* Saturday, 2011-10-29 at 20:59 +0100 - And Rosta <and.rosta@gmail.com>:
> Martin Bays, On 29/10/2011 18:28:
> > * Saturday, 2011-10-29 at 17:05 +0100 - And Rosta<and.rosta@gmail.com>:
> >> Martin Bays, On 29/10/2011 01:14:
> >>> 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.
>
> Given that English allows us to speak of "a lion" that you would
> consider to not count as a lion, and to speak of "an Obama" that you
> would not consider to count as an Obama, we do seem now to be
> disagreeing about the meaning of English.
OK, so I agree that "is a lion" can sometimes be used of kinds of lions.
I was forgetting this.
I'm not sure it can be used of Lion itself, though.
It's an unusual meaning of "is a lion", and I would be surprised if the
authors of the gismu list had it in mind... but nevermind.
To fix the metalanguage: I'll continue to use "is a lion" and "are
lions" as if this ambiguity in english didn't exist - I always mean
actual individual lions.
> I had formerly thought that you were seeking to define Lojban
> predicates such as cinfo on the basis of a particular model of the
> universe, rather than on the basis of English, and hence that the
> semantics of English were irrelevant to the discussion.
Yep, I just thought they coincided. I was slightly wrong. Sorry for
resulting confusion.
> >> 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".
>
> I don't think that's what we disagree on. Maybe we disagree on whether
> there's a difference between "ko'a has lionhood" and "ko'a is a lion",
> for I don't see a clear difference.
So now it seems we disagree on whether "is a lion" should be understood
in a sense which allows Lion and its subkinds.
> >>> 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).
>
> Well, obviously there are generics like "a lion has four legs", and
> then there are things like "We were talking about a lion. Which lion?
> The lion in my garden each day.",
I don't think that one works - a reasonable response would be "are you
sure it was the same lion each day?"
> and then we can say "an angry lion erased from my consciousness a calm
> lion" (as opposed to "an angry lion erased itself from my
> consciousness") in situations where you would count the two lions as
> the same lion.
>
> I have no hesitation in believing that English works xorxesianly --
> indeed, the reason I always supported xorxesianism is that it reflects
> the way English works. (I don't venture to generalize beyond English,
> because English is the only language I know better than badly.)
>
> >>> 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?
>
> It'd be the individuative cmavo. I guess the one you call "Lion" is
> used where X is a lion and Y is a lion but you don't know (or don't
> say) whether X = Y.
Err. Maybe. I don't think I understand you there.
But if you mean to consider kinds as equivalence classes of mundanes
("imaginary elements", in mathematical logic jargon), I may be with you.
(Although I'm not sure this wouldn't end up being effectively equivalent
to considering them as bunches)
In any case: as I'm understanding it, Lion is an entity which somehow
corresponds to the unary predicate "x is a lion" (where recall that
I mean by this that x is an actual lion, not a kind of lions!). I'm
a bit vague on what its properties should be, but xorxes' usage seems to
agree with the simple rule: if "lions [do/are something]" is true in
english, then Lion does/is it too.
> And the one you'd want is where the speaker is
> certain how many distinct lions there are, based on maximizing
> spatially distinct lions, minimizing temporally distinct lions, and
> whichever other criteria deal with cases like "the lion(s) we each
> spoke about" (where we each speak about one lion) and so forth.
Something like that. Whether or not we can define it precisely, and
whether or not we'd agree on edge-cases, I think we both know what the
difference between one lion and two lions is.
> >>> 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?
>
> Provided that the default is to allow speakers to be vague and
> unspecified, then yes I think it would be good to have ways of being
> explicit about criteria for individuation.I don't see there being
> a simple dichotomy between kinds and nonkinds, though.
Is a lion a kind? If so, what are its exemplars?
Ah, I recall your answer: lion-stages.
OK; is a lion-stage a kind? If so, what are its exemplars?
> > For example, let's consider x1 of {ckape}. I assume you would say that
> > lions, Lion and Perilousness all ckape.
>
> Is Lion what you get when X is a lion and Y is a lion but you don't know (or don't say) whether X = Y?
>
> And is Perilousness the potential harmer, or the situation of there
> being danger, or the property of being a potential harmer, or what?
Something to do with the latter, I assume. Whatever it is you'd want as
a referent of {lo ckape} which has lions and Lion as instances. If you'd
describe it differently, please explain.
> > 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.
> > ?
>
> Let me leave Perilousness to one side, since I'm not sure what it means here.
>
> I'm not advocating (ii).
Do you see anything particular wrong with it?
> If the difference between (i), (iii) and (iv) is that in (i)
> disambiguation is by tense, in (iii) disambiguation is by special
> individuating cmavo, and in (iv) disambiguation is solely by glorking,
> then I reject (i) because I don't see how it could work,
Do you see that it couldn't work?
> and favour (iii)
There is a reason to prefer a bottom-up approach like (i) or (ii) to the
top-down approach of (iii). Although the path may in some cases be
tortured, it does seem that the properties of kinds are eventually
derived from the properties of their exemplars; but the converse is
false.
For example: if we try to take (what I understand to be the xorxesian
version of) Lion, it may be possible to recover individual lions by
splitting up the subset of space-time at which Lion cinfos
(supposing/pretending that this subset is at all well defined) into
lion-sized chunks, and calling each chunk a lion. (I'm not sure how this
relates to (iii), but it seems in a similar spirit.) If then want to
know whether one of these lions satisfies a unary predicate, like
lo ka ce'u ckape, we can declare that it does iff it holds on the subset of
space-time corresponding to that lion that Lion satisfies the predicate.
But this strategy clearly breaks down as soon as we consider a binary
predicate, e.g. lo ka ce'u nelci ce'u. Which lions like which other
lions is not information which is contained in the (tensed) predicates
satisfied by Lion.
> if only because you have thought deeply about (iv) and find it
> unsatisfactory. If i were to consider only my needs and not yours,
> (iv) would suffice.
Then again, maybe you have a (v) to suggest? We have a dangling
threadicule:
> > Martin Bays, On 19/10/2011 06:11:
> > > * Wednesday, 2011-10-19 at 04:59 +0100 - And Rosta<and.rosta@gmail.com>:
> > >> Martin Bays, On 18/10/2011 04:26:
> > >>>>>> For example, {na ku lo cinfo cu zvati lo mi purdi}
> > >>>>>> has at least the two following meanings in terms of actual lions:
> > >>>>>> 1. {lo cinfo} is interpreted as a plurality of mundane lions, giving
> > >>>>>> roughly:
> > >>>>>> For L some (contextually relevant) lions: \not in(L, my garden)
> > >>>>>> (which probably means that there exists a lion among L which is not in
> > >>>>>> my garden)
> > >>>>>> 2. {lo cinfo} is interpreted as the kind Lions, giving
> > >>>>>> \not in(Lions, my garden)
> > >>>>>> which is then resolved existentially, giving
> > >>>>>> \not \exists l:lion(l). in(l, my garden) .
> > >>>> Sorry, I was unclear. I meant that English seems to allow only
> > >>>> reading (2), and that the same might go for Lojban.
> > >>> Ah! Have {lo} *only* able to get kinds, you mean?
> > >> Yes. With anything that looks like a 'mundane' reconceived as a kind.
> > >
> > > So how would you rule out interpretation 1 in the above?
> >
> > By whatever rules out "it is not the case that Obama is in my garden"
> > or "it is not the case that chlorine is in my garden" from being true
> > in a circumstance in which some (but not all) Obama/chlorine is in my
> > garden. I suppose the principle is that referents are treated as atoms
> > rather than as complexes some bits of which do broda and other bits of
> > which don't necessarily broda; but I'm really only thinking aloud in
> > saying this.
>
> I don't understand how this fits with your
> whole-sort-of-general-mish-mash metaphysics and {lo} handling.
Maybe there's a resolution in there somewhere?
Martin
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