Re: In defence of philosophical languages (was: RE: Comparison of philosophical languages

----- Original Message -----
From: "And Rosta" <a.rosta@...>


> Sally summarizes the usual & valid objections to philosophical
> languages:
> > It was a tragic failure.  The seventeeth-century language philosophers
> > erred in thinking that they could replace the arbitrary and therefore
> > flawed system of natural language by a language that perfectly reflected
> > ratiocination and taxonomy (hence "philosophical").  Their words were
> > meant to DESCRIBE the nature of the things they symbolized and their
> > place within a huge map of listed items.  First, Wilkins wrote an
enormous
> > system into which he tried to put "universal" thought (not understanding
> > that his thought was basically inflected by seventeenth-century English
> > language and society).  Then he devised characters ("real characters")
that
> > would symbolize the basic elements of those thoughts, uttered in single
> > syllables, and which could be arrived at if you understood his
complicated
> > taxonomy.  Then he applied what he supposed were the most rational
sounds
> > to represent those syllables of thought.  His error was that that is
> > exactly not how language works.  All his root vegetables were expressed
> > in words that sounded too much alike, once you climbed down the ladder
of
> > his system Real language operates in our minds through difference, and
> > its symbols are ultimately arbitrary in origin: radish, carrot, turnip,
> > beet, parsnip, rutabega... these words have many different origins, and
> > they are ultimately easier to distinguish than elevela, elevale,
elevali,
> > elevalo, elevalily, etc.  Wilkins' system also allowed for no
neologisms,
> > and ultimately his language was just too difficult to learn.
>
> Yes, a language needs room for neologisms. Yes, a language that embodies
> a purely taxonomic map of meaning is unsatisfactory. But...
>
> Any language is partly a map of conceptual space, a kind of index to
> an encyclopedia of thought. It seems a virtue for the language to
> aspire to make its mapping visible to the inspection of the ordinary
> speaker and not just to the scholar.
I agree, And.  And it is refreshing to see a defense made of the principles
behind philosophical languages.  And I agree that to a great extent, English
and the languages it has borrowed from do just that kind of mapping.  Go in,
go out, go through, go around; depend, detract, ingest, exhale, inhale, etc.
But ultimately, one doesn't have to be a historical linguist to know the
etymologies of a word to understand it.  (Do we understand how 'understand'
came to mean what it does?  Or 'withstand'?)  I would, however, find it
difficult to sort through all Andrew's vegetable words based on their
descriptions.  As you say below:

> Differences between things, such as carrots and potatoes, need to
> be reflected in wordshape by phonological differences that reflect
> the unconfusability of carrots and potatoes. But at the same time,
> there are reasons for wanting to have words with similar or related
> meaning have similar or related sound. One reason is that an iconic
> map of conceptual space is a better (more faithful) map. Another
> reason is that the iconicity makes the language easier to learn.
> Another reason is that there is a universal tendency in language to
> develop iconicity: we see it in compounding, in phonaesthemes, and
> in sets like {north, south}, {east, west}, {female, male}, {dog,
> hog, frog, polliwog (tadpole)}.
True, but many of these examples you cite are arbitrary similarities.  Hog,
dog, and frog?  My understanding of their differences is not based on the
fact that they rhyme.  I've developed specific mental images for each of
these sounds, as I have as well for pig, canine, and amphibian.

> I conclude that Wilkins's effort was not bad relative to the
> state of knowledge of his time, and his efforts, rather than
> discrediting his entire enterprise, allow us to learn from his
> mistakes yet still attempt a project that preserves his goals
> to some extent.
I do not discredit it; his own times discredited it--for a number of
reasons; for his presentation, perhaps, for lack of interest, for ignorance,
for its inaccessibility.  One of the reasons that this kind of obsession
with taxonomy in language was not copied, though, in later IALs, was the
understanding that it had a basic unworkability to it.  To be sure, many
languages form words from compounds and parts.  But to control the map to
that degree was seen to be untenable.  And still is.  And too hard to learn.
You had to learn the taxonomy first, in Wilkins' case, and then the words
and characters.  Esperanto was much more successful.

> So a modern philosophical language would have the following
> properties:
> * Its model of basic/major categories would be based on the study
> of natural language semantics.
Absolutely.

> * Words with similar/related meanings should in shape be half
> similar and half different. But the different half may be similar
> to other words related in a different way. For example, the
> shape of the word for carrot might have a tubery component in
> common with the word for potato, and an orangey component in
> common with copper, red hair, fire, etc., much as, say 'crunch'
> has elements of meaning in common with other cr- words and
> other -unch words.
You mean like crack and munch?  Snack?  lunch?  A "crop" or a "bunch" of
carrots?

Okay... but already this is already getting a little promiscuous.  What
about scrunch?  Junction? Crud?  Cram?  Crayon?  Granted, this would all be
with an invented language, but the cross-pollination with sounds and
categories gets complicating when vocabulary grows.  It's all just a little
too controlled for me.  But I'll follow along here.

> * The more systematically analysable a semantic field is (within
> the constraints of cognitive naturalism), the more systematic
> the sound--meaning iconicities can be.
But you can have iconicities in a non-philosophical language.  Plenty of
them.

Okay, a final word.  I think the philosophical language argument is
secondary to the major argument (that has developed into what Andrew feels
as "flames") about the issue of advocacy.  I apologize heartily to Andrew if
he felt that my counter arguments and my suggestions to look at this or that
book were felt as "flames," or if I seemed to agree with people he felt were
"flaming" him.  (My most recent post has not shown up on my screen; you'll
see it when it gets there.  I'm pretty straightforward).  There is a reason
why we try to keep advocacy issues separate from art issues.  People's
feelings get hurt; their enthusiastic work dumped on, the list becomes a
private club which feels invaded... For heaven's sakes, it's beginning to
start again, this craziness about propoganda, and I think the fire should be
quenched.  Andrew, my apologies if I have hurt you; yes, you are getting
beat up a little bit, but you have to understand that we've had some fierce
flame wars about this kind of thing, and people are sensitive.  You yourself
are beginning that round of accusations, calling people flamers.  I would be
happy to look at your invention as an experiment in the revival of a
philosophical language.  But not in the spirit of someone who is about to be
overcome by its utility and its superiority to other invented languages.  We
don't do that here.  And if that is your sole aim, to replace all language
with the latest model, then rejection is felt more keenly.  That's why
AUXLANG split off.  The tension was just too unbearable.

If my prior remarks show up after I have posted this one to the list, my
apologies again, Andrew, for the hysteron proteron.
But I think I said basically the same thing there that I've said here.
Maybe it just got least in the ether.

Sally Caves
scaves@frontiernet.net
Eskkoat ol ai sendran, rohsan nuehra celyil takrem bomai nakuo.
"My shadow follows me, putting strange, new roses into the world."