Subject: Re: [lojban] Re: mei (was Pro-Sumti)

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sat, 6 Jul 2002 17:47:26 EDT

In a message dated 7/6/2002 3:43:05 PM 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.
> 
> **Sorry, this is really confusing, I meant x1 and x2, but I now prefer
> xorxes'
> 
> **nmei: x1 is a mass of n elements taken from set x2>>

And I like (as I read xorxes) x1 is a mass taken from the n elements of set 
x2.
(perhaps "like" is too strong, "am forced to" surely is too far the other 
way).

<<**Just as a tree should not be considered a mass of things, lei broda 
should
be considered as a mass without consideration for the individual broda>>

I don't quite get the parallelism here, "just as" seems wrong since the cases 
are so opposite, unless the point is just trees and masses are alike 
unanalyzable things in Lojban. I don't think that is quite true (though 
masses are also things): masses recognize that there are things that make 
them up, things don't (generally) recognize that they are also masses of 
parts.

<< > <> 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.

**I need another English lesson here... (or is it a Logic lesson?) what is
wrong with getting consistency in that way?>>

OK; there are maybe some pronoun problems here. There are (for me, in my 
present mood) no problems with getting consistency by extending the 
peculiarities of {lei} or {loi} to {mei}. It is what I am more or less 
setting forth as what the Book amounts to saying. As for getting consistency 
(if it does) by going to intensional definitions of masses, the classic 
problem is that identical things -- masses with exactly the same members 
doing the same things (to take the most extreme case) turn out to have 
different properties -- and, perhaps, get the ones they have in common in 
different ways. This is bad enough when the intensionality is buried away in 
special contexts, but making masses intensional would turn it lose in 
ordinary contexts as well. Since we barely know what to do with 
intensionality in a few special contexts, it would create considerable havoc 
out of them. For example, does anaphora of any sort work here -- can I refer 
back to {lei sovda} with {ri} and still get the same things being true?
I don't know and I don't know anyone who knows or even has a good idea what 
the arguments are on the various sides. And that seems to me to be an easy 
problem in this matter.