(Lament)(catharsis)
I get a lot of criticism from my friends for trying to ‘help’ idiots. And yes, it is often a waste of time in the sense that you can’t change their thinking (much). On the other hand, I learn a lot about how to debate when I do argue with simple folk.
I saved today’s conversation with (well meaning person) Wes Lysander, and some other twits or two. I can’t post a pdf here so I’ll put it on my site.
But when I criticize ‘meaning’ rather than ‘truth’, and require definitions, that’s because meaning is dependent upon the imbecile’s abilities and knowledge, whereas truth is not.
Now, truth is yet another problematic word whose ‘meaning’ is degraded into analogy after analogy. Because the truth content of a term is that which survives testing, not that from which we derive meaning.
This is why I ask people in propertarianism to use terms only when they understand the entire spectrum in which that terminological point addresses a limited context. This is to ensure that we are not making argument by loose imprecise analogy.
Often arguments require multiple axis of causality and therefore multiple spectra.
So meaning is an exceptional device for deception, self deception, and error. (Yes I think I have settled that matter now – self deception is possible by intuitive desire.)
And the reduction of any term to that which survives the process of elimination by the use of multiple axis of constraint, defines the necessary properties of the term (true), and not the abuses of that term (meaning).
Just because I can use a shoe to hammer a nail does not mean it is honest to refer to a shoe as a hammer.
That is what appeals to ‘meaning’ attempt to do.
PDF PRINTOUT OF THE THREAD:
(1) Wes Lysander – Meritocracies_ China and India Democracies_..