De Confucio: Interim

There's a website I see mentioned every once and awhile called Less Wrong. I absolutely hate it and everything it stands for. Please don't ask me why; I don't know myself. (Yes, I am aware of what's wrong with that statement.) However there was a really neat article I found on there about a year back that you should totally read through. (If you can bear the typical Wikipediaesque, emotionless distance of the writing, that is.)

Mr. Yudkowsky describes a little system that rather mechanically (as usual) solves a very Confucian problem: words losing their meaning. And for once, this is a problem that actually matters! People much smarter than me (and who don't try desperately to connect with the rest of the human species by using over-stressed references to a silly game) have already explained why that is. Let's start with Confucius himself:

Zilu said, If the ruler of Wei were waiting for you, Master, to take charge of government affairs, what would you do first?

The Master said, If I had to name my first action, I would rectify names.

Zilu said, There-- that's why people say you are out of touch with reality!

The Master said, How boorish you are, You (Zilu)! When a gentleman is confronted with something he does not understand, he should adopt a respectful attitude!

If names are not rectified, then speech will not function properly, and if speech does not function properly, then undertakings will not succeed. If undertakings do not succeed, then rites and music will not flourish. If rites and music do not flourish, then punishments and penalties will not be justly administered. And if punishments and penalties are not justly administered, then the common people will not know where to place their hands and feet. 

Therefore, when the gentleman names a thing, that naming can be conveyed in speech, and if it is conveyed in speech, then it can surely be put into action. When the gentleman speaks, there is nothing arbitrary in the way he does so.

In my edition of the Burtson Watson translation of the Analects there's a footnote at the bottom pointing to XII.11:

Duke Jing of Qi questioned Confucius about government. Confucius replied, Let the ruler be a ruler; the subject, a subject; the father, a father; the son, a son.

The duke said, Splendid! For if indeed the ruler is not a ruler, the subject not a subject, the father not a father, the son not a son, then although there is grain, how will I be able to eat it?

Are things starting to make more sense? Let's look at a few other people wiser than me. Here's an excerpt from Ezra Pound's Guide to Kulchur (I believe his economic theory is simple enough in this example that we can all mostly agree with him; at least on the points that matter):

 No conception of culture will hold good if you omit the enduring constants in human composition.

Charlemagne fights the monopolists; he decrees a commodity denar, or a grain denar, and the significance escapes six hundred and more economists in a sequence of centuries.

A.D. 794, oats, per moggio, 1 denar 
          barley     "      2 denars
          rye        "      3   "
          wheat      "      4   "

A.D. 808, oats       "      2   "
          barley     "      3   "
          rye        "      4   "
          wheat      "      6   "

the later reading "frumento parato" [protected/prepared/ready wheat. I'm not 100% sure.] and might mean superior wheat, but the rye and barley have moved in like proportion so that it wd. seem to indicate wheat as per 794 or a precaution against inferior grain.

Herein is a technical lesson in justice, there being no reasonable doubt that justice was aimed at.

Here was a lesson that David Hume had learned, presumably from some other series of observations, when he said prosperity depends not on the amount of money in a country, but on its continually increasing.

Gesell and Douglas in our time have both learned the lasson of Charlemagne's list for just prices, without any collusion.

The Catholic Church, aiming at justice, was more intelligent than professors who, in our day, fall for the stability racket, meaning a fixed set of prices, i.e. an unchanging relationship between wanted and/or needed goods and a unit of money.

The hurried reader may say I write this in cyper and that my statement merely skips from one point to another without connection or sequence.

The statement is nevertheless complete. All the elements are there, and the nastiest addict of crossword puzzles shd. be able to solve this or see this.

Having said this, perhaps the reader will believe me when I say one must begin study by method. One must be in condition to understand an author's simplest words if one wishes to understand him. A narrative is all right so long as the narrator sticks to words as simple as dog, horse, and sunset.

His communication ceases almost entirely when he writes down "good", "evil" and "proper".

Manifestly ideas are NOT understood, even when men write down what they themselves consider simple and unambiguous statements. C. H. Douglas remained misunderstood for years because he relapsed into algebra. I myself once printed an analytical formula in a discussion of sculpture, during 25 years I have had no evidence that that statement has ever fallen under the eye of any man who had both a college sophomore's knowledge of geometry, and and interest in sculpture.

* * *

Prof S. used to sneer at philosophy and at least contributed the statement that philosophers had worked for 2000 years and failed to define the few pieces of terminology sufficient to cover their ignorance.

My generation found the criticism of the arts cluttered with work of men who persistently defined the works of one art in terms of another.

For a decade or so we tried to get the arts sorted out. (I am not leaving my narrative by the jump to the present.)

For a few years paint and sculpture tried to limit themselves to colour and form. And this did I believe clarify the minds of a small group or series of people.

We traced the "just word" back to Flaubert. We heard a good deal about using it. For the purpose of novel writing and telling of stories, the composition of poems, the evocative word, the word that throws a vivid image on the mind of the reader suffices.

We litterati struggled for twenty years on this front. In the economic battle we were, after a time, confronted with the need of DEFINITION.

Definition went out in the fifteen hundreds. "Philosphy" went out in the fifteen hundreds, in the sense that after Leibniz the thought of people who labelled themselves philosophers no longer led or enlightened the rest of thinkers. "Abstract thought" or "general thought" or philosophic thought after that time was ancillary to work of material scientists.

Some Huxley or Haldane has remarked that Galileo in inventing the telescope had to commit a definite technical victory over materials.

Before the experimental method, when men had hardly more than words as a means tor transmission of though, they took a gread deal more care in defining them.

All this may be flat platitude, but one has to climb over it. The late Victorians and the Wellses were boggit in loose expression.

Every man who wants to set his ideas in order ought to be soused for a week at least in one part of mediaeval scholasticism.

So. Do you understand now? One more chance. Try reading this. (If you'd like to learn some fascinating trivia about my life, the third comment on this article is what originally pointed me to the Less Wrong article.)

Now a test on what you learned: pick up a copy of the Symposium, read it through, then tell me which speaker was most important. (Hint: it wasn't
Aristophanes or Alcibiades; if you're not crying because everyone either uses this dialogue for a launching point into discussing Ancient Greek paedophilia or as a horrible method to make their lover think they're educated, then you failed.)