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Philosophy - - (+6|-0)
The Surprising Divide Over What Counts as True(reason.com)
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[-]x0x72(+2|0)

To me, this is less a question of psychology or philosophy, and more a question of linguistics, and if people can track the difference between the primary definition of a word and a secondary one, and infer the intended definition to use from context.

I think I've been seeing a breakdown in society on this front. People debating past each other about the definition of words seems to be at an all-time high. And I feel like, and maybe this is wrong, that the past had this pretty well figured out. That multiple, non-competing, parallel definitions for words exist. And that being able to pick out the correct one for the context was considered a standard skill. One that we could trust people to do without it coming to contention.

Now we have debates between a valid primary definition and a valid secondary definition of a word.

In the Peter and Maria case, her statement was false (or likely false because Tom could have left at that time), because the universal objective perspective is tied to the primary definition of "true". And if a secondary definition was intended, that is tied to the personal limited perspective, we have words available with partially overlapping definitions to avoid ambiguities. It could be asked if she "deceived" Peter or was "honest" with Peter.

A word that has some overlapping definitions can offer more specificity when ambiguity could happen. And the mutual awareness of this is supposed to reinforce understanding that the primary definition is intended. So the question is whether listeners can trust speakers to navigate language correctly and if speakers can trust listeners to interpret language correctly. If not, we have to compress down to the common denominator, and lose tools like having multiple definitions for words. Then we really can only have one concept per word and need to debate and fight to retain the definitions we want. I blame, in a limited way, the large influx of secondary English speakers. English now has more secondary speakers than primary speakers. But I don't blame new English speakers entirely. It rests on native speakers not to yeild to the temptation to simplify language and create the spiral that entrains even resistant people to join in.

So to me, this isn't a question of philosophy, but a problem with language accuracy. Whether it's common among the people we share ideas with.

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[-]pumpkin1(0|0)

I think this and the article discuss very interesting problems, whereby concepts of 'truth' and 'Truth' can be manipulated and manufactured with the control of specific narratives. It's a very old problem, though more recently studied as a form of 'manufacturing consent'. Agreed, the language or linguistics are important, because the narrative and its relatability depend on it. Once an audience believes in the narrative, and that narrative is related to the personal identities of those people, they have their 'truth' and their consent has been manufactured. And with that a post-truth dialogue can emerge.

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