RE: [jboske] mei, latest cause celebre

["And Rosta" <a.rosta@lycos.co.uk>]

Jordan:
> On Mon, Dec 23, 2002 at 02:20:37PM +1100, Nick Nicholas wrote:
> > Jordan, on whether a collective is truly {piroloi} or not, I'm 
> > deferring to Jorge and And, since they had raised the 
> > counterarguments. But one of your quiz responses (which I will go 
> > through) has me in anguish:
> 
> They're saying no? Or are they saying yes because they think "loi"
> means collective anyway? 

By my best understanding of lojbanmass (i.e. by taking it as defined
by being expressed by loi/lei and being described in CLL), I think
that the piro makes no difference and that (piro)loi can refer to
a collective but needn't. 

To cut a long story short, sometimes loi/lei are used with apparently
Collective meaning, and sometimes they are used with Substance meaning,
and sometimes they are used with the meaning Substance-derived-from-
Collective (as if like English "There was apple-threesome in the bowl").
Hence I conclude that lojbanmass covers all these meanings. Or perhaps
it has just the meaning Substance-derived-from-Collective-of-su'opa-
members. 

(I also conclude that if my understanding is correct, lojbanmass
is not broken; it is just very wacky. As long as you allow it to
be counterintuitive, I think it is possible to work out a coherent
story for it.)

> Can someone please define this "collective" stuff?

The output of a collectivizer has discrete members -- it refers to
a collection of discrete things. The collection itself is a single
thing, it has emergent properties, and it inherits properties from
its members on a case-by-case basis, depending on the members and
properties in question.

--And.