language and inference

I want to say something pretty simple but with staggering consequences. Language is only inference. Now to show those terrible consequences i will take a long detour.

word choices

I am continually amused by very specific details of Philip K. Dick’s world view and personal philosophy, i.e. as we can grasp from his writings and occasional interview. There is one where he says that the most important part of a character is the word choice:

The most important thing is picking up the speech pattern, picking up the cadence of actual spoken English. That’s the main thing I look for — the little mannerisms, the word choice. — PKD

Obviously, that is a very restricted, casual assertion, and it is presumptuous of me to guess a whole philosophical instance from this, but… He accepts that some amount of information — and very important information — can be extracted from small differences in the form of expression. That subtle differences in speaking can lead us to uncover (or suppose) structural characteristics of the person’s way-of-knowing-the-world.

Fundamental Problem of Communication

The fundamental problem of communication is that the Sender can add to the circumstance of the Receiver, but it can never create new circumstances. In simpler words, everything that is said can only be received as an appendage to another previous text that cannot be changed. This text is the previous life of the Receiver.

Taxonomy of Utterance: first detailing attempt

I did hint at developing a detailed version of my taxonomy of utterance, and finally here it is. Straight to the thing:

Claims	Growl	/arg!/
	Statement	/i do X/, /I X/
	Request	/i need X/, /I deserve X/
	Description	/i see X/
Fictions	Possibilities	/if i do X/
	Telling	/X happened/
	Imperative	/do X/
	Recipe	/do X, then do Y, then …/
Generalizations	Speculation	/i guess X/
	Formalization	/for every X/
	Rule	/must X/
	Symbolism	/X + n/

Each four classes of utterances constitute a level of forms of expression.