Re: [lojban] [OT]Argumentum ad elephantum

[pycyn@aol.com]

In a message dated 2/14/2002 1:21:55 PM Central Standard Time, jcowan@reutershealth.com writes:

the story can be true or false.  But within
the story, the authorial voice claims that the six blind men are
referring to the same object, *and* that it is an elephant.  This
is rank metaphysical spookery.

The point of the parable, surely, is that we all see things from
our own limited perspectives.  But the poem is self-undermining, because
of the existence of an authorial voice who uses "the Elephant" =
lobi'e xanto, and says "all of them are wrong".  This voice can
only be the voice of omniscience, and if there is such a perspective,
then the notion of limited perspectives falls apart.

It depends what version you read.  My memory of the Jain version that they make the point that the narrators view is also only a maybe, one which encompasses the blind men's views, but not the whole truth.  Incidentally, they would not say that any of these views is wrong (none of them is, in fact), they are just partial.  And the whole is so unexpressible that its ineffability cannot even be expressed -- maybe.