IT’s not the nouns that” fool you” it’s the grammar – or rather, the absence of

IT’s not the nouns that” fool you” it’s the grammar – or rather, the absence of grammar.

Primary culprit behind which all fictions hide is the verb to be. If you eliminate it, then it’s extremely hard to create false equivalencies (which is what you’re describing). If you add operational grammar Meaning complete sentences that name actors, objects, actions, transformations, and consequences, then it is almost impossible to state an undetectable false equivalency. If in addition you require any noun or verb be stated as a member of a series, then it will be all but impossible to employ the pretense of knowledge.

English is a high precision, low context language. That means it is burdensome, can be wordy, but can be very precise – if you use the language. But we tend to use substitution for either brevity, or to obscure our ignorance – which is which is only decidable if the person can state that which he states in brevity, in full sentences of operational grammar. In other words, if we deflate our sentences from approximations to names of actors, actions, and objects, it becomes almost impossible to state a falsehood.

(see E-Prime, which I’m sure you’re aware of. See Operationalism int he scientific method, operationism in psychology, proofs in mathematics and logic, and the failed program of praxeology – operationalism in economics and ethics.)

The problem is the grammar: what surrounds the noun and provides context and limits. Not the noun. A noun is just a name. A category if broad, a type if narrow, and an entity if unique. But the limits of that noun, whether category, type, or entity are provided by context (limits) produced by the grammar.

So, I might go back to casting but suspicion on the noun, then saving the noun and blaming the grammar, and because of that, the speaker – because it is the speaker who exercises the pretense of knowledge without testing whether he knows of what he speaks (or reads), whenever he does not speak it in burdensome grammar – and instead he avoids that burdensome grammar, for the purpose of either brevity, approximation, pretense of knowledge, or outright deception.

(if you note that last sentence you’ll see what I mean by the use of series to deflate a category into a spectrum.)

-Curt