[lojban] Re: Philosophical differences.

["Mark E. Shoulson" <mark@kli.org>]

Regarding the various {nitcu} for sleepy/hungry/thirsty/horny/etc/etc.  
I've been thinking about this a bit whilst discussing it with Lindar on 
IRC.  You can drive yourself nuts slicing up this semantic pie (or any 
one, for that matter).

On one hand, why should we have separate gismu for all of these?  They 
all reflect the same basic concept: physical need.  So we can conflate 
all these, and that will be so much more consistent, right?

On the other hand, they are all so very *different*, how can we even 
consider conflating them?  How can we even express them with just 
{nitcu} or {djica}?  Hunger and thirst are will-controlled.  It is 
possible to starve yourself to death, and simply refuse to eat/drink 
(people have done it).  And if there's no food around, your body won't 
go trying to eat sand or rocks against your will.  But air-hunger is 
different: even if there's no air around, your body will sooner or later 
take the decision out of your hands and try to breathe, even if it means 
flooding your lungs with water.  Lindar mentioned that sleepiness is on 
a smaller scale than "need"... When I'm driving down the highway 
straining to keep my eyes open, knowing full well that falling asleep 
behind the wheel can be fatal, there is nothing small or mild whatsoever 
about needing to sleep.  That's another one where the body will take the 
decision out of your hands after a while.  Sleep is also different in 
that hunger/thirst/air-hunger all require something that might or might 
not be available in the world; sleep doesn't.  Compare also the needs to 
urinate/defecate.  All those require from the world is space (at least 
some tiny bit of which is usually available), and your body will also 
take care of these whether or not you want to, if it goes on long 
enough.  Hunger and thirst don't build monotonically; air-hunger does... 
Libido is so much more complex than mere hunger or thirst, it hardly 
bears comparing.  cf also the "need" to scratch an itch, or to cough or 
sneeze... And so on...

My point in arguing with Lindar is not that Lindar is wrong, but rather 
that Lindar is not right.  That is to say, there are *so many* ways of 
looking at just about any semantic range like this, is it really 
sensible to say that Lojban shouldn't do it *this* way but must do it 
*that* way because that one is "right"?  Obviously the standard has to 
pick *some* way, and then all alternate views will perforce have to make 
use of lujvo, etc., and we can probably agree that some ways of looking 
at some things are fairly uncontroversially worse than most, but it's a 
_very_ tough sell, as I see it, that these gismu (or others being 
discussed) are actually "broken."  There are just too many "right" ways.

~mark


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