Re: A question of semantics

Estel Telcontar <estel_telcontar@...> wrote:
>
> I'm not sure exactly what's wrong with it either, though I'm trying to
> figure it out.  It may be a case where -  how do I explain this? - the
> statement is technically correct because it includes what I want to
> express, but unsatisfyingly inaccurate because its centre or focus is
> not on what I want to express.  Almost as if the statement I make draws
> a circle around a some semantic territory, and my meaning is inside the
> correct semantic territory, but not near the middle, and I feel that
> when  my statement is received, the listener/reader will automatically
> understand something near the middle of the circle of semantic
> territory.  Whether or not this is such a case, I know I've found cases
> like that.
That is certainly true.  While there are lots of cases like that, the
ones that are relevant to this thread is when there is no way to
phrase what you mean in a way that most readers will home in on the
correct interpretation.

To a great extent, my example of "with probability one" is like that.
Most people will interpret it as being a paraphrasing of "includes
all possible outcomes", but the concepts are not very close.  They
happen to be the same for discrete probabilities, which is all that
non-mathematicians will have encountered, but are very different in
general.

There is a similar one with describing tastes.  Something like 60%
of Caucasians cannot distinguish bitter and sour.  It is extremely
hard to explain the distinction to someone who cannot, and is not
aware of the fact and roughly what the difference is.

In all of the cases I am thinking of, the problem is that you are
trying to express a concept in a language that does not have it,
in any form, rather than one that is merely not present in a
concise or convenient form.

An example of the latter is the colour "medium yellow ochre with a
hint of green".  Pretty well everyone with a fair knowledge of
colours and normal colour vision will visualise something very close
to the colour I am visualising.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.

Reply