From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Tue Sep 03 2002 - 21:18:51 MDT
Dan writes
> Certainly, abandoning the natural realistic language we've been using for
> so long would be difficult at best, and dangerous at worst. But realizing
> that we shouldn't abandon this language is a world of difference from
> saying that we shouldn't check out the others.
I'm not for an Inquisition, you know. I'm predicting that
"checking out other languages" will come to nothing. I'll
even offer reasons for this prediction if asked. (For what
it's worth, I don't agree with the subject line of this
thread: it's entirely possible that postmodernists have
something to contribute to the study of literature. It's
just that they foolishly wander from their domain too often.)
> Maybe realism is your favorite language for science (though it's still a
> difficult fit in QM), but non-realism teaches you the most about how to
> look at morality, or at mathematics.
I don't follow this. Do you have an example for each? I claim
that anything with actual content is best spoken about with
realistic language.
> Eliminating the truth words (as awkward as that might be) might
> help us get out of that rut; certainly Charles' point holds
> that truth words hardly ever crop up in technical literature.
> I agree with Charles that this is customary for a good and
> useful reason.
I explained my reason why "truth words" seldom show up:
they're redundant. Saying X is true is often just like
saying X. Don't you agree that this is the key reason?
> > Naturally your paradox isn't a paradox. We have to use *some*
> > word like true, I'm afraid. You may find a circumlocution that
> > appears not to use it, "it is the case that" being one favorite,
> > but it came into our language (and perhaps everyone's?) for a
> > reason.
>
> I disagree. We could remove them without significant loss of content,
> especially from technical articles, which may simply make statements in
> the indicative mood without emphasizing their claims as "true". As a
> trivial example, you could just swap them for "ought" words ("I wonder
> whether I ought to believe X").
As long as you're editing the Newspeak Dictionary, why
not drop "ought" from that sentence, so that it becomes
"I wonder whether to believe X", and then you can get
rid of "I", "wonder", and so on, until we are left with "X?".
Languages do change over time, of course, and a number of
words, such as "fain" in English go out of fashion for the
precise reason that there are other ways to say the same
thing. Sorry, but the words "true" and "false" are
necessary, and so are the phrases "X is true" and "X is
false". I consider most notions to do away with certain
words to be naive.
> You may be surprised just how much you can strip out of the English
> language and still get something useful/interesting. Take this example
> from our Extropian glossary.
>
> http://www.generalsemantics.org/Articles/E-Prime_intro.htm
>
> E-Prime would obviously ban statements like "X is true".
Yeah, but has family or larger group ever adopted its strict
use? Will any? No. But even more telling to me is that
Korzybski and Whorf exaggerated the importance of language
in thought. It doesn't follow IMO that thinking is improved.
Yes, often the writing is sharper and clearer when you learn
how to omit unnecessary and redundant words, but as someone
very sympathetic to Korzybski and general semantics, I have
to admit that if their stuff was half as good as they thought,
it would have taken over the world by now.
> think how much easier it'd be if the grammar of our
> language included conjugation of degrees of certainty,
> where it'd be impossible to merely say that X is true;
> you could only gauge the certainty with which you believe it.
Our language already does have such capabilities. Note
the important fact that *every* human language does.
This is no accident. Like I say, I'm very skeptical
that any benefit would accrue from streamlining the
language or "improving" it. Our thinking appears to
lie on a different plane. I certainly hope that African
leaders seeing how backward their continent is don't
start to think that if they just switched to English
things would be suddenly marvelously better.
> And anyway, let's not forget that the realists have some rather
> significant atrocities to account for, atrocities which, on their face,
> seem as if they couldn't have happened if everyone was a postmodernist.
> Take religious/ideological wars, for example.
You can't be serious! Post-modern academics have just as
ferocious battles with each other as anyone else, and struggle
for turf in the universities with a ruthlessness that would
impress New Guinean head-hunters.
This is even worse than trying to blame religionist for wars.
Atheists often make silly arguments which appear to imply
that but for religions, wars and atrocities wouldn't take
place. Groups seems to be at each other's throats for the
same basic reasons that individual humans are.
> (Now, if your theory of history suggests that putatively ideological wars
> are not really ideological, you may not find this example so convincing.
Yes, the Protestants and Catholics really went at it, but
standing back and looking it all over, there would have been
other reasons at about the same time for the rivalry to occur.
> > But the downside of throwing away "the Truth" is considerable!
> > It foments double-think in some academics (thankfully none
> > on this list) who talk one way about scientific things and
> > another---very astutely---about, say, the credentials of a
> > bitterly resented colleague.
>
> I am officially in doubt that the ability to think in many ways will
> significantly reduce your ability to think in your own way, or to see what
> way is dictated by your own culture.
Yes, I can see that I overstated the case; as Damien was saying,
sloppy thinking certainly pre-dates modernism.
> > (Here is an example of the first way of speaking by Bruno
> > Latour, notorious arch-post-modernist, while discussing the
> > to him ridiculous contention of French scientists in 1976
> > that Ramses II died of tuberculosis, "How could Ramses II
> > die in 1213 B.C. from a bacillus discovered by Robert Koch
> > in 1882?". Post-modernism really can mess up some people's
> > thinking. For other hilarious examples, see "Fashionable
> > Nonsense" by Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont.)
>
> Yeah, well. It's a point of view. It's part of his job to find
> interesting points of view.
No, we should certainly criticize errors and stupidity
and not accept them as "interesting points of view".
You have to accept that the above question (purportedly
by Latour) is brainless.
I support realism, and contend that other ways of speaking
(e.g. in churches, in some university classes, and in
a number of highly theoretical political tracts) are
far more vulnerable to criticism.
Lee
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