[1230] I wear it with pride

[cannister]

Aug 3, 2013 11:32:46 GMT Marnath said:

Aug 2, 2013 11:17:53 GMT GK Sierra said:

My younger sister was born a woman and decided later that she wanted to be a man,

No, just stop. Posting something like that while trying to argue you're not a bigot is a bad way to make people believe you. Trans people do not "decide" they "want" to be the opposite gender from their physical sex,they discover that they are. Saying otherwise makes you look ignorant and bigoted.

I presume you followed the proper channels to be elected spokesman.

[Deleted]

Aug 3, 2013 20:47:49 GMT legion said:

Speech should be fought with speech, not with laws or taboos.

This is impossible, because words have no inherent power.

Edit: I wanted to quote witty Wittgenstein here but can't actually remember anything he's ever written.

[Lightice]

Aug 3, 2013 20:06:07 GMT The Anarch said:

Aug 3, 2013 20:00:17 GMT Lightice said:

And we are human, so they are extra-effective on us.

Nope, only as effective as we allow them to be.

In that case you choose to get angry. You choose to get insulted. You choose to be offended. Or in opposite, you choose to be happy, you choose to enjoy yourself. You choose to like a person. You choose to fall in love. By that logic, all reactions to human interaction are conscious choices. I'm yet to meet anyone that would apply to, however. You don't get to choose how words affect you. That is determined by your culture, your upbringing, the people you've interacted with. Even by simple chemistry such as inebriation. It's arrogant to insist that you have a full control over your reactions to other people's words. The best you can claim is that you understand how they affect you and why.

Aug 3, 2013 20:47:49 GMT legion said:

Speech should be fought with speech, not with laws or taboos.

Laws and taboos are words...

[The Anarch]

Aug 3, 2013 21:56:10 GMT Lightice said:

You don't get to choose how words affect you. That is determined by your culture, your upbringing, the people you've interacted with.

You may not get to choose how things effect you. I can't speak for the existence or non-existence of your personal free will since, y'know, I'm not you and I don't know you personally. But I've personally met many people who are capable of making their own decisions. I've also met many people who have rejected their culture, their upbringing, and the things they've heard while interacting with other people. Though I'm sure that many prospective parents would be quite happy to know that their children will never, ever question what they're told and thus will never, ever try to make up their own minds about how certain words should or shouldn't affect them, that's simply not the case. The problem is not that people can't choose how words affect them. It's that they don't or they won't, and this problem is, I will definitely concede, extremely widespread.

But I'm going to assume that you have no choice but to disagree because of your culture, your upbringing, etc. Or perhaps you have no choice but to agree since my words have so much power? I dunno. Personally I think it's pretty arrogant to assume that all humans are incapable of doing stuff like ignoring things that they find offensive. It would seem to assume some sort of world-wide mental stasis that never, ever changes, a stasis that does not seem to be borne out by history.

So with that said, I'm going to exercise my gargantuan superhero-level amounts of free will and choose to say sayonara to this conversation. I've had it and seen it before elsewhere several times, and it's always a ridiculously futile undertaking for both sides. Much like all arguments. I would add "on the internet", but I think I'll stick with "all arguments" full-stop. I hardly need any other real proof that people are capable of willfully ignoring the words of others when it's convenient for them to do so than the fact that during these little debates, hardly anyone ever really listens to what anyone else is trying to say.

Cheers!

[Lightice]

Aug 3, 2013 22:23:53 GMT The Anarch said:

You may not get to choose how things effect you. I can't speak for the existence or non-existence of your personal free will since, y'know, I'm not you and I don't know you personally. But I've personally met many people who are capable of making their own decisions. I've also met many people who have rejected their culture, their upbringing, and the things they've heard while interacting with other people. Though I'm sure that many prospective parents would be quite happy to know that their children will never, ever question what they're told and thus will never, ever try to make up their own minds about how certain words should or shouldn't affect them, that's simply not the case. The problem is not that people can't choose how words affect them. It's that they don't or they won't, and this problem is, I will definitely concede, extremely widespread.

Certainly people are capable of making their own decisions. But they don't make them in vacuum. Even if you reject your cultural values, you are still rejecting your cultural values. You couldn't reject them if they didn't influence you to begin with. We are all brainwashed into certain modes of thinking; it wouldn't be possible for us to interact and understand each other, otherwise. Your insistence that nothing can affect you if you don't choose so is simply an extreme expression of Western individualism, not a unique perspective that you created out of thin air.

My arguments have nothing to do with free will or lack thereof, they simply acknowledge that people influence other people all the time; it's impossible to be emotionally and intellectually isolated to the point where you could insist that nothing influences you unless you consciously allow it. Did you choose to let my post anger you, for example?

[legion]

See this is the sola scriptura thing again: laws are not words, laws are procedures, they are things that happen; the text of a law is not the law itself, it's a description of the law (just like a map isn't the territory it represents), they are statements of which procedure shall or may happen in which fashion under which circumstances.

It's not the constitution of the US that magically makes it a sovereign country; it's that other countries are effectively recognizing and respecting the sovereignity of the US in how they act toward it.

A law that is "just words" is a law that isn't applied, and effectively doesn't exist. And reciprocally, there are plenty of laws that aren't written anywhere and yet are consistently applied (did you know that the UK have no written constitution?)

[Lightice]

Aug 4, 2013 10:08:22 GMT legion said:

See this is the sola scriptura thing again: laws are not words, laws are procedures, they are things that happen; the text of a law is not the law itself, it's a description of the law (just like a map isn't the territory it represents), they are statements of which procedure shall or may happen in which fashion under which circumstances.

And what do law procedures consist of, if not words? The debates of lawyers and politicians, statements, testimonies, contracts, hearings, etc. etc. It's difficult to find anything from the world of legislature that doesn't consist of exchange of words. Verbal exchange is the heart of the law and the society as a whole. Actions are meaningless beyond their immediate vicinity if they can't be described in words.

[Deleted]

Sola scriptura may not actually mean what you think it means.

What Luther criticized was the morally flexible exegesis of the Bible by the privileged priest caste who could read Latin. He wanted to prove that the sale of indulgences, for example, was at odds with the message of the Christ. For this purpose, he needed a definitive, objective scale by which his opinion could be measured, for which he chose the Bible.

Sola scriptura means that nothing represents the Word of God but the Bible. Therein lies the danger of abuse again, though. Therefore, Luther insisted that the Bible represents, at its core, the (non-descript) message of the Christ, the evangelium, without being its equal. He went as far as to claim that any Papal verdict, or even any excerpt from the Bible itself, may be criticized if it does not agree with this evangelium.

What's more, Luther asserted the »double clarity« of the scripture: on the one hand, the »external clarity« of the text; and on the other hand, the »internal clarity« conferred to the reader wordlessly, by the Holy Spirit. Now, I don't believe in the Holy Spirit or anything, but I think that he identified, in his own way, an important distinction between content and sense of a given text. Therefore, along with Gianbattista Vico, he can be counted among the predecessors of the 20th-century structuralists who attempted to base all philosophy on philology.

[legion]

Aug 4, 2013 10:55:00 GMT Lightice said:

And what do law procedures consist of, if not words? The debates of lawyers and politicians, statements, testimonies, contracts, hearings, etc. etc.

You're describing lawmaking. This is like equating music with musicologists discussing music.

I'm talking about contrete things, like penalties, physical restriction, power structure, organization of institutions, who can do what, who must do what, who can sue whom under which circumstances. I'm talking about rule of law, I'm talking about law as the system of codes that permeates everyone's life and regulates human interactions.

It's difficult to find anything from the world of legislature that doesn't consist of exchange of words. Verbal exchange is the heart of the law and the society as a whole. Actions are meaningless beyond their immediate vicinity if they can't be described in words.

That's not saying anything: *everything* can be described with words, but a description is not the thing it is describing, the word "dog" isn't a dog and has nothing inherently canine about it, a description of a painting isn't the painting itself, a representation of an event isn't the event, and the sentence "you shall not kill" is not a provision against murder, even when it is written in a text called "constitution" (again, many dictarorial countries have a text called a constitution that "guaranties" protection against infrigement on freedom of speech, torture, unlawful arrest and so on; see what good it does them in practice).

[Lightice]

Aug 4, 2013 11:50:41 GMT legion said:

I'm talking about contrete things, like penalties, physical restriction, power structure, organization of institutions, who can do what, who must do what, who can sue whom under which circumstances. I'm talking about rule of law, I'm talking about law as the system of codes that permeates everyone's life and regulates human interactions.

All which is, again, expressed through words. What separates the wall of a prison from the wall of an apartment building, except the verbal abstractions that define its use, for example? How is a police officer who shoots a suspect different from a gangbanger who shoots a rival? Again, the abstractions that determine their status in the society.

That's not saying anything: *everything* can be described with words, but a description is not the thing it is describing, the word "dog" isn't a dog and has nothing inherently canine about it

You can argue that natural phenomena are unrelated to the words describing them, although it would still be impossible to define them without verbal intercourse, but when we enter to the world of social abstractions, then all we have is words. You can't find justice anywhere in the universe outside human skulls or present it in any way besides verbal description. Abstractions like "justice" can only emerge from human interaction, which in turn is necessarily verbal in nature.

[Deleted]

A description is not a thing that it describes. No objections there. Still, when someone says »dog«, you will recall some manner of dog. It's most likely not the same dog that I picture; it's certainly not the »Platonic idea« of a dog — but it will be a dog, because you have learnt, across the span of years, what a dog is; and because other people have similar ideas about what a dog is. Society gives value to words, and words in turn enhance communication across societies. They have inherent power, since people generally agree on their broader meanings.

Then again, which colour is the grass? Green, of course. And the sea? It's blue, duh. A native speaker of Welsh would answer both questions with the same word: »glas«. But wouldn't they still have the same impression of the colour that I get, if we assume that our eyes perceive no difference?


Edit: As for Lightice' assumption that justice is man-made, and arose from human interaction: this is actually debatable. The shapes of our numbers have been invented by humans. The numbers themselves, however, have been there from the start. Similarly, lawyers and courtrooms and fines are human inventions; the word for »justice« is just as well; justice itself, though? I'm not sure about that. 

[Lightice]

Aug 4, 2013 12:15:29 GMT @korba said:

Edit: As for Lightice' assumption that justice is man-made, and arose from human interaction: this is actually debatable. The shapes of our numbers have been invented by humans. The numbers themselves, however, have been there from the start. Similarly, lawyers and courtrooms and fines are human inventions; the word for »justice« is just the same; justice itself, though? I'm not sure about that. 

Well, we did invent numbers, both as shapes and concepts to describe various physical phenomena. Those phenomena exist regardless of language, but the numbers don't. And what we have hear is simply a linguistical problem concerning the multiple meanings of the term "word". That term can be used for more than one related concept. In linguistics we separate the concept into two distinct abstractions: phoneme and morpheme. Phoneme is the abstraction of a meaningful sound; the smallest unit of sound that can influence meaning. Morpheme, on the other hand, is the smallest unit of meaning, itself. It can be a noun, a prefix, a word ending and so on. When I talk about words here, I primarily mean morphemes, units of meaning, not the actual air bursting from between our lips in distinct wave formations.

[Deleted]

Hey, this is what I meant, but let me try to make it clear. The phoneme, in my example, is the shape of the number, which may even differ across cultures. The morpheme is the number itself, and by extension mathematics, which predates humans, and indeed the Earth itself. It exists regardless of language.

Similarly, the word »justice« as a melange of sounds is man-made. The concepts pertaining to justice — laws and such — are man-made. The meaning of the word justice, as given by any dictionary or opinion, is man-made. The concept of justice — this may be older than humanity, even though humans first put it into practical use.

Invention is a difficult word. Somebody carves an idol from a piece of wood, using a stone. They are the first person in the world to ever do so, and they have therefore invented art. The possibility of the wood being carved into a shape is inherent in the wood itself. The possibility of the stone being used as a knife is inherent in the stone itself. Any shape that the wood could be carved into is exactly determined by the constitution of the artist (including memories and such), and thus inherent in the artist. The possibility of communication through pictures is inherent, perhaps, in the universe itself; at any rate, it has been possible even before the concept was first executed. So wherein, exactly, lies the invention?

I'd say: the finished piece of work is the invention, because it can exist independently of the artist, or any material used to create it, and take on different meanings as generations live and procreate and forget and die. Words work in a similar fashion.

[thedoomblahsong]

I know I contributed to this discussion earlier (when it was still about slurs), but might I now suggest continuing this philosophy of language discussion in its own thread?

[Deleted]

This entire »power of words« business, and the lack of a simple answer, is featured prominently in the comic itself. After all, who put the stars in the night sky?

That said, I'll stop now.

[philman]

Well I suppose the discussion of the philosophy of words subdued the dispute over insult/not insult before it got too heated.

Well done philosophy, well done.

[GK Sierra]

Aug 4, 2013 15:09:05 GMT philman said:

Well I suppose the discussion of the philosophy of words subdued the dispute over insult/not insult before it got too heated.

Well done philosophy, well done.

A close shave, though. I almost didn't make it out alive.

SPOILER: Click to show

[The Anarch]

I think this calls for a group nose boop.



Boop!

[GK Sierra]

O-okay ;_;

[Deleted]

I love this picture.

Elephants are my favourite animals. My first stuffed toy was an elephant in the primary colours, ingeniously named »Elephanty« (translated into English). The music box in his chest stopped working at some point, so I fetched my plastic stethoscope to check his heartbeat. I didn't find it.

[Per]

[GK Sierra]

You know, looking back, Kat's nose had a sharp resemblance to Voldemort's.

[legion]

How can I post a serious rebuttal now that you've posted cute pictures of animals.

[Deleted]

How about you post your fierce rebuttal interspersed with cute pictures of fuzzy animals? Nothing could possibly be more Internet.

Edit: Unless you write it in broken Japanese.

[Daedalus]

In other news, this page causes me great happiness...good to have at least one character's loyalty clarified

[lordofpotatoes]

Aug 4, 2013 10:55:00 GMT Lightice said:

Aug 4, 2013 10:08:22 GMT legion said:

See this is the sola scriptura thing again: laws are not words, laws are procedures, they are things that happen; the text of a law is not the law itself, it's a description of the law (just like a map isn't the territory it represents), they are statements of which procedure shall or may happen in which fashion under which circumstances.

And what do law procedures consist of, if not words? The debates of lawyers and politicians, statements, testimonies, contracts, hearings, etc. etc. It's difficult to find anything from the world of legislature that doesn't consist of exchange of words. Verbal exchange is the heart of the law and the society as a whole. Actions are meaningless beyond their immediate vicinity if they can't be described in words.

If laws were words they would mean nothing. There are laws and rules that can't be called words. But if you want to, you can always try to say they're just words too.

[The Anarch]

yaaaaaaaay, that conversation again, what fun

[sidhekin]

Semantics: The procedure by which a collection of words attain meaning.

Also the rotten heart of a hundred thousand arguments.

[GK Sierra]

Aug 25, 2013 16:26:21 GMT sidhekin said:

Also the rotten heart of a hundred thousand arguments.

That's why the cornerstone of logical debate is establishing agreed-upon standards beforehand. They're like locks; they keep honest people honest.