Rationality Quotes May 2014

elharo

Rationality Quotes May 2014 — LessWrong

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The reason why the thing can't be expressed is that it's too definite for language.

This feels like a combination of words that are supposed to sound Wisely, but don't actually make sense. (I guess Lewis uses this technique frequently.)

How specifically could being "definite" be a a problem for language? Take any specific thing, apply an arbitrary label, and you are done.

There could be a problem when a person X experienced some "qualia" that other people have never experienced, so they can't match the verbal description with anything in their experience. Or worse, they have something similar, which they match instead, even when told not to. And this seems like a situation described in the text. -- But then the problem is not having the shared experience. If they did, they would just need to apply an arbitrary label, and somehow make sure they refer to the same thing when using the label. The language would have absolutely no problem with that.

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anandjeyahar12y00

But then the problem is not having the shared experience. If they did, they would just need to apply an arbitrary label,

Yes.. If they had the shared experience, they would just need to apply an arbitrary label, however given how we learn language(by association based on how they are used by people around us on what we see as objective events/experiences), I am not too confident the labels will match even after having the shared experience. My previous comment assumes this, but did not make it explicit. And I derive the

The reason why the thing can't

... (read more)

1tristanhaze12y

This remark seems to flow from an oversimplified view of how language works. In the context of, for example, a person or a chair, this paradigm seems pretty solid... at least, it gets you a lot. You can ostend the thing ('take' it, as it were) and then appy the label. But in the case of lots of "objects" there is nothing analogous to such 'taking' as a prior, discrete step from talking. For example, "objects" like happiness, or vagueness or definiteness themselves. I think you may benefit from reading Wittgenstein, but maybe you'd just hate it. I think you need it though!

0anandjeyahar12y

I tend to think of language as a symbolic system to denote/share/communicate these experiences with other brains. Ofcourse, there's the inherent challenge of seldom two experiences are same.(Even if it is an experiment on electrons). It's one of the reason, one of my sci-fi favourite scenario is brain-brain interfaces, that figure some way to interpret and transfer the empirical heuristic rules about a probability distribution(of any given event) one person has to another. Or may be am just being too idealistic about people always having such heuristics in their heads. (even if they are not aware of it) . :-)

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