Discover Top Posts Tagged with #language holes

Someone replied to the preference-pleasure root post:

Does this suggest that preferences eventually boil down to something experiential?

Yes, but it also simultaneously suggests that the experiential stuff is a type of preference.

The original birth of this idea, which we saw in my posts from two or three years ago, was the whole "preference utilitarianism and hedonistic utilitarianism are the same thing!" epiphany I had.

Yet another way I've used to word it before, is that there is a language hole between the think-y terms like "preference" and the feel-y terms like "pleasure". The term "preference-pleasure root" is trying to fill in that language hole. Give name to the idea in the middle.

And the best way I know to move the mind into that language hole is:

Try to rigorously define preference (without using any words that are synonyms for or implicitly depend on the idea of preference).

Try to rigorously define pleasure (without using any words that are synonyms or implicitly depend on the idea of pleasure).

Near as I can tell, we can observe that pleasure boils down to an innate quality of some experiences relative to other experiences that makes them more preferable to us, and we can observe that preferences are motivated by (sometimes unacknowledged) pleasure or predictions of pleasure.

And that's obviously circular definitions. But clearly the actual reality isn't circular. It's just that the language we are using is not giving us an unambiguous word for talking about that underlying raw sense in which experiences are more or less positive to us.

#preference pleasure root #language holes

The thing I said in my last post is actually why for a long time now, I have not said "this is a language hole" in any of my posts about other issues. I don't really talk about language holes much at all nowadays, and I haven't mentioned them in a while, until it just came up the other day.

I initially kept pointing at language holes after I made the definition post, but then I realized that there was no non-arbitrary distinction between

"this is a language hole!" and

"this was tricky to put into words".

I also realized that even though I wanted to popularize this idea, a lot of the time it was just a tangent from my main point.

It would be better for the purposes of having examples of bigger language holes if I did that. But usually if I'm talking about something, I'm just trying to get someone to think into the language hole, not derail into "and by the way this is a language hole".

#language holes

Another example of a language hole from an older elaborating/reply reblog I did on the language holes post:

The fact that English has no grammar by which to distinguish between statements applying simultaneously/collectively or individually/distributively ("two men carried the box" (at the same time) versus "two men carried the box" (one after the other)) is a subtler (but still relatively small) language hole, because while we can easily think of the difference, we must walk around the language hole to express it.

#language holes

Someone replied to my prior language hole example post:

I don’t understand… wouldn’t the english grammar to distinguish “two men carried the box” (at the same time) versus “two men carried the box” (one after the other)) be either “two men carried the box at the same time” versus “two men carried the box one after another”?

Right (though I don't know if in some formal nitpicky sense it is a part of "grammar" or not), which is why I said it was also a small language hole. But what I'm getting at is

it takes more language to express it than it conceivably could,

that's not intrinsic to the language the way that some other distinctions are, and

as a result, a lot of us end up thinking about that distinction less.

It's kinda like the difference between having a language feature like the "-ing" suffix, which lets us say "I am thinking" instead of a more awkward full phrase like "I am in the state of active thought in my mind".

If we took "-ing" away from English, it would be a "small" language hole in that we can probably work around it with a fairly small amount of words in each situation, and a "big" language hole in that it would permeate your entire language.

And you would immediately feel this language hole. You would immediately notice "oh there's this gap where my thoughts are much more efficient than my words - my mind just instantly thinks it, but then I have to stop and slowly trace around it with words to say it".

But have you ever felt that with the distributive versus collective distinction for verbs? Have you ever noticed how inefficient saying that distinction is, relative to how quickly you can think it?

For a lot of people, the answer is "no" - because we all tend to learn to think in ways that trace the path our language has to take.

#language holes

The language holes post regularly generates annoying responses which just suggest a way to plug the specific example language hole.

The most positively I can view it is like...

it's good that people are engaging with it, that means the post hooked and connected enough to get a reaction,

it doesn't necessarily mean that people are failing to engage with the post enough to see the bigger idea either now or eventually, and

it spreads the post to a wider audience who might engage with the post enough to see the bigger idea either now or eventually.

But the thing it most strongly pattern-matches with for me is contempt-deserving levels of incompetent, unwarranted dismissal. Like someone neglected to engage with the whole idea, and just over-eagerly or over-confidently jumped to a "solution" and then moved on as if that's it, as if there's nothing more to it. As if the words right after the example didn't clearly indicate that this is a small language hole that you can trivially plug with a close-enough word or phrase. Like it's not inherently bad if you throw in a suggestion, but if that's literally all you did, if you just dropped a solution and that's it, then

I have to assume you think it's a good solution (it's not - all of the suggestions so far misfit the idea shape in some way, and that just tells me you're not as discerning with the nuances of wording, or don't see why they matter), and

you at best didn't relate to why what I'm actually saying is important, and either you couldn't see a way that you felt good about to convey why it's not important or you didn't think it was valuable enough to offer your insight into why it's not important - all other possibilities I can think of feel ethically worse in some way.

Anyway, that post is such a perfect showcase of the problem with trying giving examples for non-trivial ideas while trying to stay very concise. Now that I'm feeling this again, I suspect this was another reason why I stopped pointing out language holes - because then I'd need to link to that post and that opened up too much risk of feeling this again.

The distributive versus collective application of verbs language hole is interesting because it can only warp some of our relevant cognition.

When we have an idea about what happened in mind, the distributive versus collective distinction is already there in our mind, whether or not we word it. No amount of failure of language to efficiently distinguish will cause you to confuse the difference between a clear idea in your head of

first you separately doing something and then someone else separately doing something, versus

you two doing it at the same time, together.

But when we are parsing words, or judging the efficiency of wording versus thought it's a bit trickier.

How often do we just interpret distributive or collective purely from context? How often do we think "wait! was there really enough context here for me to conclude that?" How often do we try idea-fitting variations along that dimension onto words that we get from others? How big of a cognetic opening do we have for missing the distinction when the context isn't enough because we are so used to context being enough most of the time?

Similarly, how often do we look at our language and ask ourselves "wait, this distinction is actually way more efficient and fundamental in my head than it is to say".

So this is an example of how language holes don't necessarily just warp our cognition in the sense of us not even conceiving of an idea. Sometimes they warp our cognition for interpreting language, or our metacognition about how our thoughts map to language. These effects can be independent.

#language holes #idea fitting #cognetic openings #cognition

To be clear, there are good reasons behind why human languages tend to allow expressing some distinctions very efficiently and leave other distinctions uncovered. Some ideas are more important to capture efficiently than others, and language tends to combine ways to efficiently say things in ways that interconnect and together provide an efficient way to cover most common needs.

Just because I am pointing out a language hole doesn't mean I'm saying "this needs to change".

#language holes

Someone replied to my last post:

it seems valuable to distinguish between “this distinction is easy to express but not mandatory” and “this distinction is in fact difficult to express at all”?

Sometimes, yes. But it's just a matter of degree with regard to the concept I am trying to name with "language holes". The former and the latter both have a certain property in common, the latter just has a lot more of it than the former.

Like... when we really boil it down, what's the difference between:

having to add or change one piece of a word,

having to add one word,

having to add a few words, or

having to add a book?

It's just a quantitative difference - how much language do you need to express it.

Now, in practice, what makes us call something a hole? If it's big enough to trip over. To fall into. To get caught on. And that depends on how precise you're being - what scale you're operating on.

A well-built freshly paved road has no holes. Unless you zoom in from the scale of cars down to the scale of small bugs. Then it's jagged terrain full of holes.

Language is full of holes of various sizes. I don't want a term that means "[general idea] (but only when it is bad enough)" when we don't yet have a term that just means "[general idea]". I trust that in practice, people will only point at holes that they think are big enough to matter in that context.

#language holes