WikiDiscuss

I see that my last attempt to send on the
original messages has not yet worked so here they
are again:

---

wrote:

> > xorxes:
> > > The (present?) material world is not
> especially favoured by the
> > > _grammar_ as the universe of discourse,
> although it is a very
> > > frequent obvious choice in many contexts.
> >
> > Okay, but one would like to somehow be able
> to make unambiguous
> > claims to the effect that exactly two things
> have the property of
> > doctorhood in the world in which I need them.
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>
> That would be {re da mikce}, "exactly two
> things have the
> property of being a doctor".
>
> > In other words,
> > that one can go out into the world in which
> my needing occurs,
> > and find & grab hold of these two individuals
> that are doctors.
>
> By "universe of discourse" I mean the set of
> things that we may
> make reference to in a given discourse. In one
> context, {lo mikce}
> may have a single referent in the universe of
> discourse, in other
> contexts it may have more than one. In any
> context,
> {mi nitcu re lo mikce} says that exactly two of
> the referents of
> {lo mikce} (from all the referents of the
> universe of discourse)
> are such that I need them. In that discourse, I
> don't need any
> of the other referents of {lo mikce} (from all
> the referents
> in the universe of discourse).

This notion of "universe of discourse" is fraught
with practical difficulties e.g., are things in
the physical environment in the universe or not
and, if not, how can I then introduce them, or ,
if so, what is excluded?) but it also does not
solve the {mi nitcu lo mikce} problem, which is
about scope, not range: {mi nitcu lo mikce} does
not generally even entail (let alone be
equivalent to) {lo mikce zo'u mi nitcu my}, since
whatever doctor(s) we pick is not needed for
another would do as well.

> > For clarity, a second example: There is an
> ambiguity in "I drew
> > two unicorns" that doesn't exist in "I ate
> two unicorns". How
> > can one remove the ambiguity, if one wanted
> to do so?
>
> Do you mean the "I drew two unicorns" that is
> like "I took
> a photograph of two unicorns" vs. the "I drew
> two unicorns"
> that is like "I made two unicorns out of clay"?
> maybe we can
> distinguish them with different predicates:
>
> mi pirfi'i lo re pavyseljirna
> I picture-created two unicorns.
>
> mi pirfukygau lo re pavyseljirna
> I picture-copy-made two unicorns.
>
> 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.
Presumably eating a unicorn requires a unicorn,
not just a representation of one (to speak
loosely). This is usually just fussbudgetry, of
course, but it does sometimes make a difference
and, as a logical language (well, trying to be
one where possible), Lojban sould make the
necessary distinctions at the basic grammatical
level (where inferences are meant to be
transparent).

> > > I think that unless the grammar is to
> impose an ontology,
> > > that distinction can't be made with gadri.
> One way to make
> > > it is through prediacates: "is a subkind
> of", "is an instance
> > > of"
> >
> > I understand your reasoning, but "lo instance
> of lo mikce"
> > would not guarantee that we are referring to
> actual instances;
> > we could be referring to imaginable
> instances. That's why
> > I can't see how to do it without involving
> gadri. (More
> > precisely, I can't see how to do it without
> having a way
> > to distinguish quantification over subkinds
> from quantification
> > over instances.)

And I can't see exactly what subkinds will do to
help the matter at all, unless {nitcu} is like
{sisku} in taking properties; but we usually say
it takes events.

> Would that require fixing the universe of
> discourse
> to the one set of referents we all agree are
> true material
> indivisible objects in the real meterial world,
> irrespective
> of context? I don't think that's desirable, but
> I'm not sure
> it's even possible. For some broda we may all
> agree on what
> counts as a true individual concrete real
> single broda for
> any and all contexts, but for many broda we
> won't, it will
> depend on context.

I have to agree with xorxes here (as often), but
I don't see how this helps matters at all.

---

wrote:

>
> --- John E Clifford wrote:
> > This notion of "universe of discourse" is
> fraught
> > with practical difficulties e.g., are things
> in
> > the physical environment in the universe or
> not
>
> In some contexts they are, in other contexts
> they
> are not.
>
> > and, if not, how can I then introduce them,
>
> 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). 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? 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?
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.

> >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
..
> > but it also does not
> > solve the {mi nitcu lo mikce} problem, which
> is
> > about scope, not range: {mi nitcu lo mikce}
> does
> > not generally even entail (let alone be
> > equivalent to) {lo mikce zo'u mi nitcu my},
> since
> > whatever doctor(s) we pick is not needed for
> > another would do as well.
>
> 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. 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.

> > > 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.