From robin@xxxxxxx.xxx.xxx Sun Feb 21 09:29:52 1999 X-Digest-Num: 69 Message-ID: <44114.69.352.959273824@eGroups.com> Date: Sun, 21 Feb 1999 19:29:52 +0200 From: Robin Turner From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" > > At 12:49 AM 2/21/99 +0800, Lin Zhemin wrote: > >From: Lin Zhemin > > > >Before all, I'd say that, it isn't intellegible to translate something > >like Daodejing into Lojban... First, there is one more ancient version > >found in Mawangdui, and experts are trying to understand it. And then, > >since there is no punctuations in ancient Chinese, the _true_ meaning > >is impossible to be understood. Third, since Lojban derives from _logic_, > >which is a result of social working of ancient Greeks, it is > >_incompatible_ with the system of Daodejing. You just cannot understand > >many ancient Chinese things by logic; that'll be illogic. > > Actually, pc has said that both the Chinese and Hindi cultures in olden > times did have systems of logic. I don't think he ever described how > compatible they were with modern logics., though. > All I know of early Chinese systems of logic are cases of Daoists like Zhunagzi taking the mickey out of logicians ({.u'u} I'm afraid I can't remember the references. Seems to have been based on semantics. Indian logic, on the other hand, is voluminous and well-documented, with various competing schools, and this was developed further by the Buddhists. One system stuck in my head (thoug I forget the Sanskrit name for it) because it has no less than seven truth-values: 1. True 2. False 3. Meaningless 4. True and false 5. True and meaningless 6. False and meaningless 7. True and false and meaningless. This is because the logicians in question ({pe'i} quite sensibly) decided that you need to consider the potential truth of a statement in all possible times/places. Thus the proposition "Two-headed cows eat grass" is an example of 7. because while at the moment the statement is meaningless because there are no two-headed cows, it is possible that at some point in the future there may be, and they may or may not eat grass. co'o mi'e robin.