From cowan@ccil.org Tue Mar 13 18:29:40 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: cowan@mercury.ccil.org X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-7_0_4); 14 Mar 2001 02:29:40 -0000 Received: (qmail 48254 invoked from network); 14 Mar 2001 02:29:40 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.26) by l7.egroups.com with QMQP; 14 Mar 2001 02:29:40 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO mercury.ccil.org) (192.190.237.100) by mta1 with SMTP; 14 Mar 2001 02:29:39 -0000 Received: from cowan by mercury.ccil.org with local (Exim 3.12 #1 (Debian)) id 14d138-0007cQ-00; Tue, 13 Mar 2001 21:30:06 -0500 Subject: Re: [lojban] I almost caught the train In-Reply-To: from Jorge Llambias at "Mar 13, 2001 09:44:03 pm" To: Jorge Llambias Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 21:30:06 -0500 (EST) Cc: lojban@yahoogroups.com X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL66 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-Id: X-eGroups-From: John Cowan From: John Cowan Jorge Llambias scripsit: > They shouldn't. On the other hand, if you tell me "you know, > this morning Peter and Paul were on the verge of fighting > when the bell rang", then I will probably assume that the > fighting did not occur. Why? Because if it had occured, the > information you are giving me is fairly irrelevant, you > would have told me that they fought, not that they were on > the verge. It is nothing more than an assumption, of course, > based on the further assumption that your purpose in > telling me what you tell me is more than just uttering > true but uninformative or misleading statements. I will > assume that you are telling me the most relevant fact about > their fighting, and if being on the verge is the most > relevant then they probably did not actually fight. How is this different from "I was on the verge of sleeping when I got the idea"? I wouldn't infer from that that you didn't go to sleep! -- John Cowan cowan@ccil.org One art/there is/no less/no more/All things/to do/with sparks/galore --Douglas Hofstadter