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> Since people can't find their own asses with both hands and a flashlight, one can never trust that what a person has found using both hands and a flashlight, is in fact their own ass. Deductive logic is abused more often than it is used, since some abuses are so extreme as to have no "use" component.
Given the attention on the ability (or willingness) people exhibit in the pursuit of their own asses when needed, I'd say that the whole question of deductive logic is irrelevant here. Because people cannot or will not reliably find their own asses -- both hands or none, flashlight or not -- or, when they find it, often lie about it (sometimes to themselves), they cannot be trusted whenever they say they have found something, regardless of the methods used. This in no way reflects poorly on deductive reasoning per se even one iota, and in cases where the deductive reasoning involved is presented for review it can then be verified or debunked to the extent of the capabilities and willingness of the party receiving the wisdom (or foolishness) of the previous deductive reasoner. In short, "People are often stupid, and often lie!" would have been a much more reasonable, applicable, and (in terms of the context in which it first came up) obviously irrelevant statement. The only thing that makes it more obviously irrelevant is the obviousness of it, so don't get the idea that it was somehow more irrelevant, considering that's roughly synonymous with your new formulation of the previous position you took.
> My other statement was one of cold hard fact - meaning: here I stand. Tell me how there can be a language apart from its usage.
From usage patterns, systems emerge. Describing the emergent system is as valid as describing all the puny little trivial details that, in the aggregate, give rise to that system. Describing the system is also much more useful, because it takes far fewer rules to compose a system than to compose a purely descriptive, contextless definition of the state of things as they are. It is also at least as accurate, because contextless description requires describing how things differ in every individual usage case to achieve perfect accuracy and, while deviance from the rules of an emergent system may not cover 100% of usage cases exactly as they occur, the human propensity for pattern recognition provokes independent arrival at similar or same conclusions about systematic rules -- and, once people recognize such rules, they tend to propagate them not only by demonstration, but by conscious dissemination. Enough of that, and you get English teachers in public schools conveying such rules to their students explicitly. Without these emergent systems, we would not be able to communicate and, without communication, the question of whether language even exists arises. This essentially means that to call it a "language" at all, we must accept that there are systematic rules (yes, even though it is an emergent system) that apply in the general case.
Once we accept that there is a system, it behooves us to attempt to improve upon it. It is efforts to improve upon it, or at least to sustain and maintain it, that ensures that the system does not crumble away beneath our feet to the extent that only small local groups have any ability to communicate. It is thus the efforts of people like me, who care about the difference between "since" and "because" in a roughly prescriptive sense, that ensure that people who nominally speak English in the United States and Japan are able to communicate as well as they do on business calls, arranging for the timely arrival of widgets used to provide us with the necessary technology to get on the Internet and have these little debates.
> If you mistake your empirical facts with things that can serve as true premises for deductive logic, well, then you're claiming to have found your ass with both hands and a flashlight, and I do not intend to humor such claims.
One can absolutely use empirical observations with things that can serve as premises for deductive logic. It is from the apparent failure on your part to differentiate between "given these premises" and "it is true that" your dismissal of the usefulness of deductive reasoning arises, and your apparent unwillingness to support a systematic interpretation of language that prompts your seeming self-contradictory statements about language (given that the very fact you are using language to convey a theory of language that roughly corresponds to denying existence of an actual prescriptive system of language -- even if it's an evolving system -- supports the notion of a prescriptive system).
I see that hippiekarl is downvoting everything I say, by the way. Isn't there a rule against trolling in these parts?
Given the attention on the ability (or willingness) people exhibit in the pursuit of their own asses when needed, I'd say that the whole question of deductive logic is irrelevant here. Because people cannot or will not reliably find their own asses -- both hands or none, flashlight or not -- or, when they find it, often lie about it (sometimes to themselves), they cannot be trusted whenever they say they have found something, regardless of the methods used. This in no way reflects poorly on deductive reasoning per se even one iota, and in cases where the deductive reasoning involved is presented for review it can then be verified or debunked to the extent of the capabilities and willingness of the party receiving the wisdom (or foolishness) of the previous deductive reasoner. In short, "People are often stupid, and often lie!" would have been a much more reasonable, applicable, and (in terms of the context in which it first came up) obviously irrelevant statement. The only thing that makes it more obviously irrelevant is the obviousness of it, so don't get the idea that it was somehow more irrelevant, considering that's roughly synonymous with your new formulation of the previous position you took.
> My other statement was one of cold hard fact - meaning: here I stand. Tell me how there can be a language apart from its usage.
From usage patterns, systems emerge. Describing the emergent system is as valid as describing all the puny little trivial details that, in the aggregate, give rise to that system. Describing the system is also much more useful, because it takes far fewer rules to compose a system than to compose a purely descriptive, contextless definition of the state of things as they are. It is also at least as accurate, because contextless description requires describing how things differ in every individual usage case to achieve perfect accuracy and, while deviance from the rules of an emergent system may not cover 100% of usage cases exactly as they occur, the human propensity for pattern recognition provokes independent arrival at similar or same conclusions about systematic rules -- and, once people recognize such rules, they tend to propagate them not only by demonstration, but by conscious dissemination. Enough of that, and you get English teachers in public schools conveying such rules to their students explicitly. Without these emergent systems, we would not be able to communicate and, without communication, the question of whether language even exists arises. This essentially means that to call it a "language" at all, we must accept that there are systematic rules (yes, even though it is an emergent system) that apply in the general case.
Once we accept that there is a system, it behooves us to attempt to improve upon it. It is efforts to improve upon it, or at least to sustain and maintain it, that ensures that the system does not crumble away beneath our feet to the extent that only small local groups have any ability to communicate. It is thus the efforts of people like me, who care about the difference between "since" and "because" in a roughly prescriptive sense, that ensure that people who nominally speak English in the United States and Japan are able to communicate as well as they do on business calls, arranging for the timely arrival of widgets used to provide us with the necessary technology to get on the Internet and have these little debates.
> If you mistake your empirical facts with things that can serve as true premises for deductive logic, well, then you're claiming to have found your ass with both hands and a flashlight, and I do not intend to humor such claims.
One can absolutely use empirical observations with things that can serve as premises for deductive logic. It is from the apparent failure on your part to differentiate between "given these premises" and "it is true that" your dismissal of the usefulness of deductive reasoning arises, and your apparent unwillingness to support a systematic interpretation of language that prompts your seeming self-contradictory statements about language (given that the very fact you are using language to convey a theory of language that roughly corresponds to denying existence of an actual prescriptive system of language -- even if it's an evolving system -- supports the notion of a prescriptive system).
I see that hippiekarl is downvoting everything I say, by the way. Isn't there a rule against trolling in these parts?
Posted by apotheon
23rd Oct 2011
