Subject: Re: [lojban] pro-sumti question

From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 5 Jul 2002 17:35:01 EDT

In a message dated 7/5/2002 2:23:28 PM Central Daylight Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

> ><There is no reason why {le remei} can't be {piro lei re danlu}.>
> >
> >There is no reason why it can't be; but there is also no reason why it has 
> 
> >to
> >be, which is the point here.
> 
> But there is a reason why it has to be. {le broda} normally
> refers to a broda, not to part of a broda. That's what
> {pisu'o le broda} is for. There is no reason to make
> exceptions for masses, irrespective of what the implicit
> quantifier of {lei} or {loi} or anything else is.
> 

And your point is? {le remei} refers to a mass based on a two-membered set. 
That mass may have either one or two members itself (though I admit to being 
suspicious of one-membered masses). Nothing that I can see in the sematics 
requires that the mass has to use all the members of the set. And, if it 
does, then the idea of using {le remei} in the original problem is in even 
worse shape -- as is the notion of a mass, for then we are back to having no 
mass of dogs less than all being a mass of dogs (in Lojban, never mind what 
the English for that is).

<There is no reason why {pisu'o} can't be piro
>either, but it doesn't have to be.

We're talking at different levels here. Obviously {pisu'o}
is not {piro}, even though in some cases both can be true
together.

But {le broda} refers to full broda, not partial broda.
For example, {le broda cu brode le brodi} is always
equivalent to {le brodi cu se brode le broda}. This is because
you can freely switch the order of two {ro} quantifiers (the
implicit ones for {le}). However, if you now introduce the
notion that {le broda} could sometimes be {pisu'o le broda},
depending on the semantics of {broda}, the switch is no longer
possible, because {ro} and {pisu'o} cannot change their order
without affecting meaning! I can't imagine why you would favor
such a move.>

Notice first I said "{pisu'o} can be piro" NOT "{pisu'o} can be {piro}", 
that is {pisu'o} applies even when it is in fact piro has the property in 
question, as you later admit.
Beyond that, I'm not clear about your point. Yes {le broda} means the whole 
broda, so {le remei} means the whole mass based on a pair of things. So, 
what follows against my position, which is NOT that {le remei} means the same 
as {pisu'o le remei} -- which would ruin the whole joke. So, the conversions 
go through without any problem. I think ignoration elenchi again, maybe with 
a little straw man.

<><The way I see it, the properties of
>tiredness and postman chasing do not add up that way. Just like the
>dog's weight is not the mass weight, the dog's tiredness is not
>that of the mass.
>
>So, how do they work? I see postman-chasing as directly analogous to
>piano-toting, which can be done by three guys together even if only two of
>them ever lay hands on the piano (or housepainting if you like that 
>better).

Certainly, the third guy might not lay hands on the piano and still
be said to be part of the piano movers, but not any third party
unrelated to the moving. There has to be a relevant participation
in the event.>

Well, if he in the set on which the mass is based, then he is relevantly 
participating. Of course, it is not clear how he gets in the set (he runs 
the company of piano movers, perhaps, but the criteria are more open-ended 
than for the people who actually lift on the piano). But ultimately some 
relevance condition applies, yes. So, I suppose that a habitual two dog team 
could chase a postman even if one one actually pursued him.

<>And I see being tired as being like being green, true of a mass if true of
>one element.

But a mass is not green if one element is green. A mass of two
hundred white balls with one green ball in their midst is not
green. At least not any more than a person is blue if they
have blue eyes.>

I suspect this is English again, {lei bolci cu crino} is true -- at least 
this has been said authoritatively several times over the last 47 years -- if 
even one ball is green (sometimes if even one ball has a green spot). And, 
of course, in Lojban a person with blue eyes can be lo blanu prenu -- though 
not obviously lo prenu poi blanu.

<>(remember -- as I think you occasionally do not) that in
>Lojban, {lei} behaves in this respect exactly like {loi}.

You rmember that we are talking of {le remei}, not about
{[pisu'o] lei broda}. Of course I have no objection to
{pisu'o lei bolci cu crino} if at least one of the balls
is green, but that's "some part of the balls is green" in
English, and not "the mass of balls is green".>

But we are talking about the Lojban, not the English -- lousy translation or 
not. If we shift the translation, would that help. However, this is still 
off my point, which is in the this case case, that even when there are a 
hundred and one balls, the mass with just one of those balls as its only 
member can still be lei bolci.

<><But the idea that the mass has all properties of the
>members (or that anything that applies to part of a mass applies
>automatically to the mass) is nonsense, and unfortunately very
>widespread in Lojban lore.>
>
>That masses have all the properties of any member may be (but I don't think
>really is) widespread in Lojban lore, but I certainly don't hold it (and 
>have
>spoken against it within the last few days). It is, however, the default
>position when nothing else clearly has a role -- logical sum when neither
>numerical nor participatory applies.

That's not how I see it. This logical sum applies very
rarely (are there any clear examples where it does?) and I
certainly don't think it is the default position.> 
The history of examples goes against you here -- they have almost all been 
logical sums, except for clear teams and things like weight. It may be that, 
as we examine cases, those where logical sum is correct get to be fewer and 
fewer and may eventually almost disappear, but for now the default default is 
logical sum. The usual example is about lions inhabiting Africa as I recall.

>And it is hard to see how either
>numerical or participatory applies in the case of tiredness (a little 
>clearer
>in the case of postman-chasing). Of course, there are almost certainly 
>other
>kinds of exceptions and they should be counted in as soon as explained, but
>for now I don't see an explanation that works for tiredness aside from 
>saying
>that it is sui generis -- which is not very convincing.

Every property is sui generis in this regard. Not all properties
of members need even make sense with respect to a mass. For
example, consider age. What is the age of a mass of people?
The age of the youngest? Of the oldest? Their average age?
I would say that a group of people can be said to have an
age only if the ages of all the members cluster around some
value, but not if the distribution is very dispersed.>

Oh, surely not every one sui generis. At worst they divide into a number of 
cases that get the same treatment -- and even a large number of such types 
(but I doubt it). 

The question about age in a mass raises a nasty question, that of identifying 
a mass (or distinguishing one mass from another, individuating a mass). 
Depending on how that is done (and there are a number of ways of doing it). 
We can a variety of answers. The Dodgers baseball team is over a hundred 
years old, for example, but this year's Dodgers are less than a year old. And 
most positions in between have support on one view or another. Non-teams are 
probably easier, since they don't have the corporate identity range, but they 
still can be thought of in a number of ways. Tell me what makes something a 
mass and I can usually (given the empirical data) tell you how old it is 
(yes, it even can have any age that any member has). I actually have more 
trouble with all your statistical notions than with a variety of others. I 
think the best general answer is that it is as old as its youngest member -- 
provided all its members exist -- for that is how long the underlying set has 
existed and thus the mass in posse at least (and logicians are quick to leap 
from there to in esse for things like masses).

<>True in general, but not the issue here, which is whether a mass of a 
>subset
>is also a mass of the set as a whole.

I'm not sure I see how the question is important. The members of
a mass form a given set, and that is the relevant set for that
mass. That the members can also belong to other sets is of
course also true, but why would we want to say that the mass is
a mass of those sets? In any case, it is just a definition
of what "mass of a set" means, but it doesn't change much else.>

Well, for one thing, if we get that meaning pinned down, we can probably end 
much of this argument and that would be a big change. We have already 
established that the set of exactly the members of the mass need not be the 
set that is relevant for the mass (or at least you seem to have agreed with 
me on the cases that I take to have dealt with that). Why we would want to 
say that the mass is also a mass of other sets is simply to make {lei gerku 
cu gunma le'i gerku} true -- as it intuitively is.

<>But
>the point again is whether this mass from less than all the members of a 
>set
>is a mass from that set. If it is, {le remei} can be just the dog (or the
>mass that consists of just the dog, for which the inference from member to
>mass seems to go through unscathed).

Well, then we clearly don't want that. We want {remei} for pairs,
not for singletons or pairs. We already have {su'eremei} for that.>

But the {remei} is about the size of the set, not of the mass and the set IS 
a pair (in the case that started all this).

<{lei gerku na gunma le'i gerku} means (with implicit {pisu'o})
That it is false that there is some part of the mass of dogs
which corresponds to the set of dogs. I can't see how
that could be true with any interpretation of {lei}.>

Well, that is not quite what it says: It says that some mass of dogs, some 
submass of the mass of all dogs, is not a mass from the set of dogs. This 
seems very odd indeed. 

<>No one -- so far as I can tell -- thinks that {lo sovda paremei} means that
>there are only twelve eggs altogether in the world forever, etc.

Good!>

I'm not sure why the exclamation point -- do you really think someone thinks 
that? (Historically we have had the opposite problem, getting people to 
believe that {lo pare sovda} does mean that there are exactly 12 eggs 
everywhere throughout all time.)

<>I am less
>sure that it means "a dozen eggs", since I don't generally take that as a
>mass (except in a recipe: "add a dozen eggs" and maybe a few other places).
>Generally, I think "a dozen eggs" is just {pare sovda}, since I intend then
>to be used one by one. Or maybe {le sovda se paremei}.

Well, it doesn't make sense to argue that point without a context.
I tend to think of a dozen of anything as one thing, but that may
be just me. The point was whether {lo 12mei} could refer to
half a dozen. I hope not.>

Well, I think it can, which is why, on those occcasions when I need to think 
about a dozen eggs, I would usually say {pare sovda}. They are one thing 
only in the sense that they come in a box -- not even as complicated as "a 
pair of sox."

<>You still us an explanation of "the group as a whole should be tired" that
>is different from both "one member of the group is tired" and "all the
>members of the group are tired."

I'd go with: "enough members of the group are tired".>

As usual -- the question Lojban doesn't ask -- enough for what? Can you come 
up with something other than "to declare that the whole mass is tired"?

<>Well, the case to watch for is {lei nanmu cu tatpi ije lei nanmu cu naku
>tatpi}. The others work because they are logical contradictions, not 
>because
>they say anything useful about masses (or anything else).

{pisu'o lei nanmu cu tatpi ije pisu'o lei nanmu naku tatpi} is
perfectly possible. What is nonsense is to translate it as
"the mass is tired and the mass is not tired", when the right
translation is "part of the mass is tired and part of it is not".>

OK, it's a lousy translation, but we are talking about the Lojban, not the 
English. Does this get you over all your objections?

<Yes. The confusion comes from the bad habit of translating
{loi broda} as "the mass of broda" instead of as "some broda
together".>

Or just "some mass of broda"

<