Subject: Re: [lojban] x3 of dasni

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sun, 11 Aug 2002 10:20:08 EDT

In a message dated 8/11/2002 1:12:57 AM Central Daylight Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

> >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.
> 
> (You must have meant "extensional reading" up there.
)

No, I meant "intensional, as the full context makes clear(er?). The rest of 
your comments thus are a bit off the mark. They are off as regard the 
extensional meaning as well, since they continue your insistence that "there 
is a" has some how to be related to "this particular" (I am reminded of 
Johnny Carson's famous refutation of the claim that if there are twenty-seven 
people in a room, probably two of them share a birthday, by asking if anyone 
else were born on his (Johnny Carson's) birthday.) And, assuming that we can 
make sense of "he wears the blanket as his grey coat," that is easily enough 
even for that (majorly irrelevant) reading.

<<
I mean the bridi in whose prenex their quantifiers are contained.
For a simple bridi, any {lo broda} filling one of the selbri's
standard places has an extensional reading in that bridi.

But this is circular! Of course, if there is a bridi in which the 
quantifiers can be fronted, then the occurrences of {le} and {lo} are -- at 
least to that extent -- extensional in that bridi. If the third place of 
{dasni} is intentional, there would be no such bridi, however, since the only 
bridi {lo kosta} is in is that with {dasni} as selbri and its quantifier 
could not be fronted in that.

<<
You mean something like {ko'a krici le du'u ge fo'a du fo'e gi
fo'a na du fo'e}? Yes, a person can believe contradictory things,
how is that a problem?
I didn't mean anything that crude, although I suppose someone could actually 
believe that as well. The case I suggested was in effect a denial of 
Leibniz's law, failure of which is a mark of intesionality. A more apt case 
would be {ko'a krici le du'u lo broda cu brode ije noda ge da broda gi da 
brode} which shows that fronting does not work in intensional contexts even 
on the bridi level.

<<
. There is no
such thing in Lojban, as far as I know, as an intensional place
that protects its arguments from exporting their quantifiers to
the prenex. {lo broda cu brode} is always {su'o da poi broda zo'u
da brode}, whatever brode is.
Over the years we have weeded most of them out; the last I remember for sure 
was {nitcu2}. But that is no guarantee (witness the gap in the 
de-agentizing) that we have gotten them all. {dasni3} may be a hither-to 
unnoticed case, now permanently left as a trap.

<<
Any quantified term has to deal with the set over which the
quantifier runs. {lo broda cu brode} makes a statement about
the set of {broda}. It says that at least one of its members
is a brode.
Gee, I thought you thought sets almost never had any use; now you say they 
turn up every time we have a sumti. Odd. I would have thought that {lo 
broda cu brode" made a claim about brodas, not the set of them, and, more 
precisely, about the predicate {broda}. Why bring sets in? Or, how are sets 
involved?

<<
with {lo'e broda} we don't deal with the set of broda
extensionally because we don't have a quantifier to run over
that set. It is pure intension. But this is not provided by
x3 of dasni, {lo'e} is intrinsically intensional, just as
{lo} and {le} are intrinsically extensional because they
have quantifiers to answer to. So in the same x3 of dasni, one
will produce the standard extensional reading, and the other
will produce a zi'o-type reading.
I get from this that {lo'e broda} is an individual (since no quantifiers are 
involved) and that it is an intensional individual (not an easy concept, but 
OK, if fleshed out), like a proposition or a property or an event. I still 
don't get, though, what this latter has to do with quantifiers -- we can -- 
and do -- quantify over intensional objects and even refer to them in {le} 
and {lo} constructions: is le du'u lo broda cu brode less intensional for 
having a quantifier?
Nor do I understand (on third reading) any better what you mean by "a 
zi'o-type reading." {zi'o} blots out one place of a predicate structure 
creating a new predicate that applies to all the things the original did and 
also to all things like them except for failing to meet the requirement of 
the blotted out place. It gives a generally broader predicate. Your reading 
gives a generally narrower predicate, since the place is not blotted out but 
rather restricted to a particular value. That is to say, it behaves just 
like any other case (than {zi'o}) and so is not a special type at all. So 
what have I missed here?

<<
There is a word filling the x3 slot, but it's
a word like {zi'o} (only with greater semantic content).
Any word would have greater semantic content than {zi'o}, but still, how is 
{lo'e kosta} special (as a step toward saying what it means altogether)?

<<
{lo'e} marks those transcendental types which are not extensional.

OK, {lo'e} marks types. That fits in nicely with the text (the only case -- 
or one of a very few -- where Lojban material contains "type"). That now 
leaves us with the question of how do types work.

<<
We got away from the problem because we no longer have
quantification over coats at the main bridi level.
Does the fact that the quantification is buried in the predicate, to be 
brought out, one assumes, if one were asked to explaimn what was meant, mean 
that the problem is gone. Well then, I'll just go back to tanru: {ko'a 
kosta dasni lo boxfo}.
Of course, as you note elsewhere, I'll have to deal with it eventually. But 
not now.

Just by the way, it does seem that either types themselves or the "as" in the 
definition forces us into one of those contrary to fact intensional 
situations. That is, the definition as it stands IS one of those possible 
(but presumed unused) definitions you listed.