Message-Id: <199510040032.UAA21581@locke.ccil.org>
Date:         Tue, 3 Oct 1995 19:14:00 +0100
Reply-To: "Steven M. Belknap" <sbelknap@UIC.EDU>
Sender: Lojban list <LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET>
From: "Steven M. Belknap" <sbelknap@UIC.EDU>
Subject:      future tense
To: John Cowan <cowan@LOCKE.CCIL.ORG>
Status: OR

la pitr cusku di'e

>All this talk about future tenses has gotten me thinking about whether
>it's desirable to *have* a future tense.
>
>Or rather, about whether it's desirable to *use* the future tense.
>
>I like the idea of having the ability to talk about future events, because
>it gives symmetry to the time tenses which is aesthetically pleasing, and
>also because it allows you to talk about the future of past events, the
>outcomes of which are known.  But shouldn't there be an alternative way to
>express unknown future events?

Actually, there is the same problem with any event which occurs at a time
or place not accessible for verification. What we know of the past is
either via memory (unreliable), the memory of others (even more
unreliable), documents (forged with increasing ease, which will only worsen
with introduction of nanotechnology), or electronic media (see John
Brunner's The Sheep Look Up).

It is possible to imagine an encryption scheme which would verify records
of past events, but each record could only be decrypted once; after that
tampering is possible. The same problem applies to distant places. It is
possible that there really is no place such as Russia, (I've never been
there...) and its all a grand, apparently pointless conspiracy to convince
me there is a Russia.

Someday in the technological future some maniac may decide he doesn't like
the historical record of WWII, or the history of biology or whatever, and
send off nanotech robots to find and alter all records pertaining to that
subject. Even brains could conceivably be altered.

What we know of the world is imperfectly recorded, as the OJ verdict
demonstrates. All tenses except the here and now and possibly the abstract
timeless & placeless are suspect. I don't think the lack of absolute
verifiability is a reason to abandon the future tense, or any other tense.
I will continue to use the future tense, despite these problems.

Didn't Loglan distinguish between the prophetic sense of a future
occurence, and the predictive sense? I seem to remember that from the
latest edition of the Loglan textbook.

co'o mi'e stivn.


Steven M. Belknap, M.D.
Assistant Professor of Clinical Pharmacology and Medicine
University of Illinois College of Medicine at Peoria

email: sbelknap@uic.edu
Voice: 309/671-3403
Fax:   309/671-8413