I don’t know how helpful this will be to others, but in my own investigation of this topic, including reading many different takes, I’ve found it highly helpful to notice/track different types of confusions that arise. Often value can be extracted and meaning can be triangulated from multiple takes by disentangling them. Especially for takes by people trying to get down to the actual mental events that are happening, I find it useful to pause and notice how the cached belief/concept I have contains one of these confusions. In this way, an initial ‘ah-ha’ moment from a good explanation can be milked for additional insight! Or to put it another way, noticing your confusion has perceptible structure. I run into at least these very frequently, there may be others worth categorizing as well.
Linguistic confusion: Korzybski coins the term multiordinal words, which are words that operate at multiple/ambiguous levels of abstraction, leading to easy misunderstandings. If the connotative space of a word is large (e.g. justice), it is unsurprising that people can use it while talking about completely different things. This effect is magnified when we are translating from another language, and magnified further when it is from a dead language. Pali, the language that Buddhism was recorded in has no major surviving texts other than said discourses themselves.
Abstraction level confusion: While usually manifesting as a linguistic confusion, it is worth separating this out explicitly. An abstraction level confusion occurs when an explanation switches mid-stream between goal, representation, method, and implementation details and then fails to go back and connect things to the original level. Imagine that I want an explanation for why we need a table and you start discussing the expense of different table materials. This is much more pernicious when it occurs in the context of trying to learn about something new.
Pedagogical confusion: What is intended as formal practice instructions (i.e. sit down and do this for one hour) is either confused with the results of practice (e.g. a clear mind as a result, rather than something to do), or confused with a life philosophy/the final goal of the practice (e.g. the idea one should strive to have a clear mind at all times). So a subtype of this might also be
Measurement confusion: where it isn’t clear what the metric for success is supposed to be.
Metaphysical confusion: Map-territory confusion as standard here. I’d also include positive-normative equivocation under this heading, i.e. claims about what-is confused with claims about what-ought. These kind of reference-referent mixups get worse when we’re talking about modifying or examining the thing you are using to do the examination.
You probably noticed that this isn’t a totally clean ontology, in that things may fall into multiple categories. Improvement is possible! And I’ve also noticed how much clearer my thinking gets when I get better at noticing that, that an explanation or argument hinges on several of these mixed together.
I don’t know how helpful this will be to others, but in my own investigation of this topic, including reading many different takes, I’ve found it highly helpful to notice/track different types of confusions that arise. Often value can be extracted and meaning can be triangulated from multiple takes by disentangling them. Especially for takes by people trying to get down to the actual mental events that are happening, I find it useful to pause and notice how the cached belief/concept I have contains one of these confusions. In this way, an initial ‘ah-ha’ moment from a good explanation can be milked for additional insight! Or to put it another way, noticing your confusion has perceptible structure. I run into at least these very frequently, there may be others worth categorizing as well.
Linguistic confusion: Korzybski coins the term multiordinal words, which are words that operate at multiple/ambiguous levels of abstraction, leading to easy misunderstandings. If the connotative space of a word is large (e.g. justice), it is unsurprising that people can use it while talking about completely different things. This effect is magnified when we are translating from another language, and magnified further when it is from a dead language. Pali, the language that Buddhism was recorded in has no major surviving texts other than said discourses themselves.
Abstraction level confusion: While usually manifesting as a linguistic confusion, it is worth separating this out explicitly. An abstraction level confusion occurs when an explanation switches mid-stream between goal, representation, method, and implementation details and then fails to go back and connect things to the original level. Imagine that I want an explanation for why we need a table and you start discussing the expense of different table materials. This is much more pernicious when it occurs in the context of trying to learn about something new.
Pedagogical confusion: What is intended as formal practice instructions (i.e. sit down and do this for one hour) is either confused with the results of practice (e.g. a clear mind as a result, rather than something to do), or confused with a life philosophy/the final goal of the practice (e.g. the idea one should strive to have a clear mind at all times). So a subtype of this might also be
Measurement confusion: where it isn’t clear what the metric for success is supposed to be.
Metaphysical confusion: Map-territory confusion as standard here. I’d also include positive-normative equivocation under this heading, i.e. claims about what-is confused with claims about what-ought. These kind of reference-referent mixups get worse when we’re talking about modifying or examining the thing you are using to do the examination.
You probably noticed that this isn’t a totally clean ontology, in that things may fall into multiple categories. Improvement is possible! And I’ve also noticed how much clearer my thinking gets when I get better at noticing that, that an explanation or argument hinges on several of these mixed together.