Subject: Re: [lojban] coi rodo - mi'e .aulun.

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sun, 28 May 2000 04:57:05 EDT

In a message dated 00-05-27 19:26:31 EDT:xorxes writes:
<< la pycyn cusku di'e

>An interesting analysis and one that is possible for Chuang but does not 
>make
>much fun of Hui.

Well, Hui falls in all the traps that Chuang sets up for him,
so we shouldn't make fun.>>
I prefer to think that Hui is led into a trap he himself set up -- but then I 
don't like him the way I like Chuang.

<<>I would take it -- on the basis of this English, anyhow --
>that Chuang's win comes from his point that the original question was "HOW 
>do
>you know?" and that that question only makes sense when it is agreed that
>"you" DO know.

Yes, but if Hui had asked {ju'apei} in Lojban, i.e.
"what evidential are you using?" then he would not
be agreeing that Chuang knows. But in that case, Chuang's
answer would be overtly evasive, at least until he
finally responds {se'o}, "I know internally".
If they had been speaking Lojban instead of Chinese
we would have been spared the parallelism stuff>>

I guess arguments don't translate any better than jokes in some cases. The 
question Hui asks is literally "From where do you know that,"so that Chuang's 
final "From on the Hao Bridge" is a secondary shot at Hui (and one that 
clearly won't go into lb at all, since Hao Bridge would not work as even an 
information source, let alone a means to knowledge). This English is the 
first time I can remember seeing that "the way I feel" bit from Chuang, but 
it doesn't kill the central point. It is just not clear that asking how (in 
whatever way that is put) you do something does not entail that you do do it. 
It clearly does presuppose it in some contexts and that is enough for a good 
sophistry, as here. At worst, it suggests that you KNOW HOW to do it and 
that is almost as good. 

<<>Is it a strange claim that you have to be a just like another
>person to really know what they think/feel? Chuang seems to accept it --
>indeed insist on it -- but it is not a win for him, only a draw.

I think the more credible claim is that the more you
are like another, the closer you will be to "knowing"
what they think/feel. But they seem to deal in black
and white, ignoring the different distances that might
exist between Chuang and the fish and between Hui and
Chuang. >>
Well, Chuang, as a good proto-taoist, would probably maintain that he is a 
lot closer to fish in a river than he is to the very court-centrered Hui -- 
nature v. culture and all. But again, he does not chase down that line but 
returns to a better ploy.