Re: [lojban] Re: xorlo & mi nitcu lo mikce

["And Rosta" <a.rosta@v21.me.uk>]

[Am experimentally cross-posting to wikidiscuss-list. If it works,
I'll discontinue the thread from Lojban list.]

xorxes:
> --- And Rosta wrote:
> > But let me reask my question, because it hasn't been
> > answered yet. "PA broda" can apply to PA subkinds of Brodakind
> > or to PA things that are classified as having the property of
> > being broda.
>
> Right, but {lo} does not make that distinction. A subkind
> of brodakind is nothing but a thing classified as having the property
> of being broda.

This can't be right. Subkinds of, say, Mr Dog exist by virtue of being
conceivable/imaginable, whereas instances of Mr Dog, viz things that
I classify as having doghood, exist by virtue of having material
existence (since that is a necessary condition of doghood). I accept
that this is an ontological distinction. But I think it's a
distinction it is needful to be able to make somehow.

> > -- Xorlo generalizes over that dichotomy, which is
> > fair enough, but since it is a distinction that underlies the
> > two nonspecific readings of "I need a doctor", it would be
> > nice to have a way of making the distinction if one wanted to.
>
> I'm not sure it is a pure dichotomy. {mi nitcu su'o lo mikce}
> can't have the "I need any doctor" reading. Neither of two
> "I need any doctor" possible readings in fact: "I need any individual
> who is a doctor", or "I need any kind of doctor".

Yes, you're right, & I was wrong on that point.

> > That is, given "mi nitcu re mikce", it would be nice to
> > have a way of signalling whether the truth-conditions of
> > the sentence are to involve checking through the subkinds of
> > Mr Doctor (& seeing whether I need exactly two of them)
>
> That's exactly what it always involves. The tricky part is
> figuring out what counts as a subkind in the given context.
> Perhaps in the case of doctors there are usually only two
> obvious choices: either specialists of a given speciality, or
> individuals. But for other brivla there may be other options.
>
> > or,
> > on the other hand, checking through the things in the material
> > world that are classified as having the property of doctorhood
> > (& seeing whether I need exactly two of them).
>
> The (present?) material world is not especially favoured by the
> _grammar_ as the universe of discourse, although it is a very
> frequent obvious choice in many contexts.

Okay, but one would like to somehow be able to make unambiguous
claims to the effect that exactly two things have the property of
doctorhood in the world in which I need them. In other words,
that one can go out into the world in which my needing occurs,
and find & grab hold of these two individuals that are doctors.

For clarity, a second example: There is an ambiguity in "I drew
two unicorns" that doesn't exist in "I ate two unicorns". How
can one remove the ambiguity, if one wanted to do so?

> > I'm not saying that this is something the BPFK gadri proposals
> > should have covered; but I find it hard to imagine how
> > the distinction could be marked other than by gadri and,
> > obviously, the matter occurs to me because in ancestral
> > versions of xorlo the distinction was made.
>
> I think that unless the grammar is to impose an ontology,
> that distinction can't be made with gadri. One way to make
> it is through prediacates: "is a subkind of", "is an instance
> of"

I understand your reasoning, but "lo instance of lo mikce"
would not guarantee that we are referring to actual instances;
we could be referring to imaginable instances. That's why
I can't see how to do it without involving gadri. (More
precisely, I can't see how to do it without having a way
to distinguish quantification over subkinds from quantification
over instances.)

--And.



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