Subject: Re: [lojban] Re-evaluation + an idea - Was: A parable

From: Invent Yourself <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2001 20:07:35 -0400 (EDT)

Now here's a man that speaks the language I want to hear!

On Sat, 25 Aug 2001, Jim Peters wrote:

> Maybe I should come as clean as I can. I threw the spanner in
> regarding the defined meanings of Lojban words being non-abstract, as
> a Sapir-Whorf thing.

What does this mean?

> So I'm like a wanderer coming back with strange stories, lots of bits
> and bobs of experiences and a few skills, but not much in the way of
> the kind of systematic information that might be required to help
> build or improve a language.

No, I think it's time for a few strange tales from foreign places,
actually.

> If the approach so far with Lojban has been to base everything on a
> physical-scientific world-view, then I'm in absolutely no position to
> argue with that. In any case, it does have the advantage that all
> Westerners will understand it, and science has been spreading pretty
> well to other places. Maybe this could be seen as the chosen "tone"
> of the language.

Do you think Lojban has that tone?

What's the best world-view you've seen for building rocketships? How about
for keeping a marriage together?

> I don't know how big a task this might be - how many phrases are
> required to completely define all the words and constructions to the
> depth that you'd all like them to be defined. Maybe it's an awful
> lot, so maybe this isn't actually feasible in practice.

Wonderful idea! We have random sentence software.

>
> [*1: Justification: Working with healing, I know that there are many
> systems to help understand and resolve illness, and all of the ones I
> know do indeed work, in their own ways. Although there are some
> common themes that occur, in several cases one world-view will say
> completely the opposite of another. So you can't make a bigger better
> world-view that actually works by merging them. This doesn't make any
> sense, but this is my experience.

This is very discordian. But what if you try? Cultures don't disagree on
the brokenness of a bone. So there are some illnesses whose state has
nothing to do with the world-view. Perhaps you'd like to qualify that
statement of extreme relativity?

-----
"It is not enough that an article is new and useful. The Constitution
never sanctioned the patenting of gadgets. [...] It was never the object
of those laws to grant a monopoly for every trifling device, every
shadow of a shade of an idea, which would naturally and spontaneously
occur to any skilled mechanic or operator in the ordinary progress of
manufactures." -- Supreme Court Justice Douglas, 1950