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Re: [lojban] A Simpler Quantifier Logic (blog article)
On 08.10.2016 02:23, And Rosta wrote:
I do have one question, regarding the following:
"One last note about predicates not being defined clearly as
distributive/non-distributive in xorlo; xorxes wanted lo to be
absolutely non-committal with regards to distributivity, therefore, in
his model, all predicates are left vague with regards to distributivity.
In my proposed full plural logic, predicates are defined as distributive
or non-distributive, so it is usually unnecessary to force
distributivity via explicit universal quantification."
I take it that this is not held to be a necessary feature of full plural
logic, but rather is held to be desirable so as to not have to force
distributivity via quantification. And I take it also that by
"predicates" you mean "argument places"?
Yes. "Predicate" is a sloppy abbreviation, but it works as long as you
assume that the predicates under discussion are unary.
I don't think it's a *necessary* feature of all possible plural logics.
It is merely one that I currently favor.
Each argument place is either
distributive or collective? Would you not also want an "unspecified as
regards distributivity"? And wouldn't this mean that where the xorxesian
underspecification of distributivity would have one predicate with, say,
three argument places, yours would have 2^3 or 3^3 predicates? This
looks so untenable that I conclude I must be misunderstanding you.
This would indeed be untenable, but I do not believe that you need every
version of every predicate. For example, I believe that a distributive
{citka} is enough. Very often, a non-distributive version is either not
distinct from the distributive version, or includes some added meaning
of "doing it together while possibly some of them only watch" (things
like {kansi'u lo ka citka}). There is a lot more to be said here, but
I'd rather first hear any additional points from you.
Unspecified distributivity in an argument place is a form of ambiguity
at the definitional level of a predicate. It makes it very difficult to
ever answer "what does it mean to {broda}", because there are by
definition multiple potentially non-overlapping answers. (I cannot
possibly count the hours that went into discussing {bevri lo pipno} over
the years without ever getting to a conclusion. This sort of stuff is
hard to sort out!)
There are other ways (for example, in the realm of pragmatics) to deal
with vague distributivity, outside of the definition of argument places,
and I prefer those ways.
~~~mi'e la solpa'i
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