Subject: Re: [lojban] x3 of dasni

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sun, 11 Aug 2002 15:59:23 EDT

In a message dated 8/11/2002 11:12:05 AM Central Daylight Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

> . I am not saying
> that if he wears a blanket as a coat then he must be wearing
> it as Paul's coat. I am at the more basic stage of trying to
> understand what it means for two people to share the same
> birthday. What does it mean for John to share the same
> birthday with Paul? I can understand that, and so I can understand
> what it means for someone to share the same birthday with
> someone else. What does it mean for John to wear the blanket as
> Paul's coat? If I don't understand the particular case, I can't
> understand the generalized one. And I don't understand what it
> means for John to wear the blanket as Paul's coat.

But you continue to say that there must be a single identifiable coat that he 
wears it as, and that is not what the particular quantifier says. So, that 
you do not understand what it means to wear a blanket as THIS coat does not 
mean that you can't understand what it means to wear a blanket as a coat, 
where there is no need to identify which coat it is. Indeed, I rather 
suspect that you understand it perfectly well (at least you seem to have some 
idea in mind, since you keep insisting that such-and-such a view can't be 
right) and you don't understand, you say, what wearing as THIS coat means. 
Perhaps if you laid out what you take it to mean, we might resolve this issue 
(and maybe thus the one about {dasni}) more quickly. I assume that your 
explanation will be intentional, and that seems the easiest one to deal with 
altogether and, that being so, that it would be the easiest way to deal with 
{dasni}.

<<
The only sense I can make of that one is what I said before,
that he habitually wears his grey coat but this time for
some reason he had to replace it by the blanket. And even
that is a bit forced, as that English phrase seems not at
all idiomatic.
Well, if using "as" for "in place of" or the like is idiomatic, then I 
suppose it is. But I am not sure it is idiomatic. In any case, you seem to 
have found a perfectly good sense of the "this coat" reading. So now where 
exactly is your objection -- other than that you (and maybe even ko'a) don't 
know what coat he is wearing the blanket in place of? But why do you think 
you should always be able to find that?

<<
This is where most of our disagreement comes from. You seem
to be saying that it is possible that {lo kosta cu te dasni}
is somehow not equivalent to {da poi kosta zo'u da te dasni}.
You allow that somehow x3 of {dasni} provides a shelter for
quantifiers so that {lo kosta} there is no longer an extensional
quantification over the set of coats. To me that is just not
a possibility.
Yup, that sounds about right; we missed at least one in the clean-up. But I 
admire your blind faith in the ability of the lexicographers of Lojban 
(though being puzzled about how you can trust them here but regularly run 
against them in so many other places).

<<
I think I finally understand. You are saying that from
{ko'a krici le du'u lo broda cu brode} I cannot conclude
that {ko'a krici le du'u da poi broda zo'u da brode}.
I'm not sure it makes sense, but I'll take your word
for it. Our case is much simpler though, as we are
dealing with quantifications in the main bridi.

As I said, the point is that a person does not always believe the 
consequences of what he believes and may in fact believe the opposite and 
thus that quantifiers are not always extentional in their bridi. So, the 
general rule that you stated does not hold. I assume you now want to modify 
it to say "in the main bridi". But, if {dasni} has an intensional place, as 
{nitcu} did within the time I have been reading this list (or its 
predecessor), then that rule won't work either.

<<
I hope you're just being facetious here. I never use set articles
in my Lojban, or at least I try to avoid them as much as I can.
This does not mean that the concept of sets is not useful in the
metagame.
Maybe a little. I am glad to know we have sets again, but don't see what 
they have do with the present case. Oh, that's the next paragraph.

<<
If you like, I can restate in terms of brodas: {lo broda} and
{le broda}, indeed any {Q broda} are used to make claims about
brodas extensionally, while {lo'e broda} cannot be used to make
any extensional claim about brodas. The very definition of
extensionality has to be that a quantifier is involved, and
of intensionality that no quantifier is involved.
Nope. Oh well. Extensionality affects quantifiers (and identity and, 
depedning, several other things) but it is not defined in terms of the 
presence or absence of quantifiers. We have seen cases of intensional 
contexts with quantifiers all over the place. {lo'e broda} presumably 
applies to an atomic individual, so that NO quantifier is significant for it, 
but that does not make it intensional. The empty set is similar in this 
respect, but clearly extensional.

<<
It [{le du'u lo broda cu brode}] has no quantifier at the main bridi level, 
which is what matters here. At that level, {lo broda cu brode} has to be 
understood as
an extensional claim about brodas, and that meaning can in turn
be used as {le du'u lo broda cu brode} in another bridi. In this
external bridi there is no etensional claim about brodas, but
{lo broda} is not an argument of the external bridi, so there
is no contradiction.
Since it is {le du'u} it is presumably quantified at the main bridi level 
with {ro} (although I think that the {le} is often a mistake here). There is 
no extensional claim about brodas, but there is a quantified claim about 
du'u-lo-broda-cu-brode's, though they remain intensional. I still do not see 
the claim you are making. FAilure of certain kinds of quantifier moves are a 
good clue that intensions are involved, but not a defining one (it was, 
remember, why I said that you had an intentional understanding of {dasni3} 
and that turned out to be right. You can't jump from that to that 
quantifiers occur with all and only extensional notions.)

<<
A similar thing might happen with {lo'e broda}. It creates
a predicate that applies to all the things the original did
with {lo broda} in that place and also to all things like them
except for failing to meet the requirement of the brodaed
place. For example, the wearer of the blanket does not wear
it as any {lo osta}, but it is like all the things that do
wear something as a {lo kosta}.

Now I am confused. I thought that you held that {dasni fi lo kosta} was 
illegitmate, either meaningless or false of practically any pair of x1 x2. 
And that {dasni fi lo'e kosta} was the legitimate expression. But now you 
say, that it is legitmate, but narrower than required and that the broader 
one is supplied by using {lo'e kosta} as x3. This is probably true, but was 
not the example that you were using before. {zi'o} predicates are not 
compared with predicates that have something in the blanked space but with 
the bare predicate, with {dasni}, not {dasni fi lo kosta}. In this 
comparison -- the one you originally invited -- {dasni fi lo'e kosta} is 
clearly more restrictive (it won't allow in blanets worn as skirts, for 
example, though {dasni fi zi'o} would). Whether {dasni fi lo'e kosta} is 
more or less restrictive than {dasni fi lo kosta} I can't say, since we don't 
quite know what either means -- for example whether the third place is 
intensional. If the third place of {dasni} is intensional, I suspect that 
they are equivalent, since a type will get you into pretty much the sort of 
maneuvers that are needed for "as if it were" or whatever. And, of course, on 
the extensional reading of the third place, they would be exactly the same, 
since things of the type lo'e kosta are presumably just the kostas.

<<
{broda be lo'e brode} is narrower than {broda} in a sense, but
it is wider in another sense. In particular, it is wider than
{broda be lo brode}.

I take it this is a general rule, but since I don't know what any of this 
means -- nor what the senses are, I can't comment. I assume that, in the 
absence of a second place on {broda}, {be} marks an indefinite or 
contextually defined relation (so here an indefinite one, since there is no 
context). But then it is easy to come up with particular relations for 
anything you want, making any one larger than any other or all the same size. 
So, the rule seems blatantly false unless something is being smuggled in with 
{be}, which usually is about a meaningless (or only syntactically required) 
as anything I can think of.
Ahah! {be} just means "with the following filling some place." But then both 
{broda be lo brode} and {broda be lo'e brode} will be more restrictive than 
{broda} since they each only allow tuples with the named critter in the 
indicated place. At best, if it were the case that the only tuples that fit 
{broda} were ones with one of those indicated critters in the indicated 
place, then one would be exactly the same as {broda} and the other would be 
null. In what sense could either be wider? And, on what evidence would the 
{lo brode} case be wider than the {lo'e broda} case. I would assume they 
were virtually disjoint -- not many things stand in the same relation to an 
object and its type.

<<
The gi'uste uses the word "type" quite often. 
Of the 33 uses I found on a quick scan of just the definitions, almost all 
were dummies used for lack of a better word, as in the "type-of" 
constructions for reading tanru. Most of the rest are, as you say, clearly 
mean "property" or something close to that (though "type" itself is close). 
That's why I assumed that "type" in the definition of {dasni} was just 
another version of "thingy," not seriously a type

<<
, but there are some like {dasni}.
For instance:

gusta restaurant
x1 is a restaurant/cafe/diner serving type-of-food x2
to audience x3

What goes in x2? {lo'e bakni rectu}, {lo'e na'e rectu}, etc.
I don't quite see what is like {dasni} here. Maybe we can use types here, 
but simple properties or even sets make at least as much sense: "American 
food," "sushi" and so on. There does not seem to be anything that can easily 
support a trip through Counterfactualland, as {dasni} seems to require. Ditto 
for {nejni} (mechanical, electrical, fusion, ...} 

<<
("Forms" are also types, I would say, and there are lots of
"form" places.)
Whether forms are types, for the appropriate meaning of "form," in the 
gi'uste "form" generally means "shape" or "arrangement of parts" (all but 10 
of 54 instances spotted -- the remainder were mainly linguistic forms -- 
morphs or tagms or... -- or patterns of movement or behavior. Only {tarmi}, 
"shape" seemed close to "type.")

<<
>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.

But it cannot be brought up. It remains inescapably buried
in an internal bridi.
Even bridi get defined and, given the English definition, what is to prevent 
the Lojban one from following the same lines, thus bringing the quantifiers 
out?

<<
>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.

I never agreed that {nitcu}, {djica} et al needed to be "fixed",
so obviously I won't agree with this.
Gawdamighty! I find it as least as weird to say that when I need a nail, 
there is a nail I need as you do about the corresponding move for I wear as a 
coat -- or, worse, that it follows from the fact that I am hunting a unicorn 
that there is a unicorn I am hunting. I can understand deviating from Lojban 
sometimes, but I do try to keep the deviations consistent with one another.