Re: TECH: lambda and "ka" revisited

[ucleaar <ucleaar@UCL.AC.UK>]

cusku die fa la djan:
> > > Whereas sets must be abstract, because they have no empirical
> > > correlates, events and forks are concrete (in the sense of being
> > > observable).
> > > Forks are concrete: I can point at them, pick them up, etc.  Event
> > > abstract objects are not.
> > Events can be pointed to, albeit not picked up. Event abstract objects
> > and fork abstract objects can be pointed to if they're real; the fork
> > abstract object, if real, can also be picked up.
> I think it is only the concrete fork, not the "fork-type abstract
> object", which can be picked up.

Right.

> To tell the truth, I have no idea what a "fork-type abstract object"
> might be; I only say that Lojban has a way of referring to such
> objects if anyone finds it useful to postulate them.

Well, if an event-type-abstract-object is a conceivable
not-necessarily-actual event, then a fork-type-abstract-object is a
conceivable not-necessarily-actual fork.

> I do not think event abstract objects can be pointed to,

No. They have to be actual events to be point-at-able.

> or only by a kind of metonymy of pointing, whereby you point at some
> concrete object involved in the event.  You can point at me, and you
> can point at me-who-is-breathing, but I don't see how you can point
> at my breathing.

I don't share your intuitions. It is normal to point at a tornado, or
at a football match. Events (dynamic) have times and places which makes
them point-at-able. And concrete objects can be viewed as events
abstracted from time; e.g. a melon is in fact a melon event.

> > > > Events and forks can be either real or imaginable, whereas for sets
> > > > reality and imaginability amount to the same thing.
> > > I again disagree, but from the other side now.  I can imagine the set
> > > of all sets ("lo'i girzu"), but Cantor's paradox guarantees its
> > > nonexistence.
> > Should that be {lohi se girzu}? I had an idea that x1 of girzu is the
> > group and x2 is the set of its members. But my gismu list has "x1 is
> > group/set defined by property (ka)/membership (set) x3", which is
> > stange both in the absence of x2 and in the "group/set" gloss.
> The current definition makes both of us wrong: "x1 is a
> group/cluster/team showing common property (ka) x2 due to set x3
> linked by relations x4."

A weird definition. Why that x2?

> I had thought that "selcmima" was a set defined extensionally
> (relationship between set x1 and each member x2) and "girzu" was
> a set defined intensionally,

I thought that was {klesi}.

> > As for Cantor's paradox, it is metaphysically curious. lohi girzu
> > exists in the world of the imaginable, and no sets (or all sets)
> > exist in the world of the real. I'll go off and revise my metaphysics.
> > Maybe you can't imagine the set of all sets - rather, you can imagine
> > a method of generating it (which wouldn't work).
> Maybe so.  But your "no sets/all sets" dichotomy is just what I reject.
> Depending on your set theory, you can accept the existence of some sets
> but deny others, or more precisely, you accept that some membership
> conditions (e.g. "x | x is on my desk") determine sets, and some
> (e.g. "x | x is a set") do not.

I think we're concluding the same thing.

---
And