Re: [jboske] Nick on propositionalism &c. (was: RE: Digest

[John Cowan <cowan@ccil.org>]

Robert LeChevalier scripsit:

> Not a meaningful question for some of these, as there is no grammatical 
> form "mu li tu'o".

In fact this is grammatical (see sumti_F_97), but it's nonsense because
there is only one instance of any number.

> For le'i and lo'i it is a meaningful question, which is 
> determined by examining all potential usages of the form "PA le'i broda" to 
> see which one occurs most often,

CLL says that the outer quantifier of a set refers to a subset, so
the default is piro (the whole set) for both lo'i and le'i.
If we want to talk about multiple sets with le'i, we have to use
LAhEs, I think.

> If John is right and we can use set descriptions for collections, 

I am by no means sure this is right any more: Nick's (?) example about
burning a deck of cards is suggestive, though not completely persuasive.
This may in fact be a mass example: I would say that the deck is burned
when, say 90% of each card is burned *or* when 90% of all cards are burned.

> The value for the inner quantifier depends on how you want statements about 
> different forms of the empty set to be interpreted - thus probably either 
> su'o or su'ono or ro.

su'o for le'i, ro for lo'i, per CLL 6.7.

> A faster-than-light spaceship is not the same as a purple unicorn, so the 
> quantifier on "lo" must exclude the empty set. The set of 
> faster-than-light spaceships is logically the same as the set of purple 
> unicorns, but I am not sure if it is pragmatically the same.

The *sets* are the same, but the *property* (ka) of being a u.
is not the same as the property of being a ftl-s.

-- 
He made the Legislature meet at one-horse John Cowan
tank-towns out in the alfalfa belt, so that jcowan@reutershealth.com
hardly nobody could get there and most of http://www.reutershealth.com
the leaders would stay home and let him go http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
to work and do things as he pleased. --Mencken, _Declaration of Independence_