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RE: [jboske] Re: gadri paradigm: 2 excellent proposals

At 12:54 PM 12/23/02 +0000, And Rosta wrote: 
Lojbab:
> At 05:19 PM 12/22/02 +0000, And Rosta wrote:
> > > > * Is there any scope to fiddle with default interpretations
> > > > of bare gadri?
> > >
> > > By the fundamentalist imperative, not much
> >
> >I agree. But we know that CLL is partly broken,
>
> We don't "know" this. CLL does not claim to define a semantic theory for
> Lojban, and it is that expectation that is broken

We know that CLL partly defines an incoherent semantics for Lojban.

We also know that at the time, we did not consider it possible nor necessarily desirable to define a coherent semantics.

If we were able to take the view that nothing that CLL says about
semantics is official, then our job now would be much easier.

But that is not what the decisions have been regarding CLL as part of the baseline.

> The ground rules of the byfy require that "fundamentalists" accept that
> there be some changes to CLL, whether they (we) want it or not. I am
> trying to destroy factionalism, so quit trying to force people into
> factional modes

I am not trying to force people into factional modes. I am trying
to articulate a number of ideologies that have a degree of integrity

I am an utter foe of ideology as an intellectual endeavor. The integrity of an ideology rests on its assumptions as well as on the logical coherence of its arguments based on those assumptions. When push comes to shove, people do not share common assumptions, and logical reasoning based on conflicting assumptions necessarily leads to conflict.

and coherence such that one can predict their stance on any given
question.

I'd rather not be predictable. Merely trying to always be perfectly correct in my Lojban for so many years (since I was expected to be the paragon of Lojban usage until others became as skilled as I was) was stultifying to my developing language skill. I wouldn't want to be predictable unless I was perfectly sure of my correctness, and that is simply too much of a burden.

If someone argues their own views from such a consistent
ideological position then their ideological justification for their
views is more estimable than if they vary their ideological stance
from issue to issue.

We disagree.

IMO
this is better than the way you (and not only you) interject into
discussion contemptuous or antagonistic remarks about jboske.

I'm sorry if I come across as contemptuous. I am pragmatically trying to preserve/promote a language, and I do what I have to do as I see dictated by my position. To the extent that I can ignore jboske, I would not be contemptuous at all.

Thus I prefer to recognize the existence of fundamentally different
ideologies towards lojban that are each deserving of respect, even
though they are incompatible, why you prefer to deny these fundamental
ideological differences and work towards consensus through some sort
of discourse of mutual disrespect.

Because as you ask another post 
How can consensus develop when one person's judgements are conditioned by
such different factors from another's?

If people play ideological games strictly, then consensus cannot develop. People have to not hold to any factors so strongly that they won't bend to meet others.

> The ground rules of the byfy are that changes are not to be made lightly,
> and not merely because someone has a better idea.

I don't accept these 'ground rules'.

The policy statement is the ground rules. Your vote against the policy statement was recorded.

I am content to be outvoted by
people who do, but if accepting them is a precondition of involvement,
then we need to go back, formulate an explicit list of Articles, and
require an Act of Confirmation from BF members.

Does Britain require a written Constitution now, in order for you to accept citizenship?

> "Broken" in reference to CLL means that it is self-contradictory (or
> contradicts the word lists). Contradicting some school of logic is NOT
> "broken", and being semantically vague is not "broken", just "vague"

It's true that the semantics is rarely clear, formal and explicit
enough for us to detect brokenness.

%^)

So perhaps instead of "broken"
we should say "nugatory". The problem is not that it contradicts some
school of logic or is vague but that it is difficult to find a way
build a coherent, formalized and explicit semantics out of it.
And thus do we face the choice between baroque kludges that strive
to be CLL compatible, and alternatives that can be more elegant by
virtue of not striving to be CLL compatible.

It is too late for elegance. Elegance should have been proposed in 1996-7. There is a time when language design has to stop, and that time was nominally 1997. I'm willing to loosen up enough so as to get the documentation effort done. But an argument from elegance would probably move us back to 1986, and throw out the whole language as the Ceqli and guaspi efforts did.

Another related problem is that we don't have any arch-fundamentalists
(participating in the current discussions) that are both able and
willing to do what is required for the BF -- that is, construct a
semantic analysis that is fully consistent with CLL,

The arch-fundamentalists don't see a need for such a semantic analysis, which may be why they are (still) arch-fundamentalists. They consider other things more important than semantic rigor. The fact that jboske is SO voluminous, even amongst those oriented towards semantic analysis, tells me that semantic analysis is not an endeavor that is sufficiently understood that it can be accomplished. The verbosity and obscurity and inconclusiveness of the jboske debates weigh against them as a basis for defining the language.

But the bottom line is that we need a dictionary done, and we need the help of the non-fundamentalists to get it done. So the arch-fundamentalists will lojbanmassly work for a dictionary that the lojbanmass community will accept. %^)

lojbab

--
lojbab lojbab@lojban.org
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: http://www.lojban.org