Olie, A good example, though the writer doesn't pin down the shortcoming, which is surely the vagueness/open-endedness of all words/concepts.
To re-present the text's example, a law that states, say: "Gardens must have trees to qualify for tax rebates" can be endlessly reinterpreted as to the meaning of "garden" and "tree" and whether the properties of particular individuals qualify as such, (and whether the law doesn't really intend them to be eligible for a "bailout" and not just a "common-or-garden" rebate). Olie:This is hardly a list of natural language shortcomings, but it provides a (slightly amusing) example of natural language problems within a bad-argument context: http://atheistwiki.wikispaces.com/Why+you+can%27t+win+an+argument+about+what+the+Bible+says -- Olie On Tue, Dec 2, 2008 at 9:00 AM, Mike Tintner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Steve: I finally gave up on having Dr. Eliza answer questions, because the "round trip error rate" seemed to be inescapably high. This is the product of: ....... x.5 English's shortcomings in providing a platform to accurately state the knowledge, question, or answer. Steve, I wonder whether you'd like to outline an additional list of "English/language's shortcomings" here. I've just been reading Gary Marcus' Kluge - he has a whole chapter on language's shortcomings, and it would be v. interesting to compare and analyse. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- agi | Archives | Modify Your Subscription ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ agi | Archives | Modify Your Subscription ------------------------------------------- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=120640061-aded06 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
