Re: whether (was Re: ni, jei, perfectionism)

[And Rosta <a.rosta@UCLAN.AC.UK>]

Carl:
> >> >> So 'the fact that' is explicitly transient?
> >> >No, but nor is nu.
> >> I disagree.  Transience (used to be) the _essence_ of {nu}.
> >
> >What, then, would have been used for, say, modern {lo nu
> >da zasti} - "the event of there being something that exists"?
>
> That still sounds right, taking one meaning of 'modern' as the
> time envelope which includes something that exists.

I meant: "_lo nu da zasti_ in modern Lojban, as opposed to ur-Lojban
of 10 years ago.

lo nu zasti cintinues throughout all time.

> >> I disagree that {mi jmive} and {nu mi jmive} are equivalent,
> >
> >What would the difference be?
>
> {mi jmive} is the statement that "I live/lived/will live";

right

> {nu mi jmive} is the period of time during which "I live" is
> true, treated as an entity;

Or rather, it is the statement that there is such a period of
time.

More fully, it is {da nu mi jmive}.

> that's simplistic, but is pretty
> much the way I understand it.  It feels like there is more to {nu}
> than just the time interval and ability to sequence, but I'm not
> sure how to describe it... I never really questioned what {nu}
> meant to me until I had to explain why it was different from
> your usage.  Certainly there is a sense that {nu} events are
> not permanent, since they have a beginning and an end (even if,
> as in {le nu munje}, the duration is infinite.)

It seems a bit perverse to insist that something with infinite
duration has an end.

Anyway, apart from that I seem to pretty much agree with your
understanding of nu.

> ...
> After leaving this message half-written for a few hours, it seems
> to me that {nu} really refers to the tense of the bridi; typical
> usage restricts that to timelike aspects, but spacelike aspects
> could probably fit as well if the context supported it.  Since {nu}
> is the most general event abstractor, aspects such as achievement
> are still implied within {nu}, but only as a part of the whole.
> So, {nu} is saying that 'there's a bridi, and that bridi has a tense,
> and I'm talking about that tense'.

OK.

> >> although I do see that they both differ from {le du'u mi jmive}.
> >> I can see that the predicate formed from {mi jmive} with {du'u} can
> >> unify with both {mi jmive} and {nu mi jmive}; it could unify in some
> >> sense with {ka mi jmive} or {ni mi jmive} as well, since those
> >> are all aspects of the same base bridi, but the only thing that
> >> really _matches_ {le du'u mi jmive} is {mi jmive}.
> >
> >I'm not clear what "matching" or "unifying with" mean. Can you
> >explain again?
>
> Hmmmmm... my usage was sloppy.  'Unification' as I meant it is a
> pattern-matching algorithm used in artificial intelligence for
> finding facts that match with rules, binding variables to specific
> facts; it's something I'm aware of but not an expert in.  My intent
> was to describe how I thought bridi in the environment could satisfy
> the predication, without being rigorous about the process.
>
> So, {le du'u mi jmive} is a predication, and the only fact/object
> that makes it true is {mi jmive}.

{mi jmive} is an act of asserting that {le du`u mi jmive} is true.
In most cases, {le du`u mi jmive} is true if and only if it
is the case that {da nu mi jmive} - i.e. that {le du`u mi jmive}
is temporally manifest.

--And