Re: [lojban] {zo'e} as close-scope existentially quantified plural variable

[John E Clifford <kali9putra@yahoo.com>]

Oy! Never mind  that nothing has been said about {zo'e} for many moons, we now 
seem to have wandered from the question of what {lo cinfo} refers to to question 
of disparate identity.  So, to try to state my position clearly -- leaving 
aside, for the moment, the identity question -- I say that anything that cinfo 
can be a referent of an occurrence of {lo cinfo}, which, with you guys 
apparently immediately raises the issue of what cinfo.  To answer: 1) lions 2) 
temporally defined lion segments 3) some spatially defined lion segments (those 
that still constitute a functioning organism, those that constitute a 
presentation of a lion when we are being hypercorrect about what we see, but not 
yet slopping into phenomenology) *4) maybe visual sensations of lions with the 
possibility of non-veridical perception (why we use {tu'a} and whatever that 
gadri is in these cases).  Things that don't cinfo: a) lion (as in the deli 
order "A half pound of lion, please") b) Lion(kind) per se (though there might 
be something like conjunctive predication for its manifestations, the same might 
hold for lion and its normative slices) c) lionness.  Each of these is just the 
wrong sort of thing: abstract or disorganized.
That being said, it seems that most of what you have said fits in fairly 
nicely.  As for the issue of identity, I suppose we use common sense, which 
amounts to observed or tightly inferred continuity.  So, if we see a lion on the 
left and one on the right, they are not identical and are, therefore, two.  If 
we see one side of a lion and walk around it, keeping it in sight, we take all 
of the presentations to be of the same lion.  And so on, to the hard cases.

----- Original Message ----
From: And Rosta <and.rosta@gmail.com>
To: lojban@googlegroups.com
Sent: Fri, November 4, 2011 1:34:29 PM
Subject: Re: [lojban] {zo'e} as close-scope existentially quantified plural 
variable

Martin Bays, On 03/11/2011 23:49:
> * 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.

A difficulty I have in this discussion is that you have defined various notions, 
such as 'Lion', 'kinds', 'mundanes', but we lack a clear mutual understanding of 
them. Furthermore, you are using these notions metalinguistically but arguing 
they don't have a place in Lojban and are supposing me to be arguing that they 
do have a place in Lojban, whereas I don't really understand the import of the 
metalinguistic terms, and hence don't believe myself to be arguing the notions 
have a place in Lojban.
  
> 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.

I'm certainly not supposing that any gismu  have meanings radically different 
from what the authors intended.
  
> 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 still think that you have framed the debate in terms different from what 
actually underlies the debate. I don't see a problem in saying that lions, or 
cinfo, are individual lions, but we seem to have different understandings of 
what an individual lion is. As for actual lions, I'm not sure what is meant by 
'actual' here, but at first glance I see no reason not to accept that all lions, 
and all cinfo, are actual lions.
  
>>>>> 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?"

That might be a reasonable response, but "No" is also a reasonable answer. The 
description doesn't entail it's the same lion each day.
  
>>>>> 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.

Well, I was just groping towards trying to get an understanding of what Lion is.

> But if you mean to consider kinds as equivalence classes of mundanes
> ("imaginary elements", in mathematical logic jargon), I may be with you.

Explain a bit further, and then I might be able to say whether this is what I 
mean.

I don't know what equivalence classes and imaginary elements are, but if they're 
what you get in situations where broda(X) and broda(Y), but you don't know or 
choose not to say whether X=Y, then maybe I'm saying that whenever you say 
broda(Z), Z is one of these equivalence classes thingos.

> (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.

As I suggested in my last message, maybe your Lion is, in my terms, what you get 
when you take the bunch of all lions, but don't know or choose not to say 
whether or not they're all the same lion. I'd say all bunches work that way: you 
don't know or choose not to say whether or not they're all the same individual.

>> 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.

Sure, we know what the difference between one lion and two lions is. But there 
are these cases where you can't tell the difference. And I think that these 
cases in which the speaker can't tell the difference should be generalized into 
a case where for whatever reason the speaker doesn't tell the difference.
  
>>>>> 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?

Further lion-stages. Or, as xorxes suggested in his reply, different spatial 
aspects. Or, the lion-stage-that-I-described and the 
lion-stage-that-you-described. And so on -- subtypes may be  differentiated in 
all sorts of ways, not just spatiotemporal ones.
  
>>> 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?

I think it remains to be decided if something that *is* the property of being a 
lion is dangerous, which is what (ii) seems to say. My current position is that 
the property of being a lion is not dangerous.

If Lion is not a lion, but is the property of being a lion, then I can only 
conclude that "Lion" does not denote anything that I am arguing in support of.

>> 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?

Yes. If {ko'a broda ko'e} you'd want to disambiguate both the criteria by which 
ko'a counts as a single broda (be ko'e) and the criteria by which ko'e counts as 
a single se broda (be ko'a). I don't see how the tense system could do that.

>> 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.

I understood the difference between (i) and (iii) to principally involve whether 
it is the predicate/predication that is marked with a disambiguator or whether 
it is the predicate-place that is marked with a disambiguator.

Any disambiguation schmeme also faces the problem that wWhere broda(X) and 
broda(Y), there is a potentially infinite number of different ways of deciding 
that X is or is not Y, so I guess the scheme would need to be suitably 
open-ended and expandable.
  
>> 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?

I don't have a clear enough sense of what would satisfy you. I think for lions 
and Obama I might have a clear sense, but I don't know how to generalize that to 
a usable scheme.

>>> 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?

Is {na ku la bitlz cu zvati lo mi purdi} ambiguous? Could it be true if Ringo is 
in my garden but John isn't? If you could formulate general rules for {la}, 
they'd also apply to {lo}. But I don't know if one can formulate general rules 
-- these are difficult philosophical questions beyond the scope of linguistic 
semantics.

--And.

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