I’m saying, “Show me something in particular that I should’ve looked at, and explain why it matters; I do not respond to non-specific claims that I should’ve paid more homage to whatever.”
As far as I can see, your point is something like:
“Your reasoning implies I should read some specific thing; there is no such thing; therefore your reasoning is mistaken.” (or, “unless you can produce such a thing...”)
Is this right? In any case, I don’t see that the conditional is correct. I can only give examples of works which would help. Here are three more. Your second part seeks (as I understand it) a theory of meaning which would imply that your ′ Elaine is a post-utopian’ is meaningless, but that ‘The photon continues to exist...’ is both meaningful and true. I get the impression you think that an adequate answer could be articulated in a few paragraphs. To get a sense of some of the challenges you might face -ie, of what the project of contriving a theory of meaning entails- consider looking at Stephen Schiffer’s excellent Remnants of Meaning and The Things we Mean or Scott Soames’s What is Meaning? .
As far as I can see, your point is something like:
“Your reasoning implies I should read some specific thing; there is no such thing; therefore your reasoning is mistaken.” (or, “unless you can produce such a thing...”)
I think it’s more like
“Your reasoning implies I should have read some specific idea, but so far you haven’t given me any such idea and why it should matter, only general references to books and authors without pointing to any specific idea in them”
Part of the talking-past-each-other may come from the fact that by “thing”, Eliezer seems to mean “specific concept”, and you seem to mean “book”.
There also seems to be some disagreement as to what warrants references—for Eliezer it seems to be “I got idea X from Y”, for you it’s closer to “Y also has idea X”.
“If there is such a thing and you know it, you should be able to describe it at least partially to a highly informed listener who is already familiar with the field. Your failure to describe this thing causes me to think that you might be trying to look impressive by listing a lot of books which, for all I know at this point, you haven’t even read.”
I’m saying, “Show me something in particular that I should’ve looked at, and explain why it matters; I do not respond to non-specific claims that I should’ve paid more homage to whatever.”
As far as I can see, your point is something like:
“Your reasoning implies I should read some specific thing; there is no such thing; therefore your reasoning is mistaken.” (or, “unless you can produce such a thing...”)
Is this right? In any case, I don’t see that the conditional is correct. I can only give examples of works which would help. Here are three more. Your second part seeks (as I understand it) a theory of meaning which would imply that your ′ Elaine is a post-utopian’ is meaningless, but that ‘The photon continues to exist...’ is both meaningful and true. I get the impression you think that an adequate answer could be articulated in a few paragraphs. To get a sense of some of the challenges you might face -ie, of what the project of contriving a theory of meaning entails- consider looking at Stephen Schiffer’s excellent Remnants of Meaning and The Things we Mean or Scott Soames’s What is Meaning? .
I think it’s more like
“Your reasoning implies I should have read some specific idea, but so far you haven’t given me any such idea and why it should matter, only general references to books and authors without pointing to any specific idea in them”
Part of the talking-past-each-other may come from the fact that by “thing”, Eliezer seems to mean “specific concept”, and you seem to mean “book”.
There also seems to be some disagreement as to what warrants references—for Eliezer it seems to be “I got idea X from Y”, for you it’s closer to “Y also has idea X”.
“If there is such a thing and you know it, you should be able to describe it at least partially to a highly informed listener who is already familiar with the field. Your failure to describe this thing causes me to think that you might be trying to look impressive by listing a lot of books which, for all I know at this point, you haven’t even read.”