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Re: [lojban] {zo'e} as close-scope existentially quantified plural variable
Whatever else it does ( and I confess to not following most of the subsequent discussion), xorxes' story raises one of the great problems for the Aristotelian wing: how do we get to generalizations from limited instances? Children who have seen only chihuahuas, somehow recognize terriers and spaniels as dogs, for example. Xorxes suggests the Platonic answer: we are directly aware of the kind when we see the instance (well, some of us, anyhow). I don't think that is a very good answer, but the attempts to find psychological mechanism to explain how we do it so well are not much better.
But I still don't see why kinds (etc.) are needed for Lojban semantics or just explaining what Lojban expressions do nor why, if they are needed, maximal bunches of the appropriate sort won't do the trick -- at a significant ontological savings.
Sent from my iPad
On Oct 29, 2011, at 10:59, Martin Bays <mbays@sdf.org> wrote:
> * Saturday, 2011-10-29 at 10:55 -0300 - Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>:
>
>> On Fri, Oct 28, 2011 at 9:14 PM, Martin Bays <mbays@sdf.org> wrote:
>>>
>>> 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 wouldn't that just shift the whole discussion from "cinfo" to "dacti"?
>
> Well, And seemed (I may well have misunderstood) willing to accept that
> lojban should be able to handle the notion of an object, just not that
> {cinfo} and similar should involve objects by default.
>
>> ~ Another Evolutionary Tale ~
>>
>> One day, Mamma Human was with her two children, Moople and Cless, when
>> they saw Lion in the distance. Moople and Cless had never seen Lion
>> before and wanted to go and play with him, but Mamma Human told them
>> Lion was dangerous and they should never go anywhere close to him. The
>> next day, while Momma Human was away collecting fruit, Cless saw
>> something approaching and said "Hey Moople, there's Lion again, let's
>> get out of here! (*)" But Moople laughed and said "No silly, that's
>> not Lion. I saw that Lion had a mole on his forehead, and that one has
>> no mole. I'm going to play with him." Guess who grew up to have
>> descendants...
>>
>> And now in Lojban:
>>
>> ca lo djedi lo mamta remna cu kansa lo re panzi be ri be'o no'u la
>> .mupl. jo'u la .kles.
>
> Off-topic, but why {jo'u} rather than {joi}? Do you have a theory of
> what the difference between those words is?
>
> I was kind of thinking that {jo'u} should work like {e}, but be
> processed only after everything else so it has "innermost scope";
> e.g. {broda ko'a jo'u ko'e ro brode} == {broda ro brode ko'a .e ko'e}.
>
> But that doesn't fit with how you just used it.
>
>> .i ca bo viska lo cinfo noi darno .i la .mupl.
>> jo'u la .kles. no roi pu viska lo cinfo gi'e djica lo nu klama ri gi'e
>> kelci .i ku'i lo mamta remna cu jungau ra lo du'u lo cinfo cu ckape .e
>> lo du'u .ei no roi klama lo jibni be ri .i ca lo bavlamdei ca lo nu lo
>> mamta remna vu crepu lo grute kei la .kles. cu viska da noi ca'o
>> jbibi'o gi'e cusku lu ju'i .mupl. lo cinfo za'u re'u zvati .i .e'u
>> mi'o cliva li'u .i ku'i la .mupl. cu cmila gi'e cusku lu doi bebna tu
>> na cinfo .i mi pu viska lo nu lo pilba'a cu jadni lo sedycra be lo
>> cinfo
>
> Yes, that's just the sad kind of error you're likely to make if you
> aren't taught about individuals... he thinks that just because {lo cinfo
> cu broda}, it follows that {ro na broda na ku cinfo} - which is valid if
> {pa da cinfo} (which his kindly mother presumably taught him), modulo
> complicated tense issues he can be forgiven for overlooking.
>
>> .i tu na se pliba'a .i .ai mi ba klama tu gi'e kelci li'u .i ko
>> smadi lo du'u ma kau ma'urbi'o gi'e se panzi ...
>>
>> (*) I read somewhere that "let's get out of here" is the most common
>> line in movies ever, but I suspect it may be just a myth.
>
> Martin
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