{"id":253,"date":"2007-03-17T14:50:30","date_gmt":"2007-03-17T18:50:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/jreyes\/2007\/03\/17\/on-connectives-and-language-some-more-"},"modified":"2007-03-19T13:49:04","modified_gmt":"2007-03-19T17:49:04","slug":"on-connectives-and-language-some-more-robots-and-cartoons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jreyes\/2007\/03\/17\/on-connectives-and-language-some-more-robots-and-cartoons\/","title":{"rendered":"On Connectives and Language: Some More Robots and Cartoons"},"content":{"rendered":"

\nAfter the initial post on my robot\/cartoon universe<\/a>, a few of my friends and I have talked out the system. It turns out that my scheme is too restrictive in its expressiveness. Here I’ve set to free up the system.\n<\/p>\n

\nNo one has argued against the robot\/cartoon dichotomy. But some have pointed out that pretends-to-be is too restrictive a connective. It only captures a very narrow (albeit common) relationship between self and self-image. Others have shown me that the connective is, perhaps, too idealistic. Pretends-to-be issues a lot of self-awareness to its referent. To balance out the relationships a little, I’ve decided to add the connective thinks it is<\/b> to the mix. Thinks-it-is tries to convey whatever the opposite of self-awareness is—I’m loathe to call it self-absorption or self-deception.\n<\/p>\n

\nJust as the split between robot and cartoon begins to blur when they are connected using a connective (like pretending-to-be), you can see that thinks-it-is is not at odds with pretending-to-be. They compliment each other through their (dual) connectives cartoon and robot. When both connectives appear in a single description, a new, complex meaning emerges from their interaction. However, the new addition complicates the taxonomy in more ways that I had first imagined. You see, pretends-to-be and thinks-it-is do not, as the mathematicians say, associate. And verbal language is not well-suited for these kinds of connectives. Let me show you what I mean.\n<\/p>\n

\nI have a friend who is most certainly ((a cartoon who thinks it is a robot)-pretending to be a cartoon). Notice how that is not the same thing as (a cartoon who thinks it is-(a robot pretending to be a cartoon)). I’ve tried to demonstrate the difference by grouping with parentheses and hyphens (to show that the phrase wasn’t just a grammatical parenthetical). See what I mean?\n<\/p>\n

\nTextual language handles the problem with hardly any more finesse. Parentheses and square brackets already have semi-well-defined meanings in English. The curly brace ({) is, and I’m sorry to say this, ugly in most contexts. Perhaps nested less than\/greater than sign pairs would do better? My friend is a <<cartoon pretending to be a cartoon> who thinks he’s a cartoon>. Please offer up opinions and suggestions.\n<\/p>\n

Technorati Tags:robot<\/a>, cartoon<\/a>, associate<\/a>, taxonomy<\/a>, connective<\/a>, language<\/a>, delimeter<\/a><\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After the initial post on my robot\/cartoon universe, a few of my friends and I have talked out the system. It turns out that my scheme is too restrictive in its expressiveness. Here I’ve set to free up the system. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":102,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[201,114,199,139],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-253","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-entertainment","category-personal","category-philosophy","category-psychology"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jreyes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jreyes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jreyes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jreyes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/102"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jreyes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=253"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jreyes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jreyes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jreyes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jreyes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}