Subject: [lojban] Re: quantifying over imaginaries (was: Re: partial recantation in favour of solomonics

From: John Cowan <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 8 Nov 2002 22:06:06 -0500 (EST)

Jordan DeLong scripsit:

> I think Cowan's stuff about 0/0 and this here is bunk. pi mu isn't
> a divison, it's a multiplication. 0.5 * 0 == 0.

Yes, but to say that 50% of unicorns are male is usually taken to exclude
that 75% are male. Yet 0.75 * 0 is just as much 0. The indeterminacy
is the same.

> Furthermore, I think this is entirely beside the point; {ro} is not
> {piro} (remember piro is exactly the same as pa), we don't have to
> treat it like a fractional quantifier, because it isn't one.

piro is "the whole of"; pa is "one of". Extensionally these may coincide,
but intensionally they are quite distinct. Still, "ro" is not fractional,
it's true.

> *mutters about how close this issue was to being solved*

If it were easy to solve, it wouldn't still be troubling us in 2002.

-- 
John Cowan [email-masked] http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
Most languages are dramatically underdescribed, and at least one is 
dramatically overdescribed. Still other languages are simultaneously 
overdescribed and underdescribed. Welsh pertains to the third category.
--Alan King