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RE: [jboske] The two faces of tu'o (was: Nick on propositionalism&c. (was: Digest Number 134))

At 11:54 PM 1/10/03 +0000, And Rosta wrote: 
> Upon reflection, a "this is tautological" marker should be an evidential
> UI. se'o might work; any sentient being should be expected to be able to
> process tautologies

No objections to that, but I object to having to be more verbose in
order to indicate that I'm working with an ontology that is in some
ways simpler than the one Lojban forces on me.

It seems to me that we might do best, if dealing with a different ontology that requires it, to specify that the quantifiers and gadri might have subtly different semantics under certain ontologies. We have precedent for this in having ways to specify operator precedence that differs from the standard. Why not use metalinguistics to specify an unusual ontology? Since I doubt that the differences matter most of the time, choose things so as to cause minimum effect by a change, then switch ontologies metalinguistically, thereby changing the semantics along with it, when it is necessary to use the differing ontology in a discussion.

That way we don't have to be committed to only one ontology with others being a schismatic Lojban.


--
lojbab lojbab@lojban.org
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: http://www.lojban.org