On Mon, Dec 31, 2012 at 03:22:47PM -0500, Alex Rozenshteyn wrote: > Even if you don't like philosophy, this is still a linguistic issue. In > English, the Goa'uld are *not* gods, even though they are worshiped as > gods; in lojban (assuming your definition as canonical, which makes sense) > they *are* gods *because* they are worshiped as such. Every now and then people start talking philosophy on this list and it's probably something that is hard to circumvent. However, it's highly important to keep things appart here in my opinion. At least the part of language, that I'm concerned with, is _NOT_ about extensions of predicates, and it's not about what things _ARE_. That's ontology, and that's a crazy hell in itself! (though, I grant, things are pretty much mixed up) Language has to provide means for people to _express_ what things _might_ be and therefore provide a basis for people to express what _they think_ things are. It's not, and nobody said it is, dependent on the language whether the Goa'uld are gods or not! It depends on the perspective! If you listen to the Goa'uld servants speaking english, they might still utter "The Goa'uld are gods". If you listen to a member of SG-1, they might utter "The Goa'uld are no gods". Neither one is said to be wrong from a pure 'language perspective'. I know this view is highly debatable, but that's my current opinion on these matters. v4hn
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