[FRIAM] ordinary language

[Prof David West]

Reminds me of a recent conversation with Grok (yes, I know that makes me evil, but it was handy)

It started with discussion of garden path sentences, like "the man saw the woman in the park with the telescope." Grok correctly parsed three possible meanings from the sentence. I suggest a fourth: the park had the telescope. The only way that this meaning might be discerned (other than as a very remote, technical, possibility) is if there was context from a near by sentence, e.g., one that mentioned a visit to Mt. Palomar, or at least L.A.

The conversation proceeded with me asking about 'implicit context' something that the reader probably knows but is never mentioned in any of the text. This was deemed possible, with cultural knowledge being an exemplar.

I then asked about the possibility of context coming from Jung's collective unconscious or similar. This was ceded as possible as well. Examples were exchanged and discussed.

Then I inquired about the possibility of "non-mental" context and the possibility of epigenetically transmitted knowledge or context was offered. We were discussing slavery, and how context would most likely be transmitted culturally via story, but could, at least for a generation, also come via epigenetics. Instances from Iceland and famine.

The conversation continued in interesting ways, but the reason I bring it up is the way it supports, from a different direction, glens assertions about "ordinary language."

davew


On Thu, Apr 10, 2025, at 11:00 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> Yeah, is CHIR99021 a treatment for bipolar disorder or a bioweapon for 
> controlling reproduction?    
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of glen
> Sent: Thursday, April 10, 2025 8:27 AM
> To: FriAM <friam at redfish.com>
> Subject: [FRIAM] ordinary language
>
> After reading this yesterday:
>
> https://theaggie.org/2025/04/09/the-corrupt-and-ridiculous-jurisprudence-of-the-john-roberts-supreme-court/
>
> Then reading this today:
>
> https://dailynous.com/2025/04/09/ordinary-language-philosophy-in-supreme-court-gun-case/
>
> I'm steadily more convinced of what I took to be Eric's opinion of the 
> Roberts court. I'm still on the fence re: ACB & Gorsuch. But the rest 
> of the conservatives do seem to "work backward from preconceived 
> political ties", as Caleb puts it.
>
> And although I kindasorta agree with the outcome (that gun kits are 
> properly called "weapons" and regulated as such), citing "ordinary 
> language" is just convenient bullshit. Somewhere underneath my opinion 
> lies my persistent hesitancy around ordinary language philosoph[y|ers]. 
> Ordinary language is more likely to trick you into thinking you 
> understand what's being said [⛧]. I know that's counterintuitive. But 
> it's akin to code-switching. The meanings of words, phrases, and whole 
> arguments/presentations depends fundamentally on the context in which 
> they're being used. Ordinary language philosophy seems to either a) 
> ignore the diversity of contexts or b) assert a kind of Grand Unified 
> Context, the one model to rule them all.
>
> It works for me to always remember things like "Oh, yeah, I forgot I 
> was in a room full of [engineers|academics|furries|whatevers]." There 
> is no such thing as ordinary language full stop, only language ordinary 
> to a particular context.
>
> [⛧] It also results in a bit of a verbosity explosion, where every 
> polysemic word or phrase needs more phrases to disambiguate it, each of 
> those phrases then needing more phrases, etc.
>
> -- 
> glen
>
>
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