Re: Philosophy (was: CPE: Corliss Lamont)

[Steven Belknap <sbelknap@uic.edu>]

Wittgenstein, who was a suicide, eventually concluded that philosophy was a
form of mental illness, or to be more precise, that the behavior of making
philosophical inquiry was a form of mental illness. This seems a defensible
position, given the tragic personal lives of most philosophers. Philosophy
is only dangerous when taken too seriously. Reading in philosophy is an
essential part of an education, as familiarity wiith mental illness is very
helpful in understanding history. The trial of Socrates is best appreciated
after several glasses of a good port. How about "pointless pondering" as an
English gloss for the lojban translation?

-Steven

 >la xorxes. cusku di'e
>
>> I think philosophy has to be a saske. [...]
>> Any suggestions from the philosophers?
>
>pc denounced this view, which was the original
>Loglan view, as long ago as 1980, and I posted his
>remarks to this list on 18 October 1993.
>I will repeat them here.
>
>[...] The L4/L5 (1975) word
>for "philosophy" is (the equivalent of) "pensi zei sakse", think-science.
>(Institute Loglan doesn't have an equivalent of "nun-".)
>
>In TL4/4:200, {pycy. cusku di'e}
>
>> This ... word is one of the worst items in the established Loglan
>> vocabulary.  Philosophy is not any kind of a science -- even the
>> pickwickian sorts that astrology or sociology are -- and hence is not
>> the science of thought, in particular.  That title might better go to
>> psychology, were it may not fit well, but certainly better than it does
>> for philosophy.... Since no canons of the scientific method -- and no
>> appeal to evidence of a scientific sort -- is relevant here, the best
>> words are surely those from the fields of airy argumentation.  Since
>> the subjects are words and/or ideads dealt with in a strange way or
>> ideologies ditto ("the analysis of concepts and the criticism of beliefs"
>> we used to say) how about something from [ciste ke sidbo darlu]
>> (the [ke] is to cover the two phases -- the systematic discussion of
>> ideas and the discussion -- admittedly also systematic, in the same sense
>> of ideologies -- systematized ideas, more or less.
>
>The resulting lujvo is "ci'erkemsibdau", not much worse than "philosopher".
>(This discussion neglects the distinction between "-y" and "-er".)
>
>--
>John Cowan                                              cowan@ccil.org
>                        e'osai ko sarji la lojban


Steven Belknap, M.D.
Assistant Professor of Clinical Pharmacology and Medicine
University of Illinois College of Medicine at Peoria