[lojban] Re: {lo}, {lu'o}, and {loi}.

[John E Clifford <lojban-out@lojban.org>]

--- Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/9/05, John E Clifford
> <clifford-j@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> > Aside from the problems with doing all the
> > collecrtive/distributive etc. predication
> with
> > gadri, making the distinction this way
> deprives
> > us of one of the things groups were
> introduced to
> > do (a contradictory list, to be sure), name
> give
> > corporate responsibility for actions which
> are
> > not done jointly or individually but by some
> part
> > of the group functioning for the group.
> 
> I think the general principle is that Lojban
> does not
> force you to make a distinction when the
> distinction
> is not relevant, but allows you to make it when
> it is.
> So if the distinction between group and
> subgroup
> functioning for the group is not relevant, you
> don't have 
> to make it. When it becomes relevant, you can
> say
> for example {lo krati pagbu be ko'a} instead of
> {ko'a}.
> 
Quite right; we don't have to use {lu'o} or even
{loi}.  And with this device we could dodge the
responsibility every time by a circumlocution of
this sort.  But it is not clear that the
person(s) who do these things is in any
meaningful sense a representative of the larger
group -- a part yes (including, of course, the
whole) but perhaps representative only in the
rather circular sense that he did in fact do what
the whole is said to do (which has limited
explanatory power).  The whole is rather trickier
when dealing with named groups: the Chrysler
Corporation to cite the old example: there is no
warning that this is a group and yet the various
kinds of prediction clearly make significant
differences on some occasions -- sometimes with
the same predicates.  So, we may occasionally
need the distinction and it is nice to have it
directly, not jury-rigged together on an ad hoc basis.