Re: TECH: lambda and "ka" revisited

[ucleaar <ucleaar@UCL.AC.UK>]

> But your prenex proposal, using "ko'a" etc., has been put into the
> latest version (as yet unreleased) of rel.txt, which is about .01 notch
> below Lojban Central adoption.

This will go down in history as a proud day for me.

> > > > > > I think I'd like to argue that "abstraction" has no meaning,
> > > > > > at least not beyond the n-adic ka/duu.
> > > Why?  There are many abstractions reified by Lojban.  Numbers are
> > > abstractions, sets are abstractions, masses are abstractions: at
> > > least, none of them are concrete objects.
> > I thought "abstraction" necessarily involved a bridi.
> I meant "abstract objects" rather than "abstractions".

So: I purpose to contend that "abstraction of bridi" has no meaning (not
counting n-adic ka/duu). I am reading my way through the refgrammar
papers, and while the papers themselves deserve nothing less than
the highest praise for their clarity and thoroughness and for the
lucubration devoted to their composition, I find nothing in the
abstraction paper to persuade me that NU is anything but a ghastly
chunder in the face of those qualities for which I hold Lojban dear.
That said, I have, through colloquy with Jorge and Chris, come to think
that redemption is possible for {nu}, but the rest of NU still deserves to
- well - die in the arse.

> > > > > The point is that every other abstraction can be expressed as a
> > > > > "su'u" with an appropriate x2:  "nu" is "su'u ... kei be lo
> > > > > fasnu", "jei" is "su'u ... kei be lo niljetnu", etc.
> > > > I think I get it.
> > > >    lo suu broda kei be lo ganxo
> > > > is equivalent to
> > > >    lo ganxo poi kea duu broda
> > > >    lo duu broda kei poi kea ganxo
> > > No, I don't think so. It's the asshole-abstraction of
> > > something-unspecified being a thingummy, whatever that is.  But it
> > > is not necessarily itself an asshole: "le nu broda kei cu na fasnu"
> > > can be true, although not by your reading of "nu".
> > I'm gobsmacked by that. How can "lo nu broda kei cu na fasnu" be true?
> I'm not sure whether your difficulty is with the denotation of "nu" or of
> "fasnu".

Both, evidently, since I had supposed them to have the same denotation
(that of {fasnu}).

> Lojban ontology is such that there exist certain objects, called
> "abstract objects", which can have various things predicated of
> them.  The abstract objects called "events" can each have a "nu...kei"
> predicated of them; in fact, they are called into existence because
> of the "nu...kei" predicates.  (To be is to be the value of a variable:
> so "da poi nu ... kei" says "there exists an event abstract object ...")

They seem like sets and bridi then.

> However, the gismu "fasnu" is true only of such event abstract objects
> as actually occur.  So "da poi nu la .ualas co'eli'o kei zo'u da fasnu"
> is false because Wallace wasn't President, but the abstract object
> encoding "Wallace was President" still exists, and we can say things
> about it other than "da fasnu".  This does not mean that "da" can refer
> to a nonexistent object (there are no nonexistent objects); it means that
> it can refer to abstract objects which encapsulate non-occurring events.

I'm still rather unhappy about having eventy abstract objects but not
appley abstract objects and forky abstract objects and so on. Whereas
sets must be abstract, because they have no empirical correlates,
events and forks are concrete (in the sense of being observable).
Events and forks can be either real or imaginable, whereas for sets
reality and imaginability amount to the same thing.

I'd welcome further clarification of this. But please don't rush to
respond - I don't want to light the fuse on a new thread.

---
And