Posted by:
Lot's Wife
(
)
Date: December 13, 2023 03:49PM
In reply to BoJ:
Dare I suggest that a computer scientist tends towards binary thinking?
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> The vast majority of people use the craft store
> definition of color. Black is a color. It comes in
> tubes and bottles. There is not a section of the
> store for non-color colors.
>
> Black is a color. Tomato is a vegetable.
> Technicalities be damned.
Putting aside the fact that you have already changed definitions yourself, thereby indicating that there is ambiguity about what "black" means, let's take a different example.
The color blue. Do people agree on how to define that term? The answer is no, they do not. Different cultures draw arbitrary lines on the visual spectrum to define colors. The Western concept of blue is idiosyncratic. In East Asian languages like Chinese and its regional progeny, the term blue includes hues that are firmly in the green range according to Westerners.
So what is it? Is a young plant sprouting out of the ground green or blue? In your terms, there are at last 1.5 billion people who are off their rockers. And there are other examples as well. So no, the definitions of colors are not black and white.
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> ?? All signals only convey information by mutual
> agreement on what the signals mean.
That's what I have been trying to say. If there is no mutual agreement on terms, the signal is ambiguous.
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> You have committed a category error. Stones are
> not capable of believing or disbelieving anything.
But what is a person who has never agreed to terms, who has not been told what the signal means or even that the signal exists? Is he more like a knowing participant in the experiment or like an insensate stone, incapable even of understanding the question?
Using your example of a lantern in a lighthouse, there are two different groups of people: those who know the light has meaning and those who do not. You blur the distinction. A light going on in the night is NOT a signal of British maneuvers to well more than 99.9% of humans and probably the same proportion of Bostonians.
You are suggesting that a signal has meaning to all people if it is understood by any people, which is incorrect.
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> ??? All communication is by mutual agreement of
> terms.
That's the point. An atom decays and kicks out a particle. That signals information to people who 1) understand particle physics, 2) understand the nature of the experiment, and 3) are aware of the results of the experiment. If those conditions are not met, there was no communication; the signal did not result in information conveyed.
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> Atheism is the belief that there are no gods.
> Atheism is no belief that there are gods.
>
> Except at the most pedantic parsing, those are
> equivalent statements. It's not that complicated.
> Really.
Let's explore that. Definition 1(a) of Merriam-Wester is "a lack of belief or strong belief in the existence of a god or any gods." So atheism means either what you say or the opposite. That seems more "complicated" than you suggest.
Let's go further. Is the definition of atheism clear and agreed? A decade ago Oxford University Press published the Oxford Handbook of Atheism, which explicitly rejects your proposition.
"‘Atheism’ is a term that has historically carried a wide range of meanings and connotations. Popular speech, in particular, admits of a range of definitions, but the same is true of contemporary scholarly usage also. This chapter therefore surveys the sheer variety of ways of defining ‘atheism’, before outlining the pressing need for a generally agreed-upon usage in the growing—and, thus far, Babel-like—field of scholarship on atheism."
In other words, what you claim is obvious--that atheism is a belief--is anything but clear. The argument then proceeds to suggest what a firm definition SHOULD be.
"It then outlines and explains the precise definition used throughout the Handbook: an absence of belief in the existence of a God or gods. . ."
In other words, the best definition is "an absence of belief," which is the opposite of what you say is already the established usage. The authors may be wrong in what they propose, but that doesn't change the fact that what you call agreed is anything but.
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If there is no agreement on definitions, there can be no unambiguous interpretation of any datum.
ETA: Adding the source.
https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/37199/chapter-abstract/327367059?redirectedFrom=fulltext&login=falseEdited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/13/2023 04:11PM by Lot's Wife.