From nicholas@uci.edu Thu Aug 23 17:23:59 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: nicholas@uci.edu X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-7_3_1); 24 Aug 2001 00:23:59 -0000 Received: (qmail 63852 invoked from network); 24 Aug 2001 00:17:18 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.26) by m8.onelist.org with QMQP; 24 Aug 2001 00:17:18 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO e4e.oac.uci.edu) (128.200.222.10) by mta1 with SMTP; 24 Aug 2001 00:17:18 -0000 Received: from localhost (nicholas@localhost) by e4e.oac.uci.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id RAA23666; Thu, 23 Aug 2001 17:17:18 -0700 (PDT) X-Authentication-Warning: e4e.oac.uci.edu: nicholas owned process doing -bs Date: Thu, 23 Aug 2001 17:17:18 -0700 (PDT) X-Sender: To: Cc: Nick NICHOLAS Subject: Re: remoi malglico (was: A revised ce'u proposal involving si'o Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII From: Nick NICHOLAS cu'u la xod. >I want to argue against And's proposal too, but my arguments are based on >the differences between "relationship" or "quality", and "idea". They are >not based on any differences between "ckaji le ka ce'u broda ce'u" and >"sidbo". Here again, are we letting English concepts poison our >understanding of similar-but-different gismu? xod, the metalanguage of Lojban is still English. Inasmuch as {si'o} has a definition at all, that definition is "idea/concept". We can guess at what an 'idea' or a 'concept' are in English; how the hell are we supposed to guess what a {si'o} is in Lojban? Is it a {sidbo}? But then, what's a {sidbo}? Is it an idea, or a concept? Or both, or neither? What is an idea, anyway? How do you get away from English there? By prototype? By formalism? Who will tell us? Will it be you? Will it be me? malglico is a good thing to be on the alert against. malglico purely for malglico's sake is not. You're asking for a bootstrapping that I think impossible. We can't agree what a 'concept' is in English, and saying it's actually a {sidbo} in Lojban solves this? With the defined place structure "x1 (idea abstract) is an idea/concept/thought about x2 (object/abstract) by thinker x3"? Which disambiguates what exactly? No; we have to keep talking about this in English. At least with formalistic approaches, you're not expressly copying English. Talking about {si'o} with a bunch of lambdas is not inherently malglico; I would have thought it's a good thing. In fact, it was the *only* way I could understand what Lojbab means by his protean {ka}: by not concentrating on any of the places, he's concentrating on the {selbri}. (Wish he'd said that earlier, of course.) Talking about {ce'u} (and lambdas) was formalistic, and my impression was, this is how we've worked out what {du'u} and {ka} are --- not, in the first instance, by talking about English "properties" and "propositions". I think it absolutely legitimate to expand this to {si'o}; and I now think And's proposal makes me understand {si'o} more, not less. I'm rapidly tiring of these running street-battles, btw. If it does come down to who yells the longest, it won't be me... On a sidenote: .i doi xod do se cnemu fi lenu mrilu le 10000mei be le'i notci pe le la .iaxus. jbomriste -- == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == Nick Nicholas, Breathing {le'o ko na rivbi fi'inai palci je tolvri danlu} nicholas@uci.edu -- Miguel Cervantes tr. Jorge LLambias