People who disagree with this book really are a bunch of jerks (exercise two)

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People who disagree with this book really are a bunch of jerks (exercise two)

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Started 7 months ago by Psyche
Latest reply from Cole Tucker

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Psyche

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Meaningful:
A. I hauled the garbage out this morning.
D. This table top measures two feet by four feet.
E. Space becomes curved in the vicinity of heavy masses, such as stars.
F. Space does not become curved at all; light simply bends in the vicinity of heavy masses, such as stars.
H. The umpire's decision is binding.
J. In the act of conception, the male and female each contribute 23 chromosomes.

Meaningless:
B. God appeared to me this morning.
C. I saw a UFO this morning.
G. Defendants are innocent until the jury pronounces them guilty.
I. History is the march of God through the world.
K. The devil made me do it.
L. My unconscious made me do it.
M. Conditioned reflexes made me do it.
N. A church is the house of God.
O. Anybody who criticizes the government is a traitor.
P. Abraham Lincoln served as President between 1960 and 1968.

NB: For me, meaningless here means (ha!) "meaningless without further context". "God appeared to me this morning" may convey more information if I could be reasonably certain that my (atheistic) understanding of "god as metaphor for x" was in accord with the speaker's intent.

PS: Feel free to start topics on your own if you're ahead, I'll contribute when I catch up. I work an office 9-5, then hit the gym for two hours after work most nights, so I get home late. :)

Posted 7 months ago #
misterbrent

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The real trick in this exercise is to analyze the sentence exactly, without personally translating a meaningless statement into a meaningful one by virtue of interpretation. I also assume that we're categorizing from a perspective of scientific verifiability / operational language rather than a subjective interpretation.

Meaningless:
BHGIKLMNO

Meaningful:
ACDEFHPJ

We can never fully 'identify' something, so all flying objects could be called UFOs (I think Wilson makes this argument later in the book). I think that G and H are basically the same statement; H is slightly more meaningful in that the umpire does not redefine reality but instead defines effective truth within some context. D has a slight issue in that no inertial frame of reference is defined. The table 'is' a different size depending on how fast it 'is' going. (I hate E-prime, it's so clumsy!)

Posted 7 months ago #
Psyche

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How can you not translate the sentence without interpretation? I know precisely what is meant by the sentences I indicated as meaningful, and the others are too obscure for me to grasp immediately - I would need more data.

G and H are not the same though. If G said "Defendants are presumed innocent..." I would have put it in the "meaningful" category. In reality (whatever that is) defendants are not necessarily innocent - they may be, and the benefit of the doubt is given, but they could have killed that guy, robbed that bank, etc. G, as presented, is a poor description of the rules of that game.

However, H does accurately describe what occurs in sports. Whether or not the umpire's decision was the right one (whatever that is), hir decision is still binding. Those are the rules that have been agreed upon.

Posted 7 months ago #
misterbrent

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All communication involves some level of interpretation. It would be easy, for instance, to (in your head) translate "God appeared to me this morning" as "Feelings of divine happiness flooded my mind this morning.", which is suddenly in more concrete operational language. In other words, what I'm saying is that part of the exercise is to not impose your own definitions onto the statement -- to not generate the extra context required to meaningfully interpret a statement.

I put H in the meaningful category; I generally agree with it being more meaningful than G. Again, this is about interpretation. It would be easy to interpret G as "Defendants are PRESUMED innocent until the jury pronounces them guilty.", at which point it seems just as meaningful as H.

As an aside, I reiterate how much I dislike writing this way in practice. English sentences can get pretty clumsy when written in operational language. It may be more precise to say "In the past, I have exhibited a tendency to value members of the opposite sex less than members of my own sex.", but "I am sexist" is much more likely to be understood. You could try some middle ground like "In the past I have exhibited sexist tendencies.", but 'sexist' is a very abstract term and thus may not have much meaning.

I honestly feel that it's better to preface my writing with an appropriate disclaimer that I don't know anything about truth rather than re-emphasizing that point in every single sentence I write.

Posted 7 months ago #
Psyche

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I attribute "meaning" to a sense of being able to do something with that information - it must have some sort of practical value. If I have to ask follow up questions, it's not immediately apprehensible nor accessible, and therefore meaningless in and of itself.

That said, G may be meaningful in the sense that I understand what's being said, even if it is a false statement. It's falseness is what makes it meaningless for me.

In writing that may seem ambiguous, I prefer to preface my statements with usage definition points, or deliberately leave it ambiguous enough to invite questions. The former more than the later though.

(I like where this discussion is going.)

Posted 7 months ago #
Cole Tucker

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I would think that A & D are as false as G, since they refer to fictional people/objects, yet you placed them into the meaningful category. Instead, I would look at the word "innocent" as overly vague. Not innocent to the Catholic church; it depends on the frame of reference.

Posted 7 months ago #
Psyche

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Ah, good points, Cole. I did not, in fact, haul garbage this morning, and this table is not quite those dimensions (the desk in my study is an old kitchen table repurposed).

In that case, both of those could be placed in the "meaningless" category, even if they do convey a (false) sort of meaning.

Posted 7 months ago #
Coyote426

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Meaningful

A. I hauled garbage out this morning
C. I Saw A UFO this morning
D. This table top measures two feet by four feet
E. Space becomes curved in the vicinity of heavy masses, such as stars.
F. Space does not become curved at all; light simply bends in the vicinity of heavy masses, such as stars.
H. The umpire's decision is binding.
J. In the act of conception, the male and female each contribute 23 chromosomes.
P. Abraham Lincoln served as President between 1960 and 1968.

Meaningless

G. Defendants are innocent until the jury pronounces them guilty.
I. History is the march of God through the world.
K. The devil made me do it.
L. My unconscious made me do it.
M. Conditioned reflexes made me do it.
N. A church is the house of God.
O. Anybody who criticizes the government is a traitor.

I thin G is an interesting one here. As I'm taking meaningful/meaningless to be a matter of whether they can be measured G could be meaningful as it's possible to measure that statement in terms of legislation but I decided that it is significantly vague enough to be meaningless on it's own. This may relate to Psyche's meaningless without further context".

The UFO statement is meaningful to mean because there could be some future time travel technology that allows us to observe the person observing the UFO, or even on a more mundane level we could watch some security camera footage of it. It's easy to slip into the trap of thinking that UFO means spaceship. Anything flying that the person making the statement cannot identify would be a UFO.

Posted 7 months ago #
Psyche

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So C is meaninful based on its potentiality rather than its current position in your reality tunnel? Or am I missing something?

It's an interesting take, certainly.

Posted 6 months ago #
Coyote426

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My understanding of "meaningful" in the context of the book is whether something appears to be measureable or not, or has the potential to be meaningful. This "is" purely based on the description on page 31. So meaningless/meaningful "is" all a matter of testability. Hopefully this would reduce the impact of my own reality-tunnel on said judgement.

Posted 6 months ago #