Fw: [lojban] pro-sumti question

["G. Dyke" <gordon.dyke@bluewin.ch>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "G. Dyke" <gordon.dyke@bluewin.ch>
To: "Jorge Llambias" <jjllambias@hotmail.com>
Sent: Saturday, July 06, 2002 12:30 PM
Subject: Re: [lojban] pro-sumti question


>
> **pycyn: Can you get your mail client to let us know when you are quoting
> and when you're replying?
> Sometimes it seems that you reply inside the <...>'s.
>
> xorxes:
>
> >
> > la pycyn cusku di'e
> >
> > >{le remei} refers to a mass based on a two-membered set.
> >
> > Whereas for me it refers to a two-membered mass. If we can't
> > get past this stumbling block, we'll continue talking past
> > each other.
> >
>
> I interpret  Nmei as being a bijection between the N members of the set in
> x2 and the N constituants of the mass in x3. Implied quantifiers on {lei}
do
> not apply here.
>
> > >I suspect this is English again, {lei bolci cu crino} is true -- at
least
> > >this has been said authoritatively several times over the last 47
> years --
> > >if
> > >even one ball is green (sometimes if even one ball has a green spot).
> >
>
> But this is only true because of the implicit pisu'o. It seems to me that
it
> should only be true if "enough" of the balls are green so that, when
> considered as a mass the mass is green. Very little of a pine tree is
> actually green (with shadows and all, even less than half) but {le ckunu
> tricu cu crino} is true because the tree is considered as the mass of it's
> components.
>
> > Yes, unfortunately it has been said authoritatively too many
> > times. I never saw actual usage take advantage of this "feature"
> > though.
> >
> > >However, this is still
> > >off my point, which is in the this case case, that even when there are
a
> > >hundred and one balls, the mass with just one of those balls as its
only
> > >member can still be lei bolci.
> >
> > In official Lojban, yes, {[pisu'o] lei bolci} is some part of
> > the mass of balls, so it can refer to the one ball.
> >
> > But even in official Lojban I have never before seen the claim
> > that {le 101mei} could refer to the mass of one ball. It seems
> > outrageous and it would seem to make {mei} fairly useless.
> >
>
> Agreed, we can live with an implied pisu'o on {lei bolci}, but you can't
> extend that to {mei}
>
> > >Oh, surely not every one sui generis.  At worst they divide into a
number
>
> remind those of us who are too lazy to find out : what is meant by "sui
> generis"?
>
> > >We have already
> > >established that the set of exactly the members of the mass need not be
> the
> > >set that is relevant for the mass (or at least you seem to have agreed
> with
> > >me on the cases that I take to have dealt with that).
>
> Bzzt. I don't recall any examples given by anyone which explain to me what
> it is that we have already established. In other words, I can not extract
> any semantical meaning to what you have just said.
>
> >
> > I hope I have not agreed with that, since I think that the set of
> > exactly the members is the relevant one, if we need to talk
> > of any set at all. And the place structure I had proposed for
> > {mei}, which you said you liked, had the mass of cardinality n
> > in x1, and a supermass (of indeterminate cardinality) in x2.
>
> I like that as well, scrap my bijection theory
>
> >
> > >I'd go with: "enough members of the group are tired".>
> > >
> > >As usual -- the question Lojban doesn't ask -- enough for what?  Can
you
> > >come
> > >up with something other than "to declare that the whole mass is tired"?
> >
>
> I think tatpi is a particularly bad example.
>
> I'd say the truth condition of {lei broda cu tatpi} "should" have more to
do
> with what {broda} we are dealing with than with the truth conditions of {N
> le broda cu tatpi}. In Lojban, {lei nanmu cu tatpi} is true if just one of
> the men has tired legs. Who cares if they just want to play on the PSII.
It
> should be true when the mass of men is tired. With tiredness, this will
> happen when some of them are tired and then psychological factors come
into
> play so that at some point we say {lei nanmu cu tatpi}. Which is a mass
> factor with little correlation to what {xokau le nanmu cu tatpi} returns.
> With {lei skami cu tatpi} (supposing that Windows outputed {mi tatpi}
> instead of crashing). I wouldn't say that until either all of them were
> tired, or enough of them for it to hinder their work "as a group".
>
> Another way of looking at this has occured to me: take some painters. {lei
> nanmu cu tatpi} would probably hinder their functionality as a mass. Maybe
a
> ladder needs to be held and the guy meant to be holding it got tired. The
> way {lei} works, {lei nanmu cu tatpi .ijo su'o le nanmu cu tatpi}. A mass
> should be more than the sum of it's elements. I'm sure there must be some
> relation for which {lei broda cu brode .ijenai su'o le broda cu brode} is
> true.
>
> Greg
>
>