From lojban+bncCIywt_XDCRCxraryBBoExvvSAQ@googlegroups.com Tue Aug 16 09:22:19 2011 Received: from mail-yx0-f189.google.com ([209.85.213.189]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.72) (envelope-from ) id 1QtMP9-0005aJ-9G; Tue, 16 Aug 2011 09:22:19 -0700 Received: by yxk8 with SMTP id 8sf56808yxk.16 for ; Tue, 16 Aug 2011 09:22:08 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=googlegroups.com; s=beta; h=x-beenthere:received-spf:x-yahoo-newman-property:x-yahoo-newman-id :x-ymail-osg:x-mailer:message-id:date:from:subject:to:mime-version :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=wBTQL3JeheRxD8lhqGENW2PqxL4P1LR7lBpil9+oeG0=; b=UBYWAZiFH/ZvST+zRK07d7Xe4mtqUv51VsVfh1IXn63dYVUL9Sg1t4y0UrqolrZxR8 UDKgO2ikx1fd5KtfRU29tqj5jRZWVQ0sMjmMpJnnn7hPZBTIpDIseBGueJe7VrmWEAz/ Iwe5916fDYetgxEuH5wJY30/kBLOFzyjMnBJQ= Received: by 10.150.95.15 with SMTP id s15mr1140062ybb.54.1313511089795; Tue, 16 Aug 2011 09:11:29 -0700 (PDT) X-BeenThere: lojban@googlegroups.com Received: by 10.101.164.21 with SMTP id r21ls8532333ano.1.gmail; Tue, 16 Aug 2011 09:11:28 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.101.137.32 with SMTP id p32mr5429562ann.4.1313511088785; Tue, 16 Aug 2011 09:11:28 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.101.137.32 with SMTP id p32mr5429561ann.4.1313511088761; Tue, 16 Aug 2011 09:11:28 -0700 (PDT) Received: from nm16-vm0.access.bullet.mail.mud.yahoo.com (nm16-vm0.access.bullet.mail.mud.yahoo.com [66.94.236.19]) by gmr-mx.google.com with SMTP id j18si86491ybc.0.2011.08.16.09.11.27; Tue, 16 Aug 2011 09:11:27 -0700 (PDT) Received-SPF: pass (google.com: best guess record for domain of kali9putra@yahoo.com designates 66.94.236.19 as permitted sender) client-ip=66.94.236.19; Received: from [66.94.237.198] by nm16.access.bullet.mail.mud.yahoo.com with NNFMP; 16 Aug 2011 16:11:27 -0000 Received: from [66.94.237.121] by tm9.access.bullet.mail.mud.yahoo.com with NNFMP; 16 Aug 2011 16:11:27 -0000 Received: from [127.0.0.1] by omp1026.access.mail.mud.yahoo.com with NNFMP; 16 Aug 2011 16:11:27 -0000 X-Yahoo-Newman-Property: ymail-3 X-Yahoo-Newman-Id: 430015.98719.bm@omp1026.access.mail.mud.yahoo.com Received: (qmail 52949 invoked by uid 60001); 16 Aug 2011 16:11:27 -0000 X-YMail-OSG: QENijEsVM1n0MrsiMdEtqQM.jjIbRUZLvYvYzstcBtNgj8Z xl.ag.0J_AuNhrbxvt8quAXYvK3vOSV2sw.sDnN8LlrGV5.3E7CtICCCKtCy nkg5gKN3NnI2cd.z9Fdx8ybq2N_sUmCnhmh41TZKiAeF9JlfbtepJoM5Iz2Y vzo0KH.lwvuyC7YZDWflkjOKAzgoAgQe7gzuLT.inmAq4l5hJy4GRazDkCRB TVz2wd8YrMgii4maBwJYtbF23IToyvCxAR4DsVfwx.DkaS07wubsgJvFcDfs eosUc1wyfUOuQS2jkriutp.o.3fSg_c_Z9iZcB_SlWJjJAF3rlwy4uU1J_Cm DC2ghSZS3ujtFrRN7f.pPY1m91xKKekkzBDVuPDmvb.0plIBhw.gN7WBWJyK 1lo.dLsggBXNIKcPx5O_vKjKCB4TxMzrh18DzpQeY7vjmtg-- Received: from [99.92.108.41] by web81308.mail.mud.yahoo.com via HTTP; Tue, 16 Aug 2011 09:11:26 PDT X-Mailer: YahooMailRC/574 YahooMailWebService/0.8.113.313619 Message-ID: <1313511086.45473.YahooMailRC@web81308.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Date: Tue, 16 Aug 2011 09:11:26 -0700 (PDT) From: John E Clifford Subject: Re: [lojban] xorlo and masses To: "lojban@googlegroups.com" MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Original-Sender: kali9putra@yahoo.com X-Original-Authentication-Results: gmr-mx.google.com; spf=pass (google.com: best guess record for domain of kali9putra@yahoo.com designates 66.94.236.19 as permitted sender) smtp.mail=kali9putra@yahoo.com; dkim=pass (test mode) header.i=@yahoo.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 Almost like a natural language, Lojban contains bits and pieces left over from earlier stages. This is especially true of descriptors, which have been a topic for debate for half a century at least. In particular, there was once a time when we had to warn people that if they said 'lo ci gerku' they were saying, inter alia, that there are exactly three dogs in the who universe and that they probably wanted either 'ci lo gerku' or maybe (but we weren't quite sure what this meant) 'lo ci lo gerku'. That is, 'lo gerku' referred to all the dogs in the domain. Gradually, that changed, along with a variety of changes in (and muddles about) the meaning of 'lo', until now it is almost the veridical parallel of 'le', differing only in the specificity (or is it definiteness?) of the referent. We don't have to have particular dogs in mind to use 'lo'. Another of these relics is "mass" (and, presumably, 'gunma'). A number of years ago (on a list far far away) someone listed 10 (I think, but thereabouts anyway) uses that had been applied to that word in Logjam discussions. A few of these have dropped out or been dealt with elsewhere (the Osterizer sense, say, and the related minimal bit sense). What now seems to be the most prominent is the collective sense, though just what that involves is still problematic, mainly about questions of what sort of participation is needed to be in the mass (is the organizer of a sit-in in the mass even if not present at the sit-in?, does the batboy count when the team wins a game?) For all that the examples seem to be about assigning credit or blame, there are purely logical questions as well, the foremost being the relation of individuals to the property which defines their agglomeration, To me, the present discussion seems to have into a large variety of traps, factual, logical and conceptual, and that makes solving the issue (does anyone remember what the issue was?) difficult. The first problem is simple out-of-date information, CLL was old news even before it was published and the history of Lojban since then has been mainly about correcting it, minimally bringing it up to date for some point in time (now hopelessly lost) or trying to keep up while trying to catch up. On the whole, that has not fared well and getting the corrections that have been recorded out to the troops has done even worse. Witness the persistence of 'ro broda = ro lo broda', which was not true even while CLL was abuilding, if I remember correctly, and certainly hasn't been for a long time since. There are many other cases, dipping back into the past muddle about 'lo' (and perhaps the other descriptors as well). The assumption was that that had been resolved by xorlo. But xorlo was itself a conceptual mess for some time, though it finally solidified (mainly by dropping some of the "mass" freight it still carried for a while), Now it is in pretty good shape and the problems have shifted into another area, collectivity vs distributivity. The referent of a descriptive phrase is some things that satisfy the description (which ones is contextual). That a thing is among these things is a relationship that is formally identical to the part-whole relationship (Lesniewski, Quine, Goodman, Leonard). Thus, if the things are described as people, they have parts, and, since the relation is transitive, they are parts of the things referred to by the description. But they are not among the things referred to by the descriptor, since they are not people (the fallacy is NOT committed, though some would have it so). There may be things among those described which are among the things describe, the subsets (as it were) and their parts are, of course, among the described (though the subsets themselves may not be -- fallacy doesn't work either way, contrary to some attempts). Similarly, the referents here may be among some other things and thus satisfy the defining description of that group, but that does not mean the larger group satisfies the description of the smaller. In short amongness is separate from predication, which has to be decided by the facts. So the fact that a brain is part of a rhinoceros does not mean a rhinoceros is a braid, any more than the fact that neurons are part of a brain mean that neurons are a brain (even all the ones that are parts of a given brain). The issue of collectivity (the logical default case) has gotten mixed up with ol-timey muddles about masses again. And, indeed, collectivity does solve one issue that was in the "mass" mix. Or sorta solve it. In the ever-popular issue of "The boys carried the piano", we can now say (well, we really can't apparently) that the boys collectively carried the piano, leaving aside issues about how the work load was distributed. We can pry, if we want, but that rarely is necessary except for moral or legal cases, where rewards and punishments are to be distributed. But the fact that the boys do something collectively does not mean that there is something more than the boys involved (their mass or group or set or...); there is just them acting in certain ways, ways that happen, on this occasion, to come together to get the piano moved. These same boys -- maybe even with the same amount of plannong and cooperation -- might wear red ties to school one day, each one individually (it is hard for two to wear one tie at the same time). Of course, they might also be collectively staging a protest thereby. The fact that we have no way to indicate that the things are acting collectively (but two ways to show that they are acting distributively) is a problem, though xorxes' arguments convince both that this concept needs more work and that the solution does not lie in descriptors. On the conceptual level, their are this category errors of saying that the eye sees or the brain thinks. People (and other animals) see and think and so on. Brains and eyes are, at best, tools for these activities, even necessary conditions, but not the same thing by any means (someone once compared the brain and though to the bile duct and bile). Totally different predicates apply to them, since they are, in fact, in different categorical realms. Attmepts to reduce one to the other inevitably flounder on this fact. Not that this has anything to do with the present discussion, unless one want to try and pull some sort of fallacy about brains thinking and therefore neurons thinking or some strange converse like brains thinking and thus big toes think, since they are both parts of one body (St. Paul!). Now, can we get back to the issue, whatever it was? Or has it been resolved by careful sorting out? -- 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. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/lojban?hl=en.