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LINGUISTIC_LOGIC

                                             January 5, 2019

  From Bertrand Russell's "The Philosophy of Logical Atomism" (1918),
  where he argues that there are:

  "great advantages that we derive from the logical imperfections
  of language, from the fact that our words are all ambiguous".


  "The whole question of the meaning of words is very
  full of complexities and ambiguities in ordinary
  language. When one person uses a word, he does not
  mean by it the same thing as another person means by
  it. I have often heard it said that that is a
  misfortune. That is a mistake. It would be absolutely
  fatal if people meant the same things by their
  words. It would make all intercourse impossible, and
  language the most hopeless and useless thing
  imaginable, because the meaning you attach to your
  words must depend on the nature of the objects you are
  acquainted with, and since different people are
  acquainted with different objects, they would not be
  able to talk to each other unless they attached quite
  different meanings to their words."

    This may seem like a peculiar line
    of argument: it's important for
    people to be able to talk to each
    other, even though they can't
    understand what's being said?

    Nevertheless, I take the point that
    there may be-- probably are-- useful             I was just wondering if
    aspects to what look like the flaws              anyone has tried to
    of human natural languages.                      verify whether simpler
                                                     things are *always*
                                                     easier to remember than
    Russell goes on with an example about            complex things.
    how a famous street like "Piccadilly
    Circus" means different things to                That simpler is *usually*
    people with different levels of                  better is likely, but I can
    experience of the actuality.  The way            imagine that complexities
    the tag actually works though is that            might actually have some
    there are certain aspects of it's                hidden advantages--
    meaning which are invariant, and                 irregular linguistic quirks
    others that are understood to be                 might provide handles for
    subject to individual variation.                 our brains to engage with.
                                                     If so, that could help
    You might say it's not terribly                  explain some of the
    ambiguous about the ways in which                prevalence of complexity.
    it's ambiguous.

        The things that are invariant
        might be a *little* hard to pin
        down-- myself I'm not entirely         Even the classic examples
        sure whether it's a street" or a       like "red" aren't that bad--
        neighborhood-- nevertheless, it's      there's a range of measurable
        a location in London, and if you       frequencies that get associated
        wanted a more precise meaning, you     with the word, and it's a
        know that there are places you can     reasonable inference from
        look up it's standard meaning.         the uniformities of human
                                               biology that the experience
                                               of red is fairly similar for
                                               all of us, even though it's
                                               a given that we may all have
                                               different associations with
                                               the color.




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