WikiDiscuss

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> --- Jorge Llambías
> wrote:
> > Mentioning something immediately introduces it
> > into the discourse.
>
> But, in order to mention it and thus bring it
> into the universe, it has to be somewhere already
> (in some sense).

Well, if it was somewhere already, we could define that
somewhere as the one true universe of discourse fixed
once and for all for every utterance in every context.
I don't think there is such a somewhere.

> In particular, suppose I say
> "some cows" or "there are cows that," what cows
> have introduced? the ones that satisfy the rest
> of the sentence?

No, quantifiers don't refer. Saying "some cows"
"all cows" or "no cows" just introduces cows.
{ro lo bakni}, {su'o lo bakni}, {no lo bakni}
and {lo bakni} will all require {lo bakni} to
have referents in the universe of discourse.
The quantifiers just quantify over those referents,
they don't introduce them.

> But the rest of the sentence
> comes after the introduction — the cows have to
> be there in order to go on. And what if I am
> wrong? I have introduced cows apparently but none
> of them have the properties involved. So, maybe
> by mentioning cows I introduce the lot of them.
> But then, what is excluded — I mentioned
> physical objects too, so are all of them in or is
> it specific?

{lo dacti} in principle could have a single
referent, "Mr Object".

> I suspect this is all terminological, that
> "universe of discourse" here means something more
> restricted than usual (what has actually been
> mentioned and perhaps what is going to be
> mentioned in the foreseeable future, abstracted
> from the broader notion of, say, the range of
> quantifiers or the like). A smidge of
> clarification might be handy here — and maybe
> some new terminology as well.

You're welcome to suggest other terminology,
but I think "universe of discourse" is fairly
standard.

> > >or ,
> > > if so, what is excluded?)
> >
> > There is no general answer. When I say that
> > there
> > is nothing in the box, air molecules are
> > normally
> > excluded from the universe of discourse, but
> > once
> > I mention them, we have to admit that there is
> > something in the box after all.
>
> I didn't ask for a general answer in the sense of
> a list of allthe things that are always in the
> universe of discourse, only criteria for deciding
> whjat is in and what is not. Obviously
> everything tha has been mentioned explicitly is
> in. Almost as obviously, some other things,
> implicit in what has been said or about to be
> mentioned, are also in, but what are the limits
> — by rule, not by list

I don't know the rule. Relevance will probably be
the most significant factor.

> > In {mi nitcu lo mikce}, the universe of
> > discourse
> > contains a single doctor, "Mr Doctor" for those
> > who don't mind that picture. If you can't
> > picture
> > doctors as just doctors, and you necessarily
> > must
> > picture them as an aggregate of many individual
> >
> > doctors, each considered separately, then you
> > must
> > take another course, for example (mi nitcu lo
> > nu
> > da mikce mi}, "I need that someone treats me"
> > or
> > something like that. Here you are picturing all
> >
> > {lo nu da mikce mi} as one "Mr
> > Someone-Treats-Me"
> > that you need, but some people mind doing this
> > abstraction less than doing the "Mr Doctor"
> > abstraction. Events are somewhat easier to
> > abstract
> > than people.
>
> Ah, the history of Philosophy: those who ignore
> it are doomed to repeat it. This is the kind of
> metaphysical argle-bargle created by not paying
> attenmtion to logic (or being to lazy to use it).
> There is no Mr. Doctor (shouldn't that be "Dr.
> Doctor"?) and if there were, he would be of no
> help in satisfying a person's needs. Only a real
> concrete doctor will do that, and further one who
> is in the appropriate relation to the needer --
> treating him, say.

Mr Doctor (or Dr. Doctor if you prefer) is of course
real and concrete. Just like an event of a doctor
curing me has to be real and concrete in order to be
any use to me. I have no need for an event of a doctor
curing me if the event is not real and concrete.

> The fact that we cannot
> identify beforehand who that doctor is, indeed
> that the need is indifferent to that issue, does
> not mean that there is an indifferent doctor who
> is needed or an unidentified one. It only means
> that the quantifier involved is within the scope
> of the needing.
> As for Mr. abstractions just being a variant of
> event abstractions (and sometimes property or
> truth function or... abstractions), the Lojban
> answer is simply NO. The event, property, and so
> on abstractions are inherent in Lojban; the Mr.
> abstractions — assuming that it could be given
> some meaningful interpretation (and all serious
> attempts at this have failed so far) — is a new
> thing, not already provided for. That it is
> being used to hi-jack an existing construction,
> which had a perfectly good but different meaning,
> does not mean that it was laready in Lojban. It
> is a foreign import and needs to be marked as
> such.

It was first introduced in Loglan by JCB, so it can't be
all that new.

> > > > You can draw two unicorns into existence,
> > but
> > > > you can't
> > > > eat them into existence, so that would be
> > the
> > > > difference
> > > > between those predicates.
> > >
> > > Category mistake. Pictures of unicorns
> > aren't
> > > unicorns (in the {lo pavyseljirna} sense) --
> > see
> > > the fronting problem again if nothing else.
> >
> > That seems like an ontology issue. Are
> > teddy-bears bears?
> > CLL says they are, if I recall corrrectly. I
> > say it depends
> > on the context (maybe that's what CLL says
> > too). The same
> > with pictures of unicorns. I don't think there
> > needs to be a
> > special gadri to sort teddy-bears from more
> > central bears,
> > or drawn unicorns from clay unicorns from
> > flesh-and-blood
> > unicorns.
>
> I agree, this is not a gadri issue — unless you
> want to use the "what I am calling" aspect of
> {le} to deal with the eccentric cases. You
> might, of course, say it is a brivla issue: what
> exactly does a certain predicate mean (I take it
> that this is the solution proposed for teddy
> bears). So, if {pavyseljirna} refers simply to a
> shape (as Kung Sun Lung would have us believe)
> then painting a picture of a unicorn presents no
> problem: there is the unicorn I painted a picture
> of, namely the shape of the picture itself. This
> of course makes for some very strange aesthetics:
> it become hard to define realism, for example, or
> portraiture in particular. And it is rarely what
> we mean.
>

(I think I didn't delete any of your stuff this time.
I believe your post was sent to me only, not to the
list. I am responding to the list.)

mu'o mi'e xorxes

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