Re: On {lo} and existence

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

Jorge:
> > It seems to me that we are using "world" in two different senses, one
> > defined by reality, and one by reference. Each sense is valid; we must
> > simply distinguish them.
> Agreed. The one defined by reference is the one relevant for quantification
> purposes. The claim {da zo'u ...} means "there is some x in the reference
> world, such that...". We can say about things in that reference world
> that they are real or non-real, certainly. Why that predicate should have
> any special significance in discussing grammar, I don't know.

The reference of {ro broda} is determined with respect to an only-real
world. Unless it's {ro dahi broda}.

> The initial point was that the existence related to {lo} is referential,
> not real. Which referents belong to the real world and which don't is
> not very relevant in understanding {lo}, that's all.

{da broda} is: "There is some x *in the reference world* that *in an
only-real world* is a broda"

{dahinai} = in the relevant only-real world
{dahi} = in the reference world


I'll reply to the rest of your message, but the above is the only
bit of the discussion that is relevant to Lojban.

> > In this world there is a state of affairs in which something is blue.
> > But there are languages with no word for "blue". These two facts are
> > entirely compatible.
> Are you saying that there are languages where you cannot explain what
> "something is blue" means in English? I very much doubt it.

No, I was denying the presupposition of your earlier question:
   > How can there be something like
   > a proposition associated with "da blanu" without a world where the
   > word "blanu" makes sense to the speakers of the language?

> What I'm saying is that there is nothing intrinsic about things being
> blue, and especially with this example, which is so dependant on human
> physiology. The predicate blue() is a convenient convention of the
> language, to classify together a bunch of things that we perceive to
> have something in common, but quite arbitrary and so whatever proposition
> uses that predicate must be an artifice of the language, not something
> independent of it.

It's not an empirical issue. I just view things differently.

> You mean like the predicate qwepoi() exists but is unknown to any mind?

Yes.

Consider sets, like, say {3, 17, 30}. What makes that set exist? Nothing
makes it exist; it just does. You can't find the set by mindlessly
inspecting the world, and nor can you find the set of blue things by
mindlessly inspecting the world.

> > > What I understand you to be saying is that at least some predicates must
> > > somehow be there independently of the world and the speakers.
> > I am saying this. I don't really see why it matters.
> It matters because without such predicates, all predicates are a convention
> of the language, and so in fact their meaning is purely context dependent.
> When we say {ta blanu}, the only reason it may be true is that speakers
> agree that it is true, and not because of any intrinsic property of the
> world. (The reason that speakers agree has to do with similarities and
> patterns that they perceive in the world, but not because there is any
> intrinsic blueness to ta other than the one we ascribe to it through the
> use of language.) In such case, your "inspecting the world to ascertain
> the truth value of a proposition", really should be replaced by "holding a
> speaker convention to decide on the truth value". We can get away with the
> "inspecting the world" fiction because we are pretty similarly working
> machines, and so we can be fairly sure that a one speaker convention will
> conclude the same as most other speakers.

You're talking about real, psychological, semantics. Given that,
I agree with most of what you say. I've been talking about pretend,
truth-conditional, semantics.

> > Are you saying that some words vary in what their sense is, depending
> > on the context of the utterance? I tend not to agree
> > with that, but anyway it's not relevant to truth-conditionality, which
> > pertains to the relationship between a meaning and a world, not to
> > the relationship between a word and its meaning.
> Talking about truth-conditionality is only an easy way of saying that
> we are in a position to understand what it means that a proposition
> is true or false. The actual determination of the truth value is not
> that important here. What we want is to understand what an utterance
> means, once we do that, we can worry about whether it is true or not.

How do we analyse the meaning of an utterance? One way is to state what
conditions would have to obtain in the world for the meaning to be true.
This method has the advantage of rigour and precision, but the disadvantage
of not being how language really works. Another way is to take a more
psychological view of meaning, and thereby be more plausible but less
rigorous and precise. I'd have thought that the "design specification"
of Lojban ought to favour rigour and precision, while if it were to
become a native language, the other approach would be preferable. That's
how things have been done with Lojban syntax.

---
And