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

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 21 Aug 2002 22:13:05 EDT

In a message dated 8/21/2002 6:21:24 PM Central Daylight Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

> la pycyn cusku di'e
> 
> >You want to distinguish between "There are events of
> >eating that I like" and "I like it that there are events of eating" or
> >something like that. Let's see if that works out for explaining your
> >position.
> 
> No, you already proposed that in your previous response and I said
> that is not what I'm trying to distinguish. 

I thought I was making a slightly different point, but, since it no longer 
seems to fit, I'll go with your story. Still, I would appreciate a little 
help here in trying to figure you out. Standing still for a moment might 
help as I am bad at moving targets.

<<
. But just for the record,
I think those two would be:

mi nelci lo nuncitka
There are events of eating that I like.

mi nelci le nu da nuncitka
I like it that there are events of eating.

The last one is not much related to what we're discussing.
Also irrelevantly, the same distinction can be made for
chocolate instead of events of eating:

mi nelci lo cakla
There are quantities of chocolate that I like.

mi nelci le nu da cakla
I like it that there are quantities of chocolate.
Well, shifting from {lo} to {le} here makes it harder to follow your point. 
Surely the second in each case also says (inter alia) "There are events of 
something being chocolate/ something being an event of eating that I like" 
and so open to the same objections (as far as I can figure what your 
objections are) as the first one. Except, of course, that there always are 
events of eating or of being chocolate, and presumably specific one that I 
like, so the condition is non-problematic.

I don't see a significant difference between "chocolates" and
"events of eating", that is the point I'm trying to make.
well, we are not arguing (I hope) about English words but at least about 
Lojban ones and more likely about what they refer to to. There are clearly 
differences between chocolates and events (I hope they are clear) and these 
are likely to be reflected in the way that words that refer to them behave.

<<
{mi nelci lo cakla}, {mi nelci lo nuncitka},
{mi nelci lo nu <whatever>}, all say that there are some
members of the relevant set, visited extensionally, such
that I like them.
Yes. And how is this a problem?

<<
When I say in English "I like chocolate"
or "I like to eat chocolate", I am not making a statement
about the members of the class of chocolate (or the members
of the class of eatings of chocolate) on a one by one basis.

Certainly not of the members of the class of chocolate, and not members of 
the class of eatings of chocolate, if that means particular occasions, 
manifestations of that event. 

<<
><<Where would you put the ta'e relative to {da poi nu}/{lo nu}?
> >>
>When prefixing is implicit, tenses have to be the outermost item except for
>negation, thus the quantifier must be inside them.

The way I understand it: to make a fully prenexed expression,
you start with already explicit prenex terms, then selbri tcita,
then non-prenexed terms.
Yes, but {na} and tense if they occur ARE already prenex and at the far left 
end.

<<
>But
>I am not sure that that is what "I like to eat" means either -- it may be
>that the abstraction here is {li'i} rather than {nu} or {du'u}

It all depends (as in all the other cases) on the quantifier you
put on li'i. {le li'i citka} will refer to a particular
experience that you have in mind, {lo li'i citka} to at least
one of all things that are experiences.

I don't see -- still, after all this time wiht this issue -- what the gadri 
has to do with it in any crucial way: what you say is correct, but does not 
obviously have any relevance to the issue (whatever it is) under discussion. 
I should have thought which was right depended upon whether we were talking 
about events or experiences, two different abstraction types.

<<
><<
>So would you say, for example:
>
> le du'u le mensi be la djak cu sipna cu du'u la djil sipna
>
> >>
>Yes, I would say that in the imagined circumstances.
[...]
>If Jack doesn't
>know that Jill is his sister, then your proposition would not be one of 
>ones
>that Jack knows.

In that case, you would claim:

la djak naku djuno ro du'u la djil sipna
Jack doesn't know (every) that Jill is asleep.

Even though he does know that Jill is asleep. Odd at least.

Why so? Jack very likely does not know that his mother's father's mother's 
oldest great grand-daughter is asleep and yet that is in lo'i du'u la djil 
sipna (let us suppose that Jill really is that great grand-daughter). And 
there are easily any number of further cases, if he happens to be a 
genealogist.

<<
>I could look and see whether
>there is a device already for restricting scope, as {ku} does for {na} and
>tenses. But {ku} won't work with quantifiers apparently and nothing else
>suggests itself.

{tu'o} suggests itself to me: the non-quantifier quantifier.
I suppose I have been using {lo'e} as {tu'o lo}.

And this differs from {su'o lo} exactly how? Aside from discouraging 
somewhat more intensely the temptation to pin the number down.

<<
Also {tu'a} must be a close relative of {tu'o}:
{tu'a ko'a} = {tu'o du'u ko'a co'e}. Otherwise, what is the
quantifier on the implicit {du'u}?

I don't get this at all. They are from totally different selma'o. I suppose 
that the gadri on {du'u} is usually {lo}, but it would depend upon the 
context: what place on what selbri is it attached to.

<<
>But, of
>course, I don't like an event or a proposition and, further, there is no 
>way
>to identify WHICH proposition -- or event -- I like: xorxes; central and
>repeated argument, I think.

You keep trying to pin that argument on me, but I never claimed
that {lo} requires any identification or identifiability. It does
require an extensional visiting of the members though. Something
that "I like chocolate" does not.
What is the point of visiting all these members, if not to find one that 
satisfies the claim. I don't see just how you disavow this argument that you 
have used a couile dozen times. But the point is that it doesn't prove what 
you want it to prove, since "I like chocolate" does exactly involve such a 
run-through. And the fact that it seems odd to say so is that you have been 
running through the wrong things.

<<
>Is it wrong that {mi nelci lo nu mi citka lo cakla} is equivalent
>to {da poi nu mi citka lo cakla zo'u mi nelci da}?

It is not wrong, it is definitional.
Well, that may be a little strong, but it is a fundamental principle. 

<<
>The appearance that it is
>comes from asking questions like "Which one is it then?" and expecting
>answers like "The one last Thursday or the one in my dream last night," 
>which
>clearly won't work, whereas the appropriate answers are "The most general
>one, simply that I am eating chocolate" or "A very specific one like that 
>I
>am eating a Hershey bar (with almonds) on a sunny afternoon in Seville with 
>a
>little bird flutterng around to get scraps ......"

That's all very well, but then you're arguing for {le nu}, not
for {lo nu}. Because {mi nelci lo nu mi citka lo cakla} is true
even if I don't like chocolate but I liked it on one occasion,
whereas "I like chocolate" is false in that situation.
Why {le} rather than {lo}? They both come out of the same set (assuming 
veridicality): is some part of this set automatically assigned to {le} and 
the rest to {lo} -- say {le} gets the detailed ones and {lo} the fuzzy ones?
Why is {mi nelci lo nu mi citka lo cakla} true if on one occasion I liked 
eating a chocolate. The occasions don't enter in, as I have been saying for 
a while now, this is a set of intensions, not extensions - of events, not 
occasions; of tokens, not of types. Why would it be true if I didn't like 
chocolate?

<<
That's exactly why I don't want to bring the manifestations in,
which le/lo inevitably do. I just want the intension, I don't want
to extend myself over the manifestations.
Why do {le} and {lo} bring in manifestations. They refer to members of the 
set lo'i nu mi citka lo cakla, and every member of that set is an event, 
abstract, not an occasion, manifestation. 

<<
>presumably if you like eating
>chocolate (are in the like-relation to some member of the class of
>me-eating-chocolate events) then you will generally enjoy occasions of
>chocolate eating (have the feelings that might prompt you to say {oinai} or
>even {ui} while doing it).

Why? Why being in like-relation to some member would imply anything
about general occasions? It doesn't follow at all.

What's a general occasion? It would be odd to have someone like eating 
chocolate but have a miserable time each time he ate chocolate (I know there 
is the old "I like chocolate but it doesn't like me" routine, that is not 
quite the miserable time I had in mind). Did a person both claim the general 
like and claim to hate every occasion we would suspect him of being deceived 
in one of his claims (if not just flat lying).

<<
>So, of course there is an event that I like: that
>I am eating chocolate (and perhaps some more specific members of the set).

Nobody denies that there is one such event. I agree that
{mi nelci lo nu citka lo cakla} is very likely true. What I
dispute is that it translates "I like to eat chocolate".
The Lojban is true in a whole lot more occasions than the
English.

I suspect that this is still confusing events as abstract entities with 
events as what goes on in the world -- there is (at least) one abstract 
entity that falls into the appropriate relation covered by {nelci} but, while 
that implies that there is at least one occasion (indeed, it implies a large 
precentage of the occasions of me eating chocolate) that I enjoy. Implies, 
but does not mean.

<<
>When I am telling you what I like, it is probably appropriate to use {le 
>nu}
>then;

If {le nu citka lo cakla} can refer to that generic event of
eating chocolate, then {le cakla} must also be able to refer
to that generic chocolate. Or are cakla and nuncitka intrinsically
different types of things?
How so, generic chocolate is presumably abstract as {le cakla} distinctly is 
not. But {le nu mi citka lo cakla} is abstract already. Yes, citka and 
nuncitka are inherently different things, one concrete, one abstract. One 
might not exist, one always does. And so on.

<<
>when I am reporting on someone else {lo nu} seems safer, since his
>particulars may not be obvious (if we get it by observing, we may miss
>details that are significant to him;

It would certainly be a safer claim, but it would not be equivalent
to what we mean in English by "he likes to eat chocolate".
So you keep saying, but when asked why, you give an argument about 
quantifiers, whose relevance is at least obscure, or one about occasions, 
which is demonstrably irrelevant. Do you know something about liking to eat 
chocolate that I don't? What?