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

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sun, 15 Sep 2002 13:49:08 EDT

In a message dated 9/14/2002 7:11:28 PM Central Daylight Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

<<
> >Yes, lo sincrboa is picturable, but you want a picture of lo'e sincrboa,
> >which we can't drag out an look at and compare with the picture.
> 
> You don't have to drag it out. All you need is to know what
> {sincrboa} means.
>>
In that case, what {sincrboa} means already involves visual properties, the 
way a boa looks. Serpentine, obviously; scaly, I suppose; I don't know what 
else is essential ro being whatever kind of boa you have in mind. But, if 
you mean the genus boa (or wherever boas fall in that scheme of things) some 
of these properties that are essential to the picture drop out, because they 
can't be essential (different species of boas do them differently)

<<
>All we have
>to go on in the generic case is the (weighted?) list of properties that
>somehow (still haven't said how) characterize the members of lo'i sincrboa.

Yes, an imaginary list which need not be made explicit. If I tell
you from here, where you can't see me nor the boa, {mi viska lo
sincrboa} you need to know the same list of properties in order
to understand what I mean. If I tell you {mi viska lo'e sincrboa}
you can conclude that either {mi viska lo sincrboa} or else I'm
having visions, but you don't need to know anything else about
boas than what you needed for the claim with {lo}.

{lo'e sincrboa} provides a way to use the intension of
lo'i sincrboa in a sumti slot directly. (Not to make a claim about
the intension of lo'i sincrboa, that's what {le ka sincrboa}
is for.)

I have some idea what your boa is like, but I can't paint a reliable picture 
of it yet because too many things I need to know to do a picture I don't know 
from knowing only that it is a boa. Is it basically brown or basically 
green, for example?
Having a delusion is coverd by the usually safe {mi viska li'i sincrboa} 
(this also covers the {lo} case but does not entail it). Why is {lo'e} a 
no-no? If I can paint it, I can see it surely.
By "the intension of lo'i sincrboa," I suppse you mean "the intension (sense) 
of {sincrboa}" -- I don't think sets have intensions other than that of the 
predicates that define them (if any). Now, if you literally mean that you are 
using just exactly that intensional object, not any other properties that are 
accidentally associated with it through the things which have that property, 
I see a major problem with your examples. Either {lo'e cinfo cu xabju le 
frike} means "if anything were a lion, it would live in Africa," which is 
obviously false, or it means (I have to unpack some more) "In some world 
there is something which is a lion and lives in Africa," which is -- in the 
case of lions, but not of unicorns -- of little practical value over {lo 
cinfo cu xabju le frike}. (The more unpacked version of the first is "in 
every world in which there are lions, they all live in Africa" -- i.e., 
living in Africa is an essential property of lions, a part of being a lion, 
le du'u ce'u xabju le frike is a part of -- is pervaded by --le du'u ce'u 
cinfo). The problem with {pixra} is that boahood pervades too few viusal 
properties to allow a picture to be made, if it is at all representational 
(and if it is not, anything goes and I have to take your word for what it 
represents and by what coding, so almost any visual image will do and the 
whole becomes really uninteresting).

<<
>I think that, in fact, barring the miraculous appearance of a better
>explanation, {nelci le nu lo sfofa co'e} is exactly what {nelci lo'e sfofa}
>means. In what does it differ. DON'T "in that it deals with generic sofas
>not particular ones" since {le nu lo sfofa co'e} doesn't deal with any
>particular sofa either -- that is what intensional contexts do best.

I never said {le nu lo sfofa cu co'e} deals with particular sofas.
I did say it deals with particular events.
OK -- and how can there be a particular event involving sofas that does not 
invlve a particular sofa?

<<
>I
>suspect that {co'e} is something about lying on 'em or looking at 'em, just
>as {nelci lo'e cakla} = {nelci le nu lo cakla co'e} is about eating 'em.

That other claim may very well be true. But if it is possible to
like a particular sofa without saying that it is doing something
about it that I like, it should also possible to like sofas in
general without saying that it is doing something about them that
I like.
I actually think that {nelci} tends to be moe about {li'i} than {nu}, but I 
don't suppose that affects your case.
You must have some reason/cause/motive for liking something (I think -- even 
if you can't articulate it better than "I just do") and that presumably is 
something that sofas do or are or, perhaps, something that you do or are in 
the presence of sofas (would do or be were you in the presence of sofas, 
strictly -- but there are sofas and you like them so the hypothetical 
fuzzies things a bit here). Maybe it is just the fact that they are sofas. 
And, if {lo'e sfofa} is about generic sofas, that is about all it could be, 
since incidentally allied proerties are excluded.

<<
>Nor
>-- your other line -- that it can't be quantified over, since neither can
>{tu'a lo ...} What is different?

For me, liking sofas is different to liking an event. I never
disputed that {tu'a} works as a way to get the quantifier out
of the way, but it also changes the level of abstraction, from
liking sofas to liking things that happen in/with/about/to sofas.
Well, as I said, it is more like liking an experience, which seems less 
problematic -- not that I see that much problem with liking an event, in the 
appropriate sense. Perhaps some of our discomfort with {nelci le nu lo sfofa 
co'e} is that we read it as "I like the event of there being something about 
a sofa" rather than "I like something about sofas" which is a better bit of 
English. You complained about the corresponding translation of {nelci lo'e 
sfofa} as "like the generic sofa" -- we are (in your terms) using the event, 
not talking about it.
Using {tu'a} does not literally change the level of abstraction, since 
everything is on the same level in Lojban. And your case is ultimately 
talking about the properties of a sofa, not about sofas (since you can do it 
even if there are no sofas to talk about), which does not seem to me to be a 
different level, only a different kind, of abstraction.
(I expect you to deny this fervently, but lacking a different explanation, I 
have to go with what works to preserve as much of your claim as I can and 
this seems to do it, since hypotheticals live off properties, there being no 
other gudes for them once we cut free from the actual incidental properties 
of things in the set.(