Subject: re: loi

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sat, 26 May 2001 08:50:37 EDT

rab.spir
<I thought an important part of {loi} was that it refers to part of the mass,
not the whole thing. Wouldn't that be {lei}?>
{lei} is to {loi} as {le} is to {lo}, so no; they refer to different masses

xorxes:
<I would say that the last is {piro loi}.

Since {loi} by itself is {pisu'o loi}, it should give "there are
some Chicagoans that altogether drink more than some New Yorkers".
Very little informative indeed, and I'm not sure the original can
even have this reading.>
Right. That particular assignment, motivated by the corresponding value for 
{lo} is a part of the problem with explaining how {loi} functions, since it 
forces us to conceive of a mass as something other than a way of talking 
about a set (or rather the set's members) and means that each {loi broda} may 
be different. It claims to prevent paradoxes in this way, but I am not sure 
that that is a sufficient advantage for the problems it creates in other ways 
(see all the discussions of {loi} elsewhere). {lei} is much clearer than 
{loi} as a result.

cowan:
<>   But our putting it that way misses what the Trobriander means 
> when he says (I don't know whether this is authentic) "gavagai" which is 
not 
> "There goes a rabbit" but "Lo, Mr. Rabbit." 

AFAIK Quine made up "gavagai" for his indeterminacy of translation thesis:
we, the Westerners, think it means "rabbit", but in fact it means
"sundry detached rabbit parts".  Not, I suppose, physically detached!>

I think -- still without the stuff around I need to check -- that this is 
right and my memory (as usual) played me false. So the Trobriand case and 
the Quinine case are different and the Q belongs more to goo theory of masses 
and to the argument about whether the mass of people included detached people 
parts. I think that one got decided in the negative, while allowing that 
seeing (for example) a leg was seeing the person of whom the leg was (still) 
a part and thus seeing loi prenu.

Sorry about the muddles; I hope the point got through.