Curt Doolittle

Theme: Grammar

  • ON USE OF LANGUAGE – SLANGS AND SUBLANGUAGES – STATUS SIGNALS Different distribu

    ON USE OF LANGUAGE – SLANGS AND SUBLANGUAGES – STATUS SIGNALS

    Different distributions achieve their utilitarian optimums by different standards of complexity. English is an empirical, unemotional language. Where the British use art in language to convey emotion, americans use exaggeration and hyperbole. This language was not evolved for use by a passionate people, but a functional one.

    Whereas latin languages contain the most expressive and heavily loaded content and methods, slavic forms a middle ground. To listen to slavs and russians is to listen to conservative italian speaker. To listen to germans is to listen to a conservative slavic speaker. To listen to the english is to listen to a playful and mischievous german.

    African gene pools, because of their *distribution* of talents, if not very different facial neurology and musculature, prefer more impulsive, and more reliant on emotion, and more *appreciative* of emotion, and the *honesty* of rapid emotional displays.

    However, this problem affects lower class whites as much as lower class blacks. And the ‘aristocracy of everyone’ implied by the anglo american political mythology of equality, is an equal burden on both lower classes.

    Articulate english can be viewed as a computationally difficult language that requires a significant bit of planning one’s speech – and is counter intuitive to our brain’s language processes.

    For this reason, articulate use of language is the first, most visible, least easily faked, most dependable means of determining the abilities and social class of the individual.

    This is the underlying cause of frustration with that language. We cannot legislate or educate around it. WE cannot make it different by wishing it so.

    Rebelling against articulate language is like rebelling against the SAT or IQ tests, or the human bias that symmetrical features are beautiful. Nothing more.

    (from an autist who has some difficulty with language)

    Source date (UTC): 2014-06-21 11:16:00 UTC

  • COPULA: THE VERB TO-BE. A LABOR SAVING FUNCTION, AND A SOURCE OF OBSCURANTISM. I

    COPULA: THE VERB TO-BE. A LABOR SAVING FUNCTION, AND A SOURCE OF OBSCURANTISM.

    In the English language, the verb ‘to be’ (also known as the copula) has several distinct functions:

    SET MEMBERSHIP

    1) IDENTITY***, of the form “noun copula definite-noun” [The cat is my only pet]; [The cat is Garfield]

    2) CLASS membership, of the form “noun copula noun” [The cat is an animal]

    CURRENT STATE OR PROPERTIES

    3) PREDICATION***, of the form “noun copula adjective” [The cat is furry]

    4) AUXILIARY, of the form “noun copula verb” [The cat is sleeping]; [The cat is bitten by the dog]. The examples illustrate two different uses of ‘be’ as an auxiliary. In the first ‘be’ is part of the progressive aspect, used with “-ing” on the verb, and in the second it is part of the passive, as indicated by the perfect participle of a transitive verb.

    EXISTENCE

    5) EXISTENCE, of the form “there copula noun” [There is a cat]

    6) LOCATION, of the form “noun copula place-phrase” [The cat is on the mat]; [The cat is here]

    ***Bourland sees specifically the “identity” and “predication” functions as pernicious, but advocates eliminating all forms for the sake of simplicity. In the case of the “existence” form (and less idiomatically, the “location” form), one might (for example) simply substitute the verb “exists”. Other copula-substitutes in English include taste, feel, smell, sound, grow, remain, stay, and turn, among others a user of E-prime might use instead of to be.

    (src wiki)

    Source date (UTC): 2014-06-20 11:58:00 UTC

  • CAN LANGUAGE TRANSFORM MAN? —“The sourcebook for general semantics, Science an

    CAN LANGUAGE TRANSFORM MAN?

    —“The sourcebook for general semantics, Science and Sanity, presents general semantics as both a theoretical and a practical system whose adoption can reliably alter human behavior in the direction of greater sanity. Its author asserted that general semantics training could eventually unify people and nations. In the 1947 preface to the third edition of Science and Sanity, Korzybski wrote, “We need not blind ourselves with the old dogma that ‘human nature cannot be changed,’ for we find that it can be changed.”—

    While I agree that we can transform man, I would caution that we can transform him to the common language of science, which corresponds to reality, or we can transform him in a hundred other ways, which conflict with reality. At least most physical scientists seek to transform man’s thinking such that it corresponds to reality. Economics, as we have seen of late, transforms man to think in terms not correspondent with reality. The remaining social sciences transform him to correspond with reality even less so.

    The language of science appears to be universal and transformative for all.

    My question is why we cannot use operational language to transform ethics, economics and politics into a universal language that corresponds to reality as does that of the physical sciences.

    Korzybski, Alfred (1994). Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics (5th ed.). Brooklyn, NY: Institute of General Semantics.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-06-19 06:52:00 UTC

  • DISCIPLINES ORDERED BY CONTENT (interesting) 1) Imagination 2) Language 3) Logic

    DISCIPLINES ORDERED BY CONTENT

    (interesting)

    1) Imagination

    2) Language

    3) Logic

    4) Economics (ethics/cooperation)

    5) Physics (science)

    6) Engineering

    7) Computer science

    8) Mathematics

    Source date (UTC): 2014-06-19 06:28:00 UTC

  • LANGUAGE TELLS US LITTLE UNLESS REDUCED TO ACTION People have written software t

    LANGUAGE TELLS US LITTLE UNLESS REDUCED TO ACTION

    People have written software that generates postmodern obscurantist academic papers, submitted those papers, and had them published. Hundreds of them.

    Now, you COULD write a program that generated arguments in e-prime, using operational language, and a demonstration of construction.

    The difference is, that it would be just as impossible to construct an undetectable empty or false argument under operationalism as it is trivial to write one under postmodernism.

    Language tells us little until reduced to action.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-06-19 04:45:00 UTC

  • Different Disciplines Ordered by Their Content

    (interesting) 1) Imagination 2) Language 3) Logic 4) Economics (ethics/cooperation) 5) Physics (science) 6) Engineering 7) Computer science 8) Mathematics

  • Different Disciplines Ordered by Their Content

    (interesting) 1) Imagination 2) Language 3) Logic 4) Economics (ethics/cooperation) 5) Physics (science) 6) Engineering 7) Computer science 8) Mathematics

  • THE PROBLEM OF INCOMPLETE STATEMENTS OF TRUTH PROPOSITIONS Operationally, I cann

    THE PROBLEM OF INCOMPLETE STATEMENTS OF TRUTH PROPOSITIONS

    Operationally, I cannot rely upon the verb to be, particularly in the case ‘…is X true?’, which is platonic and obscurant, and must say instead “am I willing to…?” or “…can I…?” Carrying it further, I am not sure of the value of the statement ‘is X true’, because, outside of an analogy for proofs of consistency within a tautological system, I think as an incomplete statement, it is an empty statement. Instead, I would ask a complete question: ‘Is X sufficient for me to act at cost Y?’ which requires only knowledge of use, or ‘Is it ethical for me to claim that X is true, or is it merely an hypothesis?’ which requires knowledge of construction. We know it is never possible to say ‘X is ultimately true’, because, outside of reductio examples, we lack the ability to ever know if it is the most parsimonious set of statements (constructions) with the greatest explanatory power (empirical content).

    (Note: I’m getting closer. Not quite there yet. But very close.)

    Source date (UTC): 2014-06-19 00:10:00 UTC

  • CONCEPT(NAME) = FUNCTION({OPERATIONS}); A change in the concept requires change

    CONCEPT(NAME) = FUNCTION({OPERATIONS});

    A change in the concept requires change in the operations.

    —-“[any given] concept is synonymous with a corresponding set of operations. If the concept is physical, as of length, the operations are actual physical operations, namely, those by which length is measured; or if the concept is mental, as of mathematical continuity, the operations are mental operations, namely those by which we determine whether a given aggregate of magnitudes is continuous.”—

    A concept describes a function whose contents are algorithmic: a series of operations – a series of actions.

    That does not prohibit us from expressing fantasies as operations.

    HOwever, it does require that we discriminate between fantasies, pretentions and demonstrable operations.

    The square root of two is not a number – it cannot be. It is a function – it must be a function. As are all names of entities other than the natural numbers.

    The same applies for “JUSTICE”.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-06-15 12:15:00 UTC

  • WHEN I SAY “MERE VERBALISMS” I MEAN: “MEANINGLESS FALLACIES” (worth repeating) –

    WHEN I SAY “MERE VERBALISMS” I MEAN: “MEANINGLESS FALLACIES”

    (worth repeating)

    –“…many of the questions asked about social and philosophical subjects will be found to be meaningless when examined from the point of operations.”– Bridgeman.

    1) Acquisitiveness as necessary for life.

    2) Cooperation and negative expression: the prohibition on free riding.

    3) The prevention of free riding as an incentive to produce.

    4) Property as a positive expression of the prohibition on free riding.

    5) Voluntary, fully informed, warrantied exchanged, free of negative externality.

    6) The Common law as a means of evolving property rights and the prevention of free riding as technology expands.

    7) Operationalism as the test of truth in political, ethical and moral expression.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-06-15 05:05:00 UTC