Re: [lojban] xorlo and masses

[tijlan <jbotijlan@gmail.com>]

On 21 August 2011 18:54, John E Clifford <kali9putra@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Secondly, descriptions refer to things in the domain of discourse, which need
> not be mereologically closed either up or down, and usually isn't (when I talk
> about rhinoceroses, I have never yet even thought about their brains, though I
> would, if asked, have admitted they were se besna -- still not talking about
> their brains.)

I agree.


> So much of what you say is off topic, indeed, irrelevant to
> Lojban, as far as I can see.  Part-whole has nothing to do with predication
> (unless you include collective/distributive in it, where it does not strictly
> belong).

"the part-whole relation is not essential to the selbri's meaning",
said I on 19 Aug.


> Semantics is not biology or physics or ,,,, and syntax even less so.

"be not too serious about whether the physical reality of a "rhino" is
such that it must be more than a "brain"", 19 Aug.


> I'm with Jones on this.  The word "mass", which you don't use all that often,
> admittedly, is totally useless for these conversations, so that is out.

"mass", "group", "collection"... whichever appropriate word.

I could ask this:

  lo xanto cu gunma lo besna joi ma

... which would be a response to Jonathan's presupposition that a
rhino must be more than a brain. I say that such a presupposition is
*not* necessary, that "lo xanto cu besna" can be ok.


> Nor, contrary to your last remark, does what yu say have any obvious linguiatic
> relation to 'lo besna' and 'lo xanto'.

I discussed the non-linguistic aspects of brains etc. in response to
Jonathan's non-linguistic assumptions (e.g. what a brain is a mass or
part of). I tried to point out that there are fundamental fuzziness
and arbitrariness in what we perceive as physical boundaries and
wholes, if that's what he had meant by "mass". I then tried to suggest
that the physical reality of anything is not essential to the way we
handle objects in languages. That's my linguistic point. For me, what
an object is a "mass" or part of, if ever, is ultimately determined by
the logic that manifests over a discourse.


mu'o

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