When a man says "I'm a woman.", are they misusing words? — Harry Hindu

When a Harry spurge psychic dilemma because five sideways, misusing symptom communicates upside. But all that's by the bye; The point is can you understand? I you can't then call it misuse or call it ad hom, or call it a fuckwit playing games. Whatever you call it will be a misuse of words.

Apologies. I clicked the wrong 'reply' tab. It's been corrected.

Lol. I was confused.

Understandably >:O

I think I get what you're saying.

There are lots of occasions where the distinction between what you literally say and what you mean, or what you communicate, matters. Logic is exclusively concerned with what is literally said. Libel law. And we manipulate the distinction in our daily lives by suggesting and insinuating and implying things we don't actually say.

Am I in the neighborhood of what you were asking?

Surely I'm saying something meaningful, even though I don't understand it. — Michael

Looking back, I don't think I ever said I agree with this.

Thinking more about what you and @Michael said, there is still this oddity about what use you can possibly be making of a word, or even an entire sentence, that you don't understand.

I do think, as I said before, that this is something you'll often see with people learning a new word. And I think there are obvious limits to how far this can go.

But the other thing to note, following on what @Michael said, is that the meaningfulness of a word or a sentence is not dependent on whether you understand it, even if you're the one speaking.

And that's why "meaning is use" and related doctrines are usually expressed in the passive voice, so to speak. The user that matters for theory is not really you the individual speaker, but a fictive omni-competent speaker.

But it's your particular uses that language is put to, that make using language useful. It's as if you ask yourself, what would the ideal speaker say if she wanted to say what I want to say the way I want to say it?

Am I in the neighborhood of what you were asking? — Srap Tasmaner

I don't think so, because I can't see the connection between what you said and what i said. I'll try to explain what I said again more clearly.

In the post of your that I responded to you said this:

If my doctor tells me I have Schnarrglop's syndrome, but I don't know what that means, and then I tell someone I have Schnarrglop's syndrome, I think the second sentence is really elliptical for "My doctor told me I have Schnarrglop's syndrome." If the person you talk to says, "What's that?" it's coherent to answer, "I don't know. That's what the doc told me." — Srap Tasmaner

I was saying I think it is closer to the case, that when I tell someone I have Schnarrglop's syndrome and I don't know what that means it is really elliptical for "I have some kind of syndrome", although of course the implication that I was told this by a doctor (or someone who knows what Schnarrglop's syndrome is) is certainly inherent in that. The word "Schnarrglop's" is pretty much useless if neither I nor the person I tell knows what it is. I mean, basically what I am saying is that exactly the same amount of relevant information would be conveyed by using " some kind of" instead of "Schnarrglop's" in the sentence.

Perhaps my response above addresses this to some extent. I would say it is only the one part of the sentence ('Schnarrglop's') that is meaningless.

Except that "Schnarrglop's" is actually the right word. Think about teaching someone to play chess or to use a tool, teaching them any kind of skill. Their first attempts will be tentative and uncertain. "Is this right?" "Yes, that's how the knight moves." (Ain't it funny how the knight moves?) Their understanding is limited, but the training includes them doing something barely right at first. Similarly for the guy you tell you have S. syndrome. If he googles it, he'll have that statement you made to connect his new knowledge to.

Yes, that's a good point. The word doesn't convey any immediate extra information, but it is the key to getting extra information.

Act as if ye had understanding, and understanding will be given ye, or something. Fake it till you make it.

I guess I still haven't exactly addressed the question of whether you could be said to be really using a word if you don't understand it. As I tried to indicate earlier, whether you individually use a word, or use it correctly, isn't even directly relevant for theory. It's how the word is used that matters there.

But for you, beyond the training and learning stuff, there's a little that you already do know that entitles you to use the word: you know it's the name of a medical condition, and you know how to use expressions in that class; you know it's something someone with a life like yours could have (it's not like malaria, say); you might know some of the symptoms if that's why you were taking to the doc. And I think the person you talk to would get all that too.

So you're not quite in the position of the congenitally blind person with color-words.

Yes, I think you can rightly said to be using a word if you know that the word has a conventional use, which your use refers to, even if you don't know what that conventional use consists in (i.e. if you don't know what the term refers to exactly, you know it refers to something, even to a certain kind of thing, as in the example, where the referent is a medical condition).

Something like that... :)

My teenage son once described an album to me as resulting from a "conflagration of influences." I convinced him that was not the word he wanted, though it has a certain metaphorical charm. The problem is "confluence of influences" is hideous, so maybe his brain just refused to let him say that.

Aw, I wish I'd had a Dad like you! :-! Maybe 'conjunction' or 'convergence'?

Yeah I tried to think of all sorts of "con-" words! People even use "constellation" in related ways.

"constellation" — Srap Tasmaner

I think that's the one.

Since we were talking of communication, it might be worth noting how redundancy carried the con-versation my son and I were having-- I knew exactly what he was trying to say, what he meant, despite his extravagantly erroneous word choice.

Nah, "constellation" has this static feel to it. Maybe "convergence" is best if we're wedded to "influences."

(That second sentence is strangely poetic.)

LOL, it is "strangely poetic" or perhaps poetically strange. So, it seems you don't hold with the dynamic interrelated cosmos of astrology?

I'm proud to say the astrology reference didn't even occur to me.

Yes, that's interesting, and you could argue that it is only the fact of conventional use (along with the associative imagination) that allows it to happen like that.

I'm torn as to whether that's a good or bad thing. (I love some aspects of astrology, and the way the symbolism it embodies maps onto other sets of twelve, and particularly four sets of threes and three sets of fours; it's all very elegant and fruitful). But that's off-topic.

Yeah, and it runs pretty deep. There are certain sorts of things people say, certain words they use together, and so on. In chess there are automatic moves. I could analogize here forever. I guess we'll have to give Wittgenstein some credit here, because it also comes back to a shared way of living, not just talking.

Indeed!

When a Harry spurge psychic dilemma because five sideways, misusing symptom communicates upside. But all that's by the bye; The point is can you understand? I you can't then call it misuse or call it ad hom, or call it a fuckwit playing games. Whatever you call it will be a misuse of words. — unenlightened

Then a "transgender" is misusing words when a male calls themselves a "female"?

Well, you did use those words for a reason - no? If not, then why did you post it? What was your intent in using those words? What did you mean by using those words? It must have been to make some point, or simply to confuse. Whatever you call it will be a use of words because you had a goal-in-mind when using them.

Well, you did use those words for a reason - no? If not, then why did you post it? What was your intent in using those words? What did you mean by using those words? — Harry Hindu

His intent in using those words is not the same thing as the meaning of those words. The sentence "when a Harry spurge psychic dilemma because five sideways, misusing symptom communicates upside" is meaningless even if he has a reason for saying it and a particular goal in mind (namely, to show that your account of meaning is a false one). The sentence doesn't mean "you're wrong" even though that's what he's trying to convey in saying it.

Then how is it that I was able to understand what he means (his intent)? We can misuse words on purpose, but then are we really misusing them if we accomplish our goal as a result of using them that way? Poets and musicians "misuse" words all the time, yet we still try to get at the intent of the writer to get at what those words are meant to say. Using metaphors is using words the "wrong way", yet still convey some meaning (the intent of the user).