Subject: platonism, organicism and hardlinerism

From: And Rosta <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 21 Aug 2001 17:53:57 +0100

>>> Jorge Llambias <[email-masked]> 08/19/01 09:24pm >>>
#la nitcion cusku di'e
#
#>In the attitude to Lojban I will conventionally characterise as
#>'naturalistic', it is objected that 'hardliner' insistence on rigour
#>(particularly semantic rigour) places unwelcome constraints on creativity.
#
#If I may, I would like to open this one-dimensional categorization
#into a two-dimensional one. Let's consider two "rigor axes":
#semantic rigor and baseline rigor. We now have four groups, which
#I will arbitrarily designate as Lojbab, Xod, And, and Xorxes.
#
#Lojbab wants absolute baseline rigor, and is not overly concerned
#about semantic rigor. As long as it doesn't violate the baseline,
#anything goes, and if you have to do a triple somersault in the
#air in order to make sense of some baseline rule, then so be it,
#but the rule stands.
#
#Xod doesn't care about either rigor in particular. The point of
#the language is to communicate, and anything that facilitates
#communication is acceptable, whether that means taking liberties
#with the baseline or with strict semantics.
#
#And wants semantic rigor to be matched by baseline rigor, so
#whenever the baseline does not make sense it should be officially
#fixed.
#
#Xorxes cares most about semantic rigor, but doesn't give much of
#a hoot about the baseline.

(LOL)

To really get to the bottom of these differences of opinion, 
I think we have to introduce a further dimension, which I'll 
call Platonist versus Organicist.

Organicists see a language as a community of communicating
users and as a body of usage. Platonists see a language as an
abstract set of rules. (This 'Platonism' is also known as 
'Realism', but that latter term is far too liable to be 
misunderstood.) For Platonists, usage is not language, 
strictly speaking; usage is vocal noises or visible marks, 
which communicators interpret of an abstract set of rules. 
Now I am about the most rabid Platonist I know (among people 
& linguists in general, not only among Lojbanists). To me,
all that matters is the abstract set of rules that constitute 
the language. Usage is of value only in testing the viability 
of design features in the abstract specification -- rather as 
if, to reuse a metaphor introduced by Xod, the only value of 
driving a car was to test the efficacy of the car's design. 
Now if the 'baseline' is understood as meaning the official
specification of the rules that to a Platonist constitute the 
language, then you characterize my position exactly. But to 
some people the baseline also defines norms or parameters of 
conformant behaviour; i.e. it defines whether usage counts as 
proper Lojban. Now here we get a different set of ideologies: 
(a) Xod and Xorxes who don't care whether the usage of the 
community at large conforms to the baseline, and (b) Lojbab 
and Belknap-Koenig who do care, and do want usage to conform 
to the baseline. Lojbab and Belknap-Koenig differ on whether 
the baseline should be alterable or not. I, on the other hand, 
care about usage only if the abstract rules that constitute 
the language are going to be derived inductively from usage -- 
i.e. I care only if usage is an instrument or determinant of 
design. So by Jorge's classification, And and Belknap-Koenig 
are in the same corner, but in fact And is in the Belknap-Koenig 
corner only because the 2-dimensional classification is too crude.

(Note, btw, that Platonism doesn't derogate the value of
linguistic expression, of literature, and so on. I value 
linguistic expression as much as I value Platonic language, 
but personally when it comes to a vehicle for linguistic 
expression, I am ardently and uxoriously wedded to English.)

--And.