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

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 17 Sep 2002 04:31:55 EDT

In a message dated 9/16/2002 10:05:12 AM Central Daylight Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

<<
> I
> think I understand how Jorge's {lo'e} is supposed to work, but
> I'm not yet convinced that {lo'e} is the right solution to generalize
> over all examples that have popped up in discussion.
>>
Do tell us. The worst that is likely to happen is that xorxes says (as he 
does with all my tries) that that is not it at all. He may even try to 
explain why not (anything is possible).
I agree that some of the cases that muddy the water are probably wrongly 
included, but I have trouble -- since I can't get a straight answer on what 
any of them mean -- which ones (but I am pretty sure about {pixra lo'e 
sincrboa}).

<<
#I suppose you mean {se li'i}, "I'm a visual experiencer of
#something being a boa".
#>>
#No, I meant {li'i} though I left out the {le} . Apparently the meaning has 
#changed since the word was created by someone who lived primarily in a 
#disembodied experiental mode.

It hasn't changed its meaning AFAIK. It's just that "viska lo li'i" means
"see an experience", not "have an experience of seeing". That doesn't
mean there's no way to say "have the experience of seeing", though.
I am not sure about {viska lo li'i ...} meaning "has a visual experience of", 
but I think that is about right. The word {li'i} was devised by a paraplegic 
(as far as I can remember, anyhow) who experience many events but could 
participate in none. The term was devised to allow him to express his view 
of the world -- and also be an aid in dealing withm delusional states and 
illusory presentations (the Indian chestnut about the snake and the rope got 
translated rather nicely using it, I recall.) Of course, this was in Loglan, 
but {li'i} was taken over -- at least originally -- directly and explicitly.

<<
IMO, the Lojban technical term "abstraction" is primarily grammatical
rather than semantic -- an event is indeed no more abstract than 
a participant in an event. So really "abstraction" just means "selmaho
NU". {tu'a ko'a} is therefore an abbreviation for {le su'u ko'a co'e},
no more and no less. 
Well, one of the lines that led to the present mess was my claiming -- on the 
basis of both CLL and some logical conveniences -- that {nu} and {du'u} 
expressions had more in common than just grammar. That was, of course, in 
the midst of the token/type argle-bargle, now happily irrelevant. Since all 
events always exist in Lojban, they are surely somewhat more abstract than 
objects -- they exist even when the objects in them don't, for example. Just 
like propositions in that respect. And properties. So far as I can see, the 
releative abstractness of various referents plays no real role in the present 
problem.