From jjllambias@hotmail.com Wed Mar 06 23:53:47 2002 Return-Path: X-Sender: jjllambias@hotmail.com X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: unknown); 7 Mar 2002 07:53:47 -0000 Received: (qmail 30754 invoked from network); 6 Mar 2002 18:06:12 -0000 Received: from unknown (216.115.97.167) by m5.grp.snv.yahoo.com with QMQP; 6 Mar 2002 18:06:12 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO hotmail.com) (216.33.241.25) by mta1.grp.snv.yahoo.com with SMTP; 6 Mar 2002 18:06:12 -0000 Received: from mail pickup service by hotmail.com with Microsoft SMTPSVC; Wed, 6 Mar 2002 10:06:12 -0800 Received: from 200.49.74.2 by lw8fd.law8.hotmail.msn.com with HTTP; Wed, 06 Mar 2002 18:06:11 GMT To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Bcc: Subject: Re: [lojban] Re: [jboske] Quantifiers, Existential Import, and all that stuff Date: Wed, 06 Mar 2002 18:06:11 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed Message-ID: X-OriginalArrivalTime: 06 Mar 2002 18:06:12.0044 (UTC) FILETIME=[996538C0:01C1C539] From: "Jorge Llambias" X-Originating-IP: [200.49.74.2] X-Yahoo-Group-Post: member; u=6071566 X-Yahoo-Profile: jjllambias2000 la pycyn cusku di'e >Read the whole exchange. The initiator was holding that universal >affirmatives do not have existential import in logic but their negations >do. >But, he noted, ordinary language is different: the negations of a universal >need not have existential import -- in the real world. I don't think he noted that at all. What I understood was that the fact that "not all Klingons are bad" is true in fiction should not be confused with a claim that Klingons exist in the real world. The existential import applies in the fictional world only, where the sentence is true. No conflict between logic and ordinary language. >I merely noted that, >if you hold that, then the universal being negated does have existential >import (which the initiator had denied). He gets into a contradiction, >from >which there are several escapes. To be sure, I prefer the one that allows >importing universals. Let's see. In the fictional world: "All Klingons are bad" is false. "Not all Klingons are bad" is true. Presumably we all agree about that, since in fiction the set of Klingons is not empty, and we take it that Worf is not bad. In non-fiction, since there are no Klingons: "All Klingons are bad" is true or false according to your predilection. "Not all Klingons are bad" is false or true respectively. Now, which contradiction did he get into, and how does importing universals gets you out of it? > > >True, though hard to work through by hand. I have to get a working parser. >Too bad, too, because it is less controversial than either {me'i ro} or >{da'a >su'o} . But {na'e bo ra} is too long to be a contender, I fear. Besides, {na'e bo ro da} is "na'e bo (roda)", not "(na'e bo ro) da". >What is >{me'i} implicit number? Damn! {pa} I echo that. It would have been much better for {me'iro} to be the default, and {da'asu'o} the default for {da'a}. Now, forgetting the nonsense that either {su'o lo ro broda} or {su'o da poi broda} can be used for I- (and correspondingly for O-) here is a system I can work with: A+ ro lo su'o broda cu brode E+ no lo su'o broda cu brode I+ su'o lo broda cu brode O+ me'iro lo broda cu brode = da'asu'o lo broda cu brode A- ro lo broda cu brode E- no lo broda cu brode I- naku no lo su'o broda cu brode O- naku ro lo su'o broda cu brode [I-] >Technically it needs >something like the {me'i ro} of O-, but I haven't come up with a good word >for it: it seems to cover the entire range of possibilities -- which is >probably why no one considers it much; {su'o no} is right but endlessly >confusing. I think {su'o no} is wrong. {su'o no broda cu brode} is true when {no broda cu brode} is true, but I- should be false if there are broda but none of them is brode, i.e. when E+ is true. >In addition, {ro lo su'o broda} might not include >all the broda, if you start playing that game, just some number of them >(this >is at least a justified as your notion that {ro} doesn't imply {su'o}). I don't think it's justified. The "inner quantifier" is the cardinality of the set. Inner {su'o} says that the set in not empty. Inner {ro} is tautological, because every set has cardinality {li ro}. Here are the ways each of the quantifiers can be expressed in terms of each of the others: "Contraries": roda = naku me'iroda noda = naku su'oda su'oda = naku noda me'iroda = naku roda "Complementaries": roda = da'anoda noda = da'aroda su'oda = da'ame'iroda me'iroda = da'asu'oda "Duals": roda = naku su'oda naku noda = naku me'iroda naku su'oda = naku roda naku me'iroda = naku noda naku (Warning: I'm not sure that the names of those relationships are standard, and some of the relationships fail if {ro} is taken to have existential import.) mu'o mi'e xorxes _________________________________________________________________ Join the world’s largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. http://www.hotmail.com