[lojban] Re: xorlo podcast

[John E Clifford <clifford-j@sbcglobal.net>]

--- Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com> wrote:

> On 9/29/05, John E Clifford
> <clifford-j@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> > Well, you probably have an advantage on me
> for
> > doing history, since a large part of my hard
> > drive that Linux took out was my records for
> > those earlier discussions.
> 
> Everything relevant is publicly accessible on
> the internet
> (which is not to say that it is always easy to
> find) except
> for that recent private exchange we had. I
> don't have much
> kept in my computer, all of my writing in or
> about Lojban
> is out there in cyberspace. The advantage I may
> have is
> that if we are discussing what I did or did not
> do, or how I
> used certain word, or which word I used for
> something,
> then I have a better chance of recalling
> correctly. If we
> were discussing your usage you'd have the
> advantage.

Well, this historical stuff can become a
hindrance to discussing what is important.  I
have tried to get information out of the material
on the net but the search engines do not find for
me even things I know are there (since I have
them also in my files), so I have little hope of
finding things that I do not know where are.
  
> > Not that it actually
> > matters in the long run whether it was as
> > accepted or used as I remember.  the
> discussions
> > on which it was based and the formulations of
> are
> > as they were presented at various times in
> our
> > more recent discussions -- where it was
> described
> 
> (described by you, yes, never by me)

So far as I can find, you never disabused me of
this notion I had (still have, come to that),
though you did occasionally say that you did not
participate in some part of what I remembered as
the  history.
 
> > as the previous standard in various ways  and
> was
> > clearly not CLL. And, of course, the whole is
> > laid out in the cited wiki page.
> 
> But did that page ever constitute a consensus
> of more
> than one?

Well, I presented it as a summary of a position
that I took to have had at one time at least
three consenting members -- yourself included, to
be sure, apparently incorrectly.  In any case, it
is not just my invention so far as I can tell. 
And, again, this historical discussion is
divereting from the substantial issue.
 

> > > I can't "go back" to a place I never left.
> >
> > Well, I will not cite personal conversations,
> 
> Please do cite whatever you want from me, I
> don't
> remember saying anything in that discussion I
> wouldn't
> say in public. I'm quite certain have not
> changed my
> position.
> 
> >but
> > they did leave me with the impression that
> you
> > were now falling back to the smaller
> "species"
> > interpretation.
> 
> I don't really know what the 'smaller "species"
> interpretation'
> is, so I can't comment on that. I don't think I
> have ever
> understood the labels you keep coming up with
> for my
> position, but it is you who keeps changing the
> labels, not
> my position that changes.
The labels have changed for a variety of reasons
1) I find a new facet of what you are proposing
(it may always have been there, but it comes
clearly into focus only later -- possibly from a
new example or something that you say about one
of my proposed solution to the mystery) 2) one
proposed model having failed, I try a new model
to see if it will work better 3) some new
information from outside comes in that casts the
problem in a better light (the McKay book on
plural quantification and the types of
predication was the clearest case of that) 4)
some of the implications of an old name seem to
be interfering with understanding what the model
means and some other word seems to work better. 
On this, I have stepped back (in a reversal) to
"species" from "-hood," as it is not clear just
whjat properties are actally involved (or even
whether it is properties rather than some othe
form of abstraction -- it doesn't matter except
in how the final explication is phrased; the
pattern of explication remains the same).  I
think that perhaps the same thing is working for
you: you drop the Mr.Mr. talk for fairly long
stretches because it tend to lead the discussion
off into that murky metaphysical muck, which is
not strictly relevant to what you have in mind
(always assuming that you have something in mind
other than a set of sentences which you think
ought ot have a certain meaning).

> > Even that was a bit hard to get
> > out of the official description but was a
> > possibility, but the Mr.Mr. interp is harder
> > still.  And -- at least in the version that
> was
> > most recently going round -- it does prevent
> the
> > carefully constructed system that allowed
> {lo}
> > finally to be workable in at least some kind
> of
> > logic.
> 
> You don't have to use that way of describing
> things if
> it doesn't sit well with you. Your best bet is
> to ignore
> all descriptions and concentrate on the usage
> and the
> examples.

As has turned up many times, the examples are not
very useful without contexts and clear
translations (which also require context
usually).
{lo cinfa cu citka lo bakni} can mean any number
of things (and hence essentially nothing) in
isolation.  If it is clearly a report of what is
going on or did on some occasion, it means one
thing; if it is clearly a generalization about
lions or cows, it means another; if it just
laying out a possibility, it means yet something
else again.  And so on.  And an explication of
what {lo cinfa} means needs to cover all of these
-- and whatever else comes along.  It is the more
remote cases that are the most interesting
usually: your {mi djica lo cinfa}, to stick with
the current vocabulary, reveals (as nothing else
does that I can recall) the peculiar nature of
{lo cinfa} relative to the other types of sumti
in the language (I mean the {lo} series, not just
the word {lo} -- so the contrast is with the {le}
series and variables primarily) -- if all uses
are to be encompassed in a single explication (as
seems to be part of what "logical language" is about.


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