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The crow paradox and the evolution of language

שו”תCategory: philosophyThe crow paradox and the evolution of language
asked 6 years ago

Peace be upon Rabbi Michi.
In your book “That which is and that which is not at the end of Enlightenment 5” you present the analytical solution to the paradox of the crows:
“…the analyst will say that the theory that all crows are black is not a synthetic claim at all. It is simply the definition of the species crow, that is, an analytic theorem. We do not discover facts about crows, but classify animals according to their properties. All those with the following particular set of properties: flying, black, with such and such a beak, etc., will be called by us from now on: crow. The analyst needs such strange solutions, since only he is prone to getting entangled in the above loop. Those who hold the synthetic position know (at least to a certain degree of probability) what a crow is even before its essential properties have been defined.”
I don’t understand why you refer to the analytical solution here as “strange” when it is clearly the correct one in terms of the evolution of language. Language is the tool through which humans communicate with each other, the word crow was created when there was a need in the world to describe something in order to convey information about black birds. That’s how words are created. When we climbed trees, we didn’t have language, it was created over a process of thousands of years by humans who invented sounds that were agreed upon by society to describe things in the world. Treating a crow as if it were something “essential” seems very strange and wrong to me.
(I also didn’t find an answer to this in the second title of the first book)


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0 Answers
מיכי Staff answered 6 years ago
According to your method, every claim is analytic, that is, it is a definition. So what is a false claim in your opinion? Is saying that there is a crow that is not black a false claim? At most, it is just talking about a different species of bird. In my opinion, there are claims that are not definitions. They add information to us about the world. For example, the color black is not part of the definition of a crow, so when we say that crows are black, it is a synthetic claim that adds information to us about the world, and of course it can also turn out to be wrong. My intention here is of course only to demonstrate. If you believe that the color black is part of the definition of a crow, then let’s talk about the maximum distance it can fly or some other property that is not part of its definition (at least as it is known to us now).

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סיידלר replied 6 years ago

The problems created by the fact of the evolution of language must be dealt with and not found magic solutions in the form of “this is essential” or Platonism.
A false claim, according to my system, would be when a person means something specific and attributes to it things that it does not have. For example, “a person can jump 100 meters high” would be a false claim when it comes to what I and the claimant call a person. Of course, the claimant could say “the person I am talking about can jump 100 meters high” and thus escape being called “wrong”. But again, language is the tool that humans use to communicate with each other. If a person begins to attribute to words things that other human beings do not agree with but only he agrees with – he is not speaking the language.
Information about the world, according to my system, is when we discover new things and give them names. For example, there is a phenomenon in which objects with mass are attracted to each other in a ratio proportional to the product of the masses of the two attracted bodies. Let's call this phenomenon “gravity”.
The more we discover things in the world and give them names so that we can talk about them – the more we can use the things we discover and talk about for our own benefit and the technological development of humanity.
An interesting phenomenon could be seen in ancient America. The Indians remained for years without development. They had a primitive language (there was a word for the number “one” for the number “two” and that was it. Beyond the quantity 2 they simply said “many”) compared to the Aztecs who had a more developed language and a more advanced civilization.
I see a direct connection between the things.

מיכי Staff replied 6 years ago

You are repeating my words here. According to your words, the claim that crows are black is also a claim and not a definition: what is known today as a crow is black in color. After all, you rejected the “analytical solution”.
In parentheses, I don't think you are right about the Indians. There are one-two-many tribes in South America (like the Pirahi in Brazil, to this day) and as far as I remember in East Asia as well. But as far as I know, this was not true for all Indians. I discussed this in an interesting thread on Ars kein tsenyim:
http://www.bhol.co.il/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=1083983&forum_id=1364

סיידלר replied 6 years ago

I don't think you and I are saying the same thing. As far as I'm concerned, treating the sentence "all crows are black" as a claim that tries to claim something new about the world and could turn out to be a mistake is a silly reference because crow is first and foremost a word that came to describe black birds. When there is something called a "white crow" (a genetic mutation that will be created somehow), we will not use the word "crow" to describe it, but we will call it a "white crow" (we created a new concept to indicate a new object discovered in reality). It is clear that everything we call just "crow" (without any special addition) will be black in color [as an analytical method].
Another difference between my method and yours is how we obtain information about the world. According to you, we make claims about the world and thus we accumulate information. And according to me, gaining information about the world is expressed in discovering new phenomena to which we give new names and nothing more. Words and concepts that we use to point to things we already know – cannot add to us information that we do not have.

מיכי Staff replied 6 years ago

You say exactly the same thing as me, except that specifically regarding the claim that crows are black, you claim that it is a definition and not an argument. Even if you are right (and in my opinion you are not), it does not change the logical point demonstrated here. At most, you claim that the example is unsuccessful.
Why do I think you are wrong here too? Because you assume that the information that they are black is part of their definition, and I do not know why you assume this. In any case, whoever makes the claim that crows are black does not think so, and you should analyze it according to his method. It seems to me that you are simply speaking after the information that crows are indeed black has accumulated and has become part of the definition of a crow. This example deals with people who are in the stage before that. But as mentioned, all this is unnecessary babbling, the logical point is completely clear.

I claimed that information is accumulated about making claims? Where did you see this nonsense in my words? What I am writing is that claims contain information about the world and do not constitute a means of accumulating it (not claims that I make. Claims that I hear – sometimes yes).

סיידלר replied 6 years ago

I assume that the information that they are black is part of their definition – because that is how the word crows was created. By pointing to black birds. Not related to ”after accumulating knowledge”
I completely lost you.. those people who are “before accumulating knowledge about crows” – what are they talking about? In your opinion they say “there is such a thing called a crow, now let's find out what it is” So:
A.Who told them that there is such a thing as a crow? “They understand it intuitively”? The word deck did not exist before there were ships. Humans do not “understand intuitively that decks exist”. There is no reason that regarding the word “crow” it would be permissible to say this sentence.
B. Why do they use the sounds that make up the word "crow"? They don't know what it is, so they use the word "jigglyph" or some other funny sound to describe the thing they are going to discover.

סיידלר replied 6 years ago

C. What is the meaning of the statement "There is such a thing as a crow" before bothering to find out what it is?

מיכי Staff replied 6 years ago

The word crows was created by pointing to birds 20 cm high, so that is also part of their definition? The question is whether the color of the crows you saw characterizes all crows. The claim that all crows are black says yes, and therefore it is a significant claim. If you create the word horse by pointing to brown horses, then the brown color is part of the meaning of the word horse? Or if the horses you saw were in Kansas, then being in Kansas is part of the meaning of the word horse?
A term can be familiar to us in some of its characteristics and further examination introduces us to additional characteristics of it (or those of them that are essential or accidental). In science too, we know about space and time and the electromagnetic field and over time we discover more and more of their characteristics, and sometimes we give up on characteristics that we thought they had.
These are really very simple things, and so it seems to me that we are already slipping into idle chatter.

סיידלר replied 6 years ago

Their size is indeed an important part of what the word indicates. No exact size is needed. It is certainly possible to say that the word “crow” indicates a “black bird that is between 10 and 30 cm”high”. And it is clear to me and to you that the moment there is a huge black bird that is a meter tall that looks like a crow, we will not call it a “crow” but a “giant raven” (a new concept). If there were only brown horses in the world to which you would call “horse” and suddenly you would discover a “horse” but its color is white, you would call it “white horse” (a new concept). Space/location is not part of a phenomenon in the matter of word creation by humans. The same phenomenon can occur in several different locations. If there is no difference in the phenomenon that can be pointed out - no new word will be created to describe the phenomenon in a different location. The concept of space-time was invented when we discovered that we do not understand space well. Now the word space is indeed used to point to something different than the thing it pointed to a few decades ago (when space was thought to be filled with "space"), meaning it is the same "sound" but not exactly the same "meaning". Of course, when it comes to a very significant change in the understanding of the thing we are pointing to - a new word will already be created. (If in the past "demons" was the word used to indicate the cause of the phenomenon of milk turning sour, today the word "bacteria" is used.)
Things are indeed very simple.

סיידלר replied 6 years ago

And regarding the sentence “A term may be familiar to us in some of its characteristics” – That's exactly what I'm saying. I'm just claiming that ”black” is part of its characteristics. Why are your characteristics more legitimate to be called characteristics than the characteristic “black”?

סיידלר replied 6 years ago

Correction* This is not exactly what I am saying. I am saying that words are a tool for describing a phenomenon (with some characteristics) in reality. So to a large extent the word is the characteristics themselves. And a term cannot be familiar to us in some of its characteristics – a term is the characteristics that we know about. But the question remains, why is it that the characteristic “black” is not legitimate for you to call one of the characteristics (then the sentence “the crows are black” is equivalent to the sentence “the black thing is black”)? And regarding the other characteristics (X and Y) that you do attribute to the word “crow” – would the sentence “all crows have X and Y” be a sentence that makes a claim about the world?!

מיכי Staff replied 6 years ago

As I said, I've lost you. I think I've explained my position well. So please, I'll stop here.

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