I've previously stated (and then refused to explain) that I would favor "massive one-time redistribution" if I thought it was feasible, and that it would only be feasible if a world-government existed. I don't think that commits me to any part of 11, but it's a near thing.
I'm not sure if you're asking this but, metaethics is (I'm going to get this wrong, people who have devoted their career to philosophy, so correct me) the study of what the source and point of ethics is, whether or not ethical statements have truth values, what ethical statements are even about, etc.
Conractarian metaethics is one answer to all those questions, involving, in at least one form, a hypothetical implicit contract which depsite being both hypothetical and implicit commits all people to some minimal ethical standards, and provides a basis for figuring out what those standards are.
1. I believe that economics and analytic philosophy gain their authority institutionally, by control of hiring, the same way scholastic theology did ca. 1500 and the same way Marxist dialectics did in the USSR. Economics and philosophy are sometimes right, sometimes wrong, and sometimes neither provable nor refutable, but their institutional authority allows them to keep all disputes and doubts internal by means of rules as to what kinds of arguments will be admitted as valid.
The greatest foreign policy mistake of the last 100 years was refusing to allow Japan to become a colonial power, and if Japan was populated with White people we wouldn't of tried.
I believe that I have a substantially better understanding of pro basketball and what it takes to put together a winning team than people who have been intimately involved with the game for 20+ years. I believe young NBA talent is more mismanaged than misjudged. And I believe that Kwame Brown and Darko Milicic will become valuable and consistent members of their teams, if not All-Stars.
Reading the latest on Hugh Hewitt, it occurs to me that nothing I believe could possibly qualify as absurd in today's America. The bar is just too damn high.
I believe that within 5 years I'll be shaving with a Gilette Aleph, a hyperbolic razor featuring blades as innumerous and indistinguishable as points along a single blade.
Hey how about this: is it fundamentally absurd to believe in anything? "Believe in" is an action that seems fraught with absurdity to me. Like saying you believe or disbelieve in phenomenon X is arrogating to yourself the ability to decide what is or is not real. While all around you the universe is just sitting there unaffected.
My mom believes in mind-reading, and she claims, whenever I try to argue with her, that many other people share her belief. Does anyone here believe in mindreading? She claims that it ought to be possible because thoughts are just electrical impulses, in response to which I always point out (despite not knowing much about physics) that they're very weak impulses in very specifically defined paths, and they'd have to be communicated through the skull and the air, through a lot of other electromagnetic fields, and to another skull and then correctly interpreted despite the lack of path-context.
She also believes that once when her lamp all of a sudden burned brighter it was the group mind communicating with it in response to some very intense thoughts she was thinking about a man she loved, unrequitedly.
I believe a thread about belief and absurdity, can, besides this comment, remain a Kierkegaard-free zone.
Yes, if I go up to people on the street and tell them a contract which they aren't, and have no reason to be aware of, but would have agreed to if they had been made aware of it under the proper conditions, provides with complete justification to accurately criticize their behavior, I think peolple might describe that more harshly, but in the same direction as, "absurd."
I'm an atheist and generally anti-religion and foofy unprovables, but I like to believe that reincarnation is real.
(More accurately, that there only so many personalities/schemata that human brains can have, and hence functionally identical personalities are born and die all the time. Hence, even if there is no literal transfer of memories, etc., I have lived before and will live again (and am likely living in other bodies as I type.))
I believe in the existence of love as a connection which can bind two people against logic and reason and which is separate from lust, infatuation, social expectations, hormones, familiarity or any of the other things to which love bears a more than passing resemblance.
I also believe that people are basically good and want to do good.
I believe these things despite 50 years of experience telling me that they are naive and foolish (or at least woefully incomplete) things to believe.
I believe that I will use a pseudonym from this time forth, forever, but that the combination of tortured syntax, clumsy and not-always-intentionally-absurd euphemisms, and wildly inappropriate bible quotations should assure I'm easily recognised.
I believe that the knowledge I want to have and rely on cannot usually be proved but can usually be demonstrated.
I believe in existentialist absurdity, as I understand it. I believe that there is no meaning to life, absolute or relative. You can give life meaning, but only if you don't scrutinize it too hard. Consequently, the better you are at scrutiny the more meaningless your life feels. As soon as you try to figure out exactly what it is that gives your life meaning, the meaning disappears and leaves you depressed. Consequently, the examined life is not worthwhile.
I believe--and I honestly do, I don't even think this is ridiculous--that virtually everyone is way more intelligent than they realize, and that they can learn and think if you just treat them with respect and ask good questions.
I believe---and this is absurd, and I wish I didn't--that there exists some job somewhere that, if I can just figure out what it is, will make me perfectly happy and my entire life will be wonderful for ever after.
What 2 said, and consequently some of what 44 said. Worse yet, I believe on some level that the universe is basically ordered so that things will work out OK for everyone. Not in this world, obviously.
Re 35: I can read minds to some extent. For instance, the other day when someone punched me in the face I was able to discern that he was mad at me. (Note: did not actually happen.)
I believe that the only reason for honest disagreement is lack of communication -- that on any point where I and someone else disagree, that if we were both able to completely and accurately explain both our beliefs and our reasons for holding those beliefs, one of us would be convinced that they were wrong. I further believe that it would usually be the other guy.
52, there's a ton of research/scholarly work on that (I learned via one of the two blogs linked in the body of this post), though they insist on using silly terminology like "bayesian priors."
I believe the first part of the first part #49 is right, but that B is massively underselling how difficult it is to teach people to use that intelligence.
I believe that there are a not insignificant number of people who overestimate their intelligence, enough so that it is wrong to say "virtually everyone is more intelligent than they realize."
I believe in "reverse" clairvoyance. By that I mean that if in my mind I think (or fantasize) about how a situation will unfold, one thing is absolutely certain: It will NOT unfold in that way.
Hope for the best; expect the worst. -- Mel Brooks
I believe there are many people in this great country that have only managed to keep from getting their heads stuck in pickle jars by pure luck. Forexample.
What's funny about 52 is that if it's right, every professionally significant thought I have is wrong. Fortunately, I believe that 52 is itself wrong. So far.
I believe that thing about the 15 pounds is wrong.
I agree with 52, to the extent that people converse rationally, (though I don't suspect that it's an absurd belief, so I didn't mention it). I forget whether it was SCMT or text who was giving me shit over it a while back. In their defense, I was being a bit tone deaf in that thread.
I also agree with the last part of 48, and I think people would be better off if they stopped fooling themselves.
To expand a bit, I believe that people in the right frame of mind and with the right education can approximate rationality in conversation to a large extent, enough to make 52 a useful idea.
I believe people hold most of their opinions for non-rational reasons, but often justify them with rational arguments they've come up with after the fact.
79: But are all disagreements just confusion over meaning, and not of substance? This seems totally wrong to me. At some level you come to differences in values, or in the efficacy of prediction models, or whatever.
I believe, via "Sickness Unto Death" and the rest of K, that the only logical choices are belief in God or concious rebellion against Him. Atheism is impossible. Also, that the strongest argument for belief is authority, you believe in God because He commands belief.
63: I should have said, "more reasonable, more intellectually honest, and more thoughtful" than is usually acknowledged. Arrogance about intelligence, I would argue, is not actually *true* intelligence--it's a form of defensiveness covering up a suspicion that really, they're not as bright as they want people to believe.
86: I believe what you're calling "disagreements of substance" can only be disagreements about morals, or values. I think that either you can frame a disagreement as a question of fact (or of logical deduction) or it devolves into a question of values, and I don't believe in any sort of objective morality, so that doesn't really hurt my theory. Am I being unclear enough?
Also, I suspect 84, and that complicates things. (How can I believe in 52 and 84? Absurd!)
Sometimes I believe that time doesn't actually exist, and that all that exists is a single time-slice of the universe. That slice happens to be the present. The experience of time is just an illusion.
Sometimes I believe that life is a dream, or a simulation, centered on me, and everything else is just calculated just-in-time as needed to complete the illusion of my world.
In other words, I think disagreements about values can potentially not be resolved, but they're not disagreements in the same sense. They're just differences between people, like differences in eye color. Or differences in sanity.
But I believe that the subset of questions that don't devolve into differences of value are large enough, and that even when they ultimately do, various internal factors that happen during the discussion can cause people to actually change their values on reflection. I don't think one's values are really a property of one's character so much as an artifact of one's upbringing, and are thus more malleable than most would be comfortable admitting.
I believe in free will but I believe [God? The Universe? Something Else?] drops little hints throughout our day-to-day lives for the best path to take. I also think whatever that force is has certain people enter our lives who will prepare us for things that will happen in the future so we will be ready when they do.
I'm really trying to argue against the usefulness of 52.
I don't think substantive disagreements are only about values, though that's one category of them. I also think you can have substantive disagreements about likely future events (that's what I meant by the prediction models thing). I think two people can totally understand each other's meaning and reasons for holding their beliefs, and it's possible (likely, even) that neither will be convinced they're wrong.
But 52 is making an incredibly strong claim that the only reason for disagreements is failure to communicate (if I understand it correctly). I don't disagree that values are malleable--just that they're not inevitably so.
I think the prediction of future events is so hard that the amount of time and information it takes to do a good job is too high to make it feasible to hold a conversation with someone that resolves the disagreements. There would be too make effort spent in doing additional fact-gathering and theoretical hashing out of things. Because these conversations so often end up short on facts, psychological biases in are often a larger factor than in other kinds of conversation.
I agree that 52 isn't useful for many kinds of discourse, because of resource restraints. But I think it's true theoretically, and I think understanding and applying it opens up ideas pertinent to the construction/maintenance of forums of a higher quality, and at least allows you to see when a conversation is going nowhere and why that's so, which can save time.
I think 52 doesn't seem like such a strong claim. I see most conversations as taking place with an extremely limited bandwidth compared to the total information pertinent to the discussions. Several orders of magnitude difference. Failure to communicate is practically inevitable.
I think that Tia's point in 105 is a strong one, strong enough that it justifies my putting 52 on this thread as the most absurd thing I believe, rather than one of the many non-absurd things I believe.
I.e. the amount of information necessary to really communicate oneself fully on an issue like abortion, for instance, would be measured in thousands of pages, whereas most conversations take place in thousands and tens of thousands of words.
In that case, I think I would have to back away from the claim in 52, and only say that all disagreements about fact are due to failure to communicate.
it's the lizard people who trick us into thinking we disagree about abortion, so that they can rob us blind and eat our children while we argue about it.
every aborted fetus is awarded fifty beauteous virgins in the afterworld, and therefore, it is a great honor to abort them. If we all had information about this, and shared it, we would not disagree.
And note that many questions about value are just thin wrappers of value over questions of fact. For instance, people who think that fornication is a sin. They often have the misconception that fornication is inevitably emotionally harmful to its participants, when in fact that's not the case. If they could be convinced that it's not the case, their value would likely change. (Some would say this indicates that they just have a deeper value. But deeper values tend to be more universal, so that doesn't lead to a lot of disagreement.)
In that case, I think I would have to back away from the claim in 52, and only say that all disagreements about fact are due to failure to communicate.
I think I can endorse this, in that a fact, pretty much by definition, exists independently of how its perceived, right? And since I signed on in the body of the post to objective reality, I think all people, when being rational, can come to agreement about fact, so long as they understand each other's terms and the pertinent information.
118: You might believe in objective reality and disagree that we are in a very good position, at this time, to describe it very well. In part, it isn't the absence of objective reality that makes things hard, but rather that "facts" are social constructs that are more or less useful to differing groups of people.
You might believe in objective reality and disagree that we are in a very good position, at this time, to describe it very well. In part, it isn't the absence of objective reality that makes things hard, but rather that "facts" are social constructs that are more or less useful to differing groups of people.
Okay, but we're talking about a fantasy world in which everyone was able to perfectly explain their terms and had complete information. In that world, there wouldn't be disputes of fact, because no one's social construct would get in the way of describing objective reality to someone else.
"a fact, pretty much by definition, exists independently of how its perceived, right?"
Well, as long as you acknowledge that questions of fact can be extremely fuzzy and potentially include questions such as whether (particular) abortion restrictions lead to a better or worse society (by a particular definition), or whether (a particular brand of) social welfare will improve society (by a particular metric).
Some facts, like some equations, are impossible to prove though true.
And I acknowledge that discourse doesn't even begin to head in the right direction most of the time (due to limited human attention and interest and structural factors of the conversational environment), and that this kind of discourse doesn't have an especially large amount of influence on public policy, etc. etc.
One of my interests is in figuring out what kind of internet forum would be more suited to leading to this ideal kind of conversation, so that's perhaps why I seem so abstract on the matter. These abstractions are important to the question, but not to many other questions.
Okay, but we're talking about a fantasy world in which everyone was able to perfectly explain their terms and had complete information.
But having limits on our ability to express ourselves to other human beings is a defining element of the human condition. The beings inhabiting this fantasy world would not be a different kind of creature than we are.
121: If everyone had access to the same information, and used the same models to understand that information, I wonder whether there would be no disagreements in part because there doesn't seem to be much need for conversation.
Believing (as I'm inclined to) that the notion of some kind of endless cycle of reincarnation is less absurd than the Christian Heaven or the Muslim Paradise, is probably my most absurd belief. Also, I still believe that Teilhard de Chardin was on to something.
Like others, I believe that most people are fundamentally decent. I also believe there are a small minority of people who are incorrigible and unreformable sociopaths. Deep down, I also believe that most committed right-wingers are either stupid or heavily weighted towrds the sociopathic end of the bell-curve.
I believe that the whole Kripke/Putnam revival of essentialism was in error and I also believe that we live in a competely non-teleological universe. Evolution isn't a *process* in anything like the usual sense and it isn't directional.
Like others, I have worries about the persistence of identity over time and think that both Hume and/or various Buddhists may have it right about the self.
Generally, I think that on most philosophical issues, agreeing with Hume is a often a useful rule of thumb.
Again, like others, I think that some kind of broadly contractarian meta-ethics is likely to be right.
Politically, I suspect that something radical needs to happen before the lives of ordinary men and women will improve to any appreciable extent. I have no concrete idea about what that might be.
I believe psychedelic drugs have confirmed this belief.
I often believe that Native Americans and other assorted pagans had it right when they worshipped nature as god(s), but I feel pangs of Catholic guilt when I think this.
Aha! Mr. McGee's comment brings to mind a belief which I certainly hold and which is certainly absurd on its face: to wit, that marihuana hallucinations reveal or can reveal deeper, more fundamental truths about my reality, than those which are accessible to me during waking life. I also believe this about dreams some, though not as strongly, and that belief is similarly absurd.
131- I was telling SB just the other day that I think I have my own version of Shinto. Which is to say that I am often transfixed by things or people, to the point where it almost seems as though they are temporarily inhabited by some sort of minor god or sprite. Not really, of course, but it seems that way.
history began in 1914 when the lizard people deposited us here and instructed us to start fighting the Great War. Everything we have historical evidence for did happen, only after 1914, with the lizard people playing various parts, as they are wont to do.
I don't even see this as unChristian. What are the Gadarene swine or balaam's ass? I think this inhabitation is a basic, and by me at least, respected spiritual perception. Idolatry is something very different, imo.
I don't believe in any kind of deity but if one were to believe in something spiritual, then some form of pantheism does seem like the least obviously abusrd option.
132- I had to stop smoking marijuana because it began to make me nauseous. I've never literally hallucinated while on drugs, e.g. seen pink elephants or the like, but - absurd as it sounds, but then this is the right thread for it - I feel like I transcend time and space and I can see the connectedness of everything. The blanket is everything: you, me, a ham sandwich. I think the Catholic equivalent of this is the belief that God is in everyone and everything.
I've taken to writing down my dreams, especially the more absurd ones, because I believe they reveal much about our subconscious that never manifests itself in conscious thought, only in dreams.
I've taken to writing down my dreams, especially the more absurd ones, because I believe they reveal much about our subconscious that never manifests itself in conscious thought, only in dreams.
I believe this statement is redundant and auto-pwning.
Writing down your dreams in detail can lead to lucid dreaming, because you more often think about dreams and therefore are more likely to think about dreaming while dreaming and thus realize that you are dreaming.
I don't believe in soulmates, but I do believe that only a small minority of people are able to have healthy relationships at all. Among those people, I don't know how much the specific pairing matters.
Perhaps multiple-tentacled creatures permit themselves to be imagined, if they know that once they materialize in a dream, they'll be able to take pdf23ds.
My cousin knows this guy who took too much pdf23ds, and he totally cut his face off and fed it to his dog, then jumped off the roof 'cause he thought he could fly.
Interestingly enough, pdf23ds are the drugs I was talking about in #131.
148- I've heard that about writing down dreams. I've also heard that once one achieves a state of lucid dreaming, one can ultimately begin to control his/her dreams.
I've tried to write down my dreams before, but I'm always just too sleepy when I first wake up to feel like moving around any to write it down, especially between sleep periods, but even after my last sleep period. I'm so lazy.
I had an odd dream the other night that I wanted to write down. I got my notebook and started to write it down, then got distracted by something or other. At a certain point, I woke up and realized that I had dreamed trying to write down the first dream.
I actually did have one lucid dream. I woke up and tried to look at the alarm clock, and it was fuzzy and I couldn't read it. So I realized that, oh, I'm still dreaming. I got kind of excited about having a lucid dream, and woke up. So I looked at the clock again to see what time it was, and turns out I was still dreaming. So I got up and walked around my apartment a little. I tried flying, but all I ended up doing was jumping up and down a little. Then I woke up. I was still dreaming, so I walked outside my apartment and starting swinging around like a gymnist from the railing on my balcony (impossible in real life because of the vertical rails holding up the handrail, but whatever). Then I woke up.
Yeah, the alarm clock is my lucid dream trick. Sometimes it doesn't have real numbers at all, just LCD gibberish. But I'm often too close to waking to have a very long dream at that point. In the best one I ran out into the hall, found a good friend and proclaimed, "Let's have sex!" We did.
In my dream in #159, I think I didn't realize I was still dreaming because I was at my parent's house, where I didn't have an alarm clock, and thus had no test to see if I was dreaming or not.
I probably should have realized that I was dreaming though, because the distraction I was talking about was actually a random girl in my bed wanting me to have sex with her.
In my dream in #159, I think I didn't realize I was still dreaming because I was at my parent's house, where I didn't have an alarm clock, and thus had no test to see if I was dreaming or not.
I probably should have realized that I was dreaming though, because the distraction I was talking about was actually a random girl in my bed wanting me to have sex with her.
I wish that actually happened, but sadly it doesn't.
Me too, considering that I'm rather horrificly at risk for the same myself. My well-thought-out plan if anyone here asks me about my online timewasting is to change my name and resurface as a waitress in Oklahoma.
I try to confine my own Unfoggetariat duties to brief spurts of inactivity during my workday, largely clustered around lunch and closing time. Also, I'm pretty sure my boss reads Unfogged. I mean, I've seen her computer and she's reading Making Light and some guy named Gary Farber (?)—how could she not have ventured into the Mineshaft?
I often feel left out of the more interesting threads because discussion mostly takes place during the day, when I'm in class. But there are worse commenting-related problems to have.
Considering the amount of time that can be consumed by either of these activities, my employer would probably prefer that I neither comment here nor blog elsewhere during work hours. Is that what you were asking?
I believe the first part of the first part #49 is right, but that B is massively underselling how difficult it is to teach people to use that intelligence.
Or perhaps B is just a really really good teacher.
I believe that there are logically alien languages, that is, languages that are similar enough to human languages in their grammar that we can definitely say that they are languages, but different enough that no human could ever learn them.
I believe that bottlenose dolphins speak such a language.
Or perhaps B is just a really really good teacher.
I don't doubt it. Rather, I believe that there is a pretty hard and early limit to how much of an effect a teacher can have on a student. After all, he or she only has, at most, only a few hours a day with the kid. And most of the important stuff - the building of the interstitial connections between the material that distinguish those who "get it" from those who just learn it - happens outside the control of the teacher.
FL: I suppose it is a psychological contingency thing, in that if a human had a portion of her brain wired like a dolphin, and spent time in a linguistic community that followed dolphin protocols, she would be able to speak dolphin. However the relevant arrangement of neurons is not within the normal range of human plasticity.
The question becomes metaphysical when you ask whether one can define "similar enough to human languages to recognizably be a language" in such a way that it doesn't require that humans be able to learn it without some kind of brain transplant.
194: Are there any cognitive scientists that believe such a language would be possible?
I think the evidence points against the idea. If it were really possible for a language to be that incomphrehensible, one would think that human languages would exhibit variation such that some are somewhat incomprehensible. I'm not aware of any such language, though. AFAIK, the variation between human languages are small enough that a sufficiently intelligent and motivated speaker of a major language can achieve fluency in any human language given enough exposure to it. (I say major because there are some languages whose native speakers live such circumspect lives that their mental capacity may not be developed enough to achieve fluency in a more complicated language.) Differences are really more about vocabulary and word order and phonemes and tonality and the grammatical role of metaphor than in any basic difference in the way they exercise the human mind.
The question becomes metaphysical when you ask whether one can define "similar enough to human languages to recognizably be a language" in such a way that it doesn't require that humans be able to learn it without some kind of brain transplant.
I don't think you can. For the language to be anything that I can recognize as a language, it would have to involve correspondences between the language and the outside world according to some set of rules. Given that limit, I cannot conceive of a language that would be unlearnable. (I think you may be confusing the idea of 'a language outside the scope of possible natural human languages' with 'a language a human could not learn'. Any programming language, for example, is the first but not the second.)
Programming languages allow us to tell a computer what we want it to do. So, metaphorically, it is a language. Plus, I bet computer languages use many of the same parts of the brain that real languages do. On the other hand, working with code is a very different experience than working with human text, and I imagine utilizes the brain very differently. But maybe not.
Right, I was thinking of the sort-of Davidsonian argument that anything properly called a language has a truth predicate, and our best understanding of the truth predicate is the Tarski disquotational scheme, and that involves identity of content, so there can be no in-principle untranslatable langauges, etc. Wolfson will now proceed to tell me that I don't understand the argument properly, which I admit freely.
LB: I was specifically thinking of a language that we could never learn, so that we would never know what the hell those guys are squeeking about, but know well that they are squeeking about something. There are a wide variety of artificial languages that humans would never develop naturally--computer langauges, first order logic--but these are actually meant to be a purification of human rationality, not something logically alien.
FL: That is the obvious argument against my belief, and the reason why I named this idea an absurd thing that I believe.
My main motivation for this theory is simply that it would be really cool if it were true. This is also my motivation for believing the dinosaurs were brightly colored, like birds. They also must have sang elaborate songs to attract mates and mark their territory. I mean, that would just be too cool.
Davidsonian argument that anything properly called a language has a truth predicate, and our best understanding of the truth predicate is the Tarski disquotational scheme, and that involves identity of content, so there can be no in-principle untranslatable langauges, etc.
To the extent that I understand it (that is, leaving out all the proper nouns and the word disquotational) I think this was what I was groping toward.
They also must have sang elaborate songs to attract mates and mark their territory.
This, on the other hand, is the best idea ever. And it isn't even absurd -- birds are dinosaurs, why shouldn't dinosaurs sing? I plan to tell this to my kids as accepted fact.
201: Actually, I think David Davidson speaks a mutually untranslatable language vis a vis English. At least, I've only met one person who claims to understand Davidson, and I'm not sure how you could verify his claim.
Sylvia had an excellent book about feathered dinosaurs, with pictures of brightly colored microraptors and others and explanation of dinosaurs' evolution into birds. I would recommend it to you, LB, but I cannot find it or remember the title. But if it turns up I shall.
(I say major because there are some languages whose native speakers live such circumspect lives that their mental capacity may not be developed enough to achieve fluency in a more complicated language.)
Hey I read a pretty incredible statistic today in the opening chapter of "Guns, Germs, and Steel", to wit: that of the roughly 6,000 human languages known to exist, about 1,000 are spoken only on New Guinea. Can anybody here tell me if that's straight up?
217: yeah, I was skeptical of that assertion too. I don't think life circumscription has anything to do with capacity for language learning, which is universal, except in an individual with seriously impaired intelligence, and intelligence doesn't correlate with the kind of circumscription I imagine pdf is talking about. I mean, have native peoples, when colonized, been unable to learn the language of the colonizer?
I see that I need to reaffirm my place in the Crazy Old Man clan, which I can do most easily by speaking out of ignorance and being spectacularly wrong.
Davidsonian argument that anything properly called a language has a truth predicate, and our best understanding of the truth predicate is the Tarski disquotational scheme, and that involves identity of content, so there can be no in-principle untranslatable languages, etc.
I'm quite confident I didn't understand that, but I'm wondering if there isn't an important difference between translating and learning a language. That is, that it might well be possible to learn a new language, yet remain unable to express in the old language thoughts that are sensible in the new.
I speak Mike-ese, a variant of american, and I'm pretty sure that what FL said cannot be simply translated into Mike-ese. There's no equivalence like 'la plume de ma tante est sur la table' for FL's statement. It might be possible to learn FL-ese (given worlds enough and time, and a very patient teacher), and understand what he said, but that's not translation.
Learning a language, I guess, involves learning a set of shared referents. [that] is Banana, [that] is friendship, etc. Humans (I'm guessing again) share a hardwired predilection for certain sorts of referents - things seen, things touched, social relations. I think work has been done about universal aspects of human language, and innate linguistic tendencies (Chomsky? Can't remember). Perhaps all human languages are learnable by humans simply because all humans are human. That is, non-humans, having non-human perceptions and non-human ways of organizing the universe, might have a language not learnable by humans.
Consider bee language. Does wiggle-wiggle-walk-walk mean 'left at the cottonwood, straight on 'til barn' or does it mean 'fly 3 units with the sun over your left shoulder in the morning, then turn towards the smell of horse'? Would either of those sentences make any sense to a bee, or do they have such an alien set of referents that we'll never know?
If we were doing "things I believe that would get me laughed out of a gathering of my colleagues," it's that Schneider's comment is basically right, in that I think that two utterances never (or almost never) express exactly the same thing. I have a way of reinterpreting this that makes it more boring than it sounds, though.
I think I basically agree with Schneider too, although maybe for different reasons than Matt's. For more on universal properties of human language, see anything Chomsky has ever written (other than his political stuff, of course). Actually, most American linguistics since 1957 is also on this topic.
Linguists generally use a definition of "language" that limits it to a type of communication system that "is a purely human and non-instinctive method of communicating ideas, emotions and desires by means of a system of voluntarily produced symbols" in the words of Edward Sapir. The relation between symbol and referent is also held to be arbitrary. Under this definition, communication systems like those of bees don't qualify as language.
Does it somehow follow from "two utterances never (or almost never) express exactly the same thing" that two people hearing the same utterance will never (or almost never) reach the same understanding?
My impression is that there's been a lot of work beyond my simplistic notion of symbol/referent, but I don't know where it's gone.
I'm intrigued by LB's statement that For the language to be anything that I can recognize as a language, it would have to involve correspondences between the language and the outside world according to some set of rules. I think that may be related to FL's statement about a truth predicate.
It assumes the objective existence of an outside world. That's a fairly safe assumption about things like bananas but gets really murky really quickly when we're talking social categories or concepts. For example, if I understand correctly, 'spouse' can have meanings in MA that it can't have in Kansas. I'm not sure that Kansans have an equivalent word in their lexicon.
Assume there exists a Kansan who would deny the possibility of the existence of a referent for MA-spouse, who would say 'that's nonsense, it's as meaningless as asking what color is north' and refused (or failed) to learn otherwise.
If two such closely related people could achieve perfect mutual incomprehensibility, isn't it more than likely that there could exist alien languages that are unlearnable by humans?
I see on preview that Teofilo has weighed in, too. Thank you. I'm gonna have to thimk, but I'll go ahead and post this anyway.
Does it somehow follow from "two utterances never (or almost never) express exactly the same thing" that two people hearing the same utterance will never (or almost never) reach the same understanding?
More or less -- at least, I would apply that also to two beliefs. But that's exactly the same. My view is that quite frequently two utterances/beliefs whatever have contents that are very similar in the relevant respects. (In Davidsonian terms, it's that we should be talking about similarity of content instead of identity of content.)
That quote from Sapir is very helpful, thanks. It reminds me why I wish I had actually learned something of linguistics.
I remember about symbols being arbitrary. That distinguishes them from signs, which are causally related, IIRC. I remember hearing that thunder was a sign, not a symbol, of a storm because the connection was not arbitrary. Similarly, blanching may be a sign, rather than a symbol, of fear.
I'm a little troubled by the notion of 'voluntarily produced.' Do Tourettes sufferers produce non-language? Those who talk intelligibly in their sleep?
But that's rather off topic. I can see that both 'voluntary' and 'non-instinctive' eliminates the bees. Bye bye bees.
Why "purely human?" My recollection is that Koko, a non-human, was able to construct phrases from arbitrary symbols that meant, for example, 'I want a banana'. My recollection is that she was able to learn the symbols for 'want' and for 'banana' and put them together, without ever having seen them used in that combination.
Worse, 'purely human' eliminates R H-C's posited alien language, for no reason I can discern.
... contents that are very similar in the relevant respects ...
That seems to imply two dimensions. First, similarity, from very similar to not very similar and perhaps to wholly dissimilar. Second, a relevance dimension, more relevant to less relevant (or perhaps a binary, relevant/irrelevant).
I'm not sure where I'm going with that, but I thought I'd check before I assume farther.
I quoted Sapir because I happen to have his book nearby, so I'm not really sure why he includes "voluntarily produced" (I haven't read the book). "Purely human" is a more typical condition; I don't know Sapir's reasons for using it, but Chomskyans consider Universal Grammar to be based in neural structures that are unique to humans. I believe most research with primates has shown that they don't actually use language with the sophistocation that humans do, which implies that they don't have whatever it is that produces human language (whether or not you accept the Chomskyan view). I am unsure of the implications of any of this for alien language; I guess we'll have to cross that bridge if we come to it.
"two utterances never (or almost never) express exactly the same thing"
Here's a thought: what about when the utterances in question are a line from a script, spoken during two different performances of the same play, by either the same actor or two different actors playing the same role? Would that case be an exception to this rule?
No. (Now that I think of it, my view has to be even crazier than I said, because one of the ideas is that what is expressed depends partly on the knowledge of the audience; which means that the utterance has different contents for different audience members. Which means we have to go relativist in a manner discussed by this guy among others.)
what is expressed depends partly on the knowledge of the audience
I would have thought "what is expressed" would depend solely on the intentions of the speaker, while "what is understood" or "what is heard" would depend on the knowledge of the listener. "Express" implies to me something done by the speaker without input from the listener.
...the utterance has different contents for different audience members
That strikes me as not crazy, but rather blindingly obviously true. Consider 'disquotational' or 'gentile'. TMK's point about the distinction between what the speaker intends to say, and what the hearer understands, seems correct, too.
My vague understanding is that each entity has in their head a set of meanings (referents, contents) and a set of arbitrary symbols that point to those meanings. Given that both will vary between actors - different entities will have different sets of possible meanings, as well as different symbols for those sets - aren't we left with only a hope that communication happens? That when one speaks, one will call up in the listener's head something similar to what one intended to evoke?
Assume I have an obedient and well trained Standard Poodle. I say to Poodle "get me a beer." Poodle fetches a beer.
Assume I have an obedient and well trained Wife. I say to Wife "get me a beer." Wife fetches a beer.
What has gone on in their heads? If I spoke fluent Poodle, would Poodle explain to me that she understood that I was saying I'd continue to love her, and satisfy her need for companionship, emotional support, validation, and being-in-relation if she brought me the beer? If I asked Wife (assuming I spoke fluent Wifese) might she say the same thing? Is that what I meant? Is there any way to tell?
Now try one from Poodle's point of view. Poodle comes up to the side of the bed where I'm lying and reading, and stares at me. I say "do you want to go out?" Poodle replies "Bounce Bounce Wag Wiggle Thump" ('thump' is her tail, apparently deliberately, hitting the chest of drawers). I heave my sorry ass off the bed, follow her to the back door, and let her out.
But sometimes she leads me to the kitchen and points to the bag of rawhide chew bones on top of the refrigerator. I say "no, you can't have a bone, the house is knee deep in half chewed bones". She says "Wag Wag Bounce Point". Is she saying "if you really loved me you'd get me another rawhide bone"?
When I first heard "Bounce Bounce Wag Wiggle Thump" was I stupidly failing to hear that she'd really said "Bounce BOUNCE Wag Wiggle THUMP Thump", meaning rawhide bone, rather than the other phrase meaning "I want out"?
Teofilo points out that non-human primates "don't actually use language with the sophistication that humans do". But that doesn't really get us far. People vary in the sophistication of their language. Some people do poorly on the verbal part of the SAT. I tried reading MacFarlane's papers, and my lack of sophistication was immediately apparent.
Is my difficulty in understanding Poodle like my difficulty in understanding MacFarlane? Is the set of symbols and meanings in Poodle's head just too alien for me to grasp? Is the same true of MacFarlane? Are we just too far apart along the relevant similarity dimensions?
Dammit, I thought I left a comment in response to 238. Anyway, one of the crazinesses of the idea is that it can manifest itself even when we consider more or less literal interpretations of the sentences, as opposed to subtextual stuff like the emotional support stuff. This for pretty hypertechnical MacFarlanian reasons (and I wouldn't say your troubles are necessarily with verbal sophistication, Michael; part of it is knowing the jargon and knowing the background of the issues he's addressing).
BUT one of the reasons I'm interested in this is that I want to say that there's less difference between literal meaning, implicature (relatively obvious things such as "Wouldja get me a beer, honey?" being a request for a beer) and subtext than is sometimes thought. So in that way I'm very interested in a lot of what you're saying there.
Also, about the expressed/understood/heard thing; contrast my saying to someone in the Unfoggetariat who knows TMK's real name, "I was talking to TMK about relativism." Unfoggetarian 1 could say to Unfoggetarian 2, "Weiner said that he was talking to [real name] about relativism" and usually be mostly right. (Unless the conversation concerned my propensity for Indiscretion Errors, in which case it would be important to report my utterance with the pseudonym I used.) But if I say the same sentence to a non-initiate, they can't report me as saying "Weiner said that he was talking to [real name] about relativism"; it seems to me that there would be something wrong with that report over and above the fact that Non-Initiate will never hit on this formulation. That's just not part of what I conveyed. (And it need not be a matter of my intention; I may not be thinking about your real name at all when I talk to these folk.)
My dimly remembered old comment was going to conclude by saying that I'm rapidly outstripping the actual thought I put into this and will have to stop commenting on this now, but since the thread is dead anyway hopefully I can get away without that.
Doesn't the one-time redistribution run into problems with geography? As long as land (and the resources on/under it) has value and as long as geography remains uneven, how does a one-time redistibution deal with this?
I believe it's important to be the first person to comment on a post.
Posted by Gaijin Biker | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 8:17 AM
I believe people are fundamentally good at heart.
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 8:24 AM
I don't believe in beetles.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 8:31 AM
The cars or the arthropods? Or both?
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 8:33 AM
3: Hm. I had a friend once who didn't believe in Wales.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 8:34 AM
My answer on Marginal was that some form of contractarian metaethics is true. But I'm not sure I actually the liklihood of that is over 50%.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 8:34 AM
What's contractarian metaethics?
(I'm going to start being obnoxious about asking questions on philosophy threads.)
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 8:35 AM
That you can support both Spurs and Arsenal.
Posted by dave heasman | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 8:36 AM
That black underwear are for entertainment purposes only.
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 8:38 AM
"actually the liklihood" s/b "actually think the likelihood"
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 8:39 AM
I believe that a democratic federal world government is both possible and desirable.
Though not viable in the next 50 years, obviously.
I win!
Posted by Robin Green | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 8:41 AM
Dark matter isn't the answer. Something else is going on. But I dunno what.
Posted by Mr. B | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 8:41 AM
The cars or the arthropods? Or both?
I just believe in me.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 8:42 AM
That the American people will only take so much, and no more.
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 8:43 AM
13: aw crap, count on me to miss the cultural reference...
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 8:47 AM
W/D, that's true but not absurd, I think, if you take contractualism broadly.
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 8:48 AM
What's contractarian metaethics?
(I'm going to start being obnoxious about asking questions on philosophy threads.)
Sigh.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 8:50 AM
I've previously stated (and then refused to explain) that I would favor "massive one-time redistribution" if I thought it was feasible, and that it would only be feasible if a world-government existed. I don't think that commits me to any part of 11, but it's a near thing.
I'm not sure if you're asking this but, metaethics is (I'm going to get this wrong, people who have devoted their career to philosophy, so correct me) the study of what the source and point of ethics is, whether or not ethical statements have truth values, what ethical statements are even about, etc.
Conractarian metaethics is one answer to all those questions, involving, in at least one form, a hypothetical implicit contract which depsite being both hypothetical and implicit commits all people to some minimal ethical standards, and provides a basis for figuring out what those standards are.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 8:52 AM
1. I believe that economics and analytic philosophy gain their authority institutionally, by control of hiring, the same way scholastic theology did ca. 1500 and the same way Marxist dialectics did in the USSR. Economics and philosophy are sometimes right, sometimes wrong, and sometimes neither provable nor refutable, but their institutional authority allows them to keep all disputes and doubts internal by means of rules as to what kinds of arguments will be admitted as valid.
2. I do not think that #1 is in any way absurd.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 8:52 AM
but unlike him, I don't believe that science doesn't provide us with access to objective knowledge about the external world.
I somehow got lost on the negative curves here: your saying that you do believe science provides access to objective knowledge, correct?
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 8:56 AM
Yeah, I do believe science provides access to objective knowledge.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 8:58 AM
18: So why are contractarian metaethics absurd, w/d? Because it's absurd to believe in the bindingness of a hypothetical, implicit contract?
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 9:00 AM
dsquared believes Searle's theory of transcendent meat? Say it ain't so!
I believe that if we locked Searle in an empty room, the room would understand AI.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 9:02 AM
Oh i got an unpopular one.
The greatest foreign policy mistake of the last 100 years was refusing to allow Japan to become a colonial power, and if Japan was populated with White people we wouldn't of tried.
Posted by Asteele | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 9:03 AM
I believe that I have a substantially better understanding of pro basketball and what it takes to put together a winning team than people who have been intimately involved with the game for 20+ years. I believe young NBA talent is more mismanaged than misjudged. And I believe that Kwame Brown and Darko Milicic will become valuable and consistent members of their teams, if not All-Stars.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 9:05 AM
I believe the 1970's were the greatest decade for music, or at least American popular music.
I believe we're in the middle of the golden age of film.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 9:05 AM
My 10 year old son doesn't believe in North Dakota. He repeatedly says it's a myth.
Posted by Anonymous | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 9:08 AM
I don't believe in free will.
Posted by tom | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 9:10 AM
I believe that there is some limit to how much people are willing to pay for a college education and that we're reaching it.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 9:12 AM
I believe in free will.
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 9:12 AM
Reading the latest on Hugh Hewitt, it occurs to me that nothing I believe could possibly qualify as absurd in today's America. The bar is just too damn high.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 9:15 AM
I believe that within 5 years I'll be shaving with a Gilette Aleph, a hyperbolic razor featuring blades as innumerous and indistinguishable as points along a single blade.
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 9:15 AM
It's difficult for me to identify what the most absurd thing I believe is, because whatever it is, it strikes me as entirely reasonable.
Posted by My Alter Ego | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 9:16 AM
Hey how about this: is it fundamentally absurd to believe in anything? "Believe in" is an action that seems fraught with absurdity to me. Like saying you believe or disbelieve in phenomenon X is arrogating to yourself the ability to decide what is or is not real. While all around you the universe is just sitting there unaffected.
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 9:16 AM
My mom believes in mind-reading, and she claims, whenever I try to argue with her, that many other people share her belief. Does anyone here believe in mindreading? She claims that it ought to be possible because thoughts are just electrical impulses, in response to which I always point out (despite not knowing much about physics) that they're very weak impulses in very specifically defined paths, and they'd have to be communicated through the skull and the air, through a lot of other electromagnetic fields, and to another skull and then correctly interpreted despite the lack of path-context.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 9:24 AM
She also believes that once when her lamp all of a sudden burned brighter it was the group mind communicating with it in response to some very intense thoughts she was thinking about a man she loved, unrequitedly.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 9:25 AM
I believe a thread about belief and absurdity, can, besides this comment, remain a Kierkegaard-free zone.
Yes, if I go up to people on the street and tell them a contract which they aren't, and have no reason to be aware of, but would have agreed to if they had been made aware of it under the proper conditions, provides with complete justification to accurately criticize their behavior, I think peolple might describe that more harshly, but in the same direction as, "absurd."
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 9:26 AM
I'm an atheist and generally anti-religion and foofy unprovables, but I like to believe that reincarnation is real.
(More accurately, that there only so many personalities/schemata that human brains can have, and hence functionally identical personalities are born and die all the time. Hence, even if there is no literal transfer of memories, etc., I have lived before and will live again (and am likely living in other bodies as I type.))
Posted by Chopper | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 9:38 AM
lizard people
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 9:43 AM
I have believed and will believe again that my life would be better if I were 15 pounds thinner.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 9:44 AM
I believe that I want to believe in God.
I believe that religion is a really bad arbiter of moral behaviour.
I believe that Rugby is the queen of all team sports but that Kevin Keegan rocked.
But most oddly of all I believe that people are decent.
Posted by Austro | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 9:50 AM
I believe that blogs come in matched pairs, and I desperately want to find The Unassimilated Negro's blog.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 9:56 AM
Psst...I'll see you all at Fogged. Don't tell SCMT.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 9:58 AM
(warning--sickeningly earnest comment below)
I believe in the existence of love as a connection which can bind two people against logic and reason and which is separate from lust, infatuation, social expectations, hormones, familiarity or any of the other things to which love bears a more than passing resemblance.
I also believe that people are basically good and want to do good.
I believe these things despite 50 years of experience telling me that they are naive and foolish (or at least woefully incomplete) things to believe.
Posted by Idealist | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 10:02 AM
I believe that a diet based primarily on cigarettes and pork hasn't negatively affected my health.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 10:06 AM
I believe that I will use a pseudonym from this time forth, forever, but that the combination of tortured syntax, clumsy and not-always-intentionally-absurd euphemisms, and wildly inappropriate bible quotations should assure I'm easily recognised.
I believe that the knowledge I want to have and rely on cannot usually be proved but can usually be demonstrated.
Posted by I don't pay | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 10:07 AM
I believe in existentialist absurdity, as I understand it. I believe that there is no meaning to life, absolute or relative. You can give life meaning, but only if you don't scrutinize it too hard. Consequently, the better you are at scrutiny the more meaningless your life feels. As soon as you try to figure out exactly what it is that gives your life meaning, the meaning disappears and leaves you depressed. Consequently, the examined life is not worthwhile.
That is all.
Posted by pdf23ds | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 10:12 AM
I believe that belief isn't worth much, and justified true belief is only marginally better.
I am both an atheist and a pacifist.
I don't believe in any form of personal identity over time.
Posted by rob helpy-chalk | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 10:33 AM
I believe--and I honestly do, I don't even think this is ridiculous--that virtually everyone is way more intelligent than they realize, and that they can learn and think if you just treat them with respect and ask good questions.
I believe---and this is absurd, and I wish I didn't--that there exists some job somewhere that, if I can just figure out what it is, will make me perfectly happy and my entire life will be wonderful for ever after.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 10:35 AM
What 2 said, and consequently some of what 44 said. Worse yet, I believe on some level that the universe is basically ordered so that things will work out OK for everyone. Not in this world, obviously.
Re 35: I can read minds to some extent. For instance, the other day when someone punched me in the face I was able to discern that he was mad at me. (Note: did not actually happen.)
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 10:40 AM
there exists some job somewhere that [...] will make me perfectly happy and my entire life will be wonderful for ever after
Lottery winner.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 10:46 AM
I believe that the only reason for honest disagreement is lack of communication -- that on any point where I and someone else disagree, that if we were both able to completely and accurately explain both our beliefs and our reasons for holding those beliefs, one of us would be convinced that they were wrong. I further believe that it would usually be the other guy.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 10:47 AM
52, there's a ton of research/scholarly work on that (I learned via one of the two blogs linked in the body of this post), though they insist on using silly terminology like "bayesian priors."
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 10:49 AM
(Note: did not actually happen.)
You did not actually realize that the puncher was mad?
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 10:50 AM
I believe that 52 is wrong because the first part of 49 is wrong.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 10:52 AM
52: I believe that LB is mocking ... someone. Maybe "Us." Maybe "Them."
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 10:52 AM
I don't believe in any form of personal identity over time.
Hazlitt believed this too and tried to make it a foundation for morality.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 10:54 AM
I believe that the frist part of 49 is wrong, and 52 is wrong for this and other reasons.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 10:56 AM
I think the first part of 49 is obviously right, and it surprises me a bit that anyone disagrees (or is the conversation going over my head again).
Posted by Idealist | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 11:02 AM
I believe the first part of the first part #49 is right, but that B is massively underselling how difficult it is to teach people to use that intelligence.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 11:06 AM
it surprises me a bit that anyone disagrees
When did you last work retail, Idealist?
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 11:09 AM
I believe that the purpose of liberal democratic government is to make sure that the strong don't bully or take advantage of the weak.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 11:10 AM
I believe that there are a not insignificant number of people who overestimate their intelligence, enough so that it is wrong to say "virtually everyone is more intelligent than they realize."
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 11:11 AM
I believe that 56 is correct with respect to the second part of 52, and that the person being mocked is "Me".
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 11:11 AM
I believe I can fly—I believe I can touch the sky.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 11:15 AM
I believe in "reverse" clairvoyance. By that I mean that if in my mind I think (or fantasize) about how a situation will unfold, one thing is absolutely certain: It will NOT unfold in that way.
Hope for the best; expect the worst. -- Mel Brooks
Posted by admadm | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 11:16 AM
PSR! PSR!!
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 11:18 AM
I believe there are many people in this great country that have only managed to keep from getting their heads stuck in pickle jars by pure luck. For example.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 11:19 AM
I believe all heterosexual women and homosexual men, in their heart of hearts, want to sleep with Taylor Hicks.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 11:20 AM
I believe the Bridgeplate is our future.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 11:21 AM
65: I believe the children are the future.
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 11:21 AM
I believe for every drop of rain that falls, a flower grows.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 11:22 AM
Aw fer cryin out loud, Drymala.
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 11:24 AM
Then I pulled out my gun!—
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 11:28 AM
I believe my effort to bait Drymala has been a complete success.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 11:31 AM
What's funny about 52 is that if it's right, every professionally significant thought I have is wrong. Fortunately, I believe that 52 is itself wrong. So far.
I believe that thing about the 15 pounds is wrong.
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 11:37 AM
I agree with 52, to the extent that people converse rationally, (though I don't suspect that it's an absurd belief, so I didn't mention it). I forget whether it was SCMT or text who was giving me shit over it a while back. In their defense, I was being a bit tone deaf in that thread.
I also agree with the last part of 48, and I think people would be better off if they stopped fooling themselves.
Posted by pdf23ds | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 11:47 AM
LB is Gottfried Leibniz!
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 11:48 AM
To expand a bit, I believe that people in the right frame of mind and with the right education can approximate rationality in conversation to a large extent, enough to make 52 a useful idea.
Posted by pdf23ds | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 11:51 AM
I believe MFAs are a Ponzi scheme.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 11:52 AM
In high school there was a guy who decided one day that every time the teacher said "Leibniz", he would quickly echo "Leibniz" in falsetto.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 11:53 AM
I don't currently believe the 15 pounds thing. I just have and will again. Or some future person who lives in the body of Tia will.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 11:55 AM
Did the teacher get annoyed and/or tell him to shut up?
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 11:55 AM
I believe people hold most of their opinions for non-rational reasons, but often justify them with rational arguments they've come up with after the fact.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 11:55 AM
Jon Haidt's done some work on that, Joe, if you're interested & biscuity.
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 11:56 AM
79: But are all disagreements just confusion over meaning, and not of substance? This seems totally wrong to me. At some level you come to differences in values, or in the efficacy of prediction models, or whatever.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 11:57 AM
37:Silly rabbit
I believe, via "Sickness Unto Death" and the rest of K, that the only logical choices are belief in God or concious rebellion against Him. Atheism is impossible. Also, that the strongest argument for belief is authority, you believe in God because He commands belief.
Posted by bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 11:57 AM
I'm buscuity!
Posted by pdf23ds | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 11:58 AM
I'm biscuity if you want me to be.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 11:59 AM
Mmm, biscuits.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 11:59 AM
79 should read "in beliefs about the efficacy of prediction models"
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 12:01 PM
Does it count as a pwning if I misspelled the word?
Posted by pdf23ds | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 12:01 PM
63: I should have said, "more reasonable, more intellectually honest, and more thoughtful" than is usually acknowledged. Arrogance about intelligence, I would argue, is not actually *true* intelligence--it's a form of defensiveness covering up a suspicion that really, they're not as bright as they want people to believe.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 12:02 PM
91: You mean "in conversation" s/b "in beliefs about the efficacy of prediction models"?
Posted by pdf23ds | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 12:03 PM
Sigh. In 91, 79 s/b 86.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 12:05 PM
According to McLemee this morning:
http://insidehighered.com/views/2006/03/29/mclemee
Garry Wills believes Jesus' teachings don't make sense without the assumption of divinity.
Posted by I don't pay | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 12:05 PM
The falsetto thing lasted just long enough to be more funny than annoying. Which I suppose amounted to just a couple of Leibnizim.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 12:05 PM
I believe life began again at 40.
I believe in God, but I believe I'm frequently a huge disappointment to Him.
I believe what goes around comes around.
Most absurdly, I believe in love and I believe love lost will eventually be found again.
Posted by synaesthete | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 12:08 PM
Wow, I missed 86.
86: I believe what you're calling "disagreements of substance" can only be disagreements about morals, or values. I think that either you can frame a disagreement as a question of fact (or of logical deduction) or it devolves into a question of values, and I don't believe in any sort of objective morality, so that doesn't really hurt my theory. Am I being unclear enough?
Also, I suspect 84, and that complicates things. (How can I believe in 52 and 84? Absurd!)
Posted by pdf23ds | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 12:09 PM
Sometimes I believe that time doesn't actually exist, and that all that exists is a single time-slice of the universe. That slice happens to be the present. The experience of time is just an illusion.
Sometimes I believe that life is a dream, or a simulation, centered on me, and everything else is just calculated just-in-time as needed to complete the illusion of my world.
I don't really believe those much.
Posted by pdf23ds | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 12:12 PM
In other words, I think disagreements about values can potentially not be resolved, but they're not disagreements in the same sense. They're just differences between people, like differences in eye color. Or differences in sanity.
But I believe that the subset of questions that don't devolve into differences of value are large enough, and that even when they ultimately do, various internal factors that happen during the discussion can cause people to actually change their values on reflection. I don't think one's values are really a property of one's character so much as an artifact of one's upbringing, and are thus more malleable than most would be comfortable admitting.
Posted by pdf23ds | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 12:17 PM
I believe in free will but I believe [God? The Universe? Something Else?] drops little hints throughout our day-to-day lives for the best path to take. I also think whatever that force is has certain people enter our lives who will prepare us for things that will happen in the future so we will be ready when they do.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 12:19 PM
I'm really trying to argue against the usefulness of 52.
I don't think substantive disagreements are only about values, though that's one category of them. I also think you can have substantive disagreements about likely future events (that's what I meant by the prediction models thing). I think two people can totally understand each other's meaning and reasons for holding their beliefs, and it's possible (likely, even) that neither will be convinced they're wrong.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 12:20 PM
Cross posted.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 12:21 PM
But 52 is making an incredibly strong claim that the only reason for disagreements is failure to communicate (if I understand it correctly). I don't disagree that values are malleable--just that they're not inevitably so.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 12:24 PM
I think the prediction of future events is so hard that the amount of time and information it takes to do a good job is too high to make it feasible to hold a conversation with someone that resolves the disagreements. There would be too make effort spent in doing additional fact-gathering and theoretical hashing out of things. Because these conversations so often end up short on facts, psychological biases in are often a larger factor than in other kinds of conversation.
I agree that 52 isn't useful for many kinds of discourse, because of resource restraints. But I think it's true theoretically, and I think understanding and applying it opens up ideas pertinent to the construction/maintenance of forums of a higher quality, and at least allows you to see when a conversation is going nowhere and why that's so, which can save time.
Posted by pdf23ds | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 12:28 PM
106 crossed with 105.
I think 52 doesn't seem like such a strong claim. I see most conversations as taking place with an extremely limited bandwidth compared to the total information pertinent to the discussions. Several orders of magnitude difference. Failure to communicate is practically inevitable.
Posted by pdf23ds | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 12:30 PM
I think that Tia's point in 105 is a strong one, strong enough that it justifies my putting 52 on this thread as the most absurd thing I believe, rather than one of the many non-absurd things I believe.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 12:30 PM
I.e. the amount of information necessary to really communicate oneself fully on an issue like abortion, for instance, would be measured in thousands of pages, whereas most conversations take place in thousands and tens of thousands of words.
Posted by pdf23ds | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 12:33 PM
Oh, I think I misunderstood 105.
In that case, I think I would have to back away from the claim in 52, and only say that all disagreements about fact are due to failure to communicate.
Posted by Anonymous | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 12:37 PM
it's the lizard people who trick us into thinking we disagree about abortion, so that they can rob us blind and eat our children while we argue about it.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 12:37 PM
to fight the lizard people, we must love each other.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 12:38 PM
every aborted fetus is awarded fifty beauteous virgins in the afterworld, and therefore, it is a great honor to abort them. If we all had information about this, and shared it, we would not disagree.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 12:39 PM
I actually liked the lizard-guy on Deep Space Nine.
Posted by I don't pay | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 12:40 PM
And note that many questions about value are just thin wrappers of value over questions of fact. For instance, people who think that fornication is a sin. They often have the misconception that fornication is inevitably emotionally harmful to its participants, when in fact that's not the case. If they could be convinced that it's not the case, their value would likely change. (Some would say this indicates that they just have a deeper value. But deeper values tend to be more universal, so that doesn't lead to a lot of disagreement.)
Posted by pdf23ds | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 12:42 PM
Michael Douglas is dangerous and insane.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 12:44 PM
I've got a third arm that nobody can see, with a mind of its own. It's the third arm that gets me in trouble.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 12:46 PM
In that case, I think I would have to back away from the claim in 52, and only say that all disagreements about fact are due to failure to communicate.
I think I can endorse this, in that a fact, pretty much by definition, exists independently of how its perceived, right? And since I signed on in the body of the post to objective reality, I think all people, when being rational, can come to agreement about fact, so long as they understand each other's terms and the pertinent information.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 12:49 PM
there is no time, because I spent it all during my childhood.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 12:51 PM
118: You might believe in objective reality and disagree that we are in a very good position, at this time, to describe it very well. In part, it isn't the absence of objective reality that makes things hard, but rather that "facts" are social constructs that are more or less useful to differing groups of people.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 12:52 PM
You might believe in objective reality and disagree that we are in a very good position, at this time, to describe it very well. In part, it isn't the absence of objective reality that makes things hard, but rather that "facts" are social constructs that are more or less useful to differing groups of people.
Okay, but we're talking about a fantasy world in which everyone was able to perfectly explain their terms and had complete information. In that world, there wouldn't be disputes of fact, because no one's social construct would get in the way of describing objective reality to someone else.
The lengths I go to to avoid secretarial work.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 12:57 PM
"a fact, pretty much by definition, exists independently of how its perceived, right?"
Well, as long as you acknowledge that questions of fact can be extremely fuzzy and potentially include questions such as whether (particular) abortion restrictions lead to a better or worse society (by a particular definition), or whether (a particular brand of) social welfare will improve society (by a particular metric).
Some facts, like some equations, are impossible to prove though true.
And I acknowledge that discourse doesn't even begin to head in the right direction most of the time (due to limited human attention and interest and structural factors of the conversational environment), and that this kind of discourse doesn't have an especially large amount of influence on public policy, etc. etc.
One of my interests is in figuring out what kind of internet forum would be more suited to leading to this ideal kind of conversation, so that's perhaps why I seem so abstract on the matter. These abstractions are important to the question, but not to many other questions.
Posted by pdf23ds | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 1:01 PM
Okay, but we're talking about a fantasy world in which everyone was able to perfectly explain their terms and had complete information.
But having limits on our ability to express ourselves to other human beings is a defining element of the human condition. The beings inhabiting this fantasy world would not be a different kind of creature than we are.
Posted by DaveL | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 1:02 PM
121: If everyone had access to the same information, and used the same models to understand that information, I wonder whether there would be no disagreements in part because there doesn't seem to be much need for conversation.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 1:02 PM
WOULD BE a different kind of creature than we are.
Posted by DaveL | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 1:03 PM
I wonder whether there would be no disagreements in part because there doesn't seem to be much need for conversation.
Every word spoken would be a cock joke. Ergo, I believe Unfogged is the apotheosis of the human project.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 1:05 PM
"but rather that "facts" are social constructs that are more or less useful to differing groups of people."
From a sociological perspective, sure. But we weren't talking about this from a sociological perspective.
Posted by pdf23ds | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 1:05 PM
Believing (as I'm inclined to) that the notion of some kind of endless cycle of reincarnation is less absurd than the Christian Heaven or the Muslim Paradise, is probably my most absurd belief. Also, I still believe that Teilhard de Chardin was on to something.
Posted by Paul | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 1:19 PM
Absurdly enough and allegorically of course---
Just come on down to 54;
Find a spot out on the floor.
[happy birthday, F/L/]
Posted by Mark | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 1:39 PM
Like others, I believe that most people are fundamentally decent. I also believe there are a small minority of people who are incorrigible and unreformable sociopaths. Deep down, I also believe that most committed right-wingers are either stupid or heavily weighted towrds the sociopathic end of the bell-curve.
I believe that the whole Kripke/Putnam revival of essentialism was in error and I also believe that we live in a competely non-teleological universe. Evolution isn't a *process* in anything like the usual sense and it isn't directional.
Like others, I have worries about the persistence of identity over time and think that both Hume and/or various Buddhists may have it right about the self.
Generally, I think that on most philosophical issues, agreeing with Hume is a often a useful rule of thumb.
Again, like others, I think that some kind of broadly contractarian meta-ethics is likely to be right.
Politically, I suspect that something radical needs to happen before the lives of ordinary men and women will improve to any appreciable extent. I have no concrete idea about what that might be.
Posted by Matt McGrattan | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 1:41 PM
I believe #100.
I believe psychedelic drugs have confirmed this belief.
I often believe that Native Americans and other assorted pagans had it right when they worshipped nature as god(s), but I feel pangs of Catholic guilt when I think this.
I believe this thread could be turned into a weekly thing, much like Kotsko's Tuesday Hatred and Friday Confessional.
Posted by Jon McGee | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 1:42 PM
Aha! Mr. McGee's comment brings to mind a belief which I certainly hold and which is certainly absurd on its face: to wit, that marihuana hallucinations reveal or can reveal deeper, more fundamental truths about my reality, than those which are accessible to me during waking life. I also believe this about dreams some, though not as strongly, and that belief is similarly absurd.
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 1:49 PM
131- I was telling SB just the other day that I think I have my own version of Shinto. Which is to say that I am often transfixed by things or people, to the point where it almost seems as though they are temporarily inhabited by some sort of minor god or sprite. Not really, of course, but it seems that way.
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 1:56 PM
history began in 1914 when the lizard people deposited us here and instructed us to start fighting the Great War. Everything we have historical evidence for did happen, only after 1914, with the lizard people playing various parts, as they are wont to do.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 2:08 PM
I believe that thing about the 15 pounds is wrong.
I believe the correct number is thirty.
Posted by mcmc | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 2:09 PM
I don't even see this as unChristian. What are the Gadarene swine or balaam's ass? I think this inhabitation is a basic, and by me at least, respected spiritual perception. Idolatry is something very different, imo.
Posted by I don't pay | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 2:09 PM
136/133
Posted by Anonymous | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 2:11 PM
re: 131
I don't believe in any kind of deity but if one were to believe in something spiritual, then some form of pantheism does seem like the least obviously abusrd option.
Posted by Matt McGrattan | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 2:13 PM
I believe in soulmates. Unfortunately, I believe that mine is just as antisocial as I am, and so we have never met.
Also, I believe I'll dust my broom.
Posted by Mo MacArbie | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 2:15 PM
I believe the correct number is thirty.
Hey!
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 2:15 PM
132- I had to stop smoking marijuana because it began to make me nauseous. I've never literally hallucinated while on drugs, e.g. seen pink elephants or the like, but - absurd as it sounds, but then this is the right thread for it - I feel like I transcend time and space and I can see the connectedness of everything. The blanket is everything: you, me, a ham sandwich. I think the Catholic equivalent of this is the belief that God is in everyone and everything.
I've taken to writing down my dreams, especially the more absurd ones, because I believe they reveal much about our subconscious that never manifests itself in conscious thought, only in dreams.
Posted by Jon McGee | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 2:15 PM
140: (I don't really misunderstand. I'm just pretending to for comic effect.)
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 2:16 PM
I've taken to writing down my dreams, especially the more absurd ones, because I believe they reveal much about our subconscious that never manifests itself in conscious thought, only in dreams.
I believe this statement is redundant and auto-pwning.
Posted by Jon McGee | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 2:17 PM
I believe in Crystal Light 'cause I believe in me.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 2:19 PM
I stand alone without beliefs. The only truth I know is you.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 2:22 PM
I agree with 145, except I replace "beliefs" with "pants."
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 2:23 PM
140: Oops, that didn't come out right. Just universalizing from my particular case.
Posted by mcmc | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 2:23 PM
Writing down your dreams in detail can lead to lucid dreaming, because you more often think about dreams and therefore are more likely to think about dreaming while dreaming and thus realize that you are dreaming.
I don't believe in soulmates, but I do believe that only a small minority of people are able to have healthy relationships at all. Among those people, I don't know how much the specific pairing matters.
Posted by pdf23ds | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 2:31 PM
When did you last work retail, Idealist?
Oddly enough, apo said the same thing in this other thread about what it's reasonable to believe.
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 2:32 PM
When taking pdf23ds, be careful what you wish for.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 2:32 PM
Uh, I meant, "when taking pdf23ds's advice," although it's very possible you should be similarly careful when taking pdf23ds as well.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 2:35 PM
nice site
Posted by discount pdf23ds | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 2:37 PM
Perhaps multiple-tentacled creatures permit themselves to be imagined, if they know that once they materialize in a dream, they'll be able to take pdf23ds.
Posted by I don't pay | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 2:38 PM
I had to stop taking pdf23ds because they made me nauseous.
Posted by Mo MacArbie | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 2:43 PM
When I want your many arms
When I want you and all your charms
Whenever I want you, all I have to do is
Dre-ea-ea-ea-eam, dream, dream, dream
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 2:44 PM
My cousin knows this guy who took too much pdf23ds, and he totally cut his face off and fed it to his dog, then jumped off the roof 'cause he thought he could fly.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 2:45 PM
Interestingly enough, pdf23ds are the drugs I was talking about in #131.
148- I've heard that about writing down dreams. I've also heard that once one achieves a state of lucid dreaming, one can ultimately begin to control his/her dreams.
Posted by Jon McGee | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 2:51 PM
I've tried to write down my dreams before, but I'm always just too sleepy when I first wake up to feel like moving around any to write it down, especially between sleep periods, but even after my last sleep period. I'm so lazy.
Posted by pdf23ds | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 2:54 PM
I had an odd dream the other night that I wanted to write down. I got my notebook and started to write it down, then got distracted by something or other. At a certain point, I woke up and realized that I had dreamed trying to write down the first dream.
Posted by Jon McGee | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 2:58 PM
You just blew my mind.
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 3:01 PM
I had dreamed trying to write down the first dream.
Let us now take pdf23ds and meditate on the great truths you have laid before us.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 3:02 PM
I actually did have one lucid dream. I woke up and tried to look at the alarm clock, and it was fuzzy and I couldn't read it. So I realized that, oh, I'm still dreaming. I got kind of excited about having a lucid dream, and woke up. So I looked at the clock again to see what time it was, and turns out I was still dreaming. So I got up and walked around my apartment a little. I tried flying, but all I ended up doing was jumping up and down a little. Then I woke up. I was still dreaming, so I walked outside my apartment and starting swinging around like a gymnist from the railing on my balcony (impossible in real life because of the vertical rails holding up the handrail, but whatever). Then I woke up.
That was a really sucky dream.
Posted by pdf23ds | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 3:03 PM
Yeah, the alarm clock is my lucid dream trick. Sometimes it doesn't have real numbers at all, just LCD gibberish. But I'm often too close to waking to have a very long dream at that point. In the best one I ran out into the hall, found a good friend and proclaimed, "Let's have sex!" We did.
But mostly I just wake up.
Posted by Mo MacArbie | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 3:13 PM
In my dream in #159, I think I didn't realize I was still dreaming because I was at my parent's house, where I didn't have an alarm clock, and thus had no test to see if I was dreaming or not.
I probably should have realized that I was dreaming though, because the distraction I was talking about was actually a random girl in my bed wanting me to have sex with her.
Posted by Jon McGee | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 3:22 PM
In my dream in #159, I think I didn't realize I was still dreaming because I was at my parent's house, where I didn't have an alarm clock, and thus had no test to see if I was dreaming or not.
I probably should have realized that I was dreaming though, because the distraction I was talking about was actually a random girl in my bed wanting me to have sex with her.
I wish that actually happened, but sadly it doesn't.
Posted by Jon McGee | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 3:22 PM
Sorry for the double post, I've taken way too many pdf23ds.
Posted by Jon McGee | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 3:26 PM
Most of the dreams I remember are sex dreams, except for the ones that are terrifying nightmares, which is at least 25% of them.
I had a lucid dream once where I started to fly away from someone who was chasing me, but then I woke up.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 3:26 PM
I think I remember reading somewhere that about 1 in 5 people regularly have lucid dreams without trying. Or something like that.
Posted by pdf23ds | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 3:36 PM
"lucid dreams" s/b "wet dreams"
Posted by Jon McGee | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 3:44 PM
Credo in unum Deum, Patrem omnipotentem, factorem coeli et terrae, visibilium omnium, et invisibilium.
...
Posted by Benedictus XVI Pontifex Maximus | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 3:52 PM
My most absurd belief
iswas that my employer is unaware of employees blogging on company time.Posted by a regular commenter who probably won't be showing up during work hours anymore | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 4:32 PM
I believe that sucks.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 5:29 PM
Blogging or commenting?
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 5:52 PM
Me too, considering that I'm rather horrificly at risk for the same myself. My well-thought-out plan if anyone here asks me about my online timewasting is to change my name and resurface as a waitress in Oklahoma.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 5:54 PM
I try to confine my own Unfoggetariat duties to brief spurts of inactivity during my workday, largely clustered around lunch and closing time. Also, I'm pretty sure my boss reads Unfogged. I mean, I've seen her computer and she's reading Making Light and some guy named Gary Farber (?)—how could she not have ventured into the Mineshaft?
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 5:56 PM
'smasher, can't you claim any time spent blogging as research for that Smiths/ onian thing?
(Originally misgoogleproofed as "smiths/ onion." It's hip!)
LB, I hope "me too" was to 172, not 171. You must risk firing in order to keep blogging for my amusement!
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 6:00 PM
I often feel left out of the more interesting threads because discussion mostly takes place during the day, when I'm in class. But there are worse commenting-related problems to have.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 6:00 PM
I do the Sm/thson/an in addition to my dayjob, which isn't blog related in the least.
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 6:06 PM
Oh.
You'll be happy to know, I've just been cooking (sort of) with Gebhart's chili powder.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 6:20 PM
Awesome! I always stock up on that stuff when I'm back at home.
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 6:31 PM
This is the closest thing to an open thread that I remember seeing on unfogged for a while.
My forearm is really tired. I don't think I like racquetball that much.
Posted by pdf23ds | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 6:59 PM
This is the closest thing to an open thread that I remember seeing on unfogged for a while.
Really?
My forearm is really tired. I don't think I like racquetball that much.
Is that what they're calling it these days?
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 7:05 PM
Is that what they're calling it these days?
No, they're calling that felching.
Posted by Stanley | Link to this comment | 03-29-06 7:39 PM
Blogging or commenting?
Considering the amount of time that can be consumed by either of these activities, my employer would probably prefer that I neither comment here nor blog elsewhere during work hours. Is that what you were asking?
Posted by a regular commenter, etc. | Link to this comment | 03-30-06 5:22 AM
I believe the first part of the first part #49 is right, but that B is massively underselling how difficult it is to teach people to use that intelligence.
Or perhaps B is just a really really good teacher.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03-30-06 7:43 AM
B, have you got broadband there?
Posted by I don't pay | Link to this comment | 03-30-06 7:47 AM
Am not at home.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03-30-06 7:51 AM
I believe that there are logically alien languages, that is, languages that are similar enough to human languages in their grammar that we can definitely say that they are languages, but different enough that no human could ever learn them.
I believe that bottlenose dolphins speak such a language.
Posted by rob helpy-chalk | Link to this comment | 03-30-06 8:01 AM
188: Ryan Reynolds says his budgie predicted the Asian tsunami and told him just before he (the bird) died that God was coming to take him away.
Alternate theory: Reynolds desperately needs to get out of the house.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 03-30-06 8:07 AM
Not the Ryan Reynolds from Just Friends, oddly enough.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 03-30-06 8:09 AM
Rob, is that an "in principle unlearnable" kind of claim, or is it a matter of psychological contingency?
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 03-30-06 8:10 AM
Or perhaps B is just a really really good teacher.
I don't doubt it. Rather, I believe that there is a pretty hard and early limit to how much of an effect a teacher can have on a student. After all, he or she only has, at most, only a few hours a day with the kid. And most of the important stuff - the building of the interstitial connections between the material that distinguish those who "get it" from those who just learn it - happens outside the control of the teacher.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03-30-06 8:16 AM
Believing 192 has certainly made my job easier.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 03-30-06 8:20 AM
FL: I suppose it is a psychological contingency thing, in that if a human had a portion of her brain wired like a dolphin, and spent time in a linguistic community that followed dolphin protocols, she would be able to speak dolphin. However the relevant arrangement of neurons is not within the normal range of human plasticity.
The question becomes metaphysical when you ask whether one can define "similar enough to human languages to recognizably be a language" in such a way that it doesn't require that humans be able to learn it without some kind of brain transplant.
Posted by rob helpy-chalk | Link to this comment | 03-30-06 9:13 AM
194: Are there any cognitive scientists that believe such a language would be possible?
I think the evidence points against the idea. If it were really possible for a language to be that incomphrehensible, one would think that human languages would exhibit variation such that some are somewhat incomprehensible. I'm not aware of any such language, though. AFAIK, the variation between human languages are small enough that a sufficiently intelligent and motivated speaker of a major language can achieve fluency in any human language given enough exposure to it. (I say major because there are some languages whose native speakers live such circumspect lives that their mental capacity may not be developed enough to achieve fluency in a more complicated language.) Differences are really more about vocabulary and word order and phonemes and tonality and the grammatical role of metaphor than in any basic difference in the way they exercise the human mind.
Posted by pdf23ds | Link to this comment | 03-30-06 10:50 AM
The question becomes metaphysical when you ask whether one can define "similar enough to human languages to recognizably be a language" in such a way that it doesn't require that humans be able to learn it without some kind of brain transplant.
I don't think you can. For the language to be anything that I can recognize as a language, it would have to involve correspondences between the language and the outside world according to some set of rules. Given that limit, I cannot conceive of a language that would be unlearnable. (I think you may be confusing the idea of 'a language outside the scope of possible natural human languages' with 'a language a human could not learn'. Any programming language, for example, is the first but not the second.)
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03-30-06 11:16 AM
Programming languages are not languages, at least by any definition I can think of off hand.
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 03-30-06 11:20 AM
Programming languages allow us to tell a computer what we want it to do. So, metaphorically, it is a language. Plus, I bet computer languages use many of the same parts of the brain that real languages do. On the other hand, working with code is a very different experience than working with human text, and I imagine utilizes the brain very differently. But maybe not.
Posted by pdf23ds | Link to this comment | 03-30-06 12:04 PM
They're language-like, though, in the sense that the hypothetical dolphin language would have to be. Yet they're still learnable.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03-30-06 12:06 PM
I believe that legalizing prostitution would destroy the internet as we know it.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 03-30-06 12:24 PM
Rob, LB,
Right, I was thinking of the sort-of Davidsonian argument that anything properly called a language has a truth predicate, and our best understanding of the truth predicate is the Tarski disquotational scheme, and that involves identity of content, so there can be no in-principle untranslatable langauges, etc. Wolfson will now proceed to tell me that I don't understand the argument properly, which I admit freely.
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 03-30-06 12:28 PM
LB: I was specifically thinking of a language that we could never learn, so that we would never know what the hell those guys are squeeking about, but know well that they are squeeking about something. There are a wide variety of artificial languages that humans would never develop naturally--computer langauges, first order logic--but these are actually meant to be a purification of human rationality, not something logically alien.
Posted by rob helpy-chalk | Link to this comment | 03-30-06 2:41 PM
FL: That is the obvious argument against my belief, and the reason why I named this idea an absurd thing that I believe.
My main motivation for this theory is simply that it would be really cool if it were true. This is also my motivation for believing the dinosaurs were brightly colored, like birds. They also must have sang elaborate songs to attract mates and mark their territory. I mean, that would just be too cool.
Posted by rob helpy-chalk | Link to this comment | 03-30-06 2:46 PM
Davidsonian argument that anything properly called a language has a truth predicate, and our best understanding of the truth predicate is the Tarski disquotational scheme, and that involves identity of content, so there can be no in-principle untranslatable langauges, etc.
To the extent that I understand it (that is, leaving out all the proper nouns and the word disquotational) I think this was what I was groping toward.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03-30-06 2:47 PM
They also must have sang elaborate songs to attract mates and mark their territory.
This, on the other hand, is the best idea ever. And it isn't even absurd -- birds are dinosaurs, why shouldn't dinosaurs sing? I plan to tell this to my kids as accepted fact.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03-30-06 2:49 PM
Oh, Bronty
Well you ate your weight in vegetation
But you're extinct anyway, oh Bronty
Well the ground shook with my admiration
They'll put your bones on display, oh Bronty
Posted by Dinosaur Barry Manilow | Link to this comment | 03-30-06 3:05 PM
Isn't that Apatsy, these days?
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03-30-06 3:06 PM
I don't go for that touchy-feely PC crap.
Posted by Dinosaur Barry Manilow | Link to this comment | 03-30-06 3:09 PM
Unlike lizards, dinosaurs do not keep up with current terminology. They're dinosaurs, duh.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 03-30-06 3:09 PM
Yes, Bronty had a carnevore's head on an herbivore's body.
Posted by I don't pay | Link to this comment | 03-30-06 3:10 PM
You traduce the memory of my beloved!
Posted by Dinosaur Barry Manilow | Link to this comment | 03-30-06 3:11 PM
Don't you mean "hott!"?
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 03-30-06 3:12 PM
Was that Anne, Emily, or Charlotte Bronty?
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03-30-06 3:13 PM
I'm still working out the kinks in this persona.
Posted by Dinosaur Barry Manilow | Link to this comment | 03-30-06 3:23 PM
201: Actually, I think David Davidson speaks a mutually untranslatable language vis a vis English. At least, I've only met one person who claims to understand Davidson, and I'm not sure how you could verify his claim.
Posted by Ben | Link to this comment | 03-30-06 3:48 PM
Sylvia had an excellent book about feathered dinosaurs, with pictures of brightly colored microraptors and others and explanation of dinosaurs' evolution into birds. I would recommend it to you, LB, but I cannot find it or remember the title. But if it turns up I shall.
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 03-30-06 5:34 PM
(I say major because there are some languages whose native speakers live such circumspect lives that their mental capacity may not be developed enough to achieve fluency in a more complicated language.)
Ummm...
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 03-30-06 6:02 PM
Hey I read a pretty incredible statistic today in the opening chapter of "Guns, Germs, and Steel", to wit: that of the roughly 6,000 human languages known to exist, about 1,000 are spoken only on New Guinea. Can anybody here tell me if that's straight up?
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 03-30-06 6:29 PM
It is.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 03-30-06 6:33 PM
217: yeah, I was skeptical of that assertion too. I don't think life circumscription has anything to do with capacity for language learning, which is universal, except in an individual with seriously impaired intelligence, and intelligence doesn't correlate with the kind of circumscription I imagine pdf is talking about. I mean, have native peoples, when colonized, been unable to learn the language of the colonizer?
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03-30-06 6:41 PM
Well they talk in these funny pidgins and accents which mark them as Other.
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 03-30-06 6:58 PM
I won't defend the statement. I thought it at least possible.
Posted by pdf23ds | Link to this comment | 03-30-06 7:26 PM
I see that I need to reaffirm my place in the Crazy Old Man clan, which I can do most easily by speaking out of ignorance and being spectacularly wrong.
Davidsonian argument that anything properly called a language has a truth predicate, and our best understanding of the truth predicate is the Tarski disquotational scheme, and that involves identity of content, so there can be no in-principle untranslatable languages, etc.
I'm quite confident I didn't understand that, but I'm wondering if there isn't an important difference between translating and learning a language. That is, that it might well be possible to learn a new language, yet remain unable to express in the old language thoughts that are sensible in the new.
I speak Mike-ese, a variant of american, and I'm pretty sure that what FL said cannot be simply translated into Mike-ese. There's no equivalence like 'la plume de ma tante est sur la table' for FL's statement. It might be possible to learn FL-ese (given worlds enough and time, and a very patient teacher), and understand what he said, but that's not translation.
Learning a language, I guess, involves learning a set of shared referents. [that] is Banana, [that] is friendship, etc. Humans (I'm guessing again) share a hardwired predilection for certain sorts of referents - things seen, things touched, social relations. I think work has been done about universal aspects of human language, and innate linguistic tendencies (Chomsky? Can't remember). Perhaps all human languages are learnable by humans simply because all humans are human. That is, non-humans, having non-human perceptions and non-human ways of organizing the universe, might have a language not learnable by humans.
Consider bee language. Does wiggle-wiggle-walk-walk mean 'left at the cottonwood, straight on 'til barn' or does it mean 'fly 3 units with the sun over your left shoulder in the morning, then turn towards the smell of horse'? Would either of those sentences make any sense to a bee, or do they have such an alien set of referents that we'll never know?
Okay, cue the linguists and the epistemologists.
Posted by Michael H Schneider | Link to this comment | 03-30-06 8:43 PM
Not to forget the entomologists.
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 03-30-06 8:44 PM
(And the apiarists.)
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 03-30-06 8:45 PM
If we were doing "things I believe that would get me laughed out of a gathering of my colleagues," it's that Schneider's comment is basically right, in that I think that two utterances never (or almost never) express exactly the same thing. I have a way of reinterpreting this that makes it more boring than it sounds, though.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 03-30-06 8:49 PM
I think I basically agree with Schneider too, although maybe for different reasons than Matt's. For more on universal properties of human language, see anything Chomsky has ever written (other than his political stuff, of course). Actually, most American linguistics since 1957 is also on this topic.
Linguists generally use a definition of "language" that limits it to a type of communication system that "is a purely human and non-instinctive method of communicating ideas, emotions and desires by means of a system of voluntarily produced symbols" in the words of Edward Sapir. The relation between symbol and referent is also held to be arbitrary. Under this definition, communication systems like those of bees don't qualify as language.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 03-30-06 9:22 PM
Does it somehow follow from "two utterances never (or almost never) express exactly the same thing" that two people hearing the same utterance will never (or almost never) reach the same understanding?
My impression is that there's been a lot of work beyond my simplistic notion of symbol/referent, but I don't know where it's gone.
I'm intrigued by LB's statement that For the language to be anything that I can recognize as a language, it would have to involve correspondences between the language and the outside world according to some set of rules. I think that may be related to FL's statement about a truth predicate.
It assumes the objective existence of an outside world. That's a fairly safe assumption about things like bananas but gets really murky really quickly when we're talking social categories or concepts. For example, if I understand correctly, 'spouse' can have meanings in MA that it can't have in Kansas. I'm not sure that Kansans have an equivalent word in their lexicon.
Assume there exists a Kansan who would deny the possibility of the existence of a referent for MA-spouse, who would say 'that's nonsense, it's as meaningless as asking what color is north' and refused (or failed) to learn otherwise.
If two such closely related people could achieve perfect mutual incomprehensibility, isn't it more than likely that there could exist alien languages that are unlearnable by humans?
I see on preview that Teofilo has weighed in, too. Thank you. I'm gonna have to thimk, but I'll go ahead and post this anyway.
Posted by Michael H Schneider | Link to this comment | 03-30-06 9:31 PM
Does it somehow follow from "two utterances never (or almost never) express exactly the same thing" that two people hearing the same utterance will never (or almost never) reach the same understanding?
More or less -- at least, I would apply that also to two beliefs. But that's exactly the same. My view is that quite frequently two utterances/beliefs whatever have contents that are very similar in the relevant respects. (In Davidsonian terms, it's that we should be talking about similarity of content instead of identity of content.)
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 03-30-06 9:40 PM
That quote from Sapir is very helpful, thanks. It reminds me why I wish I had actually learned something of linguistics.
I remember about symbols being arbitrary. That distinguishes them from signs, which are causally related, IIRC. I remember hearing that thunder was a sign, not a symbol, of a storm because the connection was not arbitrary. Similarly, blanching may be a sign, rather than a symbol, of fear.
I'm a little troubled by the notion of 'voluntarily produced.' Do Tourettes sufferers produce non-language? Those who talk intelligibly in their sleep?
But that's rather off topic. I can see that both 'voluntary' and 'non-instinctive' eliminates the bees. Bye bye bees.
Why "purely human?" My recollection is that Koko, a non-human, was able to construct phrases from arbitrary symbols that meant, for example, 'I want a banana'. My recollection is that she was able to learn the symbols for 'want' and for 'banana' and put them together, without ever having seen them used in that combination.
Worse, 'purely human' eliminates R H-C's posited alien language, for no reason I can discern.
On preview: Gak, as usual, I'm too slow.
Posted by Michael H Schneider | Link to this comment | 03-30-06 9:57 PM
... contents that are very similar in the relevant respects ...
That seems to imply two dimensions. First, similarity, from very similar to not very similar and perhaps to wholly dissimilar. Second, a relevance dimension, more relevant to less relevant (or perhaps a binary, relevant/irrelevant).
I'm not sure where I'm going with that, but I thought I'd check before I assume farther.
Posted by Michael H Schneider | Link to this comment | 03-30-06 10:02 PM
I meant lots and lots of diiferent similarity dimensions, only some of which are relevant at any given time.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 03-30-06 10:05 PM
OK. Thanks for the clarification. I'm afraid my brain has turned back into a pumpkin, and I'm going to have to sleep. Thanks.
Posted by Michael H Schneider | Link to this comment | 03-30-06 10:07 PM
I quoted Sapir because I happen to have his book nearby, so I'm not really sure why he includes "voluntarily produced" (I haven't read the book). "Purely human" is a more typical condition; I don't know Sapir's reasons for using it, but Chomskyans consider Universal Grammar to be based in neural structures that are unique to humans. I believe most research with primates has shown that they don't actually use language with the sophistocation that humans do, which implies that they don't have whatever it is that produces human language (whether or not you accept the Chomskyan view). I am unsure of the implications of any of this for alien language; I guess we'll have to cross that bridge if we come to it.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 03-30-06 10:38 PM
I believe that nothing has meaning unless it is shared.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 03-30-06 11:43 PM
"two utterances never (or almost never) express exactly the same thing"
Here's a thought: what about when the utterances in question are a line from a script, spoken during two different performances of the same play, by either the same actor or two different actors playing the same role? Would that case be an exception to this rule?
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 03-31-06 5:53 AM
No. (Now that I think of it, my view has to be even crazier than I said, because one of the ideas is that what is expressed depends partly on the knowledge of the audience; which means that the utterance has different contents for different audience members. Which means we have to go relativist in a manner discussed by this guy among others.)
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 03-31-06 7:35 AM
what is expressed depends partly on the knowledge of the audience
I would have thought "what is expressed" would depend solely on the intentions of the speaker, while "what is understood" or "what is heard" would depend on the knowledge of the listener. "Express" implies to me something done by the speaker without input from the listener.
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 03-31-06 7:46 AM
...the utterance has different contents for different audience members
That strikes me as not crazy, but rather blindingly obviously true. Consider 'disquotational' or 'gentile'. TMK's point about the distinction between what the speaker intends to say, and what the hearer understands, seems correct, too.
My vague understanding is that each entity has in their head a set of meanings (referents, contents) and a set of arbitrary symbols that point to those meanings. Given that both will vary between actors - different entities will have different sets of possible meanings, as well as different symbols for those sets - aren't we left with only a hope that communication happens? That when one speaks, one will call up in the listener's head something similar to what one intended to evoke?
Assume I have an obedient and well trained Standard Poodle. I say to Poodle "get me a beer." Poodle fetches a beer.
Assume I have an obedient and well trained Wife. I say to Wife "get me a beer." Wife fetches a beer.
What has gone on in their heads? If I spoke fluent Poodle, would Poodle explain to me that she understood that I was saying I'd continue to love her, and satisfy her need for companionship, emotional support, validation, and being-in-relation if she brought me the beer? If I asked Wife (assuming I spoke fluent Wifese) might she say the same thing? Is that what I meant? Is there any way to tell?
Now try one from Poodle's point of view. Poodle comes up to the side of the bed where I'm lying and reading, and stares at me. I say "do you want to go out?" Poodle replies "Bounce Bounce Wag Wiggle Thump" ('thump' is her tail, apparently deliberately, hitting the chest of drawers). I heave my sorry ass off the bed, follow her to the back door, and let her out.
But sometimes she leads me to the kitchen and points to the bag of rawhide chew bones on top of the refrigerator. I say "no, you can't have a bone, the house is knee deep in half chewed bones". She says "Wag Wag Bounce Point". Is she saying "if you really loved me you'd get me another rawhide bone"?
When I first heard "Bounce Bounce Wag Wiggle Thump" was I stupidly failing to hear that she'd really said "Bounce BOUNCE Wag Wiggle THUMP Thump", meaning rawhide bone, rather than the other phrase meaning "I want out"?
Teofilo points out that non-human primates "don't actually use language with the sophistication that humans do". But that doesn't really get us far. People vary in the sophistication of their language. Some people do poorly on the verbal part of the SAT. I tried reading MacFarlane's papers, and my lack of sophistication was immediately apparent.
Is my difficulty in understanding Poodle like my difficulty in understanding MacFarlane? Is the set of symbols and meanings in Poodle's head just too alien for me to grasp? Is the same true of MacFarlane? Are we just too far apart along the relevant similarity dimensions?
Posted by Michael H Schneider | Link to this comment | 03-31-06 3:46 PM
Dammit, I thought I left a comment in response to 238. Anyway, one of the crazinesses of the idea is that it can manifest itself even when we consider more or less literal interpretations of the sentences, as opposed to subtextual stuff like the emotional support stuff. This for pretty hypertechnical MacFarlanian reasons (and I wouldn't say your troubles are necessarily with verbal sophistication, Michael; part of it is knowing the jargon and knowing the background of the issues he's addressing).
BUT one of the reasons I'm interested in this is that I want to say that there's less difference between literal meaning, implicature (relatively obvious things such as "Wouldja get me a beer, honey?" being a request for a beer) and subtext than is sometimes thought. So in that way I'm very interested in a lot of what you're saying there.
Also, about the expressed/understood/heard thing; contrast my saying to someone in the Unfoggetariat who knows TMK's real name, "I was talking to TMK about relativism." Unfoggetarian 1 could say to Unfoggetarian 2, "Weiner said that he was talking to [real name] about relativism" and usually be mostly right. (Unless the conversation concerned my propensity for Indiscretion Errors, in which case it would be important to report my utterance with the pseudonym I used.) But if I say the same sentence to a non-initiate, they can't report me as saying "Weiner said that he was talking to [real name] about relativism"; it seems to me that there would be something wrong with that report over and above the fact that Non-Initiate will never hit on this formulation. That's just not part of what I conveyed. (And it need not be a matter of my intention; I may not be thinking about your real name at all when I talk to these folk.)
My dimly remembered old comment was going to conclude by saying that I'm rapidly outstripping the actual thought I put into this and will have to stop commenting on this now, but since the thread is dead anyway hopefully I can get away without that.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 04- 2-06 1:33 PM
171, 184: Would you mind e-mailing me to say what name you usually comment under?
Also, I'm taking the fact that 18 wasn't corrected to mean that it's awesomely correct.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 04- 5-06 10:52 PM
Doesn't the one-time redistribution run into problems with geography? As long as land (and the resources on/under it) has value and as long as geography remains uneven, how does a one-time redistibution deal with this?
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 04- 5-06 10:56 PM