Tag: truth

Is/ought, descriptive/prescriptive, truth/value

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Yesterday, I happened to have a conversation about Hume’s is/ought problem with someone. It was the first time I had touched on this subject with anyone even though I had read about it.

What happened was that I had the construct of the problem backwards in my head — what ought to be could be derived from what is. Or did I?

I had suggested that what someone pays for a painting such as a Da Vinci is over-inflated because it’s worth is that of the cost of its material and labour. The discussion was derived from a discussion on what is truth and value.

Noticing my mistake, I thought more about it. I realized this problem is similar to the descriptive/prescriptive conundrum in linguistics.

Where as linguistics of the earlier generations were about prescription (telling what the rules of language are to be adhered to) later generations up to now is about description (telling you how language actually is used). That is, to describe is to say what it is and to prescribe is to say what it ought to be.

It also seems that this does indeed relate to truth and value. Truth is what something is thought to be. And value is what something is thought to be worth. But does it?

Is/ought is about experience and judgement of reality. Descriptive/prescriptive is about data and its interpretation. But truth and value do not seem to be a “natural” binary in the same way as the other two. Truth is usually discussed with false or falsity of facts or reality. And value is usually discussed with subjectivity and objectivity. Their domains are different. This is an uneasy relationship and perhaps should not be discussed together.

What you see is only in the frame 

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Life is like a camera lens – you only see the things in the frame. The rest beyond the edge of the frame is part of the world carefully shown to us, and sometimes we choose to ignore. 

The pair of jeans says it all. 

The thing about inconveniences …

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… is that it ultimately gives one a better perspective of the world.

Last night I posted on my Facebook Wall about the beauty of the stars in a clear sky. And this morning I continued the story with an update about how clear the morning night sky was again. This prompted a  friend of mine to comment how she wished she had the luxury of looking at the stars like me.

But what she and probably everyone else don’t realize was that I wasn’t actually delibrately going outside to look at the night sky but rather I was doing the mundane task of putting in the laundry into the washing machine in our creaky old country outhouse. I do it every night before I sleep at nine (put on a six-hour-later timer so that we use the off peak electricity, of course), collect and hang it up just after five in the morning. So all I had done was look up at the night sky as I made the trip there and back.

It isn’t the romantic country lifestyle as everyone seems to think. That is what is so great about darkness. They are like “alcohol goggles” (that is, being drunk): you can forget about reality and enjoy the sheer beauty of the dark clear night sky. But it all comes crashing back to earth when you enter your artificially lit home and see yourself in your run down PJs in the mirror.

As I said it isn’t a romantic lifestyle but it is an ideal one, one that makes me happy and feel closer to nature. And I wouldn’t give it up for the world. At least that is what I feel at the moment. Because if it wasn’t for this lack of convenience of not having space for a washine machine in our house I wouldn’t have seen that beautiful sky, or notice the natural rhythm – night after night – of the world that is beyond the psychological and physical walls which surround me.

Sustainability Wit

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  1. We need science to solve all the problems we wouldn’t have if there were no science.
  2. “If sunbeams were weapons of war, we would have had solar energy long ago.” Sir George Porter
  3. Gravity is a myth – the Earth sucks.
  4. Whenever he thought about the environment he felt absolutely terrible. So he came to a fateful decision. He decided not to think about it.
  5. The modern electric toothbrushes are having an effect on tooth care. In fact, my dentist was telling me that in Great Britain today, the major cause of tooth decay is weak batteries.
  6. Progress: the continuing effort to make things to be as good as they used to be.
  7. Have you ever noticed how modern developers operate? They bulldoze the trees and then name the streets after them!
  8. Most people in the city have come up from the country to make enough money to leave the city and live in the country.
  9. The government is finally doing something about energy conservation. They are asking motorists to remember to turn off their wind-screen wipers whenever they drive under a bridge.
  10. How wonderful it is to wake up in the middle of London every morning to the sounds of the birds coughing.