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[lojban] Re: A (rather long) discussion of {all}

On 5/31/06, Maxim Katcharov <maxim.katcharov@gmail.com> wrote:


Does each student perform part of the surroundment of the building?
No: looking at it this way was demonstrated useless.


Actually, when the students surround the buiding, each student does
perform part of the surrounding of the building. But the converse is not
necessarily true.

It could be, for example, that the students and the professors surround
the building together. So there is a surrounding of the building taking
place, and each student does take part in it, but the students by
themselves don't surround the building.


"The students" can refer to a mass, or a set - is there anything else?
Nothing that has been demonstrated.


There are also the students themselves.


If "the students" does not refer to each student, then it must refer
to a mass of them.


In a singularist scheme, you are absolutely correct. In a pluralist scheme,
variables can refer to many things at once, so "the students" can refer
to many students at once.


"20 students" can be a set of 20 students.


("20 students" is an expression, it can't be a set.)
"20 students" can refer to 20 students. It could also refer to a set (in the
everyday sense of "set") of 20 students. In this sense "set", "mass" or
"group" are interchangeable.


Ok, a set of students. I'm not talking about some special metaphysical
set, it's just that if I have two pencils in my hand, we call that "a
set of two pencils".


Suppose I have a set of 6 color pencils, each of a different color.
The set/group/mass of pencils is multicolor. Each pencil is one color.
I don't think introducing an eighth entity, on top of the six pencils and
the mass of them, will help clarify anything.


>         le vitke cu pamei tolcliva
>         The guests arrived singly.
>
>         le vitke cu romei tolcliva
>         The guests arrived "all-ly" (all together).
>
>         le vitke cu remei tolcliva
>         The guests arrived in pairs.
>
> You could easily do the first two with your method, but the third one
> would be more complicated.

pair typeof arrival? No, I see no problem. You'd say it exactly as you
said it there:

{ro lo vitke cu  remei tolcliva}
all the guests pair-ishly arrived.


Yes, that wasn't a very perspicuous example, because when a pair
arrives, each member of the pair also arrives, so you can do that with
your method, you're right. Before I change the example to a better one,
however, this raises an interesting question. Suppose three guests arrive
together and you see them enter the house together. We could say:

         lei ci vitke cu klama le zdani
         The three guests went into the house together.

Now someone asks you:

       xo klama be le zdani cu se viska do
       How many goers-into-the-house did you see?

Your answer is:

(A) One. (The mass of three guests.)
(B) Three. (The three guests.)
(C) Four. (The three guests and the mass of three guests.)
(D) Seven. (The three guests, the mass of three guests, and the
       three masses of two guests.)
(E) Far too many to count (all the visible organs that compose the
    guests, and their corresponding masses.)
(F) None of the above.


Now, to change the example to something not distributable:

        le nanmu cu pamei bevri le pipno
        The men carried the piano singly.

        le nanmu cu romei bevri le pipno
        The men carried the piano "all-ly" (all together).

        le nanmu cu remei bevri le pipno
        The men carried the piano in pairs

You could easily do the first two with your method, but the third one
would be more complicated.



> > > They are all covered by "the students surrounded the pole".
> >
> > Ok, now tell me which one is the pluralist view.
>
> The pluralist view is that "the students surrounded the pole" covers
> them all.

I see. So, in your pluralist view, you could say ...

"the students [The students surrounded the pole one at a time.] and
[surrounded the pole in groups of three]"

right?


There must be a typo there somewhere, but I can't tell what you meant.


It's exactly so in my view, you just have to move some things
into the proper places:

"[individually the students surrounded the pole] and [groups of three
students surrounded the pole]"


Right, with the singularist view you have to repeat "the students".


This really brings us back to the building example:

"the students surround the building and wear hats"

Let's break this up:

13.1 "the students surround the building"
13.2 "the students wear hats"

In (1), what is the referent? "A surrounder of the building": "a mass
formed of students".


Neither. "The students" does not have a single referent, it has many
referents, namely student A, student B, student C, ... and student Z.


In (2), what is the referent? "Wearers of hats": "each student individually".


The same as before, the referring expression "the students" does not take
one value at a time. That's a job left to the predicate, "... wear hats".


The two referents are not the same. You can't pretend that they're the
same for the sake of translating

"the students surround the building and wear hats"

verbatim into Lojban.


In the pluralist version, it makes no sense of talking about the two referents,
because there are fifty referents involved, not two.

mu'o mi'e xorxes


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