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Emile comments on Folk grammar and morality - Less Wrong
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Comments (61)
Actually, your metaphor is more apt than you give it credit for. Native speakers can't be 'proven wrong' in their use of the language as 1) no language has a formal grammar and 2) to the extent that there are rules they are extracted from the way native speakers use the language. Something like morality, then.
Come to think of it, this can be used to construct a pretty intuitive response to those that claim that 'without god there is no objective morality and therefore society will collapse'. There is no formal grammar for English, and yet we're able to communicate pretty well.
[another stray thought] ...so then CEV would be like trying to extract a fully formal grammar for a given language, only harder.
Right, but they can be proven wrong in the explanations they give about their use of language (except for rare pathological sentences, speakers of the same language agree which sentences "feel wrong"). Disproving an explanation about one's morality is much harder.
(I don't know if I'm disagreeing with you here)