On Wed, 14 Oct 1998, Tom Wier wrote:
> Nik Taylor wrote:
>
> > Charles wrote:
> The way I read it, the writer of the second line here was saying
> rather that there is nothing silly about the issue, and that it is on
> the contrary something that should be taken with some degree
> of seriousness. The point was NOT that races aren't equal,
> they are; the point was that it was not a silly thing to talk about
> them being so, likewise with languages.
Yes, it was an argument by analogy. I simply reject that analogy.
A better one is "all cars are equally good".
> Any attempt to use terms of value judgment areat base flawed, and are outside the
> scientific realm of doing things.
You can't say that without self-contradiction, because it is
a value judgement to do so: "Value judgements are bad!"
> I would even deny the ability to build -- there is *no* basis on
> which one can make such a language any more than another
> on the macrolinguistic scale. It's critical to understand that
> dichotomy (the one between microlinguistic and macrolinguistic
> issues), because it's the difference between life and death
> of his position.
Any tool can be made better or worse.
Aren't we all engineers here?