> tu'a places WAS Re: Fractal Lojban Sentences > > Not exactly disagreeing, just asking for more > > > justification. > > Boy. That would have to be quite a lengthy > post. I think I should probably make sure I > understand what you're expressing before > undertaking such an endeavor...! > > > events, utterances, intentions, and so on). > The > > > variety is more to allow the distinctions to > be > > > made (as they cannot be easily in English, > > > say)than to force them to be made. > > I agree that, if people find certain semantics > to be useful, such constructs should not be > excluded from the Lojban language... but only > to the extent that such semantics don't > entail the immigration of semantic warts from > the source language into Lojban.

I suspect a problem here would be to separate out what are warts from what are just common expressions which we find objectionable for some reason. The only real warts are those which lead to logical mistakes; theoretical diagreements don't count (or at least don't automatically do so).



> IMHO, Lojban > needs to be (and, in fact, is) picky about > meaning in order to retain its status as a > {logji bangu}. Rejecting {baukemnorlogji}, I > think, is one of its pursuant responsibilities.

As usual, I need to remind you of in what sense Lojban is a logical language — it is not that it is "logical" in some popular sense; it is that its grammar is based on Applied First Order Predicate Logic and that is designed to make logical inferences (as defined for that language) transparent and uniform. What sense did you have in mind?

> If you can find an example in which a > non-abstract {xamgu1} or {xamgu2} makes sense, > I will reconsider my position. But I've never > (that I can recall) seen one, and none come > immediately to mind.

Well, I (and most of the history of value theory) has had no problem with saying things like "Charles is good for Jane because he is kind to her" and the like and that without meaning "Charles' kindness to her is good for Jane." That is, axiology has traditionally been rather thing-oriented. Now, new theories may have come in favor of another approach, but that does not make the old systems fallacious (logically defective); they are just different theories, different analyses.

> je'u pe'i tu'a lo pavyseljirna cu xamgu tu'a > loi lisri

Yes, I suppose you do. I would say things about unicorns were good for stories as well as for thing about stories.

> .ini'ibo lo pavyseljirna cu zasti fi tu'a lo > menli

I don't see this as following from any logical point, nor do I see things about minds being a metaphysics (though I have to admit that what that means exactly in Lojban — and "epistemology" too — is less than clear). There are surely worlds in which unicorns exist and even more in which there are unicorns, but that seems unrelated to either logic or minds.

> > places ({nitcu2}, say). The latter involves > > > using transparent places with intensional > object > > > mentioned in place of opaque places with > > > extensional objects. It has a double > advantage: > > I don't understand your use of the words > opaque and transparent. In what sense > do you mean them? > Standard terminology. An opaque occurrence of a term is one that does not (necessarily) justify an existential generalization nor applications of Leibniz's Law (substitution for identicals). Thus, from the fact that I need a unicorn, I cannot infer that there is a unicorn that I need and (in the appropriate world)from the fact that I need Superman I cannot infer that I need Clark Kent.

> > I don't have a "preview" button and, if I > did, it > > It's part of the form... right next to the > "post" button. (I refer, in particular, to > inclusion of ">" at random places in quoted > lines.)

I am not replying on wiki but just regular email. No buttons, mainly, I suspect, because this is not in any way marked up. The wandering ">" are a(n annoying) feature of the "Reply" feature of my browser, which puts everything in very short lines .