From lojban+bncCNCCoMTMDhDIxYzxBBoEG-iW-A@googlegroups.com Sun Jul 17 10:58:47 2011 Received: from mail-pv0-f189.google.com ([74.125.83.189]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.72) (envelope-from ) id 1QiVc3-0003Jp-98; Sun, 17 Jul 2011 10:58:46 -0700 Received: by pvc22 with SMTP id 22sf3712697pvc.16 for ; Sun, 17 Jul 2011 10:58:37 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=googlegroups.com; s=beta; h=x-beenthere:received-spf:mime-version:in-reply-to:references:from :date:message-id:subject:to:x-original-sender :x-original-authentication-results:reply-to:precedence:mailing-list :list-id:x-google-group-id:list-post:list-help:list-archive:sender :list-subscribe:list-unsubscribe:content-type; bh=F/3yj8nW2Ie+okOXG2cOa9vGyz1habbO0SDQYIfr1dI=; b=vxbNHxn1WeCqAh2nSyyGiVd1a8MQyZiB972SaDcQ3MLoa3c2izotR2WOiPJTshNvMW KF6APYxneD88jdaeMkGlQKZydt6MqAgwkEzWsNLdJ38pp/1EvwF7unnlpPOAJk5Ygn7F olHxVWMi/fH+2cxi1u55qFkNwiWjQNl/o0HYg= Received: by 10.68.36.136 with SMTP id q8mr1344769pbj.25.1310925512960; Sun, 17 Jul 2011 10:58:32 -0700 (PDT) X-BeenThere: lojban@googlegroups.com Received: by 10.68.39.97 with SMTP id o1ls2911069pbk.2.gmail; Sun, 17 Jul 2011 10:58:32 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.68.23.40 with SMTP id j8mr785848pbf.84.1310925512358; Sun, 17 Jul 2011 10:58:32 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.68.23.40 with SMTP id j8mr785847pbf.84.1310925512349; Sun, 17 Jul 2011 10:58:32 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mail-pz0-f46.google.com (mail-pz0-f46.google.com [209.85.210.46]) by gmr-mx.google.com with ESMTPS id v9si7979436pbc.2.2011.07.17.10.58.32 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=OTHER); Sun, 17 Jul 2011 10:58:32 -0700 (PDT) Received-SPF: pass (google.com: domain of selckiku@gmail.com designates 209.85.210.46 as permitted sender) client-ip=209.85.210.46; Received: by mail-pz0-f46.google.com with SMTP id 3so3351184pzk.5 for ; Sun, 17 Jul 2011 10:58:32 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.142.150.20 with SMTP id x20mr2618252wfd.62.1310925512181; Sun, 17 Jul 2011 10:58:32 -0700 (PDT) MIME-Version: 1.0 Received: by 10.143.93.3 with HTTP; Sun, 17 Jul 2011 10:58:02 -0700 (PDT) In-Reply-To: References: From: Stela Selckiku Date: Sun, 17 Jul 2011 13:58:02 -0400 Message-ID: Subject: Re: [lojban] girzu gi'i gunma gi'i se gunma To: lojban@googlegroups.com X-Original-Sender: selckiku@gmail.com X-Original-Authentication-Results: gmr-mx.google.com; spf=pass (google.com: domain of selckiku@gmail.com designates 209.85.210.46 as permitted sender) smtp.mail=selckiku@gmail.com; dkim=pass (test mode) header.i=@gmail.com Reply-To: lojban@googlegroups.com Precedence: list Mailing-list: list lojban@googlegroups.com; contact lojban+owners@googlegroups.com List-ID: X-Google-Group-Id: 1004133512417 List-Post: , List-Help: , List-Archive: Sender: lojban@googlegroups.com List-Subscribe: , List-Unsubscribe: , Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 On Fri, Jul 15, 2011 at 4:45 AM, tijlan wrote: > > Fried eggs are "whites jo'u yolks", while omelettes are "whites joi > yolks", according to their relative easiness and difficulty of > separating the two cooked components. But the criteria for such > easiness / difficulty can well be subjective. It doesn't seem to ever > have a rigorous logical basis. Whole milk, another example, could be > said to be "cream joi zo'e", since removing all the cream from the > finished product is not something that often occurs to most people; > but such removal is trivially done by skimmed milk producers, for whom > "cream jo'u zo'e" could be a more accustomed perception. I think what you are describing is some situations where describing something as a mass is *sensible*. It makes more sense to consider things jointly when they are less easily separated. But I believe Lojban allows you to make and discuss masses whether or not they are reasonable. The creation of a mass is an attribution of responsibility. Any action taken by any of the parts of the mass, whether individually or collectively, is considered to be done by the entire mass. It's not a distinct class of entities; anything can be considered as a composition of elements. For instance we're used to referring to things like "people", which are responsible for the actions of all of their parts (a person lifts everything lifted by their hands and sees everything seen by their eyes), or "cars", which are responsible for the actions of all of their parts (a car hits anything that any of its parts hit and carries anything that any of its parts carry). The only difference is that you can explicitly create a mass of anything. For instance I can create a mass out of my left pinkie and a bug crawling on a leaf in a rainforest in South America, tie those things up with a {joi} and throw them in {ko'a}, and now I've got this strange entity I can discuss. It's nothing that wasn't there before; it's nothing more or less than my pinkie and that bug, considered together. But now that we're talking about ko'a we can discuss its various strange properties. Right now ko'a is typing the letter "a" in the very pro-sumti that refers to it, while simultaneously using its six legs to crawl across the leaf. The oddness of masses is that ko'a has both a fingernail and six legs, and spans both North and South America at once, simply because that's how I defined it. Considered as a universally applicable abstraction that might seem bizarre, but then consider again that innocent case of {mi joi do}. What it does is pull out two people out of everything in the universe to consider them together. Whenever either of us picks something up, mi joi do is lifting it. Because of our ability to communicate and work cooperatively, a mass that could otherwise be a bizarre collection of elements becomes a reasonable abstraction in predicting and discussing the world. Who knows what aggregations of elements might sometime be sensible to consider together? We had best keep our options open. For instance in my story I'm working on called {mafro'i}, there's a rock which remembers things it's put on top of. It remembers everything it's ever been put on top of, but more strongly the longer it's left there. Even if the objects later move, the rock can feel where they are, and you can use it to guide you to them. So in this story there's a mass that's reasonable to discuss consisting of all the things that that rock has ever been set on top of, including lots of random leaves and sticks and animals and people. You could put all of them together and call them {fo'i}, and then say of them "by touching the rock, she could feel that fo'i wasn't nearby." mi'e la stela selckiku mu'o -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "lojban" group. To post to this group, send email to lojban@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to lojban+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com. 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