Language in Thought and Action

by Hayakawa, S.I.

Published: January 1, 1939

Read: September 1, 2020

★★★★★

Goodreads

Review

Old books are a great reminder that our society and ideas are really not that unique and unprecedented. This book has many points I wish everyone knew, but unfortunately, misunderstanding language still causes much unnecessary confusion today. The ideas should be required reading for a more educated population and show how many common, circular arguments especially political are really just confused misunderstandings of language. Perhaps this is the origin of the ideas, but I personally didn't learn much as the ideas are similar to those found in the book/blog series Rationality: From AI to Zombies by Eliezer Yudkowsky. I found Yudkowsky's version more articulate and fleshed out. Key idea: Words are a map, not the territory. Arguments are often affective and intensional(guided by words alone), meant to stir emotion rather than reflect reality. Rarely is the argument "will the (extensional) results outweigh the (extensional) hardships involved?"

Notes

#Book by [[S.I. Hayakawa]]

• This book seeks to offer a general system for clearing the mind of obstructions. To learn something, people must often unlearn something else. It’s not ignorance but knowing too much that isn’t true.
• A story with a moral
  • Town A gives relief and wants to teach a moral lesson. [[Welfare]] recipients don’t become grateful and despise the system and others who looks down on them.
  • Town B decides everyone is policyholders by their past work in cities and are given insurance if they become unemployed. A huge ceremony of giving relief that gives recipients confidence that their community is behind them.
  • Is [[Welfare]] it really insurance or relief? This book aims to change your attitude about language.
• The importance of [[Language]]
  • All of civilization's progress given to our current generation from economics to the printing press is getting something for nothing. Yet we look down on [[Welfare]]. 
  • [[Language]] is us making noises to communicate some knowledge to other nervous systems. More is better for survival. 
  • Our language can be about language unlike animals. He said there is a shark.
  • Scratches stand for language lasting for centuries.
  • [[Language]] makes progress possible, starting from where others left off.
  • Live in two worlds, one small of our own experience and one verbal through reports or reports of reports of reports. Verbal world and existential world.
  • Verbal world is map to the territory. Maps can have no relation to reality and harmful if used as if they do.
  • Two ways to get bad maps, by having bad maps given to us or making bad maps ourselves by misreading good ones.
• [[Symbols]]
  • Animals struggle for food, but not for things that stand for food like a badge or money.
  • Chimps taught to drive will stop at a red light. Red light to chimps is stop, a signal. To humans, a red light stands for stop, a symbol.
  • If we agree, feathers can stand for chief and runs for wealth.
  • Likewise we have agreed certain grunts stand for something.
  • Some people think if you yell English loud enough people will understand because a door is a DOOR. They should know.
  • One would think more communication would mean more cooperation, but the opposite has happened. Linguistic naïveté is our tendency to think like savages.
• Reports
  • Reports are capable of verification and exclude judgments intended or loaded words. "There is a Dutch on the road."
  • We trust reports to a surprising degree along streamers for help and picking up books.
    • The senator was stubborn and defiant. The senator courageously rejected tyranny. The senator was the only one to vote no.
    • Verifiable is the report. He is a thief is often seen as a statement of fact, he stole and will steal again. He was convinced if there is more verifiable. Implied judgments often get in. He looked like he hasn’t shaven in days vs his face seemed breaded and neglected. Write two essays side by side on opposite sides. We will also see how we don’te want to write impartially about the people and things close to us. Facts can fill up pages, vs inexperienced writers that just put short judgements.
• Contexts
• Words don’t have correct meaning. Dictionary writers gather all the contexts words are used, then he writes his definition. Historian not law giver. Systematic of the way we all learn our words. Can use words without knowing precise definition. For children, newspaper is what the poster boy brings everyday. Dennotation vs connation. Extension meaning vs intensional meaning. Denotation is what word points to. Intentional meaning is what is suggested in someone’s head. Foreign words can have no intentional meaning to us. Angeles has no extension. No word has exactly the same meaning twice is a better premise then all words have one definition. Bring me my book with a point means many different things in many different contexts. Justice means different to each Supreme Court judge.
• Words that don’t inform
• Language is new and too often we use language as grunts and screams to express rather than report. You dirty scoundrel is statement of persons feelings. Arguments are inevitable if no extensional context is being referenced. Is he a scoundrel or a great statesman? Avoid them. Knowing why they make the judgement or better. Then there is singing and small talk where the content is sparse. Prevention of Silence is important function of speech. At rallies no one comes out wiser or better. Religious chants without understanding words. Not meaningless though, attached to feelings. Can even be conveyed without words just noises. Some people listen to the chatter and conclude all men except for themselves are fools. A great deal of our pessimism for the world is from applying standards of symbolic language to these presymbolic utterances.
• Connotations
  • Con nations are the impact words have in our mind.
  • Two types: informative and affective.
    • Informative are socially agreed upon impersonal  w meanings. Often more specific words for specific contexts like scientific animal names.
    • Affective arose  feelings. Many words just for affective value like gentleman., bozo. Affective words can create social taboos like dead or rest room though we do not rest there. White and dark meat instead of breast or leg. We resent words that strongly affect us, so those who censor often those that are the most morbid not pure.
    • We often need to persuade give affective over informative accounts.
• Directive Language
  • Come here! Not describing anything but making something happen. We use that language that accomplishes what we want. Bible, Gettysburg, ads. Maps of territories that are to be. Often imply some reward. Can’t reject emotional appeals because telling to give children better care or reminding you of your love of family is an emotional appeal. We resent false promises. Newspapers and ads and politicians misleading the public cause similar destruction in mutual trust among human beings. Society is one big mutual statement about trump efuture that we bring about. Agreements to not murder each other and exchange goods for money on certain day. We must impose patterns of behavior for order to continue. Ideals and punishments. Fancy language, appeals to the supernatural affective, punishment, imitation or training, specific gestures, clothing, or activities to convey unique importance like grad gown, parties after like wedding, repetition. Goal is deep effect on memory. Difference between directive is and informative is. Police officers are defenders of the weak is a goal and you shouldn’t be against all police officers when seeing one be a bully.
• How we know what we know
  • Our senses are very limited. Bessie is different from one moment to the next and can be described as a collection of electrons or nerves and sinew. Bessie is not static but a dynamic process. The Bessie we experience is only a small fraction of Bessie. The object of our experience is not the thing in itself, an interaction between our nervous system and the data produced vs something outside it. Cow removes all the features that make it unique. Animal even more. Cow and Bessie are useful handles to y’all about the class, but more constrained. Definitions tell us nothing about things but only peoples linguistic habits. Definitions that are the same level of abstraction or worse higher level are pretty useless. Indifference defined as apathy. Red defined as a a color. Verbal circles.
• The little man who wasn’t there
  • Hit our car when it won’t start. Confuse our abstraction with the world. We do this all the time though like yellow is not a property of the pen but our interaction with it. We automatically leave things out and so often confuse seeing and believing as a single process. The word and thing can arouse the same feeling. Rattlesnake the word can turn people pale. Automatically condemning a Jew in everything he does makes us respond inappropriately to a situation that could have benefited us financially or spiritually like being on guard for the wrong things like our wallets instead of our wives. Criminal implies not only he committed a crime in the past but will in the future, a judgment. I failed three times vs I am a failure. Many areas we are blinded by prejudice. A delusional world where all Jews are out to cheat you. One way to counter is to know there is no necessary connection between words and reality.
• Classifications
  • A new animal appears and different people abstract it different to useful categories like bites or eats snakes. What is really is is a nonsense argument. Name something is to classify and individual objects have no class until we put it in one. The effect in reality of these classifications is what is important. Some people when they meet a Jew will instead of changing their definition say they don’t think of them as a Jew. People like this can’t learn from experience. All statements of the form business is business or boys will be boys are not true. Denotation doesn’t imply connotation. Can start marking words with numbers to indicate characteristics left out. Business1 isn’t business2. Society regards codification as true if it produces the desired results. Is the medical association a trade or profession legally, depends on what laws we feel like applying though the argument might bring up accusations of perverted meanings.
• Two valued orientation
  • Assumption there are two sides often. Patriot or foreign agent. In a single desire like hungry, things either are fire or audit that. Fighting war requires this duality to making us forget the rest. White and black however are a spectrum. Everything holler wanted was beautiful and aryan, everything rose Jewish and disgusting. The greater the means of distinction the greater courses open to us. Instead of just burning all heretics at the stake, discerning the level of guilt. Witch doctor treated many illnesses the same Vs modern doctor. Humans are filled multivalued creatures. Many democratic processes rely on this idea. Science has fixed agreed upon scars of degrees. Infinite precision. In the expression of feeling, two valued orientiom inavoidable, but should be starter while multi value directs us to our destination. Arguing against a two value person can’t be done without putting you in one camp or the other. Affirmative and negative can’t concede only belittle and exaggerate. Two sided is tool of demagogues. Are they sincere or think the public wouldn’t understand the opponents good points are outweighed by their bad points.
• Affective communication
  • We need to know what life feels like and sympathy. Numerous listeners just listen words and speeches and sermons as music devoid of listening to their content. So numerous intellectual failure doesn’t stop you from being a politician or speake. Alteration, rhyme. Of the people by the people of the people. Better than peoples government. Direct address to you, yes the person reviewing these notes. Good work coming back to these! You, we. Metaphor and simile. Moon is a lady or piece of cheese if it creates desired feeling . Coherent. Not ornaments of discourse but direct expression of feelings. Simile implies difference unlike metaphor. He is a pig vs he is like a pig. Personification is not distinguishing between the animate and inanimate. Dead metaphors are so commonly used they are part of language without inventing a new word. Branches of a company or hands of a watch. Allusion work especially for shared culture. Shared culture therefore increases our efficiency of communication. Irony, pathos, and humor. The conflict between grand and inglorious. Report of careful facts can be more affective than judgements. Facts rely on the readers understanding like stating they like Shakespeare Creates different responses to different people. Pop magazines go judgements disguised as reports to control the affective and quality journals rely more on the reader. Most writings from poetry to speeches are much more affective map then territory. Feelings can be so complex and unique we couldn’t just report. Science makes us able to cooperate, arts willing to cooperate through understanding. Lit analysis can determine what author know and feels about the subject and you the reader.
• Intentional orientation
  • America got that beautiful freedom of information. Savagery doesn’t seem solved by learning to read. What’s happening down there, politics? Yes politics is suppose. And both are satisfied by the question.
  • Intensional orientations is the habit of guiding ourselves by words alone. Unaware of context, satisfied with word definitions, confusing levels of abstraction. America is a democracy because we say so. Churchgoers just go to church but can be seen as good Christians and husbands. Many speeches school teach how to talk with nothing to say. Education, magazine fiction, and ads tend to increase our intensional orientation. Education gives us information and perhaps more importantly character. Language used informatively and directively. Law schools teach more about how law ought to work than how it does work as does English class. Often confusion that teachers directive and informational language both use the word true and people feel misinformed. Magazine articles follow already established narrative of intensional orientation with no need to check the world as you would if you were following an ikea manual. It’s easy on the reader and writer. This deepens our intensional delusion. Ads are the worst creating intensional orientation of positivity towards brands. We should be concerned at this distortion of minds.
• Rats and men
  • Rat trained to jump left for food. And when the food is not on the left, the rat keeps trying until it goes insane. Didn’t happen but sounds human. Often prevention can cause the thing we are trying to prevent like trust in relationships, larger armies for war can lead to arms race, etc. Paradoxes like countries stabilize prices by dumping food when they could feed the poor. Or saying blacks are stupid then using that to prevent educating them. Insoluble problems seemed impossible often solved. We fail at using language to cooperate even though we have the means to prevent war, feed the sick, and stop things before its too late. We too often prefer the evils we have to the ones we know not. Pathology where people who oppose a dam for not very reasonable motives defend it for the underdog farmers being forced to leave. Arguments rarely put into form: "Will the (extensional) results outweigh the (extensional) hardships involved?"Facts cant contest "paving the way for dictatorship". Citizens should shift to extensional, as staying intensional means signal reacting to however throws off the right signals regard of what they are actually doing. As science continues, reasonable humans more important. Scientists(at least when they are doing science) check their maps with the terriority throwing it out if no good. They globally and collective check their maps with the terriotory. When we get our car fixed we don't ask if this is indicative of some moral decline or what would happen if we did this to every car. Its all about results.
• Extensional Orientation
• Memorize those:
  •  a map is not the territory it stands for; words are not things. A map always misses things and can exist without any connection the territory.
  • Contexts determine meaning.
  • The meaning of words is not in words l, that are in us
  • Beware of the word is. The grass is green(nervous systems much). Business is business(should be meaningless).
  • Don’t try to cross bridges that aren’t built yet. Distinguish between directive and informative statements
  • Don’t sock a car in the eye when it stalls
  • The two valued orientation is the starter not the steering apparatus.
  • Beware of definitions. They say too much as overgeneralize while also never say enough because each chair is unique.
  • Use index numbers and dates to remind you that no word has the same meaning twice. Smith1939 is not smith1940.
  • When you are disillusioned, cynical, and beset with doubts, doubt your doubt.
• Detecting symptoms of disorder: temper, circular worry, quick to resent. Facts not words. What does it mean that she is a bitch or politician. People with a sense of certainty about their words when confronted with corrupt politicians or disloyal friends will either deny facts altogether or reverse the principle ie go from all insurance companies are safe to no insurance companies are safe. Intellectually mature person knows he speaks with uncertainty. Not insecure because the only security life offers is “dynamic security that comes from within: the security derived from infinite flexibility of mind-from an infinite valued orientation." Reading books as an end can cause intensional orientation. Good lit is affective and calls our attention to facts unnoticed. We can barely hope to be guide without words and the poets or window washers of the mind.