Re: `at least one ' vrs `one or more'

[Chris Bogart <cbogart@QUETZAL.COM>]

The question is whether the following statement
prevents me from also liking at least one cat?

    .i naku zo'u mi nelci lo mlatu
    It is false that I like some number, at least one,
    but perhaps more, of all real cats

Does falseness regarding my liking of one or more cats apply globally
to all cats?  Or does the utterance make a more limited claim
that it is false that I like some number of cats, that number being
one or more?

The "naku zo'u" at the left means: come up with a truth value of the =
stuff inside, then change True to False and False to True.  If there is =
any cat anywhere in the world that you liked, the inner sentence, =
without naku would be true.  So the whole thing *has* to mean that I =
don't like any cats at all.

Now, I am sure someone is going to question my introduction of the
phrase `some number'.  But does not the definitional expression (from
Chapter 6.7) say:

No, all your translations of {lo} seem OK to me.  The problem is that =
they have different senses, to you, in English, but the same logical =
meaning in Lojban.  You're taking the glosses too seriously.
=20
      Suppose we have a universe of five cats and I like three of them.

In this context, it is true that

    1. I like some number, at least one of all real cats, but perhaps
       more (in this case, three, but we are not specifying that).

It is *also* true that

    2. It is false that I like some number, at least one of all real
       cats, but perhaps more (in this case, two, but we are not
       specifying that).

No.  "It is false that X" means that X is false.  You've just stated in =
1 that X is true, so 2 must be false.  If this goes against your native =
intuition about the truth of 2, then you see the pitfall in talking =
about logic in an illogical langauge like English.

But this double truth cannot apply when you use a word such as `see'
since the statement that:

My sense of English logic doesn't make a distinction between 'see' and =
'like' for these sentences, so I can't comment.