Subject: Re: [lojban] Re: zi'o & otpi

From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 11 Jul 2000 07:56:08 -0400

At 08:17 PM 07/10/2000 +0200, Elrond wrote:
> > > le se gerku be zi'o, for a dog breed
> > > that exists independently of actual dogs.
> >
> > 1) "gerku" relates not only actual dogs with actual dog breeds, but
> > allows the relation of potential dogs and/or potential dog breeds as well.
> > Does it even make sense to talk about a dog breed which neither is,
> > nor could possibly be, instantiated in any conceivable dogs? What on earth
> > would make it a *dog* breed, then?
>
>Well, let's imagine a fiction story in the future, where a crazy inventor
>is wanting to create a completely new, yet unexisting, dog breed, and this
>not by instanciating a sample dog from it, but by specifying on paper all
>the characteristics of the dog breed, more particularly by specifying the
>characteristics of the breed not as the characteristics of any dog of that
>breed, but of the breed as a "breed" (= species, somewhat).
> Such a specification is feasible:
>"I am going to create a dog breed that will be described in other books
>for at least one billion years".
>This might seem flawed, because one could argue that to create a dog
>breed, it is needed to instanciate a dog of that breed.
> However, I do not agree. When I think about a breed of any animal
>type, I do an abstraction (else I wouldn't understand why to use the same
>word, "breed", for several different animals). For me, what makes a
>breed a dog breed is that it is related to dogs, and is a concept that
>allows regrouping several different objects (here, dogs of different
>breeds) into one family sharing common properties when describing the
>whole set of them. It is then perfectly legal, IMO, to speak about
>properties of the breed that can be described in other books, for
>example. (Anyone stating that no property of a breed is not also linked
>with the individuals has to fight the philosophical truth that the concept
>of "breed" has at least the property of its very existence as a
>concept...)
>
>Of course, when thinking about the concept of "breed" as explained above,
>a separate generic predicate should logically be needed (for example, se
>danlu, jutsi ?), although any predicate taking a breed as first argument
>has most probably a set of members as another argument (and there we have
>the same problem all over again).
>
>I postulate that the "dog breed" is a rather simple concept that *should*
>be allowed not to need actual dogs to be thought about. I might be wrong,
>and thinking actually about "gerku girzu" instead of "se gerku". Well, a
>special form of "girzu", though, one that has not its (still problematic)
>x3 place...

The answer is that "dog breed" the English phrase is MORE THAN ONE concept 
that in Lojban must be expressed in more than one way depending on what it 
is you are trying to say. Lojban allows finer distinctions in meaning than 
English does, in its pursuit of one word/one meaning and that pretty much 
assures that there will be aspects of most every English word that cannot 
all be covered by one Lojban word.

If this is constraining, then it is an intended constraining.

Again, to me, a dog breed that has no dogs is not really a dog breed at 
all, but something similar to a dog breed, or of the form of a dog breed or 
having the properties of a dog breed. In modern parlance it is probably a 
set of traits, or perhaps a particular range of the dog genome. However it 
is you are defining this thing that is not quite a dog breed because it 
does not have any dogs in it, you would choose a different Lojban word to 
express that different definition - a definition that does not include an 
association with one or more potential dogs. (Remember that a Lojban place 
can be filled with a potential sumti, so claiming that there is nothing 
that fills the dog place means not only that there is no dog in that breed 
but that there cannot potentially be a dog in that breed).

>(Honestly, I feel that lojban here is constraining the way I'm thinking --
>it seemed obvious to me to be able to think about a "girzu be fi zi'o",
>even a "se gerku be zi'o", and all I'm hearing for several days now just
>states that it "cannot"... I just am more and more agreeing with the SWH!)

Remember that it is NOT that a dog breed cannot exist without a dog, but 
that a se gerku cannot exist without a gerku

English speakers are used to the multiple meanings of English words, 
meanings that can be contradictory, verbs that can be both transitive and 
intransitive, that the mere act of trying to pin down a word to single 
meaning does chafe on us a bit. The solution for me has been to wax 
creative with new words, though so far I have confined myself to words for 
things that I imagine people would really talk about and not dog breeds 
that cannot have dogs in them or the sound of one hand clapping.

>Actually, I am beginning to think that the whole issue is not about
>the ability of describing such or such concept, but about the way
>(western) people think and use description words to designate/name
>*objects*, rather than *relationships* (as does, apparently, lojban).

Yes.

>By the way, I just noticed that this is not the first time that lojban
>allows constructs that are difficult to understand at first (perhaps a
>side-effect of being logical and providing symmetry of constructs around
>relationships ?) To my mind, if "le girzu be zi'o" is declared to be
>sensible, then symmetrically "le se girsu be zi'o" should be, no matter
>what we think about it.
>
>Doesn't the Book state everywhere that the order of appearance of
>arguments in a bridi is only a matter of emphasis? The very act of
>allowing "zi'o" for x2-x5/bai/fi'o places MUST allow its use for x1, too.
>If using "zi'o" for x1 in a construct leads to obviously paradoxical
>meanings, or simply to concepts that are strictly logically nonsense, then
>it should mean that the very place structure itself is flawed, and not
>that the language user "should not" build such constructs.

I think that the problem is that zi'o does not lead to anything that is 
strictly logically nonsense. It leads to incomplete concepts that we 
cannot necessarily wrap our minds around. We can perhaps come closer to 
imagining a situation where a zi'o would fit for an oblique place than we 
can for the x1, but the fact that we cannot imagine a meaning for a zi'o in 
x1 is our limitation (or the nature of the concept itslef) and not the 
language.

lojbab
--
lojbab [email-masked]
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: http://www.lojban.org