From: Charles Hixson (charleshixsn@earthlink.net)
Date: Tue Oct 22 2002 - 15:05:45 MDT
Dehede011@aol.com wrote:
> In a message dated 10/22/2002 12:02:45 PM Central Standard Time,
> charleshixsn@earthlink.net writes: If you want to start meaningful
> development of your arguments, you must first use well-defined terms.
>
> Charles,
> No, no, no. If you look at General Semantics the definition of
> Capitalism is a higher level of abstraction than to observe a real
> living example of capitalism in action. If you talk me into going to
> a higher level of abstraction then I am also further from the thing
> itself and hence less accurate.
A well defined term is one that can be used to refer back to the
physical instances that it purports to describe, and that can be used as
a test to determine whether or not those physical instances actually do
reflect the proposed term. Yes, it is at a higher order of abstraction,
and thus does not contain all of the information of the original
instance. But if the definition is formally correct, then it will
contain all of the necessary information to use it as it was intended to
be used. This is roughly equivalent to "information hiding" where the
handle to a routine doesn't tell you everything about it, and certainly
not it's private state information. But you can still use it to
properly perform the operations that it can correctly handle.
>
> For instance a friend that is active in General Semantics just
> informed me that she found one word in the dictionary that had 26
> meanings attached to it.
This is why I said "well defined". You are perfectly correct about the
chaos that can be engendered by sloppy definitions.
> ...
> And, that is how I view socialism. Scholars, they say they are,
> have written volumes defining socialism, telling us how it will work
> and explaining how "Heaven on Earth" will have arrived. Then along
> comes a socialist state, a thug takes over, sends the scholars off to
> the Gulag and suddenly the rest of us had hell on Earth.
The fact that they made predictions does not, in and of itself, cause
those predictions to be correct. Again, we have a problem here with
poorly defined terms.
> As to all those thugs that people object to having called
> socialist -- they said very clearly that they were and it was under
> the auspices of socialism that they came to power.
To the extent that the original state was indeed a socialist state (not
certain.. clearly depends on what the definition actually is), then it
becomes obvious that one of the possible descendant states is rather
different than the original predictions. This doesn't make those who
took power either socialists or non-socialists. In the absence of a
workable definition they can claim to be socialists if they want to, and
there's no test to show that they aren't (or are).
> Now, I can almost anticipate that you will pull out some counter
> examples of so called capitalists that were really nothing but common
> criminals. Well, we have sent a lot of them to the penitentiary and
> look forward to sending more of them to the same place.
Counter example to what? I don't know what either a capitalist or a
socialist is. I have partial definitions, but they don't suffice to
test a specific example and categorize it one way or the other. Which
is my point.
> As you may know I am a part blood Cherokee. My understanding is
> that you killed close to 50 million of us counting all indians between
> the north and south poles. The vast majority died of your diseases
> and often were many miles removed from the nearest white man. The
> whites never knew of it and for the most part are ignorant of the fact
> today but the same would have happened had you been peaceful traders
> and missionaries.
> Ron H.
Not denying the result, but again just noticing that a vague definition
has occured. Who is this "you"? Does "you" include all of those who
ever have been or ever will be infected with one of n infectious
diseases? Not that you don't have a strong basic case here, I'm not
disputing your physical world facts. But your categories are
dangerously unclear. For that matter, I'm a part Creek. It's not my
cultural identity, but it's one aspect of who I am. Does this mean that
I am or am not a part of "you", or of "us"? Or do we need to start
counting fractions? Or, possibly, doing a DNA analysis?
-- -- Charles Hixson Gnu software that is free, The best is yet to be.
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