Let's say I have a concept I call "arthritis". I have a number of beliefs about this concept - arthritis is a disease, I have it in my hands, it involves inflammation, it's painful, etc. Most of these beliefs accord with how other people in my community use the term "arthritis". However, I also have the belief that I have arthritis in my thigh, whereas the standard concept of "arthritis" is defined as a disease of the joints only.In this case, when I use the term "arthritis", am I expressing the standard concept held by others in my community, while simply being mistaken about some fact about arthritis, or do I express some distinct concept altogether - some disease involving more general inflammation of joints and ligaments?
>>18481158In accordance with dialectical materialism you merely contain, as all people do, an incomplete (false) consciousness called the subjective. All knowledge is the product of the material world acting on the nervous system and entering the brain to be stored as electro-chemical signatures in the neurons. The connections that form between them are the synapses. This is the literal physical process of the dialectic that is the resolution of contradictory infinite in your mind. Say you see something in on position then at a different period of tine at a different position. Your brain automatically resolves that as the sensation of motion dialectically through the synthesis of the thesis of the first position and the antithesis of the 2nd. And in this sense all understanding of material reality is a relationship to every other aspect of material reality (time cannot exist without motion, motion can’t exist without time and neither can exist without matter).
>>18481158You are expressing a standard concept held by others in your community, while being mistaken about some fact about arthritis, thus confusing others about reality.
>>18481158Here's a cheeky solution. You express words, not concepts. Your use of the word arthritis is out of step with how your community uses it, so you're making a mistake in your use of the word. If your community suddenly finds itself needing a word that is used in the same context as your use of the word arthritis, it will come up with a new word (or repurpose the word arthritis, I guess).
>>18481158Language requires mutual agreement on definitions in order to function. If you are going against the groupthink, then you are essentially "wrong".
>>18481254If someone said "Water isn't H20" and you asked them what they mean by "water" and they said "the clear, odorless, colorless, liquid that comes out of taps and flows in rivers, etc.", you would be satisfied they are referring to the same thing everyone else is when they use the word but are just ignorant of it chemical composition. But if they said "water is the black, viscous, flammable liquid we pump from underground to produce energy", then it would be clear they have some different concept altogether (oil) that they are just using the word "water" to express. So I agree the mistake being made is using a word in a way that's out of accord with how others use it, but I think it's better to say words express concepts rather than we express words.>>18481256But only some broad overlap is required for language to function in most cases. In the arthritis case, if the person never had pain in his thigh and therefore never formed the belief he had arthritis in his thigh, he might never use the word in a way that clashed with his community's usage. I imagine a lot of people who successfully use the word "arthritis" do not know it's a disease of the joints only, but this issue never happens to come up just out of luck, so we have no problem saying they possess the standard concept.
>>18481158Test
>>18481158In a conversation you should give enough statistical discriminants not unlikd how akinator works, to make sure we have the same idea about the thing we are talking about, the more specific we get, the more specific the discriminantsWe may say water in a context and it means the one that is in your drink, another time it might be your pool, and at work it might be the electromagnetic properties of water that we care about
