Subject: Re: [lojban] x3 of dasni

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sat, 10 Aug 2002 22:47:59 EDT

In a message dated 8/10/2002 11:47:37 AM Central Daylight Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

<<
> Let me try to clarify how I see this inensional/extensional
> issue so you can correct me where I got it wrong.
>>
Great, but I don't think you can be wrong here; the notions are too fluid, 
beyond a bare minimum (failure of Leibniz and particular quantification -- 
oh, and fronting)

<<
We are dealing with this English sentence:

E1) He wears the blanket as a coat.

And these two Lojban sentences:

L1) ko'a dasni le boxfo lo kosta
L2) ko'a dasni le boxfo lo'e kosta

Well, several more Lojban cases have been suggested and I have almost no idea 
what L2 means when you say it, but OK, lets get these sorted out at least.

<<
Now, first about E1. According to my understanding, the
intensional reading is the standard one for that sentence.
I can force an extensional reading if I try hard, but it
is certainly not how I would normally understand it. The
normal reading of E1 cannot be put into logical form
as: there is some coat x, such that he wears the blanket
as x. The normal interpretation would be something like
"he wears the blanket as if the blanket was a coat", thus
providing a clear intensional context for "a coat".
Do we agree so far, or would you say that the extensional
reading of E1 is more prevalent?
I am not at all sure which is the more common and how much of what makes you 
think the intensional one is due to misunderstanding of what "a coat" means 
or to the influence of the standard Spanish expression. I try to avoid 
intensions wherever possible, and this seems to me not to force an 
intensional reading under normal conditions, but I can bear to have it be 
intensional if you like.

<<
Now for the Lojban. Lojban does not allow the
intensional/extensional ambiguity to arise. L1 only has
the extensional reading (the one that I hold E1 hardly
ever would have). This is because any {lo} term, as well
as any {le} term, are always extensional in the bridi in
which they appear. There is no possible intensional
reading of L1. Quantifiers are intrinsically extensional.

I'm not quite sure what the last bit means, but I'll agree that quantifiers 
outside intensional contexts refer to existing things, whereas those inside 
intensional context need not (just as any sumti in there need not -- nor 
indeed and selbri either).

Lojban does try -- not always successfully, alas -- to avoid int/ext 
ambiguity; it doesn't "allow" them but they keep popping up anyhow (some 
words just don't listen to rules, though their creators could have avoided 
the problem by defining them differently. But the damage is not set in 
concrete until long after Hell is a skating rink). I take it that L1 points 
up a case of that sort: the third place of {dasni} is not marked (however 
that would be done) as intensional and yet taking it as extensional leads to 
what appears to some people to be wrong results. It has a perfectly good 
intensional reading (and extensional one, too, for that matter -- but we 
disagree abbout that). Apparently, you find even the intensional reading of 
L1 objectionable, though none of the objections I have heard (except your gut 
feeling -- which is often a rather good indicator, but usually backed up with 
a bit more rationale than this time) applies to it. 
The claim that {le} and {lo} are always extensional in the bridi in which 
they appear (though we cannot even agree on which bridi they appear in, last 
time I checked -- I'm assuming you mean "appear in most immediately" or some 
such thing) seems a little muddled, since, if that bridi is a {le du'u} 
clause, for example, which sets up an intensional context, then I don't 
quite know for sure what you mean. I suppose you are saying that, within the 
sentence between {du'u} and {kei} all the ordinary extensional rules hold. 
But that is notoriously not the case: a person can believe an identity to 
hold and one member of the identity to have a property and yet deny that the 
other member has that property. He is, of course, a little slow or 
irrational, but he can do it -- and often does. And similarly for the other 
rules of extensionality. So, if the third place of {dasni} is intensional, 
then {lo} or {le} there will not be extensional in that place, though they 
are in that bridi.

<<
What about L2? L2 does not deal extensionally with the
set of coats, so at least in that respect it is a better
translation of the normal sense of E1.

L1 doesn't deal with the set of coats either, just with a coat (though it 
might be all of them -- but certainly not the set of them). As for the rest, 
I have to take your word, since you have yet to explain just what the Hell 
{lo'e kosta} refers to. Apparently, whatever it is, it is dealt with 
extensionally, accepting your rule from L1 that the place cannot be 
intensional. So, there is some particular thing which ko'a is wearing the 
blanket as. But, as far as I can tell, lo'e kosta is not something wearable 
at all, so wearing something as it would be what? 
But, of course, the definition doesn't say "wears as" but "wears as a garment 
of type" and so {lo'e kosta} is the name of a type. [Note the "a garment" 
means that even if the type is taken care of, there is still something that 
he is wearing the blanket as.]
As noted, Lojban has done nothing or very little very poorly to deal with 
types, so what that line means here is unclear. But real types are generally 
transcendental, which is at least not extensional in the quantifier sense and 
arguably not in any of the others either. So we are probably back to some 
intensional interpretation of that place, now marked -- assuming {lo'e} marks 
something intensional (but what exactly?)

<<
{dasni} could have been defined in other ways. For example:

x1 wears x2 as if it were a member of set x3

or:

x1 wears x2 as if it had property x3

If one of those was the definition of dasni, then the proper
way of translating E1 would be respectively:

L3) ko'a dasni le boxfo lo'i kosta
L4) ko'a dasni le boxfo le ka ce'u kosta

and those would also be fine because neither of them deals
with the set of coats extensionally, only intensionally.
But that is not how dasni is defined, so L2 remains the
best translation I can think of, using the gi'uste definition
of {dasni}.

It could have -- and perhaps should have -- but, as you note, it wasn't and 
so neither of these works (and didn't we get rid of {ka} a while back?) 
[though again, I can't resist to note that a garment that is a member of thes 
et of coats or has the property of being a coat, is a coat, so I am not sure 
how we have exactly gotten away from your original problem].

Using the gi'uste definition of {dasni} but not the ma'oste definition of 
{lo'e} is as obscure as going the other way round. It doesn't work, since 
the critters weren't defined that way. I don't think he wears it like the 
typical coat -- and not merely because you can't wear a typical coat -- nor 
is a typical coat a type. So, barring an explanation of what you mean by 
{lo'e broda}, L2 is worse than L1, since it is at best false and most likely 
meaningless.