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

From: And Rosta <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 29 Oct 2001 16:46:05 +0000

John:
#And Rosta scripsit:
#> The point I was making that any arbitrary subdivision of loi djacu counts
#> equally well as pa djacu, re djacu, ci djacu, truthconditionally,
#
#Well, surely not. pa djacu cu du lo djacu would not count as true; at least
#one must be consistent.  

Eh? What am I missing? -- "pa djacu cu du lo djacu" seems wholly true.

#(Oy, I curse the day that I decided to merge selma'o DU and GOhA.)

Why?

#> In your descriptions, as in current Loglan documentation, only the
#> collectivity interpretation is presented, not the categorial individual/myopic
#> singular interp. I only encounter mention of the latter from veterans of
#> Loglan days.
#
#Well, yes, I think it's paedagogically easier to grasp.

Definitely.

#> I will grant you that every reference to a stereotype could be said with
#> le'e, but not vice versa.
#
#Wasn't meant to be. After all, ma'oste keywords are just keywords, not
#full definitions.

.. which doesn't stop us trying to treat them as definitions when we have
no other indication about their meaning....

#> Not every le'e broda is the stereotype of
#> lo'i broda (or "lo'e du'u ce'u broda", or however it is we refer to categories).
#
#Well, maybe. It may be *some* stereotype of lo'i broda, even if not yours.

Maybe so, but even so, "le archetype of lo'i broda" is not equivalent to
"lo pa archetype of le'i broda", since the latter but not the former has truth
conditions that depend on the referent of "le'i broda" (which group of
broda is referred to?), while the former but not the latter has truth conditions 
that depend on the referent of "le'e" (which stereotype is referred to?)

#> Right. So my position is that "lo'e" doesn't *strictly* mean "the
#> typical/average member",
#
#I think this results from a confusion between "the average member"
#(which does not exist) and "the most average member" (which does).
#If we have a series of men, we can say that George is the most
#average member of this series, but *the* average member is an
#abstraction.

It doesn't result from such a confusion. I take it that we are agreed that
"lo'e" expresses an abstraction. My point is that if you take it as an
abstraction arrived at by averaging and selecting typical properties,
then you get the distinction between having properties that by default
inherit to all instances of the abstraction (e.g. living in Africa), and, on 
the other hand, having properties that don't by default inherit to all 
instances of the abstraction (e.g. being discussed by us).
This is an analogue of the distinction between properties of members 
versus of properties of sets. However, you don't get this distinction
when it comes to properties of individuals, and I think the essence of
lo'e should be that it is an individual. Hence I think the average/typical
interpretation should be pedagogical rather than defining.

--And.