Re: [lojban-beginners] About {mi cu facki di'e}

[David Gowers <00ai99@gmail.com>]

2010/4/19 Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>:
> On Sun, Apr 18, 2010 at 8:28 PM, David Gowers <00ai99@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Referent is like expanding the named clause (in this case, the next
>> bridi), right?
>> I confused the referent (mi nelci lonu citka) with the subject (mi).
>
> The "referent" is the "se sinxa", the thing that a sign refers to.
>
> The referent of the sumti "lo mi pendo" is my friend. (Not the words
> "my friend", the person I refer to with the words "lo mi pendo".)
>
> The referent of a sentence is the proposition that that sentence expresses.

== a single particle containing the actual meaning of the bridi,
rather than it's literal content, then?

>
>
>>> The choice between "du'u" and "nu" doesn't really depend on what a
>>> liking is, but on what a se facki is. A se facki is a fact.
>>
>> I took your initial point (pay attention to explicit
>> 'this-place-contains-an-XYZ' markers); however a se facki (ie. du'u)
>> is not a fact, it's a predicate; that is, it's something that *can* be
>> true, rather than something that *is* true.
>
> Well... This could be a long discussion, but I would say that only
> facts can be discovered. If you think you discover something that
> later turns out not to be a fact, will you still claim that you
> discovered something? If someone else mistakenly believes that they
> have discovered something, but you know that that something is not a
> fact, will you report that as "they discovered X"?

>  wouldn't. I think
> discovering X, like knowing X, requires X to be a fact.
Yes; I would report that they believed they had discovered X,
eg

{la djan. krici lo du'u facki lo du'u pelxu lo najnimre}

(perhaps John is colorblind yet acts as if he is not)

>
> But in any case, yes, that aside, the issue here was that the x2 of
> facki has to be a "lo du'u ...".
>
>> (this is rather trivial to illustrate with Newton's Law; not 'TRUE',
>> but a valid observation that fit the evidence and continued to do so
>> for some time)
>
> Suppose I mistakenly believe that I have discovered that you are a
> murderer. Will you happily say to someone else "he discovered that I
> am a murderer". If yes, then for you "discover X" indeed does not
> require X to be a fact. If you would not report my presumed discovery
> that way, why not?

Ah, I take that point too: A du'u doesn't have to be a fact, but in an
accurate usage of facki, se facki will be a fact.


>
>> As far as I understand the idea of 'fact's, they denote an idea which
>> significant (say, >50%) probability is assigned to (typically through
>> collective observation and agreement). On the other hand, a
>> du'u/predicate only has to have some probability (that is, nonzero; it
>> could be as small as 10^-30 %). That places 'the sky is blue' and 'we
>> were designed by an omnipotent god' as both being du'u* (which
>> evidently would be a substantial problem if du'u or se facki really
>> was representative of facts.)
>
> A du'u predicate could be 100% false. "lo du'u lo mluni cu

No predicate can be 100% false or true, because we can never have
enough data to reach 100% certainty, only a maximum of N/(N+1)
certainty where N is the number of data points so far (which
presumably all were perfectly predicted).


>marji lo
> crino cirla cu jitfa" is true.
> A jitfa is a false du'u, just like a se
> facki, a se djuno or indeed a jetnu are true du'u.

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