On Mon, Feb 21, 2011 at 2:46 PM, Luke Bergen <lukeabergen@gmail.com> wrot= e:

oh, maybe that's where my confusion lies. =A0So if I'm a logician a= nd I'm trying to talk about "for every X if X is human than X is m= ortal" how would you do that? =A0How do you say in a prenex that "= ;ok, {roda} here is actually everything, our universe of discourse is.... e= verything".

2011/2/21 Jorge Llamb=EDas <jjllambias@g= mail.com>

On Mon, Feb 21, 2011 at 4:14 PM, Luke Bergen <lukeabergen@gmail.com> wrote:<= br> > My only concern is that if {roda} has an implicite {poi co'e} then= I'm not
> sure what you could put in for that {co'e} that gets you back to t= he strong
> EVERYTHING that logicians want.

What exactly is this strong everything? In Logic there is always a domain of discourse for the variables to take their values from. See
for example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantification

"In logic, quantification is the binding of a variable ranging over a<= br> domain of discourse. The variable thereby becomes bound by an operator
called a quantifier."

Or: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_of_discourse

"In the formal sciences, the domain of discourse, also called the
universe of discourse (or simply universe), is the set of entities
over which certain variables of interest in some formal treatment may
range. The domain of discourse is usually identified in the
preliminaries, so that there is no need in the further treatment to
specify each time the range of the relevant variables."

You can't really do quantification without a domain of discourse.

> lojban makes it very easy to narrow a concepts meaning (with tanru, wi= th
> poi/noi, with further bridi, etc...), but there are very few ways (non= e that
> my fever-addled brain can think of at the moment anyway) that expand a=
> concepts meaning. =A0So if we take something as widely expanded as {ro= } and
> say "oh, but it's not really universal all the time" the= n what CAN you say
> that is consistently universal?

"ro" says that the bridi is true for ALL the values in the = universe of
discourse that the variable bound by the quantifier can take. Of
course it's consistently universal.

The problem seems to be that some people believe that there is some
absolute universal universe of discourse that includes all possible
universes of discourse or something like that, but there isn't.

mu'o mi'e xorxes

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