Whether the weather be cold, whether the weather be hot...
July 16th 2007 00:49
So, because I want to bore the shit out of you...
1. "Long" is long compared to something. It's not meaningful without comparison; there is no long in the abstract. And ditto with fast, thick, heavy, loud, poor. (And perhaps ditto with "happy".)
But in many contexts it's possible to be correct or incorrect, because the standards are agreed among speakers, or are otherwise well enough established. For instance, when commenting on the state of world tennis, it would ordinarily be silly to deny that Federer is a "good" tennis player.
Another example: A carpenter might say "This table is dense" and a physicist "This table is full of holes" -- and both claims might be true, such that it would be misleading for one carpenter to say to another "This table is full of holes", or for the physicist to tell another physicist that it isn't.
The point, anyway, is: (a) that a lot of our language has "relative to standard" built in (not only adjectives, but nouns as well -- "You call that a knife? This is a knife"); and (b) often, in order to fix the standard, our language "points" to one or another context, depending on such factors as where we are, what we're doing, who we're talking to.
2. To paraphrase an infamous claim by Hilary Putnam...
Imagine that you didn't know water was H2O (you're a child, or are living in a South American tribe, or are from the 15th century, or whatever). And imagine also that you travel to a magical distant land (maybe another continent, maybe another planet called "Twin Earth") where you find some liquid that's clear, wet, and flowing, that fills the rivers and oceans, that rains from the sky, that's drinkable and quenches thirst, that freezes at 0 degrees Celsisus and boils at 100, that people use to wash their clothes and cars in, etc.
And then someone teaches you chemistry. You discover that the stuff back home is H2O, whereas the stuff in distant magical land is XYZ.
So is XYZ "water" or isn't it?
Frankly, I think either option is possible. I think language could happen to go either way.
-- You could say: "Yes, XYZ is water. So now I've learned that water comes in different varieties."
And the real life example always given is "jade". In the 19th century it was found to refer to two chemically different types of rock, but we still continue to use the single word.
More generally, in the absence of something like a scientific system of classification, people often try to describe, understand, assimilate by family resemblance to existing words and natural language categories. Alcohol might be understood as "firewater". Or, in childspeak, a horse might be a "big dog".
-- Or you could say: "No, XYZ isn't water. When I use the word 'water', I mean the stuff from around home that I called water. This XYZ substance might function exactly like water, but the fact is that it isn't."
And I think it's plausible that people sometimes go with a "No" -- but for the life of me I can't off the cuff think of any straightforward examples. Perhaps debates over whether a banana is a tree, tomato is a vegetable, and Pluto is a planet are related -- where science might correct, or try to correct, natural usage.
But if you buy that this second option is possible, what it seems to suggest is that a lot of nouns, for some people, have a quality of "indexicality", "pointing to", built in. They have this implicit idea "like the stuff from around here".
3. If I assert that the kebab is tasty, that doesn't mean that I think that you've got to find it tasty as well.
If you ask me whether a job is difficult, I might reply, "Well, I find it fucking hard, but since you're Mr smarty pants Rhodes-scholar-type person, you'll find it a cake walk." And in this context, I'm adding qualifying phrases -- I'm saying that it's difficult for me, but not difficult for you.
A lot of adjectives not only have standard built in, but are relative to person, or to groups of people -- and even if we aren't conscious of this.
Now, there's plenty of instances where we might simply say, "Yes, it's tasty", or "Yes, it's warm", without adding a qualifier. But it's not as if the weather can be warm for no one.
If I omit a qualifier, it's because I'm being lazy or unspecific, or the scope is obvious -- perhaps the weather would be found warm by you as well, or by anyone.
Notes
-- Saturday 5 June 2010: The following seems to support the "language could go either way" claim. Kwame Anthony Appiah, "The New New Philosophy", NY Times, Sunday 9 December 2007:
"To support his case, Kripke offered a thought experiment: Suppose, he asked us to imagine, that Gödel’s theorem was actually the work of a fellow named Schmidt; it’s just that Gödel somehow got hold of the manuscript and thereafter was wrongly credited with its authorship. When those of us who know about 'Gödel' only as the theorem’s author invoke that name, whom are we referring to? According to Russell’s view of reference, we’re actually referring to Schmidt: 'Gödel' is merely shorthand for the fellow who devised the famous theorem, and Schmidt is the creature who answers to that description. 'But it seems to me that we are not,' Kripke declared. 'We simply are not.'
To which experimentalists reply: What do you mean 'we,' kemo sabe? Recently, a team of philosophers led by [Edouard] Machery came up with situations that had the same form as Kripke’s and presented them to two groups of undergraduates -- one in New Jersey and another in Hong Kong. The Americans, it turned out, were significantly more likely to give the responses that Kripke took to be obvious; the Chinese students had intuitions that were consonant with the older theory of reference. Maybe this relates to the supposed individualism of Westerners; maybe their concern that we get Schmidt’s name right isn’t shared by the supposedly more group-minded East Asians. Whatever the explanation, it’s a discomforting result. 'We simply are not': well, that may be so at Princeton or Rutgers. On the other side of the planet, it might seem we are. What should philosophers make of that?"
***
1. "Long" is long compared to something. It's not meaningful without comparison; there is no long in the abstract. And ditto with fast, thick, heavy, loud, poor. (And perhaps ditto with "happy".)
But in many contexts it's possible to be correct or incorrect, because the standards are agreed among speakers, or are otherwise well enough established. For instance, when commenting on the state of world tennis, it would ordinarily be silly to deny that Federer is a "good" tennis player.
Another example: A carpenter might say "This table is dense" and a physicist "This table is full of holes" -- and both claims might be true, such that it would be misleading for one carpenter to say to another "This table is full of holes", or for the physicist to tell another physicist that it isn't.
The point, anyway, is: (a) that a lot of our language has "relative to standard" built in (not only adjectives, but nouns as well -- "You call that a knife? This is a knife"); and (b) often, in order to fix the standard, our language "points" to one or another context, depending on such factors as where we are, what we're doing, who we're talking to.
***
2. To paraphrase an infamous claim by Hilary Putnam...
Imagine that you didn't know water was H2O (you're a child, or are living in a South American tribe, or are from the 15th century, or whatever). And imagine also that you travel to a magical distant land (maybe another continent, maybe another planet called "Twin Earth") where you find some liquid that's clear, wet, and flowing, that fills the rivers and oceans, that rains from the sky, that's drinkable and quenches thirst, that freezes at 0 degrees Celsisus and boils at 100, that people use to wash their clothes and cars in, etc.
And then someone teaches you chemistry. You discover that the stuff back home is H2O, whereas the stuff in distant magical land is XYZ.
So is XYZ "water" or isn't it?
Frankly, I think either option is possible. I think language could happen to go either way.
-- You could say: "Yes, XYZ is water. So now I've learned that water comes in different varieties."
And the real life example always given is "jade". In the 19th century it was found to refer to two chemically different types of rock, but we still continue to use the single word.
More generally, in the absence of something like a scientific system of classification, people often try to describe, understand, assimilate by family resemblance to existing words and natural language categories. Alcohol might be understood as "firewater". Or, in childspeak, a horse might be a "big dog".
-- Or you could say: "No, XYZ isn't water. When I use the word 'water', I mean the stuff from around home that I called water. This XYZ substance might function exactly like water, but the fact is that it isn't."
And I think it's plausible that people sometimes go with a "No" -- but for the life of me I can't off the cuff think of any straightforward examples. Perhaps debates over whether a banana is a tree, tomato is a vegetable, and Pluto is a planet are related -- where science might correct, or try to correct, natural usage.
But if you buy that this second option is possible, what it seems to suggest is that a lot of nouns, for some people, have a quality of "indexicality", "pointing to", built in. They have this implicit idea "like the stuff from around here".
***
3. If I assert that the kebab is tasty, that doesn't mean that I think that you've got to find it tasty as well.
If you ask me whether a job is difficult, I might reply, "Well, I find it fucking hard, but since you're Mr smarty pants Rhodes-scholar-type person, you'll find it a cake walk." And in this context, I'm adding qualifying phrases -- I'm saying that it's difficult for me, but not difficult for you.
A lot of adjectives not only have standard built in, but are relative to person, or to groups of people -- and even if we aren't conscious of this.
Now, there's plenty of instances where we might simply say, "Yes, it's tasty", or "Yes, it's warm", without adding a qualifier. But it's not as if the weather can be warm for no one.
If I omit a qualifier, it's because I'm being lazy or unspecific, or the scope is obvious -- perhaps the weather would be found warm by you as well, or by anyone.
***
Notes
-- Saturday 5 June 2010: The following seems to support the "language could go either way" claim. Kwame Anthony Appiah, "The New New Philosophy", NY Times, Sunday 9 December 2007:
"To support his case, Kripke offered a thought experiment: Suppose, he asked us to imagine, that Gödel’s theorem was actually the work of a fellow named Schmidt; it’s just that Gödel somehow got hold of the manuscript and thereafter was wrongly credited with its authorship. When those of us who know about 'Gödel' only as the theorem’s author invoke that name, whom are we referring to? According to Russell’s view of reference, we’re actually referring to Schmidt: 'Gödel' is merely shorthand for the fellow who devised the famous theorem, and Schmidt is the creature who answers to that description. 'But it seems to me that we are not,' Kripke declared. 'We simply are not.'
To which experimentalists reply: What do you mean 'we,' kemo sabe? Recently, a team of philosophers led by [Edouard] Machery came up with situations that had the same form as Kripke’s and presented them to two groups of undergraduates -- one in New Jersey and another in Hong Kong. The Americans, it turned out, were significantly more likely to give the responses that Kripke took to be obvious; the Chinese students had intuitions that were consonant with the older theory of reference. Maybe this relates to the supposed individualism of Westerners; maybe their concern that we get Schmidt’s name right isn’t shared by the supposedly more group-minded East Asians. Whatever the explanation, it’s a discomforting result. 'We simply are not': well, that may be so at Princeton or Rutgers. On the other side of the planet, it might seem we are. What should philosophers make of that?"
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Comment by Damo
I guess that is why adjectives were invented to qualify and be more specific.
In Sinhalese Fingers and toes are both called by the same name. Yet we know some are on the foot and some are on the hands. Yet we add an adjective and it we know if it is on the hand or the foot.
You would have to pick H2O would n't you?
The strangest and most unique liquid on the planet.
From a chemists viewpoint in our universe XYZ cannot operate like H2O and have different mollecular structures. However in an imaginary universe it can.
Trivia I know but someone will one day mention it to you.
Swapping between language, which I do very baddly, often shows a lot of the issues in communication.
Comment by postmoderncritic
Postmodern Critic
Relativity Watch
Padsoc
I say it doesn't matter whether it's the same liquid or not - if you want it to be exactly like the liquid you left at home then it'll function as such, but if you want it to be different it will be - for you. Therefore, reality is a state of a mind. Even if it were proven that the liquids could be chemically substituted for each other someone could still hang onto the perception that they're somehow different due to being in different environments.
Comment by Anonymous
I disagree about the H2O case. It could be found that not all hydrogen and oxygen are alike. In fact, this is the case, since the number of neutrons can vary.
Now, suppose it were discovered that the H2O particles on Twin Earth were consistently different from any on Earth (in neutrons or perhaps some newly discovered property). This case is totally analogous to the one originally proposed. Knowing that both forms H2O are identical in all their physical and chemical properties, leaves us with the crucial decision: are they the same thing?
Comment by Anonymous (the same)
Have you read anything on Wittgenstein's "language games"? -seems you're taking a similar route here.