On Wed, Apr 27, 2011 at 1:40 AM, Ivo Doko
<ivo.doko@gmail.com> wrote:
On 27 April 2011 08:26, Jonathan Jones <
eyeonus@gmail.com> wrote:
> We don't fly because we evolved the ability. We fly because of technological
> innovation.
because of natural evolution.
Whether or not evolution enabled technological development is irrelevant to whether evolution enabled humans to fly. It didn't, nor under any circumstances will it ever. Einstein's mother gave birth to him. That fact has nothing to do with him developing the Theories of Special and General Relativity.
> Bats have the ability to manipulate tools...
There have been no reported sightings of bats manipulating tools.
Tool manipulation is a product of comprehension, which is determined by various factors of the brain. The ability does not imply the use. Monkeys are able to type, but they lack that necessary to understand how to write.
> That's not a reason.
The sentence by itself is circular and not an explanation of the
reason, but the sentence is not by itself (it is followed by an
explanation) so there's no point in singling it out and pointing out
that it is not a reason. Of course it's not. Now that I've singled out
your sentence as well I can say that it is a pointless tautology,
because the word "that" is clearly not a reason. Those sorts of
arguments don't give much fruit, though.
I'm not even going to bother pointing out the flaws in the above argument, as they are wholly irrelevant to the issue at hand.
>> No natural language features even
>> remotely similar mechanism for handling pronouns, which can only mean
>> that our "hardware" is not a priori "wired" in a way in which such
>> handling of pronouns comes naturally to it. (Which doesn't mean that
>> I'm saying that it can't be learned - it is an extremely flexible
>> piece of hardware we are talking about here.) As opposed to that,
>> inductive reasoning (which I demonstrated in understanding the example
>> with Mabel) *does* come naturally to the hardware, which is why no
>> natural language features specific mechanisms for minimising the
>> requirement of inductive reasoning in understanding of the language.
>
>
> None of that has anything to do with whether or not Lojban's system is messy
> or confusing. Red Herring fallacies are not logical arguments.
I don't see how what I had said was a red herring argument. My point
was that lojban's way of dealing with pronouns does not in any similar
form occur in any natural language, thus it is not a linguistic
mechanism which comes naturally to humans, thus it is confusing (not
messy, I agree - that was a hyperbole).
That Lojban's pronouns do not exist in natural languages does not mean that it is confusing, nor does something existing in a natural language mean that it is not confusing. The two statements are unrelated. As such, your point is irrelevant to the issue. I personally do not find the method confusing at all, thus providing counter-evidence to your claim, while I do find German's system of declension extremely confusing.
--
mu'o mi'e .ivan.