Re: context in Lojban

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

Bob Chassell:
> ucleaar@ucl.ac.uk cisku di'e
>     replying to Bob Chassell:
>     > ... if the context is that there are a real and a
>     > non-real box in front of us, and our contextual range is constrained
>     > to those boxes, then
>     >
>     >     .i mi nitcu lo tanxe
>     >
>     > is *specific* as to which box, and
>
>     So even if there exists a real box that you do need, but you need neither
>     of the boxes in the "contextual range", then the utterance is false
>     - according to you. I am incredulous that this really is the official
>     line on LO.
>
> Not incredible at all.  Surely, if the box I need is not in the
> "contextual range", then it is not `for real'.

It seems, then that incredible as it may - or many not - seem, that
the "contextual range" of a proposition must be established before
its truth conditions can be ascertained. Is that so? And isn't
the insuperable vagueness of "contextual range" going to render
Lojban unamenable to treatment in logical ways? The baby textbooks on
formal semantics that I've read say "'Snow is white' is true iff snow is
white" - they don't qualify this with notions of contextual range.

Note that I can see how contextual range is relevant for utterance
interpretation ("I want a sandwich" doesn't get interpreted as
asserting that a mouldly sandwich regurgitated by a warthog will
be perfectly satisfactory), but I can't see why it is not a Bad
Thing for contextual range to be part of the semantics that derives
propositions from lexical expressions.

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And