Subject: Re: [lojban] zo'e = ? su'o de (was Re: What the heck is this crap?)

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 6 Nov 2002 10:15:45 EST

In a message dated 11/5/2002 8:15:43 PM Central Standard Time, 
[email-masked] writes:
<<
> imho it would *suck* *ass* if ro were importing though, as
> lo'i broda wouldn't be something you could say when the set is
> empty, since the inner quantifier is ro. Also I gather that
> nonimporting universal quantifier is more standard in logic as
> well). 
>>
I don't like &'s solution that the inner {ro} means something different from 
the outer; I prefer that there simply are no implicit inner quantifiers at 
all (I am not sure quite why they are there anyhow). 
As for Logic, non-importing quantifiers are extremely rare (I can think of 
maybe half-a-dozen books that use them and they almost all fringe). The view 
that they are common is simply a confusion between the quantifier itself and 
the way that modern logic choses to translate English (etc.) universal 
claims. This involves putting the apparent subject term in as antecedent of 
a material conditional, which is true if the antecedent is false. The 
universal quantifier in these translations is still importing (entails the 
corresponding particular claim) but the existence it imports is of universal 
class. {ro} is supposed to me just that quantifier, or its restricted form, 
the traditional
universal affirmative, which imports for its class as well.