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

From: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 14 Feb 2002 15:37:24 EST

In a message dated 2/14/2002 1:21:55 PM Central Standard Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

> 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.
> 

It depends what version you read. My memory of the Jain version that they 
make the point that the narrators view is also only a maybe, one which 
encompasses the blind men's views, but not the whole truth. Incidentally, 
they would not say that any of these views is wrong (none of them is, in 
fact), they are just partial. And the whole is so unexpressible that its 
ineffability cannot even be expressed -- maybe.