They Say Eloquence Never Forget

[bcholmes]

I get a lot of e-mail about my web site. Which I think is cool, but I often don't know what to say in response. Two words keep coming up again and again in those e-mails: intellectual and logical.

Every few months, I get e-mail from a Christian apologist who says something like, "You're non-Christian and yet (surprisingly) you seem very logical. I'd like to argue Christian theology with you." Christian apologists always want to argue theology. Go figger.

These situations make me wonder about how I present myself in electronic spacese.

On alt.poly, recently, a coupl'a people have shown up that I don't really have a lot of respect for. Both of them have flaunted their intelligence and talked ad nauseum about concepts like "scientific process" and "logic". All the while arguing in support of stupid-ass positions.

(Tangent: remember when you first read the D&D rulebook, and they went to great length to explain that intelligence and wisdom were two different statistics, and how they differed from one another?)

One of them recently said (I'm paraphrasing), "some people just don't think logically about X or Y or Z," and I thought, "so what?" What's wrong with not exclusively thinking logically? Do you realize, I thought, that you inhabit a head space that privileges logic? How informedly did you arrive in that headspace? Have you ever interrogated that value system?

I've been thinking about this a lot because someone on alt.poly was talking about Lojban, about which I was previously ignorant. Lojban is a logical, unambiguous language. I found this statement about the language very interesting:

Lojban was originally designed for the purpose of supporting research on a concept known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. Simply expressed, this hypothesis states that the structure of a language constrains the thinking of people using that language.

I was surprised at just how turned off I was by the idea of a language that is so logical. I found myself pondering what is lost in a language that can't be ambiguous. (And I should acknowledge, here, that other than cursory reading about Lojban, I really don't know enough about it to be dissing it the way I am, but so what).

The people at lojban.org say that "Lojban attempts to remove restrictions on creative and clear thought and communication." And a big part of me thinks, who says that clear thought is creative. Some part of me believes that creativity and art and insight and intuition come from that part of the brain that processes puns and metaphors and homonyms (heh heh: homo-nyms... ) (See: there's a queer thought. The association of queerness with intuition... a thought I only triggered because of free-association on the spelling and pronounciation of the word).

When people tell me that I'm so logical, I kinda feel like I've just been given a mug as a birthday present: You don't really know me, do you? I think.

There were very clearly times in my life when I did value logic highly. I mean, hell, growing up with a last name of "Holmes" meant that I was always going to be compared to the paragon of deductive thinking.

But I value different skills now. I sometimes say that my only real skill in life is pattern matching. I have this hyperactive tendency to look for patterns in things.

Intuition is a big thing with me. I remember back when I worked for IBM. There was a guy who worked in the expert systems area (that stuff that computer people call "artificial intelligence" -- you know, the kind of computers that have been just around the corner for twenty-five years now), and he told a story of trying to build an expert system to help with supporting computer applications at IBM. He said that he and his department interviewed a bunch of the best application problem solvers at IBM, asking them about the process they used to determine the problem. All of them, he said, eventually said something like, "I had a gut feeling about X". (I've since heard that there's a skill that can be learned that allows one to tease out steps that lead to intuitive leaps; I don't know anything about that skill but it sounds really interesting).

I'm also really fond of perspective switching (a phrase I think I first heard from firecat). The ability to try on different headspaces or worldviews and see something different. I think that's one of the things that postmodernism really got me onto. For me, the value of postmodernism is that it provides tools that help one see one's headspace apparatus. (What is the name of the skill that allows me to change perspective?)

I am certain that I have a default headspace... one that sometimes refuses to budge on certain long-standing beliefs of mine. But I also know that that headspace has a backdoor. Eloquence is the thing that is able to slip past the mental barriers that logic can't penetrate. I've often talked about how Douglas Hofstadter's essay, "A Person-Paper on Purity in Language" was able to finally get through the stupid resistance I had about gender-neutral pronouns. The fact that Hofstadter is an eloquent writer meant far more to me than the fact that Hofstadter is a logical writer.

It's not just eloquence though. There has to be something inside me that the eloquence can attach itself to. Some eloquent phrases just ring hollow to my ears and don't... click. (I find this a lot when people quote the American founding fathers, for example. "Liberty is a well-armed lamb? What?" I feel like the person in the gag about the joke-tellers convention. "24" "519" "Sorry, some people just can't tell jokes.") (Did you understand something about what I meant when I explained myself with a joke? Was that analogy somehow related to logic?) What is the name of the thing inside me that eloquence about a certain topic can attach itself to? Does Lojban have a word for that?

Why are Zen koans so quirky? Why are mantras so spiritual? Why did Jesus talk in parables?

I find myself pondering what would be lost in the Lojban translation of the Tao Te Ching. Everything important, I feel.

Comments

[dunhamdancer.livejournal.com]

oooh...have to re-read this one later...too much thinking to do tonight...off to bed. G'night BC! I'll reply to this tomorrow...late...after i wake up the 2nd time!

love,
Chrystie

the uses of language

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

Lojban was originally designed for the purpose of supporting research on a concept known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. Simply expressed, this hypothesis states that the structure of a language constrains the thinking of people using that language.

One of the things that fascinates me most about language (and pains me so much that my brain is so resistant to learning any) is how it expresses the thought processes of the people who use it.

I'm always telling people the story about how the guy who was trying to teach us Irish Gaelic explained that the Irish do not have words that mean unequivocably "yes" or "no" -- only "mostly yes" at best, and the resulting lightbulb that went off in my head. I "get" my whole family (including me) a little better since that meme.

I was surprised at just how turned off I was by the idea of a language that is so logical. I found myself pondering what is lost in a language that can't be ambiguous.

I think it's a fantastic concept and I would love to learn how to speak it and use it in conversation with other people who speak it -- for the exploration of logical concepts.

I also want to learn Irish so I can better understand the way my family thinks.

And I want to learn a host of other languages so I can get how the internal landscape of their cultures look. (I'be been told Arabic is the ultimate language for poetry.)

One of these days I will figure out how to train my brain to absorb that kind of knowledge. There is a way of accessing it if I can just find the right path.

[hellsop.livejournal.com]

Personally, I think Sapir-Whorf is only applicable with any consistancy during the same childhood years that learning languages is fluid. That is, the hypothesis is it likely true: primary language use forms thought patterns. The conclusion drawn from it, that thought patterns can be altered by use of an arbitrary new language, doesn't seem to follow to me.

Is the computer term you're talking about "Context siwtching"?

Hofstadter's essay may be brilliant, but I think his goal was to inflame as a means to educate, and that attempt doesn't seem to have had much effect on me over the course of reading it several times with years in between. My objections to "gender-neutral" language are largely based on that I still find "hir/sie" to be mentally jarring, and (affectations such as "herstory" aside) that it's entirely possible to write English in a gender-neutral manner with pre-existing vocabulary and habitual care. Even example pronouns where gender doesn't matter can fairly be assigned a gender randomly or at whim, because the gender of the person in the example doesn't matter, right? The political rights and empowerment of the homemaker don't change regardless of whether "he" or "she" is used as a pronoun. I can happily accept either and read smoothly, but "sie" jumping up and down in the text yells "Look at me! I'm being neutral!" and struggles with the author's actual point for my attention.

Was it Twain who talked of Americans and English as being "two peoples divided by a common language"? I understand "Liberty is a well-armed lamb" and most of the other pithy aphorisms attributed to the US founders. They do speak to me and, I expect, that a large part of the reason that they do stems from that I am from and of the US, and comprehend (if not always agree with) the precepts and basises upon which the country was founded. I live with them, and am surrounded by them, and comprehend fully and instantly the ram-ifcations of the "well-armed lamb". Interestingly this is likely for exactly the same formative reasons that Sapir-Whorf talks about; I'm steeped in this culture, and its vocabulary has molded my thought patterns.

[mr-sharkey.livejournal.com]

> There were very clearly times in my life when I did value
> logic highly. I mean, hell, growing up with a last name of
> "Holmes" meant that I was always going to be compared to the
> paragon of deductive thinking.


That's funny. The first person I thought of was John Holmes,
not Sherlock.

Times change, or maybe it's just me.



M.

[firecat]

I feel that as I get older, I rely more on what I might for lack of a better word call "intuition" and have less of a sense that language can adequately describe my mental/emotional landscape. I suspect if I live to be a thousand, all I'll be able to say is "mu."