Subject: Re: sets, masses, &c. (was: RE: [lojban] Re: [jboske] RE: Anything but tautol...

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sun, 3 Mar 2002 15:32:17 EST

In a message dated 3/3/2002 1:34:19 PM Central Standard Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

> Sequences can have properties derived from the members but not 
> shared with the members. E.g. "The alphabet takes 1 minute to
> recite".
> 

But this is true of both sets and masses, so not a useful way to fold 
sequences into one or the other of them.

<We might want to distinguish between masses that don't necessarily
have discrete members (e.g. apple, in diced pureed form), and masses
that do (e.g. apples, filling a bowl). >

We might indeed; this is one of the original muddles about masses, as you 
have spoken about so elequently over the years. And I suspect we do need to 
work on that some yet.

<My point is that, as Jorge often reminds us, we hardly ever need
to talk about sets in the strict sense, so the lV'i gadri are
wasted. But we do often want to talk about groups/teams (appies
filling a bowl), and, I think, anything that can be described
in terms of sets can also be described in terms of sets/teams
-- all properties that sets have are also properties that groups/
teams have. Hence if we did want to distinguish between a bowl
full of apple and a bowl full of apples, I would suggest making
the first be full of lei apple and the second full of le'i apple.>

Well, I'm not sure we can do all set things with masses (I think, for 
example, that the device for building up sets out of the basics will not work 
for masses -- they will keep collapsing down to the basics again, especially 
if like xorxes, you believe that the mass of a single dog is a dog). But we 
do need them less and the two types of masses would be useful -- unless we 
find some other way to distinguish them (there have been numerous 
suggestions, many of them from you).