From rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org Thu Apr 19 10:10:37 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-7_1_2); 19 Apr 2001 17:10:36 -0000 Received: (qmail 86901 invoked from network); 19 Apr 2001 17:10:36 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.142) by l10.egroups.com with QMQP; 19 Apr 2001 17:10:36 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO chain.digitalkingdom.org) (64.169.75.101) by mta3 with SMTP; 19 Apr 2001 17:10:34 -0000 Received: from rlpowell by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 3.22 #1 (Debian)) id 14qHwq-0006pl-00 for ; Thu, 19 Apr 2001 10:10:28 -0700 Date: Thu, 19 Apr 2001 10:10:28 -0700 To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Subject: Re: [lojban] RE: "not only" Message-ID: <20010419101028.A20714@digitalkingdom.org> Mail-Followup-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.3.17i In-Reply-To: ; from pycyn@aol.com on Thu, Apr 19, 2001 at 11:38:19AM -0400 From: Robin Lee Powell On Thu, Apr 19, 2001 at 11:38:19AM -0400, pycyn@aol.com wrote: > We now have a very peculiar situation. > I take it that everyone agrees that for the general case "Only S is P" means > "All P is S" and thus does not entail "Some S is P" or even "Something is P". > If there is some doubt about this, consider the following. For humans it is > universally true that only females are pregnant. So, in particular, it is > true that only female inhabitants of the Carmel of Sts Tereesa and Therese > are pregnant. But, even though there are female (and only female) > inhabitants, it does not follow that any of them are pregnant. > Similarly, only female inhabitants of Gethsemani Abbey are pregnant. It does > not follow from this that any of these men is pregnant, indeed, from the fact > that they are all men it follows that none of them is pregnant. Of course, > you could say that it is not true of these groups that only female members > are pregnant, but that entails that they are not human, contrary to all the > available evidence. With you so far. > However, when the S class gets small enough or specific enough or is > mentioned in a certain way (I am unclear just what the condition is here), > this rule no longer holds: > "only s is P" means something else. I am not perfectly sure what, but it > seems to be at least "s is P and nothing different from s is P" which simply > adds the questioned conclusion to the general solution (the second half is > equivalent to "All P is s"), thus guaranteeing that it does indeed follow. There's an obvious change of category here, though. If I say "Only my wife likes olives", I'm talking about a single named class of individuals. If I say, "Of the inhabitants of the Carmel of Sts Tereesa and Therese, only Vivian is pregnant", I am, again, talking about a named class of individuals. In both those cases, there is an _extremely_ strong implication that the named class does, in fact, conform to the condition. I will, however, agree with you that it is an implication, not an entailment. However, I would certainly add something clarifying such entailment to a lojbanic version, because if the member of the named class does not conform to the condition, this seems to me to be equivalent to referring to a black-painted house as le blabi zdani because once you saw a cat that lives there chasing a white dog. Unless your listener has that context, or the sentence has a zo'o or je'unai in it, this is obstructionist and obnoxious behaviour that results in no communication. Why the _hell_ are you mentioning that only your wife likes olives if she does not, in fact, like olives? -Robin -- http://www.digitalkingdom.org/~rlpowell/ BTW, I'm male, honest. le datni cu djica le nu zifre .iku'i .oi le so'e datni cu to'e te pilno je xlali -- RLP http://www.lojban.org/