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[lojban] Re: A (rather long) discussion of {all}
On 6/1/06, Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com> wrote:
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.
I should make clear that the "set" that I'm talking about is simply
what you'd call more than one student. I can't think of a less
ambiguous word. "The students themselves" is a set - there are no
implications of an object.
> 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.
Right. In the pluralist scheme, "the animal" can refer to both "the
cats" (who are running) and "the dog" (who is white). {lo danlu cu
bajra gi'e blabi} - except restricted to "things" and "masses composed
of the things" being interchangeable, but that still suffers from the
very same problem as the white dog example: you're switching referents
halfway through a sentence.
> "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.
Yes, "the members of a set", which I'm referring to as "set".
It could also refer to a set (in the
everyday sense of "set") of 20 students.
The everyday sense of "set" is little more than "group".
In this sense "set", "mass" or
"group" are interchangeable.
I don't see how that follows.
> 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.
As I've defined: I'm not talking about some special metaphysical set,
it's just that if I have two pencils in my hand, I call that "a set of
two pencils". Alternatively, "two pencils". The set of pencils isn't
"multicolor", it's just "each is a pencil".
> > 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
The problem that you're about to pose is as much (perhaps even more
of) an issue in your pluralist view.
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.
Alright, perhaps they were so drunk that they had to lean on each
other, and only through communal effort managed to topple into the
house. (Otherwise they didn't do it together, though they did do it at
the same time: "concurrently".)
Though I wouldn't usually see people going in as that sort of mass,
even if they were drunk, so I would seldom say {lei ci vitke...} in
the first place.
Now someone asks you:
xo klama be le zdani cu se viska do
How many goers-into-the-house did you see?
Note that this question is a bit off. Usually one would ask "how many
guests came in?" and not "how many acts of going in did you see?"
Your answer is:
(A) One. (The mass of three guests.)
Yes, if I saw them go in in that form, I'd say something like "Goers
in? Well, three. First Alice and Bryce, and then a drunken heap of
Carol, David, and Eliza toppled in." I'd offer the explanation because
I'm not a twit, and I'd know that what's really being asked of me is
"how many people increased the number of people in the house by coming
in via this door?".
(B) Three. (The three guests.)
Yes, this would usually be my answer, since I'd seldom see people
going in "together"-as-in-{loi} in the first place.
(C) Four. (The three guests and the mass of three guests.)
If I saw them come in as a mass, I wouldn't think that they came in
individually, and vice-versa.
(D) Seven. (The three guests, the mass of three guests, and the
three masses of two guests.)
*Potentially* there are 7 different goers-in, yes. Note what I wrote for (C)
(E) Far too many to count (all the visible organs that compose the
guests, and their corresponding masses.)
No, none of the organs themselves entered the house, just as none of
the students themselves surround the building.
(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.
There's still no problem. And I think that you want {loi}:
{loi nanmu cu remei bevri le pipno}
"the mass of men pairishly carried the piano" /
"together the men pairishly carried the piano"
This is not a problem because tanru have no fixed meaning. "Pairishly
carried" could mean that the mass was a pair. You'll find that being
explicit ("each of set A is in a group/mass with only one other of set
A such that that group lifts a piano") is just as verbose in your
method.
You should just use the abstractor {su'u} to accomplish this vague
"something to do with these students (i.e. groups of them)" thing that
you'd like {lo} to do.
> > > > 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.
No. The students do not surround the building individually, therefore
there are not 26 referents. There is only one "surrounder of the
building", and therefore there is only one referent. In this case,
you're treating "the students" as a mass that surrounds the building.
It doesn't matter that "the students" can potentially refer to either
a mass or some individuals (a set) in your view. {lo danlu} can
potentially refer to a white dog or some running (we'll say black)
cats that we see on this street. But when you say {lo danlu cu blabi},
the referent *is* clearly not the running cats.
> 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.
I should have said "two types of referents". One of them is the 50
students (that wear hats), one of them is the mass of 50 students
(that surrounds the building).
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