ChaunceyRiddle

Human Ways of Forming Answers to Questions

Type	Description	A Principal Use	Strength	Weakness
Authoritarianism	Composite of opinions of other human beings	To know one’s mother tongue	Easiest	Often wrong
Rationalism	Deducing an answer from accepted premises	Balancing one’s checkbook	Very sure if premises are correct	Premises must be taken on faith
Empiricism	Directly sensing something to know it	Finding the exit	Helps us to relate to our immediate environment	Many important things cannot be sensed
Statistical Empiricism	Forming a conclusion on the basis of arrays of data	Which ball bearing lasts longest	Very good masses of empirical data	Biased sample gives wrong impressions
Pragmatism	Calling what works “the truth”	When a baby cries, it is picked up and comforted	Great last resort	May be coincidence
Fabrication	Inventing a hypothesis	Detective work Theory in science Mathematics	Hypothesis helps in recognizing evidence	We may begin to believe our hypotheses, shutting off further thought
Mysticism	Substituting “immediacy” for noetic knowing	Religious satisfaction?	Very satisfying	Intellectually empty
Scholarship	Forming ideas about past on basis of authoritarianism, rationalism, and fabrication	Biography of Napoleon	Gives a rational thread to accounts of the past	Often in error because of bias of extant documents
Science	Forming ideas about the universe on basis of authoritarianism, rationalism, statistical empiricism and fabrication	Creation of the periodic table	Helps to discover and control nature	Cannot deal with the non-empirical
Revelation	Forming ideas on basis of communication with the supernatural	Learn the nature of God	Most productive means for the most important questions in life	Two sources, one good, one evil
Knowledge of Good and Evil	Feelings of the heart which differentiate righteousness from selfishness	Differentiate revelation from God from revelation from Satan	Priceless key to all knowing	Variable from person to person, because some are not honest in heart

Priesthood: The power and authority from God to assist in the saving work of Jesus Christ.

• Power: Ability to perform miracles by divine means.
• Authority: Delegated right to act for God.

Name of the priesthood: The Holy Priesthood after the Order of the Son of God. (D&C 107:3)

A true priest always leads people to find the living Christ for themselves and to live by His light.

Priestcraft: Setting oneself up as a light unto the world for praise or gain. (2 Nephi 26:29)

Functions of the true priesthood:

1. Preach a binding witness of Christ upon people’s souls.
2. Administer the ordinances of salvation in the New and Everlasting Covenant of Jesus Christ.
3. Judge persons as to their worthiness to partake of the ordinances in the New and Everlasting Covenant of Jesus Christ.
4. Order and organize the Church of Jesus Christ and the Kingdom of God on earth. (The Church and families.)
5. Perform miracles to further the work of Jesus Christ.

Priesthood performance: To receive the Holy Priesthood is to receive a designated duty or duties to perform in the kingdom of Jesus Christ which can only be fulfilled by the true power and authority of Jesus Christ. Honorably to fulfill such duties is worthy priesthood performance. Receiving the priesthood is not an honor, but much more than an honor: it is a responsibility to produce worthy priesthood performance.

Priesthood proven: A bearer of the Holy Priesthood is priesthood proven when he has shown that he can be trusted to fulfill any and every priesthood assignment. This is only done by achieving a series of worthy priesthood performances.

Worldly authority: Dominion is exercised from the top down.

Divine authority: Righteous dominion means that one is appointed by God to preside over others and thus becomes their servant. This dominion is exercised only from the bottom up.

There are three steps to receive the fullness of the Melchizedek Priesthood:

1. To have the Melchizedek Priesthood conferred and to be ordained to an office in that priesthood.
2. To receive one’s endowments in the holy temple.
3. To be sealed (married) in the holy temple for time and eternity.

How to use the Holy Priesthood: D&C 121:34–46.

Jesus Christ is the source of all good things on this earth. If any person does any good thing, it is by the gifts and power of Christ. Satan is the father of all lies and other evil. If any person on this earth does an evil thing, it is because he or she has yielded to the temptation of Satan. The agency of man is to choose at each moment between the gifts and power of Christ and the gifts and power of Satan. (Moroni 10:24–25; Moses 4:3–4; 2 Nephi 2:26–29) Below is a sequencing of the basic gifts and power of God available to mankind. Receiving each gift is prerequisite to receiving the next gift.

1. The light of Christ. A radiation from Christ which is the law by which all things in the universe are governed. It enables men to live, breathe and be intelligent; to tell the truth, to do good things for one another. It manifests itself in the form of conscience.

2. The Gospel message. Enables persons to understand how to enter into the New and Everlasting Covenant of God in order to do greater good. It is manifest unto men by the preaching and teaching of prophets, in scripture, and in the whisperings of the Holy Spirit.

3. The witness of the Holy Ghost. Assurance to the heart and mind that Christ lives and that the Gospel message is true. It manifests itself in the voice of conscience, but a stronger, augmented conscience. Conscientious persons readily accept this witness, for they already recognize the voice of God.

4. Faith in Jesus Christ. Faith is willing trust and obedience to someone or something. Faith in Jesus Christ exists first in trust in and obedience to the Holy Ghost, who is the messenger from the Father and from our Savior. Afterward it may also exist in trust in and obedience to direct personal instruction from the Father or the Son, but only as led by the Holy Ghost. Faith is a gift in that the prerequisite is having a message from God, but that gift does not fulfill faith. Faith in Jesus Christ is fulfilled or manifest only in wholehearted obedience to a specific message from God.

5. Baptism by water. The formal act of accepting the New and Everlasting Covenant by being immersed in water under the hand of one authorized by God. It is \efficacious only to those who have accepted the witness of the Holy Ghost that the Gospel is true, and who do make the promises of the covenant.

6. The Gift of the Holy Ghost. The constant companionship of the Holy Ghost, to lead one into all truth and to all righteousness. It comes only to those who make the covenant of baptism knowing and intending to keep the promises of the covenant, and only by the laying on of hands by one having authority from God. It manifests itself in the voice of the augmented conscience.

7. Hope in Christ. Faith in Jesus Christ encourages one to hope for celestial gifts and blessings. As one thus hopes, he or she has the gift of hope. Without this hope, faith will not endure. Hope is fulfilled and manifested in a determination to be faithful, to endure to the end, come what may.

8. The gifts of the Holy Ghost. Special gifts and power from God to do specific good acts in and for the kingdom of God. Some of the standard gifts are enumerated in D&C 46. They are manifest through the Gift of the Holy Ghost.

9. The Holy Priesthood. Received by the laying on of hands to work in behalf of God to do supernatural good for others within specially prescribed bounds (keys). This power manifests itself through the Gift of the Holy Ghost.

10. The Holy Endowment. A further bestowal of priesthood, received in the temple by the laying on of hands. (“Endowment” means gift.) Specific gifts of knowledge and power are bestowed. These gifts are manifest and usable only through the Gift of the Holy Ghost.

11. Eternal marriage. Received only in the temple, and is the final stage of receiving the Melchizedek Priesthood. Specific gifts and powers (keys) are bestowed. These are manifest and usable only through the Gift of the Holy Ghost.

12. Charity. All other gifts are foundation for this greatest and culminating gift. Charity is the pure love of Christ manifest in power unto blessing everything and everyone around the bearer of this gift. To have this charity is to have become just, keeping all the laws of God; to have become merciful, to forgive all others their trespasses and to pay the penalty thereof whenever possible; and to have gained the power of Christ, our covenant Father. To have this charity is to be as Christ, one with Him. It manifests itself in everything one is and does, physical or spiritual. To live in this gift is to have “endured to the end.”

Thinking: The spiritual, intellectual, social and physical response of a person to his total environment on the basis of all the evidence he can gather and in accordance with his own eternal personality. To think is to exercise agency.

I. Preparation

1. Get rid of what we usually start with
   Pride
   Fear
   Despair
   Fatigue
   Ennui
2. By fostering what is born of discipline
   Humility (spirituality)
   Courage
   Conscience
   Health
   Enthusiasm

II. Definition

1. Carefully size up the problem and as much of the situation which has created the problem as possible.
2. Turn the problem over and over, looking at all sides of it.
3. Define how and for what you intend to use the answer.
4. Formulate the problem in carefully defined terms.

III. Hypothesis

1. Construct an answer to the problem in terms of all you now know and feel. You must start where you are.
2. Detail the hypothesis sufficiently that it becomes rich with implications. (This is known as “sticking your neck out.”) This is usually done by making the hypothesis as specific and as “concrete” as possible.
3. Formulate the hypothesis as simply as is possible in symbols that will enhance communication.

IV. Test the Hypothesis

1. Intellectual. Employ the thinking processes deliberately and carefully. Especially search out the consistency of the hypothesis with as many other things you know and believe as possible.
2. Study. Gather relevant information everywhere possible. Read, examine, pick the minds of intelligent people on the subject as you have appropriate opportunity.
3. Social. Try your hypothesis out by telling your friends about it. (A friend is a person who can and will cut your ideas down to size with reason and evidence without cutting you down or demanding that you accept his or her ideas.)
4. Experiment. Act on your hypothesis doing the best you know mentally, physically, and spiritually. Carefully note the consequences. (If you cannot experiment with it, it is not a real problem.)
5. Time. Don’t be in a great hurry unless the problem is unimportant. If the hypothesis wears well over a period of time, good. The better you become at thinking, the more success you have had in doing it, the more you can afford to move swiftly.
6. Prayer. The spiritual test is the most important. Prayer should be the beginning, the constant middle, and the terminus of all real thinking. If you are humble and spiritual, light and truth will flow into you as you exercise your own powers to think as fully as possible.

V. Modify your Hypothesis

1. As each bit of sound evidence and inference brings new light, modify the hypothesis appropriately. Use all the results of all the tests insofar as possible.
2. Never finalize your hypothesis. If it works, delight in it and bear testimony to it on appropriate occasions. But never assume that no new evidence can cause a change in your hypothesis. That would be intellectual and spiritual death.

VI. Record your Results

1. Even though your memory is marvelous, write down your testimony of your fruitful hypothesis. Sin can snatch from you both your memory and your testimony to good things. You may need the record later to revive yourself.
2. Keep a Book of Remembrance. The most precious heritage you could possibly give your posterity would be a record of your good ideas, your testimony and experiments.

VII. Courage

1. Have the courage of your convictions. If you always act on your best ideas, you will never be sorry.
2. Bear witness in word (as you are prompted) and in deed to your good ideas. Don’t worry if you stand alone before men. Fear God, not men. If you stand with God, He and many righteous people will stand with you in this age.

1.   Since a basic definition is always ostensive, and since ostensive definition can only offer family resemblance likeness in the formation of universals, the first language learned by a person must always be a vernacular language where family resemblance is the unifying factor in all universals.

2.   After a vernacular language has been mastered, essential definitions can be constructed, thus making technical languages possible.

3.   For a symbol system to be a language, there must be:

• a.   A community of persons who have a need or opportunity to cooperate.
• b.   A common physical context (to make primitive ostensive definitions possible).
• c.   A set of signals (phonemes, letters, gestures, etc.)
• d.   A defining procedure (ostensive plus other definitions).
• e.   A lexicon: a set of defined signals.
• f.    A syntax: a set of typical patterns of word and sentence formation.
• g.   A rhetoric: a set of typical patterns of sentence usage in conversation and writing.
• h.   A social structure for identifying and rewarding “correct” usage and for identifying and penalizing “incorrect” usage.

4.   Mastery of a language is the ability to use it correctly (typically) for all purposes, satisfying the social structure which rewards and penalizes usage.

5.   Once they have mastered a language, some persons who are leaders expand the typical patterns by introducing new symbols with old meanings, new symbols having new meanings, new meanings for old symbols, new syntactical arrangements, new defining procedures, and new social support structures. This atypical use of language is the occasion for the growth of knowledge, change in values, and the drift of language.

6.   Language is a technology, the most important technology known to man. It is thus an instrument of power. It enables men to:

• a.   share good things with others (righteousness),
• b.   dominate others (unrighteousness), and
• c.   fill up time (phatic use of language).

7.   Principles of language use:

• a.   Radical utility. Usefulness shapes and controls the nature of every language in every aspect.
• b.   Indeterminacy. Any linguistic structure can be used to mean anything by any person.
• c.   Typicality. For any given language in a given time/place/culture there is a pattern of typical phonetic, semantic, syntactic and rhetorical usage, the mastery of which makes one a full-fledged member of that language community. Non-typical usage is simply error.
• d.   Atypicality. One who has mastered a language can then use it atypically with great power. Atypicality must be very close to typicality to have power. When one uses language atypically, one is attempting to assume a leadership role. (Any given population is susceptible to the atypicality of leaders because there are always unfulfilled desires. The leader raises the hope of fulfilling those unfulfilled desires by leading the group to the “promised land.”)
• e.   Parsimony. When language is used for sharing or control, efficiency is important: language tends to be lean, spare, nothing unnecessary. When language is used phatically, parsimony is undesirable.
• f.    Ellipsis. No speaker can express all he means in any finite discourse. The meaning of any utterance is ultimately the total universe of the speaker.
• g.   Entropy. There is always a loss of information from speaker to hearer in any natural language transaction.
• h.   Integrality. As persons have four parts, so meaning has four parts: heart, might, mind and strength. The whole person speaks in every linguistic usage.
• i.    Attraction. The community using a given language grows (in relation to rival languages) in proportion to the relative utility of that language.
• j.    Generality. A pattern of typicality in a language is more widespread the more large segments of the population have common linguistic experience. (E.g., television is a powerful establisher of typicality.)
• k.   Diversity. The more a sub-population desires to separate itself from a community, the more its typical language patterns will differ from that of the community from which it wishes to separate itself. Examples of the need for diversity: 1) professional jargon; 2) preventing “out” persons from penetrating an “in” group.

February 1987

1.   “Mean” is an active verb. It signifies the intentional act of a person. It is appropriate to ask about any intentional act, “What do you mean (to do).” One of the mistakes of our civilization is to make “mean” a passive verb as regards both human action and “natural” events.

2.   People “mean” through action, including language, to help others form correct associations of universals in the “others’” own minds.

3.   False witness is knowingly or unknowingly to affirm a false association of universals or to negate a true association of universals.

4.   Valid (honest, true) witness is affirming an association of universals or denying such an association on the basis of sufficient support.

5.   People “mean” by using words, usually words in sentences. All meaning is pattern, type, shadow, paradigm. Example: The school is small. “The school” is a pattern: this thing which partakes of the pattern of being a collection of persons which includes those more learned and those less learned and where the more learned are assisting the less learned to learn more. “Small” means that the numbers of persons involved is fewer than one expects to find. “Is” means that one should add the two patterns into one to think of this school correctly.

6.   Typical patterns of meaning:

• a.   Persons, places, things, concepts: Nouns
• b.   Partial patterns of persons, places, things, concepts: Adjectives
• c.   Actions or states: Verbs
• d.   Partial patterns of actions or states: Adverbs
• e.   Pointers to patterns: Articles, pronouns, demonstrative adjectives
• f.    Operators on patterns: Conjunctions
• g.   Affirmation of conjoined pattern: Verb “to be”
• h.   Prohibition of conjoined pattern: Negation

7.   Sentence formation: All basic sentences are kernel sentences, having only one subject universal, one predicate universal, a copula affirming or denying the conjunction of the subject and predicate universals to form a new universal, plus the possibility of a pointer to the subject universal. Example: The school is small.

8.   Complex sentences are simply grammatically felicitous concatenations of kernel sentences. Example: This aviation school has only one instructor. Constituent kernel sentences:

• a.   This school is aviational.
• b.   This aviation school is school-having-one-instructor.
• c.   This aviation school having one instructor is school-having-only-one-instructor.

9.   Meaning of sentences: Permutations and combinations of the basic stock meanings in a person’s mind.

10. Metaphor: conjoining a universal with a target universal in a novel way, suggesting the result to be a more or less permanent description.

• Dead metaphor: customary conjunction. Apt metaphor: combines reaction of surprise and appreciation of insight in receiver.
• Example: He is a crab.

11. Simile: conjoining one standard universal to another in a more or less temporary arrangement. Example: He walks like a crab.

12. Class identification: Conjoining a given universal with a genus universal. Example: He is an Amerindian.

13. Personal identification: seldom possible with words; better done by photographs, paintings, fingerprint patterns, etc.

1. What is communication?   

2. What is language?

1. Definition of human language.
2. Definition of divine language.

3. Is language a natural phenomenon, a human artifact, or a gift of God?

4. Was language created once for all time?

            Is language constantly created by each use?

5. Is meaning of symbols intrinsic or extrinsic?

6. Is language aided or hindered by complexity of forms?

7. Is language best studied synchronically or diachronically?

8. Is language creatively increased and expanding, or is it decaying?

9. Is language study exhausted in comparative grammar and philology, or must it reach out to include all of what human beings do with language?

10. Do the grammatical forms of language reflect the particular culture of a people or are such quite accidental?

11. Do we think only with words, or may we also think without them?

12. Is each person’s language private, or is there no such thing as private language?

13. Do words refer to objects or to ideas?

14. What are the mechanisms of reference?

15. What are the capabilities and limitations of different notational systems in language?

16. Is translation always possible or not?

17. Is language whole and contextual or is it linear?

18. Do poetry and prose really differ, or are they essentially the same?

19. What are the differences between the spoken and the written versions of a language?

20. Can everything be said?

21. What is the ideal language and how would it operate?

1.   Definition of language: Any patterned and normed set of assertion codes by which one being communicates with another.

Patterned: A finite set of standard projections which may be combined and recombined in a virtually infinite set of communications.

Examples:

•       Written language: An alphabet, a syntax, a rhetoric
•       Spoken language: Morphemes, a syntax, a rhetoric

Normed: Mutual agreement in a community of agents as to the definition of a pattern set. This establishes typical usage.

Example:

•             Periodic table of the elements
•             Dictionary

Assertion: Any communication of one being to another.

Example: A person speaks standard morpheme patterns in a standard syntax and rhetoric to communicate with others within his group.

Code: Medium for the physical projection of an assertion in a language.

Example:

•             Regular spoken English
•             Morse code
•             Sign language
•             Digital language

2.   Kinds of language:

• a.   English, French, American Sign Language.
• b.   Body language (actions and appearance)
• c.   Chemical triggers
• d.   Concept language

3.   Basic principle of language usage: Radical Utility: All language use is governed by the desire of individuals to communicate with (affect change in) their environment. The only limitation on language is that it work (that the individual achieves his desires). There are no necessary patterns, norms, codes or languages. Any individual may do anything he or she pleases with language. The only question is, does what is done further the desires of the individual or not?

4.   Other principles of language use:

• a.   All meaning is personal. No language pattern means anything. Meaning is always a function of the speaker or hearer but never of the connecting language link between speaker and hearer.
• b.   All meaning is total. To get a full understanding of what a person means by a given communication one would need to understand his entire being: heart, might, mind and strength in the past, present and future.
• c.   All language is abstract. All meaning is particular.
• d.   There are two kinds of language in every culture:
•            1)   Common sense language: Meanings are vague and general (family resemblance)
             Example: I want to buy an apple tree.
•            2)   Technical: Meanings are relatively much more precise (essence)
             Example: I want to buy a Stark Yellow Delicious on a Malling IX
• e.   No language usage should be self-referential. Language must always depict things from a “distance” to avoid paradoxes.

5.   Parameters necessary to a language:

• a.   A community of persons who have a need to cooperate.
• b.   A common physical context. (This makes definition possible)
• c.   A code. A set of signals.
• d.   A syntax. A typical set of word and sentence forming patterns.
• e.   A rhetoric. A typical set of message and communication patterns.
• f.    A lexicon. A standard set of words.
• g.   A defining procedure. A standard means of relating codes, words and meanings.
• h.   A culture. A common set of beliefs, values and customs.

6.   Natural language: Any language learned as a mother tongue.

Artificial language: Any language not learned as a mother tongue by anyone. Any language artificially constructed or artificially employed.

7.   Grammar: Rules invented in the attempt to provide pattern for syntax systems. (Grammar is an artificial imposition on a language; syntax is the typical “natural” patterning of a language. Grammar is not used to learn mother tongues. It is a “schooling” contrivance thought by some to assist the learning of second languages.)

8.   Stages of language:

• a.   Pidgin: Noun language formed in the first generation of cultural contact between two very different language cultures.
• b.   Creole: Basic inflected language formed in the second generation of cultural contact between two very different language cultures.
• c.   Normal language: Fully developed language having all tenses, moods, cases needed by the participants.

9.   Additional principles of language use:

• a.   Indeterminacy: There are no correct or incorrect semantic, syntactic, or rhetorical patterns in any language. There is only modal usage. Modal usage is a pattern that is used most often in a particular culture at a particular time and place to accomplish a particular task.
• b.   Typicality: The modal usage of language in a particular time, place, and culture. Only by mastering the typical patterns of a language can one gain entrance to most social groups. Typicality maximizes the utility of language for most ordinary purposes.
• c.   Entropy: There is always a loss of information between the sender and the receiver in any natural communication.
• d.   Ellipsis: No speaker can say all of what he means in any finite language use.
• e.   Parsimony: Communication must be finite to be effective. (Say all that is necessary but no more.) The principle of parsimony does not apply to phatic communication; there the goal is to fill up time, so the communication may be infinite.
• f.    Integrality: Every assertion has four principal parts. Speaker intent, speaker message, speaker support, speaker result. This is matched by hearer intent, hearer message, hearer support, hearer result. (These map on to heart, might, mind and strength for every person.)
• g.   Attraction: The community using a given language grows in number (in relation to the number of users of rival languages) in proportion to the relatively greater utility of a language.
• h.   Generality: The more widespread and the greater the number of experiences a language population has in common, the more uniform the language usage tends to become (patterns of typicality have more widespread use.)
• i.    Diversity: The more a sub-population desires to separate itself from a community, the more it clings to non-typical patterns of language. Non-typical patterns are used when there is a need to:

•            1)   Discourse in a technical way about recondite matters (jargon).
•            2)   Prevent the general population from understanding or penetrating an “in” group (dialect).

• j.    Admittance: the entre into any social group is to master the language patterns of that group.
• k.   Accession: The key by which to acquire the total culture of any social group is to master the typical language patterns of that group.
• l.    Stability: Typical use of language tends to stabilize language forms through time. Factors which tend stability in a language:

•            1)   Constant physical environment.
•            2)   Constant culture/religious environment.
•            3)   Appreciation/respect for ancestors/conventions/traditions.
•            4)   Influential persons who speak typically.
•            5)   A written literature which is highly respected and widely read.

• m.  Metamorphosis: Non-typical and atypical use of language tends to cause language forms to change. Factors which abet metamorphosis:

•            1)   New physical environment or factors.
•            2)   Desire for exclusivity.
•            3)   Desire for novelty.
•            4)   Influential persons who speak atypically or non-typically.
•            5)   Social interaction with other cultures.
•            6)   Preponderance of spoken over written usage of the language.

10. The signals (codings) used by a language vary on a scale from very representational to very referential. Examples:

• a.   Very referential: Binary codes, alphabets.
• b.   Moderately referential: Glyphs, pictographs
• c.   Moderately representational: Pantomime, pictures, graphs
• d.   Very representational: Drama, movies, television, role-playing.

Referential coding maximizes efficiency in communication.

Representational coding maximizes efficacy in communication.

11. Naming may be random or rational.

• a.   Rational coding: Surnames, latitude, and legated descriptive names
• b.   Random coding: Most given names

12. Defining: pairing a symbol with another indicator of meaning.

•             (Rule: Never use the definiendum in the definiens.)
•             Definiendum: That which is being defined.
•             Definiens: that which does the defining.

            Modes of defining:

• a.   Ostension: Pairing a symbol with an experience.
• b.   Synonymy: Pairing a symbol with another symbol which is supposed to have the same meaning.
• c.   Denotation: Pairing a symbol with a verbal set of directions which enable the receiver to pair the symbol with an experience.
• d.   Connotation: Pairing the symbol verbally with a larger class to which the concept belongs (the genus), then verbally separating it from other members of that class (differentia).

13. Kinds of assertions: There are four kinds of assertions by which human beings express themselves. These are:

• a.   Disclosures: Communication of thoughts or feelings of the speaker.
  Examples: I have a headache. I believe in the supernatural.
• b.   Descriptions: Communication of the nature of things in the universe other than inside the speaker. These may be open to inspection by the hearer, whereas disclosures are not.
  Example: The earth revolves around the sun.
• c.   Directives: Communications by which the speaker attempts to get the hearer to do something.
  Example: What time is it?
• d.   Declaratives: Communications by a person having authority which change the status of something in the universe.
  Example: I now pronounce you man and wife.

Exercises for Language

1.   Why is there communication that does not involve language?

2.   What is the basic difference between linguistic and non-linguistic communication?

3.   What are some theories of language other than Radical Utility?

4.   What are the inter-relationships of the triad signal/sign/symbol?

5.   Is the fourfold taxonomy of assertions exhaustive?

6.   What are the inter-relationships of the fourfold taxonomy of assertions?

7.   Why can’t human beings be fully human without language development?

8.   Why do propositions not serve well as the basic unit of human communication?

9.   Why is it false to say that all meaning is particular?

Type	Figure of Speech	Definition
Simile	like a cross	Pattern or essence
Metaphor	a cross	Pattern or essence
Metonymy	The Cougars were #1	Change of name
Synecdoche	How beautiful are the feet	Part for whole
Homonymy	For a fisherman, on the bank is in the bank	Name has two meanings (allows punning)
Analogy	The human mind functions like a computer	Extended metaphor
Personification	Wisdom is justified of her children	Attributing personness to a non-person
Irony	When he returned from letting the air out of his friend’s tire, his own was flat	Poetic justice in relationships
Understatement	You are a bit soiled. (Said someone covered with mud.)	Saying less than the situation warrants
Sarcasm	He really gave it his all. (Said when he obviously did not)	Saying one thing while meaning a contrary thing
Oxymoron	Conscientious sinner	Contradiction for effect
Parable	A sower went forth to sow	Short story told to illustrate
Allusion	His past was not all that illustrious without detail	Referring to something
Hyperbole	The best uncle in the whole world effect	Overemphasis for special

February 1986

Question: What is the most useful unit on which to focus as the basic unit of human communication?

Static system: A non-functioning sub-system consisting only of stationary parts and their relationships.

Communication in a static system: unobstructed contiguity of parts of a static system. Unit: discrete situations of unobstructed contiguity.

+ e.g.: The kitchen communicates with the dining room in this house.

– e.g.: Tunnel A does not communicate with tunnel B.

Dynamic system: A static sub-system having moving or effective parts, having input, internal process and output.

Communication in a dynamic system: The effect that one or more parts of a dynamic system have upon one or more other parts of the system. Unit: Effective force applied through time: foot-pounds of work.

+ e.g.: This thermostat communicates “turn on” and “turn off” signals to the furnace.

– e.g.: Because the power is off the thermostat cannot communicate with the furnace.

Agent system: A dynamic sub-system of which at least one agent is a dynamic part. (Agent: a dynamic system the output of which is not more than partly determined by input to that system.)

Communication in an agent system: The attempt of an agent to effect a desired change in the universe by performing an act (input to the rest-of-the-universe-sub-system by an agent in order to change its output). Unit of agent communication: Assertion+: the output of an agent which becomes input to the universe-system (the all-but-this-agent subsystem of the universe).

Assertion: The intentional act of an agent who acts to create a change in the universe. Assertion is the vehicle of message. It is a sentence, an exclamation, or any non-verbal intentional act. Assertions are physical and ostensive. Messages are mental only.

Message: The interpretation of any assertion in which the following operations are performed by an agent on the occasion of observing an assertion in context:

1. The asserter’s intent is hypothesized.
2. There is a propositional decoding of the assertion.
3. There is an attribution of strength (support, + or –) for that assertion.
4. There is an estimate of the impact or result on the universe of that assertion occasion (present result and probable future results).

Propositional decoding: Interpretation of the assertion into a concatenation of the concepts of the observer which the observer deems to be an adequate translation of the assertion from some physical language into his own concept language. The observer’s own concept language is not language specific in relation to the public languages of the human community.

Analogy: An assertion might be likened unto the shooting of an arrow (indeed, the shooting of an arrow by an agent is always an assertion). Message components:

1. The target and intended effect of the shooting of the arrow.
2. The specific nature of the arrow projected at the target.
3. The force imparted to the arrow in its projection.
4. The actual and probable future effects of the arrow as judged at the time when its force is spent.

Messages are constructed (created) attributions concerning as asserter and the asserter’s assertion by a participant in the assertion experience context. They should be ex post facto reconstructions of past events (hear or experience first, judge later). They may truly or falsely portray the assertion in context. True message portrayal: One-to-one correspondence between actual assertion and assertion context as judged by a perfect (unbiased) and omniscient observer.

False message portrayal: erroneous constructive portrayal of an assertion and its assertion context as judged by a perfect (unbiased) and omniscient observer.

Messages are always private mental constructions. To express those private mental constructions in any overt way is to assert, to make an assertion, which is to try to create a change in the universe by doing work (dynamic communication). Assertion is the dynamic communication of an agent, therefore is also agent communication.

Meaning: The total message a person creates for a given assertion. Meaning is always attributed (never inherent), and is always use-context specific. Words and sentences in mention context have no meaning. This is to say that though there are meanings-in-general (meanings that represent statistical modes of historic use-contexts), there are no general meanings (necessary or correct meanings) for words or sentences. Words in mention-context only have potential meanings, and that potentiality is infinite in theory but limited in practice.

Thesis: Assertion-in-use-context is the basic unit of communication.

Support

Successful assertion is always an assertion-in-use-context unit. Understanding or correct apprehension of meaning is always mental reconstruction by a participant in that context of an assertion-in-use-context (hereafter referred to by the acronym “aiuc”).

Aiuc vs. phoneme character: An isolated phoneme/character can be made to mean anything because it means nothing.

Aiuc vs. morpheme/word: An isolated morpheme/word has typical meanings but there is no way to know apart from context which typical or which atypical use is intended.

Aiuc vs. phrase: Phrase has all of the problems of morpheme/word.

Aiuc vs. sentence: Sentences in use are assertions, but not all assertions are sentences. Sentences in mention have only potential, not actual meaning. (Except that sentences in mention are actually cases of sentences in use and the user may indeed intend them to have a particular meaning, and the observer may indeed insist that his “meaning” attribution is appropriate. But there is nothing to which two observers who disagree could refer to settle their dispute. Aiuc always has something more than personal opinion to which persons can refer to help settle disagreements.)

Aiuc vs. proposition: as usually construed, propositions are taken so narrowly as to eliminate much meaningful human communication. As construed here, propositions are only part of the necessary complete unit of meaning.

Aiuc vs. message: Message is always the subjective reaction of a context participant. That message may improve or deteriorate through time relative to a given aiuc. The aiuc is the object of interpretation, and needs to be as fixed and as objective as possible to facilitate progressively better interpretations.

Aiuc vs. meaning: Meaning is the whole point of contention. To decide what is the most felicitous unit for communication is to say what is the basic unit of meaning. To settle on meaning over aiuc would be to beg the question.

Other points which favor aiuc as the basic unit of communication:

1. This use of aiuc is continuous with common sense; we know that meaning can best be determined only in use-context.
2. The use of aiuc allows as objective or behavioral a target for interpretation as possible, yet supplies a sufficiently rich situation to enable us often to come to agreement as to interpretation.
3. This use of aiuc is metaphysically parsimonious, not necessitating the ad hoc invention of such creatures as “deep structure”, “objective referents”, or platonic categories.
4. The use of aiuc recognizes agency, both in the asserter and in the attributor of meaning. Agent communication is thus not forced into a mechanistic reductionism.
5. The use of aiuc facilitates consideration of non-verbal languages and non-language actions as part of the actual human communication phenomenon.
6. This construal of aiuc helps to prevent hubris in the human species by reminding us that there is no human voice that is final and authoritative, about anything, and that every assertion is a species of bearing personal testimony.

QED!