Re: [lojban] state of {binxo}

[Felipe Gonçalves Assis <felipeg.assis@gmail.com>]

On 10 December 2011 10:55, John E Clifford <kali9putra@yahoo.com> wrote:
> The metaphysics is getting a little thick here.  Lojban doesn't say much sub
> rosa about what exists or does not; it (like most languages) is just about what
> predicates apply.  No thing comes into existence or passes out of it in {binxo}
> and related predicates; rather one set of predicates cease to apply and a new
> set come to apply. That is, there is a change of state not of substance.
> Otherwise there would be no change, merely a substitution  (read a good old
> Thomist on the Eucharist).
>

Not having read the Thomist texts yet, I am trying to keep the metaphysics to a
minimum. I can perfectly well talk about tonight's moon as something that has
a certain span of coordinates in space-time. There is a (vague) limited interval
of time associated with it. When I say "begin or cease to exist", I am
not talking
about a higher reality, just about trespassing the time-boundaries of
this object
of discourse during the time of an event.

My point about {binxo} is precisely that: if it is object-object, it
can't be just about
some predicates ceasing to apply and a new set coming, because it doesn't make
reference to these predicates. As tijlan pointed out, the
uncontentious alternative
to that is {co'a} and friends.

For that reason, I looked for an interpretation of {binxo} that is
coherent with that.
My current understanding is that the time span of binxo1 or binxo2 is trespassed
during the nu binxo.

So, you can talk about an object that is a seed at a moment and then becomes a
tree, and say
  {ti tsiju gi'ebabo co'a tricu}.
You can even choose to describe it as {lo tsiju} and {lo tricu}, but if you say
  {lo tsiju cu binxo ti},
or
  {ti binxo lo tricu}
you can't be referring to the same object as {lo tsiju} and {ti} in
the first sentence,
or as {ti} and {lo tricu} in the second one. All sentences may be used
to describe
the same situation, but they involve fundamentally different choices of objects,
and have different semantic implications.

I am not questioning the validity of the objects, I am just trying to
clarify the
semantic implications, and confront them with current usage.

mu'o
mi'e .asiz.

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