biting the hand that feeds us?

[lojbab (Bob LeChevalier)]

Eric Raymond may be disappointed in Lojban after what I say, but he will have
something to hate worse than "du".  

I respond, hopefully apolitically, to the first of his two repostings, which
argued the definition of 'society' that allows 'society' to have needs.
This linguistic situation, contrary to what I believe eric was saying, is the
result of natural language, especially western indo-european (since I can make
no claim about others) tendency to personify any and every concept that is
personifiable.  This leads to the corporate individual, which he argues as a
linguistic ~e(fallacy (I think).  But I suspect it is a fallacy only if it 
goes unrecognized - and much in language goes unrecognized at the time we say
it.  He is thus practicing wishful thinking.

In any event, the corporate indivdual arises linguistically in a totally
different way than he suggests OR that European languages actually do.  This
is in the 'mass' concept that shows up in Lojban's 'loi' and 'lei' and 'lai'.
The concept derives from the Trobriand Islanders, among others, who view
evry rabbit as an instance of Mr. Rabbit - the mass concept of rabbit.  By the
same world-view, evry person is an instance of Mr. Person (loi prenu) and

Statements that are true of any rabbit are true of Mr. Rabbit.  Staements true
of any one person are true of Mr. Person.  I would contend that the 'society'
definition that people use(misuse?) in the manner eric describes is
'Mr. Person', and hence, if indeed any one person is hungry, than 'society
is hungry'.

Now this kind of world-view is not supportive of indivuality, personal freedoms,
etc. - it is strong on interdependency.  The various doctrines of the 'Gaia'
hypothesis might therefore see all of us, and all creatures plants and natural
resources as instances of Mr. Earth (Ms. Gaia?).

If all of this seems unlikely or unaccesptable, look within yourself.  You are
thinking about what I write (I hope).  But is it you who is thinking, or merely
some portion of the neurons in your brain.  It is legitimate to say that you
are thinking only if you can generalize from the individual who is a portion of
the mass to the entire mass.  Thus to call it wrong that 'society' can be hungry
also calls it wrong that 'you' can think.

(Note that there are some theories that in effect each of our cells is really
not one but two independent life forms - the cell proper and the mitochondria
living in symbiosis.  Then we are merely symbiotic results of many independent
cells that have evolved through natural selection to respond to signals from
neighboring cells.  So we are a 'society' of cells, and 'we' cannot be hungryy
only our indivdual cells can.)

This of course takes the argumnent to the extreme.  The point is that language,
especially Lojban, must be open to many world-views, and Lojban by its goals
must be designed to avoid prohibiting any more than minimally necessary,
except in the places where intentional constraints exisst (the logic part).
While typical English speakers do not understand the Lojban mass concept, I
think it is one of the neater things in the language, and it has probably
changed my own world-view in a direction opposite from eric's.  Luckily eric
need not use mass description in Lojban, but he may find that others doing so
will make for even more of what he considers 'erroneous thinking' than occurs
in English.

lojbab