Obfuscatory Discourse
http://www.umsl.edu/~alexanderjm/ScholarsAndSoundbites.pdf
There is a link to a pdf by Graff, which is a paper he wrote about the fact that academia has an unjustified culture of obtuse and obfuscatory communication styles. This is not just limited to overly-jargonized communication to other specialists in a narrow field, but also to general academic discourse and literature, which is written in esoteric manners, which are often inaccessible to general audiences.
The general thrust of the paper is that this is an unnecessary addition to the academic process.
My personal take on this situation, is that even in philosophical conversations, the likes of which occur in this forum, can become overly pedantic and obtuse, to the extent that any meaningful communication is sacrificed on the altar of self aggrandizement. I think there is a lot of value in a sort of "blue collar philosophy," where the object is clearly communicating ideas in ways which are in line with the common patterns of communication. The objective being transferring information to another person, who very well could be a lay person or a non-specialist, as opposed to posturing as a deeply intellectual savant.
I would be curious to hear anyone else's opinion. One final thing I would add here, is the quote from Einstein,
"If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough."
There is a link to a pdf by Graff, which is a paper he wrote about the fact that academia has an unjustified culture of obtuse and obfuscatory communication styles. This is not just limited to overly-jargonized communication to other specialists in a narrow field, but also to general academic discourse and literature, which is written in esoteric manners, which are often inaccessible to general audiences.
The general thrust of the paper is that this is an unnecessary addition to the academic process.
My personal take on this situation, is that even in philosophical conversations, the likes of which occur in this forum, can become overly pedantic and obtuse, to the extent that any meaningful communication is sacrificed on the altar of self aggrandizement. I think there is a lot of value in a sort of "blue collar philosophy," where the object is clearly communicating ideas in ways which are in line with the common patterns of communication. The objective being transferring information to another person, who very well could be a lay person or a non-specialist, as opposed to posturing as a deeply intellectual savant.
I would be curious to hear anyone else's opinion. One final thing I would add here, is the quote from Einstein,
"If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough."
Comments (116)
I am often of the impression that it is a way of hiding one's ignorance from both one's self and others. The gaps and jumps get covered over by reference to a specialized terminology and conceptual apparatus.
One of the most difficult things is to speak simply and clearly. Nietzsche said:
Many years ago I made a "business card" that said:
Philosophies for All Occasions
Specializing in the Obfuscational
Generally, what makes philosophy difficult is understanding concepts and how they relate to each other both contemporaneously and historically. So, no matter how clearly something is written, if you don't have the right background knowledge to contextualize it, you'll likely find yourself lost. And to expect philosophical writers to provide all that background knowledge and not presume some of it would be unreasonable. So, sure, deliberate attempts to overcomplicate or obscure in order to self-aggrandize can be frustrating, but as @SophistiCat pointed out, some stuff is just very difficult.
Hilarious!
I'm with you and Einstein. If you can't explain it to your son, you don't understand it. I have found myself using philosophical terms more than I used to. Some of it is useful and even when it's not needed, it's good to use the same type of language as the rest of the people on the forum. There's nothing mysterious about reality, knowledge, or morals, so no weird language is required.
Nobody on this forum should be making up new philosophical terms unless they're ridiculing something or someone.
And since we're on the subject of clarity, I'll make my usual pitch for defining important terms in the opening post or as they come up. At least 50% of the arguments on the forum come from people using different meanings for the same words.
Most who asked for an explanation did not see the irony.
The corpus of English is extremely large, and is larded with rarely used and/or obscure terms often coined from Latin and Greek roots relatively recently in the history of the language. Words like
sessile - fixed in one place, immobile; from the Latin verb sedere, to seat
callipygian - nicely shaped buttocks - aka, nice ass - late 18th century: from Greek kallip?gos (used to describe a famous statue of Venus), from kallos ‘beauty’ + p?g? ‘buttocks’, + -ian.
minatory - expressing a threat, late Latin minat- "threatened"
cenacle - a discussion group - late Middle English: from Old French cenacle, from Latin cenaculum, from cena ‘dinner’. The Philosophy Forum is a "cenacle".
Obscure words, or more common words strangely twisted into obscurity are a way of demonstrating that one's word stock is very big, and that one is dealing with such deep and difficult concepts that they simply can not be expressed in ordinary language for worms like us.
I expect to encounter difficulty when I open a book on quantum mechanics (something I assiduously avoid doing) but not when I open a book about English literature, or sociology, or history, or any number of topics which deal with the lives and experiences of real people. Employing obscure vocabulary and terribly complex sentence structure does not signal insight, It is a bright flashing light leading us to an author who knows less than he or she seems to know.
The use of a core of perhaps 25,000 English words that have been in use since the 1400s, and is made up of Anglo-Saxon and Old French words, forces a writer to reveal what he really knows, or does not. Obfuscation is much more difficult in plain language -- as George Orwell said his essay, Politics and the English Language:
In general, then, write in the simplest possible language to honestly convey the content of one's mind.
In my past work, I have found that many professional people really hate abandoning their particular argot (not to be confused with ergot).
The usual defense is that some ideas require difficult, dense expression. But I think it's rare that the sort of writing we're talking about couldn't be communicated just as well in a much clearer, simpler way . . . even if it would still have to be relatively challenging.
The systematic abuse of a terminology specially invented for that purpose.
I assume you are an educated person, like most of us here. Educated, one way or another.
Would you rather read philosophy (or pedagogical theory, sociology, history, literary criticism, etc.) that was expressed in familiar language (using words ranked in the most frequent 25% of the English corpus of 172,000 words -- that's still about 43.000 possible words -- or would you like to read texts composed with many of the least frequently used words (like cenacle) and freely borrowing from languages with which you are not familiar? Add to that clumsy sentence structure and other sins of composition.
Much of the philosophy I read was not written in English and much of it is not by contemporary writers. As to clumsy sentence structure and other sins of composition, some influential philosophers have been accused of this. While I think there is some justification of this, I am not so quick to put the blame on them. Perhaps the fault is in my understanding.
When it comes to others, however, I am generally intolerant of writings that take what is found in academic journals as the model of good writing.
Added:
Quoting Terrapin Station
Yes, that too!
Perhaps this bright flashing light is meant to be blinding, so as to protect the position from opposition
My main complaint is that the point of communication is the transference of ideas, not the flexing of intellectual muscles or deliberately complicating what should be simple.
Translation and age of the text is a separate issue, altogether.
But just in English, some writers in past periods (Edwardian, Victorian, Georgian...) have had styles which now seem at least very tedious, if not verbose. Addison's long and lively Tom Jones was written out by hand and one would have thought he would have been more economical, given the labor of writing longhand. Samuel Johnson (1709-1785 author of the first English Dictionary, editor of an edition of Shakespeare, and more) and his close friend and biographer, James Boswell (1740-1795) were both fine writers, imho, and are readily accessible. There are writers in the Victorian period I find just plain tiresome to read because of the style of the times--long winded, erudite, complicated structure. Samuel Pepys, 1633-1703), an administrator in the English navy, wrote his famous diary in very contemporary sounding prose.
Point is, English has had several episodes of rather heavy language, in academic fields as well as in literature.
Probably not the best example of a straightforward philosophical concept there.
https://plato.stanford.edu/search/search?page=1&query=freedom&prepend=None
One criterion seems to be: there is a simpler way to say it. We can see if the examples pass this test. For example.
Edit: after looking a little harder, I see there is a response, it is just the way notifications work here, I was not notified because I was not "mentioned" in the reply
Yeah I am okay with experts using jargon to expedite communication, I guess where I have an issue is when communication bogs down when one party decides to deliberately complicate their language. Reducing the bandwidth of information transfer between two parties fro arbitrary reasons seems rather useless.
Sure, and that's where cases can help. Especially here where people with some expertise are conversing with others who have little and then others have a lot. What seems like posturing might simply be not realizing what communication is best given the experience of the other person.
But I agree that people can get fancy ass - my wording - for the wrong reasons.
Here is my submission:
Quoting Mww
It's one of those passages that you can read three or four times over, and yet still be like: what the fuck is he saying?
The username under the quote is a link to the discussion. You'll also find my brilliant parody.
:lol:
Thanks. I've read it a few times. I wonder if it might be a failure to communicate well rather than obfuscatory discourse. Now, those are not mutually exclusive terms, but I say this because for me the words he uses and not problematic in and of themselves - iow given my comfort level with the terms. It doesn't strike me, now, as Quoting rlclauer
Now it might be that. He's talking about motive and I can't be sure of that.
In any case it strikes me as someone stringing together too many abstractions, but fairly non-jargony ones, sort of forgetting that it's hard to follow.
I checked ahead in the thread and he does not clarify. So perhaps we'll never know.
I am not particularly disagreeing with you, just saying I think it might be another kind of problematic communication than riclauer meant. We can see what he says.
Would you like an aspirin?
It seems fairly clear to me. He's saying that the idea of concepts being incorrect in themselves is incorrect. He's referencing Kant's "thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind", saying that cognition is not possible without concepts and that errors in cognition result not from incorrect concepts but from incorrect use of them. A child sees a horse and thinks "big dog" for example. The concept of a horse as a "big dog" is not incorrect, but its use is cognitively incorrect. See the distinction?
As to the OP, I think language can be arcane, and there may be poetic value in that, if it makes you think, put effort into interpreting what is written, and think differently. Some complex allusive ideas cannot be translated into simple "literal" language without any loss of conceptual richness. Of course if you have no taste for poetry then you won't like a lot of "continental" philosophy. I like to say that in philosophy there are two main traditions: there is the Anal Tradition and the Incontinent Tradition; the retentive and the expressive.
Why would I, when no one asked me for it. And usually no one asks, for one of two reasons: no one cares enough, or, it’s so much easier to make fun of the writer, then to query for an understanding of the written.
Thank you. Twice. Cuz now I don’t have to do it myself.
I can’t lie.....my ego says thank you too. You know how they are.....nosey, noisy little buggers.
So, now we have a clarification accepted by Mww
Which means we can see if it could have been clearer from the beginning. Note that Janus' explanation is longer.
Mww's paragraph has 90 words and 396 letters.
Janus' clarification has 79 words and 404 letters.
Approximately equal length.
Do S and riclauer find Janus' explanation clear? Clearer?
Since they are about the same length, does this mean, if it is clearer, that the original was problematic?
One immediate difference is an example in the clarification. Another is that the clarification mentions Kant. Allowing one to put the argument in a context. Should these, ideally, have been there in Mww's post?. It seems like Mww effectively communicated to Janus what he meant. What obligation is there to people who might not have realized Kant was implicit? Perhaps this was clear in context back there that he was working with Kant's ideas. Did S miss that?
A lot of the classic philosophers get pretty dense, with their own coined terms, use of different languages, their own idiosyncratic uses of words. Is that OK? If so, why would it not be OK here?
Do we think that here it is more a lay forum, so it would be good to assume less about the other's abilities? Or would this be least skilled dumbing down?
Good post. Even if it had nothing to do with somewhat exonerating me, it would still be a good post.
I gave an example.
Another person said it made sense to him. YEA!! Count ‘em....TWO!!!
I make no apologies for my writing style, a cross between Andy Rooney and Stephen King I always say, and I will never dumb down my entries here.
Moving on......
You mean 'kill'?
Thinking further I guess it begs the question as to whose misery I'd be putting them out of.
Better to pass them away painlessly and gently.
Isn't that just what euthanasia is, though? Perhaps that painlessness and gentleness is the difference between killing and euthanazing, so perhaps I was not euphemizing after all?
Yup. Unquestionably a problem.
Quoting rlclauer
It is a bit of a problem here, but I find it far worse in the average document published by a college professor. Around here, when I can't understand people, I generally blame my inadequate knowledge of the subject being discussed. I only call people out for being pedantic if it is a subject I am very confident in.
Have you ever read anything by an English professor? Literary criticisms are the most pedantic documents I have ever read...it also seems intentional. I wouldn't mind except high school english teachers assign these pieces of garbage to their students (with the expressed intent of clarifying their understanding of whatever book they are reading).
Quoting Fooloso4
Does it seem strange that I can 100% agree with this, and 100% agree with the OP? I don't think anything was specifically said that would discount what you wrote here.
Quoting StreetlightX
hehe, what, does that seem a pedantic title to you?
As I almost always agree with, or learn from, your posts, let me disagree and see if I can learn something.
Does the speaker have any responsibility in being understood?
What you have wrote seems to imply we all have communication preferences (undoubtedly true), so misunderstanding will occur? (correct my misunderstanding where needed)
MOST, certainly not all, but most people who can use pedantic language are smart enough to be aware of it. Therefor, they should be smart enough to NOT use it if they are hoping to communicate with a large swathe of humanity.
Now I can admit there are some very bright people that may primarily operate using vague figurative language...and some of these people may do it so regularly that it is just who they are, and they can't even realize they are doing it (@Mww and @PoeticUniverse come to mind). I don't find these people pedantic, but I do find that I have to read much of what they write multiple times before it makes sense.
Quoting Janus
I am sure I am being stupid, but can you give me a non-art example of this? Or do you mean stuff like the word "red" cannot capture everything we experience when we see "red"...ugh, I hope it is not that as that example NEVER causes confusion in a conversation. I have never had someone question what I meant when I said "red".
The use of "Obfuscatory" was probably intentional, a kind of joke on the OP.
I once attended a pretentious, cultured art lecture at Vassar College in which they went on and on and raving about the sticking to the 'canon' and especially pointing out the exquisite use of "particulate matter"—which turned out to be 'sand'.
I think there's a new support group for sophisicate babblers, called 'On and on, anon.'.
Agreed, I think that is what @StreetlightX was pointing out anyway. And you are probably right that @rlclauer was well aware of what he was doing there.
Quoting PoeticUniverse
Yes. This could be a dictionary example of pedantic. There may be times and places where jargon or complicated vocabulary are necessary (or at least helpful in some way), but this is an example where all the use of 'particulate matter' accomplished was to reduce the number of people that understood the message being delivered.
Quoting PoeticUniverse
I often tell students the best reason for a big vocabulary is comedy :smile:
I don't think that we should have to ask. I think that you should write clearer in the first place to avoid that scenario. If something is excessively unclear in wording, seemingly deliberately as a matter of style, then that puts me off asking for a clarification, because then it might just be more of the same.
And making fun of it is almost a given. Can't let an opportunity like that slip away.
Definitely clearer.
Quoting Coben
No. This is Mww we're talking about, after all.
Knock yourself out.
I guess there seem like other possibilities. I don't think Janus' clarification was a dumbed down post. IOW there's no need to apologize, but you have the option of reaching perhaps more people without dumbing down. Or not. That's up in the air. But it seems like a possibility. Of course the appeal of this depends on your goals.
How beautiful. I have great difficulty comprehending and always struggling to grasp that meaning or concept or theory.
As a counterpoint to Einstein, I have the following:
Every complex question has a simple answer which usually isn't correct.
I'm paraphrasing so forgive me for any errors. What do you make of that?
By the way Einstein's theory of relativity is not easy.
Then there's Feynman who said "if you understand quantum physics then you don't understand it."
It's crazy what people say. I guess Schrodinger's cat is both dead and alive.
They're the sharpest of the lot. If only they'd chosen science what wonders we may have achieved!
Oh you need to spend more time on a philosophy forum (although on second thought...).
Anyway, it just strikes me that alot of the the circle-jerk of mutual-agreement going on in this thread is a apology for condescension. It reeks of a lack of respect for the intelligence of the other, or else just intelligence in general. Not even children ought to be spoken to like children, who generally deserve much better than we give them. The OP's linked essay has a very nice point about how, when writing about tough topics, one ought to be 'dual-lingual': able to flit easily between specialist and lay writing. This I quite like.
Politicians universally speak like fucking morons, as though to an audience of equally moronic dolts. It's insufferable.
I must say that the so-called "intellectual" is the real moron as absurd as that sounds. Not trying to contradict you. Just a feeling I have. :smile:
I don't doubt it.
And sure, many people are in a torpor, including in philosophy forums. I don't see that entails one assumes the role of waking people up from that. I don't see many good examples, in my long history with philosophy forums of people being woken up by dense posts. Doesn't mean I haven't appreciated some very dense posts, it's more like I don't know what you're on about. In any case, it seems you just repeated your position, instead of responding to my post. I am sure you have been successful waking people up out of their torpors by insulting them for no reason and not responding to their posts. But many of us may lack the miraculous grace that surrounds your posts.
Oh, and circle jerk was a really nice addition. I suddenly realized something about Kant I never got before.
Amazingly my experience in philosophy forums had led to encounters with people who can't really respond to other people's posts but see other people's posts as a chance to repeat their assertions and attitude.
You'll pardon me if I ignore you from here on out. Must be my love of torpor.
I meant that you should save yourself from the torpor is all! It was a dig at forums, on which I waste plenty of my time too - not you. Apologies it it came off otherwise.
Don't be excessive, lest they throw your meal away.
I can't disagree, but we don't always understand our subject matter. Perhaps because we're still learning about it? Nevertheless, I think we all accept (?) communication is optimised if we are able to employ simplicity and clarity. In English, there's always E-Prime to consider too. All it really does is to express your thought(s), clearly, without implication, inference or magnification.
"Korzybski observed improvement "of one full letter grade" by "students who did not generalize by using that infinitive"."
I'm just offering a different opinion. That's all.
I actually think you're correct. When you understand something then you can probably see through the incidental aspects of an issue and see its essence. The best analogy I can come up with is a beautiful woman letting her clothes drop to the floor and allowing you to "grasp" her essence. Shed of distracting "nonessential" components we could say that it is "simpler" than it appeared when you began. I think Einstein was/is right.
If an artificial difficulty person goes to a "normal player," and tries to speak to them about the intricacies of imposing difficulty on oneself, it would probably be lost on the normal player, and if the difficulty person said "well you are just not a good player and you need to get better, I would not lower my skill level or knowledge of the game lore to speak with you, that would be insulting to you," the "normal player" would shrug and look at them like, "ok?"
It's all well and good if you are a super intelligent savant and you have read 100s maybe 1000s of books and you have wrestled with the loftier points of human intellectual achievement. I think that is something to celebrate. I agree, there is something to be said for challenging writing styles and speaking to bring the mind to rise to the occasion. But there is also something to be said for clear communication, in order to begin to illuminate the minds of those who have not arisen to those luminous heights through their own toil.
Sounds like you acknowledge there are times when pedantic language is a problem? Why bother with the lay writing?
Quoting StreetlightX
Huh? I don't measure intelligence based on vocabulary (at most, vocabulary shows an education level). Using common language is showing that I DO respect their intelligence, even if they don't know fancy words (I still want their opinion on the subject). When I am asked to explain a word, I don't lose respect for the questioner, I analyze what I said to see how I could communicate better next time.
To make a point comprehensive. As the essay says, putting something in lay-writing often doesn't simply restate a point, but transforms it, or at least elaborates it in a different way. To weave between 'bi-lingual' writing is to make that writing comprehensive. One should speak to the lowest common denominator no less than the highest, each affording a new and different light on what is said.
Quoting ZhouBoTong
Good. Neither do I, which I why I didn't speak of vocabulary, let alone even use the word.
Quoting SophistiCat
Quoting T Clark
Quoting rlclauer
There is a good historical example for the Einstein quote.
When Algoritmi wrote his book in the 9th century, the "Liber Algebrae", he needed hundreds of pages to explain what in modern math is just a one liner of sorts. The big book started circulating in Europe in the 12th century, and caused a stir, because Algoritmi proposed a complete solution for the quadratic (degree=2).
That was something that nobody had been able to pull off till then.
So, it was considered some esoteric magic that came from mythical Arabia with its harems and 101 nights, that contained secret spells. So, "Don't tell anybody else that you now know about the secret!" before they passed on the secret to the next person to be initiated.
It took a long while to solve the cubic (degree=3) and the quartic (degree=4), mostly because the Catholic Church did not like the subject at all. The Medieval Italians who finally unravelled it, had to hide that they were working on it, and did stints in prison while frantically trying to avoid getting burned at the stake.
[i]The Soviet historian I. Y. Depman claimed that even earlier, in 1486, Spanish mathematician Valmes was burned at the stake for claiming to have solved the quartic equation. Inquisitor General Tomás de Torquemada allegedly told Valmes that it was the will of God that such a solution be inaccessible to human understanding.
The solution of the quartic was published together with that of the cubic by Ferrari's mentor Gerolamo Cardano in the book Ars Magna.[/i]
They were first secretly circulating encrypted drafts of parts of the half-finished solution:
[i]The solution to one particular case of the cubic equation had been communicated to him in 1539 by Niccolò Fontana Tartaglia (who later claimed that Cardano had sworn not to reveal it, and engaged Cardano in a decade-long dispute) in the form of a poem.
Cardano was arrested by the Inquisition in 1570 for unknown reasons, and forced to spend several months in prison and abjure his professorship.[/i]
Huh? I thought the thread was 'obfuscatory discourse'? Isn't vocabulary the biggest obfuscatator?
Quoting StreetlightX
I thought you were referring to the people here that are agreeing that pedantic language use can be a problem?
Quoting StreetlightX
Since I am obviously wrong, what is the "it" you are referring to here?
Quoting StreetlightX
When you say "spoken to like children"...you are NOT talking about vocabulary? What, is my grammar going to be too complex for them? Surely it is the VOCABULARY that they would have trouble understanding, so that would be the part is 'dumbed down'...what am I missing here?
No, I wasn't suggesting anything like that.
Consider the following passage from the preface of Difference and Repetition by Gilles Deleuze:
"The subject dealt with here is manifestly in the air. The signs may be noted: Heidegger's more and more pronounced orientation towards a philosophy of ontological Difference; the structuralist project, based upon a distribution of differential characters within a space of coexistence; the contemporary novelist's art which revolves around difference and repetition, not only in its most abstract reflections but also in its effective techniques; the discovery in a variety of fields of a power peculiar to repetition, a power which also inhabits the unconscious, language and art. All these signs may be attributed to a generalized anti-Hegelianism: difference and repetition have taken the place of the identical and the negative, of identity and contradiction. For difference implies the negative, and allows itself to lead to contradiction, only to the extent that its subordination to the identical is maintained. The primacy of identity, however conceived, defines the world of representation. But modern thought is born of the failure of representation, of the loss of identities, and of the discovery of all the forces that act under the representation of the identical. The modern world is one of simulacra. Man did not survive God, nor did the identity of the subject survive that of substance. All identities are only simulated, produced as an optical 'effect' by the more profound game of difference and repetition. We propose to think difference in itself independently of the forms of representation which reduce it to the Same, and the relation of different to different independently of those forms which make them pass through the negative."
What do you make of it? Is it meaningless to you? If so, do you think you would not be able understand it if you were familiar with the central ideas of the philosophers Heidegger and Hegel he refers to? If you do understand it, do you think what it is saying could have somehow been expressed in simpler, more "literal" language, and if so, without any loss of quality?
I asked several direct questions that I think would have shed more light on the situation, but fine, let's try it this way:
Quoting Janus
pure pedantic garbage...right? It says NOTHING, right? I understand all of the words...but maybe their sum is greater than the parts? You have also pulled a random passage out of context, which may be why I am not picking up the full meaning.
Quoting Janus
I am not sure I even know what exactly they are saying here ("for example"? or "we know this is true because"? or "there are signs that we can record"? - the last one seems most direct, but as this passage is out of context, I can't say for sure (and if the last one right, why is it being said at all?). Seems a poor use of language.
Quoting Janus
Here you are right, I don't know Heidegger. I like to think ideas existed before people became famous for them, but I can understand there are SOME TIMES (not a lot) where saying a name can act as a useful summary.
Quoting Janus
yes. I would have to know what the structuralist project is
Quoting Janus
while not terrible, this is verging on pedantic. This could be written in a way that is clear to more people without much effort.
As I am not very interested in the content of the passage, and I think I have gone through enough to prove both of our points (and I don't want to torture you as I go through every line), I will stop there.
Quoting Janus
Not written for me. I would lose interest after the hearing that "the subject is manifestly in the air".
Quoting Janus
Not meaningless, but you are right to assume there are allusions/references that I do not understand (and those allusions/references are the major ideas being referred to).
Quoting Janus
It would clarify the few sentences that require background knowledge. And obviously, the WHOLE passage requires context (much of which is the philosophy of Heideger and Hegel...but not all). And the random capitalizations (sometimes Difference, sometimes difference) suggest a writer who just IS NOT considering the reader at all.
There is NOTHING I understand that I would explain so unclearly...but yes I am a moron, so oh well.
Hardly. Presumed knowledge, unarticulated concepts, references allusive or explicit, condensed presentation of reasoning and so on do far more to make a work hard to read than any 'big vocabulary'. If anything an unfamiliar vocabulary is the lowest bar of entry - vocabulary can be looked up in a dictionary, and in some cases, if you don't know the words, it's very likely that you either A) should educate yourself better, and B) realize that you're trying to have a conversation which you are not fit for. It's like people are too afraid to appear stupid and have to require the world to bend to their own inabilities.
Quoting removedmembershiprc
Quoting Fooloso4
Quoting Bitter Crank
I agree with everyone else here, too.
I just want to add that "obscure" scientific writing and journals full of it may use words that are less frequently used than normal, or they may be extremely little frequently used; but the vocabulary of these trade journals is surprisingly impoverished. They use, typically, 2000 words, except the words they use are esoteric.
The more esoteric a trade or profession is, the more esoteric words they will use. But their word usage is not wide. AND the in common English rarely occurring words they use are those that relate to their trade. So I think -- despite agreeing with everyone else on this thread -- is that this thread is complete total ignorant bullshit.
Most of the threads on THIS website, a philosophy forum, do not require understanding of any of the difficulties you have mentioned above. A philosophy forum would be more likely to discuss issues that could be difficult, and yet most threads do not REQUIRE knowledge of technical jargon or references to a specific philosopher, to be understood.
I am NOT saying that the more technical threads are all pedantic. Those are the passages you refer to when saying I (we) need to get educated or butt out - and I AGREE.
But most communication, most of the time, should be communicated with the goal of being understood by as many as possible. Why not?
Quoting god must be atheist
haha, I feel like almost everyone is discussing a slightly different version of the same topic. If we each are visualizing a different scenario where complicated language is used, how can we agree on the usage?
Absolutely not. If you have a paper trying to solve, say, the Riemann hypothesis, the goal of that paper is to solve the Riemann hypothesis, and not cater to everyone and anyone with a passing interest. This isn't to say anything goes. Ideally, one ought to write to be understood by those with the technical knowledge and background capable of understanding the problem, and your proposed solution. But 'as many people as possible'? No. Just as many as you need. We don't just communicate in order to communicate, we communicate to make a point, pursue a goal, get something done, solve a problem, etc. "As many people as possible" is not your problem. Many people are idiots.
I thought that complicated language is not the issue, but the usage of esoteric words. If the language of a text is proper, it is never complicated. I guess I am not quite right in this statement; but the only exception I can find is legal documents. They don't need to use complicated words to say something complicatedly. "It is an offence notwithstanding paragraph 8, section 27, except exemptions of section (9) and sections (494) through to (49303). when and only if the sheriff's duties are delegated to a paralegal under the provisio of paragraph 4, section (44), regardless of however many wickets the crickets dicker."
Hypotheses are not to be solved. In math and logic, they are taken as assumptions, as givens, as accepted as true. In science hypotheses are to be supported, or shown some credibility by actual observations of test results or natural phenomenon.
Science proves nothing. Proof is not one of the aims or functions of science. In math and logic you don't prove hypotheses. You prove theorems.
Sorry. Not my fault. I did not do it.
Agreed. I would not expect to understand that paper...but seriously, what realm do you exist in where that is part of 'most' communications?
So just so you get why I am arguing, I taught Martial Arts for 10 years. Since then I have taught middle school through high school, mostly history, but some math, and too much English as well. I want EVERY student to be able to understand. And fortunately, there is almost nothing taught at the high school level, that can't be explained fairly simply...most humans' academic level is WELL BELOW the knowledge learned in high school (they may know a lot about their job, but would struggle to compete with 6th graders at math and history).
When I taught martial arts, I COULD have used all sorts of technical jargon, but there is this concept called code-switching which most people can do pretty easily. I used technical terms with people that get it, and common language with those who don't.
Now I get you work at a college, where everyone is brilliant. But outside the ivory tower (hehe, I've never sounded so Republican before), there are very few subjects that can not be easily, simply, and clearly explained.
Fair enough, I was just trying to use 'complicated language' to summarize all of the different language issues that have popped up in this thread.
Quoting god must be atheist
makes sense, since they do NEED to be understood by everyone.
I agree. My quibble is with those who would take this as a general model to be universally applicable, so that anything that doesn't conform to this ease of communication is a mark of inadequacy. There is a space, a necessary one, for things to be hard-going. Not everything should be made easy, as though a matter of principle. There's a time and place. And we should respect those times and places. Just as we should respect situations in which simple explanation is warranted and necessary.
Entirely agreed. I do believe in prerequisites :smile:
If a person tries to learn calculus before addition and subtraction, they are going to have a lot of problems.
And there is that whole zone-of-proximal-development thing which says if stuff is TOO HARD or TOO EASY students will not learn to their potential.
Quoting god must be atheist
The Riemann hypothesis is a question that arises under the assumptions of number theory (Dedekind-Peano), or a theory that encompasses it, such as set theory (ZFC).
So, in the abstract, Platonic world generated by the axiomatic assumptions of number theory, a particular number pattern emerges. You can manually check it for any arbitrary value. Up till now, nobody has discovered a counterexample.
What is now wanted, is a chain of provable, first-order logic that works its way back to the assumptions, and which therefore proves that the pattern will always occur for any arbitrary value.
This particular pattern about the zeta function was first reported in 1859 by Bernhard Riemann (160 years ago).
Some patterns in numbers are easy to derive from the construction logic of number theory, but other ones have resisted every attempt at bringing them back successfully. You can clearly see these patterns and pick examples to verify, but nobody has found a way to link them to the very construction logic of the world in which they occur.
It is not possible to add the Riemann hypothesis to the axioms of number theory, because it may not be independent of the existing axioms. It could actually be provable from them, but that is exactly what is not known today.
By the way, the Clay Institute pays out $1 million to anybody who figures out the Riemann hypothesis.
:kiss:
Sorry I missed your reply earlier. What were the direct questions you refer to? I'd be happy to try to answer them if you are still interested.
Quoting ZhouBoTong
Firstly I don't think "pedantic" is an appropriate judgement in the context of what we are discussing here. Secondly I think it just means that the subject has obviously been much discussed of late ("of late" or "in the air" meaning at the time of writing of course) and so is of present philosophical significance.
Anyway I don't think we can do very much with your comments on the text, so perhaps we need to try a different approach.
Quoting Janus
If it is not pedantic, then the speaker has made overly complicated language their normal form of communication (you are right without 'knowing' the author did it with the intention of sounding smart, I can't say for sure it is pedantic - but it is still problematic).
Quoting Janus
Exactly. So it said, "here is a current subject of interest"...Well, I sure hope so! Why else are you writing this whole essay about it?
Oh and just in case it helps, I DO believe in prerequisites. I DO believe some subjects are so complicated that an uninitiated needs to go do some studying before participating.
However, MOST of the time:
Doesn't the speaker have some responsibility in being understood? When communicating with other humans that don't have master's or doctorate degrees, are phrases like "the subject is manifestly in the air" effective communication?
If a relatively benign phrase like that seems like too much to you, you shouldn't be studying philosophy. That something is 'in the air' is, if anything, a pretty colloquial expression.
Too much for me? Who said that? Wasn't it fairly obvious that I understood it? Maybe not? It is just garbage writing. What percent of the English speaking world do you think would EXACTLY understand that sentence? If you say more than 10% I think you need to talk to some people that are not college professors. Was that one of those sentences you mentioned where it is important to make the reader think?
Quoting StreetlightX
Sure but it is used very causally as it doesn't say much (which is exactly how the author uses it). Adding the word manifestly is just going to ensure that some percent of your readers aren't EXACTLY following. Similarly, if I ask "do you have a preference for X?" I could ask the exact same question but be sure I have alienated some readers by asking "do you have a discriminating preference for X"?
Quoting StreetlightX
So what is the prerequisite? Who should be studying philosophy? Since disliking unclear communication is a dis-qualifier, is there a test I can take so that I know when I am ready to start studying philosophy?
As they say in math, shut up and show your work. No work, no play.
I read most of that paper. It itself has that academic smell. Not much is said, but it's puffed up with allusions and quotations. I find the same smell in lots of journalism these days. It's as if most of the work goes into signaling that the author is a particular kind of trustworthy, educated chap. What is the word for it? Depersonalized? Bogus?
Quoting removedmembershiprc
I like where you are going. Let's be fair to the other side, though. I've been personally frustrated by acquaintances who pose as interested in Big Questions who nevertheless don't read anything. Unless a person naturally lives in the conceptual realm (which is to say has a passion for getting it right), they probably won't read themselves 'up' to the level of good, relatively current conversation.
Having given the other side its due, I still think that plenty of 'intellectual' writing is lost in the mirror.
Cool. I only took a couple of philosophy courses in college, and they did not get into showing your work. Can you give me a quick example from this thread where you have "shown your work" so I know how to do so effectively?
Quoting alcontali
Thanks for the explanation, Alcontali. I looked up "The Riemann Hypothesis" and this is the simplest explanation that I found:
Well, f... me.
:-)