Re: Dao De Jing [was Re: Promoting Lojban]

["Steven D. Arnold" <yami@dementian.com>]

> I have no idea how English version of Daodejing is like.

Try:

http://rhino.harvard.edu/elwin/pJoy/taoteching.html

This is my favorite English translation. Note, however, that I know
absolutely no Chinese in any dialect, so I don't know how close it would
come to the original.


>> (1) Predicate logic and its offshoots are a lot more flexible than
>> Aristotelian logic. I would hope logicians have got to the point where they
>> aren't just relexicalising Greek!

They certainly have.

I once began dreaming up an infinite-valued logic, where every assertion had
a truth-value between 0 and 1 inclusive. Instead of truth tables, you'd
have truth formulas or algorithms to define AND, OR, NOT, etc. (I don't
know how close fuzzy logic would come to this. Is it infinite-valued or
multi-valued, or something completely different?)


> Even fuzzy logic is for some advanced people to read.

Speaking of fuzzy logic, what kinds of structures and words would we need to
apply such a system in Lojban?


> It's expressive, admittably. But don't forget that we're of our own
> cultures, not of the one of Logbanistan. :-)

I think I know what you mean, but to take you a little more literally than
you probably intended -- we, together, make up Lojbanistan, we define the
culture -- and most of us are perfectly capable of making illogical and
contradictory statements in Lojban. You ask whether a child who grew up
speaking only Lojban would be able to do this; I say if he or she were
raised by one of us, most likely the answer is yes.


steve