How to Be a Human Animal, Chapter 18: What Does “Meaning” Mean?

Hey, Baby!  And I do mean hypothetical baby, because I’m using the idea of a newborn infant as a foil so that I can subtly confess to readers that I spent a lot of time, energy experience untold frustration learning things that now seem like second nature.  BTW, there’s nothing in life quite like asking obvious questions to shake things up. When I was young, I assumed I was slow and that everyone else knew things that I didn’t understand (like the word “meaning”). Now I know that most people shy away from the simple questions because their ”meaning” often runs deep.  Words like “person” or “thing” or “good” or “unfair.”  You will start using these effortlessly when you are 2 or 3 years old, but you’ll rue the day when someone comes up and asks you to “define” these words.  And many other words.

This is my 18th Chapter. Doesn’t that sound pretentious for someone who it tapping away at night, sipping tap water and listening to the sweet jazz recordings of the recently-deceased piano player, Lyle Mays?  If you are intrigued and not too disturbed by this growing series of what will be 100 articles, you can access all of them at this link. And if you someone else who might enjoy articles like this, please share them. As you might have noticed, I’m funding this entire operation myself. There are no ads on this website. I’m avoiding any risk that I would be financially influenced by advertising.

Let’s start with the word “define,” because I think that’s where things got off track with the word “meaning.” Academics might get really complicated about this, but what it has historically boiled down to is this:  When you “define” a word, you are either pointing to it (where it is a thing you can point to) or your are describing that word in terms of other words. The second meaning is the predominant one and unfortunately, it leaked over into the way most people (and academics) understand the word “meaning.” Most people you ask will assume that when you ask for the “meaning” of a word, you are asking them to use other words to describe that word. If your eternal regress alarm bells are going off, good for you! Let’s look into it further.

What does it mean for a word to have meaning? This simple question affects almost everything we do, every day. Now here’s something mind-blowing: For the past 2,500 years (including up to the present) most of the people studying this question (“How is it that words have meaning?”) have analyzed meaning from their armchairs, content to assume and then preach it, that meaning is best studied by defining words in terms of other words, without considering the neurophysiology of the human biology.  Long distinguished careers of many philosophers and linguists have come and gone without making the human body even a tiny part of their analysis of this question.

Philosopher Mark Johnson describes this failure:

The overwhelming tendency in mainstream analytic philosophy of language is to begin with concepts more-or-less well formed, and then to analyze their relations to one another in propositions and to objects of reference in the world. This leads one to overlook the bodily origins of those concepts and patterns of thought that constitute our understanding of, and reasoning about, our world . . . when I found myself immersed in linguistic philosophy as a graduate student in the 1970s, I did not even realize that I had been plunked down in a landscape that had been invaded by the body snatchers.

Johnson, Mark. Embodied Mind, Meaning, and Reason (2017).

You would think that overlooking of the human body while discussing meaning would be impossible, especially over the past few decades, during which dramatic new cognitive science findings are everyday occurrences. Isn’t it obvious that the oral and written words we use, the grunts and scribbles we produce, don’t have any inherent meaning? Isn’t it obvious that it is only when those grunts and scribbles interact with a human body that those grunts and scribbles trigger meaning? Apparently not.  It hasn’t been obvious for thousands of years and it is still not obvious to many people. Why not?

Here’s my suspicion. Many of those who study language want to believe that each word has one “objective” meaning, the same meaning for every person who properly uses that word (if not, it’s the fault of the user, not the word). This biologically un-anchored belief in objective meaning guarantees that one can study word meaning without knowing anything interesting about human bodies and brains. It means that “professionals” can sit in their armchairs and draw trajectories from selected words to other words and declare that they are studying and establishing word meanings, as though a grunt means nothing more than another grunt or a scribble. QED!

Many academics studying meaning have ignored horn-blaring necessity that means must absolutely have something to do with human brains, which are situated in bodies, which are situated in social environments. To the extent that a linguist simply declares that meanings inhabit words much like souls supposedly inhabit bodies, without any reference to brains, bodies and societies, the whole enterprise is immensely simplified to such an extent that we don’t need laboratories, but only dictionaries to do our research. More specifically, in this cartoonish world, linguists don’t need to roll up their sleeves to study any neuroscience, and that makes everything a lot easier. That’s as absurd as claiming that in order to understand the human sense of taste, you only need to feed Cheez-its to people and then ask them what they think. “My dissertation proves that when you feed people Cheez-its, they sense a Cheez-ity taste on their tongues and it makes them reach for more.  QED!”

Continue ReadingHow to Be a Human Animal, Chapter 18: What Does “Meaning” Mean?

Chapter 12: How to Disagree with Others

Chapter 12: How to Disagree with Others

Here’s another lesson for you, my hypothetical newborn baby. As you keep eating and pooping, I’m going to keep giving you pointers on how to make sense of this crazy world. These are the sorts of things I wish I had known when I was a lot younger . . .

We’ve already discussed (in Chapter 10) that the brain is overrated as a truth-finding device. It functions well to find truth only in certain specially-tuned environments such as laboratories, where scientists who are well-trained to disagree civilly (using the scientific method) want to know if and when they are wrong so that they can advance the kind of research that allows airplanes to actually fly. Most of the time, human animals are not in that kind of specialized environment. Much of the time, we wander around using our brains to concoct arguments that we are correct, even when we have little or no evidence that we are correct. For instance, we constantly employ these three-pound miracles as tools for making arguments to convince others to give us resources such as food, sex and big screen TVs, but not necessarily in that order.

In a later chapter, we will discuss the topic of social intuitionism, the human animal tendency to make shit up in our head to justify what our bodies want. That tendency probably describes 50% of the utterances that come out of human mouths. But wait? It just now occurred to me that we also call our mouths “pie holes,” which is fascinating. The same orifice we use for making noises at conferences is also used for transporting biomass to our stomachs. Natural Selection is such an innovative tinkerer!  And we are such a strange type of animal! Sometimes I pretend I am an alien anthropologist. At those fanciful moments, I see the human animal as a mobile intestinal tract adjoined to a sophisticated and acutely tribal PR apparatus seeking out ways to make copies of itself. But that is my cynicism showing. Let’s move on, because there is an important topic at hand: We struggle to talk to one another.

We are always tribal, but especially when death or uncertainty is in the air. That is the basic holding of Terror Management Theory. Mortality salience reactivates the high school part of the brain and we flap around seeking acceptance from tribes of humans who seemingly are be best position to provide ample orgasms and iPhones. We glom on to those groups like flies onto shit. It’s really something to behold because the process of ingratiating ourselves to groups rewires the brains of human animals. If the tribe dresses in suits and ties, we dress in suits and ties. If the tribe sings songs that claim that there are more than two biological sexes or that a virgin can have a baby, we join in and sing those songs. If the tribe defines up as down, no problem. If the tribe vociferously asserts that non-stop warmongering is a good thing, we sign up for the military. Again, it’s a surreal spectacle. For reasons unclear, some of us are not wired to be groupish, so we are spared from social contagion and from having these illusions. Independent thinking is an enormous benefit. I hope you are one of the lucky ungroupish humans so that your brain doesn’t become distorted these sorts of bizarre claims that serve as identifying markers to help hold the group together. Here’s the downside. If you aren’t groupish, you’ll feel somewhat nervous when you witness a big tribe engaged in energized chanting in unison. If you aren’t wired to be groupish, you’ll need to form your own social network, person by person, which can sometimes be a lot of work, causing you to feel awkward and isolated. If you are an independent thinker, you will be able to plainly see it with your own eyes that groupish people bask in the glow of the group. It's like a powerful drug and they are willing to through skeptical truth-seeking out the window for a lifetime of basking.

But here’s a problem. When groupish people talk to us, it can be almost impossible to understand each other because we see the world so differently. Even non-groupish people often have trouble understanding each other because each of us is such a complex animal who enter conversations having been tuned for decades with lifetimes of idiosyncratic experiences. What can we do about this struggle?

I am part of an organization called Heterodox Academy, which encourages its members (teachers and professors) to reach out to engage intellectually (and otherwise) with people who don’t think the same way. Why?  Because schools are supposedly places to learn and we won’t learn much of anything if we limit ourselves to hanging out people who think the same. Heterodox Academy’s mission statement is straightforward: “To improve the quality of research and education in universities by increasing open inquiry, viewpoint diversity, and constructive disagreement.”

The cornerstone of HxA is known as the five-point HxA Way, a set of easily understandable guideposts for talking with people with whom you disagree. In my experience, it works well as a general rule. It works much less well with groupish people, but it's the best tool we've got. Here are the five points:

1. Make your case with evidence. Link to that evidence whenever possible (for online publications, on social media), or describe it when you can’t (such as in talks or conversations). Any specific statistics, quotes, or novel facts should have ready citations from credible sources.

2. Be intellectually charitable Viewpoint diversity is not incompatible with moral or intellectual rigor — in fact it actually enhances moral and intellectual agility. However, one should always try to engage with the strongest form of a position one disagrees with (that is, “steel-man” opponents rather than “straw-manning” them). One should be able to describe their interlocutor’s position in a manner they would, themselves, agree with (see: “Ideological Turing Test”). Try to acknowledge, when possible, the ways in which the actor or idea you are criticizing may be right — be it in part or in full. Look for reasons why the beliefs others hold may be compelling, under the assumption that others are roughly as reasonable, informed, and intelligent as oneself.

3. Be intellectually humble. Take seriously the prospect that you may be wrong. Be genuinely open to changing your mind about an issue if this is what is expected of interlocutors (although the purpose of exchanges across difference need not always be to “convert” someone, as explained here). Acknowledge the limitations to one’s own arguments and data as relevant.

4. Be constructive. The objective of most intellectual exchanges should not be to “win,” but rather to have all parties come away from an encounter with a deeper understanding of our social, aesthetic, and natural worlds. Try to imagine ways of integrating strong parts of an interlocutor’s positions into one’s own. Don’t just criticize, consider viable positive alternatives. Try to work out new possibilities, or practical steps that could be taken to address the problems under consideration. The corollary to this guidance is to avoid sarcasm, contempt, hostility, and snark. Generally target ideas rather than people. Do not attribute negative motives to people you disagree with as an attempt at dismissing or discrediting their views. Avoid hyperbole when describing perceived problems or (especially) one’s adversaries — for instance, do not analogize people to Stalin, Hitler/ the Nazis, Mao, the antagonists of 1984, etc.

5. Be yourself. At Heterodox Academy, we believe that successfully changing unfortunate dynamics in any complex system or institution will require people to stand up — to leverage, and indeed stake, their social capital on holding the line, pushing back against adverse trends and leading by example. This not only has an immediate and local impact, it also helps spread awareness, provides models for others to follow and creates permission for others to stand up as well. This is why Heterodox Academy does not allow for anonymous membership; membership is a meaningful commitment precisely because it is public.

I know you won’t need the HxA Way for awhile. Your main conflicts will first arise when you don’t want to go to sleep. Then your main conflict will be that you won’t want to share your toys and you start to constantly fight with your caretakers for endless streams of candy (I know this is difficult to believe, but your quest for candy will fade as you become an adult). Eventually, you will have more sophisticated conversations with people who will disagree with you. I hope you will have lots of these conversations, because that's the only way for you to intellectually grow. And when you are ready for these conversations, pull out this copy of the HxA way to make disagreeing agreeable.

Continue ReadingChapter 12: How to Disagree with Others

Our Modern Tower of Babel

This is a riveting and disheartening tweet-thread, begun when Brent Williams asked a rather simple question: "Name all the words that have a different meaning now then they did in 2019."

Check out the thread. Many of these suggestions seem spot-on. No wonder we have such a difficult time talking with each other. No wonder so many have given up trying to converse with people from other tribes. We are living in modern-day Babbel. Here are some of the many candidates mentioned in the tweet-thread:

Dangerous Conversion Therapy Woman. Man. Phobia Healthy Vaccine Science Freedom Pandemic Insurrection Vaccine Racism and Racist Gain of Function Public health expert Gender Misinformation Left Wing and Right Wing, Liberal and Conservative Peaceful Violence Fact-Checker Truth Equality Fascist Conspiracy Theory Safe Trusted Freedom Infrastructure Progressive Fact Anti-vaxxer Inclusion Diversity News Reporting Tolerance

Continue ReadingOur Modern Tower of Babel

The Type of Real Life Government Freddie deBoer Can Believe In

I enjoy reading the writings of Freddie deBoer, who describes himself as a "Marxist of an old-school variety." Here is an excerpt from his most recent Substack post: Title is "I want a political movement that is . . .

We would be concerned first and foremost with reality, and we would therefore privilege “is” statements over “ought to be” statements. My ideal movement would recognize that the obsession with the symbolic has become a road to nowhere for the left-of-center. Our relentless habit will be to say, what does this do for actually-existing poor people? What does this do for actually-existing Black people? What does this do for actually-existing women or gay or trans people? What does this policy, argument, or claim do in fact, for real human beings, in material terms? Put another way, if we got our way, could we see the effects of that with our own two eyes? I can see hungry Black kids getting food. I can’t see white liberals “holding space” for Black people. We must return to the real. It’s past time . . .

An effective left movement would identify building a mass movement by appealing to the unconvinced as its most central, most essential goal. All strategies and messaging would be bent towards the goal of rational appeal to potential supporters. We would identify obscurantism, factionalism, purity signaling, and other behaviors that limit the potential numbers of the movement as counterproductive. We would limit the use of specialized vocabulary and other forms of in-group signaling. We would constantly consider how our practices and discourses actually grow or fail to grow the ranks of the movement.

We would not abandon principle in the name of popularity, but we would insist that principles that inherently exclude large swaths of the human population cannot be the basis for a successful movement. We would seek to welcome, not alienate, those not already convinced. We would utilize traditional democratic principles such as voting and representation for decision-making. We would recognize that all “flat” movement structures, leaderlessness, and other anti-hierarchical systems of decision-making have repeatedly failed as means of governance in past left-wing movements. We would affirm and defend the rights of minority voices and dissent within the decision-making process. We would recognize the basic, beautiful radicalism of voting and democracy and defend them against the tyranny of structurelessness . . .

We would recognize that left movements have traditionally suffered terribly from assaults on individual rights, such as in anti-Communist purges, redbaiting, and anti-left eliminationism. We would acknowledge that the illiberalism and rights-trampling of several so-called Communist governments in the 20th century prompted an enormous backlash to left anti-capitalism. We would understand that a robust, functional left social movement would be strong enough to live alongside those who disagree with it, and would have no need of silencing them. We would move confidently in the knowledge that our core beliefs will eventually win because they are correct, and so feel no particular desire to silence those who dissent from those beliefs.

Continue ReadingThe Type of Real Life Government Freddie deBoer Can Believe In

Coleman Hughes Reacts to CNN’s Meltdown over Joe Rogan’s Mention of the N-Word

There is no evidence that Joe Rogan has ever used the N-Word as a racial slur. He has discussed the word and joked about the word, but there is no evidence he has ever used the word as a racial epithet.

CNN hires writers who refuse to acknowledge the use/mention distinction. It's a very bad thing to use the N-Word as a racial slur. There are valid and admirable reasons for mentioning the full N-Word. For instance, professors should be admired for mentioning the N-Word when teaching the brutal and despicable history of American slavery. Or when discussing language or culture. CNN must certainly understand this distinction between using a word and mentioning it, but acknowledging this very basic thing doesn't fit CNN's mission: dismantling Joe Rogan's big audience by pandering to CNN's increasingly woke but numerically dwindling audience. Many have suggested that CNN is doing this out of jealousy, given CNN's paltry audience numbers.

Or maybe CNN finds it much easier to attack Rogan for something trivial than to do the hard work of reporting real news, something CNN used to do.

Here's Coleman's tweet. I agree entirely with this sentiment and I enjoyed the entire thread of comments. Use of the N-Word as a racial slur is (and should be) socially and morally abhorrent. Mentioning the N-Word where it is not being hurled as a slur should not a big deal, but it is a big deal to those who believe in religious taboos. CNN apparently believes that the N-Word is like the word "V------." OK, I'll actually risk death by writing it out: Valdmort.

For an in-depth, riveting and enjoyable discussion of the use of the N-Word through U.S. history, consider reading linguist John McWhorter's excellent book, Nine Nasty Words (2021). Here is the description from Penguin's website:

One of the preeminent linguists of our time examines the realms of language that are considered shocking and taboo in order to understand what imbues curse words with such power–and why we love them so much.

Profanity has always been a deliciously vibrant part of our lexicon, an integral part of being human. In fact, our ability to curse comes from a different part of the brain than other parts of speech–the urgency with which we say “f&*k!” is instead related to the instinct that tells us to flee from danger.

Language evolves with time, and so does what we consider profane or unspeakable. Nine Nasty Words is a rollicking examination of profanity, explored from every angle: historical, sociological, political, linguistic. In a particularly coarse moment, when the public discourse is shaped in part by once-shocking words, nothing could be timelier.

BTW, I highly recommend the podcast of Coleman Hughes. He seems entirely too young to be as wise as he is on so many topics. Check him out!

Continue ReadingColeman Hughes Reacts to CNN’s Meltdown over Joe Rogan’s Mention of the N-Word