Re: Lojban is *NOT* broken! Stop saying that! (was Re: [lojban] Re: Vote for the Future Global Language)

[Robert LeChevalier <lojbab@lojban.org>]

Ivo Doko wrote:
> There's no "lojbanic" thinking about logic - there's logic and not 
> logic.

False.  There are multiple schools of logic, which conflict at times on 
very fundamental issues.  Though that probably isn't relevant for this 
example.

> If the two sentences parse differently you've either
> mistranslated them or lojban is not logical. Yeah, I'll presume the former.

The better conclusion is that the original sentence, being written in an 
ambiguous language, wasn't logically unambiguous in the first place.

> Wow, you guys need to learn your logic. Let's do it properly:
>
> A = "lojban is fully defined."
> B = "lojban is complete."
> C = "lojban is a functioning language."
>
> "lojban is not a fully defined, complete and functioning language" can be written as:

Not it can't. Your summary sentence is NOT
¬(A ∧ B ∧ C)

The closest English can come to that is
"It is not the case that lojban is fully defined, and that lojban is 
complete, and that lojban is a functioning language." and even that is 
potentially ambiguous in several ways, because the words themselves are 
ambiguous given differing contexts.  (for example, "Lojban is complete" 
and "Lojban is a complete language" are not necessarily identical in 
meaning.)

Your summary sentence uses "not" as a contrary rather than contradictory 
negation, and combines the three independent logical terms into a single 
complex modifier of the word "language".  It thus is NOT the same as the 
three separate sentences, logically ANDes and the whole negated.

Lojban makes the differences extremely clear.  English obviously does not.

lojbab

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