djuno and ce'u

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

>> but thatmay be because I do not understand ce'u, NOT because I don't
>> understand ka.
>
>If you don't understand ce`u then I don't see how you can understand ka.

I understand what the effect of ce'u is in the examples wherein it
appears in the Book.  I have not been able to extract a concept of ce'u
that allows me to consider whether it might apply to some other
situations and have a lot of confidence.  But of course once we go
beyond the Book, there is no prescription.

>> >I suggest:
>> >
>> >  mi zanru le ka ce`u nu melbi
>> >
>> >for the meaning you want.
>>
>> No.  having thought of it, I think the ce'u-in-all-places is more
>> valid, because I think of ka bridi as multi-aspectual.
>
>I think both are possible, and subtly different.  Which one is more
>appropriate depends, I feel, on why exactly you approve of it.

My default, unless there is a place structure reason to favor selecting
one place (as in x3 of zmadu) is to favor no place (or all places).
This seems quite Lojbanic to me.  It may be a different generalization
of ce'u+ka than John seems to have, but I don't think that the Book goes
into it at this level of detail.

>> What is not clear to
>> me is whether ce'u in all places is ENOUGH, or whether we need ce'u in all
>> places plus all possible tcita sumti.
>
>How do you mean "all possible tcita sumti"?  All possible sumti?

Yes.  But remember that in addition to all enumerated places of a bridi,
there are an infinite number of possible tense and BAI and FIhO tagged
sumti that can be attached to a bridi, and all of them could be
ce'u-filled as well.  When I think of properties of a RELATION (which is
the core meaning of ka) I am by implication thinking about all of these.
This is not particularly easy to do in English, and I think the
transferrence to single ce'u ka is based on thinking in English.  But I
suspect that poets who talk of the "universal ideas" that tend to be
capitalized, like Truth and Beauty are not thinking about single-ce'u
kas.

>> It sounds like you are saying that we have another bloogy sumti raising here
>> and that nu is no better than du'u.  Are you saying that we need
>>
>> mi zanru lenu ledu'u broda cu jetnu
>> or of course
>> mi zanru tu'a ledu'u broda
>> ?
>
>Well, yes. But I think
>
>     mi zanru lenu ledu'u broda cu jetnu
>
>is pretty much equivalent to
>
>     mi zanru lenu broda

It is a semantic inference.  And in Lojban, semantic inferences are not
(generally) prescribed. On the other hand

>> If I approve of something, then I approve of it being a true
>> proposition.
>
>That's not *necessarily* so, unless you mean it as a claim about
>your personal approval criteria.

This sounds like a contradiction of what you just said above about their
supposed equivalence.

>> >x2 of djuno = fact = true proposition.
>> >du`u = proposition.
>>
>> But then here it seems that you are saying that the x2 of djuno must
>> similarly be marked:
>>
>> mi djuno lenu ledu'u broda cu jetnu
>>
>> because you have said that a mere ledu'u is not a true proposition.
>> But then a lenu ledu'u is not a true porposition either.
>
>{djuno ko`a} entails that ko`a is (a) a proposition, and (b) true.
>
>There is nothing wrong with {ko`a djuno le du`u broda}, but it claims
>that (a) ko`a believes le du`u broda, and (b) le du`u broda is true.
>
There is nothing about the nature of Lojban that requires x2 of djuno to
be a true proposition.  There seems to be something about your
interpretation of djuno (or maybe even the English "know") that presumes
that something known is "true".  The only basis internal to the language
that I can see for such an assumption is that the x4 place,
epistemology, combined with the x2 place, resembles that of jetnu.
Otherwise you are projecting the semantics of English or something else
onto the Lojban.

I of course believe that there is no prescribed semantics for any of the
places - the semantics is inferrable from usage and syntax.  The syntax
is prescribed and in some cases there are prescriptions for usage.  But
I resist extending those prescriptions by analysis without actual usage.
Anything decided beyond the prescription must be description.

>[Yes yes yes I realize that (b) might in fact be a presupposition rather
>than a claim, but that's another story.]

No it isn't.  It's a major point. se djuno != jetnu.  There are two
other places involved, one of which, the knower, is prone to
subjectivity.

>> How does zanru differ from djuno?  If I know something, then I know
>> that it is a true proposition.
>
>Not exactly: If you know something, then (a) it is true, and
>(b) you believe it to be true.

This is not even true for English.  To be seasonal, many people "know"
that "Christ was born on Christmas Day", even though there is
considerable evidence even in the scriptural accounts that suggest
otherwise.  The scholars who interpret otherwise, and who know the
history of the association of Christmas with Dec. 25, "know" that Christ
was NOT born on Christmas Day.

Neither of these is a "presupposition", but is belief supported by
epistemologically valid evidence according to their particular
epistemologies.  But supported by evidence does not equal truth even
within a single epistemology (and English of course does not acknowledge
as Lojban does that truth is always based on epistemology).

>I am not sure why {djuno} was made to be like {know} rather than
>{believe}, but that's pretty clearly how things are now.

I am not sure what you mean.  We have "krici" for believe, which is
identical in the first 3 places to djuno, but requires no
epistemological place, because no epistemologically based evidence is
required for belief.

I think we have to clarify that there are many more than two
distinctions possible in Lojban regarding "truth".

The following take du'u
fatci           truth in the absolute
jetnu           true according to some epistemology
se djuno        known based on epistemology (but may not be true
                    by other epistemologies - and the knower may
                    be aware of this)
se jinvi        opined based on grounds
se krici        believed based on no grounds
The following takes text or sedu'u
bridi           proposition text

It seems to me that "approval" implies "truth" and "known" unless there
is contextual counter-implication that the discussion is hypothetical.

>> Whne I use ka (without ce'u) I am focussing on relationships, not on things.
>
>See my remarks about distinguishing prescription from personal
>usage habits.
>
>> The properties (ka) of a proposition, are to me the relationships that make
>> the proposition meaningful.
>
>That sounds interesting, but I don't understand it. Could you
>try to say it again?

See what I said above.  Lojban predicates are in general multi-place.
When one thinks about lo ka klama, one should be thinking about all 5
places by default, or otherwise someone is thinking about some kind of
zi'o-filled derivative of klama.  All of the relationships of the
various places to each other and to the whole are part of what makes
klama meaningful.

I won't go so far as to say that single ce'u predicates are in effect
putting zi'o in the unfilled places (which is NOT the LOjbanic
assumption), but the way you are talking about ka seems that way to me.


----
lojbab                                                lojbab@access.digex.net
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
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