Letters Not Sent and Other Musings

A place for musing on things political, ethical, logical, and thus philosophical.

Name:
Location: In the hills

I jokingly say that I am a Luddite with an internet addiction.. I am an independent designer and remodeling contractor, writer, explorer of ideas, places, and cultures. I a lover of nature, reason, and craftsmanship no matter the form. Update: I am just a guy who left a successful business in the city to go to the mountains, to live the simple life in a home I am building for myself. I am experimenting with various aspects of simplicity, off grid power, efficiency, frugality, living with the seasons, gardening, and freeing up the time I used to spend working for others so that I can pursue various passions including the above, but also reading, writing, and the general exploration of ideas via critical examination, aka Philosophy. This blog chronicles my adventures in traveling, as well as my current adventures in living a truly simple, comfortable, peaceful, and enjoyable life. If you like it tell me.. if you have ideas for me to try tell me.. As with all aspects of life, this blog is ever adapting to the environment, so come along on the adventure.

Thursday, May 12, 2005

A slight turning

I had intended this blog to be simply a place to post those responses to what I catch on the news, or from other sources that I would like to send, but for various reasons choose otherwise. Usually this is out of the desire to stay off the radar, else to simply avoid the troubles that can come from speaking out on what is right, and against what is wrong. Those who know me, know that I am far from silent on these two subjects, but there are lines I try not to cross, lines that will garner me as an individual more attention than I desire. Especially since it is never about the person, but always about the ideas and truth.

With that in mind, I have decided to expand this blog to include some responses/reactions to other items, to things that others say and do, to incidents not on the news, but in my own life. I will still post the original sorts of letters with the same infrequency as they have appeared already, but hopefully will be posting the reactions to more common, more mundane if you will, sorts of events and occurances.

So with that in mind, a recent event, the one that spawned this change for many reasons, begs for some attention here.

In a discussion with a friend, we found ourselves at loggerheads over what I believe to be simple but crucial notions. This lead to the realization that there were different attitudes at play, different approaches to the discussion of ideas, as well as different meanings being used, which of course means that what appeared to be communication was nothing more than a fun house illusion of communication.

Consider words.. What gives them meaning? Some would say that we (each) determine their meaning by use, but what does this tell us? It could tell us that we each have a private language, which shares words, but not necessarily meanings, with the private languages of others. If this is the case, then when you say "barn" I may think of a mild vegetable which grows from vines. This does not seem to be the way that we communicate, or the way that we use words in general. Of course we know this from the misuse of words, such as the example here would indicate, but also from the fact that words point to something. If we are confused or uncertain of the meaning of "barn" we can physically point to a barn. This is true for a vast number of the words we might use, regardless of language. This even works for verbs, as to demonstrate the meaning of "running" or "to run" we need only demonstrate that action, so clearly this is not limited to nouns alone.

Words have meaning based upon the connection to that to which they refer. Consider a word to be a pointer to some item or action. The word itself may be unimportant in that it could take almost any form (though languages usually develop along defined paths for a reason) but regardless of the specific pronounciation, that to which it points (the barn for instance) remains the same.

When we converse we seldom think about the possibility of error. We do not consider that one or the other of us may have been misinformed as to the meaning of a word, or we may be sloppy in our usage, or perhaps we simply uttered the wrong word. If the other already has a given opinion, which happens to coincide with what was uttered, though not what was intended, then it is not unlikely that the intended meaning will be lost by the actual meaning of what was uttered.

This is just the first point of contention, but without this one simple element of common ground, without this connection to reality, communication will not happen.

We must understand what the words are referring to, without this we are simply are not communicating, the pointers are not pointing to anything..

More later..

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