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The message this is responding to said the following:
It listed 3 small changes to CLL -- the total number of changes
required: changes to default quantifier of lo/le, so that no overt
quantifier is equivalent to no quantifier (tu'o), plus a change to
the meaning of the virtually-never used inner PA of lo.
It pointed out that very little usage would be invalidated and that
a significant amount of usage might become validated.
It pointed out that it would make sayable everything we have been
wanting to make sayable, and would remove the thorny issue of
sayability/expressiveness from the task of sorting out the other
gadri.
The minimum negative response I would have hoped for from a thinking
contributor to the BF would be to point out any unnoticed flaws in
the scheme and/or to propose a better one. But I would have hoped
for an enthusiastically positive response from any thinking
contributor, given that the changes are so minimal, and the gains so
immense.
If there are political considerations that render this scheme so
egregious that its content should not even be considered, then
political considerations nullify all reason, and there is no point
in my continuing, for I am truly incapable of making reason
subservient to politics so completely that it is entirely
extinguished.
If anyone but Nick had made this response, I'd have thought to
myself "Well, I always knew there'd be unthinking kneejerk reactions
flying around, but I can trust to Nick's leadership to keep them at
bay, since conservatives trust him to keep changes to the minimum,
and lojbanologists trust him to insist on rationality and its
embodiment in lojbanic principles". And knowing that the future
of the Lojban prescription was in the hands of the BF, and the BF
in the hands of Nick, gave me a certain degree of confidence in
Lojban's future and the will to help bring the BF's project to
fruition.
As Lojbab says, there are lines in the sand. Mine is that rationality
can't be subservient to politics. Yes, politics can be a consideration:
"I prefer X to Y" can be one argument among other more rationally-
founded ones. But "I don't like it, so it is inadmissible for rational
consideration" is not an acceptable response.
--And.
----- Original Message -----
From: Nick Nicholas <opoudjis@hidden.email>
To: <jboske@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Saturday, August 09, 2003 1:31 AM
Subject: [jboske] torch
> I had a huge flame of jboske ready to send last night. I didn't. I send
> this now, though.
>
> A Lojban which contains {lo} = Kind is so incommensurable with CLL, and
> so manifestly against the entire spirit of the language (which is
> founded on Quine and not Montague), that its acceptance will force me
> to cut ties with the language. I will not relearn {lo}, and I will not
> ask anyone else to; this is where I draw the line.
>
> Jorge started that particular thread by saying it was a revisionist
> fantasy, and I need not read it. I wish And had stuck to that. And this
> is why I did not want BPFK discussions to happen on jboske as it
> stands. I should not even have to entertain consideration of change so
> disruptive.
>
> I am supposed to wade through 500 K of this produced over just five
> days, with no sign of letup. Frankly, I no longer see the point of any
> of this --- or of starting to have my sleep, day job and research start
> suffering again for this. And, if you can't see by now that this is the
> kind of proposal that *should not be made at all to BFPK*, then go
> ahead and make it. But you have my veto.
>
> --
> Dr Nick Nicholas, French & Italian, University of Melbourne, Australia.
> http://www.opoudjis.net nickn@hidden.email
> "Most Byzantine historians felt they knew enough to use the optatives
> correctly; some of them were right." --- Harry Turtledove.
>
>
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