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

From: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 12 Sep 2002 21:41:13 EDT

In a message dated 9/11/2002 6:43:50 PM Central Daylight Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

<<
> Very considerate of you, but {xorban} means "Croatian language"
> in..., well in what you call Xorban.
>>
Oops! sorry (but ought I have known?)

<<
>What does "use an intension" mean? What can you do with them?

I say things like: {mi nelci lo'e cakla}, {ta simsa lo'e sfofa},
{ta pixra lo'e sincrboa}.
These seem to me to be paradigm cases (well, not quite, since none of them 
has {lo'e ...} as first argument) of talking about lo'e ..., which is an 
intension (in some sense or other -- I am not at all such which), isn't it? 
You say you like it or that that is like it or that is a picture of it (a 
notion I have a lot of trouble with -- abstract expressionism?)

<<
>{le du'u ce'u
>broda} refers to a property (or some properties, of course), using the
>expression is a way of talking about that property.

Right. But in those cases I am not talking about properties. I'm
not saying that I like some property, that that is like some
property or a picture of some property.
Which cases? {mi nelci lo'e ...} or {mi nelci le du'u ce'u ...}? I gather 
the former, from which I infer that lo'e ... is not a property. But then, I 
didn't think it was: it's a type, right? So, in those cases you are talking 
about a type. How is that using the type? Or, if that is what you mean by 
"using the type," what would be a case of talking about the type?

<<
>(but I can't figure out how to say, fairly literally "it has the
>property of being broda" in Lojban -- nor Xorban, for that matter).

What's wrong with: {ta ckaci le ka ce'u broda}?
Not a thing that I can see ({ka} aside). I just was looking the wrong way to 
find it. Thanks.

<<
>{lo ...} always refers to things in the reference class of {...}, the
>extension of {...}. Whether lo ... (the thing(s), not the expression) is
>extensional or not depends upon what sort of things are referred to by 
>{...}.

I think we're blocked here. For me every set {lo'i broda} has
an extension, and {lo broda} always picks from that extension.
By George, it is -- at least partly -- use-mention! {lo'i broda} is not a 
set, it is an expression that refers to a set, lo'i broda, which contains all 
and only the broda. That expression does have an extension, the set (of 
course) and {lo broda} refers to members of that set. Maybe running 
everything through this mill will give a bit more clarity.

<<
>(I do wish you'd use {du'u}
>after all the work we went through to get it straightened out)

Only you seem to think that the outcome of that discussion was
that {ka} should not be used. The way I understood it is that
{ka ce'u broda} is equivalent to {du'u ce'u broda}, but {ka} and
{du'u} differ in their defaults: {ka broda} necessarily has at
least one implicit {ce'u} and {du'u broda} necessarily has no
implicit {ce'u}.
During that overly extended discussion, I proposed half-a-dozen ways to deal 
with word for properties (including the one you suggest). The only one that 
survived without significant criticism -- and that actually got used -- was 
this one: properties with {du'u} and {ce'u}, {ka} for the qualitative analog 
of {ni}. This is clearly unzipfy to the max, but it does account for most of 
the CLL usage and the logic of the situation. And, of course, no one does it 
that way -- or any other way consistently. Well, education is part of the 
role of this list.

<<
>A place that requires ... tokens is presumably filled by using {lo ...} --
>isn't that what you just said? Is there a place -- in Lojban -- that
>requires being filled by ... types? I couldn't find any.

I can't think of any place that requires types. I can think of
plenty that accept types.
Well, in the sense that many Lojban expressions are ambiguous among tokens 
and types of various levels, this is true. And it would be nice to be able 
to break that ambiguity a bit. (I see I am slipping, too: for "by ... types" 
read expressions referring to ... types." I don't think it confused either 
of us, but we can't be too careful at this point.)

<<
<<
> ta simlu le ka ce'u sfofa
> That appears to have the property of being a sofa.
>
> ta simsa lo'e sfofa
> That is like a sofa.
>
> >>
>
>For the same reason, {ta simsa lo'e sfofa} is false (in your
>usage, where {lo'e sfofa} refers to the proximate type of sofas --

No, that's not my usage. I would have thought the English gloss
might have shown that. {lo'e sfofa} does not refer to a type
in my usage, that would be taking the type as a token of types, and
I don't do that. I use the type as a type, not to talk about types.
This is totally opaque. Does {lo'e sfofa} refer to the proximate type of 
sofas? Apparently not. What then does it refer to? It is obviously not a 
meaningless expression (or you would not fight so hard about it). So, it has 
a sense, that would pick out something in the world, if there is the 
appropriate sort of thing in the world. Otherwise it fails to refer, perhaps 
accidentally, because the world is shy this sort of object. Since you seem 
to think that {ta simsa lo'e sfofa} is true, the approriate sort of thing 
must be in the world (we have disallowed some weeks ago the possibility that 
some places are inherently opaque [what I used to call intensional before 
there go to be too many things getting called by that name] -- though this 
would be a good candidate, since something can clearly be like something that 
does not exist -- e.g. fat men with white beards are like Santa Claus [but 
that is another whole story]). What the fatal fandango is it? How (in 
addition) does taking {lo'e sfofa} to refer to the proximate type of lo'i 
sfofa, take the type (which one?) as a token of types -- and what does that 
mean? The proximate type of all the sfofa is, of course, a token of the type 
type, since it is a type (this gets hairy in practice, but has a variety of 
solutions). It is also a token of the furniture type and the physical object 
type and so on. So, there is no "taking" here, things just are that way. 
But I suspect that none of this is what you mean. Though what that is seems 
to come back to using, not talking about, and that was what I hoped this 
section was goiing to clarify rather than circle back to.

<<
>have I got
>that right, at least?)

You knew I couldn't possibly mean that.
On the contrary, everything you said at the beginning of this discussion, 
before it became totally unintelligible, forced me to that point. I rather 
think that I could find you saying "{lo'e broda} stands for the type of 
broda" or something very like it, when you were insisting only that it did not
mean "the typical broda."

<<
>if {ta} refers to a piece of furniture, but could be
>true if {ta} referred to another type or maybe even a property. But all of
>this is still talking about the type. What is an example (by you) of using
>it?

That was meant as an example of using it, not talking about it.
So, as noted earlier, what would be an example of talking about a type? 
Putting {lo'e broda} in first place? Obviously not. Using {li lo'e broda 
li'u}? Hopefully not. What then?