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

From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 13 Sep 2002 17:07:25 EDT

In a message dated 9/13/2002 2:45:04 PM Central Daylight Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

<<
> {lo'e broda} is special in that it does not instantiate {da}.
> {broda lo'e brode} does not logically entail {broda da}, the
> way {broda la djan} does. In this respect it is like {broda
> zi'o} which also does not entail {broda da}.
> >>

Yes, I see that that is the analogy you are using. But it is a bad one. 
{lo'e broda} des not go to bound form because, although it is a surface 
sumti, it is not a surface referring word. {zi'o} on the other hand does not 
quantify up because it is not a sumti at all -- we don't quantify over {se} 
or {ui} or (closest) {i}.

<<
"I like sofas, but there's just no sofa that I like",
while contradictory at some psychological level, is not
logically contradictory.
If the "sofas" here is {lo'e sfofa}, whether this is contradictory or not 
will depend upon just what {lo'e} means -- it clearly will not work with 
"typical" and probably not with "average." Clearly "ideal" presents no 
problems, but I am unsure about "stereotypical." And, of course, I still 
have no idea just where your usage fits into all of this.

<<
>?! Your {lo'e} is more general that Lojban's?!

If {nelci lo'e cakla} were restricted to liking some particular
kind of chocolate, (ordinary, was it?) then yes, my {lo'e}
is more general, as it's only about chocolate, not about
typical chocolate, ordinary chocolate or any other restriction
on the concept of chocolate.
I suspect this is a terminological muddle (again). I meant that Lojban opens 
up a broad possibility for things that can be true of {lo'e broda}, anything 
that is typical across the set of broda, and I have been taking your position 
to be that {lo'e broda} does was restricted to inherent (or close on) 
properties of the members of that set. And it still does seem to be that way, 
since the relevant set of properties seem to be just those very close to 
inherent in being chocolate. Lacking the details yet of your {lo'e}, I can't 
translate it out (I'm not sure I can translate any of these into more 
explicit Lojban) but the Lojban form of your sentence would be something like 
"Typically, if I were to have (probably eat) a piece of chocolate, I would 
like it." In this context, the "typical" goes not on the chocolate but on 
the whole situation. I don't think that is always true, though I have 
trouble coming up with clear counter examples. I sometimes think that {lo'e 
cinfo cu xabju la frikas} will do, but then I think that is just "Typically, 
if a thing were a lion, then it would live in Africa." But neither of these 
restricts the sorts of properties that may be involved -- or the cases that 
count for the truth of the claim, but rather allow for a broad range of 
possibly true sentence. I would take it that, in your case, {lo'e cinfo cu 
xabju la frikas} is much less certainly true, since, even zoos aside, lions 
live, and can and have lived, in lots of other places (currently only 
India/Pakistan, but once at the gates of Rome and Athens). But, of course, I 
am not sure, since I don't know what yours means.

<<
>Does {mi
>nelci lo'e sfofa} means something like (we can prise out the details later)
>"I would like anything that had the properties delimited in {lo'e sfofa}"?

If your "anything" there is not a {da}, ok. But we don't have
anything in Lojban to stand for that English "anything"
(other than {lo'e}).
The "anything" is just {roda}, I think, but it is in an intensional contexts 
of sentence length at least. Notice that this sentence is to explain {lo'e}, 
so {lo'e} has no place in it -- its components have been spread over the 
whole sentence. {lo'e broda} is ultimately an improper symbol in Russell's 
sense -- when the semantics are laid out, there is nothing to correspond to 
that symbol, but the whole sentence works.
(cf descriptions in Russell, which are improper symbols, so that "the king of 
France is bald" "really" is "there is something that is a king of France and 
is such that any thing that is a king of France is identical with it, and it 
is bald." -- with various additional fillips as complications arose.) But 
worse because the expansion is intensional (always?)