Subject: Re: meaningless language.

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sun, 4 Mar 2001 18:44:12 EST

ko'a ru'a satci bangu .i ko'e ru'a traci bangu .i ro da poi jufra bau ko'a 
zo'u go da selsmuni gi le xe fanva be da bei ko'e be'o selsmuni i ku'i ma 
bangu ka satci i ma poi xe fanva da ko'e cu se cipra fi leka selsmuni.

Enough! (to show my lojbanic incompetence as well as to get started on the 
point). xod's proposal looks like only the Logically Perfect Language part 
of the usual testafiability criterion and so may avoid the problem of 
self-application (though maybe not). So we have s sentence in English, say, 
that we suspect of being meaningless. So we translate it into LPL (NOT 
Lojban, I hope) and check. But how do we translate it into LPL? Maybe an 
algorithm that always gives a unique and accurate traslation? We know that is 
impossible for moving from a natural language to LPL, since a natural 
language sentence is almost always ambiguous and fuzzy. Okay, then maybe an 
algorithm that, applied to a given situation, gives a unique and accurate 
translation of the sentence as applied to that situation? Well, maybe 
indeed, and we can guarantee uniqueness then. But what about accuracy? 
Well, a translation is accurate, we may suppose without too much cavilage, 
just in case it means the same thing as the original. But what if the 
original has no meaning? Will it be possible to have meaningless sentences 
in LPL and, if so, how is it perfect? Typically, this question gives rise to 
one or the other of: well there is one meaningless expression in LPL into 
which all meaningless sentences translate and which, of course plays no 
further role in the language. Or meaningless sentences don't translate into 
LPL at all and so the right side in the equation is false for containing a 
nondenoting expression {le xe fanva be da bei ko'a be'o} (or we can fiddle 
the equation in some insignificant way, using bound variables rather than 
descriptions).
But all this assumes, to be effective, that we have agreed that the algorithm 
is correct (this gets worse, of course, without the algorithm but relying on 
mere skill in translating). And, as soon as one's favorite claim is shown to 
be meaningless on this test, one withdraws one's agreement, pointing to the 
result just mentioned as evidence (adequate evidence, yet) that the algorithm 
is not correct, since it gives here an inaccurate result. So we try another 
algorithm that works in this case and the cycle repeats itself.
But we might have objective tests for accuracy, at least the extensional one 
that the original and the translation are true in exactly the same cases. 
Way too weak, since it allows all true sentences of mathematics, say, have 
the same translation and similarly all the "laws of nature." But more 
importantly in a practical sense, the person whose sentence was declared 
meaningless presumably thinks that it is sometimes true and so will know that 
no translation which makes it meaningless (and thus never true) can be right.
We could move on to saying that accuracy means being the same in every 
possible situation, but -- quite aside from xod's determination not to allow 
such things (as I understand) -- this notion has little explanatory power (ya 
gets out what ya puts in), so the problem of rejecting accuracy remains 
unresolved. 
And that doesn't even touch the issue of an exact (or LP) langauge.