From: Lee Daniel Crocker (lcrocker@mercury.colossus.net)
Date: Tue Feb 16 1999 - 15:30:21 MST
[JRM]
> May we have the least difficult version of the question [why
> does something exist?] posed in Lojban, please?
Probably "ma rinka le nu da zasti", parsed roughly as "what is
the physical cause of the event/state (there-exists something
(in an unspecified but implied-to-exist metaphysics)) under
unspecified conditions"? The predicate word "rinka" could be
changed for the other meanings: "krinu" for "what is the
justification...", "nibli" for "what logically implies...",
"gasnu" for "who (agent) causes...", etc.
> BTW, how would Lojban handle the following statement?
>
> No one knows how existence came to exist, because no one has the information
> and intelligence to know it, or no one can ever have the information and
> intelligence to know it, or knowing it destroys the inquirer.
Ouch. Here's my best understanding of what that means (ignoring for
the moment that it is nonsensical drivel--at least in Lojban it would
be well-defined, understandable drivel):
da na djuno le du'u makau rinka le nu da zasti binxo
.i la'e di'u se nibli
ga ko'a goi le du'u da na zasti
le ponse be le rai selju'o .e le rai ni peistati be'u
gi ko'a noroi fatci
gi le nu djuno la'e di'u cu daspo le selju'ocpa
Roughly: "it is not the case that (there-exists someone who knows by
unspecified epistemology (indirect-question (what is the physical cause
of the state that something came to exist))), and this is logically
implied by one of the facts (it is not the case that (there-exists a
possessor of enough knowledge and enough thought-skill)), or ([pronoun
bound to the previous fact] is never true), or (the state of knowing
[pro-sentence for earlier predicate] destroys the knowledge-acquirer).
-- Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lcrocker.html> "All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past, are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC
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