From nobody@digitalkingdom.org Wed Oct 04 09:58:34 2006 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-beginners); Wed, 04 Oct 2006 09:58:34 -0700 (PDT) Received: from nobody by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.63) (envelope-from ) id 1GVA4o-0002DA-Ea for lojban-beginners-real@lojban.org; Wed, 04 Oct 2006 09:58:34 -0700 Received: from nf-out-0910.google.com ([64.233.182.187]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.63) (envelope-from ) id 1GVA4l-0002D0-Lv for lojban-beginners@lojban.org; Wed, 04 Oct 2006 09:58:34 -0700 Received: by nf-out-0910.google.com with SMTP id x30so540468nfb for ; Wed, 04 Oct 2006 09:58:30 -0700 (PDT) DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws; s=beta; d=gmail.com; h=received:message-id:date:from:to:subject:in-reply-to:mime-version:content-type:content-transfer-encoding:content-disposition:references; b=J/vohcIQiJVjoSayUFa8OsL8dP4lAGdo1yVAVfk21DWQuSN54ogRr2MIb0fSZXwzVShx/y/Xxwl2+2Ez9b16U6CMISll/qDNEDYqPNP61epjPDFRnZcG+4/kOSnqFHn5ActupuYpx4tLpqD+um0as0QpLC1LX21V5wJ8drJ4f98= Received: by 10.78.134.12 with SMTP id h12mr750335hud; Wed, 04 Oct 2006 09:58:29 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.78.144.3 with HTTP; Wed, 4 Oct 2006 09:58:29 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: Date: Wed, 4 Oct 2006 12:58:29 -0400 From: "Matt Arnold" To: lojban-beginners@lojban.org Subject: [lojban-beginners] Re: Lightbulb In-Reply-To: <737b61f30610040749u11793452k598fc3b110599fbd@mail.gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline References: <241e6b720610031415y33825031yd2ead1d89dc98c8d@mail.gmail.com> <737b61f30610040749u11793452k598fc3b110599fbd@mail.gmail.com> X-Spam-Score: -2.4 (--) X-archive-position: 3608 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-beginners-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: lojban-beginners-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: matt.mattarn@gmail.com Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-beginners@lojban.org X-list: lojban-beginners I'd have to read more about Aristotle's causalities to know for sure, but at first glance it appears they can be loosely mapped onto the Lojban cause words. Material Cause: {ri'a}, "because of cause and effect" Formal Cause: {ni'i}, "logically entailed by" Efficient Cause: {ki'u}, "because of reason" Final Cause: {mu'i}, "because of motive" "Everything happens for a reason" is trivially true as a statement of cause-and-effect, but is easily misinterpreted as a statement of supernatural providence. "Why" as in "with what end purpose in mind" and "why" as in "resulting from what" are two completely different things. Some supernaturalists have trouble distinguishing them. -Matt On 10/4/06, Chris Capel wrote: > On 10/3/06, Daniel Adamec wrote: > > What {sumti tcita} would be used for 'because' in a response to the query > > "why is the light bulb bright?". (apologies for the simplicity of the > > sentence). > [...] > > I am probably making the problem more complicated than it really is, so once > > again I apologize for the simple explanation I will no doubt receive from > > several (rightfully) exasperated {jboprenu} > > I believe Aristotle categorized causality pretty thoroughly: > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristotle#Causality > > It's nice that Lojban differentiates between different modes of > causality. You're really not making the question more complicated than > it is, because it *is* pretty complicated. > > I wonder which Lojban words correspond to which aristotelian causes. > Maybe Lojban's distinctions are somewhat orthogonal? That would be > disappointing. > > Chris Capel > -- > "What is it like to be a bat? What is it like to bat a bee? What is it > like to be a bee being batted? What is it like to be a batted bee?" > -- The Mind's I (Hofstadter, Dennet) > > > >