Re: any

[Logical Language Group <lojbab@ACCESS.DIGEX.NET>]

JL>By "more likely" which do you mean:
JL>
JL>(1) In most contexts where that Lojban sentence appears, it means something
JL>    like the second expansion, but in some contexts it may mean something
JL>    like the first.
JL>
JL>(2) It always means the same one of them, but you are not sure which, and
JL>    you suspect it is the second, that's why you say "more likely".
JL>
JL>
JL>If (1) then you are throwing logic out the window, and saying that just
JL>like in English "I need a box" can have two meanings (Quine's transparent/
JL>opaque), the same happens in Lojban, and which meaning it is is determined
JL>by context.
JL>
JL>If (2) then the way we've been interpreting most other predicates is wrong.
JL>(Unless you say that {nitcu} should be interpreted in a different way than
JL>other predicates.)

(1), I think (it is 2am %^)

JL>> I'm not sure about truth-fucntional value
JL>> of the second expansion - what the value is of "le nu [false statement]"
JL>> is not clear.
JL>
JL>Because there is no truth value for it. It is a sumti, and sumti don't have
JL>truth values. I would even question that in "le nu [statement]", there is
JL>any truth value for that [statement], since it is not being claimed.

Staements about non-0existent things are meaningless (they may be defined
as false because they are meaningless, but this is definitional).

The present king of France is bald.

has problems being evaluated truth-functionally because if it is false, then
its logical negation (contradictory) must therefore be true.

Similarly, if unicorns do not exist, then "I need a unicorn", and "It is
false that I need a unicorn" are both incorrect statements (false?)

JL>> However your clarification may point to the fact that se nitcu should be a
JL>> abstraction regardless about how we resolve the "lo"/"any" question.
JL>
JL>This is what was done to {djica}, which is analogous to {nitcu}. But I
JL>don't see why the transparent meaning should be forbidden. {mi nitcu le vi
JL>tanxe}
JL>= "I need this box", makes perfect sense. And so does {mi djica le vi tanxe}

Does it?  The (1) or (2) dichotomy above suggests that there is always a
sumti raising going on, and we are allowing the raising when there is no
scope problem, and not otherwise.  That is, I think, different than the way
we have dealt with other raising questions  (not necessarily wrong, but we
really oughta know what we are dealing with).

lojbab