From lojban+bncCNf8pM-bDBDl97PyBBoE59BBaw@googlegroups.com Thu Aug 18 04:48:06 2011 Received: from mail-vx0-f189.google.com ([209.85.220.189]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.72) (envelope-from ) id 1Qu14q-00037a-9o; Thu, 18 Aug 2011 04:48:05 -0700 Received: by vxh2 with SMTP id 2sf2561480vxh.16 for ; Thu, 18 Aug 2011 04:47:53 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=googlegroups.com; s=beta; h=x-beenthere:received-spf:mime-version:sender:in-reply-to:references :date:message-id:subject:from: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 :list-subscribe:list-unsubscribe:content-type :content-transfer-encoding; bh=FUH/jyq9kbdTjQyExZNLdL5wWLoVfQknsQvAx9oveu0=; b=TgbttLW6KEDrK+CopwTP8a53oQLzPU0bEwElACzYaNpagaUA8H5rjdSvuRLzbGJZYo aDhJPQ6d0uq+RJZQ8IapfF9yVCJ8nW1gODtGllNLDOss5eqJU9rablUT603E4Rn+aDVW ovRIxs2dDsSsQsddEzsLQU9JWG6iJD39VPilo= Received: by 10.220.148.133 with SMTP id p5mr144916vcv.14.1313668069996; Thu, 18 Aug 2011 04:47:49 -0700 (PDT) X-BeenThere: lojban@googlegroups.com Received: by 10.220.22.136 with SMTP id n8ls4210445vcb.3.gmail; Thu, 18 Aug 2011 04:47:49 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.52.95.50 with SMTP id dh18mr616282vdb.25.1313668069072; Thu, 18 Aug 2011 04:47:49 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.52.95.50 with SMTP id dh18mr616281vdb.25.1313668069060; Thu, 18 Aug 2011 04:47:49 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mail-qw0-f54.google.com (mail-qw0-f54.google.com [209.85.216.54]) by gmr-mx.google.com with ESMTPS id bh5si5873731vdc.3.2011.08.18.04.47.48 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=OTHER); Thu, 18 Aug 2011 04:47:49 -0700 (PDT) Received-SPF: pass (google.com: domain of paskios@gmail.com designates 209.85.216.54 as permitted sender) client-ip=209.85.216.54; Received: by qwc9 with SMTP id 9so2271567qwc.27 for ; Thu, 18 Aug 2011 04:47:48 -0700 (PDT) MIME-Version: 1.0 Received: by 10.224.184.12 with SMTP id ci12mr514090qab.270.1313668068641; Thu, 18 Aug 2011 04:47:48 -0700 (PDT) Sender: lojban@googlegroups.com Received: by 10.229.73.203 with HTTP; Thu, 18 Aug 2011 04:47:48 -0700 (PDT) In-Reply-To: References: <20110811101134.GF10697@gonzales> <1313159555.91794.YahooMailRC@web81303.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <20110812152917.GK10697@gonzales> <20110813082934.GO10697@gonzales> <1313242205.82409.YahooMailRC@web81306.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <20110813150339.GR10697@gonzales> Date: Thu, 18 Aug 2011 12:47:48 +0100 Message-ID: Subject: Re: [lojban] xorlo and masses From: tijlan To: lojban@googlegroups.com X-Original-Sender: paskios@gmail.com X-Original-Authentication-Results: gmr-mx.google.com; spf=pass (google.com: domain of paskios@gmail.com designates 209.85.216.54 as permitted sender) smtp.mail=paskios@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: List-Subscribe: , List-Unsubscribe: , Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable This response is going to be extensive. I do this because writing down my thoughts in detail helps me improve my understanding of the matter. On 16 August 2011 15:00, Jonathan Jones wrote: > On Tue, Aug 16, 2011 at 3:13 AM, tijlan wrote: >> >> On 15 August 2011 23:35, Jonathan Jones wrote: >> >> Worse, if you adopt the axiom that a whole satisfies a property if an= y >> >> subwhole does, the referents could also include rhinoceroses. >> > >> > No, it could not. While it is true that a brain is a mass of neurons, >> > it is not true that a mass of neurons is a brain. >> >> A brain generally includes a mass of neurons + other stuff. It isn't >> just a mass of neurons, so I wouldn't equate the two. Both statements >> seem false to me. > > First, what "other stuff" are you referring to, Notably glia (non-neuronal cells that protect neurons), as well as cerebrospinal fluid, blood vessels, etc. > and second, not being composed of /only/ something doesn't make it true. > An ocean is not 100% water, but would you say it is false that an ocean i= s made of water? Depends on what you mean by "X is made of Y ", which seems to me fuzzier than "X is Y". The statement you mentioned is not so fuzzy, "a brain IS a mass of neurons", which seems to exclude what isn't a mass of neurons. >> If the whole body rather than >> particular organs can be said to viska AND satre AND pensi, the same >> principle would allow us to say >> >> =A0A rhinoceros is processing neural inputs and breathing. >> >> instead of >> >> =A0A rhinoceros' brain is processing neural inputs and its lungs are >> breathing. >> >> Function-wise at least, then, it would seem ok to think that a >> rhinoceros 'does brain' as much as a brain 'does brain'. And, given >> that "does X" and "is X" are often interchangeable interpretations of >> a predicate in Lojban -- > > No. A rhino can be said to be processing neural inputs, but this is pensi= , not besna. Neural input processes vary in sorts. In order to pensi, concepts must be available, and not all neural inputs are readily concepts. Raw neural inputs, electrical, are 0/1 information, and this can be organized incrementally according to the so-called "working memory capacity". Quantitative research for this has been done in the field of information science and developmental psychology, one of the notable studies being the model of hierarchical complexity: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_of_Hierarchical_Complexity Every stage represents a particular form of neural input process. pensi is likely stage-4 onwards. >> > While it is true that a rhinoceros has a brain, it is not true that a >> > rhinoceros is a brain. >> >> The confusion of a part with a whole is common even in Lojban the >> logical language. Consider this: >> >> mi viska gi'e satre gi'e pensi >> >> What exactly does "mi" refer to, such that all the connected bridi >> mutually hold true for it? Is it a pair of eyes, an arm, a brain, the >> whole body, or something else? > > The whole body. However, especially in this case, the whole is not equal = to > the sum of it's parts. The entity which is being referred to by {mi} is n= ot > merely a composite of eyes, arms, etc. How would you delineate "the whole body"? I understand a physical body of life as a spatial extent of a perceivedly-individual self-sustaining system. That's more than just a bag of flesh. Materials such as air, water, food, etc. that we usually perceive to be 'external' to 'our own body' are actually essential parts of the physical self-sustaining whole. Other physical factors that might subjectively seem intangible, too, are often integral to something being a working body of a creature, such as extreme water pressures for deep sea fish. Conversely, something that's a "whole human body" at a certain conditional lower pressure would cease to exist in a deep sea without that certain pressure. The spatial extent of an organism, a body, technically goes beyond the tissue coverings, the skins. A reference to the stuffing inside the skins is not always a reference to the entirety of a living body. And when it comes to more-psychological beings such as humans, metaphysical dimensions are involved. It's hard to equate "do" in "prami do" or "do ckeji" as a mere collection of physical cells: -- It's not always the case that people love you as a bag of flesh. People can love you for what you do, for what you are as a representation of an event, which again goes beyond the physical skin boundary. I can say to love a singer not as a certain group of mereologically (part-whole-ly) related cells but as a representation of the event that a ('her') singing and a ('my') listening to it have been possible in a certain way. -- It's not always the case that the feeling of shame occurs due only to physical reasons. Neurons partake in the creation of the feeling of shame, but shameness is often a cultural mechanism, and the subject of such a feeling is often a systemic terminal of a society, which is supra-physical. "Someone feels ashamed" can often be sociologically paraphrased as "a bit of the society is systemically experiencing a controlling force". > Further, eyes do not see. Eyes merely > generate neural impulses in reaction to the stimulus of being bombarded b= y > photons, which are then carried to a specific area of the brain, where th= e > impulses are interpreted. Seeing is not possible without both eyes and > brain. Similar arguments can be used for the other two examples. Right, and that would further complicate our linguistic expressions if we always had to avoid having a whole as a representation of a limited number of its parts, for example "mi besna". It's paradoxical: -- On one hand, according to your definition of the subject of seeing, "mi" fits viska1 if it does not lack a pair of eyes plus a brain. That is, something is a seer if it's *at least* a pair of eyes and a brain. -- On the other hand, you would disagree that "mi" (or a rhino) can fit besna1 because you would consider "mi" (or a rhino) to be more than a brain. -- If you are to be consistent, you would apply that restriction to other cases, so as to say that "mi" is a seer if it's *not more than*, *exactly*, a pair of eyes plus a brain. -- Likewise, "mi" would be a caresser if it's *not more than*, *exactly*, something that does a caressing, such as an arm. -- Then "mi viska gi'e satre" would likely be illogical, because something which is exactly viska1 is not necessarily satre1. You could solve this problem by allowing "mi" to be more than e.g. a pair of eyes plus a brain in order to fit viska1. Now, why should besna1 be excluded from that practice? > The definition of besna is "x1 is a/the brain [body-part] of x2". > "Often interchangable" is not "always interchangeable". "is a/the brain" cannot be paraphrased as "does brain" with the same semantics in English... that doesn't say enough about whether "besna" itself could have such an interpretative aspect at all. I said "function-wise". A lid has a function as well as it's an object; "ko'a gacri" can be understood as "koha is a lid (for something)" or "koha covers (something)". A brain has a function as well as it's an object; I can understand "ko'a besna" as "koha is a brain (of something)" or "koha [brain-VERB] (for something)". Something besna something. The question is: -- Would "a rhino", "you", etc. represent only the latter "something", or only the former "something", or both? To put it differently: -- Would the word "you" fail to represent you if you became nothing but a (living) besna1? Imagine a world with super-advanced cybernetics that allows easy transfer of brains between shells. The official definition assumes that x2, the shell, is essential to the meaning of "brain", and I find that to potentially be not the case. >> =A0zo'e matra >> =A0something 'is a motor' >> =A0something 'does motor' > > A motor is a thing. It is not a property, nor an event, nor any other > abstract. It is a concrete, tangible object, Physical concreteness is virtual. Humans perceive any such concreteness because their physical observation occurs at such a macroscopic scale that it ignores the emptiness that occupies 99.999...% of the space of every atom. What we usually perceive as an impenetrable brick wall is actually almost completely empty. A wall appears to be concrete not because it is essentially concrete but because that's how the mind subjectively organizes information from such perceptions as "my hand is blocked off right there", "I feel a texture right there", "I see the color ending right there", etc. If we could observe a brick wall, a motor, a brain etc. from within an atom, we would be looking at not any 'concrete thing' but the event of invisible wave-particles interacting with other wave-particles in certain ways in vast space with no tangible boundary between 'a wall' and 'a non-wall'. And if our observation even did not quantum-mechanically misrepresent reality, what would be revealed is utter emptiness. For more scientific insights into this: 'Queer Universe' by Richard Dawkins http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3D1APOxsp1VFw 'A Universe From Nothing' by Lawrence Krauss http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3D7ImvlS8PLIo That a motor is 'a concrete, tangible object' is basically an illusion. That isn't to say such a perception is useless. We life forms wouldn't have evolved to this point if we didn't start falsely perceiving boundaries of ranges of invisible waving particles that would build up or destroy our self-sustaining systems, such as 'food' and 'predators'. It has been evolutionally advantageous for us to not just exist as nu nejni but also illusionally perceive lo jai nejni or lo xamsi then lo na'e xamsi then lo xamgu na'e xamsi (e.g. lo cidja) lo xlali na'e xamsi (e.g. lo bradi) and so on. There is no fundamental concrete physical boundary between anything, but our macroscopic cognition works to see virtual demarcations in the sea of energy for the sake of experiencing anything. In other words, any experiential object is virtual. Whenever we say "a motor is ..." or "a brain is ...", we are dealing with our own mental tokens, virtual things. Beyond our cognition, there ultimately is not 'a' thing. Individuality is pragmatic, not essential. We should allow ourselves to talk about 'things' in physical terms for the sake of everyday conveninence, but I like to keep in mind that all 'things' in the realm of the physical do fundamentally translate to one whole, one flow, one shot, or nothing at all. True, in "zo'e matra", "zo'e" -- that which stands for matra1, 'a motor' -- is not a property or an event. But that's for linguistic reasons, not for physical reasons. Physically speaking, there is little difference between -- Something is an electric motor in a car. and -- It is happening that magnetic fields and current-carrying conductors can interact and generate force in a car. > and so, like besna, is not > something that can be "done", only something that can "be". I didn't say a motor is something that can be done. The event of "motor-ing" that I'm talking about, for the lack of a better word, is not a relational se rinka / se gasnu / se zukte, but a non-relational fasnu. Not something that is done, but something that happens. To create a motor is to create a function, a state of functionality. You cannot assemble pieces to collectively generate force without installing the event of "the pieces can collectively generate force". You said that "the whole is not equal to the sum of its parts", which is true in a sense; something is a motor not because zo'e pagbu but because nu matra > Your argument is similar to saying that rational numbers are whole number= s. > The set includes the subset, but the set does not necessarily include the= set. The relationship between sets is ontological; the relationship between a brain and a body that I'm talking about is mereological. Different logic. On another note, numbers and sets are abstract, and are ironically less fuzzier than 'concrete' physical stuff. I clearly understand that the set of "nenri" and the set of "bartu" are different, but I don't always clearly see which physical things cu nenri or bartu. Similarly, we find a real triangle in the abstract but never in the concrete, i.e. a material 'triangle' never *is* a triangle. >> -- we have to consider whether or not that applies to "besna". >> Depending on that semantic arrangement, we could have the following: >> >> =A0lo besna cu besna .ije lo [rhinoceros] cu besna >> =A0A brain 'does brain'. And a rhinoceros 'does brain'. >> =A0A brain 'is a brain'. And a rhinoceros 'is a brain'. > > The first two are false because a brain is not something that can be "don= e". I avoided to say "does *a* brain" for a reason. "brain" is not an object of an action in this case, was what I meant. "brain" is the subject or the theme of an occurrence. "brain" in "does brain" indicates the type of event, was my intention. "does brain", "brain-type-of happens". > The fourth is false because a rhinoceros is not a brain, it is something = of > which a brain is a part of. And the point was that a whole could represent its part where expressions like "mi viska gi'e satre gi'e pensi" are allowed. >> >> So with this meaning of {lo}, how would you unambiguously translate >> >> "These brains are conscious", without the possibility of being >> >> misunderstood as claiming that their component nerves are, nor electr= ic >> >> razors? >> >> >> >> I can only see {ro lo ti besna poi ro ke'a besna cu sanji}. >> > >> > >> > {lo besna cu sanji} is the simplest way to put it. >> >> I suppose many would agree that {sanji} can predicate a rhinoceros too >> or other danlu for that matter. We could have the following >> simultaneous statements: >> >> =A0lo besna cu sanji .ije lo danlu cu sanji >> >> Would you say this is false, confusing a part with a whole? > > I would say that I am a conscious animal who possesses a brain. The quest= ion > was how would I say "these brains are conscious", not whether I believed > such a statement to be truth. And what you have presented now is the case where {lo besna cu sanji} and {lo danlu cu sanji} would be both *linguistically* valid. And that's at the risk of the fallacy of composition due to the supposed mereological relationship between {lo besna} and {lo danlu}. That is: While X constitutes Y, lo sanji is sometimes X, sometimes Y. And that's analogous to the rhino-brain example: While X constitutes Y, lo besna is sometimes X, sometimes Y. mu'o --=20 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@googlegrou= ps.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/lojban= ?hl=3Den.