* Monday, 2011-10-31 at 10:46 -0300 - Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>:
> On Mon, Oct 31, 2011 at 10:03 AM, Martin Bays <mbays@sdf.org> wrote:
> > * Sunday, 2011-10-30 at 19:00 -0300 - Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>:
> >> On Sun, Oct 30, 2011 at 6:25 PM, Martin Bays <mbays@sdf.org> wrote:
> >> > That does raise (again) the possibly important question of where it is
> >> > that a bunch of lions cinfos.
> >> >
> >> > Obvious answers:
> >> > (i) everywhere at least one of them zvatis;
> >> > (ii) at some specificish locale, such as their centre of mass;
> >> > (iii) everywhere.
> >> >
> >> > (ii) is icky.
> >>
> >> It could also be the minimum volume that contains them all,
> >
> > Isn't that the same as (i)?
>
> I took (i) to mean they were manywhere (there and there and there and
> there and ...), while (ii) meant they were just onewhere (only there).
> I was suggesting that (ii) could possibly be one big volume-like there
> rather than a small point-like there.
Ah, so you meant something like the minimum *convex* volume containing
them all?
Still pretty icky.
> >> Where would you say you remna? Is there a single right answer?
> >
> > Unless we're working with (iii), my answer would be: where I am. If you
> > asked me {xu do bu'u ti remna}, I'd probably say {go'i} if you were
> > pointing at my spleen, but {na go'i} if you were pointing at one of my
> > hairs, but would leave it to philosophers to debate whether I'm right or
> > not.
>
> If I were pointing at your spleen, I should probably say "bu'u ta".
Even if you were touching it?
> If I were pointing at the room we were both in, I could say "bu'u ti".
> I think it would generally make more sense to me to say "do zvati lo
> vi kumfa" than "do zvati lo betfu be do".
Perhaps only because the latter is bizarrely specific.
> But I agree it is a matter better left to philosophers, which is to
> say that there is no single right answer. Same thing would happen if I
> asked you when you remna. Did you remna yesterday and remna again
> today, or is there just one long when that you remna in?
Hmm, there I would be inclined to answer definitively that I remna
continuously.
> > Anyway, whatever the precise answer, if we work with anything like (i)
> > or (iii) it seems that actually {lo vi cinfo} only works if the
> > tautology is
> > {ro lo vi cinfo cu vi cinfo}
> > and not just
> > {lo vi cinfo cu vi cinfo} ,
> > because the second holds even if all but one of the lions is off
> > in africa (or, assuming possible worlds are handled analogously, are
> > space-lions from Quuxkl).
>
> I obviously would say that the tautology is "lo vi cinfo cu vi cinfo",
> which of course does not exclude the (non-tautological) possibility
> that "lo vi cinfo cu vu ji'a cinfo".
Huh. So {lo vi cinfo} just means (ignoring kinds) "some lions at least
one of which is here", and you'd have to say {lo cinfo poi ro ke'a vi
zvati} to mean "some lions here"?
If common predicates like {vi cinfo} are non-distributive, are you still
sure it's best to have {lo} work this way? If so, could you explain why?
Martin
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