Thread:User talk:Armondikov/Language sucks/reply (3)

Of course it's absolutely amazing. It's a way of, by what are effectively arbitrary contrasting patterns (writing) or compression waves in the air (talking), transferring a pattern being formed out of the neurons of one persons brain into a corresponding pattern in another persons brain. WITHOUT resorting to psychic powers! If that doesn't blow your fucking piddly little mind into a million shiny pieces of fluffy mess, you clearly haven't grasped the point.

But...

The point I'm working on is the fact that there's a map between those arbitrary squiggles we call letters (and obviously, sounds to and things but to simplify it I'll keep with the written word) and what's in our brain. It's a translation thing; cognitive-lingustic-mapping if you want to give it a fancy sounding name. Though I'm sure there's a proper word for it. This I find analogous to that problem in cracking the Enigma code. You could in theory utilise a lot of cryptography techniques to crack it, but there was one first step, apparently simple but seriously important, that was the big problem; how did the keys hook up to the first wheel of the scrambler? Now, in the end it transpired that A mapped to A, B to B and so on (hardly imaginative) but without that info nothing could really unscramble it. So language is like the wheels on Enigma, apparently complex but run on set and decipherable rules. But hooking the keys up to the wheels are where the mapping comes in. If both machines disagree on this then your scrambling simply doesn't work. You can agree on the wheel settings, how they work, how they move, but if you keyboard doesn't hook up to those wheels in the same way, communication can't happen. Similarly, in language, if the idea generated Person A's head by word q is not the same as the idea in Person B's head by word q, the exercise is pointless. Of course, by word q I actually mean "definition" too, as definitions are words too, really. Thought Q, word q - upper-case for thoughts, lower-case for words. Q <-> q <-> Q represents good communication, Q <-> q <-> R is bad communication. And we achieve "good" communication through use of precision language and a back-and-forth exchange of ideas that allow us to question and clarify. We lack the psychic ability to go straight to Q <-> Q, so the best we can do is compare maps to make sure they're consistent.

Now, you'll be thinking right now "duh, of course that's the case". But my central point here is that I don't think people actually do think this. They often seem to think the other way around. Take the atheism definition. "Dictionary definitions > personal opinion" I believe was the phrase, but this is ASS BACKWARDS! Changing q into r doesn't change Q into R. Maratrean says "rationalism" MUST mean people are nice and polite, I disagreed until I then suddenly realised this was what was actually happening. Indeed, this whole argument about what rationality/rationalism requires is just this. People fight over the words as if they carry the meaning, they don't. Finding out that these things have a different definition is no more going to change my thoughts than changing the word "brown" to actually represent "red" is going to magically dye my hair!

Now, the latest addition to this is that I think it's the fault of people who value language too much. They see it as an end in itself, when it's just a means to an end (thought that shouldn't be read as distracting from how important it is!). The ones who correct your grammar, your pronunciation, your spelling and so on. Obviously, they're correcting it, so they got the idea into their head, job done! Person A thinks Q <-> q, person B thinks q2 <-> Q - JOB DONE! However, I think this attitude seems to give the false impression that the specific word is important, not the thought and meaning it produces. This is mistaking the map for the territory.

I will get around to writing this up better at some point, or perhaps finding someone who has already said it but better. The trouble is, the former is probably less time consuming.