On Wed, Sep 15, 2010 at 4:05 PM, Stela Selckiku
<selckiku@gmail.com> wrote:
2010/9/15 Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>:
> But there is no relationship that is particularly relevant between
> the probability of an event happening and the fact that someone
> hopes that it happens.
It might be that there's no particular relationship between "hoping"
and the probability of something happening, but it's handed down to us
by the Lojban gods that there is a relationship between a "pacna" and
what they hope for and the probability of it happening. Taking that
as a given, I have no problem rationalising it. Here's how I'd
explain my understanding of "pacna":
The pacna is considering an event which may or may not occur (from
their perspective, anyway-- it might be that it's already happened or
not and they haven't found out yet which). They're considering in
particular the terpa'a of that event, they're thinking about whether
it's going to happen or not and what the likelihood is. They want the
selpa'a to occur, so they're hoping that either the terpa'a will be
high enough or they'll be lucky enough that it does occur. If it's
still possible for them to affect the outcome somehow, they may even
be acting in ways that they think will increase the terpa'a.
mi'e la stela selckiku
mu'o
The reason that the x3 exists is simple. It's English-centric. When thinking about the concept expressed by the English words "wish", "hope" and "expect", (and for that matter "dread") the jbobau team realized that the three terms were identical in one respect, that x1 believes that a future event x2 will come to pass. They differ in another respect -- the subjective reality that x2 will in fact come to pass. So by adding the x3, we can distinguish between three English words with one lojbannic word.
--gejyspa