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RE: [jboske] Lojbab on tu'o (was: RE: RE: Nick on propositionalism &c

At 03:36 AM 1/13/03 -0500, Robert LeChevalier wrote: 
At 12:43 AM 1/13/03 +0000, And Rosta wrote:
> > If A is true if zo'e is interpreted as "3", then why do we want
> anything else?
> >
> > zo'e means "some value that makes the sentence true"
>
>Surely not! Else every sentence with an ellipsis would be true by
>definition!

Of course. We presume that pragmatically people say things they want to
communicate as being true.

Nora said exactly the same thing I did just now when she read your message. Guessing a plausible response, I said that logicians may want to talk about things that are known to be false. But logician-talk is an exception to normal pragmatics (logicians aren't very pragmatic? %^) But then Lojban allows one to fill in the zo'e when one wants a value that forces the sentence to be false. So Nora says (jesting) that we've achieved the pinnacle of all language designers: a language where all sentences are true except those with explicit marking to make them false. (But she adds that even when you insert specific values instead of zo'e to make a sentence false, there are an infinite number if other ellipses that could make the sentence true, whether by tense, or an "under conditions" place, or an elliptical reference to a fictional world of Sherlock Holmes riding a unicorn. Thus Lojban is a language is which all sentences are true. %^)

lojbab

--
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