From: M= ichael Turniansky <mturniansky@gmail.com>
To: lojban@googlegroups.com
Sent: Tue, May 17, 2011 10:55:30 AM
Subject: Re: [lojban] "lo no"

On Tue, May 17, 2011 at 10:43 AM, John E Cliffor= d <kali9putra@= yahoo.com> wrote:

Not to prolong the rhetoric, but, as is usually the case in this so= rt of argument, you are arguing from two different points. You = claim that since {no da [flying teapot]} may be true, {lo no [flying teapot= ]} must be a legitimate expression. tijlan is arguing that, since {lo= broda} requires that there be a broda and {lo no broda} would claim that t= here is not one, {no lo broda} must be an illegitimate expression.

(typo filter .. You obviously meant "lo no broda", but forgive = you and love you anyway)

Thanks! {no lo broda} is, of= course, always legitimate.

I suspect that you also regularly confuse being with existin= g, so that the fact that flying teapots do not exist is evidence that {lo b= roda} refers to nothing and thus {lo no broda} is legitimate. If I ha= ve misunderstood you, I apologize, but it seems to me that you are wrong on= all counts: the non-existence of flying teapots does not say anything abou= t whether there are any; they may be in the universe of discourse ("be") bu= t just not in the extension of "exists" (which is a predicate, at least in = Lojban).

Maybe, maybe not. But I'm trying to limit discussion to a= limited universe of discourse. In the case of flying teapots and tra= ined-assassins-that-I'm-sending-you, those that exist. In the case of= dogs, those that are in the room. We already know that xorlo permits= us to leave things to context, so that's the context I'm working in. = It is the cardinality of those, nomei, that I'm trying to ascertain. = For does the inner qualifier refer to, other than cardinality?

Well, yes and no back atcha. No matte= r how you limit the context initially, the flow of conversation may take yo= u out of it

(I remember a less with JCB which = was to be about objects in the room and almost immediately got off on= abstractions and never touched an object in the room for several hours).&n= bsp; One quick way to go out of it is to use {lo broda} (conditions!) when = there are not brodas in the original constraint. Once you do that, yo= u are caught in the paradox with {lo no broda}; you posit a nonempty [whate= ver] and then cannot truthfully or meaning fully say it is empty.

Since {no da broda} explicitly claims that there are no brodas (not= only that they don't exist) it is incompatible with the legitimacy of {lo = broda}, which is meaningful only if there are brodas. Indeed, the use= (in main clauses, say) of {lo broda} guarantees that there are broda and, = thus, that {no da broda} is false. In the logic of the situation, {lo= no broda} implies that there are broda, but it says there is a [whatever] = that contains none of them (and, presumably, nothing else neither). B= ut every [whatever] contains at least one thing, namely itself, and which, = furthermore, is a broda. So, the notion of {lo no broda} is simply co= ntradictory.

I see your point, since "lo ci broda cu broda" Where I do= n't think I agree is that I see "lo no broda cu broda", and "lo no bro= da cu to'e broda" as bothe being true. That is, the mass compose= d of the members of a null set is a weird beast where any broda= you stick in is irrelevant, since they all collapse onto the same thing --= a nothingness which simultaneously has every property in the universe exce= pt perhaps for "beingness" (whatever the heck that means) and "composed of = the members of set a with non-zero cardinality". You see it has havin= g only one property -- "self-contradictoriness" ;-)

I'm not at all clear why you would think that everythin= g is the of the empty set. It is, of course, (for C-sets) included in every set, but it is a member o= f relatively few and so has relatively few properties, probably not including broda nor to'e broda. Now, it is technically true that, if x is a member of the null set,&= nbsp; then x has whatever property you want, but that is true only because there are no such objects. = lo no broda, if it is anything, is an L-set, with a member and so the gene= ralization does not apply. The expression (not the set) is self contr= adictory, since it claims at once to be an L-set (and so have a member) and= yet to have no members. For the same reason the mass (I take that to= be your version of "[whatever]") of members of the null set (presumably a = C-set) does not exist, because a mass cannot have no members and so there i= s no such thing. And so, it has no properties at all. There is no referent of {lo no broda} and so {l= o no broda cu brode} is simply not a complete sentence, since it lacks a meaningful first term.

The only loose links here are the claim that the use of{lo broda} r= equires that there are brodas or that such expressions refer to [whatever]s= with the cited properties. But both of these are fundamental to xorl= o, which is, as I've said, about as official as anything here. You ca= n reject it, fo course, but that leaves you with the need to devise some ot= her scheme that solves the problems that xorlo solves without getting into = new ones. I'd welcome that attempt, but having worked at it for 35 ye= ars, I'm not very sanguine.

I don't reject it. On the other hand, I don't reject the C= LL's version of events, either. Nor do I think the formulation will c= ome up in ordinary conversation often enough to justify all the handwringin= g that's being done about it. Let me ask you a question -- would it m= ake things any easier if I said, "okay, I won't use an inner qualifier of n= o with 'lo', but I reserve the right to use it with 'le'"? I"m willing to l= ive with that compromise, if that will make all your philosophical Gordian = Knots go away. Cause really, I just don't care that passionately abou= t it, depsite all my responses to the contrary.sts

To be sure, I doubt that anyone is like= ly to actually say {lo no broda}, but your temptation to do so suggests a f= undamental misunderstanding of the significance of {lo}. Parts of the= CLL version were known to be incomplete and even mistaken when they were w= ritten down, but they were the best we had. Now we have better and sh= ould use them.
Since the inne= r quantifier in a {le} expression is part of the non-veridical character of= such expressions, {le no broda} is not a problem. It is also not a r= eference to an empty [whatever], since there aren't any, and so any odditie= s that you might think would follow from its use don't.

&nbs= p; --gejyspa

From: Michael Turniansky &l= t;mturniansky@gmail.com>To: lojban@googlegroups.com
Sent: Tue, May 17, 2011 7:1= 1:27 AM=20

Subject:<= /b> Re: [lojban] "lo no"

On Tue, May 17, 2011 at 7:35 AM, tijlan <jbotijlan@gmail.com= > wrote:

On 16 May 2011 13:13, Michael Turniansky <mturniansky@gmail.com> wrote:
> No, I = am not asking you to arbitrarily make one up. I am asking you to
> think about exactly how many trained assassing I am sending your way,<= br>> because all of them are deadly. (And if you think the answer is mor= e than
> zero, that says a lot more about your paranoia then it does = about lojban
> quanitifers.)

I already addressed that confusion of yours= . Linguistic reference does
not hinge upon physical reality. You can mak= e reference to some flying
teapot which doesn't physically exist or whic= h you don't believe
physically exists. Since "is-flying-teapot" cannot say of nothing but
so= mething, anything with the property "is-flying-teapot" is
necessarily of= more than zero cardinality. When you say "I'm sending
the trained assassins your way", you are linguistically referring to
som= e non-zero entity; but I don't here have to assume that the
referred ent= ity has a physical factual correlate (such an assumption
depends on the = pragmatics, not syntax or semantics, of your statement,
and I'm informed by that pragmatics that you may not be stating a
physic= al reality).

Right, but this is where we disagree. I say you CAN say "= is-flying-teapot" of a nothing. I am not going to argue this point an= ymore, because you understand what I am saying, and I understand what you a= re saying. No point in going round and round here. Anymore sent= ences you say on this exact point will be ignored, but do not think that th= e fact of my ignoring them means I agree with you. It just means I'm = sick of the same points being raised again and again, as if repetition is a= valid rhetorical style to get something across.

>> "three things" differ from "zero thing" primarily in that=
>> they are both individually and collectively something as oppos= ed to
>> nothing; and so on. As far as cardinality is concerned, t= he difference
>> between "zero" and "some" is more primitive than the difference>> between "zero" and positive integers. The fact that "some" can be=
>> meaningful in primitive terms of "non-zero" rather than of suc= h
>> particulars as "one" or "three", warrants the act of making refere= nce
>> to something with no provision for its specific total quant= ity.
>
> It may not be integers, but I would think you d= efnitely have to be
> positive reals, at the very least in order to qualify "some". (su'o)
You don't always need to be able to qualify "some" with an exac= t
number, especially when what's at stake is the primitive difference of=
something from nothing.

I never said that you need to be able to qualify it with an _ex= act_ number. I am saying that quantitiy, whatever it is, must be a no= n-negative, non-imaginary number, in order to be "somethingness" as opposed= to a "nothingness" You say much the same down below.

There are cases when a reference to<= br>"non-nothing" is more meaningful than to "three things", for instance. Suppose I want to change the paint of the walls of my room by today's
ev= ening -- "I'm going to give them a new coat of paint":

mi ba punji l= o cinta lo bitmu

What's important for me is that the walls will have= different paint
than the current one -- whether one material or three hundred
materials = of paints, not important. Not only I'm unconcerned with the
number of lo= cinta to be applied, also this number is factually
undetermined; not on= ly I don't subjectively know how many lo cinta I'm
going to use, also there is no objective answer to "lo xo cinta" as of
n= ow. It might even turn out that the wall wouldn't after all change by
th= e evening because I had been too busy doing other things or I
changed my own mind.

In the last case you have not put paint on the walls, or to put= it another way, you have put "lo no cinta {of the paint you actually put o= n the walls}" on the walls (or "no lo {whatever amount you intended to put}= cinta" on the walls. The statements mean two different things, but r= efer to the same end result in the physical word)

Would these factors affect my refere= nce to lo
cinta? Would I have made a meaningless statement by "mi ba pun= ji lo
cinta lo bitmu" just because I epistemologically couldn't set a
specific= cardinality for lo cinta?

Again, you are bringing up a red herring. The amount IS q= uantifiable, whether or not you (or anything) know what it is, can measure = it, etc. Even if it is a range, even if it is constantly chagning, is= an eigenstate, whatever.

Would I have meant nothing by "locinta" just because it eventually turned out to be none? No:
regardless of the physical reality, my sumti did refer to the concept
of= some paint. The term "lo cinta" was primitively meaningful by
virtue of= the reference to non-nothing, without any exact number as a
subjective or objective answer to "lo xo cinta".

>> In Lojban, only "no" can exactly quantify nothing, an= d all non-"no"
>> cardinalities can be defined by means of contras= t to "no": "nonai". If
>> I had to fill the inner quantifier for "= no lo xo broda" from your
>> example, I might say "nonai".
>
> There's no su= ch grammatical contruct,

no nai =3D PA NAI or PA UI =3D PA*
http://www.lojban.org/tiki/tik= i-index.php?page=3Dzasni+gerna+cenba+vreji

"NAI: Extended its grammar to that of indicators, i.e. it is allowedafter any word."

"nonai" would have the composite meaning of "other= than zero". And the
set of cardinal numbers which are "other than zero"= seem more than
undefinable:

But that page is not canon. That's xorxes' proposed exten= sion of the grammar.

http://en.wikipedia.= org/wiki/Cardinal_number

> but again, I would hate to think
> that you can mea= n by that negatives, or imaginary numbers.

"PA mei" never mean= s a negative or imaginary number, insofar as the
interlocuters properly = understand what cardinality is about.

That's fine. Like I said, if you are wiling to restrict i= ts domain in that way, I have no problem with that. But we already HA= VE a construct that means that, za'uno So you don't have to reinvent = the wheel. "nonai" would include things like ka'o and ni'ure. <= /div>

Such 'restrictive' compositions exis= t in other parts of the language.
For example, we don't say "ci lo pa ge= rku", because, however
syntactically valid, "ci" makes no sense in the composition that it's
in= . Likewise, we shouldn't assume "nonai mei" could mean negatives or
imag= inary numbers, because such are never to be in the scope set by
"mei" in its compositional relation to the preceding PA.

But like I said, if you mean "greater than zero", than SAY that= , not "non-zero". Otherwise, that's as foolish as saying someth= ing like "magnetic poles always come in pairs, therefore when I say 'three = poles', I really mean 'four poles' " (imperfect analogy, but you get my dri= ft). "nonaimei", it's very true, I might not imagine might mean anyth= ing other than non-negative reals, but "nonai" by itself does NOT suggest t= hat, which is what you previously stated. "za'uno" on the other hand, alway= s does. Why not use it?

--gejyspa

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