Return-Path: Received: from kejal-9101.pc by xiron with uucp (Linux Smail3.1.28.1 #14) id m0onimG-0000osC; Fri, 15 Oct 93 08:36 EET Received: from kruuna.helsinki.fi by xiron with smtp (Linux Smail3.1.28.1 #14) id m0oni6Y-0000osC; Fri, 15 Oct 93 07:53 EET Received: from charon2-gw.pc.Helsinki.FI by kruuna.helsinki.fi with SMTP id AA12005 (5.65c8/IDA-1.4.4 for ); Fri, 15 Oct 1993 07:52:29 +0200 Received: From HYLKN1/WORKQUEUE2 by charon2-gw.pc.Helsinki.FI via Charon 3.4 with IPX id 100.931015065201.640; 15 Oct 93 06:52:48 +0200 Message-Id: Received: From FINHUTC.hut.fi by charon2-gw.pc.Helsinki.FI via Charon 3.4 with SMTP id 102.931015065149.576; 15 Oct 93 06:52:06 +-02-01 Received: from FINHUTC.HUT.FI by FINHUTC.hut.fi (IBM VM SMTP R1.2.2MX) with BSMTP id 7235; Fri, 15 Oct 93 07:52:04 EET Received: from SEARN.SUNET.SE (NJE origin MAILER@SEARN) by FINHUTC.HUT.FI (LMail V1.1d/1.7f) with BSMTP id 7233; Fri, 15 Oct 1993 07:51:50 +0200 Received: from SEARN.SUNET.SE (NJE origin LISTSERV@SEARN) by SEARN.SUNET.SE (LMail V1.2a/1.8a) with BSMTP id 4022; Fri, 15 Oct 1993 06:50:20 +0100 Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1993 01:49:25 -0400 Reply-To: Logical Language Group Sender: vilva From: Logical Language Group Subject: PHILOSOPHY/TECH: place structures and metaphysical parsimony To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu Content-Length: 7443 Lines: 131 Someone raised the question about Aristotelian motion as a justification for deleting the agent place. I've thought about it, and decided that muvdu has other problems, but also that the argument raises far more troubling questions. I believe it reflects a severe cultural bias built into the language, one which may be insoluble. Specifically, while we have for the most part eliminated 'unnecessary' metaphysics from many/most of our concepts, resulting in metaphysical parsimony, in many others we have not. The specific bias that we have retained is the bias towards the way we know things to work nowadays. Thus when you fall, you fall in a gravity well. When you are lifted, there is a force that lifts you. Well, if we go back to Aristotle there is no concept of gravity - that was Newton, wasn't it, 2000 years later? I'm not sure when "force" came to be a legit concept, but suspect it was long after Aristotle. Animals are of species, which presumes that people practice taxonomy. I suspect that children do not, and in fact do the inverse (all 4-legged animals are "doggy" at first) when very young. Shadows are caused by a light source. Well try to explain the opening scene of Peter Pan, when he needs his shadow sewn back on. When we are ill, it is with symptoms x2, but there is also an x3 disease. This is possibly just another taxonomy question. Perhaps these are enough examples to reveal the problem. I'm not sure what, if any, could be the solution. You see, it is perfectly possible for us to talk about a relation used in the past that is now obsolete, but how do you deal with a relation that is not yet meaningful. The mere existence of a word in the language presumes that there is a meaningful concept there, and the assumption of meaningfulness is itself a metaphysical bias. I understand that Classical Greek civilization had no concept of "zero". Well how then do you translate a Greek (or Roman) mathematical text that did not need/rely on zero, nor on modern standard mathematical notation that depends on the digit 0? If we are really dealing with meaningfulness paradoxes, let us hypothesize a relationship between an arm (it not being important whose it is), a property abstract of a ring or loop, a (real) mental force (not necessarily associated with an individual mind - let us presume some kind of overmind in the universe, and a transformation that takes place for which we don't even today have an English word. a. If this concept were meaningful to you, you'd have trouble putting it together as a lujvo from the existing gismu list. After all, I've given one concept that does not exist today, a force that is occassionally talked about by different philosophers that is conceptually different depending on the philosopher, an objects for which I have specified that one of the key places is omitted, and a property abstract totally unrelated to any of the other things in any concept I can think of. You'd have to zi'o up a storm to make this word, and/or make up a new word which you simply could not explain to a person of today because it simply lies outside of our comprehension. b. The very existence in the language of this concept makes the metaphysical assumption that the relationship is meaningful, and I tried to invent one for which I can't conceive of it being meaningful. Another, perhaps easier to grasp, example. You recall perhaps our discussions a couple months ago that led to zi'o - the nu zbasu with no agent. The concept that something can be made without having a maker. We can grasp this only enough to say that it is impossible - it contradicts the essence of "making". It is a totally different concept. Now imagine Lojban used in a society where such a concept exists, and indeed is the norm. Things come into being, organizations and structures are built or assembled, things just HAPPEN. There are no agents at all. How do we communicate "gasnu" to them, and its relatives like gau and jai gau. What do they do with all of those Lojban words that have agentive places, and what do we do with those words they use that don't have them. I don't think it will be as simple as using zi'o, since I think we might not even recognize that the various concepts are related, the metaphysical gap between the two cultures is so profound. A final example, one that I've actually protected us from without really knowing why until now. All the discussion about color words has been colored in recent years by the model of color involving saturation, hue, etc., and there has been a lot of talk about the color solid model. But that model and those words have no meaning to a culture that does not have the current scientific understanding of color. How would Aristotle fill in the places of a color with a place for hue and saturation? And if we devise a new model of color in the future which does not involve these concepts, how do we get rid of them from the language. In this case, I chose to try to get rid of all of the model places of colors, leaving them to be added by BAI tags. I always have felt less than satisfied by this - we always have SOME model in mind when we select a color. But the bottom line is that langauges reflect a division of the world into colors that does NOT obviously presume any particular physics. So what I did, while it seems vaguely unsatisfying, isn't "wrong", it is just metaphysically parsimonious. But I think that if we did that with all gismu, we'd end up with a truly lean language - indeed a Voksigid where EVERYTHING would need a preposition. I don't know what the answer is, but it seems to me that we have already made some kind of compromise with language reality in this area, and it is not one that we may easily be capable of undoing. I'm not sure that zi'o or anything else similar is the way to deal with concepts that are "missing" a metaphysical concept. It may be better to recognize that this is a DIFFERENT concept, coin a new word in fu'ivla (or gismu if appropriate) space, and then define its place structures in Lojban long-windedly, not by trying to say that it "is zbasu with the maker". I cannot see going throught the language and eliminating places that reflect current physical knowledge concpets simply because those concepts weren't present at some earlier day, but I'm also sure that "zi'o" isn't really a satisfactory way to create them either. Jorge has mentioned the possibility of magical disappearance, which I might buy - it fits my chaotic attitude towards the "science" of how to place-structure a lujvo (though I admit it seems incongruous coming from Jorge, whom I thought prone to maximally fat lujvo based on his earlier comments). I don't think we can change all the place structures to fit Aristotelian, or Platonian concepts therefore, where such concepts are incompatible with modern physical reality. (Hmm, why am I suddenly reminded of the ancient relativistic 4th tense that was the first "heavy" discussion on Lojban List some 2 or 3 years ago?) I know I ain't gonna stop the dictionary on this one, but I'd like the philosophers among you to comment. Perhaps someone also might be able to rephrase this discussion in a non-language-specific manner enough that it is suitable for conlang, since I suspect that the issue affects all those who would design a language, and especially a language for inter-cultural communciation. lojbab lojbab