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

[Robin Turner <robin@bilkent.edu.tr>]

"Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" wrote:

> From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" <lojbab@lojban.org>
>
> At 12:49 AM 2/21/99 +0800, Lin Zhemin wrote:
> >From: Lin Zhemin <ljm@marx.ljm.wownet.net>
> >
> >Before all, I'd say that, it isn't intellegible to translate something
> >like Daodejing into Lojban... First, there is one more ancient version
> >found in Mawangdui, and experts are trying to understand it. And then,
> >since there is no punctuations in ancient Chinese, the _true_ meaning
> >is impossible to be understood. Third, since Lojban derives from _logic_,
> >which is a result of social working of ancient Greeks, it is
> >_incompatible_ with the system of Daodejing. You just cannot understand
> >many ancient Chinese things by logic; that'll be illogic. <Grin>
>
> Actually, pc has said that both the Chinese and Hindi cultures in olden
> times did have systems of logic.  I don't think he ever described how
> compatible they were with modern logics., though.
>

All I know of early Chinese systems of logic are cases of Daoists like
Zhunagzi taking the mickey out of logicians ({.u'u} I'm afraid I can't
remember the references.  Seems to have been based on semantics.  Indian
logic, on the other hand, is voluminous and well-documented, with various
competing schools, and this was developed further by the Buddhists.  One
system stuck in my head (thoug I forget the Sanskrit name for it) because it
has no less than seven truth-values:

1. True
2. False
3. Meaningless
4. True and false
5. True and meaningless
6. False and meaningless
7.  True and false and meaningless.

This is because the logicians in question ({pe'i} quite sensibly) decided that
you need to consider the potential truth of a statement in all possible
times/places.  Thus the proposition "Two-headed cows eat grass" is an example
of 7. because while at the moment the statement is meaningless because there
are no two-headed cows, it is possible that at some point in the future there
may be, and they may or may not eat grass.

co'o mi'e robin.