PHILOSOPHY/TECH: place structures and metaphysical parsimony

[Logical Language Group <lojbab@ACCESS.DIGEX.NET>]

Someone raised the question about Aristotelian motion as a justification
for deleting the agent place.  I've thought about it, and decided that
muvdu has other problems, but also that the argument raises far more
troubling questions.  I believe it reflects a severe cultural bias built
into the language, one which may be insoluble.

Specifically, while we have for the most part eliminated 'unnecessary'
metaphysics from many/most of our concepts, resulting in metaphysical
parsimony, in many others we have not.  The specific bias that we have
retained is the bias towards the way we know things to work nowadays.
Thus when you fall, you fall in a gravity well.  When you are lifted,
there is a force that lifts you.

Well, if we go back to Aristotle there is no concept of gravity - that
was Newton, wasn't it, 2000 years later?  I'm not sure when "force"
came to be a legit concept, but suspect it was long after Aristotle.

Animals are of species, which presumes that people practice taxonomy.
I suspect that children do not, and in fact do the inverse (all 4-legged
animals are "doggy" at first) when very young.

Shadows are caused by a light source.  Well try to explain the opening
scene of Peter Pan, when he needs his shadow sewn back on.

When we are ill, it is with symptoms x2, but there is also an x3 disease.
This is possibly just another taxonomy question.

Perhaps these are enough examples to reveal the problem.  I'm not sure
what, if any, could be the solution.  You see, it is perfectly possible
for us to talk about a relation used in the past that is now obsolete,
but how do you deal with a relation that is not yet meaningful.  The
mere existence of a word in the language presumes that there is a
meaningful concept there, and the assumption of meaningfulness is itself
a metaphysical bias.  I understand that Classical Greek civilization had
no concept of "zero".  Well how then do you translate a Greek (or Roman)
mathematical text that did not need/rely on zero, nor on modern standard
mathematical notation that depends on the digit 0?

If we are really dealing with meaningfulness paradoxes, let us
hypothesize a relationship between an arm (it not being important whose
it is), a property abstract of a ring or loop, a (real) mental force (not
necessarily associated with an individual mind - let us presume some
kind of overmind in the universe, and a transformation that takes place
for which we don't even today have an English word.

a. If this concept were meaningful to you, you'd have trouble putting it
together as a lujvo from the existing gismu list.  After all, I've given
one concept that does not exist today, a force that is occassionally
talked about by different philosophers that is conceptually different
depending on the philosopher, an objects for which I have specified that
one of the key places is omitted, and a property abstract totally
unrelated to any of the other things in any concept I can think of.
You'd have to zi'o up a storm to make this word, and/or make up a new
word which you simply could not explain to a person of today because it
simply lies outside of our comprehension.

b. The very existence in the language of this concept makes the
metaphysical assumption that the relationship is meaningful, and I tried
to invent one for which I can't conceive of it being meaningful.

Another, perhaps easier to grasp, example.  You recall perhaps our
discussions a couple months ago that led to zi'o - the nu zbasu with no
agent.  The concept that something can be made without having a maker.
We can grasp this only enough to say that it is impossible - it
contradicts the essence of "making".  It is a totally different concept.
Now imagine Lojban used in a society where such a concept exists, and
indeed is the norm.  Things come into being, organizations and
structures are built or assembled, things just HAPPEN.  There are no
agents at all.  How do we communicate "gasnu" to them, and its relatives
like gau and jai gau.  What do they do with all of those Lojban words
that have agentive places, and what do we do with those words they use
that don't have them.  I don't think it will be as simple as using zi'o,
since I think we might not even recognize that the various concepts are
related, the metaphysical gap between the two cultures is so profound.

A final example, one that I've actually protected us from without really
knowing why until now.  All the discussion about color words has been
colored in recent years by the model of color involving saturation, hue,
etc., and there has been a lot of talk about the color solid model.  But
that model and those words have no meaning to a culture that does not
have the current scientific understanding of color.  How would Aristotle
fill in the places of a color with a place for hue and saturation?  And
if we devise a new model of color in the future which does not involve
these concepts, how do we get rid of them from the language.  In this
case, I chose to try to get rid of all of the model places of colors,
leaving them to be added by BAI tags.  I always have felt less than
satisfied by this - we always have SOME model in mind when we select a
color.  But the bottom line is that langauges reflect a division of the
world into colors that does NOT obviously presume any particular physics.
So what I did, while it seems vaguely unsatisfying, isn't "wrong", it is
just metaphysically parsimonious.

But I think that if we did that with all gismu, we'd end up with a truly
lean language - indeed a Voksigid where EVERYTHING would need a
preposition.

I don't know what the answer is, but it seems to me that we have already
made some kind of compromise with language reality in this area, and it
is not one that we may easily be capable of undoing.  I'm not sure that
zi'o or anything else similar is the way to deal with concepts that are
"missing" a metaphysical concept.  It may be better to recognize that
this is a DIFFERENT concept, coin a new word in fu'ivla (or gismu if
appropriate) space, and then define its place structures in Lojban
long-windedly, not by trying to say that it "is zbasu with the maker".
I cannot see going throught the language and eliminating places that
reflect current physical knowledge concpets simply because those
concepts weren't present at some earlier day, but I'm also sure that
"zi'o" isn't really a satisfactory way to create them either.  Jorge has
mentioned the possibility of magical disappearance, which I might buy -
it fits my chaotic attitude towards the "science" of how to
place-structure a lujvo (though I admit it seems incongruous coming from
Jorge, whom I thought prone to maximally fat lujvo based on his earlier
comments).

I don't think we can change all the place structures to fit
Aristotelian, or Platonian concepts therefore, where such concepts are
incompatible with modern physical reality.  (Hmm, why am I suddenly
reminded of the ancient relativistic 4th tense that was the first
"heavy" discussion on Lojban List some 2 or 3 years ago?)

I know I ain't gonna stop the dictionary on this one, but I'd like the
philosophers among you to comment.  Perhaps someone also might be able
to rephrase this discussion in a non-language-specific manner enough
that it is suitable for conlang, since I suspect that the issue affects
all those who would design a language, and especially a language for
inter-cultural communciation.

lojbab

lojbab