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> On Wed, Sep 11, 2002 at 02:38:36PM -0400, Invent Yourself wrote:
> > It seems to me that the discursives and explicit logic of Lojban lend
> > it to the creation (or at least translation) of philosophical texts
> > better than the attempt to duplicate or maintain the rich,
> > culturally-laden colloquial vernaculars and real-world descriptions
> > found in novels.
>
> I think you're right. Now, which one should we start with?
I favor the work of the Logical Positivists, not because I know it to be
the simplest and therefore best for translation, but rather because I find
its relentless rigor refreshing. I've gotten the feeling that, had they
access to Lojban, they might have considered it a purer vehicle for their
discipline. However I am aware that I could be completely wrong on any of
these accounts.
>>
The Positivist stuff is still mainly under copyright, I suspect, dating from the 30's through the 60's. As an student of Carnap and Hempel, with drop ins on a few others, I find your faith in their rigor charming -- they were as screwed up as philosophers generally are but they covered it better than some (the 18th century people, not to mention the scholastics really were rigorous, they just started fromm genuinely squirrelly ideas).
Carnap knew about Loglan at least. He was a great collector of constructed languages (you'd never guess from his own writings?) and was in JCB's intellectual genealogy. He did not care much for what he saw in the early versions available to him. Quine (a doubtful Positivist -- and less good at covering his screw-ups) also knew Loglan and rather liked the 1976 version, but never got into it.
The pre-Positivists might be a little more available -- certainly some Russell is, but probably not Mad Ludwig. And Frege, of course. But then, it occurs to me, most of the Logical Positivist stuff is not originally in English anyhow. And, Russell aside, English language philosophy at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th is pretty dismal. There is the other James of course, and Pierce, but the one writes more like a novelist (in contrast to his brother, the novelist) and the other needs English translations even for his English language papers (How to Make Our Ideas Clear is the most inaccurately named work in the history of the universe).
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