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NancyLebovitz comments on Tidbit: “Semantic over-achievers” - Less Wrong Discussion
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Or it might lead to formalizing how many layers of negation (I don't know what he means by quantification) it's safe to use, not to mention thinking about why one is using multiple layers of negation.
Why say "never fails to disappoint" if what you mean "is reliably excellent"?
A related question-- sometimes layers of negation are necessary to describe complex systems like biology or government-- something starts to happen, but something else limits it, and then another part of the system steps in to try to keep the limits from being overdone, and so on. I'm apt to lose track-- what's apt to help?
You probably meant something more like 'never fails to excite' or some antonym of 'disappoint'. Perhaps a good example of using too many layers of negation causing confusion.
Nancy was quoting the review given as an example of shooting yourself in the foot with too many layers in the linked Language Log post. The author of this review meant "is reliably excellent" and wrote "never fails to disappoint".
D'oh!. If I'd read the linked content first, I'd have understood the context that was being quoted there.
When I see something like "a referendum to overturn a law repealing a ban on X" and get confused, one thing I do is count the negations. In my example there are three, so people who support the referendum are against X and vice versa. Even if there are nuances that simple negation-counting misses (like "always fails to verb" vs. "doesn't always verb successfully", which both have one), that gives me a basic framework that then lets me add the nuances back in without getting confused.
I read the point as saying that language is capable of greater depth than humans. Das nicht nichtet is a coherent statement despite the objection of the logical positivists, but it is really deep.
As an aside, I'm not persuaded that metaphysicians are saying anything useful. But the objection that their statements were incoherent is a stronger objection.
The interpretation of some of Heidegger's statements as incoherent isn't just something his enemies came up with; it is supported by other statements of Heidegger's (as Carnap notes in his criticism of Heidegger). I really am curious as to what coherent statement you think you can find in "the nothing itself nots."
Ok, so the statement is made as part of a mission to say something intelligent about noumenon. In other words, Heidegger is trying to say something about what things are, totally independent of our perception of them. As I alluded above, I think trying to grapple with perception-independent-thingness is . . . not a good use of one's time.
Anyway, Heidegger does lots of deep thinking about this problem, and ultimately says that there is "Nothing" as the basic characteristic of objects. To me, that's a plausible response to it's turtles all the way down. At this point, Heidegger needs to explain how to get back from this to objects as we experience them. The answer is that the "Nothing" nothings. To me, that's like saying the "Nothing" verbs. There's no other word we could use, because (by hypothesis) all there is . . . is Nothing. If you pull in something else to act on Nothing, then it's the problem of Cain's wife all over again.
That's quite counter-intuitive. But so is the assertion that there is a set that contains only the set that contains no elements. Or worse, the set that contains (the set that contains only the set that contains no elements) AND the set that contains no elements.
So, Heidegger may be wasting his time (my view). He said something quite counter-intuitive. It could easily be wrong. But I assert that it is not incoherent. That is, it makes an assertion with some content.