Subject: Re: [lojban] [OT]Argumentum ad elephantum

From: John Cowan <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 14 Feb 2002 14:20:16 -0500

And Rosta wrote:

> You are in effect saying that the narrator is claiming that the text has
> the status of a historical document.

Not necessarily as such: the story can be true or false. But within
the story, the authorial voice claims that the six blind men are
referring to the same object, *and* that it is an elephant. This
is rank metaphysical spookery.

The point of the parable, surely, is that we all see things from
our own limited perspectives. But the poem is self-undermining, because
of the existence of an authorial voice who uses "the Elephant" =
lobi'e xanto, and says "all of them are wrong". This voice can
only be the voice of omniscience, and if there is such a perspective,
then the notion of limited perspectives falls apart.

-- 
John Cowan <[email-masked]> http://www.reutershealth.com
I amar prestar aen, han mathon ne nen, http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
han mathon ne chae, a han noston ne 'wilith. --Galadriel, _LOTR:FOTR_