Subject: RE: [lojban] Tentative summary on Attitudinals

From: "And Rosta" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 13:46:56 +0100

Thanks, pc, for this. Short of time, I'd left that gargantuan thread
unread, hoping you'd post a summary to save me having to spend hours
catching up on it.

I'm sorry if I'm raising issues already discussed, but if they
have been discussed then at least my points can be taken as indicators
of lacunae in the summary...

> I don't think that this discussion has reached definitive conclusions yet,
> but I want to look at where I think we are.
> 1) With some hesitation, I hold that we all are clear that an attitude
> indicator (e.g., most of UI) is not the same as a bridi which declares that I
> have that attitude: {ui p} is not the same as {mi gleki le nu p}. Uttering
> the former is evidence for the latter, perhaps, but not equivalent to it (one
> could be true and the other false, for the easiest example).

tugni

Hurray. I'm glad that battle got won without me having to weigh in.

> 2) Whenever uttered, an attitude indicator indicates an attitude toward a
> situation, which may be summed up in a sentence to which the attitude
> attaches. But need not be -- attitude indicators are complete utterances
> standing alone. We then may be uncertain what situation evoked the utterance
> and the attitude it presents.
> 3) Grammatically attached to a sentence which describes a situation, the
> attitude indicator indicates its attitude toward that situation.

tugni

> 4) There are two well-known, one documented, and one hypothesized relations
> between the attitude and its situation, the crucial divider seeming to be
> whether the situation involved is known to occur or not. The standard
> theory, which is well documented and is presented -- somewhat confusedly --
> in the Book, is that some attitudes require that the situation responded to
> be known to occur, while others require that they not be known to occur
> (maybe, in some cases, that they be known not to occur). I cannot hope for or
> wish for something that I know to occur already, I cannot be happy for
> something unless I know it does occur (in at least the primary sense of
> "happy" -- see later).

I sort of disagree. See below.

[...]
> 5) The present system does not successfully mark the two types of indicators
> it distinguishes: each of the several groups: aV, eV, iV, oV, uV, CVV
> contains some indicators that require the situation to have occurred and some
> that require that it not. In that sense then, the system is less informative
> than it might have been and requires simple memory to use correctly (we won't
> talk of reformation, since we are under a freeze). The further possible uses
> of indicators make the indicators within the present system ambiguous in a
> partiuclarly dangerous way (whether or not some claim is actually asserted or
> not, some situation holds or not).

My take on things:

I. If things were to remain a bit of a mess:
I don't see any reason why the grammar or formal description of Lojban should
distinguish among these different types, but at any rate I hope we are being
careful about categorizing the indicators. For example, although "I am happy
that P" entails P, ".ui P" means "P makes me happy" or "I'm happy, thanks to
P", where P is not necessarily the case. Something like ".ui ju'a P" would
mean "I'm happy, thanks to P being the case". Note that I'm not denying that
"a'o P" should mean "Hopefully, P" (as opposed to "P makes me hopeful", though
I gather from your summary that a'o attached in the appropriate place might
mean that).

II. If things were to get sorted out:
Ideally, I'd like to see a careful separation between attitudes to/emotions
about a proposition, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, indications
of whether P (or even not-P) is being asserted. Hoping, for example, seems
to be made up of "P is desirable" and "I am not asserting that P is the
case" (or perhaps something stronger like "I am asserting that I do not
know that P is the case"). But one could have the assertives on their own
without the attitude indicators, and one could combine desidertation with
assertions ("P is desirable and is the case") and nonassertions (e.g.
"mmm! me a millionaire" = "p is desirable (& may or may not be the case)").
Perhaps, then, a'o could be seen as shorthand for "ui ju'anai" or similar.

> 6) Attitude indicators can appear anywhere in a sentence; the different
> positions have been used only for (not very clear) rhetorical effects so far.
> To remove the ambiguities claimed for indicators, the suggestion is that we
> restrict the positions in which an indicator can appear in a particular role:
> responding to an occurrent situation, projecting the situation, responding to
> a projected situation, responding to a possibility opened by an occrrent
> situation. A variety of such plans have been proposed, none to universal
> acclaim -- even if you omit the people who don't see that the other uses than
> those given in the book are real.

Has agreement been reached about the grammar of (3), though? That seems to
be the key thing.

--And.

--And.