CPE: philosophy

[Mark Vines <vinesm@wholefoods.com>]

coidoi lobypli

Please help me to translate into Lojban the word
"philosophy", as used by Corliss Lamont in the
following passage from _The Illusion of Immortality_:

> "All men are mortal" begins the most famous
> of all syllogisms, and it proceeds to tell
> us that "Socrates is a man" and "therefore
> Socrates is mortal."  The branch of philosophy
> known as logic has made much of this syllogism
> as an example of perfect reasoning; what is
> more significant is the prodigious amount of
> time and energy which philosophy as a whole
> has spent on inquiring into its true and
> complete meaning.  On that meaning have been
> thought to hang the destiny of man, the fate
> of nations and even the existence of God.
> The real question has been:  How seriously
> are we to take the proposition that men and
> Socrates are mortal?  For there exists a
> well-known counter-proposition to the effect
> that men and Socrates are _im_mortal; or at
> least that what we call their personalities
> or souls are immortal.  In fact, Socrates
> himself, if the _Dialogues_ of Plato are to
> be trusted, was one of the first to advance
> the hypothesis of the soul's immortality.

Please keep these points in mind:

Etymologically, the word "philosophy" means
"love of wisdom".

IMO, to say that philosophy is a type of science
is like saying that the set of all mammals is a
species of jackrabbit.

IMO, to say that empiricism is peculiar to
Western philosophy, or that wisdom is peculiar
to Eastern philosophy, is to assert a proposition
which is not only chauvinistic, but ignorant &
wrong.  But even if such propositions were true,
their Lojbanic expression should be in bridi, not
in lujvo.

The meaning of the word "philosophy" certainly
does vary from culture to culture, from person
to person, from adolescence to adulthood & so
forth.  Is that a good reason to translate the
word by using a fu'ivla rather than a lujvo?  If
so, then the current jvoste is full of lujvo that
ought to be replaced by fu'ivla.  Such words as
{zgikalsa}, {grusko}, {saurgu'e}, {ruxycrida},
{farja'o} & {bacycu'e} all vary in meaning from
culture to culture.

According to Corliss Lamont, "philosophy" is like
a gigantic tree, of which logic, science, ethics,
mathematics, ontology, epistemology, aesthetics,
metaphysics & many other {seltadni} are merely
branches.  If we are to translate Lamont faithfully,
we must not use for "philosophy" a lujvo whose
denotation would exclude any of those branches.
Are any excluded by {lei vricyterctu}?

Perhaps the morphology of Lojban is sufficiently
robust for an adequate expression of "philosophy".
Perhaps not.

co'omi'e markl.