[lojban] etc. = mass, apparently

[pycyn@aol.com]

From: pycyn@aol.com

Okay, I take it back.  Lojban still has one of the confusions that went into 
Loglan's lo left in its understanding (maybe two, given asome remarks here).  
The confusion is between the joint-action mass and the mass-noun mass (and 
maybe the manifestable mass, Quine's gavagai, and the goo mass).  
I have taken it, on the basis of usage, past debates, and common sense that 
the Lojban mass sumti were the first of these, their properties the additive 
of the members of the set "massified."  
The second treats a mass like the referent of English mass nouns, as having 
no natural individuations (members) but capable of indefintely many different 
divisions into units -- as water can be ladled out in cups. spoons, etc.  But 
each of these units has to have the characteristics of the mass -- a teaspoon 
of water is still water -- so that this deindivualization does not work when 
what is massified is something inherently individualized: the mass of Bob and 
John can only be cut up into a Bob and a John, not a Bohn and a Job, and keep 
the character of the mass.  So even if Jorge is (in some sense) the mass of 
his organs, the only cuts that count are ones that give organs, or submasses 
of organs. 
The manifestation mass does allow some extention of that, in that a 
manifestation of gavagai may be (apparently, Quine nor JCB is clear on this) 
a rabbit part (still identifiable as such, I think) as well as a whole rabbit 
 -- certainly the hypothetical Trobriander is entitled to say "gavagai' on 
seeing an ear or a tail or a foot and it is not clear that he is going beyond 
his data in this.  Whether a (cut off) ear and a (ditto) foot constitute one 
piecee gavagai or two (or whether the fact that they come from one rabbit or 
two makes a difference) is unclear, but it does seem to be required that what 
we have is recognizably rabbitty.
The goo version drops this latter requirement and would have any quantity of 
the goo that results from putting the set behind a mass into a blender and 
running at liquify for five minutes as being a representative part of the 
mass, even though it no longer has any of the identifying properties.
Clearly, the additive mass can be used for the mass-noun mass in general and 
for at least the main use of the manifestable mass (and can be adapted to the 
fuller usage in any of several ways) .  It is harder to know how to handle 
the goo masses.  But it is harder to think of a use for them, too.
Hopefully, this will lead to some discussion that will clarify the actual 
situation in Lojban and point toward solutions to outstanding problems.
pc

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