Date: Tue, 9 Dec 1997 14:01:13 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199712091901.OAA29619@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: Robin Turner Sender: Lojban list From: Robin Turner Subject: Re: logical gaffs X-To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 1839 X-From-Space-Date: Tue Dec 9 14:01:18 1997 X-From-Space-Address: LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU It occurred to me that one problem in political discourse results not from politicians making obvious logical gaffs (like the ones I posted) but more often from vague but appealing statements, which are often - for various semantic and pragmatic reasons - not readily scrutinised. A common error is, in Lojban terms, missing out important sumti. For example, it is very common for a politician to say "Our country needs X", which will go unchallenged because no one wants to suggest that our country might not need such an important thing as X (free medical care / vocational education / stealth bombers etc. etc.). Now let us imagine a politician in Lojbanistan (if such creatures would still exist) saying mi'o gugde cu nitcu X (hope I've got the grammar right this time!) I would guess that a Lojban-speaker would automatically answer cu nitcu ko'a ma We could also imagine similar Lojban "heckling" along the lines of mi'o cu bilga ko'a ma and so on. I think this is much more productive than the simple question "why?". Ask a politician "why?" and you get an hour-long speech about something completely different. (at the risk of having my HTML further scrutinised, I invite Lojbanites to have a look at my web essay "How to get an 'ought' from an 'is'" () for a philosophical (more than political) look at these questions of need and obligation) Similarly a lot of psychotherapy involves getting people to fill in their missing sumti. For example, if someone says "I need X" (love / security / sex / approval etc.) possible responses are "For what?" or "What will happen if you don't get it?" I would imagine this kind of thing would again be easier in Lojban. Robin Turner Bilkent Universitesi, IDMYO, Ankara, Turkey.