* Saturday, 2011-10-29 at 17:05 +0100 - And Rosta <and.rosta@gmail.com>:
> 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.
If you were actually saying that Lion is a lion, it would be the meaning
of English we were disagreeing on! So I hope you aren't.
> We disagree on whether the definition of lionhood excludes certain
> individuative criteria.
More fundamentally, I think we disagree on whether {ko'a cinfo} means
(for ko'a an individual) "ko'a has lionhood" or "ko'a is a lion".
> > 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".
In my (perhaps naive) understanding of english, the use of "a" in
"a lion" invokes some individuation of precisely the kind we seem to be
arguing about; i.e. we can't use "a lion" to refer to an entity which
can also be seen as comprising multiple lions (Banach-Tarski aside,
please).
> >> > 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.
OK. And the "individuative cmavo" discussed below would be how you
disambiguate between these two meanings of {cinfo}? Or have you some
other way to refer explicitly to Lion rather than some lions, or vice
versa?
> > 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.
Well... you seem to acknowledge that it's useful to be able to talk
about lions as well as Lion; so if we are to have e.g. {lo cinfo} often
refer to Lion, wouldn't it be rather helpful to have an explicit way to
go from Lion to lions?
> > 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.
Hmm, it's true that {dacti} won't suffice in all cases.
For example, let's consider x1 of {ckape}. I assume you would say that
lions, Lion and Perilousness all ckape. I would want to be able to
distinguish between these three cases. Assuming we've already found
a way to distinguish between lions and Lion (e.g. using dacti), it
remains to find a way to separate Perilousness off from lower things.
The binary "pavrolza'i/dacti" approach won't help.
OK, so it seems we now have three proposed methods of handling this kind
of situation:
(i) JC's bunches approach - there are only lions and other perilous
objects; Lion and Perilousness are maximal(ish?) bunches of such;
disambiguation is through the tense system (e.g. {lo ka'e ckape},
maybe)
(ii) Using abstractions - e.g. Perilousness doesn't ckape, but it does
ka ckape; Lion doesn't cinfo, but it does ka cinfo and it does
ckape; lions cinfo and ckape.
(iii) (being my probably inaccurate understanding of your suggestion)
Like (ii) but the other way up: Lion is basic; an individuating
cmavo gets us down to lions. Similarly Perilousness is basic, and
(multiple? repeated?) cmavo can get us down either to Lion or all
the way to lions. Sometimes (i.e. in some contexts) only Lion
cinfos, while sometimes it's lions which cinfo; both ckape when
they're around, but sometimes only Perilousness ckapes (presumably
only when neither Lion nor any lions are around, although
individuating cmavo can summon them into being).
But am I understanding correctly that you actually favour:
(iv) Like (iii) but without the individuating cmavo - we can glork from
context whether we're talking about lions or Lion or Perilousness.
?
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