Using language

[Julio Juliopolis]

This is a bit of an offshoot of the "Aw Nuts!" thread.

Using language properly for more deliberate effect seems to me to be worthwhile. Not only do our thoughts become more rational this way, (6 of the 13 fallacies of informal logic identified by Aristotle were fallacies of ambiguity... IOW not using language precisely), we also have better control over our emotions and conditions when we do this. As a recent example I've been taking note of this when waking up several times during the middle of the night recently.

Specifically I've caught myself thinking things like "Aw, no! Only 2 more hours until I have to get up." I noticed that when I do that I also visualize myself waking up at that time and feeling really tired as my alarm goes off. Looking even closer, I've noticed that not only am I envisioning how this ends up I'm also faintly imagining the path to get there; that is to say I'm imagining how I'll sleep to end up waking up so tired in two hours.

So each time I've done that I've gone ahead and "corrected" it afterward. I've said to myself "I could be just fine when I wake up". And then I envision myself waking up feeling just fine. Likewise I then imagine how I must sleep in order to arrive at this more desired end. This has worked perfectly each time I've done it.

[Le_Regard]

Julio Juliopolis wrote:
This is a bit of an offshoot of the "Aw Nuts!" thread.

Using language properly for more deliberate effect seems to me to be worthwhile. Not only do our thoughts become more rational this way, (6 of the 13 fallacies of informal logic identified by Aristotle were fallacies of ambiguity... IOW not using language precisely), we also have better control over our emotions and conditions when we do this. As a recent example I've been taking note of this when waking up several times during the middle of the night recently.

Specifically I've caught myself thinking things like "Aw, no! Only 2 more hours until I have to get up." I noticed that when I do that I also visualize myself waking up at that time and feeling really tired as my alarm goes off. Looking even closer, I've noticed that not only am I envisioning how this ends up I'm also faintly imagining the path to get there; that is to say I'm imagining how I'll sleep to end up waking up so tired in two hours.

So each time I've done that I've gone ahead and "corrected" it afterward. I've said to myself "I could be just fine when I wake up". And then I envision myself waking up feeling just fine. Likewise I then imagine how I must sleep in order to arrive at this more desired end. This has worked perfectly each time I've done it.

I don't remember where but Aristotle said something like, "speak as clearly as necessary".  "Speak as clearly as appropriate to the matter at hand", or something like that.

Speaking REALLY clearly in English is probably just outright impossible.  In Robert Heinlein's "Stranger In a Strange Land" adepts perform miracles by speaking "Martian", so...

A friend of mine wrote an article once comparing it to high level and low level computer languages.  English would be a "high level" language I think?  It would have to get TRANSLATED into low level language, MACHINE CODE, the commands that actually tell your body how to work.

[Le_Regard]

A friend of mine wrote an article once comparing it to high level and low level computer languages.  English would be a "high level" language I think?  It would have to get TRANSLATED into low level language, MACHINE CODE, the commands that actually tell your body how to work.

[Julio Juliopolis]

Le_Regard wrote:
Julio Juliopolis wrote:
This is a bit of an offshoot of the "Aw Nuts!" thread.

Using language properly for more deliberate effect seems to me to be worthwhile. Not only do our thoughts become more rational this way, (6 of the 13 fallacies of informal logic identified by Aristotle were fallacies of ambiguity... IOW not using language precisely), we also have better control over our emotions and conditions when we do this. As a recent example I've been taking note of this when waking up several times during the middle of the night recently.

Specifically I've caught myself thinking things like "Aw, no! Only 2 more hours until I have to get up." I noticed that when I do that I also visualize myself waking up at that time and feeling really tired as my alarm goes off. Looking even closer, I've noticed that not only am I envisioning how this ends up I'm also faintly imagining the path to get there; that is to say I'm imagining how I'll sleep to end up waking up so tired in two hours.

So each time I've done that I've gone ahead and "corrected" it afterward. I've said to myself "I could be just fine when I wake up". And then I envision myself waking up feeling just fine. Likewise I then imagine how I must sleep in order to arrive at this more desired end. This has worked perfectly each time I've done it.

I don't remember where but Aristotle said something like, "speak as clearly as necessary".  "Speak as clearly as appropriate to the matter at hand", or something like that.

Speaking REALLY clearly in English is probably just outright impossible.  In Robert Heinlein's "Stranger In a Strange Land" adepts perform miracles by speaking "Martian", so...

A friend of mine wrote an article once comparing it to high level and low level computer languages.  English would be a "high level" language I think?  It would have to get TRANSLATED into low level language, MACHINE CODE, the commands that actually tell your body how to work.

I'm not sure I can come up with examples of where speaking less clearly is preferred, unless to speak more clearly requires too many words to be practical. Or in cases like you suggest, where speaking REALLY clearly is probably impossible. I know that when I feel "happy" for example, it doesn't always feel the same, yet there's no words to differentiate between the feelings. Sure I could use "overjoyed", "ecstatic", and other similar words but those merely convey an unspecific higher degree of the feeling, not differences between the varied flavors of happiness.

English is not an intelligently designed language, or if it is it wasn't designed with clarity in mind. I don't know of any that were intelligently designed, although parts of Chinese seem so and I've heard that Latin is somewhat as well. English does have one advantage though; it contains few words which look the same written down but mean different things when spoken. This can help avoid confusion which might be caused by written statements like "I resent that letter", which doesn't tell us whether the letter was sent again or found to be offensive. Of course, context in that example will almost definitely clear that up. Ancient Greek supposedly had issues with that sort of thing, and I imagine some other languages do as well.

I like the comparison of English to a higher level language. My experience fits with it. And just like in programming, you don't need to know the lower level languages to make stuff work!

[Le_Regard]

Julio Juliopolis wrote:
I'm not sure I can come up with examples of where speaking less clearly is preferred, unless to speak more clearly requires too many words to be practical. Or in cases like you suggest, where speaking REALLY clearly is probably impossible. I know that when I feel "happy" for example, it doesn't always feel the same, yet there's no words to differentiate between the feelings. Sure I could use "overjoyed", "ecstatic", and other similar words but those merely convey an unspecific higher degree of the feeling, not differences between the varied flavors of happiness.

English is not an intelligently designed language, or if it is it wasn't designed with clarity in mind. I don't know of any that were intelligently designed, although parts of Chinese seem so and I've heard that Latin is somewhat as well. English does have one advantage though; it contains few words which look the same written down but mean different things when spoken. This can help avoid confusion which might be caused by written statements like "I resent that letter", which doesn't tell us whether the letter was sent again or found to be offensive. Of course, context in that example will almost definitely clear that up. Ancient Greek supposedly had issues with that sort of thing, and I imagine some other languages do as well.

I like the comparison of English to a higher level language. My experience fits with it. And just like in programming, you don't need to know the lower level languages to make stuff work!

You wouldn't expect a writer of tragedies to worry about speaking precisely.  You'd expect him to choose the words that sound the most tragic, not the most precisely descriptive ones at all.  But that's just understood.

I think more broadly he meant that math requires more perfection than chemistry, where the names are always conventional and never get to what things *really are* anyway, and then chemistry requires more accuracy than like, cooking.

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