A thing that feels under-discussed when it comes to hedging is, hedging doesn’t just have to be swapping from “X” to “I believe X”. You can say “the sky looks blue” or “wikipedia says the sky is blue” or “rumor has it the sky is blue” or “IIRC the sky is blue” or “if I did the math right, the sky is blue”.
For a while, I tried using E’ (E-Prime), which doesn’t have forms of to-be. The above examples can be rendered in E’ like this:
“The sky looks blue.” (already E’)
“Wikipedia describes the sky as blue.”
“I heard rumors about a blue sky.”
“I recall memories of blue skies.”
“When I did the math, the sky came out as blue.”
After using this for a while, I got some better understanding of what “to be” means. It is either expressing common knowledge or proposing something to be common knowledge.
There are lots of language that use a “to-be” copula far less frequently than English. I don’t know that it actually affects people’s ontologies. It would be evidence in favor of Sapir-Worf if it did.
Weak Sapir Whorf is probably true though. I don’t mean in a trivial sense that it has a negligible effect. I think the effect is small but likely measureable. Mainly thru making some social effects more noticeable because easier expressible.
In fact, most of the time I see it, for propositional rather than value hedges, it IS a deferral of beliefs, rather than backing off from statement to personal belief. Rarely do I hear “I believe crime is rampant downtown”, though I do hear both the direct “crime is rampant” and the reporting-of-hearsay “everyone knows...” or “X said...”. For value statements, like “immigration is morally required”, the deferral is rarely to outside authorities, but an acknowledgement of personal opinion, “I believe...”.
In any case, where is this hedging discussion happening? What things are over-discussed?
In any case, where is this hedging discussion happening?
I’ve seen and taken part in discussions about hedging on LW, but the thing that made me write this comment was a conversation on Duncan Sabien’s facebook.
A thing that feels under-discussed when it comes to hedging is, hedging doesn’t just have to be swapping from “X” to “I believe X”. You can say “the sky looks blue” or “wikipedia says the sky is blue” or “rumor has it the sky is blue” or “IIRC the sky is blue” or “if I did the math right, the sky is blue”.
For a while, I tried using E’ (E-Prime), which doesn’t have forms of to-be. The above examples can be rendered in E’ like this:
“The sky looks blue.” (already E’)
“Wikipedia describes the sky as blue.”
“I heard rumors about a blue sky.”
“I recall memories of blue skies.”
“When I did the math, the sky came out as blue.”
After using this for a while, I got some better understanding of what “to be” means. It is either expressing common knowledge or proposing something to be common knowledge.
There are lots of language that use a “to-be” copula far less frequently than English. I don’t know that it actually affects people’s ontologies. It would be evidence in favor of Sapir-Worf if it did.
Weak Sapir Whorf is probably true though. I don’t mean in a trivial sense that it has a negligible effect. I think the effect is small but likely measureable. Mainly thru making some social effects more noticeable because easier expressible.
In fact, most of the time I see it, for propositional rather than value hedges, it IS a deferral of beliefs, rather than backing off from statement to personal belief. Rarely do I hear “I believe crime is rampant downtown”, though I do hear both the direct “crime is rampant” and the reporting-of-hearsay “everyone knows...” or “X said...”. For value statements, like “immigration is morally required”, the deferral is rarely to outside authorities, but an acknowledgement of personal opinion, “I believe...”.
In any case, where is this hedging discussion happening? What things are over-discussed?
I’ve seen and taken part in discussions about hedging on LW, but the thing that made me write this comment was a conversation on Duncan Sabien’s facebook.
Interesting question, but nothing comes to mind.