Subject: [lojban] Re: On what there isn't

From: robin <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 28 Sep 2002 01:25:48 +0000

[email-masked] wrote:

> [Long intro, skip to * or **]
> So, I was in Hay-on-Wye, a town on the Welsh boder (I think on the 
> Welsh side, but don't quote me). 

It's tricky - I come from the Borders, and I can never remember which 
place is on which side, and place names are nothing to go by. Rule of 
thumb - if the signs on the road (as opposed to road signs) are in 
Welsh, you're in Wales.

There were some interesting threads on zasti some time back (see, for 
example, http://balance.wiw.org/~jkominek/lojban/9412/msg00373.html). I 
tend to go for the "zasti should not be a gismu" view (though I can see 
some merits in both sides); Ijust don't see existence as a predicate. 
the only way I can think of making sense of "x exists" is as a 
semantically incomplete way of saying "x is a member of y", where "y" is 
usually "the set of entities that can ultimately be said to refer, 
however vaguely, to some physical state/event," but may have other 
meanings. "The present king of France" can be said to exist in a more 
idiosyncratic sense; i.e., "the present king of France is a member of 
the set of examples used by Bertrand Russell."

> Now what doesn't exist? 

Nothing. It's like asking "What isn't real?" Everything is a real 
_something_ ; e.g. Hercules is a real hero in Greek mythology, as 
opposed to Xena, who is a real TV role but not a real greek heroine, 
AFAIK. Consequently, Xena exists, but this is trivial.

>
>
> Some useful non-existents.
>
> Other interfaces between existents and non-existents come with fairly 
> clear rules. For example (a major one), existing objects never bear 
> any nuclear relation to non-existents, though what we would normally 
> take as the converse does not hold. Thus, though Holmes might have 
> the proprety of being knighted by Queen Victoria, Queen Victoria does 
> not have the property of having knighted Holmes (though her surrogate 
> would). This means that what look to be relational statements need to 
> be approached with care, since, when one term refers to a 
> non-existent, either one of the component sentences is intended and so 
> the sentence true or false depending on which one, or the whole is 
> meant and the sentence false. (I assume, in fact, that the 
> interpretation is normally the one that at least opens the possibility 
> of truth: Holmes does not, in fact, have the property of being 
> knighted by Queen Victoria, but it would usually be wrong to claim 
> that "Queen Victoria knighted Holmes" was to be read in either the 
> full relational sense or as about a property of Queen Victoria.) 

Surely this is one of those interminable proper noun problems. "Queen 
Victoria" can refer to the flesh and blood ruler of the physical 
Britain, or to the character in the book. It's pretty clear in Lojban: 
"la viktorias." means "that which is named Victoria (after 
delojbanisation)", and can thus refer to either "that which was named 
Victoria by Conan Doyle" or "that which is named Victoria by 
historians." I'm still unsure of the status of proper nouns, though - 
despite having explained it glibly in the Lessons, I have no clear idea 
of the boundary bewteen an arbitrary label and a description. For 
example, my own name is an arbitrary label, in that my parents did not 
consciously choose to describe me as "Fame-bright"*, but what about 
"Dances with Wolves"? Sorry, getting off-topc here ...

robin.tr

* from which, missing out the "fame" part, I derived my Turkish name, 
Aydin ("bright" or "luminary" in both senses) and my Lojban 
name/all-purpose Internet handle, "solri" (or "solrin" for people who 
like the belt-and-braces approach to cmene).

-- 
"Mix a little foolishness with your serious plans.
It's lovely to be silly at the right moment" - Horace

Robin Turner
IDMYO
Bilkent Üniversitesi
Ankara 06533

http://www.bilkent.edu.tr/~robin