Re: psychotherapeutic lojban

["Lee Daniel Crocker (none)" <lcrocker@MERCURY.COLOSSUS.NET>]

> In an ideal world, but is there really any chance that Lojban will
> bring about any of this beneficial increase in logicality?
> Would be prepared to say this to your peers & colleagues?

I certainly have that hope.  It is amazing to me the amount of
useless information and pure idiom that can become second nature
to all of us, and relish the idea of creating in a child's mind
those same unthinking idomatic reactions that actually have some
logical purpose.  For example, a German 6-year old has no problem
with the fine distinctions of noun case and gender in phrases
like "aus dem Wasser" and "wahrend des Tages".  They just "sound
right" to him, and he can apply that knowledge to other cases
without much thought.  Such "rules" simply become idiomatic.

Wouldn't it be great to have a language in which such rules
actually had a logical purpose?  So that a sentence that "didn't
sound right" probably had some geniuine logical reason for not
sounding right?  I which we could teach a child about logical
connectives in a language where he's already learned to use them
naturally without necessarily understanding them, and in which
understanding is not an exercise in fighting the language rules
he's already accustomed to, as is the case in English?

It sometimes takes a long time to explain  to English speakers
that "and" and "but" are logically equivalent.  A native Lojban
speaker wouldn't have to take any time to understand that--he's
been using "and in contrast..." all his life.  A Lojban native
wouldn't have to spend a week understanding why {mi na nelci
lo mlatu} applies to all cats--he would simply know that by
idiom, and maybe later when it was explained to him, he'd say
"of course", and move on.

Even if it doesn't increase the use of logical thought, it can
serve as a great auxilliary language for use where such logical
thought is really needed--scientific and technical papers,
contracts and treaties, stored information, etc.

--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lcrocker.html>
"All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past,
are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified
for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC