AJ: What elements of mainstream linguistics do you take the most exception to?
What elements of mainstream linguistics do you take the most exception to?
Just the categories that they use. Subjects, objects, verbs, nouns, adjectives, verb phrases, tense, prepositions, noun phrases, grammatical voice, aspect, pronouns, deixis, articles, modality, conjunctions, and so on, I think that all of them are just confused, muddled, fuzzy categories that we could define in a much better way, or just throw away. I think that the problem is that they look at the overcomplicated, messy surface of the natural languages, and assume that everything about it is useful, because they see the natural languages as the ultimate givens, as the unquestionable foundation of their science, but that most of it is what I said it is, an overcomplicated mess. I have seen some of the magnificantly simple design underneath the ugly exterior of the natural languages, but I don't think that most linguists have even gotten close to it.
If I wrote it more than a few weeks ago, I probably hate it by now.
AJ: Well I just feel like we don't have the mainstream position represented here. I don't know enough about it, so whatever Chomsky/Pinker quotes I dig up might be dismissed as out of context or not accepted by the mainstream anymore. I don't want to be accused of strawmanning. I need a real argument from a real linguist or someone who knows the material decently well. I have my own very detailed account of what language is and its relation to thought, but I haven't posted it here because I am awaiting something to disagree (or agree) with in the "official" mainstream.
Well I just feel like we don't have the mainstream position represented here. I don't know enough about it, so whatever Chomsky/Pinker quotes I dig up might be dismissed as out of context or not accepted by the mainstream anymore. I don't want to be accused of strawmanning. I need a real argument from a real linguist or someone who knows the material decently well. I have my own very detailed account of what language is and its relation to thought, but I haven't posted it here because I am awaiting something to disagree (or agree) with in the "official" mainstream.
Why can't you post what you think about it, but also wait for someone like John Ess to weigh in?
Because I don't know what exactly "it" is.
Meanwhile, could qzw articulate "they see natural languages as the ultimate givens" a little more clearly? I would say nothing is given. All symbols, including words, are just conventions that have some more or less vague meaningishness to each party to the conversation via experience with that conventional usage, so they come in handy when something is not obvious in the context from speaker to listener. In other words, when the speaker believes the listener needs additional guidance in reproducing the speaker's thoughts in his own mind, because the context isn't enough.
Me and qzw could form a new language right now. In fact, qzw might have realized I am already doing that. What does "qzw" mean? Some might say it obviously means "you", but that is a meaningless assertion - there is no such thing as meaning in a vacuum, there is only a speaker's intention and a listener's interpretation. Some may then say that by "qzw" I intend to indicate that same thing as when I say "you", and that is correct. That is what I intend by it. But how it is possible for any reader to know that? Well, strictly speaking, it's not. It's just that interpreting "qzw" as "you" makes my message make the most sense. For all anyone knows, if I hadn't admitted so above, I might have meant something entirely different by it. There is no way to know another's intent absolutely, only to "know" usefully. (This is tying back into the Mises/Quine thread) I contend it is through this very same process that we learn all words, and all grammar.
Here's a little more of my thoughts since I'm bored waiting for John Ess.
Why anarchy fails
AJ: Meanwhile, could qzw articulate "they see natural languages as the ultimate givens" a little more clearly? I would say nothing is given. All symbols, including words, are just conventions that have some more or less vague meaningishness to each party to the conversation via experience with that conventional usage, so they come in handy when something is not obvious in the context from speaker to listener. In other words, when the speaker believes the listener needs additional guidance in reproducing the speaker's thoughts in his own mind, because the context isn't enough.
Here:
I. Ryan: I didn't mean that the mainstream linguists treat speakers like we say that the mainstream economists treat actors, in a confused and psuedo-empirical way. I meant that they treat the natural languages like that. They see the natural languages as the ultimate givens, and go from there, just like the astronomers see the movements of the planets, asteroids, and so on, as the ultimate givens, and go from there. We can see that attitude in the fact that the mainstream linguists often say something like that no language is better than any other language, and that saying that a part of a language used to be better, or even saying that it used to be worse, is just the idle, confused talk of laymen. They say that it doesn't make sense to say that our language is better or worse than any other language, or even better or worse than any other possible language, simply because languages are just adjusted to our way of life, nothing more, nothing less. The "primitive" language of a group of hunter-gatherers isn't any less sophisticated than that of businessmen in a developed country; they are just suited to different purposes; they just developed differently for different ways of living. We in fact might have a tiny fraction of the amount of categories that they do for plants and animals, because we don't care about it, where they do, because they are hunter-gatherers, where a huge part of their way of life is distinguishing between different plants and animals. Their language is suited to hunter-gathering, and our language is suited to other things. Neither is better; neither is worse. They are just there. We can't criticize them, just like we can't say whether the orbit of a planet is "correct" or not. They are just given to us. They are unquestionable, and are the foundation of our science.
I didn't mean that the mainstream linguists treat speakers like we say that the mainstream economists treat actors, in a confused and psuedo-empirical way. I meant that they treat the natural languages like that. They see the natural languages as the ultimate givens, and go from there, just like the astronomers see the movements of the planets, asteroids, and so on, as the ultimate givens, and go from there.
We can see that attitude in the fact that the mainstream linguists often say something like that no language is better than any other language, and that saying that a part of a language used to be better, or even saying that it used to be worse, is just the idle, confused talk of laymen. They say that it doesn't make sense to say that our language is better or worse than any other language, or even better or worse than any other possible language, simply because languages are just adjusted to our way of life, nothing more, nothing less. The "primitive" language of a group of hunter-gatherers isn't any less sophisticated than that of businessmen in a developed country; they are just suited to different purposes; they just developed differently for different ways of living. We in fact might have a tiny fraction of the amount of categories that they do for plants and animals, because we don't care about it, where they do, because they are hunter-gatherers, where a huge part of their way of life is distinguishing between different plants and animals. Their language is suited to hunter-gathering, and our language is suited to other things. Neither is better; neither is worse. They are just there. We can't criticize them, just like we can't say whether the orbit of a planet is "correct" or not. They are just given to us. They are unquestionable, and are the foundation of our science.
I have to go for now, but I will get back to this tomorrow.
Well I don't know that linguists say that. Is there really a linguist who does not admit that the technical English of an engineer is not any more useful for engineering than regular everyday English?
AJ: Is there really a linguist who does not admit that the technical English of an engineer is not any more useful for engineering than the regular everyday English?
Is there really a linguist who does not admit that the technical English of an engineer is not any more useful for engineering than the regular everyday English?
Probably not, but that doesn't go against what I am saying. Engineering is a way of life!
I can't tell which side you are on. You seem to be doing that Mises thing where he speaks directly from the POV of the opposing side. It's a nice rhetorical device but it gets really hard to tell which statements are meant to be yours and which are meant to be an exposition of what you're critiquing.
AJ: This is not merely academic. The implications for the future of communication are immense, completely game-changing as a species. We are close to mapping the cerebral cortex and being able to output that on a screen. Although the output of our visual reasoning would obviously be all different, because for one person a crinkly image in the upper-left of their visual field means its a happy memory and for another perhaps an imagined future. But when children grow up with this system and learn to standardize their thoughts to the visual communication conventions that develop, then we have finally eliminated the word barrier, that awful corrupting influence of these linear, vague, slow words that don't carry nearly enough information to even adequately correspond to thoughts, but that we have had to rely on all this time. Words are a tremendous bottleneck to communication, but we hardly ever notice because we are social creatures and especially for academics, every thought they think they are eager at some level to put into words, because it is only once put into words that these thoughts, if insightful, can earn him the recognition of his fellows. I don't think it is easy to visualize just how big of a change this would be. Imagine being taught math by directly seeing how a great mathematician pictures a concept in his brain. Since thinking literally is sensations, such as visual ones, this seems to have the potential for getting close to mind-to-mind communication once the conventions are adequately synchronized among the population. To see exactly how a visual thinker visualizes something is to, once you are familiar with his internal tagging scheme, understand what he understands, in some sense. And we'll still have words on top of all that!
This is not merely academic. The implications for the future of communication are immense, completely game-changing as a species. We are close to mapping the cerebral cortex and being able to output that on a screen. Although the output of our visual reasoning would obviously be all different, because for one person a crinkly image in the upper-left of their visual field means its a happy memory and for another perhaps an imagined future. But when children grow up with this system and learn to standardize their thoughts to the visual communication conventions that develop, then we have finally eliminated the word barrier, that awful corrupting influence of these linear, vague, slow words that don't carry nearly enough information to even adequately correspond to thoughts, but that we have had to rely on all this time. Words are a tremendous bottleneck to communication, but we hardly ever notice because we are social creatures and especially for academics, every thought they think they are eager at some level to put into words, because it is only once put into words that these thoughts, if insightful, can earn him the recognition of his fellows.
I don't think it is easy to visualize just how big of a change this would be. Imagine being taught math by directly seeing how a great mathematician pictures a concept in his brain. Since thinking literally is sensations, such as visual ones, this seems to have the potential for getting close to mind-to-mind communication once the conventions are adequately synchronized among the population. To see exactly how a visual thinker visualizes something is to, once you are familiar with his internal tagging scheme, understand what he understands, in some sense. And we'll still have words on top of all that!
I have seen you write in the past that you don't think with words, but that you think with pictures, sounds, feelings, and so on. I used a few years ago to also be like that, but I have for some reason since moved back to relying a lot on words in a lot of my thoughts. I remember that I talked a lot back then with one of my friends about how we didn't use words in most of our thoughts, and how that was for some reason superior. I'm not entirely sure why I changed, but it might be the fact that I nowadays spend so much of my time thinking about language, that I just end up spending a lot of my time thinking with language, though I still know of a few related circumstances in which I wouldn't ever think with words, such as while playing chess, tennis, or an RTS.
I have also seen you admit in the past that thinking with pictures, sounds, feelings, and so on, doesn't seem categorically different than thinking with words, because both of them are just symbols for what you are thinking about, but I don't think that you grasped the implications of that point.
I first want to give a definition of what language is, and explain why we need it.
Why people use languages is to exchange their ideas with each other. Because it is of course not possible to directly connect the private world of somebody to that of somebody else to directly pass ideas back and forth between them, it is our only option left to acquiesce to a roundabout means. We express ideas, which are of our private world, as visuals, sounds, or whatever, which are of the public world. One person "encodes" one of their ideas into a sound in the range of an other person, and then the other "decodes" that sound back into an idea; the other "encodes" one of their ideas into a sound in the range of the one, and then the one "decodes" that sound back into an idea. They communicate.
It isn't possible to get away from that arrangement, even if we build something like what you are talking about. It would still be necessary that the people would be encoding their ideas into visuals, sounds, or something else of the public world, and that the other people would be decoding those visuals, sounds, or whatever back into ideas. We wouldn't be able to get away from the fact that we have to translate things of our private world into things of the public world and then back again to communicate with people. It isn't relevant what we do; we always will have to contend with that situation. It is an ultimate given.
I think that your reaction against words doesn't apply to words in general, but only to the particular words that we use. What would make using pictures, feelings, or whatever more effective than using words? No matter what, you are still dealing with using symbols to mirror your thoughts. I think that your problem is with the particular words, because they evolved mostly as a mirror of the minds of ordinary people, and because of that tend to be pretty ambiguous, vague, and whatever. There isn't a reason why you couldn't build words that mirror your thoughts, instead of relying on the ordinary, fuzzy-headed masses mirroring their thoughts, and then using those words. I don't think that the masses have any problem using words, simply because those words are about as vague as their thoughts. But we might have problems using them, because we try to make our thoughts a lot more specific and unambiguous than that.
I mentioned this in a thread a while ago, and you disagreed, but I think that the future of communication, at least between people like you and I, will be with constructed languages, instead of natural languages. The natural languages, including English, Spanish, and so on, are overcomplicated, vague messes, which conceal on their ugly surface the possible power and simplicity of a system mirroring our thoughts. I think that a lot of the errors that people make, even very intelligent people, and a lot of the miscommunications that people have with each other, would disappear if we were to have a well constructed language to use. So many of the absurdities and miscommunications that people fall into are just the result of the messy tool of thought and communication that they are using, their natural language, and people like you might tend to even go as far as abandoning their natural language as a tool of thought, because it is so messed up.
I almost daily find myself in situations in which I say something to somebody that I don't expect to pose a problem, find that their response reveals that they completely misunderstood me, feel handcuffed because English doesn't really have any way of fixing the miscommunication in less than like 500 words or something like that, but then realize how easy it would be to make that distinction in a well constructed language. I see the limitations of English and other natural languages everyday, but I don't blame words; I blame the terrible designs of the natural languages in particular.
AJ: I can't tell which side you are on. You seem to be doing that Mises thing where he speaks directly from the POV of the opposing side. It's a nice rhetorical device but it gets really hard to tell which statements are meant to be yours and which are meant to be an exposition of what you're critiquing.
I think that my previous post will reveal which side I am on, but I will spell it out anyway. I don't see the natural languages as ultimate givens. I think that they are overcomplicated messes, and I think that we have a lot of room to not only criticize them, but improve on them. It is silly to say that one part of a language couldn't be better or worse than the corresponding part in an other language, but that it is the orthodoxy in mainstream linguistics.
It doesn't even matter whether somebody wants to criticize languages or just wants to describe them. It is fine if they just want to describe them. But the problem is that in seeing the natural languages as the ultimate givens, they end up studying history without a systematic theory of interpretation, and just end up messing the whole thing up anyway. So I'm not saying that linguists should stop being descriptive, and start being prescriptive, but that their point of view makes them blind to the fact that it is possible to say whether a language is better or worse than an other, and whether a part of a grammar of a language is more or less useful, and that, if they were to change their attitude, and instead not see the natural languages as ultimate givens, they would not only be able to see that possibility, but would also be able to describe them a lot better, whether they want to prescribe anything or not.
Here is a good example of the attitude that I am talking about:
The Fifth Edition of Contemporary Linguistics: Contrary to popular belief, there is no such thing as a primitive language, even in places untouched by modern science and technology. Indeed, some of the the most complex linguistic phenomena we know about are found in societies that have neither writing nor electricity. Moreover, there is no such thing as a good grammar or a bad grammar. In fact, all grammars do essentially the same thing: they tell speakers how to form and interpret words and sentences of their language. The form and meaning of those words and sentences vary from language to language and even from community to community, of course, but there is no such thing as a language that doesn't work for its speakers. Linguists sometimes clash over this point with people who are upset about the use of nonstandard varieties of English that permit sentences such as "I seen that", "They was there", "He didn't do nothing", "He ain't there", and so forth. Depending on where you live and who you talk to, speaking in this way can have negative consequences: it may be harder to win a scholarship, to get a job, to be accepted in certain social circles, and so forth. This is an undeniable fact about the social side of language and we'll return to it in Chapter 15. From a purely linguistic point of view, however, there is absolutely nothing wrong with grammars that permit such structures. They work for their speakers, and they derive to be studied in the same objective fashion as the varieties of English spoken by the rich and educated. The bottom line for linguists in that the analysis of language must reflect the way it is actually used, not someone's idealized version of how it should be used. The linguist Steven Pinker offers the following illustration to make the same point. Steven Pinker: Imagine that you are watching a nature documentary. The video shows the usual gorgeous footage of animals in their natural habitats. But the voiceover reports some troubling facts. Dolphins do not execute their swimming strokes properly. White-crowned sparrows carelessly debase their calls. Chickadees' nests are incorrectly constructed, pandas hold bamboo in the wrong paw, the song of the humpback whale contains several well-known errors, and the monkey's cries have been in a state of chaos and degeneration for hundreds of years. Your reaction would probably be, What on earth could it mean for the song of the humpback whale to contain an "error"? Isn't the song of the humpback whale whatever the humpback whale decides to sing? As Pinker goes on to observe, language is like the song of the humpback whale. The way to determine whether a particular sentence is permissable is to find people who speak the language and observe how they use it. In sum, linguists don't even think of trying to rate languages as good or bad, simple or complex. Rather, they investigate language in much the same way that other scientists study snails or stars--with a view to simply figuring out how it works. This same point is sometimes made by noting that linguistics is descriptive, not prescriptive. Its goal is to try to describe and explain the facts of language, not to change them.
Contrary to popular belief, there is no such thing as a primitive language, even in places untouched by modern science and technology. Indeed, some of the the most complex linguistic phenomena we know about are found in societies that have neither writing nor electricity.
Moreover, there is no such thing as a good grammar or a bad grammar. In fact, all grammars do essentially the same thing: they tell speakers how to form and interpret words and sentences of their language. The form and meaning of those words and sentences vary from language to language and even from community to community, of course, but there is no such thing as a language that doesn't work for its speakers.
Linguists sometimes clash over this point with people who are upset about the use of nonstandard varieties of English that permit sentences such as "I seen that", "They was there", "He didn't do nothing", "He ain't there", and so forth. Depending on where you live and who you talk to, speaking in this way can have negative consequences: it may be harder to win a scholarship, to get a job, to be accepted in certain social circles, and so forth. This is an undeniable fact about the social side of language and we'll return to it in Chapter 15. From a purely linguistic point of view, however, there is absolutely nothing wrong with grammars that permit such structures. They work for their speakers, and they derive to be studied in the same objective fashion as the varieties of English spoken by the rich and educated.
The bottom line for linguists in that the analysis of language must reflect the way it is actually used, not someone's idealized version of how it should be used. The linguist Steven Pinker offers the following illustration to make the same point.
Steven Pinker: Imagine that you are watching a nature documentary. The video shows the usual gorgeous footage of animals in their natural habitats. But the voiceover reports some troubling facts. Dolphins do not execute their swimming strokes properly. White-crowned sparrows carelessly debase their calls. Chickadees' nests are incorrectly constructed, pandas hold bamboo in the wrong paw, the song of the humpback whale contains several well-known errors, and the monkey's cries have been in a state of chaos and degeneration for hundreds of years. Your reaction would probably be, What on earth could it mean for the song of the humpback whale to contain an "error"? Isn't the song of the humpback whale whatever the humpback whale decides to sing?
Imagine that you are watching a nature documentary. The video shows the usual gorgeous footage of animals in their natural habitats. But the voiceover reports some troubling facts. Dolphins do not execute their swimming strokes properly. White-crowned sparrows carelessly debase their calls. Chickadees' nests are incorrectly constructed, pandas hold bamboo in the wrong paw, the song of the humpback whale contains several well-known errors, and the monkey's cries have been in a state of chaos and degeneration for hundreds of years. Your reaction would probably be, What on earth could it mean for the song of the humpback whale to contain an "error"? Isn't the song of the humpback whale whatever the humpback whale decides to sing?
As Pinker goes on to observe, language is like the song of the humpback whale. The way to determine whether a particular sentence is permissable is to find people who speak the language and observe how they use it.
In sum, linguists don't even think of trying to rate languages as good or bad, simple or complex. Rather, they investigate language in much the same way that other scientists study snails or stars--with a view to simply figuring out how it works. This same point is sometimes made by noting that linguistics is descriptive, not prescriptive. Its goal is to try to describe and explain the facts of language, not to change them.
The Fifth Edition of Contemporary Linguistics: As noted above, there are simply no grounds for claiming that one language or variety of language is somehow superior to another.
As noted above, there are simply no grounds for claiming that one language or variety of language is somehow superior to another.
I. Ryan, underline by AJ:I have seen you write in the past that you don't think with words, but that you think with pictures, sounds, feelings, and so on. I used a few years ago to also be like that, but I have for some reason since moved back to relying a lot on words in a lot of my thoughts.
I use words in my thought process almost all the time, too. What I mean to say is that I don't need to (and am actively trying to kick this relatively recent habit). It's a weird custom - highly corrupting and slow on the one hand, yet of constant help when you want to explain things to others.
I think the reason is that we are social creatures, as I mentioned. It has been deeply ingrained in us from an early age that only what can be expressed really matters. My answer to that social pressure is that even if that is the case, there is no reason to require that every step of the process along the way to a great idea has to be easily expressible. As long as the end result can be expressed, that seems fine. I would probably have never arrived at most of the best ideas I've had if I had required my thinking to be expressible in words all along the way.
I. Ryan:I remember that I talked a lot back then with one of my friends about how we didn't use words in most of our thoughts, and how that was for some reason superior. I'm not entirely sure why I changed, but it might be the fact that I nowadays spend so much of my time thinking about language, that I just end up spending a lot of my time thinking with language, though I still know of a few related circumstances in which I wouldn't ever think with words, such as while playing chess, tennis, or an RTS.
There's nothing wrong with using words necessarily; they can be useful as memory aids or waypoints in one's thoughts. But trying to put every last thought into a sentence that would be intelligible to another person is, I think, way too much. Words simply do not have enough content to capture the depth and subtlety of a thought in a succinct enough manner to be efficient when it matters. In general, a line of reasoning that takes five seconds of thought can take anywhere from one sentence to 20 pages to fully elucidate and clarify, yet if it happens to take 20 pages the chances that the reader will ever really grasp it as cleanly as you do fall to almost nil.
I. Ryan:I have also seen you admit in the past that thinking with pictures, sounds, feelings, and so on, doesn't seem categorically different than thinking with words, because both of them are just symbols for what you are thinking about, but I don't think that you grasped the implications of that point.
First of all, they are not symbols for what I am thinking; they are what I'm thinking - the sensations are conscious thought. Now it get's complicated because there is an interface between conscious and unconscious, which is itself a fuzzy threshold, so the word "thought" becomes somewhat ambiguous.
The difference between sensations (pure thoughts) and words in terms of subtlety, accuracy, clarity, efficiency, and "resolution" (amount of data in a single thought) are staggering.
I. Ryan:Why people use languages is to exchange their ideas with each other. Because it is of course not possible to directly connect the private world of somebody to that of somebody else to directly pass ideas back and forth between them, it is our only option left to acquiesce to a roundabout means. We express ideas, which are of our private world, as visuals, sounds, or whatever, which are of the public world. One person "encodes" one of their ideas into a sound in the range of an other person, and then the other "decodes" that sound back into an idea; the other "encodes" one of their ideas into a sound in the range of the one, and then the one "decodes" that sound back into an idea. They communicate.
100% agreed here.
I. Ryan:It isn't possible to get away from that arrangement, even if we build something like what you are talking about. It would still be necessary that the people would be encoding their ideas into visuals, sounds, or something else of the public world, and that the other people would be decoding those visuals, sounds, or whatever back into ideas. We wouldn't be able to get away from the fact that we have to translate things of our private world into things of the public world and then back again to communicate with people. It isn't relevant what we do; we always will have to contend with that situation. It is an ultimate given.
If it's really possible to scan my visual cortex and see exactly what I'm seeing, so that if I looked at the monitor I would think, "Yup, that's exactly what I see on the visual field of my mind," then what you wrote here would not be correct. It hinges on whether it's really possible to do that. It may be that the scanned content differs in some important way, even from my subjective point of view. In that case, you'd be correct. However, we don't know that that's the case.
I. Ryan:I think that your reaction against words doesn't apply to words in general, but only to the particular words that we use. What would make using pictures, feelings, or whatever more effective than using words? No matter what, you are still dealing with using symbols to mirror your thoughts.
See above. If we don't get this aspect of the discussion straightened out, we cannot really get anywhere. Please let me know if you don't agree with what I wrote here and in the Mises/Quine thread about interface between conscious and unconscious.
I. Ryan:I think that your problem is with the particular words, because they evolved mostly as a mirror of the minds of ordinary people, and because of that tend to be pretty ambiguous, vague, and whatever. There isn't a reason why you couldn't build words that mirror your thoughts, instead of relying on the ordinary, fuzzy-headed masses mirroring their thoughts, and then using those words. I don't think that the masses have any problem using words, simply because those words are about as vague as their thoughts. But we might have problems using them, because we try to make our thoughts a lot more specific and unambiguous than that.
Technical terms are less ambiguous. In fact, for any given context it is probably possible to develop an efficient language that I would probably not object to commingling with my own thoughts, but it would be purpose-built for that context. It would not be very useful in most other contexts. Words are vague not only because people are vague thinkers (for instance, the language that math people use is much less vague), but because the words must serve many purposes. That is why coining specific terms for specific purposes is so useful, hence the phenomenon of jargon. The masses can only learn so many words by the time they reach a given age. So they tend to use them in an even more imprecise manner than necessary. Someone who knows more words and chooses their words better can communicate more accurately, just not perfectly of course.
Technical grammars would be even more useful, but few people - besides perhaps lawyers - seem to do that. Also note that there are languages such as Japanese where a main feature compared to English is that it seemingly goes out of its way not to be clear. Vagueness is seen as a benefit (because it's polite and socially sensitive), although Japanese can be used in a precise manner as well.
Naturally, the average conversational interests of the population that spawned a given language will determine how precisely it carves up various parts of concept space. The language of intellectuals in general is more precise than that of the lay person, but much more precise in their given field, and more precise still in fields and schools of thought where rigor is highly regarded. Still no one goes too far in changing language, because it would create too a high a barrier to entry into the field and preclude all possibility of mutual understanding, in practice, especially for outsiders trying to break into the mainstream. (But in fields where everyone agrees that it really really really matters, they do: mathematics being the prime example.)
One could certainly overcome these problems and create a language that is all-around very accurate for parsing logical distinctions in its grammatical structure. But realize that the problem of logical error generally stems from semantic ambiguity, and that cannot be eradicated until every last word is clear and disambiguated enough for the purpose at hand. For example normative rights, legal rights, de facto rights - these are clearer than just "rights," and clear enough for Long's purposes, but not nearly clear enough for all purposes.
What I don't think you have yet realized is that, although you may be right that some tweaks to the structure of language could yield major improvements, the only way one could ever be perfectly clear and avoid leading oneself and others into logical errors in verbal discourse is to carefully define all your terms before you use them, creating new ones as needed, and that this process can go on nearly forever. To put things as clear as I want for deep levels of analysis will require me to leave no English word unaltered, and to coin scads of new jargon on top of that, and even to alert the reader to special non-standard grammatical constructions I have made. Well, there is your new and improved language; the problem is that will be nearly useless for discussing things at an everyday level of analysis.
Words are simply too low-resolution, not to mention that they are linear. An artist may be able to imagine at least part of this painting in full resolution in his own mind.
But how many English words would it take to convey it well enough to someone on the phone, so that they could reproduce even one small part of it exactly? A new language made for just that purpose would of course shave a few years off the process, and one purpose-built for van Gogh's unique style might actually make the process go by in a matter of hours or days. But what use would this new language be for other tasks? Probably almost none. Yet the direct thought in pictures is instant and perfect.
Now of course I've made my task far too easy by choosing a picture. But how about something like the proper form for kicking a soccer ball? It would take ages to explain this perfectly in words, and by the end the listener would probably have a totally mangled interpretation of what to do. Yet if I can visualize the same thing - as I must already be doing in order to explain it! - and I can show you that visualization on a monitor, you can see it. I could even show you how it feels from the first person perspective, which muscles contract, etc., if the technology ever gets that far. People already know this, which is why they use visual aids, like this one from another thread:
Naturally, if our language distinguished this semantic ambiguity better, it would be superior for discussing polycentric law. I fully agree. There are many changes I would make to English if I could get everyone to accept them. But there are limits to what such a program could accomplish, and I'm sure you agree about that, but I don't think we yet agree on where those limits lie.
I. Ryan:I mentioned this in a thread a while ago, and you disagreed, but I think that the future of communication, at least between people like you and I, will be with constructed languages, instead of natural languages. The natural languages, including English, Spanish, and so on, are overcomplicated, vague messes, which conceal on their ugly surface the possible power and simplicity of a system mirroring our thoughts. I think that a lot of the errors that people make, even very intelligent people, and a lot of the miscommunications that people have with each other, would disappear if we were to have a well constructed language to use. So many of the absurdities and miscommunications that people fall into are just the result of the messy tool of thought and communication that they are using, their natural language, and people like you might tend to even go as far as abandoning their natural language as a tool of thought, because it is so messed up.
I completely agree with your analysis of people's thinking errors in that they mostly stem from language ambiguities. As for "constructing" language, I think we are being put on by just such an ambiguity at this very moment, because in some sense you could say that all languages are constructed. If us forum members invent a more precise language and it catches on among people interested in precision, they will surely make modifications to it for their specific purposes, and it will be out of our hands so to speak. Perhaps English developed in the same way in a small group of people with specific communication needs.
Note also, there is a sort of calculation argument to be made here, not necessarily against what you have written, but elucidating to the issue at hand:
It isn't possible for us, as central language planners, to know all the possible distinctions and subtleties that everyone in every field of discourse will need for their own communication purposes. To do that, we have to know about every field, every hobby, every culture with their different emphases on various aspects of things. Too many words and no one would use it. Too many grammar words and no one would use it because every sentence would be too long. There is also robustness (ease of comprehending mangled or misheard utterances) to consider, English being a particularly robust language probably because it had so many cultures speaking it. This doesn't mean that we cannot make improvements, but I suspect they would be limited to grammatical structure for the above reasons.
And we may find unintended consequences. Since language is a natural order, it has evolved to be useful for the communication needs of people using it. Academics have evolved more precise languages for their purposes, and specific fields such as logic and mathematics have developed even more precise languages. Yet the language of mathematics is of limited usefulness outside the field, although I have on occasion explained something in an everyday context by saying, "It's a necessary condition, but not a sufficient condition." Still that is normal English, just used more precisely than usual.
Math people will note that the final arbiter example above is also clearly delineated in the definition of a limit in calculus: "For even epsilon > 0 there exists a delta > 0 such that ... [a given condition is satisfied]" meaning it's not that there is one delta that satisfies the condition for all epsilon, but that for any epsilon you give me, I can give you a delta that satisfies the condition based on that epsilon. In other words, the picture above, but where delta is "final arbiter" and epsilon is "dispute."
So additional accuracy is there for the fields that need it; if you just want a language that is more accurate for logic, study mathematics because they have it! If you want one that's more accurate for praxeology, study Menger and Mises, and then coin less unwieldy terms - of course at the cost of the ideas being less intelligible to outsiders, since people will only tolerate so much jargon (and very little grammatical jargon).
In other words, it's virtually the case that the very study of a field, at least when doing it rigorously, itself entails the creation of the new language necessary for elucidating it. The problem is that scholars rarely take this too far for fear of not getting anyone to read their abstruse writings. Hayek invented the words nomos and taxis, and he could have invented many more, but people just don't like a lot of jargon so that is why there has been a limit. Going in like a central planner and telling everyone, in effect, "You must learn my jargon and system of speaking so that you will be able to access these works," doesn't seem to go over well, at least historically. After all, even the most respected philosophers couldn't get away with that much on these fronts. If anyone, it would be them who could get people to accept their modifications to the English language, but even they achieve so few. Do you see the problem?
So the game is not to come up with a better language, but actually to get people to learn it, meaning the real challenge is to either somehow motivate people to learn it - and historically that has proven extremely difficult - or make substantial advances in teaching methods so that people could learn these new languages or modifications quickly and painlessly enough that they would be willing to do it.
In other words, it's not about being able to cook a better hamburger than McDonald's; anyone can do that. It's about making it cheap enough, accessible enough, and proven enough by reputation that people will invest resources into acquiring it.
I. Ryan:I almost daily find myself in situations in which I say something to somebody that I don't expect to pose a problem, find that their response reveals that they completely misunderstood me, feel handcuffed because English doesn't really have any way of fixing the miscommunication in less than like 500 words or something like that, but then realize how easy it would be to make that distinction in a well constructed language. I see the limitations of English and other natural languages everyday, but I don't blame words; I blame the terrible designs of the natural languages in particular.
Well I agree that words suck for communication, and that better languages would be much better for given purposes. My response to that is above. And furthermore, although you are indeed correct that words could be much improved, a linear system of words will always be pretty paltry relative to pure thought, no matter what. Carefully constructed languages have done wonders for all manner of technical fields, but none can match the power of diagrams - and consider that that's despite there not really being much standardization in visual communication. I think if you want to design a better language, make it mostly visual. Conventionalize the visual system into a language. I think this is the future, although I've barely outlined the case for that yet. I hope to later.
@last sentence of last post: Not if you're this guy (the guy Pinker describes at the beginning of the video).
Clayton -
AJ: Do you see the problem?
Do you see the problem?
I will try to write up a detailed response later, but I first want to point something out. I'm not proposing to construct a new lexicon to use. I'm not proposing that we try to construct a lexicon of unambiguous words for people to use in their conversations. It is the job of decentralized, cultural evolution to develop the words that we use to mirror our thoughts. If people have vague thoughts, the constructed language would develop vague words, if people have precise thoughts, it would develop precise words, and, if people have both, it would develop both.
I am proposing something much different, but I don't know whether I will be able to explain what I am talking about without explaining a lot of my system to you, which I could try to eventually do, of course only if you are interested in that sort of thing. Either way, I will try to give you a glimpse of an idea about what I am talking about here. I am talking about building a good underlying design that would be flexible enough to allow people to easily coin words for their way of life, but rigid enough to not lose its form in the process. It would need to have a sound system simple enough that people wouldn't ever cut off parts of words to speak it faster, it would need to have a powerful word derivation structure so people would be able to coin a lot of what they need in a regular way, without borrowing from other languages, and so on. I wouldn't be trying to build a whole lexicon; I would just be trying to build an engine.
I can give you a good example, if you read my long post on the previous page of this thread. The noun and adjective system in English is ridiculous. It makes you have to memorize every word to know whether it is a noun or is an adjective. If we just had a system like I used with my sample language, it would be so much easier, and what I am saynig is that there are tons of examples like that. Grammatical voice is a perfect one. I could build grammatical voice into my sample language in like four lines of code, yet English is a total mess when it comes to changing voices, to the point that we often don't have a voice change available, or get confused about what is going on with the voice.
I would build the language to be extremely flexible, so it could accomodate a lot of different types of speakers. It wouldn't mandate that you put tense into every sentence that you write, but you would have that option, it wouldn't make you speak directly or logical, but you would have that option, it wouldn't make you use nouns and adjectives, because you could just use intersection as a visible relation, but you would have that option, it wouldn't make you use prefix notation over postfix notation, because you would have either option, and so on.
It would be very easy to learn, because of how regular and flexible the grammar would be, but it would be very powerful to use. It would reveal things like whether we are better at processing postfix or prefix notation, because people could choose either, it would reveal things like whether it is easier to use the invisible intersection relation, because people could elect to make it visible, and so on. We don't have those options in our natural languages.
AJ: If it's really possible to scan my visual cortex and see exactly what I'm seeing, so that if I looked at the monitor I would think, "Yup, that's exactly what I see on the visual field of my mind," then what you wrote here would not be correct. It hinges on whether it's really possible to do that. It may be that the scanned content differs in some important way, even from my subjective point of view. In that case, you'd be correct. However, we don't know that that's the case.
It would still be a translation even if no information were lost in the process.
I. Ryan: Words are simply too low-resolution, not to mention that they are linear. An artist may be able to imagine at least part of this painting in full resolution in his own mind. But how many English words would it take to convey it well enough to someone on the phone, so that they could reproduce even one small part of it exactly? A new language made for just that purpose would of course shave a few years off the process, and one purpose-built for van Gogh's unique style might actually make the process go by in a matter of hours or days. But what use would this new language be for other tasks? Probably almost none. Yet the direct thought in pictures is instant and perfect. Now of course I've made my task far too easy by choosing a picture. But how about something like the proper form for kicking a soccer ball? It would take ages to explain this perfectly in words, and by the end the listener would probably have a totally mangled interpretation of what to do. Yet if I can visualize the same thing - as I must already be doing in order to explain it! - and I can show you that visualization on a monitor, you can see it. I could even show you how it feels from the first person perspective, which muscles contract, etc., if the technology ever gets that far.
Now of course I've made my task far too easy by choosing a picture. But how about something like the proper form for kicking a soccer ball? It would take ages to explain this perfectly in words, and by the end the listener would probably have a totally mangled interpretation of what to do. Yet if I can visualize the same thing - as I must already be doing in order to explain it! - and I can show you that visualization on a monitor, you can see it. I could even show you how it feels from the first person perspective, which muscles contract, etc., if the technology ever gets that far.
Yeah, I understand that it isn't easy to explain certain things with words whether or not you have a well constructed language at your disposal, but I think that you bring that too far, and act like everything isn't very easy to explain with words. Teaching somebody how to kick a soccer ball is the job of a coach standing right next to them, a video, or a textbook with words heavily supplemented by diagrams, but that doesn't mean that everything is like that.
I don't think that languages developed to deal with situations like that, because the thing that you are trying to show them is already in the public world. If you look back at my definition of language, just think about how weird it would be to try to explain a drawing or how to kick a soccer ball in just language. Both of them, the drawing and kicking a soccerball, already are in the public world, so it would be like translating japanese into english and then back into japanese just so a japanese guy could read it. You are going to lose some of the resolution in the process, and the guy already could have read it, so why would you bother to do such a thing?
So I don't think that those are fair examples, simply because it is clear that language didn't develop to deal with things like that.
I. Ryan:I think that English, and most natural languages, didn't evolve an ending to distinguish them, but tended to have a ridiculously irregular system where just the word itself is either a noun or an adjective. Nothing about the word "stupid" makes it obvious that it is an adjective, and nothing about the word "idiot" makes it obvious that it is a noun; you just need to memorize those things when you learn English.
Hmm. Japanese is not like that: every adjective ends with either -i or -na, every verb ends with -u or similar markers. Are you fluent in any languages besides English?
AJ: In other words, it's virtually the case that the very study of a field, at least when doing it rigorously, itself entails the creation of the new language necessary for elucidating it. The problem is that scholars rarely take this too far for fear of not getting anyone to read their abstruse writings. Hayek invented the words nomos and taxis, and he could have invented many more, but people just don't like a lot of jargon so that is why there has been a limit. Going in like a central planner and telling everyone, in effect, "You must learn my jargon and system of speaking so that you will be able to access these works," doesn't seem to go over well, at least historically. After all, even the most respected philosophers couldn't get away with that much on these fronts. If anyone, it would be them who could get people to accept their modifications to the English language, but even they achieve so few.
In other words, it's virtually the case that the very study of a field, at least when doing it rigorously, itself entails the creation of the new language necessary for elucidating it. The problem is that scholars rarely take this too far for fear of not getting anyone to read their abstruse writings. Hayek invented the words nomos and taxis, and he could have invented many more, but people just don't like a lot of jargon so that is why there has been a limit. Going in like a central planner and telling everyone, in effect, "You must learn my jargon and system of speaking so that you will be able to access these works," doesn't seem to go over well, at least historically. After all, even the most respected philosophers couldn't get away with that much on these fronts. If anyone, it would be them who could get people to accept their modifications to the English language, but even they achieve so few.
I already made this point, but I want to emphasize it. I know that people invent new words to talk about ideas specific to their field, but they always use the engine of the natural language that they are writing in to do that. So my proposal isn't to coin a bunch of new words, but to build a new engine.
AJ: Are you fluent in any languages besides English?
Are you fluent in any languages besides English?
I'm not, and it is pretty pathetic that I'm not, so I am going to try to fix that in the long-term.
Even if we call it translation, what of it? The question is how faithful it is to the original thought.
Did you want an example from my own private thoughts? I thought we both agreed that this would be extremely difficult to do in English But it also seems obvious to me that whatever I can imagine in my private world would surely be no easier to communicate in words. The examples show that even relatively simple, well-understood phenomena that everyday people can and do understand are still well outside the realm of what can be explained purely in words. Or just imagine a souped-up version the final arbiter example, or just about any slightly complex diagram of logical relations.
On building an engine, point taken. I'm not sure I've understood your original post. Something like that may be possible, but again the trick is getting people to use it. And I'm just not sure the problem exists, or rather, any attempts to change the engine might result in new ambiguities. That's why it's nice to know a few languages: you can see what kinds of grammar schemes exist and their strengths and weaknesses.
AJ: Even if we call it translation, what of it? The question is how faithful it is to the original thought.
I was just trying to establish a principle. Not everything that I write is going to be against you.
AJ: Did you want an example from my own private thoughts? I thought we both agreed that this would be extremely difficult to do in English.
Did you want an example from my own private thoughts? I thought we both agreed that this would be extremely difficult to do in English.
Well, we are doing that right now, so you can judge how well it is working out.
AJ: Did you want an example from my own private thoughts? I thought we both agreed that this would be extremely difficult to do in English. But it also seems obvious to me that whatever I can imagine in my private world would surely be no easier to communicate in words. The examples show that even relatively simple, well-understood phenomena that everyday people can and do understand are still well outside the realm of what can be explained purely in words. Or just take the final arbiter example, or just about any useful diagram of logical relations.
Did you want an example from my own private thoughts? I thought we both agreed that this would be extremely difficult to do in English. But it also seems obvious to me that whatever I can imagine in my private world would surely be no easier to communicate in words. The examples show that even relatively simple, well-understood phenomena that everyday people can and do understand are still well outside the realm of what can be explained purely in words. Or just take the final arbiter example, or just about any useful diagram of logical relations.
I don't think that you understood what I was trying to say. Why we use a language is to encode our private thoughts into public things, so other people can decode those public things into private thoughts. It isn't a bad thing that language can't explain a picture very well, because the picture already is in the public world. It would be unnecessary to take something in the public world, decode it into thoughts, and then encode it back into a public thing. It is bound to lose resolution if you do that, and it was already in the public world, so it would be useless to do that. It would be better to just show it to the guy straight up. If you try to use language to explain it, instead of showing it to him, you would be taking something of the public world, translating it into something of your private world, and then translating it back into something of the public world. But it already was of the public world! So what sense does that make? It would be like translating something from Japanese to English, and then back into Japanese, just so a Japanese speaker could read it. What nonsense that would be! Why wouldn't you just show him the original Japanese?
It isn't a fault of language that it can't do something well that it wasn't designed to do. It was designed to translate things that people can't access without that translation, which means that they usually are things in your private world.
(This doesn't mean of course that you couldn't use language to explain a painting to someone that can't see it because it is locked away somewhere. It just means that language isn't very good at that for pretty obvious reasons, and that we should pay more attention to things like the arbitration diagram, than talking about how bad language is at explaining pictures.)
I. Ryan: I don't think that you understood what I was trying to say. Why we use a language is to encode our private thoughts into public things, so other people can decode those public things into private thoughts. It isn't a bad thing that language can't explain a picture very well, because the picture already is in the public world. It would be unnecessary to take something in the public world, decode it into thoughts, and then encode it back into a public thing. It is bound to lose resolution if you do that, and it was already in the public world, so it would be useless to do that. It would be better to just show it to the guy straight up. If you try to use language to explain it, instead of showing it to him, you would be taking something of the public world, translating it into something of your private world, and then translating it back into something of the public world. But it already was of the public world! So what sense does that make? It would be like translating something from Japanese to English, and then back into Japanese, just so a Japanese speaker could read it. What nonsense that would be! Why wouldn't you just show him the original Japanese? It isn't a fault of language that it can't do something well that it wasn't designed to do. It was designed to translate things that people can't access without that translation, which means that they usually are things in your private world. (This doesn't mean of course that you couldn't use language to explain a painting to someone that can't see it because it is locked away somewhere. It just means that language isn't very good at that for pretty obvious reasons, and that we should pay more attention to things like the arbitration diagram, than talking about how bad language is at explaining pictures.)
Okay, I think that I contradicted myself a lot over the course of that post, but I still think that a worthwhile point is lodged someplace in it.
Well, I am saying that pictures and videos are one of most people's primary modes of thought, so this is in the private world. The van Gogh painting was just for illustration purposes. But it could just as easily have been an internal imagining of a state of affairs I want to bring about, a memory, a logical derivation, etc.
AJ: Well, I am saying that pictures and videos are one of most people's primary modes of thought, so this is in the private world. The van Gogh painting was just for illustration purposes. But it could just as easily have been an internal imagining of a state of affairs I want to bring about, a memory, a logical derivation, etc.
Okay, I understand. I should mention that I don't just think that building a language engine straight from the ground up would be just building a syntax and whatever for words. It would also have a lot of stuff having to do with gestures and whatever, which would add a lot to the communication. Maybe we could also come up with a standardized way of drawing diagrams or something for certain things, to aid in explaining certain ideas, like the arbitration example that you gave.
Just found this. Pretty interesting, although almost certainly not how I would do it. Preview:
I. Ryan: Maybe we could also come up with a standardized way of drawing diagrams or something for certain things, to aid in explaining certain ideas, like the arbitration example that you gave.
Maybe we could also come up with a standardized way of drawing diagrams or something for certain things, to aid in explaining certain ideas, like the arbitration example that you gave.
But I don't know whether it would be possible to build a "diagram engine" or something like that, so that part of it might just be like coining a bunch of words. I'm not sure. Would it be possible to build a sort of engine for making diagrams, just like natural languages have engines for building sentences?
Well do you think there's an "engine" that underlies English (albeit an inefficient one)? If so, since diagrams and videos and commercials and such also follow conventions, they are a de facto language and should also have an underlying engine.
AJ: Well do you think there's an "engine" that underlies English (albeit an inefficient one)?
Well do you think there's an "engine" that underlies English (albeit an inefficient one)?
Of course.
AJ: If so, since diagrams and videos and commercials and such also follow conventions, they are a de facto language and should also have an underlying engine.
If so, since diagrams and videos and commercials and such also follow conventions, they are a de facto language and should also have an underlying engine.
Yeah, but what is it? How could we even start studying it?
AJ: I'm not sure I've understood your original post.
I'm not sure I've understood your original post.
Which one?
The post you wrote linearly
To find the visual engine, watch TV - commercials especially. And look at visual aids. For example, Euler diagrams are a kind of language:
Think how many propositions are contained in that, and how likely it would be for another person to grasp them all if read in prose.
This is excellent: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/diagrams/ (but it doesn't go very far into the implications I see; I will elaborate later)
It's particularly interesting that these visual modes of communication do not result in any paradoxes because they cannot express contradiction unless specifically designed to. This jives with what I was writing in the Mises/Quine thread.
Also want to add that whatever system is created, it can include whatever is most useful for communication. Surely it will include some words, but also visuals, sounds, etc. may be incorporated - although some of these present practical limitations.
AJ: On building an engine, point taken.
On building an engine, point taken.
(This is really rough and badly explained.)
I want to give you an example of a part of a "language engine", in order to give you an idea of what I am proposing. I will first build the "template language", which will be the starting point not only of every "imaginary construction" which we will use now and in the future, but which will also be the starting point of every language which we will build. I will then build something in order to handle "grammatical voice", which will not only give you a better idea of what "grammatical voice" even is than any linguistics text which you could find, but will also give you an idea of how simple and powerful a system like this could be.
We need to start out with two division of our ideas: (a) one into "simple" and "complex", and (b) one into "objects" and "relations". They aren't just of our languages. They aren't just syntactical conveniences or anything like that. They are of all of our thoughts. We can't even imagine anything at variance with them. I won't have to spend much time explaining them, because they are pretty obvious to everybody.
First, I observe (a) that I can divide some of my ideas into ones composed of them, and (b) that I can divide others into ones composing them. (a) I can for example divide my idea of "blackberries" into ones of its textures, colors, tastes, and so on, and (b) I can for example combine my ideas of "adult", "human", and "male", into one of "man".
With that said, ideas not further divisible, I will call them "simple" ideas, and ideas further divisible, I will call them "complex" ideas.
The other division is even more obvious. In the phrase "my desk is in my room", "my desk" refers to an object, "my room" refers to an object", and "is in" refers to a relation between those two objects. My desk is in my room. That is a relation between two objects. But what is less obvious is that objects like that of "my desk" and "my room" are themselves just compilations of various other objects and relations. So the legs of my desk are for example below its surface, the right side is to the right of the left side, and so on. And, with the division into simple and complex ideas made in the last section, it makes sense to assume that what makes up my ideas of my desk, my room, and so on are just compilations of simple objects and simple relations. So the simple objects of my desk for example are the colored pointed making it up, the simple relations saying how those colored points are arranged to form the appearance, the simple objects and relations referring to my feelings about it, and so on.
So the simple objects and simple relations are the foundation of all of our conscious experience. They are the foundation under all of our perceptions. An enumeration of the simple ideas and simple relations would provide us with the fundamentals of our mind. So, if we want to build a model of our mind, which is what languages are, we need to start out with those. We don't need to be able to give an enumeration of them, but we need to start out with the idea of them.
First, simple relations join just two objects together, not more or less. It is plain that it is necessary in order to establish a relation to have at least two objects, and, if a relation joins more than two objects, it would be possible to break it down into more than one relation, where the first of those relatives joins the first object with the second object, the second of them joins the joining of the first object and the second with the third object, and so on.
So the foundation of our mind is a bunch of simple relations each connecting just two objects together. We can use contextless grammar to model that, where "SO" and is for "simple objects", "SR" is for "simple relations", "CP" is for "complex perceptions", and "CP" is the start symbol. The interpretation is that two objects following a relation are related to each other by the relation. So "SR1 SO1 SO2" means that the first object is related to the second object by the relation.)
If we were to enumerate the simple objects and simple relations, that would be the formation rules for anything which we could think about. Everything which we could experience, that would be able to model it. Either way, it is a model of the "engine" of our mind. It can make any possible combination of simple objects and simple relations, so it is a model of the "engine" of our mind. The only difference between this and a normal, everyday language is that the normal, everyday language has a bunch of conveniences and shortcuts. It has words, which are complex objects already built for you; it has syntactical conveniences, like the distinction into nouns and adjectives, which might make it easier to use; and so on. Those formation rules which I layed out in those three lines are the "longhand" of our mind. And English, Japanese, and every other language, whether constructed or natural, is the "shorthand" which we use. What I just defined is the longhand; normal, everyday languages are the shorthand.
Now I want to build "grammatical voice" onto there. First, I will give you a bunch of examples of "grammatical voice" in English, just to set the stage for what we are going to do, and then I will show you how to build it into the longhand which I just built in order to show you one step in converting the longhand into a more user-friendly shorthand.
Active voice:
Passive voice:
Anti-passive voice:
Anti-anti-passive voice:
Inverse voice:
Reflexive voice:
And so on. Most of them don't have names, so I just gave a few examples of the ones which do. Notice that English doesn't have an "anti-passive" or an "anti-anti-passive" voice, so I had to approximate it by using the word "something". And also notice that I conveniently chose "own" because it has the inverse "belong", but most words in English don't have a way to be inversed. English doesn't have a regular system for doing inverse voice.
What we see in common with all of those is that they have to do with taking a connection between objects and relations and moving around the objects without changing the meaning of the relation. So, from active to passive, we get rid of the second object, and don't specify what that object is, but it is still implied, so the meaning of the relation is the same. And, from active to inverse, the positions of the objects switch, but the meaning of the sentence stays the same. And, from active to anti-passive, we get rid of the first object, and don't specify what the object is, but it is still implied, so the meaning the of the relation of the same. And so on. What we use voice for is to take a clause with objects and relations, and rearrange the objects, get rid of some, and so on, without changing the meaning of the relation.
Here are a few more examples without names (please note that I didn't take much time coming up with good sentences, so most of them are really stupid, and that a lot of them sound awkward in English, which I indicated with an asterisk in front of it):
And so on. Notice that English does voice in a bunch of different ways. A lot of times you can't even do it, others you add a random preposition if you want to have the second object and not if you don't, and so on. It is pretty random, and you don't have the capability, or it just sounds awkward, a lot of the time. I could have done a lot better job with this, but I didn't feel like spending a long time trying to come up with good examples or classifying the types of voice in English. I will do this eventually, but I don't think that I would be ready to carry out a systematic investigation yet anyway.
Anyway, we can build in grammatical voice in like five lines of code.
(Note that putting a number after it means that it is a specific one, and not putting a number after it doesn't imply anything about which one it is. Also note that the language that is spit out by these formation rules is in prefix notation.)
That is five lines of code, and it handles almost everything with voice. Here is an example, where I start out with a relation and two objects, and then show what they would change to:
Change to:
And:
If we build all of the other shorthands into that template, those five lines would take care of basically all of the cases that I showed in and all of the cases that we care about in a regular, easy way. I hope that you didn't lose me completely, because as it got harder and harder to keep this post solid, I kept lowering my standards of how well I should be explaining this.
Okay, imaginary constructions are always very abstract, so I will try to put this in some context in order to make it more clear. I will add some other things to the language in a very informal way, and then show you how the formal voice thing works with it. Suppose that the ending for a relation is "-i", the ending for a noun is "-a", the ending for an adjective is "-u", "djekus" means something like "kill", "bav" means "i" and "dev" means "you", and the endings for voice, instead of being a, o, e, u, and i, respectively, are the affixes "-es-", "-os-", "-em-", "-om", and "-ang-", respectively:
And so on. If I made prepositions and stuff like that into it, I could show you the rest of it. But prepositions are a lot harder to deal with than nouns, adjectives, and grammatical voice.
I. Ryan:First, I observe (a) that I can divide some of my ideas into ones composed of them, and (b) that I can divide others into ones composing them. (a) I can for example divide my idea of "blackberries" into ones of its textures, colors, tastes, and so on, and (b) I can for example combine my ideas of "adult", "human", and "male", into one of "man".
Just a quick note: the word "idea" may need to be clarified at some point.
I. Ryan:With that said, ideas not further divisible, I will call them "simple" ideas, and ideas further divisible, I will call them "complex" ideas.
So simple ideas would be sensations like blue, textures, tastes, pain, pleasure, etc.? Or models based on them? In other words, dots or connected dots (as in the bee and flower example)?
I. Ryan:So the simple objects and simple relations are the foundation of all of our conscious experience. They are the foundation under all of our perceptions. An enumeration of the simple ideas and simple relations would provide us with the fundamentals of our mind. So, if we want to build a model of our mind, which is what languages are, we need to start out with those.
I may agree with your conclusion here, but in case it turns out to be important I'd like to nitpick that sensations (simple objects) are foundational, and relations can only be experienced as sets of sensations - for example I can see "A chair is in my room" as a circle representing my room and a dot representing my chair, with the dot inside the circle. That picture is set of visual sensations. But I (may) still agree that objects and relations are good fundamental basis for a language.
I. Ryan:So the foundation of our mind is a bunch of simple relations each connecting just two objects together. We can use contextless grammar to model that, where "SO" and is for "simple objects", "SR" is for "simple relations", "CP" is for "complex perceptions", and "CP" is the start symbol. The interpretation is that two objects following a relation are related to each other by the relation. So "SR1 SO1 SO2" means that the first object is related to the second object by the relation.) SO -> b | c | d | . . . SR -> α | ß | Γ | . . . CP -> SR CP CP | SR SO SO | SR CP SO | SR SO CP If we were to enumerate the simple objects and simple relations, that would be the formation rules for anything which we could think about. Everything which we could experience, that would be able to model it. Either way, it is a model of the "engine" of our mind. It can make any possible combination of simple objects and simple relations, so it is a model of the "engine" of our mind. The only difference between this and a normal, everyday language is that the normal, everyday language has a bunch of conveniences and shortcuts. It has words, which are complex objects already built for you; it has syntactical conveniences, like the distinction into nouns and adjectives, which might make it easier to use; and so on. Those formation rules which I layed out in those three lines are the "longhand" of our mind. And English, Japanese, and every other language, whether constructed or natural, is the "shorthand" which we use. What I just defined is the longhand; normal, everyday languages are the shorthand.
I see what you're getting at now. One thing that may be important is to define "relation" more carefully. Also, the question of whether the fundamental objects are "dots" or "connected dots" looms large in my mind at this point.
If you've been following my conception in the Quine thread, you may be reminded of two quotes from people who's names I have forgotten, that go roughly: "Science is an empirico-deductive discipline," and "Science is just doing what everyday people do everyday, but in a more careful way." My conception is essentially that all of human reasoning is empirico-deductive, when those terms are understood with all the caveats I mentioned in that thread (which turns out to be a vastly different understanding than the standard one). I...
(1) ...experience dots (sensations),
(2) ...connect the dots (form models I deem useful for anticipating the future states of my sensations), and
(3) ...logically deduce new results from those models.
The "empirical" aspects are 1 and 2 (with again the important caveats that 1 does not refer to any "observation" of some "real world" but just of pure sensation, and that all conscious thought is also just sensation), and the deductive aspect is 3.
So can you perhaps list some relations that you see as fundamental? For example, physical containment ("X is in Y") doesn't seem completely fundamental, because it presupposes spatial relations and suggests certain facts about physical reality, such as that objects cannot pass through each other. Of course, since we seem to live in a world with such a physical reality, the language would be useful for talking about that world, but it would be a language purpose-built for one particular understanding of the physical world (one particular idealized model). So it wouldn't necessarily be useful when we delve deep enough into physics until those relations were broken down further. However, I hasten to add that any pictorial model I might propose would probably suffer from the same limitations. I don't see our conceptions as necessarily in conflict; I am posting to gain ideas from you and others, and from the discussion, just as much as to suggest my own.
--
Another quick aside: I just made a major leap in my understanding, or at least in how to explain it.
Remember how Mises says in Human Action that all the theorems of mathematics are already contained in their axioms, and that a sufficiently intelligent being would understand them all in one swoop? I made the same argument here, where I said that 2+2 just means 4. I said that if you told the axioms of Euclidean geometry to a sufficiently intelligent being, then told that being an advanced theorem, it would reply, "You already told me that!" (See also my very brief response to this misguided LessWrong post (that post notwithstanding, I highly recommend Eliezer Yudkowsky's other writings).) I made the same argument in the context of causality in physical models in this recent thread. I make many points that touch on the same in the Quine thread.
I had had trouble explaining this before, but in pictures these points are already made for me. For a simple example, 2+2 conceived on my visual field really is just the same as 4 conceived on my visual field, going something like this:
2 looks like: . .
2+2 looks like: . . . .
4 looks like: . . . .
And for a more impressive example, imagine that we have laid out the following diagram instead of a bunch of axioms of the form "Ireland is in the British Isles," "Ireland is not in the United Kingdom," etc.:
Then upon hearing someone say, "From the [written] axioms we have mathematically derived the following theorem: Every country that is in Great Britain is in the United Kingdom," a sufficiently intelligent being (in this case, you or me) would reply, "That was already contained in the [diagrammed] 'axioms.' There is no need to 'deduce' it! At most you could say you're just pointing it out."
So... this suggests that much of what we regard as difficult thinking that has in some cases taken centuries for people to work out might be trivially easy if done in pictures. It's just that the pictorial representations have not been ambitious enough, probably in part because people would be resistant to learn very complex diagramming schemes.
And also, I think this means we are engaged in the same enterprise: we both want to create better engines for basic communication "language," but I am emphasizing the visual aspect (or really all sensations, but visual seems the most practical for now).
I think success in this area would mean great strides toward AI, and even if not, it would still mean tremendously much for human communication and hence our understanding of each other.
I. Ryan: What we use voice for is to take a clause with objects and relations, and rearrange the objects, get rid of some, and so on, without changing the meaning of the relation. ... Suppose that the ending for a relation is "-i", the ending for a noun is "-a", the ending for an adjective is "-u", "djekus" means something like "kill", "bav" means "i" and "dev" means "you", and the endings for voice, instead of being a, o, e, u, and i, respectively, are the affixes "-es-", "-os-", "-em-", "-om", and "-ang-", respectively: Djekusi bava deva. <-> I kill you. (Active) Djekusesi. <-> Something kills something. (Anti-anti-passive) Djekusosi bava. <-> I kill something. (Anti-passive) Djekusemi deva. <-> You are killed. (Passive) Djekusangi bava. <-> I commit suicide./I kill myself. (Reflexive)
What we use voice for is to take a clause with objects and relations, and rearrange the objects, get rid of some, and so on, without changing the meaning of the relation.
...
Suppose that the ending for a relation is "-i", the ending for a noun is "-a", the ending for an adjective is "-u", "djekus" means something like "kill", "bav" means "i" and "dev" means "you", and the endings for voice, instead of being a, o, e, u, and i, respectively, are the affixes "-es-", "-os-", "-em-", "-om", and "-ang-", respectively:
That is really interesting. It may be better than English at handling voice and the nouns/adjectives.
However, you seem to be saying that we need grammatical voice to give speakers the flexibility to rearrange objects without changing the meaning of the relation. But it strikes me that we only need both "something killed him" and "he was killed" because something doesn't normally include people. If we had a normal English construction that just said something like "X killed him," would there be any use for passive voice? And if we could say "I killed X" we wouldn't need anti-passive, right? From those examples it seems (on my admittedly rudimentary consideration of this so far) that maybe the only reason we need grammatical voice is because we don't have sufficiently non-specific words like the mathematical "X" - because "something" implies a thing not a person, etc.
And I also suspect voice could be partially or completely done away with in a visual language.
AJ: Just a quick note: the word "idea" may need to be clarified at some point.
I think that we should just replace the word "idea" with the word "perceptions", and then define them as everything. Our consciousness is just a series of perceptions. We don't experience anything not a perception, and we don't perceive anything not an experience. Our perceptions aren't in our minds. They are our minds. Our consciousness isn't anything other than a bundle of perceptions. Feeling, seeing, hearing, hating, and so on, all of them are nothing but perceiving.
AJ: So simple ideas would be sensations like blue, textures, tastes, pain, pleasure, etc.? Or models based on them? In other words, dots or connected dots (as in the bee and flower example)? [...] So can you perhaps list some relations that you see as fundamental? For example, physical containment ("X is in Y") doesn't seem completely fundamental, because it presupposes spatial relations and suggests certain facts about physical reality, such as that objects cannot pass through each other. Of course, since we seem to live in a world with such a physical reality, the language would be useful for talking about that world, but it would be a language purpose-built for one particular understanding of the physical world (one particular idealized model). So it wouldn't necessarily be useful when we delve deep enough into physics until those relations were broken down further.
[...]
So can you perhaps list some relations that you see as fundamental? For example, physical containment ("X is in Y") doesn't seem completely fundamental, because it presupposes spatial relations and suggests certain facts about physical reality, such as that objects cannot pass through each other. Of course, since we seem to live in a world with such a physical reality, the language would be useful for talking about that world, but it would be a language purpose-built for one particular understanding of the physical world (one particular idealized model). So it wouldn't necessarily be useful when we delve deep enough into physics until those relations were broken down further.
With the last section in mind, our simple perceptions are spatial points, the most fundamental spatial relations, the most fundamental temporal relations, our most fundamental feelings, and so on. I can't enumerate all of our simple perceptions, because I don't know how, but I am pretty sure that spatial points and temporal disparity are two of them.
(Time is to us two things: (a) temporal disparity, and (b) temporal direction. We don't only say whether something happened at the same time or at a different time than something else; we also say whether it happened before the present moment or after the present moment. So temporal disparity and temporal direction are two candidates for being simple perceptions. But we distinguish between before our present moment and after our present moment only because our lifecycle is a linear movement from birth to death, and we can see how far we have progressed in that journey at any moment, and because everything else around us is subject to the same sort of thing. If we were to not see a regularity in the growth and deterioration of us and everything around us, we wouldn't be able to distinguish between before and after. We would see things changing, but we wouldn't see anything moving forward or backward. If the universe fluctuated chaotically, what justification we have for saying that time is moving forward? So I don't think that temporal direction is a simple perception. But temporal disparity still stands.)
AJ: I may agree with your conclusion here, but in case it turns out to be important I'd like to nitpick that sensations (simple objects) are foundational, and relations can only be experienced as sets of sensations - for example I can see "A chair is in my room" as a circle representing my room and a dot representing my chair, with the dot inside the circle. That picture is set of visual sensations. But I (may) still agree that objects and relations are good fundamental basis for a language.
We can't observe relations without objects, but we also can't observe objects without relations. They aren't logically prior or posterior to each other. They are correlatives. We can't imagine one without the other. We can't imagine a relation without two objects, because there would be no relation. But we also can't imagine an object without a relation, because it would be floating in nothingness. Try to imagine a simple perception such as a spatial point without imagining a relation. It is impossible. It has to be at least related to you. It has to be in front of you, in back of you, in your visual field, or something like that. It can't just be hanging in nothingness, with no relation to you.
And what the sentence "a chair is in my room" refers to isn't a simple perception. It is made up of simple perceptions, such as spatial points, the most fundamental relations between those spatial points, and so on, but it isn't itself a simple perception. So we should expect that a diagram referring to it, but also having other uses, wouldn't itself be a simple perception either.
AJ: One thing that may be important is to define "relation" more carefully.
One thing that may be important is to define "relation" more carefully.
I don't know how to. Do you have any ideas?
AJ: Also, the question of whether the fundamental objects are "dots" or "connected dots" looms large in my mind at this point.
Also, the question of whether the fundamental objects are "dots" or "connected dots" looms large in my mind at this point.
I'm not sure what you mean. (Did you explain it in the Mises/Quine thread?)
AJ: If you've been following my conception in the Quine thread, you may be reminded of two quotes from people who's names I have forgotten, that go roughly: "Science is an empirico-deductive discipline," and "Science is just doing what everyday people do everyday, but in a more careful way." My conception is essentially that all of human reasoning is empirico-deductive, when those terms are understood with all the caveats I mentioned in that thread (which turns out to be a vastly different understanding than the standard one). I... (1) ...experience dots (sensations), (2) ...connect the dots (form models I deem useful for anticipating the future states of my sensations), and (3) ...logically deduce new results from those models. The "empirical" aspects are 1 and 2 (with again the important caveats that 1 does not refer to any "observation" of some "real world" but just of pure sensation, and that all conscious thought is also just sensation), and the deductive aspect is 3.
Can you explain the second one? (Did you explain it in the Mises/Quine thread?)
AJ: Another quick aside: I just made a major leap in my understanding, or at least in how to explain it. Remember how Mises says in Human Action that all the theorems of mathematics are already contained in their axioms, and that a sufficiently intelligent being would understand them all in one swoop? I made the same argument here, where I said that 2+2 just means 4. I said that if you told the axioms of Euclidean geometry to a sufficiently intelligent being, then told that being an advanced theorem, it would reply, "You already told me that!" (See also my very brief response to this misguided LessWrong post (that post notwithstanding, I highly recommend Eliezer Yudkowsky's other writings).) I made the same argument in the context of causality in physical models in this recent thread. I make many points that touch on the same in the Quine thread. I had had trouble explaining this before, but in pictures these points are already made for me. For a simple example, 2+2 conceived on my visual field really is just the same as 4 conceived on my visual field, going something like this: 2 looks like: . . 2+2 looks like: . . . . 4 looks like: . . . . And for a more impressive example, imagine that we have laid out the following diagram instead of a bunch of axioms of the form "Ireland is in the British Isles," "Ireland is not in the United Kingdom," etc.: Then upon hearing someone say, "From the [written] axioms we have mathematically derived the following theorem: Every country that is in Great Britain is in the United Kingdom," a sufficiently intelligent being (in this case, you or me) would reply, "That was already contained in the [diagrammed] 'axioms.' There is no need to 'deduce' it! At most you could say you're just pointing it out."
Our consciousness of the public world is at the most fundamental level a succession of spaces. We see an iteration of space A, which has a ball in the bottom left corner, and then we see an iteration of space B, which has a ball still in the bottom left corner, but further toward the top right corner, and so on. But then we put them together in order to come up with an idea of the change.
Our consciousness of our private world, when we aren't thinking about the public world, is basically the same, except each iteration doesn't consist of spatial points arranged in a certain manner, but consists of points with varying meanings and degrees of severity to us. Our emotions aren't spatially related to each other, but they are related to each other in terms of what they are advising and how severe they are.
Our consciousness is a succession of iterations of spaces, feelings, and so on. So we can compare things in iterations, and we can compare things between iterations. I could compare the ball in the first iteration to the lines making up the perimeter of that iteration, or I could compare the ball in the first iteration to the ball in the second iteration.
So there are different levels of description both in iterations and between iterations.
We can explain things in iterations different ways. We can for example say that a pot of water is boiling, or we can say that the molecules of water in the pot are vibrating in a certain way. Both of those descriptions refer to the same thing, but they are still different. They are different "levels" of description. One is of the macroscopic scale, and the other is of the microscopic scale.
And, if we assume that there is a regularity in the succession of iterations, we assume that the information contained in one iteration is the equal to the information contained in all of the iterations, which means that we see each iteration as a level of description of the entire succession of iterations.
So "2 + 2" and "4" are just two levels of description of the same thing, and they are of course of the first variety, because they don't have anything to do with a succession in time. But I don't think that the matter is as simple as you are acting like it is, because see what happens when you go back to the example about the water boiling. A video of the macroscopic scale, which would be of a pot of water boiling, and a video of the microscopic scale, which would be of a bunch of molecules vibrating in certain ways, would of course be different. They wouldn't lend themselves to being seen as referring to the same thing as pictures any more than they would in writing. Or would they?
So the conclusion is that all of our science has to do with connecting levels of description. But there are two types of doing that. One is staying in iterations, which is what David Hume called "relations of ideas", and the other is jumping between iterations, which David Hume called "matters of fact".
And the question is whether visual stuff could work better at doing this. The example that you gave with "2 + 2" and "4", I don't know whether mathematics could progress without splitting the visual "...." into the the two levels of description, "2 + 2" and "4", among others. Aren't the levels of description important for other things? What your example did was just take the two levels of description and show what they were both referring to. But, with the example with the boiling water, couldn't we get something from looking at the macroscopic scale that we couldn't get from the microscopic, and vice versa? Isn't that the point of different levels of description?
(By the way, while I have you thinking about the two types of levels of description, I want to say something about praxeology. Every science has to do with connecting different levels of description, whether they are the levels of description in iterations or whether they are those between iterations. So where is pure praxeology? Does pure praxeology stay in iterations, or does it jump between iterations? I think that it stays in iterations. Saying that we desire A because we both desire B and think that A leads to B is staying in one iteration. Desiring A, and both desiring B and thinking that A leads to B, are just two different levels of description of the same thing. And they definitely don't have anything to do with succeeding iterations. The moment we come to the conclusion that A leads to B while desiring B, we start desiring A. So where does jumping between iterations come in? Isn't that psychology or something? Shouldn't we combine psychology and praxeology to get the whole picture, just like people combine mathematics and physics to get mathematical physics, which gives the whole picture? I think that pure praxeology doesn't jump between iterations, but Austrian School economists in practice jump between iterations. Maybe the next step in the theory would be making that explicit? These are just rough, somewhat tangential thoughts.)
AJ: However, you seem to be saying that we need grammatical voice to give speakers the flexibility to rearrange objects without changing the meaning of the relation. But it strikes me that we only need both "something killed him" and "he was killed" because something doesn't normally include people. If we had a normal English construction that just said something like "X killed him," would there be any use for passive voice? And if we could say "I killed X" we wouldn't need anti-passive, right? From those examples it seems (on my admittedly rudimentary consideration of this so far) that maybe the only reason we need grammatical voice is because we don't have sufficiently non-specific words like the mathematical "X" - because "something" implies a thing not a person, etc.
I could make a word containing no information, which could go in the space of something which I want to omit. Suppose that "tom-" is the root for that word.
Starting with this:
I could get these:
But that might be a bit unwieldy, or we might be able to get a different emphasis by using voice instead of the no information word, or something like that. Either way, the language would have both options, so the speaker could choose whatever he thinks will work the best.
(Also that doesn't include the inverse or reflexive voice.)
AJ: I contend it is through this very same process that we learn all words, and all grammar.
I contend it is through this very same process that we learn all words, and all grammar.
I want to show you what I think would be a good starting point in explaining how languages originate, and you can tell me how your explanation relates to my explanation. (I don't know whether I understood your explanation very well.)
David Hume in An Equiry Concerning Hume Understanding: It is evident that there is a principle of connexion between the different thoughts or ideas of the mind, and that in their appearance to the memory or imagination, they introduce each other with a certain degree of method and regularity. In our more serious thinking or discourse this is so observable that any particular thought, which breaks in upon the regular tract or chain of ideas, is immediately remarked and rejected. And even in our wildest and most wandering reveries, nay in our very dreams, we shall find, if we reflect, that the imagination ran not altogether at adventures, but that there was still a connexion upheld among the different ideas, which succeeded each other. Were the loosest and freest conversation to be transcribed, there would immediately be observed something which connected it in all its transitions. Or where this is wanting, the person who broke the thread of discourse might still inform you, that there had secretly revolved in his mind a succession of thought, which had gradually led him from the subject of conversation. Among different languages, even where we cannot suspect the least connexion or communication, it is found, that the words, expressive of ideas, the most compounded, do yet nearly correspond to each other: a certain proof that the simple ideas, comprehended in the compound ones, were bound together by some universal principle, which had an equal influence on all mankind. Though it be too obvious to escape observation, that different ideas are connected together; I do not find that any philosopher has attempted to enumerate or class all the principles of association; a subject, however, that seems worthy of curiosity. To me, there appear to be only three principles of connexion among ideas, namely, Resemblance, Contiguity in time or place, and Cause or Effect. That these principles serve to connect ideas will not, I believe, be much doubted. A picture naturally leads our thoughts to the original:[1] the mention of one apartment in a building naturally introduces an enquiry or discourse concerning the others:[2] and if we think of a wound, we can scarcely forbear reflecting on the pain which follows it.[3] But that this enumeration is complete, and that there are no other principles of association except these, may be difficult to prove to the satisfaction of the reader, or even to a man's own satisfaction. All we can do, in such cases, is to run over several instances, and examine carefully the principle which binds the different thoughts to each other, never stopping till we render the principle as general as possible.[4] The more instances we examine, and the more care we employ, the more assurance shall we acquire, that the enumeration, which we form from the whole, is complete and entire. [1] Resemblance. [2] Contiguity. [3] Cause and effect. [4] For instance, Contrast or Contrariety is also a connexion among Ideas: but it may perhaps, be considered as a mixture of Causation and Resemblance. Where two objects are contrary, the one destroys the other; that is, the cause of its annihilation, and the idea of the annihilation of an object, implies the idea of its former existence
It is evident that there is a principle of connexion between the different thoughts or ideas of the mind, and that in their appearance to the memory or imagination, they introduce each other with a certain degree of method and regularity. In our more serious thinking or discourse this is so observable that any particular thought, which breaks in upon the regular tract or chain of ideas, is immediately remarked and rejected. And even in our wildest and most wandering reveries, nay in our very dreams, we shall find, if we reflect, that the imagination ran not altogether at adventures, but that there was still a connexion upheld among the different ideas, which succeeded each other. Were the loosest and freest conversation to be transcribed, there would immediately be observed something which connected it in all its transitions. Or where this is wanting, the person who broke the thread of discourse might still inform you, that there had secretly revolved in his mind a succession of thought, which had gradually led him from the subject of conversation. Among different languages, even where we cannot suspect the least connexion or communication, it is found, that the words, expressive of ideas, the most compounded, do yet nearly correspond to each other: a certain proof that the simple ideas, comprehended in the compound ones, were bound together by some universal principle, which had an equal influence on all mankind.
Though it be too obvious to escape observation, that different ideas are connected together; I do not find that any philosopher has attempted to enumerate or class all the principles of association; a subject, however, that seems worthy of curiosity. To me, there appear to be only three principles of connexion among ideas, namely, Resemblance, Contiguity in time or place, and Cause or Effect.
That these principles serve to connect ideas will not, I believe, be much doubted. A picture naturally leads our thoughts to the original:[1] the mention of one apartment in a building naturally introduces an enquiry or discourse concerning the others:[2] and if we think of a wound, we can scarcely forbear reflecting on the pain which follows it.[3] But that this enumeration is complete, and that there are no other principles of association except these, may be difficult to prove to the satisfaction of the reader, or even to a man's own satisfaction. All we can do, in such cases, is to run over several instances, and examine carefully the principle which binds the different thoughts to each other, never stopping till we render the principle as general as possible.[4] The more instances we examine, and the more care we employ, the more assurance shall we acquire, that the enumeration, which we form from the whole, is complete and entire.
[1] Resemblance.
[2] Contiguity.
[3] Cause and effect.
[4] For instance, Contrast or Contrariety is also a connexion among Ideas: but it may perhaps, be considered as a mixture of Causation and Resemblance. Where two objects are contrary, the one destroys the other; that is, the cause of its annihilation, and the idea of the annihilation of an object, implies the idea of its former existence
David Hume in A Treatise of Human Nature: As all simple ideas may be separated by the imagination, and may be united again in what form it pleases, nothing wou'd be more unaccountable than the operations of that faculty, were it not guided by some universal principles, which render it, in some measure, uniform with itself in all times and places. Were ideas entirely loose and unconnected, chance alone wou'd join them; and 'tis impossible the same simple ideas should fall regularly into complex ones (as they commonly do) without some bond of union among them, some associating quality, by which one idea naturally introduces another. This uniting principle among ideas is not to be consider'd as an inseparable connexion; for that has been already excluded from the imagination: nor yet are we to conclude, that without it the mind cannot join two ideas; for nothing is more free than that faculty: but we are only to regard it as a gentle force, which commonly prevails, and is the cause why, among other things, languages so nearly correspond to each other; nature in a manner pointing out to every one those simple ideas, which are most proper to be united into a complex one. The qualities, from which this association arises, and by which the mind is after this manner convey'd from one idea to another, are three, viz.Resemblance, Contiguity in time or place, and Cause and Effect. I believe it will not be very necessary to prove, that these qualities produce an association among ideas, and upon the appearance of one idea naturally introduce another. 'Tis plain, that in the course of our thinking, and in the constant revolution of our ideas, our imagination runs easily from one idea to any other that resembles it, and that this quality alone is to the fancy a sufficient bond and association. 'Tis likewise evident, that as the senses, in changing their objects, are necessitated to change them regularly, and take them as they lie contiguous to each other, the imagination must by long custom acquire the same method of thinking, and run along the parts of space and time in conceiving its objects. As to the connexion, that is made by the relation of cause and effect, we shall have occasion afterwards to examine it to the bottom, and therefore shall not at present insist upon it. 'Tis sufficient to observe, that there is no relation, which produces a stronger connexion in the fancy, and makes one idea more readily recall another, than the relation of cause and effect betwixt their objects. That we may understand the full extent of these relations, we must consider, that two objects are connected together in the imagination, not only when the one is immediately resembling, contiguous to, or the cause of the other, but also when there is interposed betwixt them a third object, which bears to both of them any of these relations. This may be carried on to a great length; tho' at the same time we may observe, that each remove considerably weakens the relation. Cousins in the fourth degree are connected by causation, if I may be allowed to use that term; but not so closely as brothers, much less as child and parent. In general we may observe, that all the relations of blood depend upon cause and effect, and are esteemed near or remote, according to the number of connecting causes interpos'd betwixt the persons. Of the three relations above-mention'd this of causation is the most extensive. Two objects may be consider'd as plac'd in this relation, as well when one is the cause of any of the actions or motions of the other, as when the former is the cause of the existence of the latter. For as that action or motion is nothing but the object itself, consider'd in a certain light, and as the object continues the same in all its different situations, 'tis easy to imagine how such an influence of objects upon one another may connect them in the imagination. We may carry this farther, and remark, not only that two objects are connected by the relation of cause and effect, when the one produces a motion or any action in the other, but also when it has a power of producing it. And this we may observe to be the source of all the relations of interest and duty, by which men influence each other in society, and are plac'd in the ties of government and subordination. A master is such-a-one as by his situation, arising either from force or agreement, has a power of directing in certain particulars the actions of another, whom we call servant. A judge is one, who in all disputed cases can fix by his opinion the possession or property of any thing betwixt any members of the society. When a person is possess'd of any power, there is no more required to convert it into action, but the exertion of the will; and that in every case is consider'd as possible, and in many as probable; especially in the case of authority, where the obedience of the subject is a pleasure and advantage to the superior. These are therefore the principles of union or cohesion among our simple ideas, and in the imagination supply the place of that inseparable connexion, by which they are united in our memory. Here is a kind of Attraction, which in the mental world will be found to have as extraordinary effects as in the natural, and to shew itself in as many and as various forms. Its effects are every where conspicuous; but as to its causes, they are mostly unknown, and must be resolv'd into original qualities of human nature, which I pretend not to explain. Nothing is more requisite for a true philosopher, than to restrain the intemperate desire of searching into causes, and having establish'd any doctrine upon a sufficient number of experiments, rest contented with that, when he sees a farther examination would lead him into obscure and uncertain speculations. In that case his enquiry wou'd be much better employ'd in examining the effects than the causes of his principle.
As all simple ideas may be separated by the imagination, and may be united again in what form it pleases, nothing wou'd be more unaccountable than the operations of that faculty, were it not guided by some universal principles, which render it, in some measure, uniform with itself in all times and places. Were ideas entirely loose and unconnected, chance alone wou'd join them; and 'tis impossible the same simple ideas should fall regularly into complex ones (as they commonly do) without some bond of union among them, some associating quality, by which one idea naturally introduces another. This uniting principle among ideas is not to be consider'd as an inseparable connexion; for that has been already excluded from the imagination: nor yet are we to conclude, that without it the mind cannot join two ideas; for nothing is more free than that faculty: but we are only to regard it as a gentle force, which commonly prevails, and is the cause why, among other things, languages so nearly correspond to each other; nature in a manner pointing out to every one those simple ideas, which are most proper to be united into a complex one. The qualities, from which this association arises, and by which the mind is after this manner convey'd from one idea to another, are three, viz.Resemblance, Contiguity in time or place, and Cause and Effect.
I believe it will not be very necessary to prove, that these qualities produce an association among ideas, and upon the appearance of one idea naturally introduce another. 'Tis plain, that in the course of our thinking, and in the constant revolution of our ideas, our imagination runs easily from one idea to any other that resembles it, and that this quality alone is to the fancy a sufficient bond and association. 'Tis likewise evident, that as the senses, in changing their objects, are necessitated to change them regularly, and take them as they lie contiguous to each other, the imagination must by long custom acquire the same method of thinking, and run along the parts of space and time in conceiving its objects. As to the connexion, that is made by the relation of cause and effect, we shall have occasion afterwards to examine it to the bottom, and therefore shall not at present insist upon it. 'Tis sufficient to observe, that there is no relation, which produces a stronger connexion in the fancy, and makes one idea more readily recall another, than the relation of cause and effect betwixt their objects.
That we may understand the full extent of these relations, we must consider, that two objects are connected together in the imagination, not only when the one is immediately resembling, contiguous to, or the cause of the other, but also when there is interposed betwixt them a third object, which bears to both of them any of these relations. This may be carried on to a great length; tho' at the same time we may observe, that each remove considerably weakens the relation. Cousins in the fourth degree are connected by causation, if I may be allowed to use that term; but not so closely as brothers, much less as child and parent. In general we may observe, that all the relations of blood depend upon cause and effect, and are esteemed near or remote, according to the number of connecting causes interpos'd betwixt the persons.
Of the three relations above-mention'd this of causation is the most extensive. Two objects may be consider'd as plac'd in this relation, as well when one is the cause of any of the actions or motions of the other, as when the former is the cause of the existence of the latter. For as that action or motion is nothing but the object itself, consider'd in a certain light, and as the object continues the same in all its different situations, 'tis easy to imagine how such an influence of objects upon one another may connect them in the imagination.
We may carry this farther, and remark, not only that two objects are connected by the relation of cause and effect, when the one produces a motion or any action in the other, but also when it has a power of producing it. And this we may observe to be the source of all the relations of interest and duty, by which men influence each other in society, and are plac'd in the ties of government and subordination. A master is such-a-one as by his situation, arising either from force or agreement, has a power of directing in certain particulars the actions of another, whom we call servant. A judge is one, who in all disputed cases can fix by his opinion the possession or property of any thing betwixt any members of the society. When a person is possess'd of any power, there is no more required to convert it into action, but the exertion of the will; and that in every case is consider'd as possible, and in many as probable; especially in the case of authority, where the obedience of the subject is a pleasure and advantage to the superior.
These are therefore the principles of union or cohesion among our simple ideas, and in the imagination supply the place of that inseparable connexion, by which they are united in our memory. Here is a kind of Attraction, which in the mental world will be found to have as extraordinary effects as in the natural, and to shew itself in as many and as various forms. Its effects are every where conspicuous; but as to its causes, they are mostly unknown, and must be resolv'd into original qualities of human nature, which I pretend not to explain. Nothing is more requisite for a true philosopher, than to restrain the intemperate desire of searching into causes, and having establish'd any doctrine upon a sufficient number of experiments, rest contented with that, when he sees a farther examination would lead him into obscure and uncertain speculations. In that case his enquiry wou'd be much better employ'd in examining the effects than the causes of his principle.
We so strongly associate the symbols with what they symbolize that the perceptions of the symbols "feel" like they are what they symbolize. When a person says to me for example "table", a perception of a table appears in my mind whether I want it to or not. This is what underlies the game which children often play in which one of them tells the other to not think of something, such as a purple elephant, and then says that they won because it is clear that the other thought of it. So we barely need to "interpret" the symbols which we hear, because what appears in my mind almost coincidentally with the symbol not of my own will, is what that symbol symbolizes.
So that sheds light on how languages originate. We have the power to choose what to do, we have the power to make a wide range of sounds, and we have this principle of association working in us. So, if somebody makes a certain sound everytime something appears, such as a cat for example, the next time somebody says that sound, the people will perceive a cat whether they want to or not, and then expect that a cat is someplace around them which they haven't checked yet. So, if somebody says "cat" when you are looking at a cat like 20 times, and then says "cat" when you aren't looking at one, you will perceive a cat in your mind, and expect that one is around you someplace.
I think that it would be possible to use the principle of association to come up with an explanation of the origin of language analogous to the explanation of the origin of money.
I. Ryan:I think that we should just replace the word "idea" with the word "perceptions", and then define them as everything. Our consciousness is just a series of perceptions. We don't experience anything not a perception, and we don't perceive anything not an experience. Our perceptions aren't in our minds. They are our minds. Our consciousness isn't anything other than a bundle of perceptions. Feeling, seeing, hearing, hating, and so on, all of them are nothing but perceiving.
I. Ryan:With the last section in mind, our simple perceptions are spatial points, the most fundamental spatial relations, the most fundamental temporal relations, our most fundamental feelings, and so on. I can't enumerate all of our simple perceptions, because I don't know how, but I am pretty sure that spatial points and temporal disparity are two of them.
I. Ryan:We can't observe relations without objects, but we also can't observe objects without relations. They aren't logically prior or posterior to each other. They are correlatives. We can't imagine one without the other. We can't imagine a relation without two objects, because there would be no relation. But we also can't imagine an object without a relation, because it would be floating in nothingness. Try to imagine a simple perception such as a spatial point without imagining a relation. It is impossible. It has to be at least related to you. It has to be in front of you, in back of you, in your visual field, or something like that. It can't just be hanging in nothingness, with no relation to you.
I. Ryan:And what the sentence "a chair is in my room" refers to isn't a simple perception. It is made up of simple perceptions, such as spatial points, the most fundamental relations between those spatial points, and so on, but it isn't itself a simple perception. So we should expect that a diagram referring to it, but also having other uses, wouldn't itself be a simple perception either.
I. Ryan: AJ: One thing that may be important is to define "relation" more carefully. I don't know how to. Do you have any ideas?
I. Ryan: AJ: Also, the question of whether the fundamental objects are "dots" or "connected dots" looms large in my mind at this point. I'm not sure what you mean. (Did you explain it in the Mises/Quine thread?)
I. Ryan:But I don't think that the matter is as simple as you are acting like it is, because see what happens when you go back to the example about the water boiling. A video of the macroscopic scale, which would be of a pot of water boiling, and a video of the microscopic scale, which would be of a bunch of molecules vibrating in certain ways, would of course be different. They wouldn't lend themselves to being seen as referring to the same thing as pictures any more than they would in writing. Or would they?
I. Ryan:The example that you gave with "2 + 2" and "4", I don't know whether mathematics could progress without splitting the visual "...." into the the two levels of description, "2 + 2" and "4", among others.
I. Ryan:So where does jumping between iterations come in? Isn't that psychology or something? Shouldn't we combine psychology and praxeology to get the whole picture, just like people combine mathematics and physics to get mathematical physics, which gives the whole picture?
AJ: My suspicion is that the line between conscious and unconscious is not clean, but in fact is just determined by speed. The faster it happens the more subconscious it is. In some sense I can be conscious of almost any one thing I do when riding a bicycle, if I think to notice, but mostly it just happens way too fast. Rather than say it is below conscious awareness, I would say the sensations are flashing in my mind so fast that I cannot possibly remember them. Since there is a limitation on the number of things we can hold in our STM, it would simply be impossible to hold even a small fraction of all the sensations of the process of riding a bicycle in my STM at any given time. When I am first learning and it takes all my concentration is when I am most aware of those sensations, but I am also most preoccupied with the learning task. So one way or another we hardly ever get to notice the sensations that are our thoughts, racing by.
My suspicion is that the line between conscious and unconscious is not clean, but in fact is just determined by speed. The faster it happens the more subconscious it is. In some sense I can be conscious of almost any one thing I do when riding a bicycle, if I think to notice, but mostly it just happens way too fast. Rather than say it is below conscious awareness, I would say the sensations are flashing in my mind so fast that I cannot possibly remember them. Since there is a limitation on the number of things we can hold in our STM, it would simply be impossible to hold even a small fraction of all the sensations of the process of riding a bicycle in my STM at any given time. When I am first learning and it takes all my concentration is when I am most aware of those sensations, but I am also most preoccupied with the learning task. So one way or another we hardly ever get to notice the sensations that are our thoughts, racing by.
I stopped reading you post there, because I want to say something about it. (I will continue reading it when I finish writing this reply.)
I think that you are correct that the distinction between something being conscious and something being unconscious is at least in one sense just one of how proficient or fast you are at doing it. I can drive someplace normal without even thinking of it at all. I can drive all of the way there, and then not be able to remember anything about the trip except for all of the thoughts not about driving which were occupying my mind during the trip, because those thoughts weren't normal.
I noticed that, the older which I get, the less mundane things which there are which I have to "consciously" do. I don't need to consciously think at all about what I am doing when I am driving someplace familiar, I don't need to consciously think at all about what I am doing when I am using a fork, and so on.
But one of my goals, which I can't really explain, is that I want to "expand" my consciousness. I want to be as conscious as possible. I don't like feeling like I am on autopilot. I want to observe the world as actively as possible, so I don't lose control of my mind. I don't know how to explain this very well, but that is how I feel.
So I try to spend every moment of every single day trying to learn something new. But it is a constant struggle, because everytime I learn something new, it becomes something old, and I have to find something else to learn to keep it going. It is like my entire life is a constant struggle to make sure that I don't fall unconscious, because it might be impossible to come back after that.
I don't know whether you will be able to understand what I am talking about. I wasn't able to explain it very well, so I think that you would have needed to have had the same sorts of experiences as I was talking about to be able to get it.
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