Subject: Re: [lojban] ce'u

From: And Rosta <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 23 Aug 2001 17:31:24 +0100

>>> John Cowan <[email-masked]> 08/23/01 03:21pm >>>
#And Rosta wrote:
#> #But so does nu. An event labeled with nu need not have happened
#> #(le nu co'e cu na fasnu).
#> 
#> And likewise, {le prenu cu na fasnu}, {le prenu cu na zasti}.
#
#Nooo, this case is not really comparable.
#
#A Lojban event can exist (zasti) without occurring (fasnu).
#For the former, it suffices that the event be consistently
#describable.  

That sounds to me like a 0-adic du'u.

#For the latter, it must correspond to some actual
#region of space-time.

This is exactly my understanding of the nature of events (situations)
in contrast to du'u. I don't see why events are exempted from
having to correspond to a region of space-time if, say, dogs
are not.

So the upshot is that on your story I can't see the difference
between nu and du'u and I can't see any way of forming an
abstraction that expresses a fasnu, which is something one
obviously is going to want to do.

I must say though, that given the actual usage of nu, which so
often seems to me to be wrong, your story reflects actual usage.
I just think that neither your story nor much usage makes much
sense.

#Al Gore is not President of the U.S. But the event of his
#being so is an existing (zasti) event nonetheless. It can have
#things predicated about it.

It is an imaginary event, and imaginary events, like imaginary
dogs and people, can have things predicated about them.

I'm not opposed to this distinction between zasti and fasnu,
between existence in the noosphere and existence in spacetime.
But I am opposed to treating events differently from dogs and
people.

#> So when we are using the mechanisms for talking only
#> about realworld entities, whatever those mechanisms turn out to
#> be, li'i broda will not be equivalent to li'i le nu broda.
#
#I suppose you mean "lifri le nu broda". I claim in fact that
#they are equivalent, because there is an existent (abstract)
#thing that is "le nu broda", whether "broda" holds or not.

How do we distinguish nu, gerku and prenu that fasnu in
contextually-established realworld spacetime from nu, gerku 
and prenu that merely zasti in the noosphere?

--And.