Argumentum ad dictionarium
Argumentum ad dictionarium
It needs a page. (Yes, someone did hit me with this argumentum today in particularly annoying way. How did you guess?)
If I start it as a stock rant, do you want to add the Wittgenstein references?
Heh. So is it an essay now instead of an article?
I want to make an article, I just didn't think it was quite mainspace material in that form.
Perfect page quote: "Many people routinely make the mistake of thinking that all words can be consistently applied as logical categories (an issue often intensified by strong faith in dictionaries)."
Also, language game probably needs done, preferably without the bullshit as the opening paragraph of that article explains it better in a few sentences than WP and the SEP.
Oh, look, an example in the wild!
WTF? We have a RationalWikiWikiWiki now?
Well "What does rationality mean? From Dictionary.com, we have..." is pretty fucking funny. If you're me.
So, the purposes of the wiki seem twofold: 1) import a load of crap from Wikipedia to reach bare-minimum levels of functionality and 2) completely hash up concepts and articles that have nothing to do with the original stated purposes.
Seems that way. As it is run by Libertoonians I am sure the magic of the market will lead it to fame and glory.
Given that it's trying to associate itself with this site and uses as much of the RWW branding as possible, then has this sort of shit on it, I think that moves it into the Serious Fucking Business category. Ergo, let's destroy it.
They might want to check over the assertion that CP is the main focus of the site. It's currently September 8th, and WIGO:CP has... 1 story in the last 8 days. The clogosphere, blogosphere and world WIGOs have 50 stories between them in the same time. 150 edits on recent changes restricted to the Conservapedia namespace stretches back to September 2nd, 150 edits on recent changes with CP excluded barely covers the last 6 hours. Hardly the activity pattern of a site that prides itself on trolling Conservapedia.
The more I look the more I'm wondering who's behind it. I can't figure out if it really is Tisane or "one of us" trolling.
No, definitely Nathan Larson, as it's hosted in the same folder as libertapedia.
Quite bad that he seems to be joking about the kiddy-fiddling.
It really does need a page. Yesterday I was arguing with this guy pulling the same old 'we can never be certain of anything we can only be reasonably sure of it' spiel, except then he demanded we not use the words 'to be' and 'exists' because according to him no one could define them. By his own logic.
So basically we could not make the argument that we can be certain of existence because he banned the word and concept of existence itself.
It's a really cheap way to cut off the other side of an argument.
There is a school of thought to that effect with "to be". See E-Prime, and also Rationalist taboo. Though these are best used as critical thinking exercises that get you to think about what those terms mean without being lazy about it. You constantly use a ton of inferences whenever you say a single word, so in order to be clear you either need to a) unpack it thoroughly to say what you mean by it in very exhaustive and comprehensive terms (traditional philosophical discourse) or b) avoid its use so that the inferences don't creep in even subconsciously (E-Prime and Rationalist Taboo methods).
What does "exist" mean? Saying "it exists because it is" depends on both "exists" as "is" - and those are often defined circularly. BUT, If you take "exist" to mean something that constrains your expectation of what you will experience, then that's something more concrete. See, for instance, The Dragon in My Garage for an example where this becomes quite important - how can you say the dragon still "exists" when it has no meaningful interaction with the world? Indeed, the dragon is often defined as having no meaningful interaction with the world. But it still "exists"? I expect not to be able to leave the house if the door is closed, therefore the door is solid and exists. I don't expect to be able to sit down on this invisible chair that exerts no force, and if I park my arse there I'll just fall down - so the chair doesn't exist. This seems all grand and sensible until you tack the phrase "this is how scientific observation works" onto it, at which point people shy away and say "ah, but you can't prove it with science!" - As if this magically changes things.
If you try to define "to be" as a verb, you might run into serious trouble. Mostly, we use it to mean "has properties similar to this grouping". Aka, Socrates has a dick, therefore he is (read, "shares similar properties of the group") a man. But if you take it a little further, you could start thinking of "to be" as being some sort of essentialist quality. Now, if you want to play an essentialist card that's fine, but I don't see it being particularly useful in arguing or discussing anything. "Existence" being some essentialist "state of being" doesn't really help us at all. In fact, it's a complete non-explanation.
So, the guy you're speaking to is actually right. If you remove the cheap and lazy words from your linguistic space, you can explore them more deeply from the point of view of your conceptual space. You haven't banned the concept of existence by banning the word, you just force a more critical evaluation of what it really means "to exist".
Well yeah. But the most crushing part of this kind of debate with me is agreeing with the concept but having a 'but...' about the argument itself, which leads the other person to keep fighting when you aren't really warring with him.
It's not, of course, an excuse to simply define away your problems. Proving something is a linguistic illusion doesn't make it a conceptual illusion (and vice versa).
That's why I'm an ontological pluralist. (Yes, I did write that just to shoehorn in Wittgenstein.)