In a message dated 10/2/2001 6:29:44 PM Central Daylight Time, jjllambias@hotmail.com writes:
Your assumption is that to refer to a function we must use something Not my assumption, just the usual way of doing it; how would you like to do it? A set of ordered pairs (but you hate sets) with the condition that for each first member there is only one second member? That is not what you have presented. You have presented a proposition or a function to propositions; that is what {du'u} does, le du'u bridi is by definition something we want to call the propsotition that bridi. Putting two variables in makes it a property, i.e., a function from (in this case) an ordered pair to a proposition. That is a perfectly good way to talk about taht kind of property/function, but that is not the kind of function we have here. I don't have a good third idea at the moment, except of course to use names and fill in the last place of {fancu} -- la mamfanc fancu lo'i danlu lo'i fetsi le nu roda mapti le mamta da.
Ahah! I have accused you of that view several times and you have almost as often denied it, swearing that you believed that the answer to a question was a proposition not a thing. Now, to make a point you will go back to your true view. OK. But notice that will make {la djan djuno le du'u makau mamta la bil) into perfect nonsense (of a highly forbidden kind: we can't use {djuno} for people). Ah, but maybe what you mean is that somehow it is built into the operation of indirect questions that they generate the proposition with the right critter in for the {kau}. But then, of course, it is impossible to get the answer wrong, which, alas, goes against our experience: {mi jinvi le du'u maku mamta la bil} guarantees I get it right (so only essay questions from now on). And's view -- if I have it somewhat right -- at least misses that problem and only runs into all the intensionality or interchange problems -- as well as missing several good answers. The set-of-answers theory (not mine, by the way) was not arrived at without looking at these kinds of problems but was rather what people were forced to to deal with them. Why would its values be more representative of a function than the "Is mother of," {le ka/du'u ce'u mamta ce'u}, is a relation and, indeed, a function, as a set of ordered pairs --though the order is reversed here, so {le du'u ce'u se mamta ce'u} . There are many functions for which it is somewhat unnatural to think of the corresponding relation (sum, product, and the like, for example) and, indeed, the relations can usually be expressed only by an equation between the function with an argument and its value for that argument (though one way of doing Logic does take this notion as basic, to simplify some kinds of metatheoretical proofs). However, the shift from relation to function IN PRACTICE does require some indication that the relation IS a function and the {le ka ce'u... ce'u} does not show that, while value-description form does (well, almost -- Lojban has this singular / plural problem, as you know, but that can be handled in a variety of ways). It is that information that makes the value-description form better. |