Hallo conlangers!

This will definitely be my last post for today as it is my fifth already ...

On 05.10.2015 18:34, R A Brown wrote:

> On 05/10/2015 16:27, David McCann wrote:
> [snip]
>> I know how you feel! I have a couple of rules to guide my
>> reading: never read anything containing the words
>> "semiotics" or "deconstruction". I can now add a third:
>> "loglang". Perhaps enthusiasts for such things need their
>> own list, like the auxlangers? I'll paaS on the aaS,
>> too.
>
> I think it would be a pity if we had another sundering.  the
> great Auxlang~Conlang Sundering was occasioned by the high
> volume of "Esperanto's great" v. "Esperanto sucks" emails,
> amounting to some 50 a day. 

We haven't reached that mark yet.

> Altho there's been a very
> slight of whiff of Lojban's great ~ Loglan sucks, paaS is
> fine ~ aaS ain't, I think we are _very far_ away from the
> sort of nonsense that has every so often bedeviled the
> Auxlang list (I left when we had, I think, four different
> versions of Novial, with the inevitable "my version's great,
> the others all suck").

I see.  I wasn't around here when that happened, so I cannot really 
compare.  The TLI Loglan vs. Lojban thing and the paaS vs. aaS thing 
reek of sectarianism, but they are not really as venomous as the 
quarrels of the auxlangers.

> --------------------------------------------------------
>
> On 05/10/2015 16:45, And Rosta wrote:
> [snip]
>> But discussion of loglangs is actually more on-topic than
>> most Conlang List traffic
>
> Very true - another reason I think an engelang~artlang
> sundering is not desirable.

Fair.  There is no need for a further sundering.  The problem with the 
auxlang community which led to the Great Sundering lay in the very 
nature of the idea of an auxlang itself: the idea is to have *one* 
language for everybody to use, and any new proposal of an auxlang 
implies a rejection of every previous proposal.

Engelangs are not like that.  Just because someone has built a language 
that is designed to achieve objective X, there is no reason why someone 
else should not also design a language meant to achieve the same 
objective.  Also, engelangs are always a source of ideas from which even 
artlangers can benefit by recognizing how little in language can be 
taken for granted, and what amazingly alien solutions may exist.

As I said earlier today, I am a naturalistic-diachronic artlanger, and 
my digressions into engelanging did not achieve much, but still, I 
cannot say that my interest in engelangs was zero.

>> (the divagations from ontopicness in which, I am as
>> guilty of as anybody, I admit).
>
> Also very true   :-)

And I have to admit to have added some fuel by saying that loglangs were 
misguided because language and formal logic do not serve the same purpose.

> ---------------------------------------------------------
>
> On 05/10/2015 16:52, Logan Kearsley wrote:
> [snip]
>> I shall try not to say anything *too* controversial that
>> would draw you out of your comfortable lurk, Ray,
>
> Thanks - but I find your emails interesting.    ;)
>
>> but I actually disagree slightly on this point, in a
>> manner that actually highlights one of the differences
>> between human languages and computer languages.
> [snip]
>
>> So, while Prolog needs the 'cut' to violate purity and
>> make a useful programming language, a human-usable
>> loglang might not.
>
> _Might_, I think, is the important word.  I think one point
> I wanted to make was the layman often gets the impression
> that computers are logical machines and, therefore, we
> should be able to program them using pure logic. As you have
> explained, Prolog needs the cut.

There has been a lot of confusion about what "logic" means and what is 
"logical" about "logic circuits".  These are named thus because they are 
capable of computing "logic operations" such as NOT, AND or OR, which 
are of course nothing else than simple binary arithmetic functions.  
Computers certainly aren't "logical machines" in the sense of "reasoning 
machines", they are binary arithmetic machines.

"Logic" is a many-faceted word meaning many different things.  For 
example, there is the notion that the Vulcans of Star Trek should speak 
a loglang because they devote themselves to "logic".  I once thought 
like that, too, until I realized that Vulcan "logic" has nothing to do 
with formal logic!  There is as little reason for the Vulcans to speak a 
loglang as there is reason to program computers in one.

> I think the problems with human understanding are of a
> different order and not fully understood, and certainly the
> problems of a human mind using pure logic for communication
> will not be the same as those of a machine.

Certainly!  Human understanding and computer programming are two very 
different things, as should have become obvious in all the debate we 
have been having around here.

>
> I'll go back to lurking before I get too involved again (but
> will follow the exchanges between Patrik and you with
> interest - and try not to interrupt).
>

Fine.

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