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Re: [lojban] {zo'e} as close-scope existentially quantified plural variable
Martin Bays, On 29/10/2011 01:14:
* Friday, 2011-10-28 at 11:58 +0100 - 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<mailto: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<mailto: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.
I'm saying that the definition of {cinfo} is
"x1 is a lion/[lioness] of species/breed x2", and that I wouldn't want
to change this.
We're all saying this much. We disagree on whether the definition of lionhood excludes certain individuative criteria.
If I understand you correctly, that does mean that I am saying what you
say I'm saying.
I was making a sincere attempt to attribute to you a view I believe you do hold, but I don't think it follows from your belief that {cinfo} means"x1 is a lion/[lioness] of species/breed x2".
> 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.
I still don't think I understand your setup. Do you have different
entities to handle these different cases? e.g. would you actually use
multiple lions in the lion-hunting example, rather than Lion doing
different things in different places? But use Lion for the daily lion?
Yes. For Gricean reasons, rather than truth-conditional necessity.
If so, that is sounding closer to my understanding of xorxes' setup.
Good.
> 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.
So your individuative cmavo would be something like classifiers?
I guess so, but I hesitate to venture to delineate a scheme whose primary purpose is to satisfy your requirements, given that you have a better understanding of your requirements than I do.
Those would certainly be helpful if we're to have kinds in the language.
But really, it seems that we are literally disagreeing on the meaning of
{cinfo} - whether it means "is a lion", or "is Lion", or is ambiguous
between the two. So wouldn't the most natural and lojbanic solution be
to decide on one of the two as the meaning of {cinfo}, and have
a tanru/lujvo ({cinfo pavrolza'i} or {cinfo dacti}, perhaps) for the
other?
But {cinfo} was a mere example. We have the same disagreement over every place of every predicate. The disagreement can be resolved by multiplying the number of predicates, but it would be crazy to attempt to do that haphazardly and unsystematically. This is what I'm saying in my quoted para above.
Whichever were chosen for {cinfo} itself, it would still be possible to
declare that {lo cinfo} explicitly selects one or the other, or is
ambiguous between the two, as preferred.
Yes. I say that above too -- {lo cinfo} would be ambiguous.
--And.
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