Re: On {lo} and existence

[jorge@PHYAST.PITT.EDU]

> > > > What kind of proposition does something like {ai mi klama} determine?
> > >   true(proposition345,world-of-Jorge's-intentions,1)
> >     true(proposition346,universe-of-discourse,1)
> > And I won't ask you in what universe is that last one claimed to be
> > true, or we may never get to the end of it.
> I think it amounts to a claim independent of worlds, in that it has
> the same truth value in all worlds.

Perhaps something like:

        true(proposition347,every world,1)

But in what world do we evaluate this one? It has to be a world that
contains every world for the predication to make sense.

I insist that the true() predicate takes us nowhere. There's the world,
and there's language in it to make claims about it. The truth value of
the claims is not claimed, or we would never get out of the loop. (You
can of course claim truth values with the predicate {jetnu} or whatever.
What I'm saying is that this is not an automatic claim added to every
claim.)

Language is a part of the world, and therefore references to imaginary
worlds, which occur within language, are within the world that contains
the language. I just don't see the point of invoking worlds external
to the world that contains the language. You may talk about them, (as
we are now doing), but since they are in our minds, they are in this
world in which we are talking.

> > How can you tell whether the world place has been filled? Is there any
> > utterance for which it is clear from the grammar, or is it always
> > pragmatics?
> It depends on the grammar. If the grammar says that in the absence of
> an attitudinal the world place is filled by the u-of-d, then that's
> that. If the grammar doesn't say what fills the world place, then
> again, that's that - it is to be worked out ("glorked", in Cowanese)
> from context.

I suppose we disagree on what the universe of discourse is.
How do you define u-of-d other than as that glorked world of yours?
Without a u-of-d you don't have a language to begin with. The meanings
of predicates constitute that u-of-d.

Your argument that "bachelor" is "single male adult" or something like
that in "all worlds" doesn't convince me, because granted that, you have
to define "single", "male" and "adult". At some point you are going to
run out of predicates, and you either fall into circularity (like
dictionaries do) or you must take refuge in God-given predicates that
are well defined for all worlds. Those "primitive" predicates can
only be defined by listing all the things that satisfy them. If the
lists are different in different worlds, then the predicates have
different meanings in different worlds. So, in effect, you are dealing
with a different language, which makes sense, because the language is
contained in a different world.

> There is an appealing Lojbo proclivity to ignore cooperation between
> interlocutors and take utterances at their face value, as in the
> goat's legs debate ("You may mean that a goat has at least two legs,
> and your addressee may understand that, but what you are literally
> saying is that a goat has exactly two legs").

I think that the problem is a different one in that case. That's
sloppy use of the language as defined, which may end up requiring
a different language description. The problem of referring to pictures
of goats I think is at another level. If a fluent speaker says
"the goat has two legs" meaning at least two, and a fluent listener
interprets that as at least two, then "two" does not mean exactly
two in the real language, only in the twisted mind of the grammarian.
Hopefully, fluent speakers won't deviate that much from what Lojban's
designers planned. (Or maybe hopefully they will, I don't know.)

But there we know what the design is already. What is the design's
intention with respect to pictures of goats? Can {lo kanba} be only
a figment of someone's imagination? Probably not according to the
design. If fluent speakers use it as such, then obviously the design
is not a good description of the real language.

> You could say, then,
> that there is in some quarters a proclivity to ignore pragmatics and
> get on with semantics. (I of course am much in sympathy with this,
> especially when the object of study is an invented superrational
> language.)

It's not that we should ignore pragmatics, it's just that we should
know what is left to pragmatics and what isn't, in a way that what
is taken care of by grammar is something consistent. You say that the
meanings of predicates belong to grammar, but then you give to pragmatics
the power to change those meanings by introducing this imaginary
worlds concoction, effectively taking away the meaning of predicates
from the grammar.

...
> I don't think we need disagree on anything. We can distinguish your
> "relevant truth value" from my "truth value set". There's no need
> to argue about which of these bags the term "*the* truth value".

Agreed. I was just defending the notion that it makes sense to talk
of the truth value of an utterance.


> > I'm against {nu} being {da'i} then, inherently or implicitly.
> So will you from now on say {mi troci lo dahi nu mi klama}?

No. I will continue, as I've always done, to say {mi troci le nu mi klama}.
I don't think I've used {lo nu} very much. Usually with events I have a
particular one in mind, and there's no need to use non-specificity.

Jorge