[lojban] Re: quantifying over imaginaries (was: Re: partial recantation in favour of solomonics

[John Cowan <jcowan@reutershealth.com>]

Jordan DeLong scripsit:

> I think Cowan's stuff about 0/0 and this here is bunk.  pi mu isn't
> a divison, it's a multiplication.  0.5 * 0 == 0.

Yes, but to say that 50% of unicorns are male is usually taken to exclude
that 75% are male.  Yet 0.75 * 0 is just as much 0.  The indeterminacy
is the same.

> Furthermore, I think this is entirely beside the point; {ro} is not
> {piro} (remember piro is exactly the same as pa), we don't have to
> treat it like a fractional quantifier, because it isn't one.

piro is "the whole of"; pa is "one of".  Extensionally these may coincide,
but intensionally they are quite distinct.  Still, "ro" is not fractional,
it's true.

> *mutters about how close this issue was to being solved*

If it were easy to solve, it wouldn't still be troubling us in 2002.

-- 
John Cowan   jcowan@reutershealth.com  http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
Most languages are dramatically underdescribed, and at least one is 
dramatically overdescribed.  Still other languages are simultaneously 
overdescribed and underdescribed.  Welsh pertains to the third category.
	--Alan King