Re: [lojban] A or B, depending on C, and related issues

["Jorge Llambias" <jjllambias@hotmail.com>]

la pycyn cusku di'e

> Yup!  One problem with working at a dash when you have lousy handwriting
> (never mind P anQ, it's T and F that are the problems).

I use 1 and 0, but I could also use V and F which are
distinct enough.

> I would have taken the reduction as evidence that this was a totally
> inappropriate rendition of "Q or R depending on P" since it says that Q or 
> R
> regardless of P (or anything else).

Well, they have the same truth table, that doesn't mean it's
a good rendition. I think it means that "Q or R depending on P"
is not well represented by a three way logical connective.
(Neither is the causal "regardless", of course.)

> But then, I don't understand what all of
> this has to do with indirect questions exactly -- or with whatever keeps
> being called indirect questions while being neither (unless "indirect" 
> means
> "vague").

It has to do in that forms like "Whether A happens depends
on whether B happens", or "what x does depends on what y
does", etc, involve these so called "indirect question" forms.

> I suppose "{xn} depends on {ym}" means something like "there is a set of 
> true
> conditionals (not necessarily truth-functional, if that bothers people) 
> whose
> antecedents are each a member of {ym} and whose consequents are members of
> {xn}" and then some details about completeness and exclusiveness -- which
> might vary from case to case, as might the details of how the conditionals
> run.  The vaguer terms ("what's for dinner," "what's in the icebox," "what
> the weather is") just cover these lack of details, while guaranteeing the
> gneral (though possibly vacuous) claim.

"depending" is vacuous as a logical connective, not as a predicate.
As a predicate it probably involves all these internal conditionals
you make allusion to.

For example, I can say:

  le nu mi dasni makau cu jalge le nu mi klama makau
  What I wear depends on (results from) where I go.

I'm not saying a lot there, but I am saying something.

> The only connection I can see between all this and questions is the
> possibility that
> expressions like "what's in the icebox" stands for a set of answers (claims
> in this case, not propositions).

To my understanding so far, it stands for The Right Answer rather
than for a set, but I certainly don't have a full theory, or
anything even close to that.

mu'o mi'e xorxes




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