Re: [WikiDiscuss] Re: BPFK gismu Section: Parenthetical Remarks in Brivla Definition

On 9/29/06, John E. Clifford <[email protected]> wrote:
> Y'mean this is what you have meant! Lord, I wish you had said so
> earlier.  I wouldn't have liked it any better, but at least I would
> have understood it, whereas Mr.Broda and broda types snf thre like are
> just obscure, evern (or especially) when you spell out (more or less)
> what they are supposed to do.

I wasn't going to mention this, but Mr Broda is of course the topmost node
of the broda lattice, the ultimate subsumer. :)

> On the other hand, I do't suppose you
> could have said this before all the stuff about bunches and plural
> quantification (and collective and distributive predication) came to
> light.

I think plural quantification is somewhat orthogonal to this. Plural
quantification concerns something we do in the object language, within
a horizontal level of the lattice. The vertical organization of the lattice
is mostly metalinguistic, useful for comparing different models, but
normally not relevant within a model.

> Indeed, I set what comes to this out earlier but you rejected
> it, largely, I think, because we were still working with C-sets in
> those days and doing this in terms of C-sets is not very plausible
> looking.

I think most of my rejections came about because we ended up mixing
the object language with the metalanguage. Just because the upper
levels of the lattice are more abstract (metalinguistically speaking) that
does not mean that some dogs are more abstract than other dogs (in
the object language). In the object language model, dogs are dogs, not
abstract things, no matter from what level of the metalinguistic lattice
they came from.

> "Among" was McKay's term for the relation between a subbunch
> (including an individual) and a superbunch of any size.  I am just
> following along.

Yes. What I meant is that McKay's "among" relationships holds
horizontally in the lattice, not vertically, and it is a relationship used
within the object language. What I would like to call the subsumption
relationship holds vertically, and is normally just metalinguistic. It joins
objects that enter in different models, it won't normally be used to make
claims in the object language.

> "Part-whole" is traditional for Mereology, the
> original bunches. It also proceeds below the level of individuals
> (well the misty band across the middle of lattice); but that may not
> be an advantage, since what happens from individuals on down is
> spotty: a dog with a leg cut off is still a dog, but the leg is not.
> "Subsume", like "pervade," tends to be associated with intensional
> hierarchies (properties, especially) and this is extensional, so far
> as I can tell (I'm a little worried about identities).

It is extensional in the metalanguage, but the relationship does not
normally get pulled in into the object language. In a given model only one
horizontal level of the lattice will be present. (Lojban being a general
purpose language, it will sometimes be used metalinguistically, but then
we are forced to use different predicates to clarify the different
levels of the
lattice, just as in English, be that as "type" vs "token", or "event" vs
"occurrence", or "species" vs "specimen", or "individual" vs "stage" or
what have you.)

mu'o mi'e xorxes


 
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