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

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sat, 14 Sep 2002 08:34:41 EDT

In a message dated 9/13/2002 5:39:12 PM Central Daylight Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

<<
> No, I don't think so. {ta pixra lo'e sincrboa} does not give an
> inherent property, nor any property, of boas. It only gives a
> property of ta.
> >>
No it gives a relation between ta and lo'e sincrboa on the surface. The issue 
is what does all that come down to at the bottom. I suppose that {ta pixra 
lo'e sincrboa} means something like "That presents an image which manifests 
[some condition here] visual properties associated with boas" where, with the 
Lojban {lo'e} the box is filled with "some visually adequate typical". What 
is it on your usage? It is beginning to look like the same thing, I'm 
afraid.

<<
I don't think {lo'e cakla} involves directly any property other
than {le ka ce'u cakla}. What exactly that property is has to do
with the meaning/intension/whatever of {cakla}. I don't think
there is any need to look for any other properties to understand
{lo'e}. Only that one property is relevant.
Well, in the case of {nelci}, I agree. But {pixra lo'e sincrboa} behaves 
differently and her we have to come up with some other properties, since the 
property of being a boa, as such, is not picturable. We have to go inside 
and see what that means in visual terms.

<<
For me {lo'e cinfo cu xabju le friko} does not preclude lions
living in other places. As And pointed out, it is a claim about
Africa: it's inhabited by lions. That's all. If it fails, it is
because Africa is inhabited by many other creatures as well as
lions, not because lions may also inhabit other places. It all
depends on the semantics of xabju: is x1 supposed to be for the
main inhabitant(s) of x2? If not, then there is no problem with
the claim.
Let me put it another way. Your claim is, I gather, meant to be a different 
claim from {lo cinfo cu xabju le frika}, which clearly makes no claim about 
lions not living (even natively) elsewhere (it doesn't even claim that they 
live natively in Africa, come to think of it). The Lojban interpretation 
makes this a typical fact about members of the set of lions: typically, if 
something were a member of that set, it would live in Africa -- which is 
clearly different from the {lo} version (it doesn't claim there are lions for 
one thing) but also makes not claim about whether there are lions elsewhere. 
{xabju} says nothing about main or sole inhabitants. But what does you 
{lo'e} say? At the moment it seems indistinguishable from the Lojban 
bversions -- unless it is jjust {lo} "without the quantification," whatever 
that might mean. 

<<
As long as nobody is tempted to translate it as {mi nelci ro da
poi ...}.
I have been careful, I hope, to put it in the subjunctive to prevent that. 
My question is now "what preoperties are delimited by your {lo'e sfofa} . If 
nothing beyond being a sofa, then this is just {nelci tu'a lo sfofa} and as 
uninteresting as cases where it amounts to nothing more than {lo sfofa}.

<<Actually, we may have something in Lojban for that:

lo broda = da poi broda
lo'e broda = zu'i poi broda

Yes, I think that could work.
Pardon? One can poi onto {zu'i}, I suppose, but I don't see why one would. 
{zu'i} doesn't mean "the typical value in this context," it is just replaced 
by the typical value in this context. In addition, {zu'i [poi broda]} is 
bindable to {da}, against your notion of {lo'e} and certainly against what I 
was about in the previous sentences.

<<
>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.

I suppose {zi'o} is also an improper symbol, then. And {zu'i} too.
{zi'o} is not, in the appropriate sense, a symbol at all: it merely marks a 
different, though related, predicate. {zu'i} is perfectly normal: in the 
clarification it would appear intact as a reference to the usual referent in 
that context.

We seem to be approaching an understanding here -- asymptotically, since you 
are still flying off in various directions -- but we still need a statement 
of what {lo'e} means, how it specifies the proerties of members of the set 
which ar relevant.