Re: On {lo} and existence

[ucleaar <ucleaar@ucl.ac.uk>]

Jorge:
> Many sentences will change meaning when uttered for a second time.
> I would even say that every sentence will have a different meaning
> each time that it is uttered, but probably you kick that difference
> out to pragmatics.

Yes.

> I meant that either each utterance maps to a (sometimes only very
> slightly) different proposition, or propositions are not all that
> there is to language. I suppose you meant the second one.

Yes. I prefer to distinguish properties of language qua code from
properties of communication in general.

> > I am immune to arguments from pragmatics.
> And yet you invoke imaginary worlds, access to which we only have
> through pragmatics. Or do you assume that to understand the language
> we must know the meaning of each predicate in each possible world?

To "access" imaginary worlds, and to "understand" an utterance is
a matter of pragmatics. My view is that if we are designing the
code part of language then we can just take it for granted that
imaginary worlds get accessed and utterances get understood.

> > (a) A picture or description or story or suchlike, creates (a
> > fragment of) an imaginary world, I. We form a new universe, N,
> > from the "union" of this world, W, and I, such that anything
> > existing in either W or I exists in N. Then we can say:
> >   In universe I, Ex balrog(x) & Ey is-model-for-picture(x,y).

I've cocked that up. It should be:

      In universe N, Ex balrog(x) & Ey is-model-for-picture(x,y).

> >   "There is a picture of a balrog"
> I presume "balrog" is a predicate in W? If not, then the problem is
> that for me, we are speaking in N, not in W, an arbitrary restriction
> of of N containing only those objects satisfying the predicate real().
[...]
> How are we supposed to understand what things nanmu in that imaginary
> world? Only by analogy with the real world, otherwise "I told a story
> about a man with three heads" would be equivalent to "I told a story
> about a woman with seven legs".

I have been supposing that predicates are independent of worlds.

> > It's not clear to me how you'd do "I told a story about a man with
> > 3 heads".
>        mi te cfika lo cibyselstedu nanmu (noi na nanmu)
> Of course, I'm cheating by using lujvo, but I don't think the problem
> lies with {lo}.

I forget what tanru entail. Does {lo broda nanmu} entail {da poi nanmu}?
If I wanted to say "I told a story about a man (who may or may not
exist in this world)", I'd say {mi te cfika lo dahi nanmu}. If
we accept that my attempt to uphold the view that {lo} does not
{da poi} will not win consensus, then {mi te cfika lo nanmu} will
be equivalent to {da poi dahinai nanmu zohu mi te cfika da}, which
says - to me - that the man exists in this world.

> It is a matter of what do we accept as a nanmu. In English, we quite
> happily accept a character of fiction to be a man. We could do the
> same in Lojban, and then there would be no problem with {mi te cfika
> lo cibyselstedu nanmu noi nanmu}, but yes with {ro nanmu cu morsi}.
[...]
> > But to decide whether a proposition is true, we do need
> > to know whether things predicated about are real.
> I don't see why. "x1 is real" is a predicate like any other. You don't
> really need to know whether something satisfies this predicate in order
> to know whether it satisfies some other predicate. Unless you take a
> really holistic view that you can't really know anything unless you know
> everything.

I quite happily accept that a character of fiction be a man *in that
fictional world* but not in this world. What I've been trying to
get at is that for most predications to be true in universe X, their
sumti must also exist in universe X. E.g.:

 Real    Fictional
 false   true         Sherlock Holmes solved many crimes.

while for a few predicates to be true in universe X, certain of their
sumti needn't exist in universe X. E.g.:

 Real    Fictional
 true    false        I mentioned Sherlock Holmes.

> > So to make statements
> > that aren't truth-conditionally vacuous we need a way to distinguish
> > the real from the imaginary.
> We can make the distinction at the predicate level. I don't see the need
> for it in some other meta-level.

As long as we agree on the need to make the distinction, I don't
mind how we make it. I still maintain that the distinction amounts
to whether a selbri is associated by default with {dahi} or with
{dahinai}: so as long as we agree on which is the default, I don't
mind which is the default.

> > > If I draw a picture of my cat (if I had one) would the subject matter
> > > be anything other than my cat? That's what I meant by model.
> > The subject matter and the model would be your cat. But I could draw
> > (from imagination, not from life) a three-headed cat: this would be
> > subject-matter but not model.
> My question is, is that a mlatu? Does it satisfy the predicate "mlatu"?
> If it does, then I have no problem to say you draw {lo mlatu}. If it
> doesn't, then you drew something else, perhaps {lo cibyselstedu mlatu}.

My answer is: Yes, it is a mlatu, and yes it satisfies the predicate
"mlatu", but that {da poi mlatu zohu mi te pixra da}, which
is equivalent to {da poi dahinai mlatu zohu mi te pixra da},
is false.

The way I hope we can agree to say this is {mi te pixra lo dahi mlatu}.

> > Or, put another way, it is possible for
> > the model to exist only in an imaginary world created by the picture.
> By "exist" here you don't mean logical E. The model, or subject, obviously
> has to exist (E) to satisfy {mi te pixra da}. Now, why would you
> call it a mlatu if it doesn't mlatu?

It does mlatu. But it is in the picture-world that it is a mlatu.
In the world where I create the picture, it does not mlatu; it is
nought but a se pixra.

> That it is a mlatu in another world tells us nothing, because we only
> know what predicates mean in this world.

Crucially, I disagree. For example, {slabu} means "exists for a long
time", and is independent of the universe in which that existence
occurs. Another example: if we are told that Aragorn's eyes are blue
then it is legitimate for us to conclude that were we to behold his
eyes we should perceive their colour as blue.

> > I guess life
> > would be easiest for all concerned if we agreed that by default
> >    <selbri> = dahinai <selbri>
> >    nu = dahi nu
> > and that the inconsistency is an accident of history.
> I insist that it is an inconsistency only if you view it through the
> many worlds interpretation. If you let the {nu broda}s of this world be
> things that never happen, then there is no inconsistency, just a very
> generous definition for what counts as a {nu broda}.

I have yet to see such a definition. As I've said before, I don't
think something can be an event if it doesn't happen, just as, say,
something can't be wine if it is not material. In both cases, though,
we can conceive of imaginary events that don't happen in this world
and imaginary wine that is not material in this world. So if {nu}
is defined as something that is not necessarily manifest, while everything
else is defined as by default something that is manifest, then there is
an inconsistency. I've given additional reasons for why {nu} is
inconsistent (its guaranteed non-emptiness, its unverifiability).
Your "very generous definition for what counts as a {nu broda}" amounts
to an inconsistency, since no other predicate has a definition of
such generosity.

The worst thing about your definition is that {lo dahi nu} and
{lo dahinai nu} would mean the same thing. We should have no easy
way to guarantee that we are talking about an actually happening
event.

---
And