“I don’t understand how someone could believe X” typically means that the speaker doesn’t understand how someone could believe in X based on good reasoning. Understanding how stupidity led someone to believe X doesn’t count.
Normal conversation cannot be parsed literally. It is literally true that understanding how someone incorrectly believes X is a subclass of understanding how someone believes in X; but it’s not what those words typically connote.
“I don’t understand how someone could believe X” typically means that the speaker doesn’t understand how someone could believe in X based on good reasoning. Understanding how stupidity led someone to believe X doesn’t count.
Most people who say: “I don’t understand how someone could believe X” would fail a reverse Turing test that position. They often literally don’t understand how someone comes to believe X.
I don’t think that applies here. Your addition “based on good reasoning” is not a non-literal meaning, but a filling in of omitted detail. Gricean implicature is not non-literality, and the addition does not take the example outside McArdle’s analysis.
As always, confusion is a property of the confused person, not of the thing outside themselves that they are confused about. If a person says they cannot understand how anyone could etc., that is, indeed, literally true. That person cannot understand the phenomenon; that is their problem. Yet their intended implication, which McArdle is pointing out does not follow, is that all of the problem is in the other person. Even if the other person is in error, how can one engage with them from the position of “I cannot understand how etc.”? The words are an act of disengagement, behind a smokescreen that McArdle blows away..
Sure it is. The qualifier changes the meaning of the statement. By definition, if the sentence lacks the qualifier but is to be interpreted as if it has one, it is to be interpreted differently than its literal words. Having to be interpreted as containing detail that is not explicitly written is a type of non-literalness.
If a person says they cannot understand how anyone could etc., that is, indeed, literally true.
No, it’s not. I understand how someone can believe in creationism: they either misunderstand science (probably due to religious bias) or don’t actually believe science works at all when it conflicts with religion. Saying “I don’t understand how someone can believe in creationism” is literally false—I do understand how.
What it means is “I don’t understand how someone can correctly believe in creationism.” I understand how someone can believe in creationism, but my understanding involves the believer making mistakes. The statement communicates that I don’t know of a reason other than making mistakes, not that I don’t know any reason at all.
Even if the other person is in error, how can one engage with them from the position of “I cannot understand how etc.”?
Because “I don’t understand how” is synonymous, in ordinary conversation, with “the other person appears to be in error.” It does not mean that I literally don’t understand, but rather that I understand it as an error, so it is irrelevant that literally not understanding is an act of disengagement.
Now I just thought of this, so maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t think “I don’t understand how someone can think X” is really meant as any sort of piece of reasonable logic, or a substitution for one. I suspect this is merely the sort of stuff people come up with when made to think about it.
Rather, “I don’t understand how...” is an appeal to the built in expectation that things make obvious sense. If I want to claim that “what you’re saying is nontribal and I have nothing to do with it”, stating that you’re not making sense to me works whether or not I can actually follow your reasoning. Since if you really were not making sense to me with minimum effort on my part, this would imply bad things about you and what you’re saying. It’s just a rejection that makes no sense if you think about it, but it’s not meant to be thought about—it’s really closer to “la la la I am not listening to you”.
This is close, but I don’t think it captures everything. I used the examples of creationism and homeopathy because they are unusual examples where there isn’t room for reasonable disagreement. Every person who believes in one of those does so because of bias, ignorance, or error. This disentangles the question of “what is meant by the statement” and “why would anyone want to say what is meant by the statement”.
You have correctly identified why, for most topics, someone would want to say such a thing. Normally, “there’s no room for reasonable disagreement; you’re just wrong” is indeed used as a tribal membership indicator. But the statement doesn’t mean “what you’re saying is nontribal”, it’s just that legitimate, nontribal, reasons to say “you are just wrong” are rare.
Every person who believes in one of those does so because of bias, ignorance, or error.
Well that’s true for every false belief anyone has. So what’s so special about those examples?
You say “there isn’t room for reasonable disagreement”, which taken literally is just another way of phrasing “I don’t understand how anyone could believe X”. In any case, could you expand on what you mean by “not room for reasonable disagreement” since in context it appears to mean “all the tribes present agree with it”.
Well that’s true for every false belief anyone has. So what’s so special about those examples?
You’re being literal again. Every person who believes in one of those primarily does so because of major bias, ignorance, or error. You can’t just distrust a single source you should have trusted, or make a single bad calculation, and end up believing in creationism or homeopathy. Your belief-finding process has to contain fundamental flaws for that.
You say “there isn’t room for reasonable disagreement”, which taken literally is just another way of phrasing “I don’t understand how anyone could believe X”.
And “it has three sides” is just another way of phrasing “it is a triangle”, but I can still explain what a triangle is by describing it as something with three sides. If it wasn’t synonymous, it wouldn’t be an explanation.
(Actually, it’s not quite synonymous, for the same reason that the original statement wasn’t correct: if you’re taking it literally, “I don’t understand how anyone could believe X” excludes cases where you understand that someone makes a mistake, and “there isn’t room for reasonable disagreement” includes such cases.)
in context it appears to mean “all the tribes present agree with it”.
You can describe anything which is believed by some people and not others in terms of tribes believing it. But not all such descriptions are equally useful; if the tribes fall into categories, it is better to specify the categories.
You can’t just distrust a single source you should have trusted, or make a single bad calculation, and end up believing in creationism or homeopathy.
You don’t even need to do a bad calculation to believe in homeopathy. You just need to be in a social environment where everyone believes in homeopathy and not care enough about the issue to invest more effort into it.
If you simply follow the rule: If I live in a Western country it makes sense to trust the official government health ministry when it publishes information about health issues, you might come away with believing in homeopathy if you happen to live in Switzerland.
There are a lot of decent heuristics that can leave someone with that belief even if the belief is wrong.
Non-literality isn’t a get-out-of-your-words-free card. There is a clear difference between saying “you appear to be in error” and “I can’t understand how anyone could think that”, and the difference is clearly expressed by the literal meanings of those words.
And to explicate “I don’t understand etc.” with “Of course I do understand how you could think that, it’s because you’re ignorant or stupid” is not an improvement.
Non-literality isn’t a get-out-of-your-words-free card. There is a clear difference between saying “you appear to be in error” and “I can’t understand how anyone could think that”, and the difference is clearly expressed by the literal meanings of those words.
Non-literalness is a get-out-of-your-words-free card when the words are normally used in conversation, by English speakers in general, to mean something non-literal. Yes, if you just invented the non-literal meaning yourself, there are limits to how far from the literal meaning you can be and still expect to be understood, but these limits do not apply when the non-literal meaning is already established usage.
And to explicate “I don’t understand etc.” with “Of course I do understand how you could think that, it’s because you’re ignorant or stupid” is not an improvement.
The original quote gives the intended meaning as “I am such a superior moral being that I cannot even imagine the cognitive errors or moral turpitude that could lead someone to...” In other words, the original rationality quote explicitly excludes the possibility of “I understand you believe it because you’re ignorant or stupid”. It misinterprets the statement as literally claiming that you don’t understand in any way whatsoever.
The point is that the quote is a bad rationality quote because it makes a misinterpretation. Whether the statement that it misinterprets is itself a good thing to say is irrelevant to the question of whether it is being misinterpreted.
Yes, if you just invented the non-literal meaning yourself, there are limits to how far from the literal meaning you can be and still expect to be understood, but these limits do not apply when the non-literal meaning is already established usage.
Established by whom? You are the one claiming that
“I don’t understand how” is synonymous, in ordinary conversation, with “the other person appears to be in error.”
These two expressions mean very different things. Notice that I am claiming that you are in error, but not saying, figuratively or literally, that I cannot understand how you could possibly think that.
Non-literalness is a get-out-of-your-words-free card when the words are normally used in conversation, by English speakers in general, to mean something non-literal.
That is not how figurative language works. I could expand on that at length, but I don’t think it’s worth it at this point.
Notice that I am claiming that you are in error, but not saying, figuratively or literally, that I cannot understand how you could possibly think that.
“A is synonymous with B” doesn’t mean “every time someone said B, they also said A”. “You’ve made more mistakes than a zebra has stripes” is also synonymous with “you’re in error” and you clearly didn’t say that, either.
(Of course, “is synonymous with” means “makes the same assertion about the main topic”, not “is identical in all ways”.)
Of course, “is synonymous with” means “makes the same assertion about the main topic”
Indeed. “You’ve made more mistakes than a zebra has stripes” is therefore not synonymous with “you’re in error”. The former implies the latter, but the latter does not imply even the figurative sense of the former.
If what someone is actually thinking when they say “you’ve made more mistakes than a zebra has stripes” is no more than “you’re in error”, then they have used the wrong words to express their thought.
“I don’t understand how someone could believe X” typically means that the speaker doesn’t understand how someone could believe in X based on good reasoning. Understanding how stupidity led someone to believe X doesn’t count.
Normal conversation cannot be parsed literally. It is literally true that understanding how someone incorrectly believes X is a subclass of understanding how someone believes in X; but it’s not what those words typically connote.
Most people who say: “I don’t understand how someone could believe X” would fail a reverse Turing test that position. They often literally don’t understand how someone comes to believe X.
I don’t think that applies here. Your addition “based on good reasoning” is not a non-literal meaning, but a filling in of omitted detail. Gricean implicature is not non-literality, and the addition does not take the example outside McArdle’s analysis.
As always, confusion is a property of the confused person, not of the thing outside themselves that they are confused about. If a person says they cannot understand how anyone could etc., that is, indeed, literally true. That person cannot understand the phenomenon; that is their problem. Yet their intended implication, which McArdle is pointing out does not follow, is that all of the problem is in the other person. Even if the other person is in error, how can one engage with them from the position of “I cannot understand how etc.”? The words are an act of disengagement, behind a smokescreen that McArdle blows away..
Sure it is. The qualifier changes the meaning of the statement. By definition, if the sentence lacks the qualifier but is to be interpreted as if it has one, it is to be interpreted differently than its literal words. Having to be interpreted as containing detail that is not explicitly written is a type of non-literalness.
No, it’s not. I understand how someone can believe in creationism: they either misunderstand science (probably due to religious bias) or don’t actually believe science works at all when it conflicts with religion. Saying “I don’t understand how someone can believe in creationism” is literally false—I do understand how.
What it means is “I don’t understand how someone can correctly believe in creationism.” I understand how someone can believe in creationism, but my understanding involves the believer making mistakes. The statement communicates that I don’t know of a reason other than making mistakes, not that I don’t know any reason at all.
Because “I don’t understand how” is synonymous, in ordinary conversation, with “the other person appears to be in error.” It does not mean that I literally don’t understand, but rather that I understand it as an error, so it is irrelevant that literally not understanding is an act of disengagement.
Now I just thought of this, so maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t think “I don’t understand how someone can think X” is really meant as any sort of piece of reasonable logic, or a substitution for one. I suspect this is merely the sort of stuff people come up with when made to think about it.
Rather, “I don’t understand how...” is an appeal to the built in expectation that things make obvious sense. If I want to claim that “what you’re saying is nontribal and I have nothing to do with it”, stating that you’re not making sense to me works whether or not I can actually follow your reasoning. Since if you really were not making sense to me with minimum effort on my part, this would imply bad things about you and what you’re saying. It’s just a rejection that makes no sense if you think about it, but it’s not meant to be thought about—it’s really closer to “la la la I am not listening to you”.
Am I making sense?
This is close, but I don’t think it captures everything. I used the examples of creationism and homeopathy because they are unusual examples where there isn’t room for reasonable disagreement. Every person who believes in one of those does so because of bias, ignorance, or error. This disentangles the question of “what is meant by the statement” and “why would anyone want to say what is meant by the statement”.
You have correctly identified why, for most topics, someone would want to say such a thing. Normally, “there’s no room for reasonable disagreement; you’re just wrong” is indeed used as a tribal membership indicator. But the statement doesn’t mean “what you’re saying is nontribal”, it’s just that legitimate, nontribal, reasons to say “you are just wrong” are rare.
Well that’s true for every false belief anyone has. So what’s so special about those examples?
You say “there isn’t room for reasonable disagreement”, which taken literally is just another way of phrasing “I don’t understand how anyone could believe X”. In any case, could you expand on what you mean by “not room for reasonable disagreement” since in context it appears to mean “all the tribes present agree with it”.
You’re being literal again. Every person who believes in one of those primarily does so because of major bias, ignorance, or error. You can’t just distrust a single source you should have trusted, or make a single bad calculation, and end up believing in creationism or homeopathy. Your belief-finding process has to contain fundamental flaws for that.
And “it has three sides” is just another way of phrasing “it is a triangle”, but I can still explain what a triangle is by describing it as something with three sides. If it wasn’t synonymous, it wouldn’t be an explanation.
(Actually, it’s not quite synonymous, for the same reason that the original statement wasn’t correct: if you’re taking it literally, “I don’t understand how anyone could believe X” excludes cases where you understand that someone makes a mistake, and “there isn’t room for reasonable disagreement” includes such cases.)
You can describe anything which is believed by some people and not others in terms of tribes believing it. But not all such descriptions are equally useful; if the tribes fall into categories, it is better to specify the categories.
You don’t even need to do a bad calculation to believe in homeopathy. You just need to be in a social environment where everyone believes in homeopathy and not care enough about the issue to invest more effort into it.
If you simply follow the rule: If I live in a Western country it makes sense to trust the official government health ministry when it publishes information about health issues, you might come away with believing in homeopathy if you happen to live in Switzerland.
There are a lot of decent heuristics that can leave someone with that belief even if the belief is wrong.
If you’re in a social environment where everyone believes in it, then you have more than just a single source.
Yes.
Non-literality isn’t a get-out-of-your-words-free card. There is a clear difference between saying “you appear to be in error” and “I can’t understand how anyone could think that”, and the difference is clearly expressed by the literal meanings of those words.
And to explicate “I don’t understand etc.” with “Of course I do understand how you could think that, it’s because you’re ignorant or stupid” is not an improvement.
Non-literalness is a get-out-of-your-words-free card when the words are normally used in conversation, by English speakers in general, to mean something non-literal. Yes, if you just invented the non-literal meaning yourself, there are limits to how far from the literal meaning you can be and still expect to be understood, but these limits do not apply when the non-literal meaning is already established usage.
The original quote gives the intended meaning as “I am such a superior moral being that I cannot even imagine the cognitive errors or moral turpitude that could lead someone to...” In other words, the original rationality quote explicitly excludes the possibility of “I understand you believe it because you’re ignorant or stupid”. It misinterprets the statement as literally claiming that you don’t understand in any way whatsoever.
The point is that the quote is a bad rationality quote because it makes a misinterpretation. Whether the statement that it misinterprets is itself a good thing to say is irrelevant to the question of whether it is being misinterpreted.
Established by whom? You are the one claiming that
These two expressions mean very different things. Notice that I am claiming that you are in error, but not saying, figuratively or literally, that I cannot understand how you could possibly think that.
That is not how figurative language works. I could expand on that at length, but I don’t think it’s worth it at this point.
“A is synonymous with B” doesn’t mean “every time someone said B, they also said A”. “You’ve made more mistakes than a zebra has stripes” is also synonymous with “you’re in error” and you clearly didn’t say that, either.
(Of course, “is synonymous with” means “makes the same assertion about the main topic”, not “is identical in all ways”.)
Indeed. “You’ve made more mistakes than a zebra has stripes” is therefore not synonymous with “you’re in error”. The former implies the latter, but the latter does not imply even the figurative sense of the former.
If what someone is actually thinking when they say “you’ve made more mistakes than a zebra has stripes” is no more than “you’re in error”, then they have used the wrong words to express their thought.