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Re: [lojban] Re: A (rather long) discussion of {all}

On 5/17/06, John E Clifford <clifford-j@sbcglobal.net> wrote:

--- Maxim Katcharov <maxim.katcharov@gmail.com>
> I argue against anyone who says that the
> current method covers
> everything. I argue that this method will cover

"this method" = the one you are proposing (not
the current one)


Yes, the one I propose.


> No. They needn't be long and complex at all.
> They are usually quite
> simple, it's just that there is a significant
> number of cases where
> there are a lot of simple interpretations.

I don't get this point.  Most inferences are not
complex (glad to hear you say so, though I think
a very large percentage are complex) but ...
what?


"Get the stones" could be interpreted to mean many things:

"get all stones such that are now directly on the table "
"get all stones such that are now in the bag"
"...are now along the path"
"...are now supported by the table in some way"
"...are the game pieces used by you now"
etc.

all depending on context; you infer which one is meant based on context.

...is what I'm getting at, though I may have gotten off track, since
the problem isn't in saying that you mean one of these, but rather the
problem is in saying that you mean none of these. (This section might
be best ignored.)


> It's not strictly impossible to refer to things
> completely now. It's
> just that the method proposed for doing so is
> very crude and attempts
> to solve problems after the fact. And sure, you
> can clear up what you
> meant after the fact, but sometimes that's not
> very useful, and it's
> never as useful as clearing it up
> pre-emptively.

Since I would introduce talk about all bears,
past, present, future, merely possible, and also
the impossible ones, by saying something like
just that, unless the flow of the discussion had
made some parts of that obvious, I don't see what
could be better.  And, of course, this is just


If I'm reading you correctly:

I'd say that my{L_ ro cribe} is better than your{L_ ro cribe [such
that exist now later prior imaginary...]}. To start a conversation the
long one is still pretty effective, but when some context already
exists problems arise. Trying to circumvent them with that huge
description that with 90% certainty probably means to the listener
my{L_ ro cribe} seems a lot more cumbersome and ineffective than just
using my{L_ ro cribe}.


the method I would propose for doing this.  How
is yours less crude (come to that, how is this
crude)?  This is not argumentative, just seeking
more information about just what your complaints
and your correctives are.


As a way to clarify context, xorxes had proposed an explanatory "Now,
taking into account not just the twenty bears that we've been talking
about but other bears as well, ...". This amounts to your{L_ ro cribe
poi [in the cage, and are either in context-of-conversation or not in
context-of-conversation]}. This, to me, seems almost ridiculously
crude, especially the mention of context. Contrast it with the simpler
my{L_ ro cribe}. And consider cases where additional restrictions need
to be applied.

Perhaps another perspective on why this is crude is that a word like
"all" to me implies, in a pure sense, "all such that are", and not
"all such that are..., and are the most sensible in this context". If
I wanted the listener to figure out something based on context, I'd
indicate it in a consistent way: omission.


> darves: I hope that John has addressed your
> objection, because I'm
> uncertain of how it relates to this point #2.
> It seems to relate to
> what I said previously regarding how we all
> have a limit of what we no
> longer consider a bear. Most of the time, our
> differing limits will
> not cause a problem. Even the nominalist, for
> all practical purposes,
> will understand me when I talk of some three
> bears, and won't argue
> that they aren't bears because they don't
> perfectly match the "ideal"
> bear.

A nominalist will certainly not talk abbout an
ideal bear; he is committed to there being no
such thing (and, indeed, no general property of
being a bear).


Ah, then I'm mistaken in my perception of what a nominalist is. Based
on the wp article, it seems that a nominalist holds that there is no
green that is part of green things. My belief is that the concept of
"green" is at abstraction of certain aspects of our experience - if we
see green as a distinct concept (from red, or from walking), we'll
form the concept. (An aside from the subject at hand.)


> You don't quite mark them. You simply say that
> you mean *all* (every
> single...), and this incidetally always is a
> sign that the restriction
> is complete.

But, since the present system uses {lo ro broda}
to refer to a contextually restricted (rather
than overtly restricted) group, you are taking
{ro} to be used only for complete restrictions;
that is, it is a clear indicator that the
description is complete (else it would be
incorrect to use this expression).


Yes, I think. My point is that "marking" seems a backwards way of
looking at it. You should have to mark places where you want to say
"now determine the rest from context", and not places where your
descriptions are certain and complete. And these
'determine-by-context' places are usually 'marked' by omitting
something, yes?


>I'm saying that the idea that {L_
> ro cribe} should mean
> "all such that are relevant and such that are
> bears" is *strange* -
> {L_ ro cribe} should be "all such that are
> bears". If you want to say
> "the most contextually sensible number", just
> leave the inner blank,
> and the listener will assume exactly that.

Well, I wouldn't, but we are dealing with your
understanding of Lojban for now, so I'll take
that as a given.


You wouldn't assume that a blank inner, {L_ cribe}, implied "the most
contextually sensible number of bears"? What would it imply then?


how are you defining "relativized
descriptions"?>>

That is one which picks its referent only from
those established as relevant by the flow of
discourse so far.


This is what I've been calling incomplete restrictions / restrictions
that rely on context, yes?


Yes, though the bounds of this set may vary from
individual to
individual. This is rarely a practical problem,
especially if one
assumes that the speaker's bounds (assuming that
the bounds are
somewhat sensible) at the time they said it are
the bounds that should
be considered.>>

This emendation is problematic for me since it
seems to say both that there is a single unique
set of everything that has a certain property and
also that this set may be different for different
people.  How can this be? If the set is unique it
is not relative to a person and contrapositively.


I don't like it either, but that seems to be the way it is. I don't
believe that there's really a perfect/universal hypothetical set of
bears. The definition of "adjacent", for example, doesn't imply any
exact measurements, though it could: something like "if the distance
between the objects in question is 10% or smaller than the average of
both the object's average radii, then they are adjacent". If it had a
definition like that (or better), then there would seem to be a
universal definition of "adjacent". Can you imagine what a definition
like that - a seemingly universal definition - would look like for
"bear"? I can't. I don't want to. I'd rather put up with my bounds for
"bear" not matching your bounds. The odds that we'll encounter a
situation where we find ourselves disagreeing are tiny, and the odds
of us not hastily resolving it are smaller still.


If I understand what you mean correctly, then not
quite: they're made
complete when you say "listener, I mean *all* of
them, and therefore
it is implied that you shouldn't use context to
cut the set down
further".>>

I guess my point is that, when a description is
relativized so that it does not refer to all of
them, it can be made complete by adding
explicitly what was supplied implicitly by
context, so that it does refer to all of the new them.



But what about cases where you don't want to add anything that is
implicit (the context-based restrictions), because you don't want to
imply anything else? How does the listener know not to add stuff
themselves? If I say "all bears who are black", and I mean "all bears
who are black and are in the zoo", then it's no big deal, I just add
the "in this zoo" restriction. But what of cases where I mean "all
bears who are black" (and the implication may be to someone that I
mean bears who are black and in the zoo)?