lujvo for philosphers

[Steven Belknap <sbelknap@UIC.EDU>]

>Wittgenstein died of prostate cancer in 1951.

True. Wittgenstein was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1949.
Interestingly, although he said that "he had no desire to go on", he
continued to work intensely on his philosophy until his death in 1951. He
expressed feelings of alienation and longing for suicide throughout his
career. His brother did commit suicide. The correct statement is thus
"Wittgenstein was suicidal." rather than "Wittgenstein was a suicide." He
did conclude that philosphical inquiry was a sign of mental illness, and
appears to have met the DSM-IV criteria for severe depression. His work
seems to have been an urgent attempt to correct cognitive distortions now
considered diagnostic of depression.  He earns my respect as the most
honest philosopher I have read. Unfortunately, he lived and died prior to
the development of cognitive psychotherapy or fluoxetine.

Regarding the choice of tanru or lujvo for philosophy, I would suggest that
some persons will choose metaphors which differ from those of other
persons, and that these metaphors may reflect their cultural, intellectual,
and linguistic biases. I see no problem with this whatsoever. In the
process of distilling mutually agreeable lujvo, we may learn a lot about
our unacknowledged biases. One man's terrorist is another man's freedom
fighter. If one wants to refer to the concept represented by the English
word "philosophy", I would suggest resorting to a fu'ivla. Same goes for
words like "communism". If you construct a lujvo for these words, they will
be very new concepts, as much of their meaning resides in their historical
and linguistic context. "Biology" or "Statistics" on the other hand, are
self-correcting, and their essence ought be straightforwardly expressable
in a lujvo.

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