Re: meanings not in english

----- Original Message -----
From: "Tim May" <butsuri@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Tuesday, May 13, 2003 6:16 PM
Subject: Re: meanings not in english


> Nik Taylor wrote at 2003-05-12 19:42:52 (-0500)
>  > Robert B Wilson wrote:
>  > > it's more logical to me than distinguishing just intention. the
>  > > result is often more important than the intention. if a person
>  > > intends to fly from the top of one skyskraper to another by
>  > > flapping their arms, their intention doesn't matter... they still
>  > > go splat.  i don't see why a language shouldn't distinguish both,
>  > > though...
>  >
>  > But, it's easier to know one's own intention than effect.  If I lie
>  > and tell someone their cooking was good when it was actually bad,
>  > is that beneficial or malicious?  It's debatable.  But, I can
>  > definitely know for a fact that I *intended* it to be beneficial.
>  >
>
> While I'm agnostic on whether it's more useful for a language to
> encode intention or effect, my understanding is that the words
> "malicious" and "malice" explicitly refer to to intent, so there's no
> such thing as a "malicious effect" in standard English.
>
Yes.  Of course, 'beneficial' refers solely to effect, so, in theory, a lie
could be both malicious and beneficial, or neither.