Re: logical gaffs

[Robin Turner <robin@BILKENT.EDU.TR>]

It occurred to me that one problem in political discourse results not from
politicians making obvious logical gaffs (like the ones I posted) but more
often from vague but appealing statements, which are often - for various
semantic and pragmatic reasons - not readily scrutinised.  A common error
is, in Lojban terms, missing out important sumti.  For example, it is very
common for a politician to say "Our country needs X", which will go
unchallenged because no one wants to suggest that our country might not
need such an important thing as X (free medical care / vocational education
/ stealth bombers etc. etc.).  Now let us imagine a politician in
Lojbanistan (if such creatures would still exist) saying

mi'o gugde cu nitcu X     (hope I've got the grammar right this time!)

I would guess that a Lojban-speaker would automatically answer

cu nitcu ko'a ma

We could also imagine similar Lojban "heckling" along the lines of

mi'o cu bilga ko'a ma

and so on.  I think this is much more productive than the simple question
"why?".  Ask a politician "why?" and you get an hour-long speech about
something completely different.

(at the risk of having my HTML further scrutinised, I invite Lojbanites to
have a look at my web essay "How to get an 'ought' from an 'is'"
(<http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Delphi/8309>) for a philosophical (more
than political) look at these questions of need and obligation)

Similarly a lot of psychotherapy involves getting people to fill in their
missing sumti.  For example, if someone says "I need X" (love / security /
sex / approval etc.) possible responses are "For what?" or "What will
happen if you don't get it?"  I would imagine this kind of thing would
again be easier in Lojban.


Robin Turner

Bilkent Universitesi,
IDMYO,
Ankara,
Turkey.

<http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Delphi/8309>