Subject: Re: [lojban] Induction

From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 31 Aug 2001 01:56:51 -0400

At 05:54 PM 8/26/01 -0400, Invent Yourself wrote:
>How do we express logical induction in Lojban? In Cowan's explanation why
>certain gismu were dropped, he writes
>
> didni deduce replaced by lujvo using logji = logic
>
>logji seems to refer to the rules that permit deduction, whereas nibli
>refers to the facts that are deduced.
>
>What about induction? In the list of slaughtered gismu, it shows
>
> nusna induction x1 induces x2 about x3 from specific facts x4
>
>And in Cowan's reasons
>
> nusna induction who knows what "induction" is?

Obviously, he knew by the time he wrote the book below.

>-----
>
>The Book reads:
>
>"...whereas ``su'a'' suggests some sort of induction or pattern
>recognition from existing examples (not necessarily rigorous). The
>opposite point of the scale, ``su'anai'', indicates abduction, or drawing
>specific conclusions from general premises or patterns."
>
>What is the difference between abduction and deduction?
>
>Does this means that induction = sucta, and deduction = nibli ~= tolsucta?

nibli certainly refers to deduction.

By induction, I had meant to refer to the process commonly known as the 
"scientific method", which indeed pertains to pattern recognition followed 
by testing. As a method of knowing something, both the words for deduction 
and induction had plausible uses in x4 of djuno "epistemology" sumti.

But lojbab lost that argument.

lojbab
--
lojbab [email-masked]
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: http://www.lojban.org