Subject: Re: [lojban] Re: [jboske] RE: Anything but tautologies

From: Invent Yourself <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 5 Mar 2002 14:44:46 -0500 (EST)

I am sending this to lojban only because Cherlin's not on jboske. This is
a thread that belongs on jboske.

On Tue, 5 Mar 2002, Edward Cherlin wrote:

> On Wednesday 27 February 2002 14:50, [email-masked] wrote:
>
> > This is not obvious, it depends upon what the purpose of the
> > sentence is. Cherlin wants it to be a definition, and thus it is
> > exactly text that is wanted, needed, possible.
>
> Precisely not. x1 is a function, and x4 is a mekso expression turned
> into an "operator" by ma'o. Functions are defined by domain, range,
> and method of evaluation. They can be described in a variety of ways.
> They can have names, but this is not a requirement. Functions are not
> texts. They are mathematical objects.

Are you saying that x1 is not the name of the function, but the function
itself?

What goes in gerku1? A dog? Or the name (or reference to) a dog?

We seem to have discussions like this all the time. Dogs and functions are
real world objects which we cannot stick into sentences. Dogs' names,
function names, symbols like "ri" which mean dogs or functions; these are
all things we can stick into sentences.

So to say that fancu1 "is a function" is meaningless. It can only be the
name of a function.

-- 
When a system is in harmony with the Tao,
the compiler makes applications and utilities.
When a system goes counter to the Tao,
accounting logs fill the root directory.