Subject: Re: Fw: [lojban] pro-sumti question

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sat, 6 Jul 2002 12:24:34 EDT

In a message dated 7/6/2002 9:53:08 AM Central Daylight Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

> <> I interpret Nmei as being a bijection between the N members of the set 
> in
> > x2 and the N constituants of the mass in x3.>

I take it as an injection 3 >2, as it were: I think that elements in 3 have 
also to be in 2.

>if
> > >even one ball is green (sometimes if even one ball has a green spot).
> >
>
> But this is only true because of the implicit pisu'o. It seems to me that
it
> should only be true if "enough" of the balls are green so that, when
> considered as a mass the mass is green. Very little of a pine tree is
> actually green (with shadows and all, even less than half) but {le ckunu
> tricu cu crino} is true because the tree is considered as the mass of it's
> components.

<>if
> > >even one ball is green (sometimes if even one ball has a green spot).
> >
>
> But this is only true because of the implicit pisu'o. It seems to me that
it
> should only be true if "enough" of the balls are green so that, when
> considered as a mass the mass is green. Very little of a pine tree is
> actually green (with shadows and all, even less than half) but {le ckunu
> tricu cu crino} is true because the tree is considered as the mass of it's
> components.>

I don't think that a tree is considered a mass at all (usually, anyhow). It 
is green just because that is the way we use that word -- analysis might 
suggest something about what they way is but would not change the humanly 
primitive use here.

<> Agreed, we can live with an implied pisu'o on {lei bolci}, but you can't
> extend that to {mei}>

Well, it is one way to get consistency into the mass system, the next step 
will be to make the system intensional, which is generally something to be 
avoided as long as possible.

<> Bzzt. I don't recall any examples given by anyone which explain to me what
> it is that we have already established. In other words, I can not extract
> any semantical meaning to what you have just said.>

Too late for an English lesson here, though what examples you want is 
unclear, so you are apparently reporting accurately. What I think you may be 
trying to say is that you can't find a case where xorxes agreed to something 
that I said that clearly made the size of the set different from the size of 
the mass. You are right in that; I misunderstood xorxes' definition of 
{mei}.

<>> I think tatpi is a particularly bad example.>

It is a good example of a particular kind of problem,one where it is 
difficult to say what "sum" means in very explicit terms.

<> I'd say the truth condition of {lei broda cu tatpi} "should" have more to
do
> with what {broda} we are dealing with than with the truth conditions of {N
> le broda cu tatpi}. In Lojban, {lei nanmu cu tatpi} is true if just one of
> the men has tired legs. Who cares if they just want to play on the PSII.
It
> should be true when the mass of men is tired. With tiredness, this will
> happen when some of them are tired and then psychological factors come
into
> play so that at some point we say {lei nanmu cu tatpi}. Which is a mass
> factor with little correlation to what {xokau le nanmu cu tatpi} returns.
> With {lei skami cu tatpi} (supposing that Windows outputed {mi tatpi}
> instead of crashing). I wouldn't say that until either all of them were
> tired, or enough of them for it to hinder their work "as a group".>
Right, which is why {tatpi} is a good example -- though I am not sure that 
tired legs is enough for a man to be tired.
{xo le nanmu cu tatpi} -- {kau} is only for subordinate clauses.

<> Another way of looking at this has occured to me: take some painters. {lei
> nanmu cu tatpi} would probably hinder their functionality as a mass. Maybe
a
> ladder needs to be held and the guy meant to be holding it got tired. The
> way {lei} works, {lei nanmu cu tatpi .ijo su'o le nanmu cu tatpi}. A mass
> should be more than the sum of it's elements. I'm sure there must be some
> relation for which {lei broda cu brode .ijenai su'o le broda cu brode} is
> true.>

Certainly not {ijo}; for one man (say) might be tired but the whole group 
not. It might even be the case that the group was tired though no one member 
was, I think (if not {tatpi} then surely something else will work here).