What Berkeley called the mist and veil of words can be a source of confusion that impedes reasoning

Outline

1. Anomalies of Language
   1. Multiple Senses of Words
   2. Dictionary vs Stipulative Definitions
   3. Ambiguity
   4. Figurative vs Literal Language
   5. Vague vs Precise Language
   6. Obscure vs Clear Language
2. Articulating Ideas Clearly, Precisely, Concisely
   1. Clarity vs Obscurity
   2. Precision vs Vagueness
   3. Concision vs Wordiness
3. Defining Words
   1. How Dictionaries Create Definitions
   2. Example: Whataboutism
   3. Multiple Senses
   4. Example: Woke
   5. Republican Uses of “Woke”
   6. What ChatGPT and Bard Say
4. Russell Conjugations

Anomalies of Language

What Berkeley called the mist and veil of words can be a source of confusion that impedes reasoning.

Multiple Senses of Words

• Words often have more than one meaning.  The first entry of Merriam-Webster’s definition of sound, for example, defines three senses:
  • a: a particular auditory impression
  • b: the sensation perceived by the sense of hearing
  • c: mechanical radiant energy that is transmitted by longitudinal pressure waves in a material medium (such as air) and is the objective cause of hearing

• Definitions can be enlightening. Merriam-Webster’s definition of sound, for instance, solves the age-old riddle: if a tree falls in the forest with no one around, does it make a sound? The answer: Yes in sense (c), No in sense (b).

• Multiple senses of words sometimes follow a pattern. An example is the distinction between the process and product senses of words, e.g. of decision, construction, and explanation:
  • merriam-webster.com/dictionary/decision
    • the act or process of deciding
      • the moment of decision has come
    • a determination arrived at after consideration :
      • made the decision to attend graduate school
  • merriam-webster.com/dictionary/construction
    • the process, art, or manner of constructing something
      • Construction of the new bridge will begin in the spring.
    • a thing constructed
  • merriam-webster.com/dictionary/explanation
    • the act or process of explaining
    • something that explains

• Symbolic logic uses grammar to distinguish different senses of the verb to be:
  1. The is of predication ascribes an attribute to something or someone.
     • Barack Obama is a Democrat.
       • Symbolic Representation
         • Db, meaning b has property D
  2. The is of identity asserts that ‘two’ things are the same thing.
     • Mark Twain is Samuel Clemens
       • Symbolic Representation
         • m = s, meaning m and s are the very same thing
     • The sum of 5 and 7 is 12.
       • Symbolic Representation
         • 5 + 7 = 12, meaning the sum of 5 and 7 is the same thing as 12
  3. The is of existence asserts the existence of something.
     • There are ghosts
       • Symbolic Representation
         • (Ex)Gx, meaning there is at least one thing x such that x is a ghost
• A fourth sense of to be is the is of definition
  • A square is a rectangle with four equal sides
    • i.e. square means rectangle with four equal sides.

• View Equivocation

Dictionary vs Stipulative Definitions

• A word acquires meaning either naturally, as language evolves, or by stipulation, whereby its meaning is established by fiat.  
• The word knife, for example, has evolved to mean “a cutting instrument consisting of a sharp blade fastened to a handle,” per Merriam-Webster.  Merriam-Webster’s definition is a dictionary definition, an empirical hypothesis about word usage subject to confirmation and refutation. 
• By contrast, The Texas Penal Code defines knife as “any bladed hand instrument that is capable of inflicting serious bodily injury or death by cutting or stabbing a person with the instrument.” This definition is stipulative, decreeing what knife is to mean, as if to say “the word knife hereby means any bladed hand instrument …”  Stipulative definitions are true by fiat rather than by virtue of usage. Thus, the Penal Code’s definition of knife is not refuted by a pair scissors, which is not a knife in the ordinary sense yet is still “a bladed instrument capable of inflicting injury or death…”
• Since it’s an empirical hypothesis, a dictionary definition can be wrong.  Consider the American Heritage’s definition of chair:
  • A piece of furniture designed to accommodate one sitting or reclining person, providing support for the back and often the arms and typically standing on four legs.
• The definition is correct only if:
  1. anything that’s a chair satisfies the definition and
  2. anything that satisfies the definition is a chair. 
• But kneeling chairs don’t satisfy condition #1, since they lack backs:

Ambiguity

• A word, phrase, or sentence is used ambiguously if it can be plausibly understood in more than one way.  Thus Matt eats only fresh vegetables is ambiguous between:
  • The only foods Matt eats are fresh vegetables. 
  • The only vegetables Matt eats are fresh vegetables. 
• Ambiguity is a property, not of words, phrases, and sentences, but of their use on particular occasions. Consider sentences with the word funny:
  • The Daily Show is usually funny, but not last night.
  • At first I thought the problem was the router but now I think there’s something funny going on with the network card.
  • Sherry met the new math teacher yesterday and said he’s a funny guy.
• The first two sentences would ordinarily be used unambiguously, the Daily Show being on the Comedy Channel and network cards not known for their humor.  The third sentence has greater potential for ambiguity.  Knowing nothing about the new math teacher, you may be uncertain whether Sherry meant humorous fellow or a strange character.  
• Ambiguity is lexical or syntactic according as it’s due to multiple senses of words or grammatical structure.  Examples:
  • Lexical
    • He’s a poor student.
    • Driver: Should I go left at the light?  Passenger: Right!
    • The duchess can’t bear children.
    • Male barn swallows attract females with long tail feathers.
  • Syntactic
    • I said I would see you on Tuesday.
    • Visiting relatives can be boring.
    • There’s a guard on duty at all times.
    • I know she killed him because she wanted the insurance money.
• The ambiguities of the lexical group derive from multiple senses of
  • poor, i.e. bad versus impoverished,
  • right, i.e. non-left versus correct,
  • bear, i.e. stand versus give birth to,
  • with, i.e. by means of versus having. 
• The sentences of the syntactic group are ambiguous because of grammar.
  • On Tuesday can modify either I said or I would see you. 
  • Visiting can be understood as a present participle modifying relatives (i.e. relatives who are visiting) or as part of the gerund visiting relatives (i.e. the act of visiting relatives). 
  • There’s a guard can mean there’s the same guard and there’s some guard or other.
  • Because she wanted the insurance money could be why she killed him or how I know.

• Words and sentences with multiple meanings are a common source of humor.
  • I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve immortality through not dying. (Woody Allen)
  • I’m feeling great, and I have sex almost every day.  Almost on Monday, almost on Tuesday, almost on Wednesday. (Jack Lalanne)
  • I told the doctor I broke my leg in two places. He told me to quit going to those places. (Henny Youngman)

Figurative vs Literal Language

• A word, phrase or sentence is used or understood figuratively if it is not used or understood literally.  Examples:

Figure of Speech	Literal Meaning
She’s under the weather.	She’s sick.
He’s between a rock and a hard place.	He’s in a difficult situation.
I’m starving.	I’m very hungry.
Curiosity killed the cat.	Satisfying one’s curiosity can have unfortunate consequences.
We have to tighten our belts.	We have to reduce expenses.
Bill’s not hurting for money.	Bill’s financially well off.
We were packed like sardines.	We were packed tightly together.
Her car loves gas.	Her car uses a lot of gas.
The White House denied the report.	The administration denied the report.
I was so mad I could have eaten nails.	I was very mad.
How can I thank you?	Thank you.
Nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb.	No person shall be prosecuted for the same offense twice.

• Figures of speech are of many kinds: metaphor, simile, personification, metonymy, litotes, hyperbole, and rhetorical question, to name a few (all represented in the table).
  • britannica.com/art/figure-of-speech
• Figures of speech can be a source of ambiguity. Her car loves gas is potentially ambiguous between her car uses a lot of gas and her car literally feels love toward gas.
• It’s typically evident from context and common knowledge whether a sentence is used figuratively or literally.  Her car loves gas is clearly figurative, motor vehicles being incapable of love.  But occasionally there’s a need to explicitly indicate how a sentence should be understood.  Your remark that the groom has cold feet is liable to be misunderstood if you’ve just seen him walking barefoot in the snow.  In such cases, words and phrases such as literally, figuratively, in a manner of speaking, as it were, so to speak and if you will come to the rescue.  The groom literally had cold feet, not as it were or in a manner of speaking. These phrases aren’t foolproof, though: I’m literally starving is sometimes used to mean I’m famished.

• View Literal and Figurative Language in the Constitution

Vague vs Precise Language

• A linguistic expression is vague if it is subject to borderline cases, possible scenarios where its truth is indeterminate though all the relevant facts are known. 
• Take the word short. Select a random sample of a thousand adult males, line them up by height, start from the short end, and try to determine who’s short.  As the men become taller their shortness becomes less obvious.  Eventually you reach a nebulous range where you’re unable to decide whether the men are short or not.  The problem isn’t a lack of evidence, since the men are directly before you and their heights can be measured.  The problem, rather, is that the meaning of short yields no precise demarcation between shortness and non-shortness. The dictionary definition of short, “having little height,” is of no help. For men in the hazy zone, the truth or falsehood of the sentence “he is short” is indeterminate.
• You can always stipulate a meaning for short, say, “less than 5 feet in height.”  But your stipulated sense is not the ordinary sense, which remains indeterminate in borderline cases.
• The opposite of vague is precise, meaning “sharply defined.”   For example, “less than 5 feet in height” versus “short.”
• Vagueness permeates language. For example, like “short,” lots of words are vague because of indeterminate minimums and maximums. The following are indeterminate:
  • the minimum height a tall male adult can be
  • the maximum height a short male adult can be
  • the minimum net worth a rich person can have
  • the maximum net worth a poor person can have
  • the minimum age an old person can be
  • the maximum age a young person can be
• Vagueness is useful.  As you wait at a crossing for a 200-car train to pass by, you can later describe the train as having a huge number of cars, though you didn’t keep count, and taking an incredibly long time to go by, though you didn’t look at your watch.  We usually don’t know enough to be precise.
• Vagueness isn’t always desirable, for example in law and science.  A law prohibiting driving at an “excessive speed” is an invitation to chaos. Newton’s theory of gravity does not vaguely predict that an object dropped at sea level picks up speed as it falls. It predicts, rather, that the object accelerates at the rate of 32 feet per second, each second, enabling objective confirmation or refutation.

• View Vagueness
• View Sorites Paradox

Obscure vs Clear Language

• A text is obscure if it’s “not readily understood or clearly expressed” (MW obscure) and clear if it’s “free from obscurity or ambiguity, easily understood” (MW clear).
• G.W.F Hegel’s 1812 book Science of Logic opens with this paragraph:
  • BEING, pure Being — without any further determination. In its indeterminate immediacy it is similar to itself alone, and also not dissimilar from any other; it has no differentiation either within itself or relatively to anything external; nor would it remain fixed in its purity, were there any determination or content which could be distinguished within it, or whereby it could be posited as distinct from an Other. It is pure indeterminateness and vacuity. – Nothing can be intuited in it, if there is any question here of intuition, or again it is merely this pure and empty intuition itself; equally there is in it no object for thought, or again it is just this empty thought. In fact, Being, indeterminate immediacy, is Nothing, neither more nor less.
• Hegel’s text is clearly obscure, being neither “readily understood nor clearly expressed.”
• It may be obscure because Hegel’s thoughts, though clear, are obscurely expressed.  Perhaps he uses words in technical senses.  Perhaps he assumes a certain level of knowledge, e.g. a familiarity with other of his works. 
• Or it may be that Hegel’s thoughts themselves are obscure, however expressed.  In this case the text is nonsense
  • merriam-webster.com/dictionary/nonsense
    • words or language having no meaning or conveying no intelligible ideas.
• Advice from Alfred E. Kahn, the “Father of Airline Deregulation:”
  • “If you can’t explain what you’re doing in plain English, you’re probably doing something wrong.”

Articulating Ideas Clearly, Precisely, Concisely

Clarity vs Obscurity

• View Clear and Obscure Language

Precision vs Vagueness

• View Precise and Vague Language
• View Vagueness

Concision vs Wordiness

• Principle #13 from The Elements of Style, by Strunk and White
  • “Omit needless words”
• Example from Wordy Sentences (BYU Idaho)
  • Wordy:
    • All of the students who are new to this school are required to attend a meeting that has been scheduled for Friday the 22nd of September.
  • Concise:
    • New students are required to attend a meeting on Friday, September 22.
• Example from Write Tight, by William Brohaugh
  • Wordy
    • Jane Doe is installing a home security system.  And she’s not the only one. Thousands of people in the tri-state area will buy such systems this year.
  • Concise
    • Jane Doe is installing a home security system, as will thousands of people in the tri-state area this year.
• Example from Writing Concisely (George Mason University)
  • Wordy
    • Frequently, the title of chapter in a book reveals to the reader the main point that the author desires to bring out during the course of the chapter.
  • Concise
    • A chapter’s title often reveals its main point.

Defining Words

How Dictionaries Create Definitions

Based on MW: Words Into Dictionary

• Lexicographers read a cross-section of published material, including books, newspapers, magazines, and digital publications, looking for new words, new usages of existing words, variant spellings, and inflected forms.
• When they find something interesting they enter a citation into a database called a corpus.
• A citation consists of
  • the word
  • an example of the word used in context
  • bibliographic information about the source of the example.
• When enough citations are collected lexicographers develop a hypothesis about the meaning of the word. After the hypothesis is confirmed by additional citations, the word is added to the dictionary.

Example: Whataboutism

• Lexicographers noticed the word whataboutism being used a lot and start collecting citations, with sentences such as:
  • “They accomplish it by muddying the waters and distracting from international criticisms with whataboutisms such as telling the world that there’s nothing exceptional about America.”
  • “In the interviews, Trump supporters adamantly clung to what they called evidence of a fraudulent election, engaged in so-called whataboutism to play down the scenes of destruction in Washington and accused the news media of being overly melodramatic in describing events as a historic inflection.”
  • “Whataboutism is essentially a big cowardly shield to hide behind, where instead of answering a question or debating the argument at hand, one reflects the topic back to the opposing side asking things like ‘oh what about when your side did this’ or ‘what about this issue’, hence coining the term whataboutism.”
• After examining the citations the lexicographers developed a definition:
  • merriam-webster.com/dictionary/whataboutism
    • : the act or practice of responding to an accusation of wrongdoing by claiming that an offense committed by another is similar or worse
    • also : the response itself

Multiple Senses

• Figuring out meanings can be tricky where there are multiple senses involved.
• The word appear is a good example.
  • He appeared out of nowhere. (to be or come in sight) 
  • I have to appear in court Thursday. (to come formally before an authoritative body)
  • New strains of the flu virus appear every year. (to come into existence) 
  • The sun appears larger when it’s setting. (to have an outward aspect)
  • It appears they’ll be late. (to become evident or manifest)

Example: Woke

• Lexicographers observed two uses of “woke”:
  • First use:
    • “I advise everybody to be a little careful when they go down through there [Alabama]. Just stay woke. Keep your eyes open.”
    • “We have a moral obligation to “stay woke,” take a stand and be active; challenging injustices and racism in our communities and fighting hatred and discrimination wherever it rises.”
  • Second use:
    • See Republican Uses of Woke below
• Lexicographers at Merriam Webster developed their definition (merriam-webster.com/dictionary/woke):
  • Chiefly US slang:
    • 1. aware of and actively attentive to important societal facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice)
      • often used in contexts that suggest someone’s expressed beliefs about such matters are not backed with genuine concern or action
      • also : reflecting the attitudes of woke people
    • 2. Disapproving : politically liberal (as in matters of racial and social justice) especially in a way that is considered unreasonable or extreme
• Lexicographers at dictionary.com (Random House Unabridged) developed a similar definition (dictionary.com/browse/woke):
  • 1. having or marked by an active awareness of systemic injustices and prejudices, especially those involving the treatment of ethnic, racial, or sexual minorities:
  • 2. Disparaging. of or relating to a liberal progressive orthodoxy, especially promoting inclusive policies or ideologies that welcome or embrace ethnic, racial, or sexual minorities.
• Simply put, “woke” used derisively means rabidly liberal. And “wokeism” means rabid liberalism.
• Thus Nikki Haley’s quotes below can be rephrased:
  • “I’m running for president to renew an America that’s proud and strong, not weak and rabidly liberal.“
  • “Rabid liberalism is a virus more dangerous than any pandemic, hands down.”

Republican Uses of “Woke”

• Kevin McCarthy
  • “Buried in the omnibus is even more money for woke-ism in the government and military.”
  • “This bill does nothing to prevent toxic woke ideology from being taught in our children’s classrooms.”
  • “The woke Left wants to further divide Americans against each other based on race, sex, and background.”
• Nikki Haley
  • “I’m running for president to renew an America that’s proud and strong, not weak and woke.”
  • “Wokeness is a virus more dangerous than any pandemic, hands down.”
• Sarah Sanders
  • “While you reap the consequences of their failures, the Biden administration seems more interested in woke fantasies than the hard reality Americans face every day,”
• Ron DeSantis
  • “I think what you see now with the rise of this ‘woke’ ideology is an attempt to really delegitimize our history and to delegitimize our institutions. And I view the wokeness as a form of cultural Marxism.”
  • “We have maintained law and order. We have protected the rights of parents. We have respected our taxpayers, and we reject woke ideology.”
  • “And we reject woke ideology. We fight the woke in the legislature. We fight the woke in the schools. We fight the woke in the corporations. We will never, ever surrender to the woke mob. Florida is where woke goes to die.”
• Mike Pence
  • “The woke capital agenda of the Biden administration needs to be cast aside for commonsense policies that protect American retirees.”
• Marco Rubio
  • “Bending a knee to woke progressive craziness has made CEOs more popular than ever in elite settings. 
  • No policymaker would allow a company to dump toxic waste into a river upstream of a thriving town he is charged with governing. Yet corporate America eagerly dumps woke, toxic nonsense into our culture, and it’s only gotten more destructive with time.”
• Donald Trump
  • “It is time to eradicate Joe Biden’s sinister ‘equity’ Executive Order that has led to the woke takeover of the U.S. Government!”

What ChatGPT and Bard Say

What does the word “woke” mean?

• Bard (Google)
  • The word “woke” is an adjective that means “aware of and actively attentive to important facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice).” It is often used to describe someone who is politically or socially aware, and who is actively involved in fighting for social justice.
  • The word “woke” originated in African American Vernacular English (AAVE), and it gained more widespread use beginning in 2014 as part of the Black Lives Matter movement. By the end of that same decade it was also being applied by some as a general pejorative for anyone who is or appears to be politically left-leaning.
  • The word “woke” is a powerful word, and it can be used to describe a wide range of people and activities. It is important to use the word carefully, and to be aware of its different meanings.

• ChatGPT (Open AI)
  • The word “woke” is a slang term that originated in African American Vernacular English (AAVE) and has been popularized in mainstream culture. It’s used to describe a heightened awareness of social justice issues, particularly those related to racism and inequality.
  • To be “woke” means to be aware of and actively engaged in issues of social justice, particularly those related to race and ethnicity. It’s often associated with progressive and liberal political beliefs and activism, and is used to describe someone who is conscious of systemic injustices and takes action to challenge and address them. The term has been used in various contexts, from political activism to advertising and marketing, and has sparked both praise and criticism for its perceived effectiveness in promoting social change.

Russell Conjugations

Bertrand Russell created a clever way of contrasting words with the same meaning but different connotations.

• I’ve reconsidered; you’ve changed your mind; he’s flip-flopped
• I’m a whistle-blower, you’re an informant, he’s a snitch.
• I’m a liberal, you’re a leftist, he’s a socialist (or woke).
• I’m an author, you’re a writer, he’s a hack.
• I’m steadfast, you’re stubborn, he’s pigheaded
• I am righteously indignant, you’re angry, he’s having a hissy fit
• I’m self-assured, you’re smug, he’s conceited