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Re: [lojban] Two views of logic ?
No, not two views of logic, although there is no shortage of such views, even on
this list. What this seems to be is a discussion of the relation between the
semantics (truth values or a bit more) of the connectives and their ordinary
language pragmatics (or maybe some special language pragmatics -- I'm unsure
what the references to OOP amount to). It is not a news item that, even when it
merely connects two things, claiming credence for both, that "and" also has
other, pragmatic, functions. In particular, unlike the semantics, order is often
important in the pragmatics: what come first is more important and what comes
second less so, an afterthought (there are exceptions to this, of course, but
they usually involve complicated scenarios, e.g. David getting the report of
Uriah's death). Or the order may be temporal (which gives rise to another
logical connective "and then" to build a whole logic on). Similarly, "or" and
"if" may be used for bet-hedging, leaving an out just in case the first choice
doesn't work out. (The derivation of these usages from the converstional
conventions and the theory that has grown out of then is not simple, but still
fairly straightforward, once you see it.) Now the Lojbanic significance of this
is that we don't know much (if anything) about Lojban pragmatics. Can (is) the
-e series used like the English "and"? Is -a(nai) used to hedge bets? We know
that the pragmatic move from OR to XOR in English is represented in Lojban
(though not consistently, apparently) by a change in connective (a move also
used sometimes in Logic). Is the same true for other connectives? I'm not sure
just where the difference of "but" from "and" lies (the pragmatics of English is
no great shakes either); part of it is known syntactic but another part remains
unpredictable from syntactic context -- and has not been formalized, that I
know of. And so on.
----- Original Message ----
From: Escape Landsome <escaaape@gmail.com>
To: lojban <lojban@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Sun, July 31, 2011 2:25:19 AM
Subject: [lojban] Two views of logic ?
Hello,
there has been some discussion recently about the question of the
meaning of AND (I used AND in a sense that was different from the pure
logical AND, meaning something akin to OOP-multiple inheritance).
Now, I'd like to draw your attention on something that bothers me :
although this is not strictly a lojban-related question, it shares
some relation with lojbanic interests.
It is the fact that natlang AND is not exactly logical AND (this is
not a new item), --- EVEN WHEN the "semantic import" of AND is a
logical one (this is more of a new item).
Let me make myself clearer with a natlang example :
when I say, "John is ill, this may be because of X, OR SOMETHING
ELSE", there is a logical import in this sentence, which is, roughly
speaking, the logical conditions by which we can tell if this sentence
is true or not... and there is also a semantic and a pragmatic
import.
I claim that here the logical and the semantic imports are distinct.
Indeed, saying that somebody is ill "for some reason, or for some
other else", is tautologic, as it is clear that (X or something else)
maps everything in the world.
Yet, semantically (and even pragmatically), saying "X or something
else" is a good way of saying "anything, but more acutely X" (or, more
probably).
You may reply that, in this case, what is said is "anything, but more
acutely X", which is not "anything", neither a "OR-expression". I
agree with that. So, we need a semantic connector to say "A but more
acutely B" ?
Also, please note that "X.... or something else...." is justified in a
"cognitive-time-elapsing event" of scanning all the possible causes of
John's illness. The speaker begins by regarding X as a cause, then
adds the modifier "or something else" as a second-order correction.
Maybe, this very way of scanning things, as a first-order assertion
corrected by a second-order one, should be kept. Maybe the connector
"ko'a but more acutely ko'e" should render the mindflow logic of this
second-order correction ?
-- .esk
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