Subject: Re: [lojban] noxemol ce'u

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 18 Sep 2001 22:32:00 EDT

In a message dated 9/18/2001 7:06:58 PM Central Daylight Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

> I'm finding this discussion with you extremely frustrating.
> Could you please spell out what is plain old {ni} for you? You
> seem to go from one to the other of my ni1 and ni2 and settle
> with none.
> 
> ni1 ko'a broda = jai sela'u broda be fai ko'a
> ni2 ce'u broda = ka ce'u broda sela'u makau
> ni3 = ?
> 
> If ni is a number, it is ni1. If it's a property-type thing,
> it's ni2. If it is neither, what is it?
> 

Back at you again. It is frustrating trying to make sense of your imaginary 
constructions around a perfectly straightforward and fairly clearly stated 
cmavo. I really have tried to make some sense of your claims, but they 
always turn out to be something you say they are not or something that makes 
no sense at all. I thought that I finally had a grip on it: that one was the 
truth value of a claim -- the {jai} might be a typo for {jei}, after all. 
But that is not the case, apparently. So we are back to the claim that it is 
the number buried before after the {sela'u} BAI. That looks about right, 
except that I do not see what your {ni2} is now, since I never see anyone (I 
can't even find a case where you) use it. The fact that you give partial 
formulae (and changing them each time), not real examples, hardly helps. 
But you end with some kind of a property or rather set of properties, having 
such-and-such as the quantity, presumably giving as the selected case just 
the {ni1 [bridi]} . Doing it with indirect question, another item in dispute 
doesn't help much either unless we agree on what thye are and I don't think 
we do. In any case, the collapse of the one into the other will still go on, 
as I suggested (unless you mean something really different by your questions)
{ni ko'a broda} is a number -- a quantity at least, as the list says "the 
amount of [bridi] measured on x2" It is not the truth value of anything, as 
your invention {ni1} seems to And to be, since the amount of the bridi is not 
the same as its truth value, which might, for example be binary while the 
amount is continuous (or conversely or anywhere in between). It is not a 
property or quality or whatever else someone is calling functions from term 
sets to truth vlaues this week, because it is a quantity, not a quality (a 
very basic distinction despite all kinds of possible reductions). To take an 
easy familiar case, the amount that I am tall is 5' 9" in feet/inches, he 
amount thad Jumbo is big is very in informal scales (and the amount that Tom 
Thumb is big is not at all in the same scale). And so on. 

Ahah!? Is the distinction here between {ni ko'a broda} and {ni ce'u broda} 
the oen that you are driving at with your strange division? But they are 
the just the function and the applied function, not two different structures 
(any more than say {le mamta be la dubias} and {le mamta be ce'u} are. The 
underlying structure (if it is -- I am not sure about {sela'u} being what is 
wanted) is the same for both, just with {ko'a} interchanged with {ce'u}. The 
function evaluates to a quantity, not a quality, in each case -- as the 
rubric requires. (It occurs to me that at some point you said that the 
answers to questions where what replaced the q-kau, not what replaced the 
whole question. Is that still functioning in some aprtial way to make the 
transition from a quantity to the property of being quantized with that 
quantity?)

As the wandering shows, I am trying to understand what the Hell you are 
talking about and how you get there from such a straightforward notion as "x1 
is the amount/quantity of bridi on scale x2"

Once more, the epsilon (member) function is defined on Fx1...xn as the extent 
to which <ref(x1),...,ref(xn)> is in Ref (F). In two valued set theory the 
possible values are 0 and 1 and usually correspond to the truth values of 
Fx1...xn. But they need not even in this system and certainly need not in 
any more complex system of either values of epsilon or truth values. For 
example, with two truth values, 0 and 1, but three epsilon values, there are 
a number of possibilities: that only top epsilon value counts a truth value 
1, or that all non-bottom ones do, or conversely that only the bottom is 
false or that all non-tops are. And, of course, the ones not explictly dealt 
with can simply not be truth functional or be dealt with by default.

Please use {ni2} in a complete example (it's ahrd to know what to do with a 
{ka} unless one knows what the predicate is that it is subordinated to) that 
is not just a roundabout use of {ni1}. Maybe that will help. I note as an 
aid that all of the examples given so far an purportedly {ni2} are in fact 
{ni1}s as far as I can see (as I have pointed out in analyses before).