WikiDiscuss

A': I get that it is a constant term, i.e., refers to the same thing in all contexts. The issue is what that thing is. Apparently it is a concretum and so the talk about it as an abstractum is wrong, in spite of its making sense of the constancy, which seems to be lacking in the concrete sense.
B: So lo ractu is just the sum (collective? not set surely) of all its "instances", that is of all rabbits. It has, then, (and this may distinguish it from collectives, which might only have the cooperative properties of more than one thing) all the properties of all the rabbits, in some way that does not create contradictions.
I think my basic problem here is that you are trying to explain a synthetic category (like a collective or so) by analogy with an analytic category like a slicew or stage. with analytic categories you can fall back on the original object being analysed to guarantee and at least partially explain what holds the pieces together, with a synthetic category we have to provide that glue explicitly and this has not been done. Why should I (starting from where I am) see all these individuals (rabbits in this case) as being instances of something else concrete. This is not even like seeing all nature as One or even treating an ecosystem as an entity, for what we are dealing with has no "natural" cohesion. What is needed then is a convincing artificial one and that isn't here yet. (This is not to say that, starting from a different perceptual framework — a Madhyamika Buddhis, say — I wouldn't find this natural as well, though I am not sure that they actually would).

C: Assuming that {la ract} is meant to be a name for an ordinary thing — a guy called Bunny, for example — then more than a stage has to exist for it to exist. The stage has to fit into a continuous series of contiguous stages satisfying an array of further condition. Otherwise, Bunny falls into some category like delusions or illusions or ...
Mr. Rabbit on the other hand seems to be exactly nothing other than a bunch of "instances" with no yet explained further conditions. And as such it seems pointless, given that we have the instances. So, in addition to the glue, we need a raison d'etre for this notion.

D: Thse, of course, raise the old paradox of how to say of something that does not exist that it does not exist. I don't see that Mr. Unicorn helps here at all (though short-scope {lo} would if we take "imaginary" to be world-creating — which we should, for a variety of other reasons as well).

E: Frinstance? Lojban is almost always going to seem cumbersome to speakers of natural language because it has a built in precising mechanism and has not yet developed good conventions for work-arounds. I would assume that people who use tha language a lot (a class which is almost coextensive with you) have begun to develop those things. But that is very different from changing the basics of the language, which is what new {lo} seems to do.
What exactly is the advantage of making {lo ractu} a constant, when the phenomena being described involve variable references? As for the obvious/irrelevant distribution, that is exactly what particular quantifiers do.
Jorge Llambías <jjllambias2000@yahoo.com.ar> wrote:

pc:
> You really have to settle down on what this locution means — or,
> I suspect, get better about saying what that is.

A':I'll try. {lo broda} is, first and foremost, a constant term,
just like {la brod.} is a constant term.

lo ractu can be seen and touched. That means "rabbits can be seen
and touched".
la ract can be seen and touched. That means "Rasht can be seen and
touched".

B:When you see or touch an instance of lo ractu, you are, in the
very same act, seeing or touching lo ractu.
When you see or touch a stage of la ract, you are, in the very
same act, seeing or touching la ract.

(A "stage" differs from a "slice" in that a stage has some time depth,
so a stage is a series of contiguous slices. The analogy of instances
with stages seems better than the analogy with slices, which, having
zero time depth, are somewhat unreal. The best analogy is perhaps that
of stages of individuals with instances of substances, because two
time-contiguous stages give you one longer stage, two space-contiguous
instances give you one bigger instance of the substance.)

C:lo ractu cu zasti. Rabbits are real/actual.
la ract cu zasti. Rasht is real/actual.

For the above to be true, it is necessary that some instance
of lo ractu and some stage of la ract are real/actual, too. That's
just how {zasti} works. You can't zasti if you don't have some
instance/stage that zasti.

D:lo pavyseljirna cu xanri. Unicorns are imaginary.
la pavyseljirn cu xanri. Pavyseljirn is imaginary.

Imaginary things don't have real instances/stages. They may
or may not have imaginary instances/stages, depending on how
elaborately they are imagined.

> The juggling to get something
> externally generalizable out of such expressions is also then just a trick
> that needlessly — and misleadingly — hides what is going on: the
> generalization on, e.g., {le ka pavyseljirna} (I do agree that the gadri
> there is otiose, even odious).

E:The "Mr" talk is one way of conceptualizing things. As long as
{lo broda} behaves like a constant term (i.e. it is transparent
to negation, it can be repeated with anaphora, etc) then it
doesn't matter much how one conceptualizes it. That such a thing
is needed is evident to anyone who has used the language to some
extent. It is extremely cumbersome to reduce all your claims to
instances when in very many cases the distribution of instances
is obvious or irrelevant. When we do want to go into instances,
all the usual machinery remains available: we simply quantify
over all of them with {PA lo broda}, or refer to a specific
instance or group of instances directly with le/la.

mu'o mi'e xorxes

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