Re: [lojban] {zo'e} as close-scope existentially quantified plural variable

[And Rosta <and.rosta@gmail.com>]

Martin Bays, On 26/10/2011 04:31:
> * Tuesday, 2011-10-25 at 10:32 +0100 - And Rosta<and.rosta@gmail.com>:
>> Martin Bays, On 25/10/2011 03:15:
>>> * Tuesday, 2011-10-25 at 02:07 +0100 - And Rosta<and.rosta@gmail.com>:
>>> If Lion X is equal to Lion Y, then they satisfy the same predicates. So
>>> if we can agree that Lion X is called Nigel while Lion Y is called
>>> Samantha, or if X likes to eat gazelles while Y prefers humans, then we
>>> must agree that there are at least two lions. Right?
>>
>> So not one lion that changes its name and dietary preferences?
>
> The use of the present tense was intended to rule that out.

But you will presumably also say that the definition of {cinfo} also specified criteria for distinguishing between two stages of the same lion and stages of two different lions, and that the distinction cannot be left lingustically unencoded.

> OK. So in John's lion-hunting context, after his having shot the left
> lion, you'd say "lo pa cinfo noi zu'a se cmene zo samantas.uu cu zu'a
> morsi gi'e ku'i ri'u pu'o zi gunta .ii mi'o"?
>
> I can see that John might be dangerously confused. Perhaps there are
> sound evolutionary reasons for natural language making sharper
> distinctions between lions and Lion than you seem to want lojban to?

Speakers should make the distinctions when necessary, using the resources of the language. When being approached by lions, it is especially important to know their spetial distribution. In other contexts, such as the daily lion, there is no such need to agonize over whether they're all the same lion. For other predicates, e.g. Barbie ("We both got given Barbie for Christmas") and Father Christmas ("F. C. has a white beard"), identity criteria are more insensitive to spatial distribution.

> Is it arbitrary to treat Obama as a single entity but lions as multiple
> entities? Does it involve treating time differently from space? To an
> extent, I suppose it does - at least, I don't see a wholly coherent way
> to rationalise the counting by reference to just the topology of the
> subset of space-time at which there is Obama or Lion or whatever. But in
> a language that's meant to be speakable by humans, I don't find time vs
> space asymmetry too objectionable.

Rather than "speakable by humans" I think you mean "speakable by Martin". But anyway, I think that when one thinks about how to implement your vision of lojban, assuming it's agreed that it should be able to express world-vviews other than your own, the solution would accommodate equally well the views of all participants in this discussion. For every current predicate with X places, there will be X * Y new predicates, where Y is the number of sets of criteria for discriminating between individuals (i.e. for deciding, given F(a) and F(b), whether or not a=b). Now it's hard to see how these extra predicates could be achieved other than by the use of appropriate cmavo dedicated to the purpose. And in that case, the way of both lojban and common sense would be to stipulate that when the individuative cmavo are omitted, the semantic criteria for individuating are unexpressed. Thus, the version with individuative cmavo used would allow you to express what you want to express, while the version witouth individuative cmavo used would express how things are in me and xorxes's vision.

--And.

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