Re: Talking about non-existant objects

[faupel@TRSHP.TRS.NTC.NOKIA.COM]

Rats rats rats rats rats.

I haven't been reading my Lojban mail that closely recently, partly because
there's been so much of it and partly because I'm desperately trying to
learn Finnish (being in the country for four months for that purpose).  This
means that I've thrown away a lot of the past posts on talking about
non-existant objects without reading them closely enough to know whether
what I'm about to say is completely on the wrong track.  Nevertheless, here
goes.

While reading one of the articles on whether you can say anything about
Elves because all statements are false if they don't exist, I started musing
about what would happen if all the lions in the world suddenly died.  Would
you then not be able to say anything truthful about lions?  Obviously not;
it's just that your statements would then (by the magic of implicit Lojban
tense) default to be commenting about the past, since that is the only time
location for which it makes sense to talk about lions.  So, in this
hypothetical situation, if I said:

    lo cinfo cu barda

you, the listener, would infer:

    lo cinfo pu barda

I then further thought, why not solve the problem of not being able to talk
about Elves and the such like by inventing a tense that would get us to the
(imaginary) location in which they do exist.  Let's say this tense is "xa'o"
(c.f. ka'o :-) then if I say:

    lo ricre'a cu crino

you (believing the non-existance of elves) would infer:

    lo ricre'a xa'o crino

The only problem remaining is how to navigate to this non-existant place (if
it's not obvious from context), because we have to know on which of the
multiplicity of imaginary milieux we are basing our assertions in order to
be able to evaluate the truth of the statement.  In Tolkien's world, elves
aren't green so the above is false; in some other author's imagination, they
might be.  Perhaps vedu'o could serve this purpose by shifting us to a new
world of thought?  e.g. is:

    lo ricre'a vedu'o la'o by. The Lord Of The Rings .by. na crino

a valid (and truthful) statement?

Does any this make sense, or am I completely off my trolley/holding the
wrong end of the stick etc.?

Cheers,


Matthew