*old response on "which logic"

[Logical Language Group <lojbab@ACCESS.DIGEX.NET>]

&:
>> &: but maybe there are great virtues to restricted quantification that I
>> am failing to recognize
>> pc: Let's see:
>> They are the quantifiers of natural language, the ones grammars are
>> designed to deal with (arguable for the universal, the particular,
>> finite numerals and the plurative -- though less in the last case; not
>> for the majoritive or any of the rest)
>
>That's open to debate, and decisions for lojban shouldn't depend on
>resolution of that debate.  I (naively?) thought that logic is
>relatively well understood, while natural language is relatively ill
>understood, and hence some of the appeal of lojban is that it is based
>principally on logic.

But which logic?  A valid claim would be that TLI Loglan was based on
JCB's imperfect understanding of logic as it was understood in 1950,
with a heavy Quinian perspective.  At best it can be said to envelop a
freshman university course level of depth of understanding of logic.
Such courses are rather heavily oriented towards pragmatic
representation of natural language, rather than the formal foundational
stuff of mathematics.  Of course, since there are multiple schools of
thought as to how natlangs should be represented in logic, what has
happened is that ignoramusses like JCB and I who know little about logic
have been selecting schools that show what seems to be a naive
consistency with the patterns that JCB built into the language.

In some cases.  This has even at times put Loglan ahead of logic
research, as implied by pc when he said that JCB's quantifier+selbri
construct is coming to be recognized in logical analysis of natlang as
something fundamental - but JCB came up with this 15-20 years ago.

lojbab