Date: Fri, 28 Nov 1997 13:20:11 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199711281820.NAA29640@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: Steven Belknap Sender: Lojban list From: Steven Belknap X-To: LOJBAN@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan Status: OR X-Mozilla-Status: 0001 Content-Length: 3886 X-From-Space-Date: Fri Nov 28 13:20:44 1997 X-From-Space-Address: LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU >> >> I make no sense. Your reactions suggest that we are close to >> >> getting back to the ancient discussion about needing lo tanxe that >> >> led to enormous largely pointless volume 2 years ago (indeed it was >> >> 2 years ago Thanksgiving that we had something like 200 postings in >> >> a single day on the list or some similar nonsense). Suggesting that the vigor of a discussion is inversely proportional to the importance of a discussion is an interesting assertion. >> > >> >I don't think it was pointless. No conclusions were reached, but >> >now we come to it again, I feel that more progress is being made >> >and that red-herrings are more easily spottable. Conclusions were reached. I believe that the discussion of last November & December did affect both the baseline (slightly) and the governance of the development of the language. >> >I realize that to many these discussions are arcane, pedantic and >> >pointless. >> >> I am beginning to feel that all of them are, until we get more usage. I do not agree. The current discussions are interesting and helpful in bridging the gap between theory and practice. Unfortunately, the discussions are not linked in a useful fashion to the grammer or dictionary, which leads to repetition and rehashing of already settled issues. (For one, the dictionary on the lojban web site is now down.) However, I found the discussions on irony to be quite interesting. I believe that the use of explicit markers to denote irony defeats the whole purpose of irony. The point of irony is to communicate a concept which both speaker and listener recognize as metareferential, despite minimal or absent explicit indication in the utterance that something beyond or other than the utterance is meant. Using an explicit irony marker is like putting a turd on your chocolate pudding. Its still chocolate pudding, but the pudding is irrevocably contaminated, and ain't nobody gonna eat it. >Of course it's not that important. I participate in Lojban >only because I enjoy it, not because it's important. If I >less selfishly cared more about things that are important I >should instead be pouring my energies into exposing human rights >violations around the world, or something like that. I don't agree that lojban is unimportant. The logical gaffs made by politicians speaking natlangs are often apparent only with careful examination. Remember trying to match the utterance to the logical fallacy in Logic A01? Post hoc ergo propter hoc just slides on by if both the antecedent and conclusion are platitudinous. A spoken first order predicate logic may be helpful in making such gaffs more obvious. It is easier to find certain kind of logical errors in Pascal code than in C code, due to strong typing, formal loop constructs, and even "pretty printing" autoformatting. I hypothesize that some of the human rights violations exist because of logical gaffs. I hypothesize that some human mental illness also exist because of logical gaffs. Perhaps even a small number of lojban speakers can have signficant effects on the discourse of politics. Lojban may be more than just a toy. One way to help Polio victims was to build iron lungs. Another way was to create vaccines. Should Sabin and Salk be condemned because they choose to develop vaccines instead of building iron lungs? Maybe lojban is a vaccine. Maybe not. Either way, I believe we will learn interesting useful things from messing around with lojban and its descendents. >I got an A but it was a baby logic course. On my Montague Semantics >course, the most incomprehensible one I ever took, I got a D too. >But I've always been a bad learner. Logic was easy. Transformational Grammer was easy. Physical Chemistry was hard. -Steven Steven Belknap, M.D. Assistant Professor of Clinical Pharmacology and Medicine University of Illinois College of Medicine at Peoria