Lingusitics Is a Logically Perfect Language Possible?

[Philocrat]

Is it possible to construct a Logically Perfect Language? If so, of what value is such a language?

 

[Imparcticle]

Exactly what do you mean by perfect?

When I first read your question, I immediately thought of self organising systems and chaos. Essentially, for any given system, there will be a set of basic rules such that the consequences of the rules will eventually become chaotic. That is, random. Is that a perfect system?
In the context of linguistics, the same holds true when various ways of expressing something will be derived from basic rules of the language. In order for a language to be perfect, does it need to have perfect ways of expressing something? Is this what you mean by perfect??

 

[Philocrat]

Exactly what do you mean by perfect?

When I first read your question, I immediately thought of self organising systems and chaos. Essentially, for any given system, there will be a set of basic rules such that the consequences of the rules will eventually become chaotic. That is, random. Is that a perfect system?
In the context of linguistics, the same holds true when various ways of expressing something will be derived from basic rules of the language. In order for a language to be perfect, does it need to have perfect ways of expressing something? Is this what you mean by perfect??

Well, some philosophers, logicians and mathematicians think that by digging deep into the underlying structure of our natural language (NL), We would (1) discover in greater detail the True Logical Forms of NL, (2) discover the irrelevant components of NL, (3) discover its underlying mathematical structures and show how NL quantifies the states of the world, and (4)finally construct a Logically sound or consistent Langauge with what is found in (1), (2) and (3). That the whole exercise is to use the newly derived Logically Consistent Langauge (LCL) to speak about and quantifies the states of the world in a way that avoids both nonsense and vagueness. So, clarity and elimination of the irrelevant from NL are presumably the ultemate goals of such a language.

My question is whether this is possble in the first place given that the fundamental structure of NL may very well reflect how the native speaker of NL is physically engineered into place or configured. For example, even if the construction of LCL were in the first place possible, could this be done without the physical intervention with the native speaker of NL? Well, these are just a few of the related questions. There are more related questions at hand, especially on the technical side of things.

 

[Aquamarine]

About constructed languages:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructed_language

There have been many attempts to construct a logical language:
http://minyeva.alkaline.org/links.htm

The best known is Lojban:
http://www.lojban.org/

Claimed advantages:

Lojban is designed to be used by people in communication with each other, and possibly in the future with computers.
Lojban is designed to be culturally neutral.
Lojban grammar is based on the principles of logic.
Lojban has an unambiguous grammar.
Lojban has phonetic spelling, and unambiguous resolution of sounds into words.
Lojban is simple compared to natural languages; it is easy to learn.
Lojban's 1300 root words can be easily combined to form a vocabulary of millions of words.
Lojban is regular; the rules of the language are without exception.
Lojban attempts to remove restrictions on creative and clear thought and communication.
Lojban has a variety of uses, ranging from the creative to the scientific, from the theoretical to the practical.

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapir-Whorf_Hypothesis

 

[Philocrat]

About constructed languages:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructed_language

There have been many attempts to construct a logical language:
http://minyeva.alkaline.org/links.htm

The best known is Lojban:
http://www.lojban.org/

Claimed advantages:

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapir-Whorf_Hypothesis

Well, if Lojban, for example, meets the strict criteria of LCL and a lot of effort has been put into make it so, then you are still faced with the problem of getting the rest of the world to give up their different forms of NL and adopt your new LCL, Lojban. If you faill to convince the rest of the world to adopt it, and out of frustration engineer Lojban into computers and computers alone, you may very well end up creating computers that outfox the humans both in thoughts and creativity. Thanks for the links, anyway. I will study their contents in more detail.

 

[Imparcticle]

IOW, philocrat, you wish to construct a purely mathematical language? like modern day math?
how do you define irrelavant components of NL?

 

[RingoKid]

maybe not construct but discover, as I believe it already exists we just haven't learned it yet...

...maybe the dolphins and whales have though

the value would be never being misunderstood or misquoted out of context such that a true exchange of ideas/thoughts could take place without words getting in the way.

 

[Moses]

Well. let's come to if from quite different angle.

Let's assume that God exist, if God is perfect, so God speak perfectly, if any proven [and really proven, not just by faith] saying of that God happened "as book..or as speech" in any human language, that language should be "perfect" since God by definition is perfect and thus cannot happened that God could not express the idea meant by Him unperfectly..

In other words: if a language is proven to be perfectly suitable to reach ideas [that is what language is for..in the very bottom basic] thus we could claim that this language is perfect. A good technique might be using "God speech" thus if he exist.

Is this valid?

 

[selfAdjoint]

It's not valid because it's a mode called ignotus per ignotem; expalining something you don't know in terms of something else you don't know. God existence is at least as controversial as the existence of the perfectly logical language.

There was an artificial language called Loglan, constructed to embody prepositional calculus. Does anyone know anything about it?

 

[Aquamarine]

There was an artificial language called Loglan, constructed to embody prepositional calculus. Does anyone know anything about it?

Lojban is an offshoot of Loglan. I think interest in Loglan is quite low these days.

 

[Moses]

It's not valid because it's a mode called ignotus per ignotem; expalining something you don't know in terms of something else you don't know. God existence is at least as controversial as the existence of the perfectly logical language.

There was an artificial language called Loglan, constructed to embody prepositional calculus. Does anyone know anything about it?

Let me be asking a stupid question sound-like, at least one in my life [honestly, i did it loads in childhood ] :

So, if God exists as a fact...so perfect language could exists if God use it to communicate with humans? Does it?

Yeah yeah, i am not branching to thread to "God existence issue"

 

[selfAdjoint]

Let me be asking a stupid question sound-like, at least one in my life [honestly, i did it loads in childhood ] :

So, if God exists as a fact...so perfect language could exists if God use it to communicate with humans? Does it?

Yeah yeah, i am not branching to thread to "God existence issue"

Seems you would have to assume too many human characteristics of your "god". For example that he uses a spoken language, so he can teach it to humans. Why would the everlasting, unseen, omnipotent being have vocal chords? Many old religions have come to grief through attributing human characteristics to their numinous constructs.

 

[Moses]

Seems you would have to assume too many human characteristics of your "god". For example that he uses a spoken language, so he can teach it to humans. Why would the everlasting, unseen, omnipotent being have vocal chords? Many old religions have come to grief through attributing human characteristics to their numinous constructs.

Mmmm...
Well, so God want to communicate with you [If he exists]...Should He use a way that if you, and your son, and your grandson spends all your life to understand it and will never got it a "stoke" of it?...Or should He use a tool to comminucate with "too smatry homo-sapiens" that they could got His point?

I think the core use for language is to "transfer ideas". So both sides should "understand" it to get its results...

Well, for keeping the thread on its original track: in short; when we say "God speaks" He does not do it as the human way of doing it I agree and thus i did not put human characteristaics of my and your "God" if he exists [And for sure He is ] I just use one word in language used in DIFFERENT ways to descirbe the "action" of [God communicating with creators] by the word "Speaking"

Simply "nothing as God in any of His attribute", thus why i am not Christian nor a Jew...

 

[TENYEARS]

Yes it has meaning. The language actually already exists. You only have to search and you will find this language. With it you may commicate to all of existence without saying a word.

 

[Moses]

And TENYEARS inspired me to re-say something in another way...thx

We are not "perfect" but a perfect being could use langaude "perfectly", thus i guess X language could have the potential to be used "perfeclty" by "perfect" user.

Simply just as math...if "perfect" user use it, he will always has "perfect answers"...if it used in X question perfeclty, will have "perfect" answer for that Q.

 

[Philocrat]

Yes it has meaning. The language actually already exists. You only have to search and you will find this language. With it you may commicate to all of existence without saying a word.

Tenyears, you are thinking ahead of your time. What you are suggesting here has deeply disturbing elements of truth in it. In summer 1998, I was in my room in London looking at the sum totality and end-state of the human perfection with regards to co-existence and communication, the resulting conclusion from this led to what you are proposing here. It was scary because I ran out of my room and went to a nearby pup to drown myself in beer. Infact, it is not only this type of language that may subsequently manifest. Apart from this Mind-reading status of a language, there is also the question of non-communication at all between existings beings. What would be the state of such a living condition? Would there still be such things as communal life? Would co-existing beings, subsequently construed as structurally and functionally perfect, disperse to lead their own absolute and independent existence? Or would the notion of co-existence manifest into what I constantly label 'MONOZOIDAL OR MONOPOIDAL STATE OF BEING, where the structurally and functionally perfect beings coexist non-differentially?

If your thesis of a 'WORDLESS LANGUAGE' is correct, then I suggest that this may be viable only in a MONOZOIDAL/MONOPOIDAL STATE OF BEING (or world if you like).

 

[Philocrat]

NOTE: Logically Perfection Langauge (LPL) has already been rigorously devised and contemplated by the like of Wittgenstein, Russell and others. But it seems that philosophers involved had a different thing in mind with regards to the fundamental purpose of LPL, perhaps without any need of porting it across to the native speakers of NL (Natural Language). It seems that LPL was intended for no other purpose than as a subtler and better tool for philosophical analysis. Should this be the case, it seems that LPL serves no significant purpose to the native speakers of NL in the real world.

Personally, I do not think that this is the right path to ply. I suggest that LPL, if it is analytically and functionally superior, should climb out of the closet of philosophy into the lime light, and be rendered relevant to the community of NL speakers. It should equally serve a superior purpose in the real world. One thing it should help us do is to allow us to think, speak, write and act clearly when we are interacting with each other. Who knows? ...this may very well possesses the capacity to write off conflicts between people of the world and beyond.

 

[loseyourname]

Logic is only useful in evaluating arguments. Any language that is not used to make an argument - the statement "close that door," for instance - cannot be logically perfect. It cannot be logically anything.

 

[Philocrat]

Logic is only useful in evaluating arguments. Any language that is not used to make an argument - the statement "close that door," for instance - cannot be logically perfect. It cannot be logically anything.

Some philosophers may not accept the statement 'close that door' as amounting to or constituting a true argument simply because it is a command. They claim that commands, metaphors, exclamations, questions and so forth are not propositions. The question now is, can logically acceptable arguments be constructed from any of these types of statement? If we can do this, we ought to able to count them as propositions with clearly accountable or derivable truth values or contents. You should also ask yourself this:

when we issue commands, ask questions, make exclamtions, hype things up with metaphors, do any of these forms of statement convey any information at all? If they do, couldn't we equally claim that they are also capable of being true or false?

Well, that controversy still remains, but a logically perfect language should be able to accommodate these forms of statement in a truth-valued or truth-validating manner. At the moment they are currently in what I call 'logico-linguistic limbo'. They simply hang in the logical space without identity, especially when truth validation is concerned.

 

[Philocrat]

STANDARD DEFINITION:

PROPOSITION: This is simply a collection of passively and explicitlty presupposed statements of facts. Better still, it is an abbreviation of a deductive argument. Or simply, a proposition is an argument. This is rooted in the standard belief that statements of facts or propositions do not just pop out of people's head without some deductive origin or implications. This is contrary to the notion of the given. The derivative principle renders the principle of the given logically and quantitatively spineless!

Problem: this definition of proposition, however, may turn inwardly regressive, depending on which school of thought handles it. Personally, I always use the 'truth boundary' principle to escape this.

 

[Jio Moonshadow]

Logical empiracle symbols for math and syntax. Nothing is perfect

 

[Philocrat]

Logical empiracle symbols for math and syntax. Nothing is perfect

Can you derive such symbols from our Natural Langauge (NL) without intellectually degrading NL, as is typically the case when some dicsiplines take logic from NL to purify and instead of returning it back to where they took it from, naively repackage and keep it for themselves, and then claim to have found or discoverd a new but Logically more precise language? Of course, we all know that nothing is perfect and that NL from which every discipline takes its logic is not either. Yes, so much so, and this is the main reason why it needs to be made more logically precise, but when we do take Logic out of NL to purify, is it not appropriate that when we finish doing so (if we can do it at all in the first place), we should gracefully return it back into NL where we took it from? This is one of the key questions that this thread is attempting to establish.

LPL is only worth our wihle if and only if we make it relevant to the life-blood of all the native speakers of NL, and I do hope that it helps us to think, speak, write and act clearly in our society. The BIG question now is how are we going to achieve this when paradoxes such as these kinds are not yet fully resolved in all the logics or logical systems that are already purportedly quantificationally purified?:

1) All cretans are Liars

2) This statement is false.

Or even the most logically absurd ones as:

3) I am convinced that I do not exist

4) I see, hear, sense, smell and belief that I do not exist, therefore I know that I do not exits.

5) I am 90 years old, but it is possible that I may have come into existence 6 minutes ago?

And so on. If LPL is possible in the first place, it must not only be able to clarify the above types of statement but also it must help to discourage people from ever making them.

 

[Jio Moonshadow]

Empiracle Symbols... Nothing is pefect.

 

[marley.wannabee]

i can personally think of no flaws with binary code as an already existing perfect language... sure humans will muff up the code but the code itself?? imo perfection

 

[scarecrow]

I was wondering about this question too. I know that the Arabic alphabet follows group theory for awhile, then breaks down. So I suppose one can conceivably construct a logical system of letters. But I'm not sure if this is what you're talking about.

 

[Mr. Therefore]

Some philosophers may not accept the statement 'close that door' as amounting to or constituting a true argument simply because it is a command.

All statements could be considered to be part of an argument, such as "shut the door", if the context of a situation is considered. Whether it's a good argument to shut the door or not is up to the unsaid statements that would make up the context of the argument.

An enthymeme is a good example. It is missing one premise. But it's still an argument. The context could imply others statements:

The wind is blowing. It's below zero. I have the flu. The door has been open for an hour. The heat is on full blast in the house, but it's going out the door. Shutting the door will stop the wind and cause the temperature to increase in the house.

The statement in this case, "shut the door", would make a great conclusion. Although is may be a command, a command implies a theory. The theory to shut the door. It based upon strong evidence. And therefore a good argument, although the contextual premises are unstated.

 

[Philocrat]

All statements could be considered to be part of an argument, such as "shut the door", if the context of a situation is considered. Whether it's a good argument to shut the door or not is up to the unsaid statements that would make up the context of the argument.

An enthymeme is a good example. It is missing one premise. But it's still an argument. The context could imply others statements:

The wind is blowing. It's below zero. I have the flu. The door has been open for an hour. The heat is on full blast in the house, but it's going out the door. Shutting the door will stop the wind and cause the temperature to increase in the house.

The statement in this case, "shut the door", would make a great conclusion. Although is may be a command, a command implies a theory. The theory to shut the door. It based upon strong evidence. And therefore a good argument, although the contextual premises are unstated.

Then you and I are in agreement. If you have a little bit of time, try and go through some of my recent responses to other people's postings elsewhere on this very issue. I was only drawing Looseyourname's attention to the fact that some philosophers, especially the so-called 'Analytical Philosophers', have controversially maintained that certain classes of statements such as commands, questions, exclamations, metaphors are not propositions because they are incapable of being true or false. I think my wider definition of 'Proposition' gracely accommodates all these classess of extrocised types of statements.
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Save our Planet...Stay Green. May the 'Book of Nature' serve you well and bring you all that is good!

 

[Philocrat]

i can personally think of no flaws with binary code as an already existing perfect language... sure humans will muff up the code but the code itself?? imo perfection

Now, you see my point. If Binary code is logically perfect, why do we have to fold it into several layers up to the level of the so-called 'HIGH-LEVEL LANGUAGES' so that the native speakers of NL could understand it?; from the Binary machine codes, to hexadecimal codes(PSEUDO-CODES at the BIOS and OPERATING SYSTEMS levels) to the High-Level Programming Langauges (such as BASIC, COBOL, FORTRAN, PROLOG, C++, JAVA and now verious versions Scripting Languages for Web design). Go out there and ask the 'First Generation Programmers' this:

WHY WERE MACHINE CODES LEVEL PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES REJECTED AND THE INTERMEDIATE AND HIGHER LEVEL PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES THAT I LISTED ABOVE DEVELOPED TO REPLACE THEM?

Well, one obvious answer that they will give you is that Binary or Machine Level Languges were very difficult to understand. It was an absolute nightmare deciphering them. Writing a simple program module used to take months to do and consequenntly this pushed project times to several years instead of months. The worst problem was when a computer programmer was comissioned to improve an existing program that was written by someone else, and when there is no instruction manuals left behind by the original programmer, then the nightmares began. You either wrote a new program or you wasted years reverse-engineering.

So, the question still remains: if Binary Langauge or Machine Code is an LPL and only machines can understand it, of what value or relevance is it to the native speakers of NL at the outward perceptual level?. The standard argument is that an LPL, if it is possible at all in the first place, should be unversal in scope such that it should be accessible both to machines and humans in the same format without multi-layer foldings and translations as we have done with the Binary Language.

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Save our Planet...Stay green! May the 'Book of Nature' serve you well and bring you all that is good!

 

[Philocrat]

I was wondering about this question too. I know that the Arabic alphabet follows group theory for awhile, then breaks down. So I suppose one can conceivably construct a logical system of letters. But I'm not sure if this is what you're talking about.

The whole purpose of LPL is that it should be universal and simplified to a point where you do not need a Phd to understand it. We should be able to use it to think, speak, write, act and interact clearly with any thing that is language driven, be it human or machine. If LPL is possible, we have not even got the specification for such a lagauge yet, let alone the time table for constructing and testing it. These days, nealy every discipline has one thing or the other that it claims to be LPL, yet such LPL tends to always stays in the heavily fortified closet of that discipline. It seems that these days any thing goes. If any dsicipline claims to have such a language that can be construed as genuinely universal, let them bring it of the closet and table it it for public scrutiny. At least let philosophers look it at.

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Save our Planet...Stay green! May the 'Book of Nature' serve you well and bring you all that is good!

 

[Fairfield]

""The whole purpose of LPL is that it should be universal and simplified to a point where you do not need a Phd to understand it. We should be able to use it to think, speak, write, act and interact clearly with any thing that is language driven, be it human or machine.""
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I'm curious to know how much easier you think a LPL would make the study of medicine, physics, law, etc. When it comes to philosophy and other less physically orientated subjects, I usually find they are not using all the precision that is already available in our common language. In other words, it is not the language that is deficient. It is the user's brain, or at least his/her language skill and ideation ability. No simple language is going to be able to avoid an immense vocabulary and number of verbal tenses if it is going to be able to work in all the areas of our experience. To get even nearly perfectly skilled in any kind of completely comprehensive language you might want to postulate I think would require at least a Phd.