“It would be very uncomfortable to have discussions that on the surface appear to be about the nature of reality, but which really are about something else, where the precise value of ‘something else’ is unknown to me.”
Indeed. I agree, although I find it extremely uncomfortable even when the something else is known to me.
For example, once I had a discussion with someone which seemed to be going pretty well, and which fully appeared to be about the nature of reality, and which we were both enjoying. Then at one point in the discussion I said something like “you know, the reason I thought X was true was because of Y”, where X and Y had some reference to another discussion that we had once held and in which we had disagreed.
The person responded, “now you’re ruining everything!!”
Why was I “ruining everything”? The reason is that I misunderstood the point of the discussion. I thought it was about the nature of reality. But, in fact, they simply intended it as a discussion about the relationship between the two of us, and they understood my reference to a discussion in which we disagreed as something harmful to the relationship.
In the end I have come to the very uncomfortable conclusion that at some level, most conversations are like this, and are not about the nature of reality even when they appear to be, and that most people in fact either never or almost never engage in conversations which are actually about the truth of the matter. And the result is that in most conversations I feel like I am speaking with aliens—although the truth may be that the aliens here are the people like us who are actually concerned with reality, and the others are normal human beings.
There is consequently a problem with your four options, although I would say that the third is basically true. It is not that people think that “truth” means something other than “correspondence with reality.” If you ask them what they mean, they will say it means that, and they will disagree with any other definition. But the very discussion about the meaning of truth, is not about the nature of reality, while your attempt to resolve the problems by discussing the nature of truth, is meant to be about reality. So when you engage in this discussion you be at cross purposes, and you will not be able to resolve anything. Nor will you be able to show people that they are unable to have a discussion about the nature of reality; they will be equally and similarly unable to accept that very truth, precisely because they are unable to have a discussion like that.
Basically I think Robin Hanson has it right with his definition of human beings as “homo hypocritus.” In theory people claim accept the correspondence theory of truth, but it is basically hypocrisy, and precisely for that reason, people are unable to have the kind of discussion you want, and they will never understand this nor the reason for it, and you can never explain it to them.
If people couldn’t come to acquire a correspondence theory over time, or come to acquire a ‘sense of reality’ over time, then I wouldn’t have either of those things today, since I didn’t start with them. I can remember relatively clearly what it was like to think of truth-claims primarily and consciously as tools or games, rather than as tokens mapping indifferent, objective states of affairs; and I can remember the feeling of changing my mind about that.
I agree with you that hypocrisy and self-deception are big human problems. Since this is a thread about steel-manning the other side, though, we should keep in mind the (e.g., game-theoretic) advantages to indirect communication. Refusing to develop the knowledge and social skills needed to read into others’ subtext and linguistic goals (based on an ideal of True Rationalists who speak literally, directly, and honestly in all contexts) would be straw Vulcan rationality. (Granting that mainstream society is more in need of honesty and openness, as a rule.)
Assertion-conditions for non-truth-functional things (e.g., ‘happy birthday!’, ‘could you pass the guacamole?’, ‘go away!’, ‘mmm, hot dogs’) can certainly be about the world, particularly if the facts of psychology are included as part of ‘the world.’ It makes sense to despise pointless ambiguity, but the same doesn’t hold for relevantly unambiguous (or for that matter usefully vague) indirect statements. We should also be a lot more careful about assigning the same value to ‘conversations about nothing-whatsoever’ as we do to ‘conservations about the participants’ affect’. I find it disturbing how easily we slide from the concept of ‘reality’ that includes mental states and the concept of ‘reality’ that’s defined in contrast to mental states.
Personally I pretty much exclusively use face to face conversation for social reasons, such as building rapport/relationships, fighting status and dominance battles, bonding through shared experience, checking in for updates on moods and desires, or setting up plans. So OP, when you say that you can’t talk to many people about the nature of reality, my reaction is, “Of course! You’re using the wrong medium.”
You may have heard before that communication is only X% verbal (what you say), while the rest is paraverbal (how you say it) and nonverbal (what your body is doing). I don’t have a source for X and I don’t know if it has been rigorously studied, but everything I have seen points to X being low, around 5-10%. This implies that for most people, intrapersonal communication is largely about things other than the words being said. If you aren’t picking up on all of what’s being said through these channels, you’re likely amplifying the low bandwidth verbal information. That you’re confused why others are neglecting what’s being said verbally and that others are confused why you’re neglecting what’s being said paraverbally and nonverbally are two sides of the same coin.
Better mediums for the purpose of discussing reality, I believe, are textual (to provide record and reference, and to remove intrapersonal subtexts), and slow moving (to allow for parties to think through and clearly articulate their thoughts). Examples are academic papers and books, emails, and blogs, though these all also have drawbacks. I don’t think we have an ideal medium for discussing the nature of reality yet.
“It would be very uncomfortable to have discussions that on the surface appear to be about the nature of reality, but which really are about something else, where the precise value of ‘something else’ is unknown to me.”
Indeed. I agree, although I find it extremely uncomfortable even when the something else is known to me.
For example, once I had a discussion with someone which seemed to be going pretty well, and which fully appeared to be about the nature of reality, and which we were both enjoying. Then at one point in the discussion I said something like “you know, the reason I thought X was true was because of Y”, where X and Y had some reference to another discussion that we had once held and in which we had disagreed.
The person responded, “now you’re ruining everything!!”
Why was I “ruining everything”? The reason is that I misunderstood the point of the discussion. I thought it was about the nature of reality. But, in fact, they simply intended it as a discussion about the relationship between the two of us, and they understood my reference to a discussion in which we disagreed as something harmful to the relationship.
In the end I have come to the very uncomfortable conclusion that at some level, most conversations are like this, and are not about the nature of reality even when they appear to be, and that most people in fact either never or almost never engage in conversations which are actually about the truth of the matter. And the result is that in most conversations I feel like I am speaking with aliens—although the truth may be that the aliens here are the people like us who are actually concerned with reality, and the others are normal human beings.
There is consequently a problem with your four options, although I would say that the third is basically true. It is not that people think that “truth” means something other than “correspondence with reality.” If you ask them what they mean, they will say it means that, and they will disagree with any other definition. But the very discussion about the meaning of truth, is not about the nature of reality, while your attempt to resolve the problems by discussing the nature of truth, is meant to be about reality. So when you engage in this discussion you be at cross purposes, and you will not be able to resolve anything. Nor will you be able to show people that they are unable to have a discussion about the nature of reality; they will be equally and similarly unable to accept that very truth, precisely because they are unable to have a discussion like that.
Basically I think Robin Hanson has it right with his definition of human beings as “homo hypocritus.” In theory people claim accept the correspondence theory of truth, but it is basically hypocrisy, and precisely for that reason, people are unable to have the kind of discussion you want, and they will never understand this nor the reason for it, and you can never explain it to them.
If people couldn’t come to acquire a correspondence theory over time, or come to acquire a ‘sense of reality’ over time, then I wouldn’t have either of those things today, since I didn’t start with them. I can remember relatively clearly what it was like to think of truth-claims primarily and consciously as tools or games, rather than as tokens mapping indifferent, objective states of affairs; and I can remember the feeling of changing my mind about that.
I agree with you that hypocrisy and self-deception are big human problems. Since this is a thread about steel-manning the other side, though, we should keep in mind the (e.g., game-theoretic) advantages to indirect communication. Refusing to develop the knowledge and social skills needed to read into others’ subtext and linguistic goals (based on an ideal of True Rationalists who speak literally, directly, and honestly in all contexts) would be straw Vulcan rationality. (Granting that mainstream society is more in need of honesty and openness, as a rule.)
Assertion-conditions for non-truth-functional things (e.g., ‘happy birthday!’, ‘could you pass the guacamole?’, ‘go away!’, ‘mmm, hot dogs’) can certainly be about the world, particularly if the facts of psychology are included as part of ‘the world.’ It makes sense to despise pointless ambiguity, but the same doesn’t hold for relevantly unambiguous (or for that matter usefully vague) indirect statements. We should also be a lot more careful about assigning the same value to ‘conversations about nothing-whatsoever’ as we do to ‘conservations about the participants’ affect’. I find it disturbing how easily we slide from the concept of ‘reality’ that includes mental states and the concept of ‘reality’ that’s defined in contrast to mental states.
I agree that Option 3 is correct here.
Personally I pretty much exclusively use face to face conversation for social reasons, such as building rapport/relationships, fighting status and dominance battles, bonding through shared experience, checking in for updates on moods and desires, or setting up plans. So OP, when you say that you can’t talk to many people about the nature of reality, my reaction is, “Of course! You’re using the wrong medium.”
You may have heard before that communication is only X% verbal (what you say), while the rest is paraverbal (how you say it) and nonverbal (what your body is doing). I don’t have a source for X and I don’t know if it has been rigorously studied, but everything I have seen points to X being low, around 5-10%. This implies that for most people, intrapersonal communication is largely about things other than the words being said. If you aren’t picking up on all of what’s being said through these channels, you’re likely amplifying the low bandwidth verbal information. That you’re confused why others are neglecting what’s being said verbally and that others are confused why you’re neglecting what’s being said paraverbally and nonverbally are two sides of the same coin.
Better mediums for the purpose of discussing reality, I believe, are textual (to provide record and reference, and to remove intrapersonal subtexts), and slow moving (to allow for parties to think through and clearly articulate their thoughts). Examples are academic papers and books, emails, and blogs, though these all also have drawbacks. I don’t think we have an ideal medium for discussing the nature of reality yet.