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

From: And Rosta <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2001 15:30:57 +0000

>>> Jorge Llambias <[email-masked]> 10/30/01 02:01am >>>
#la pycyn cusku di'e
#> > I am not commenting on the lo'e/le'e construal because I agree
#> > with it completely.
#>
#>With whose version, and if with And's, can you explain it, please?
#
#I doubt I could make a better job of it than he did, I found
#his exposition clear enough.
#
#> (The last
#>round he said that {lo'e broda} was abstract
#
#Is {lo'e broda}, construed as "the typical", abstract? I think
#the prototype/myopic-singular is as abstract or not as is the typical.
#I have no problem with {lo'e tanxe cu dacti}, "boxes are material
#objects", and I suppose you wouldn't object to saying that "the
#typical box is a material object", so are they material objects
#or are they abstract? On the other hand, there certainly is
#abstraction going on when thinking of the generic/prototype/
#myopically singular box, as much as in thinking of the average
#box.

This is what I meant. The referent of {lo'e tanxe} is something
you can see and touch, so is not abstract, unlike anything
that is {du'u ce'u tanxe}, but one way of arriving at a conceptual
representation of {lo'e tanxe} is through a process of *abstracting*
away from the differences between individual boxes.

So if I said that {lo'e broda} is an abstraction (I can't remember
whether I did, but I might have done), I meant that it can be
cognized through a process of abstraction, not that it is not
concrete. 

#>but did not have properties that
#>no broda had!)
#
#I think it can have properties that no broda has by itself.
#For example, we can talk about it when not talking about
#any broda by itself.

Personally, I'm agnostic on this one. Are there properties
Jorge can have that no particular version of Jorge
(e.g. the young Jorge, the tired Jorge) has? If yes, then
yes. If no, then no. But I do think the answer from
prototype theory (and I have to say that I don't know
of (m)any attempts to create formal logics of prototype
theory) would say that every property of the prototype
would be a property of some instance of it, if it has
instances, and that in the case of apparent counterexamples,
like being talked about, the thing being talked about is
the concept/idea of the prototype, rather than the
prototype itself.

--And.