WikiDiscuss

pc:
> I think my basic problem here is that you are trying to explain a synthetic
> category (like a collective or so) by analogy with an analytic category like
> a slicew or stage.

The analogy is kind:instance::individual:stage
so the kind is analogous to the individual and the
instance to the stage.

> with analytic categories you can fall back on the
> original object being analysed to guarantee and at least partially explain
> what holds the pieces together, with a synthetic category we have to provide
> that glue explicitly and this has not been done.

The glue is the property in question. lo ka ractu is the
property that all the instances of lo ractu have in common.

> Why should I (starting from
> where I am) see all these individuals (rabbits in this case) as being
> instances of something else concrete.

Because they share a common name/description?

> This is not even like seeing all
> nature as One or even treating an ecosystem as an entity, for what we are
> dealing with has no "natural" cohesion. What is needed then is a convincing
> artificial one and that isn't here yet.

I offer their description, "ractu", or the property they all share,
{lo ka ractu}.

> (This is not to say that, starting
> from a different perceptual framework — a Madhyamika Buddhis, say — I
> wouldn't find this natural as well, though I am not sure that they actually
> would).
>
> C: Assuming that {la ract} is meant to be a name for an ordinary thing — a
> guy called Bunny, for example — then more than a stage has to exist for it
> to exist. The stage has to fit into a continuous series of contiguous stages
> satisfying an array of further condition.

Intermittent existence is ruled out even in principle, by definition?
{da ru'inai zasti} is false by definition?

> Otherwise, Bunny falls into some
> category like delusions or illusions or ...

If it has at least one stage that exists, I bet it has to exist.

> Mr. Rabbit on the other hand seems to be exactly nothing other than a bunch
> of "instances" with no yet explained further conditions. And as such it
> seems pointless, given that we have the instances. So, in addition to the
> glue, we need a raison d'etre for this notion.

The glue is that the instances share a description, the raison
d'etre is simplicity in use (constants are much easier to handle than
quantified terms).

> D: Thse, of course, raise the old paradox of how to say of something that
> does not exist that it does not exist. I don't see that Mr. Unicorn helps
> here at all (though short-scope {lo} would if we take "imaginary" to be
> world-creating — which we should, for a variety of other reasons as well).

In any case, the paradox is neither more nor less paradoxical for
Mr. Unicorn than for Ms. Poppins.

> E: Frinstance? Lojban is almost always going to seem cumbersome to speakers
> of natural language because it has a built in precising mechanism and has not
> yet developed good conventions for work-arounds. I would assume that people
> who use tha language a lot (a class which is almost coextensive with you)
> have begun to develop those things. But that is very different from changing
> the basics of the language, which is what new {lo} seems to do.
> What exactly is the advantage of making {lo ractu} a constant, when the
> phenomena being described involve variable references? As for the
> obvious/irrelevant distribution, that is exactly what particular quantifiers
> do.

But not always the references are variable. When I talk of rabbits
in general, I am talking of one thing: rabbits, not about some
rabbit or each rabbit. Examples of things that the old {lo} is not
well equipped to handle are most of the lo examples under the
proposed definition.

mu'o mi'e xorxes

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