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

On 5/19/06, Maxim Katcharov <maxim.katcharov@gmail.com> wrote:

That you find certain places where ambiguities still exist when my
proposal is in effect doesn't say a thing about my proposal that I
don't say about it myself. You have to show that it doesn't cover
anything significant.


I would say you have to show that it covers something significant.
And also that it can work even in principle (even if it didn't cover
anything significant).


I bring up certain examples where (it seems
that) your methods don't have a capacity to be specific, unless it's
through some verbose and still-context-dependant means.


Specificity is covered with {le}. You have something in mind and then
you use whatever description you think is most useful to get your
listeners to identify what it is that you have in mind. But your proposal
concerns precision: a description so precise that no matter how picky
and lawyeresque your listeners get, the description can still refer to all
and only the things you intend it to refer. I don't believe such precision
is achievable.


Yes, context
works most of the time. You can usually say with 90% certainty that a
person means X. Occasionally, cases where there is 50~% certainty come
up, but they seem to be bargained up to something "sure" like 90%
through verbose ensuing explanations. But in either case, your method
doesn't have 100% certainty regarding a referent for usual "LE" sumti.


That's right, I don't believe 100% certainty in an absolute sense is achievable,
no matter how much effort you put into definitions.


That sort of certainty is achievable, the very simplest one is {pami},


{pami} means "one of us, the speakers".


and the most complex is... well, I don't know. I'm sure there's one
that needs 1000+ restrictions, though the odds of actually seeing it
are one in a trillion.


Good enough certainty is almost always achievable. Absolute certainty
isn't, but in any case this is more of a philosophical problem than a
linguistic one.


> > > > {mu L_ ro cribe cu ba zasti}
> > > > Five bears, out of all hypothetical future bears, will exist in the future.
> > >
> > > Yes, that's "out of all bears, exactly five will exist (at some
> > > unspecified time in the future)".
>
> I was using it in my sense, i.e. "out of all things that count as bears".

What counts as bears? Bears that will actually exist in the future?


It depends on the context. In many, perhaps most contexts only
bears that exist will count as bears, yes. But as you say below, when
the predicate of the claim is {zasti}, non-existing bears could be brought
into the picture by the very presence of that predicate.


Surely not, consider:

{mu L_ ro cribe cu ba zasti}

"five of all-bears-such-that(-will)-exist will exist"? That wouldn't
say anything at all. You need a hypothetical mega-set so that it
becomes comprehensible: "five of all-hypothetical-future-bears will
exist".


It could also be interpreted as "exactly five of all currently existing bears
will still exist in the future". You don't offer much context so there are
many open possibilities.



>    le tanxe cu vasru no da to no maisle .e no pulce .e zo'e si'a toi
>
> That is of course a much less likely thing to say than the usual
> "nothing", so it is proper that it takes a bit more effort.

Erm. "The box contains nothing" - how would I say that? I don't mean
the nothing as in in-context, and I don't mean "not stuff like
molecules and dust". Just "nothing" (no existing thing).


Plain "nothing" would be {no da}.
"No existing thing" would be {no zasti}.

You can't say anything without context in an absolute sense.


So {mi panpi no da} could mean that I'm at peace with *nothing*, or it
could be that I'm not at peace with just people - noone. How would I
be explicit about this? Like if I wanted to be sure that you
understand that I'm saying I'm at peace with nothing, and not some
arbitrary subset of nothing, like "nothing... that is human".


I'm not even sure what state you are trying to describe. If you want to be
explicit that you don't mean just people you could say {no dacti}, but
that's not an absolute either, it still requires context to figure out what
counts as a dacti.


> I'm not saying there is only one way to say it. I'm saying that there is
> no infinitely precise, invulnerable to irrelevant objections, way to say it.

Two objections can be made: that our bounds for what we consider a
bear will not align, and that the identity of something is uncertain.


At least those two, yes.


Neither is a complaint against complete restrictions, they just say
that language is ambiguous in other ways.


Both conspire against complete restrictions in the absolute way that you
present them. If the bounds for what we consider a bear don't align, then
the presumed complete description will refer to different things for you and
for me. In that case, what does it mean to say that we have a complete
restriction? How doers it differ from an incomplete one? If the identity of
something is uncertain, how do we know if it fits the complete description?
If we can't know, how is that different from having an incomplete description?


If lojban had just 30 words, and so most speech was ambiguous, would
it be sensible to say that since it's probably going to be ambiguous
anyway, we shouldn't add the rest of the words?


No, it wouldn't make sense. With 30 words we could not make good
enough descriptions. (Alhough NSM fans might disagree about that.)


(Point being that I
want to be shown that this proposal does nothing significant, *not*
that it doesn't cover every case where there's ambiguity in Lojban.)


How does one show that? It should be easier to show, first that it can
work, and second that it does something significant.


> Right. Words are never defined with such precision that your proposed
> {ro} could ever be applied with absolute certainty.

I disagree. Lojban {punji} is explicit - you have to perform the
action. That seems pretty certain to me.


It seems pretty certain to me too, but we were talking about infinite precision,
so that you can know with absolute certainty whether {punji} applies or not.
I'm not saying {punji} is not well defined, I'm saying it is not
infinitely precise.


Regardless, you're trying to
move out of the scope of my proposal. This can't cover every problem
(namely the two objections that I just mentioned), but it does cover
some rather important ones.


Which important problem does it cover? Neither the bears example nor
the stones example are the least bit problematic as far as I can see.
Neither requires an absolute inner {ro} to make yourself understood.
Indeed an absolute inner {ro} only brings confusion in both cases, as
you start to wonder about irrelevant stuff like imaginary bears or whether
the stones are or are not on the table in the most absolute and strict
sense possible.


> I think of an objection that under normal circumstances would be irrelevant.
> You adjust either the description or the situation so that the objection no
> longer applies. I think of yet another normally irrelevant objection to the
> new description/situation. You adjust, etc. Even if at some point I can no

I'm not adjusting because I screwed up on my restriction, I'm
adjusting because I screwed up on my definition (I thought a word
restricted something in some way implicitly, and it didn't.)


But how can you ever be certain about a restriction, unless you assume
that words have infinitely precise meanings? Do you think lojban gismu
have infinitely precise meanings? Can those infinitely precise meanings
be obtained from the English definitions of the gi'uste?


> longer think of an objection, what does that prove? Only that I'm not
> imaginative enough, not that the description you finally gave is precise to
> an absolute degree.

If I were you, I too would be anxious to show this pattern. But it
hasn't emerged, so you're jumping the gun. And conversely, if it does
emerge, you finding problems with my restrictions would only show that
I'm not skilled enough in Lojban and in restrictions to provide a
decent one. So hopefully I can show that you can't show anything wrong
with these restrictions right off the bat.


Do you think that if I can't find an objection at some point, that shows that
the proposed description is complete?


(1) A: Put (all the black stones that are cpana this table now) in
this black bag

Here's a rough idea of the situation, so that you don't think I'm
changing anything: There's one table and one black bag in my
perception. All the black stones supported-from-below-by the table are
from the game-set (and therefore fit in their bag). There are no
stones in the black bag, because they were dumped out, so saying just
cpana is exactly what I want to say.

So, what have I failed to restrict?


For all practical purposes, nothing. In an absolute sense, I don't know,
because I don't have full access to the situation that you are imagining.
I assume for example that you are not imagining any stones that can
just disappear before I grab them, or stones that may turn into bears, or ...
but how can I be absolutely certain?


I'd like to point out that your initial argument seemed very certainly
to be that I would have to add and add and add to the restriction, and
never manage to "restrict completely". It was you, was it not, who
brought up "the price of infinite precision..."?


It was me who mentioned that yes. But I never argued that you would
ever need to add and add restrictions indefinitely, because I never
argued that you would ever need infinite precision.


> Well, it seems clear enough to me as it stands:
> <http://www.grrb.nt.ca/pdf/wildlife/grizzly/Grizzly%20Bear%20Management%202002.pdf>
> Notice that it does have a set of definitions at the beginning, but it doesn't

Yes, I see that it makes the spatial tense "sticky", among other
things, which is how it would be translated into Lojban, so your
objection that said something like "it's implied but never stated
which bears, but we *assume* that it's bears in the..." is not
accurate. We don't assume, it's stated right there.


It's part of the context, yes. It would not be part of the sumti in question,
so inner {ro} could not be used to escape the context.


If it's in his imagination, and he's not the one that spoke the
command, when what business does he have telling the admiral (as I'll
call him) what the admiral meant when he said it? Use the perceptive
definitions of the *speaker*, as best as you can guess at them (yes, I
did just admit that there is vagueness in Lojban that I'm not trying
to cover).


If only the speaker can determine what they mean, then I don't understand
what you mean by a "complete" description. It seems that to everyone else
the description would be indistinguishable from an incomplete one, so why
bother with it?

mu'o mi'e xorxes