Date: Thu, 18 Dec 1997 07:28:41 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199712181228.HAA00743@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: Robin Turner Sender: Lojban list From: Robin Turner Subject: Re: linguistics journals X-To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan Status: OR X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 1401 X-From-Space-Date: Thu Dec 18 07:28:45 1997 X-From-Space-Address: LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU la djef. cusku di'e >>I do not think that there is anything that Lojban, or ANY language, >>natural or constructed, can do to improve my thinking. I do not think in >>Lojban, or English, or any other language; I just THINK. You usually have >>to CONSTRUCT a language in which to express your ALREADY EXISTING >>thoughts, and I consider that thought and language are separate things. > This is an extremely controversial philosophical point, and one which I think has surfaced before on this list, so I won't go into the arguments. My advice to Geoff and Colin is to try "just thinking"; the most you're likely to be able to come up with is a few pictures. If you can do even this without any words coming into your head, you're well on the way to a mystical experience. As for whether language can improve your thinking, I think any second language will improve your thinking to an extent, and a language which is designed to be as logical as possible ought to do this to a greater extent. There is in fact nothing particularly remarkable about this; if I put a particularly knotty problem into symbolic logic, all I am doing is using a different language to help me think better. co'o mi'e robin. ============================================================================ =========== Robin Turner Bilkent Universitesi, IDMYO, Ankara, Turkey.