Subject: Re: [lojban] a construal of lo'e & le'e

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sun, 28 Oct 2001 21:00:23 EST

In a message dated 10/28/2001 1:12:46 PM Central Standard Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

> It's not an accidental error: his idea was to use the otherwise apparently
> useless lo'e to solve an unsolved problem. I don't think lo'e is useless;I
> now think it is vital, but I think Jorge's usage still works.
> 
> The problem with {tu'a lo broda} is that it hasn't been established which
> bridi's prenex the lo quantifier is in: is it in the bridi that tu'a lo
> broda is in, or is it in the imaginary bridi that would replace tu'a lo
> broda? Only the latter fixes the problem, but it (usefully) turns tu'a into 
> an
> exception to the usual quantifier scope rules.
> 

I know it was deliberate, but I think it an error nonetheless. By that usage 
what you are said to want is a typical whatever and so an atypical one would 
not do, presumably. But, of course, an atypical one that satisfied your need 
or... would do fine: you any old whatever. As for the rest of it, the whole 
point of {tu'a} is to prevent the quantifier on -- or one derived from -- the 
sumti from rising to the upper level, so of course the quantifier goes on the 
{le nu ... co'e} that {tu'a} indicates. Where has this been doubted? It 
thus is not an exception to the quantifier rules and, insofar as it appears 
to be, it is there precisely to remind you not to pull quantifiers out of 
intensional contexts.

<> OTOH , the claim is only true of 1
> really and an abbreviation might well be useful for resolving some
> ambiguities efficiently (Swedes eat more yogurt than Danes).

I'd resolve this as loi versus lo'e.>

The sentence is said to be five ways ambiguous, at least three of which are 
pretty obvious. {lo'e} seems to enter into at least two of them, since 
Lojban has lost (I just noticed) the distinction between typical and average, 
God knows when or why. Maybe there is another handy way to say "per capita" 
in these contexts.

<The "abstracting away from individuating differences" method of deriving
the categorial individual may fail to work sometimes, but not the notion of 
the
categorial individual itself.>

Well, it will fail -- at least to be useful -- if it cannot be given some 
meaningful content. Historically, it has been used as a magic wand to cover 
cases that could not be made to fit otherwise (this is not necessarily a 
strong criticism, since most theories in linguistics suffer from this problem 
to a greater or less extent -- galloping adhocitis is a professional 
disease). So, given a class, even a natural kind, what is its category or 
its prototype or its categorical individual? Is it a blueprint or a member 
of the class or a way of talking about the class fuzzily or..... If we are 
going to summon this thing, we need some clues about what it is. Note that 
none of these things lives in Africa -- except perhaps a member of the group. 
What properties does it really have? How are they relevant to properties of 
members of the group?

<).  The lV'e version implies a fictive
> element which is presumably not only irrelevant but flat wrong.

I don't think it should imply a fictive element. It should imply only
an ontology consistent with prototype theory, so that instead of
Category and Member-of we have Individual and Version-of.>

Unfortunately, the ontology of Lojban (yes, it has one) has sets and members, 
not individuals and versions, except in the st-worm-segment sense. And it is 
not clear what the version-ofs (or maybe it is the individuals) would be 
like. I suspect that his is Mr. Rabbit come round again, and that has always 
failed to gain adherents precisely because it is too muddled to convince 
anyone (or else it is some version of Platonism -- come to think of it, of 
course it is -- in which case the question of connection -- which may not be 
important in the present sense -- remains unsolved, and of course means that 
the individual has properties that none of its versions has and conversely).  

<But his Mr Rabbit (even if he got it from Malinowski or some other
such ancient) seems to me to be rather prescient, prefiguring ideas
that became commonplace only in the last fifteen years.>

Well, ignoring 2500 years ago and ever since, but almost always so muddled as 
to be useless. Given a is a member of A, represented (however that is 
intended) by *a, what is the reelation between properties of *a, of a, of 
each member of A? That is the problem with {lo'e, le'e} and introducing *a 
does not seem to get it any forrader, since the answers there are also 
unknown (I actually don't think the answers for {lo'e} are that obscure, just 
very personal, but that is another matter).  

<What is the quantifier on "li" and "me'o"?>
I don't think there is one, since they attach always to unique objects. That 
is, I think that, grammar aside -- but not really even that given their 
restrictions -- they are not gadri.

<> Maybe as a maxim of prudence, but it is always better to figure out
> what you really mean and say that, rather than just reduce your
> chances of saying something glaringly false or stupid.

Not always easy to figure out, though. "The customer is always right",
"The postman misdelivered our mail (often/yesterday)"... Having some
foolproof recipes is useful.>

But a foolproof recipe always gets it right, not merely usually keeps from 
getting it hideously wrong. So stick with what you know is right, even if 
there is something righter that you miss. (The first examle is directive not 
descriptive, so less a problem, the second just suffers from time scope 
ambiguities, which Lojban ought to be able to do elegantly.)