Return-Path: Received: from SEGATE.SUNET.SE by xiron.pc.helsinki.fi with smtp (Linux Smail3.1.28.1 #1) id m0tKGpI-0000ZUC; Tue, 28 Nov 95 05:35 EET Message-Id: Received: from listmail.sunet.se by SEGATE.SUNET.SE (LSMTP for OpenVMS v1.0a) with SMTP id 64512B3D ; Tue, 28 Nov 1995 4:35:21 +0100 Date: Mon, 27 Nov 1995 19:32:56 -0800 Reply-To: "Peter L. Schuerman" Sender: Lojban list From: "Peter L. Schuerman" Subject: Re: Fuzzy Fallacies X-To: "Steven M. Belknap" X-cc: Lojban List To: Veijo Vilva In-Reply-To: Content-Length: 2146 Lines: 37 Steven, Perhaps this is a suicide mission, but I can't resist trying one more time to make a fundamental point clear. Adjectives such as tall, bald, heap, etc. are not objectively defined, and not objectively used. They aren't *meant* to be. They are (brace yourself!) subjective terms. There's nothing wrong with subjectivity... it works quite well for many things, and has done so for a very long time. The reason for this has to do with how we acquire language, and how we refine our understanding of language. As well as subjective communication works, objective measurements are desirable for certain areas such as science, commerce, engineering, etc. so methods of communicating objective data have been devised. External, objective standards have been created... sticks with marks on them, standard weights, etc. You see? Remember when you gave an example earlier of using a hammer to type on a keyboard? Using subjective terms for communicating objective data is analogous. I'm really sorry I don't have a reference or a citation for you on this point... One would probably also have difficulty finding a citation to prove that water is wet or that fire is hot. Same sort of problem, really. If I said that fire was hot, would you want a reference? Probably not. If I said it was cold, would you? Probably so. The claim that words like "tall" and "heap" are objective words is really the remarkable claim here, and should be supported if at all possible. Keep in mind that any objective definition you might present must be composed of objective values. The statement that tall means "higher than average" suffers from recursion because "average" is being used in the subjective sense (after all, we don't actually calculate the objectively-defined, mathematical average before deciding whether something is tall). So, did you have any plans to respond to Jorge's message? I think this would be a valuable intellectual exercise. Peter Schuerman plschuerman@ucdavis.edu Co-editor, SPECTRA Online for back issues: http://www.well.com/user/phandaal/