(urth) AI souls

[zvi at vex.net]

Roy write:
> Dan'l wrote:
>>Speech is breath is spirit.
> Just so. And Wolfe goes out of his way to make Apheta and her kind have no
> tongues.
> [...] What is Wolfe trying to say?

I think it's further evidence that Apheta's kind are 'pure'.

In many cultures, 'tongue' is metonomy for 'language, speech,
communication'; further, it's often used in contexts where the
language/speech/communication is evil, tainted, 'bad'. 'Forked tongue' is
just one example; lashon ha-rah (Hebrew) is translated as 'evil speech'
but it's literally 'the bad tongue'.

Is it possible that Wolfe is literalizing the metonomy especially with
regard to the tongue's associations with evil speech? By definition, the
language of a tongue-less people could not be 'the bad tongue'.

Cf.:
http://www.mountzion.org/fgb/Spring95/FgbSP2-95.html
'The Evil Tongue' which contains some lovely lines:

  The apostle James in this Scripture,
  describes the evil of the tongue,
  “The tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity.”

  1. “It is a fire.” It burns with intemperate heat;
  it causeth the heat of contention; it sets others
  in a flame.

  2. “A world of iniquity.” It was at first made to be
  an organ of God’s praise, but it is become an instrument
  of unrighteousness. All the members of the body are sinful,
  as there is bitterness in every branch of wormwood, but
  the tongue is excessively sinful, “full of deadly
  poison” (verse 8).

--Zvi
zvi at vex.net