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[lojban] Re: A (rather long) discussion of {all}
On 5/17/06, Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com> wrote:
On 5/17/06, Maxim Katcharov <maxim.katcharov@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> You also need it for "future bears" to work, and for "past bears" to
> work in a way that isn't "such that are in our memories now".
No, those are {lo ba cribe} and {lo pu cribe}. In many contexts they
would not be candidate referents, so you would need the {ba} or the {pu}
to make them available. In some special contexts, they may be included
in {lo cribe}.
(I said that you need this hypothetical set for those to work. I
didn't actually give examples contrary to the two that you gave as
corrections.) You need this set because future bears and past bears
are inherently hypothetical. Especially future bears. But lets
consider:
1. How do you say "five bears will exist in the future"?
{mu L_ ro cribe cu ba zasti}
Five bears, out of all hypothetical future bears, will exist in the future.
2. How do you restrict to "all bears such that will exist"?
{l_ ro cribe poi ba zasti}
All bears such that exist in the future.
(Assuming 1 is true, 2 will pick out 5 bears.)
Is this how you would answer the two questions? If not, how would you
answer them?
It seems that there will be upcoming problems that my proposal neither
causes nor solves.
This is what I mean: In many/most contexts particles of dust won't
be available as possible referents without some extra work from the
speaker. So if you say {le tanxe cu vasru no da}, "the box contains
nothing", dust particles won't count as a disproof of the assertion. Of
course, any participant may bring dust particles into the discourse
and then they will have to be dealt with somehow, but until and unless
that happens, they don't count. You seem to want them to always count,
so that {le tanxe cu vasru no da} is practically always false.
Are you saying that you lose the ability to express yourself?
{le tanxe cu vasru no L_ ro dacti} - practically always false.
{le tanxe cu vasru no L_ dacti} - there are no contextually-sensible
objects in the box.
Given your example, {L_ tanxe cu vasru no da}, exactly how /would/ I
make the assertion that there is *nothing* in the box? Does {mi panpi
no da} mean that I am at peace with nothing? Or is it just nothing
that we've mentioned?
> Why is it wrong to use this hypothetical set that includes every
> permutation of what could be a bear in every place at every time
> [...]?
I wouldn't say it's wrong, I'd say it's humanly impossible.
What's humanly impossible?
> This brings up a very interesting point: all words that you use are
> inherantly non-veridical. If I see a group of things that represent
> the various stages of a change from bear to table, I'll have a
> definition of where things stop being a bear, and of where things
> start being a table. And you have to use my definition. So if I tell
> you {lamji cpana}, I mean it by my definition as it was at the time I
> said it.
>
> So yes, words can mean different things based on who said them.
And also when, where, and in what context, right? What you mean by
Only "when" would be needed, since that's all you need to determine
what a word means - who said it, and when. The context may help as an
approximation. Again, I stress that the odds of seeing something not
recognizable and agreeable-between-several-people-as-a-bear are much,
much slimmer than encountering vague context.
> There's a chance of a situation arising where what I think you meant
> by bear isn't what you meant by bear. A very small chance, in contrast
> to the chance that the context is ambiguous. I don't know how to solve
> that problem, but this doesn't make my efforts to solve this problem
> futile.
The way to solve it is to ask for further clarification until both parties are
satisfied that the misunderstanding has been cleared up.
Indeed, but I mean pre-emptively. This problem here can be solved in
the same way, assuming both parties can agree, and if not, then
perhaps with the help of a judge. I don't consider it a very good
solution though, by comparison.
> > And would you say that there is at least potentially any
> > human speaker with enough clarity of mind, intellect and
> > vocabulary to restrict down to what their referent is in at
> > least a significant number of cases?
>
> Certainly. I sense a trap, and hope that it won't be one of technical
> definition.
No, I meant it as a rhetorical question mostly. I don't think an absolute
restriction is humanly possible. A good enough restriction is certainly
possible and we do it all the time, but an absolutely fool-proof one
normally isn't.
In the email directed at John on May 16, 2006 7:25 PM, starting "It
/is/ dependant on the /setting/" I offered the sentences spoken by
aleks's speakers, except in a form that I consider, and hope, is
complete, or fool-proof. I don't know if John has addressed them, but
I would like to know what someone who thinks that you can't make
complete restrictions would find incomplete about them.
> Maybe I'm talking about the three bears that I saw in the cage?
> Possibley I'm talking about those two contextually sensible bears -
> why would I care about the rest of the bears, after all? It doesn't
> seem very certain to me at all. And again, look at all the
> interpretations that aleks's speaker's sentances allowed.
Indeed, that's how language works. But you make it sound as more
uncertain than it normally is. Under normal circumstances none of
those less-than-absolute-certainties interfere with understanding.
By normal circumstances, you mean not instructions, contracts, etc.?
That is, under circumstances that this doesn't really matter anyway,
it's easily understood? Well yes, but you do need it for those other
situations.
> > > which amounts to something like {__ ro
> > > cribe poi [in the cage, and are in context¬ in context]},
> >
> > What??? Where did this "in the context & not in the context"
> > come from? Certainly not from me. If they are a referent
> > they are thereby in the context, this is a result of your
> > interpretation, not a restriction used to get to the referent.
>
> 1 "Now, taking into account not just the twenty bears that we've been
> talking about but other bears as well, ...".
>
> 2 "that we've been talking about" = "that are in the context of the
> conversation" (i.e. "context" and not "setting")
>
> 3 "now, taking into account not just the twenty bears that are in the
> context of the conversation, but also bears that are not in the
> context of the conversation" ("other")
>
> 4 "X such that are bears, and such that are both in context and not in context"
>
> "...are in context¬ in context"
>
> or "...and are both those that we've been talking about and those that
> we havn't been talking about", if 2 is wrong. Or did I mess that up
> elsewhere?
Lojban can make the scope distinction pretty clearly:
lo ro cribe poi mi'o pu casnu ku'o .e lo ro cribe poi mi'o na pu
casnu (sensical)
lo ro cribe poi mi'o pu casnu gi'e nai casnu (nonsensical)
None of the bears was such that it was both talked about and not
talked about.
Ah, right. Yes, "both" is not the right word to use, I want "either".
My point is that you end up with a sickly sentence for describing
something simple.
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