Subject: Re: [lojban] Re: I like chocolate

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 20 Aug 2002 11:49:57 EDT

In a message dated 8/20/2002 8:59:03 AM Central Daylight Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

> 
> <<
> ly pycyn. cu cusku di'e
> > > On the whole, moving off into the intensional seems the right
> > > thing to do
> > 
> > I do not understand what you mean here; what does "intensional" mean?
> > 
> > > (and what xorxes would have {lo'e} do, usually). 
> > 
> > For right now, the crucial thing about intensional contexts (inside
> > the scope of abstractions and a few other places) is that you can't
> > quantify out of them.
> 
> I'm afraid I don't understand that, either ("quantify out of them").
> 
> > {mi nelci lo nu mi citka lo/loi cakla} does NOT entail {da poi cakla
> > zo'u mi nelci lo nu citka da}. Similarly, {mi nelci tu'a lo cakla}
> > does not entail either {da poi cakla zo'u mi nelci tu'a da} or
> > {... nelci da}. Thus xorxes problem is avoided without resorting to
> > {lo'e} (whose chief function often is just to avoid this problem --
> > in xorxes' usage). 
> 
> Sorry; that doesn't help me, either. Can you explain it a different way,
> perhaps?
> 
> (Or maybe I need to take a semester or two of linguistics to get this, in
> which case trying to explain may be futile. I can't tell. Sorry for being
> thick about this whole thing.)
> <<

Not linguistics, but Logic, alas. Briefly, an expression like {le/lo broda} 
refers one or more things which are broda and exist in the world (with 
occasiional doubts about the bbroda part in the case of {le} -- but not about 
the "exists in the world" part). The expression {da poi broda} (and several 
variants) means "there is at least one broda in the world such that," pretty 
much the same thing, although with a slightly different grammar. And, indeed, 
we can validly infer the second form from the first in most cases. 
Abstractions ({ka, nu, ni du'u,...} are peculiar in that they refer, more or 
less directly, not to this world but to an imaginary or logically possible 
or... world. In that world, thinks that exist in this one may not exist, and 
things that don't exist here may exist.
Thus, in those contexts, {lo broda}, for example, refers to the things that 
broda in that world but may not in this world (indeed, may not even exist in 
its world). So to go from {mi krici le du'u lo broda cu brode} which is my 
belief about brodas in my mental world (which I probably believe reflects the 
real one -- but have no guarantees about) to {da poi broda zo'u mi krici le 
du'u da brode} (which claims something about a broda in this world) is 
illegitimate. There may not even be broda in this world or it may be that 
none of them brode (in which case my belief is false, of course) even though 
there are some in the imaginary world of my beliefs.

That was thoroughly unhelpful, I suspect. Let me try an analogy. "There was 
a man who shot Lincoln" claims that at some past time that man shoit Lincoln. 
It does not say (nor deny) that that man still exists: "There is a man who 
shot Lincoln". The past, in this sense, is similar to the imaginary worlds 
just discussed (indeed, technically is such a world). Moving the reference 
to the man from the past to the present is moving from true to false, since 
John Wilkes Booth is no longer alive. [A warning: sometimes -- but not 
always -- Lojban allows that past people still exist, even when they are no 
longer alive. If this happens, modify the example from "man" to "living 
man."]