Re: [lojban] Response ro Robin's "Essay on the future of Lojban"

[And Rosta <and.rosta@gmail.com>]

Bob LeChevalier, On 09/04/2010 19:49:
> And Rosta wrote:
> > Pierre:
> >
> > > Can we have some Lojbanists accepting some, but not all, of the 
> > > rulings of the BPFK?
> >
> > The usage of Lojbanists would and should be unregulated. The 
> > declaration of Lojban would exist to be used freely however people 
> > choose.
>
> A bunch of rules that no one will ever use - sounds like a form of 
> mental masturbation (or since this is a group effort, an orgy thereof). 
>  But then I've always tended to disparage conlang-making, where the 
> process of language-making is the point, and not the result.
>
> Some people do want to work with Lojban as a mental toy, and we have to 
> allow for that.  But more, I think, want to communicate with it, which 
> is what sets Lojban apart from most of the hundreds of conlangs that are 
> out there.

Need I spell out the contempt that your similes deserve? Perhaps you would dismiss the sphere of the arts and sciences, of intellectual inquiry and intellectual production, as masturbation and toys. It's not that the similes are inapt, for most intellectual production, e.g. in the universities, is done for its own sake, and so could be likened to masturbation or play; the objectionableness is in your dismissal of this work that enriches our world and our knowledge of it.

And anyway, you've missed the point in various ways. The fact that a language is a set of rules (definitional rules, not rules regulating behaviour) does not entail that nobody uses the rules or that nobody wants to use them.

As for how many people want to communicate in Lojban, it's open to question what proportion want to communicate in Lojban and what proportion want to communicate in a still hypothetical language that succeeds in satisfying the key speakable-logic design goals of the Loglan/Lojban project. But whatever the proportions, surely I am not alone in thinking that the Lojban community is of interest precisely because there is no other community with a desire to work together to create and bring into use a logical language. The Lojban language itself is a failure as a logical language, but the community itself, despite Robin's well-warranted hand-wringing, is a relative success. 

--And.


--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "lojban" group.
To post to this group, send email to lojban@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to lojban+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/lojban?hl=en.