From arosta@uclan.ac.uk Wed Apr 25 09:37:49 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: arosta@uclan.ac.uk X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-7_1_2); 25 Apr 2001 16:37:49 -0000 Received: (qmail 6462 invoked from network); 25 Apr 2001 16:37:05 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.142) by l10.egroups.com with QMQP; 25 Apr 2001 16:37:05 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO com1.uclan.ac.uk) (193.61.255.3) by mta3 with SMTP; 25 Apr 2001 16:37:05 -0000 Received: from gwise-gw1.uclan.ac.uk by com1.uclan.ac.uk with SMTP (Mailer); Wed, 25 Apr 2001 17:18:57 +0100 Received: from DI1-Message_Server by gwise-gw1.uclan.ac.uk with Novell_GroupWise; Wed, 25 Apr 2001 17:38:46 +0100 Message-Id: X-Mailer: Novell GroupWise 5.5.2 Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2001 17:38:08 +0100 To: lojban Subject: [lojban] Re: Three more issues Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Disposition: inline From: And Rosta Adam Raizen: #To take another example, say a meat-eater says "loi rectu cu kukte". m #does not want to claim that every piece of meat is tasty, However, it #would defeat the point of the statement to limit the claim to some #mass of meat that m has in mind. I think that "loi" expresses this #situation well, without any changes to the definition in the book. This is not really about masses but the criteria for kuktehood. The same issue you describe would arise with "le pa rectu cu kukte", which would not be appropriate if only one small portion of le pa rectu was kukte. This goes for all the other examples discussed, such as living in Africa and weighing 95 kilos. That is, masses behave the same as single individuals, so it makes sense to say "I am sunburnt", even when only part of me is sunburnt, while it does not make sense to say "I weigh 2 kilos", even though, say, my foot weighs 2 kilos. Similarly, it does not make sense to say "I am a finger", even though part of me is a finger. To repeat, then, masses behave like individuals, and logical debates about the properties of masses are an instance of a more general debate about the properties of individuals. --And.