The Natural Linguist

I am currently reading "The Passion of the Western Mind: Understanding the Ideas That Have Shaped Our World View" by Richard Tarnas. This book dives into the history of Western thought, from ancient Greece to modern times. I'm reading in the last part of the book, which is about the Enlightenment era. The author divides the thinking in this period into a dichotomy that's familiar to us now, with Science on the one side and Romanticism on the other, though we may phrase it differently -- Logic vs. Emotion, Science vs. Religion, Evidence vs. Feelings, etc. It should come as no surprise to anyone who reads this blog (if anyone does, which I doubt) that I generally operate in the Science side, and consider it "the adult" in the room. But this quote really struck me: From the Romantic's perspective, the conventional scientific view of reality was essentially a jealous "monotheism" in new clothes, wanting no other gods before it. The literalism of th...

It's funny, but not not surprising, that we seem to have had some similar life experiences. The notion of ownership has been very transformative in my life, too. I can clearly recall several instances of what some might call an epiphany, where I experienced an overwhelming realization of ownership. These instances were all similar -- a sudden certainty, like a light turning on, that I was in the right place at the right time doing the right thing for the right reasons; and the not-unpleasant sensation of a new weight of responsibility settling on my shoulders, a weight I was comfortably able to bear. For the longest time, I had no word to describe these experiences, but I have come to view them as taking ownership. These experiences, and the habit of ownership that arose from them, have been very instrumental in any successes I have experienced in my life. Every religion on the planet is probably eager to offer an interpretation of these experiences -- to frame them in the phraseol...

The original motto of the United States, e pluribus unum -- from many, one -- originally signified the inclusion of 13 separate colonies into one body politic. But it also came to represent the notion that you can come to this country and become a participating citizen, taking on the responsibilities and reaping the benefits. In the 1950s, in response to severe threats playing out on the world stage, we adopted a new motto, In God We Trust . In many ways, this motto's intentions were similar to those of the original -- to unite us around a common purpose in order to prevail against forces seeking to destroy us. It was an understandable but risky choice to adopt the new motto. And now the full extent of that risk is becoming clearer every day. The trends we can see developing around us are making it more obvious than ever that we have to quash the terrifying specter of a government that wields the power of religion.  Power does not respect religion. It only uses it to advance its o...

I was watching a video  from the Prager U YouTube channel where Dennis Prager asks the following question: But how do you KNOW that murder is wrong? Prager's idea is that we can think  murder is wrong, or feel inside that murder is wrong, but that this is not enough: according to him, it's vital for us, and for society at large that we KNOW murder to be wrong; and the only way we can KNOW it is that God tells us it is wrong. The problem with the example of murder, is that it's completely relative. Murder is defined  as the illegal killing of human beings. So anytime we want the killing of some being to be considered "wrong", all we have to do is to classify that killing as "murder". And conversely, if we want the de-lifing of some being to be permissible, we classify it as not murder. Some examples of killing that is not murder are these: War . It's perfectly legal to kill someone -- or millions of people -- using war as an excuse. There are many exa...

I'm continually perplexed by the stoic insistence on the notion of Providence.  The cosmos is the way it is because of the fundamental nature of space/time and matter/energy. The cosmos is the way it is because Providence saw fit either to create it that way, or at least to ordain that it be so.  Which is it? Does it matter? Does it matter that we believe one or the other of these? Does it matter that our belief that it is one or the other be correct? For me, the main difference is that one model has a Mind or a Purpose behind it, and the other does not. What benefit is conferred by holding the belief in one's head that there is a purpose or intent behind the existence or nature of the cosmos? What detriment stems from thinking that the cosmos is the way it is because the properties of S/T and E/M simply do not permit it to be otherwise? I think it's vital to make the distinction between the real nature of the cosmos on the one hand, and our BELIEFS about the nature of the ...

People talk about freedom all the time, but do they ever really think about what it means to be free? Let's take a couple of examples to use as thought experiments. No one should be surprised when my first thought turns to language. Here's too much linguistic freedom in action: Gukb fsilmpmer splifffdd ..;;, !!! @ WASKKQS&&&&^^^^ zzzzmzmzmllllz( If we want to take advantage of language, we have to obey some rules -- a whole lot of them, many layers of rules. In situations where your native language is being spoken, your ear is finely tuned to detect unbelievably minute departures from normal language sounds. You can detect a non-native speaker a mile away from a slightly mispronounced vowel, or even just a missing glottal stop where you would normally expect it. And don't even get me started on grammar. For every way to get something right, there are 100 ways to get it wrong. And yet, once we learn to work within the rules of the language, we experience a mu...