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CharlesR comments on Conceptual Analysis and Moral Theory - Less Wrong
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If I were to say, "Evolution is the idea that men are descended from chimpanzees," would you let me have my definition or would you say I was confused?
Have you read A Human's Guide to Words? You seem to be confused about how words work.
I haven't read the entire sequence but have studied some of the entries. I've had this question--is it right to call it a confusion?--ever since I read Taboo Your Words but didn't ask about it until now.
Neither, I would say that you were either horribly mistaken or deliberately misconstruing (lying) about what other people meant when they talked about evolution. It would become a lie for certain the second time you said it.
Wow. I had to go the dictionary because I thought I might be using confuse incorrectly. I mean definition 3 of the New Oxford American.
confuse: identify wrongly, mistake : a lot of people confuse a stroke with a heart attack | purchasers might confuse the two products.
You didn't use the verb "confuse with", you used the word "confused" as an adjective, which has a slightly different meaning. Why didn't you go look "confused" up? I'm increasing the probability estimate you're being deliberately disingenuous here.
But even if you were just mistaken about typical usage, not intentionally disingenuous, it would have been better still if you tried to understand the meaning I'm trying to communicate to you instead of debating the definitions.
I'm not getting that vibe at all.
Is the problem which part of speech is being used, or is it whether or not the verb is being used reflexively?
"I fed my kitten." This sentence is ambiguous. "I fed my kitten tuna." "I fed my kitten to a mountain lion."
One can feed a kitten (reflexive) an item to that kitten, or one can feed the kitten to an animal.
The adjective is derived from the non-reflexive verb in this case, but can not both the verb and adjective both hold both meanings, depending on whether or not context makes them reflexive?
Other languages routinely mark the difference between reflexive and non-reflexive verbs.
I'm going to grant that my use of confused was mistaken and just rephrase: Physicists have a clear theory of sound. So why can't we just say Barry is wrong?
He'd be wrong if he was talking about what physicists talk about when they refer to sound. He'd not be wrong if he was talking about what lots of other people talk about when they refer to "sound".
"Sound" is a word that in our language circumscribes two different categories of phenomena -- the acoustic vibration (that doesn't require a listener), and the qualia of the sense of hearing (that does require a listener). In the circumstances of the English language the two meanings use the same word. That doesn't necessitate for one meaning to be valid and the other meaning to be invalid. They're both valid, they're just different.
If I say "you have the right to bear arms" I mean a different thing with the words 'arms' than if I say "human arms are longer than monkey arms", but that doesn't make one meaning of the words 'arms' wrong and the other right.
The analogy I've always appreciated was that my map has one pixel for both my apartment and my neighbors. So why do they get mad when I go through the window and shower there? It's mine too, just look at the map, sheesh!