From - Tue Apr 15 11:04:56 1997 Reply-To: Lee Daniel Crocker Date: Tue Apr 15 11:04:56 1997 Sender: Lojban list From: Lee Daniel Crocker Organization: Piclab (http://www.piclab.com/) Subject: Re: Philosophy X-To: Lojban Group To: John Cowan In-Reply-To: <199704082354.QAA19712@ns1.calweb.com> from Esteban Flamini at "Apr 8, 97 05:42:09 pm" X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 4260 Message-ID: > Well, everything which is a subject of philosophical study is "se > cmupeiseljibri", so the whole field of study should be "loi se > cmupeiseljibri" or "lo'i se cmupeiseljibri" (I'm not sure which of them). > Philosophy as an activity is "zu'o cmupeiseljibri", isn't it? I.e., that > what philosophers do. > And as a corpus, I think it's a kind of achievement, so it should be "mu'e > cmupeiseljibri". > Esteban Flamini I like that place structure, but I don't see why to go to great lengths with "has the job of thinking about..." when there's no particular reason to imply actual employment. One doesn't generally hire philosophers as one does plumbers, so jibri doesn't seem quite right. One hires teachers of philosophy, but their actual job is teaching, not philosophizing. His students are just as much philosophers as he is. I agree that the process/product distinction you mention is important to emphasize, but that's another reason I prefer tadni to saske. If you prefer "jicmu" as the subject of study to my self-refence, then it becomes "cmutadni" instead of "tadnytadni", but the place structure remains the same, where x1 is the studier and x2 a particular subject. la xysrl cmutadni la fenomenologis ("Husserl studies the philosophy called phenomenology") lezu'o cmutadni cu xamgu le menli ("Philosophy (the activity) is good for the mind") ti cukta lemu'e cmutadni ("This is a book about Philosophy (the body of knowledge)") -- Lee Daniel Crocker "All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past, are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Wed Apr 9 18:49:21 1997 for ; Wed, 9 Apr 1997 18:49:20 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <199704092249.SAA23033@mail1.access.digex.net> Reply-To: Steven Belknap Sender: Lojban list From: Steven Belknap Subject: lujvo for philosphers X-To: LOJBAN@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: Logical Language Group X-Mozilla-Status: 0001 Content-Length: 1947 >Wittgenstein died of prostate cancer in 1951. True. Wittgenstein was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1949. Interestingly, although he said that "he had no desire to go on", he continued to work intensely on his philosophy until his death in 1951. He expressed feelings of alienation and longing for suicide throughout his career. His brother did commit suicide. The correct statement is thus "Wittgenstein was suicidal." rather than "Wittgenstein was a suicide." He did conclude that philosphical inquiry was a sign of mental illness, and appears to have met the DSM-IV criteria for severe depression. His work seems to have been an urgent attempt to correct cognitive distortions now considered diagnostic of depression. He earns my respect as the most honest philosopher I have read. Unfortunately, he lived and died prior to the development of cognitive psychotherapy or fluoxetine. Regarding the choice of tanru or lujvo for philosophy, I would suggest that some persons will choose metaphors which differ from those of other persons, and that these metaphors may reflect their cultural, intellectual, and linguistic biases. I see no problem with this whatsoever. In the process of distilling mutually agreeable lujvo, we may learn a lot about our unacknowledged biases. One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. If one wants to refer to the concept represented by the English word "philosophy", I would suggest resorting to a fu'ivla. Same goes for words like "communism". If you construct a lujvo for these words, they will be very new concepts, as much of their meaning resides in their historical and linguistic context. "Biology" or "Statistics" on the other hand, are self-correcting, and their essence ought be straightforwardly expressable in a lujvo. Steven Belknap, M.D. Assistant Professor of Clinical Pharmacology and Medicine University of Illinois College of Medicine at Peoria