of them (cf. {le broda} in CLL). I do not think, however, that that means that {lo broda} has an implicit quantifier -- either internal {su’o} or external {ro}, though I have less trouble with the internal one. The external quantifier, if necessarily present, would force me to take {lo broda} as being distributively predicated (in fact, distributivity is defined by means of the universal quantifier) and I want {lo broda} just to refer to the brodas involved, regardless of how various things are predicated of them. It seems to me that any other external quantifer would have the same effect, forcing distributivity, whereas the internal quantifier does not: it just counts the brodas referred to. So, {ro lo broda} is very different from {lo ro broda}: the first is distributive and need not refer to all brodas, the second is not yet committed on mode of predication andd does refer to all brodas. The argument about whether there is a thing over and above the students when the students surround the building is the worst kind of vacuous metaphysics against which the Logical Positivist were ever warning us. The point is: it doesn’t matter which way you say it or even which way you think it, the logic is exactly the same (though what picture you have in your head when you see certain expressions may be different, but language is not about the pictures in your head -- the fact that you see it as a new entity doesn’t mean there is a new entity there andy more than the fact you don’t see one means that it isn’t there). In natural languages we regularly switch back and forth between the two locutions: “several students”/ “a group of students,” without any significant change in meaning. If you ask a ordinary person whether “a group of three students walked down the street” meant that four things (the students and their group) walked down the street, he would quite rightly think you were a bit more than tetched. To be sure, the two locutions “three students” and “a group of three students” have different grammars (one is plural, the other singular, for example) but they do not have different logics (as McKay eventually admits, after having talked entity language: “plurality” and the like, for many chapters). It has dawned on me slowly that the problem I am having with Maxim is that he is trying to teach Grandma to suck eggs, a proverbial form of chutzpah. As far as I can tell, he has been working with Lojban for only a couple of months; xorxes has been producing paradigm Lojan text for a decade or so. So Maxim telling xorxes that xorxes doesn’t understand what the Lojban says or is saying something improper in Lojban immediately strikes one as simple arrogance. That does not, of course, mean that it is wrong, but it does mean that Maxim has to give really good arguments for his case. Of course, he was under that obligation from the beginning, since he is the one proposing changes. So far as I can see, his arguments have not met the challenge. The one that brought this home to me seems particularly bad. Briefly it seems to be collective predication creates an entity that does the work of the members together and that entity cannot be referred to by {lo broda}, since that is needed to refer to the distributive situation, and so a sentence which uses {lo broda}as subject of both a distributive and a collective predicate is improper. But, of course, neither of the first two clauses has been established (and, indeed, it looks almost as if the claimed impropriety of the sentence were taken as evidence for them) and thre conclusion holds only if the first two are established (but not even then necessarily). To be sure, CLL, written in antiquity, logically speaking, does tend not to be clear about where the distributive/collective distinction lies, placing it in the entities, as we might now say, rather than in the predicates and so Maxim is to that extent justified in speaking of these entities as significantly different. But he seems not to have absorbed the lesson that this difference is merely a manner of speaking, not a reality that forces some linguistic feature. Indeed, even if he does hold that the students form a new entity, he has not shown that that new entity cannot be predicated of in two different ways and thus allow one reference to it to serve as subject to two predications of different mode (the fact that set theory doesn’t allow these other predications directly does not mean they don’t occur and deserve representation: indeed, we could do the whole of the {lo} discussion in terms of non-empty C-sets as well as plural logic or L-sets). The argument actually goes tother way round: since the sentence with {lo broda} as subject to both predications is proper (ones of this sort are in the accepted lojban corpus), it follows that {lo broda} of itself does not indicate mode of predication. To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to lojban-list-request@lojban.org with the subject unsubscribe, or go to http://www.lojban.org/lsg2/, or if you're really stuck, send mail to secretary@lojban.org for help.