WikiDiscuss

L: It is becoming about as clear as anything in all this, but what is not clear is what if anything it does refer to. It is in a place where the norm (I would think) is for reference to individuals, as {le ractu} and {la meripapnz} seem clearly to be, but 9it is not to an individual in any functional sense, apparently, but to an abstraction which then is taken to function as a concrete individual. I think there is some confusion in this notion, so I suppose I do not yet have it right, but nothing said so far has clarified it. Until that is done, I have to say that this section is not yet adequately dealt with, even if the usages are clear (which they are not, for just this reason).

M: I want to see how it will work out: {mi visaka lo ractu} makes {viska} stand for a relation between me and an abstraction, rabbitkind or Mr. Rabbit, while {mi viska le ractu} makes {viska} a relation between me and a concrete object, a selected rabbit. This seems to be two separate meanings of {viska}, marked at best contextually. Lojban literature claims that Lojban predicates are not ambiguous, only vague.

N: A better analogy would surely be that when I see John I see only one side (and maybe not even all of that). But the parts of John — both spatial and temporal — are joiined together in a familiar way, featuring primarily continuity. The parts of Mr. Rabbit lack this feature — among others. Mr.Rabbit appears more like an intermediate abstraction — like a state or a corporation — but lacking the foundation (at least as so far explained) that give these critters legitimacy. I suspect that this can all be corrected and that the notion will have some — maybe even considerable — use. It does not seem to me yet to have anything to do with case like what I need or see or any other fairly normal activity in non-general claims. I am not even clear how it will help in cases like "Cats chase mice" in a way that is clearer than old Lojban devices.

O:But MR.Rabbit is said to be the same over spatially discrete parts, not merely temporal slices and that is markedly different from John: we talk — when it is necessary to avoid confusion or contradiction — about the parts of John, not merely John, but Mr.Rabbit talk is always about Mr. Rabbit simpliciter, not about his parts or manifestations or whatever.

P: When you don't care which manifestation it is, particular quantification — which we already have to have for other reasons — does the job too. Why complicate matters?

Q: But {lo ractu} does not behave like a constant term — or at least you keep refusing to admit ordinary inferences involving constants with respect to it: generalization, negation transparency, apparently subject raising over compounds, and the like do none of them apply to {lo}, but all do to {la}, say.

As I have said, it is probably possible eventually to make a coherent explanation of Mr. Rabbit or whatever, but it seems like a lot of work and it has yet to be demonstrated that the result will solve any real problem — something Lojban does not yet do or do very well. Most of the apparent economies of the notion come about, it seems to me, simply because the notion is still so vague that all manner of very different effects can be attributed to it, even though, were they all actually in it, the result would be incoherent.
Jorge Llambías <jjllambias2000@yahoo.com.ar> wrote:

pc:
> I: But the inference from a particular object to the generalization "some
> object of that sort" holds generally. Thus I take it that you are now saying
> that {lo broda} refers not to an object but to a kind.

L:{lo broda} does not refer to an instance, that's right. I thought that
was clear from the beginning.

> I don't think that
> that position is sustainable without revising the semantics of every word in
> Lojban — including names and {le} descriptions.

M:I think it is.

> And, of course, what I need
> is not a kiind of thing but a thing of that kind, so the changes merely makes
> the claim false and leaves us with the problems of saying what we want all
> over again.

N:When you see John, you are actually seeing a stage of John, but
we don't need to revise {viska} to "a stage of x1 sees a stage
of x2".

> K: Well, time does affect individuals differently from space, at least as far
> as language usually goes — we tend to say that the individual is the same
> whole over time, but has spatial parts.

O:Similarly Mr Individual is the same whole over instances, just as
John is the same whole over stages.

> It is rather hard to build spatial
> analogs of the time situation for ordinary objects, but temporal analogs for
> spatial ones are relatively easy: the tomorrow slice of John is here, the
> today one is not, fits perfectly with John's left hand is raised but his
> right hand is not. So also, Mr. Rabbit's a manifestation is eating, his b is
> not. But — unlike the case of John — the references here to Mr.Rabbit play
> no significant role; the work is all done by the manifestations.

P:When you don't care which manifestation is doing the work, all the
reference you need is to Mr.Rabbit.

> It is they
> that fit in with the rest of the Lojban metaphysics of objects and
> properties, not of kinds and manifestations (though, of course, we can
> replicate the results — with a little strain — in that language).

Q:I don't think we need to embed any metaphysics in the language.
The "Mr" talk is just one way of understanding how {lo broda}
behaves logically as a constant term, like {la djan}.

mu'o mi'e xorxes

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