On Sat, May 12, 2001 at 09:59:13AM -0700, Lee Corbin wrote:
> Neal Blaikie wrote:
>> I'm responsible to [my boss]
vs
>> I'm responsible for [my work]
>> There's a difference between "responsible for" (in charge of,
>> which is what I meant) and "responsible to" (an obligation).
I didn't get what you meant by "I'm responsible to", because you were
proposing a dilemma between two meanings for "responsible",
which once again turned into a false dilemma. These meanings do not oppose.
Once again I'm responsible to my boss for my work.
There's no meaning to "in charge of" but that of an obligation of result.
And an obligation is but the data of some sanction, that will select
for or against certain behavior patterns.
As for the role of intelligence in evolution, the ultimate principle behind
evolution is that individuals are responsibles to their genes and memes
and soul or whatever for what they do toward their spreadth and survival.
That's the basis very of natural selection. Any intelligence comes afterward,
as an emerging pattern that is positively selected. Oh, and that all was
about the fact that memes are now the preponderant factor for life change,
as opposed to genes, well, uh, sure. No great news, either, though news that
deserve more than being drown into lots of fallacious small talk.
> Alas, there is only one solution to this quagmire that I know of.
> When one begins to sense that any word or phrase is causing trouble,
> then one simply stops using it, at least for a while.
Better than not using words: use them in context.
Words are things with dynamic context-dependent meaning,
but they are used to denote context-independent concepts
(or rather, concepts that contain their contextual closure).
When the contextual closure is uncertain or contextual conflict is detected,
it's possible to build some common context, out of the negociation that any
rational conversation is. What's wrong is to use the uncertainty so as
to build fallacies of distraction, ambiguity, or missing the point,
or whatever.
[Neal has contended that he was just being conversational and self-expressing.
So what? I contend that I'm just as much conversational and self-expressing
as I point out the mistakes I find in his messages.]
[ François-René ÐVB Rideau | Reflection&Cybernethics | http://fare.tunes.org ]
[ TUNES project for a Free Reflective Computing System | http://tunes.org ]
If you call a tail a leg, how many legs has a dog? Five?
No! Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg.
-- Abraham Lincoln, explaining the difference between
lexical scoping and dynamic scoping
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