semantics and pendantry thread

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > YOSPOS > semantics and pendantry thread

distortion park: Apr 25, 2011

MononcQc posted:

you’ll have to define what exactly you mean by facts here; are we talking observable phenomena, or their interpretation?

because sure you could imagine vastly different reactions to the same phenomena but if your definition of fact includes interpretation

your understanding of a fact must include some interpretation, as the fact only becomes what it is in the context of everything else you know.

anyway semantics is easy, you just look at how people are using the word in question. Doing a bunch of word games and thought experiments will normally just take you further from understanding

# ¿ Dec 8, 2023 08:18

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# ¿ May 15, 2024 02:33

distortion park: Apr 25, 2011

fart simpson posted:

i think your right but you don’t even need to go that far. you can have disagreements that don’t depend on misunderstanding or interpretation of facts, simply through conflicting interests. if you asked a slave if he should be freed he’s given a different answer than the master and it isn’t dependent on either one of them misunderstanding or misinterpreting anything, as an obvious example

but i think that should hold true even for much less extreme examples

agreed, you can do more with words than just talk about facts and the words' meanings

# ¿ Dec 8, 2023 08:36

distortion park: Apr 25, 2011

MononcQc posted:

Oh but this has some limits, generally known as the indeterminacy of translation, which states that ultimately, all translation ends up being behavioral because there is an inability to know, based on the utterances, what the initial meaning was; you mostly have only the ability to repeatedly observe it to draw a context that lets you approximate the meaning.

So of course here you're being fast and loose, but "just look at how people are using that word in question" and "doing a bunch of word games and thoughts experiments" are also part of the proper experiment design that lets you figure out if your observations are grounded properly.

I'm being a bit less fast and loose Vs my actual beliefs than you (generously!) suppose I think. Our ordinary usages of "understand" etc are perfectly at ease with the technical logical issues about our inability to achieve absolute certainty of others meaning.

And in order to achieve what understanding and knowledge I might claim in almost any context I haven't done any experiments (or at least not proper ones) or generally considered the grounding of my understanding. I'd agree that thought experiments where I put myself or another in an ordinary situation and imagine how we might speak about it can be useful, but when they take words outside their ordinary contexts often create more problems than they solve (see the Chinese Room Argument or most disputes about the "nature of truth"). Imo.

distortion park fucked around with this message at 22:21 on Dec 8, 2023

# ¿ Dec 8, 2023 22:17

distortion park: Apr 25, 2011

Cybernetic Vermin posted:

otoh, this being the thread it is, i will side with feyerabend and dispute that there's such a thing as science to start with.

this one's easy, it's what scientists do

# ¿ Dec 11, 2023 15:05

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