Re: [lojban] Counterfactual Conditions

[Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>]

On Thu, Oct 28, 2010 at 4:51 PM, Greg Nisbet <gregory.nisbet@gmail.com> wrote:
> I was skimming wikipedia while doing an econ problem set and came
> across this thing.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counterfactual_conditional
>
> "1.If Oswald did not shoot Kennedy, then someone else did.
> 2.If Oswald had not shot Kennedy, then someone else would have."
>
> (1) is an indicative conditional
> (2) is a counterfactual conditional
>
> How does one encode each of those in Lojban? I can't figure it out.

The indicative conditional is the ordinary logical connective "ganai
... gi ...", so:

   ganai la ozuyld na pu celcatra la kenedis gi lo drata be .obu cu ja'a go'i

In Lojban this is transparently equivalent to:

   ga la ozuyld pu celcatra la kenedis gi lo drata be .obu cu go'i
   "Either Oswald shot Kennedy or someone else did."

The counterfactual is a bit trickier. One way is:

   va'o lo nu da'i la ozuyld na pu catra la kenedis kei lo drata be
.obu cu ja'a co'e
   "Under the hypothetical conditions that Oswald had not shot
Kennedy, someone else would have."

mu'o mi'e xorxes

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