WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.182 Last time, we discussed what arguments are 00:00:05.182 --> 00:00:09.165 for, their purposes. We saw that arguments have at least three 00:00:09.165 --> 00:00:12.103 purposes, namely, persuasion, justification, and 00:00:12.103 --> 00:00:15.238 explanation. We also saw that one way to explain 00:00:15.238 --> 00:00:20.200 something is to cite its purpose. So, we can understand why Joe went to the 00:00:20.200 --> 00:00:25.163 store by seeing that he went to the store because he wanted some milk. 00:00:25.163 --> 00:00:29.864 So his purpose was to get milk. Similarly, we can understand arguments by 00:00:29.864 --> 00:00:33.455 looking at their purposes, and that's what we did last time. 00:00:33.455 --> 00:00:36.612 But this time, we're looking at a different kind of 00:00:36.612 --> 00:00:39.764 explanation. And as we saw, one way to explain things 00:00:39.764 --> 00:00:43.885 is to look at the material. So you want to understand why a MacBook 00:00:43.885 --> 00:00:47.280 Air is so light, the answer is, it's made out of aluminum. 00:00:47.280 --> 00:00:52.270 Similarly, if we want to understand arguments, we're going to gain understanding 00:00:52.270 --> 00:00:56.341 by looking carefully at the material that they're made out of. 00:00:56.341 --> 00:01:01.332 And we saw that arguments are sets of sentences, statements, and propositions. 00:01:01.332 --> 00:01:04.155 So that means they're made out of language. 00:01:04.155 --> 00:01:08.752 So, in this lecture, and the next few, we're going to look at the nature of 00:01:08.752 --> 00:01:11.970 language in order to better understand arguments. 00:01:11.970 --> 00:01:17.166 So, if we know that arguments are made out of language, we know that the only 00:01:17.166 --> 00:01:21.542 creatures who can give arguments are ones that can use language. 00:01:21.542 --> 00:01:27.011 Now some people think that other animals can use language, and there's a minimum 00:01:27.011 --> 00:01:30.020 kind of language that other animals can use. 00:01:30.020 --> 00:01:35.284 But other animals cannot use language that's complex enough to make argument 00:01:35.284 --> 00:01:37.814 with. It might seem that there's some 00:01:37.814 --> 00:01:40.139 exceptions. Here's one possibility. 00:01:40.139 --> 00:01:50.081 But no matter what it sounds 00:01:50.081 --> 00:01:55.300 like, this goat is not really arguing. Maybe he's fighting, maybe he's fending 00:01:55.300 --> 00:01:59.008 off what he takes to be an enemy, but he's not arguing. 00:01:59.008 --> 00:02:04.433 So, if other animals can use language, we can't define humans as the animal that 00:02:04.433 --> 00:02:07.523 talks. But we can define humans as the animal 00:02:07.523 --> 00:02:11.162 that argues, or as Aristotle said, the rational animal, 00:02:11.162 --> 00:02:15.282 the animal that reasons, because other animals don't do that. 00:02:15.282 --> 00:02:19.540 Humans are the only one that argues and reasons in this sense. 00:02:19.540 --> 00:02:22.249 So, we can understand humans and arguments 00:02:22.249 --> 00:02:27.603 better if we understand language better. Now I can't tell you everything that needs 00:02:27.603 --> 00:02:31.861 to be said about language. You'd need to take a linguistics course 00:02:31.861 --> 00:02:34.571 for that. And I recommend that you try one, 00:02:34.571 --> 00:02:39.280 because it's very interesting. But here I'm only going to be able to make 00:02:39.280 --> 00:02:43.667 four basic points about language. First of all, language is important. 00:02:43.667 --> 00:02:47.086 Second, it's conventional. Third, it's representational. 00:02:47.086 --> 00:02:50.905 And fourth, it's social. That should at least get us going in 00:02:50.905 --> 00:02:55.260 understanding what arguments are made of. First, language is important. 00:02:55.860 --> 00:03:00.498 It would be extremely difficult to live life without language. 00:03:00.498 --> 00:03:05.735 Just try to imagine what it would be like. It's really hard to imagine. 00:03:05.735 --> 00:03:11.945 But think about someone like Helen Keller, who was born able to see and hear, but 00:03:11.945 --> 00:03:16.210 very shortly thereafter lost her ability to see and hear. 00:03:16.210 --> 00:03:22.368 It was only much later in life that she gained the ability to use language, 00:03:22.368 --> 00:03:26.000 because she never had that in her early years. 00:03:26.000 --> 00:03:29.790 And when she gained that ability, she was amazed. 00:03:30.193 --> 00:03:34.768 W, a, t, e, r, water. It has a name. 00:03:34.768 --> 00:03:35.307 W, a, t. 00:03:36.787 --> 00:03:47.418 When Helen Keller gained the ability to use language and to communicate, she 00:03:47.418 --> 00:03:52.492 didn't become able to see or hear. She still couldn't see or hear, but she 00:03:52.492 --> 00:03:56.186 could do amazing things. She went around the country giving 00:03:56.186 --> 00:03:59.379 presentations. She graduated from Radcliffe College. 00:03:59.379 --> 00:04:03.637 All of that was made available to her, simply by adding language and 00:04:03.637 --> 00:04:07.832 communication to her life. So language is extremely useful, and that 00:04:07.832 --> 00:04:12.402 explains why it's all around us. Just imagine walking down the streets of 00:04:12.402 --> 00:04:17.161 the city and all the signs that you'd see. You just see words here, there and 00:04:17.161 --> 00:04:19.571 everywhere. And now we have a mystery. 00:04:19.571 --> 00:04:25.133 If we're not paying attention to language, then how can we use it so well to achieve 00:04:25.133 --> 00:04:28.774 so many purposes? The answer to that lies in the second 00:04:28.774 --> 00:04:33.608 general feature of language that I want to talk about, namely, language is 00:04:33.608 --> 00:04:36.057 conventional. But what's a convention? 00:04:36.057 --> 00:04:41.553 Remember that in the United States people drive on the right-hand side of the road. 00:04:41.553 --> 00:04:44.529 That's our convention. But what does that mean? 00:04:44.529 --> 00:04:49.594 It means that there's a general pattern of behavior that most people throughout 00:04:49.594 --> 00:04:54.660 society obey on a regular basis, and they criticize people who deviate from that 00:04:54.660 --> 00:04:57.256 pattern. And the same applies to language. 00:04:57.256 --> 00:05:02.638 We have certain patterns of using words in certain ways, and when people deviate from 00:05:02.638 --> 00:05:06.943 those patterns we criticize them. We say they're misspeaking or it's 00:05:06.943 --> 00:05:09.471 ungrammatical. Of course, conventions can vary. 00:05:09.471 --> 00:05:13.494 Everybody knows that there are many countries around the world where people 00:05:13.494 --> 00:05:17.887 don't drive on the right-hand side of the road, they drive on the left-hand side of 00:05:17.887 --> 00:05:20.428 the road. United Kingdom's one of them, but there 00:05:20.428 --> 00:05:23.033 are lots more. And the same applies to language. 00:05:23.033 --> 00:05:27.665 You can have the same word that's used to mean very different things in different 00:05:27.665 --> 00:05:30.491 languages. Most notorious example is football. 00:05:30.491 --> 00:05:35.920 In the United States it's used to refer to American Football whereas in the rest of 00:05:35.920 --> 00:05:39.733 the world it's used to refer to what Americans call soccer. 00:05:39.733 --> 00:05:45.162 And people in the rest of the world think that America is kind of silly because you 00:05:45.162 --> 00:05:50.332 don't use your feet on the ball except for punting and placekicking in football. 00:05:50.332 --> 00:05:55.503 But whether it makes sense or not the point here is simply that the conventions 00:05:55.503 --> 00:05:58.670 can vary from one part of the world to the other. 00:05:58.670 --> 00:06:01.539 And of course, you can do that with any word. 00:06:01.539 --> 00:06:06.887 You could, in English, use the word, money to refer to socks. At least the English 00:06:06.887 --> 00:06:10.343 language could've done that. It could've done that. 00:06:10.343 --> 00:06:14.517 It didn't, but it could've. So, in this way, conventions seem to be 00:06:14.517 --> 00:06:17.908 kind of arbitrary. They could've been very different. 00:06:17.908 --> 00:06:22.592 But language is far from completely arbitrary, because the conventions of 00:06:22.592 --> 00:06:27.486 language have limits, and two of these limits that I want to emphasize come from 00:06:27.486 --> 00:06:31.095 the fact that language is also representational and social. 00:06:31.095 --> 00:06:36.093 So first language is representational. When we use language, we're often trying 00:06:36.093 --> 00:06:40.438 to refer to objects in the world, and describe facts in the world. 00:06:40.438 --> 00:06:45.385 And you can't change those objects or those facts merely by changing your 00:06:45.385 --> 00:06:49.061 language. One good story to illustrate this is about 00:06:49.061 --> 00:06:52.604 the young Lincoln. When he was a lawyer, he supposedly 00:06:52.804 --> 00:06:56.080 examined a witness during a trial, and he said, 00:06:56.080 --> 00:07:00.630 Okay, how many legs does a horse have? And the witness said, Four. 00:07:00.630 --> 00:07:05.299 And then Lincoln said, Well, if we call a tail a leg, then how many 00:07:05.299 --> 00:07:08.819 legs does a horse have? And the witness said, Well, 00:07:08.819 --> 00:07:12.124 then I suppose the horse would have five legs. 00:07:12.124 --> 00:07:15.357 And Lincoln said, Absolutely not. That's wrong. 00:07:15.357 --> 00:07:18.446 Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg. 00:07:18.446 --> 00:07:24.408 And the point of this story, whether it's true historically or not, is that language 00:07:24.408 --> 00:07:29.868 cannot change the facts of the world. It can't make horses have five legs, if 00:07:29.868 --> 00:07:33.820 you merely change your language. Here's another example. 00:07:34.300 --> 00:07:40.228 Suppose that you don't have much money, But you happen to have a lot of socks in 00:07:40.228 --> 00:07:43.859 your drawer. Well, you could say, I'm going to use the 00:07:43.859 --> 00:07:49.046 word money to refer to socks. And now all of a sudden I've got lots of 00:07:49.046 --> 00:07:51.047 money. I'm not poor anymore. 00:07:51.047 --> 00:07:55.494 It ain't going to work, and that's because language, again, can't 00:07:55.494 --> 00:08:00.903 change your financial situation because that's a fact about the world, 00:08:00.903 --> 00:08:05.350 not about how you're using the word socks or the word money. 00:08:05.350 --> 00:08:11.164 And the other limit on the conventions of language comes from the fact that language 00:08:11.164 --> 00:08:14.584 is social. Sure, sometimes we talk to ourselves and 00:08:14.584 --> 00:08:19.988 use language to write things down, write notes to ourselves, for example, without 00:08:19.988 --> 00:08:25.597 other people around but basically language evolved because of its social function. 00:08:25.597 --> 00:08:31.412 What that means is that there's a point in following the conventions of the language 00:08:31.412 --> 00:08:35.790 as shared by the rest of that society that speaks that language. 00:08:35.790 --> 00:08:41.038 I've always thought that it was kind of silly that grapefruits are called 00:08:41.038 --> 00:08:44.327 grapefruits. Sure, they're fruits, but they don't look 00:08:44.327 --> 00:08:47.236 like grapes at all. They look more like lemons. 00:08:47.236 --> 00:08:53.331 They're like really big lemons, and that's why I think they ought to be called 00:08:53.331 --> 00:08:57.238 mega lemons. But If I went to a restaurant, and I 00:08:57.238 --> 00:09:02.327 wanted to order grapefruit juice, so I turned to the service person and 00:09:02.327 --> 00:09:07.088 said, I'd like some mega lemon juice, I probably wouldn't get what I wanted. 00:09:07.088 --> 00:09:12.372 And so even if I think the language is not using the right conventions, there's a 00:09:12.372 --> 00:09:17.199 point in following the conventions of the language in order to be able to 00:09:17.199 --> 00:09:20.461 communicate with other people and get what I want. 00:09:20.461 --> 00:09:25.353 And again, the great philosophers Monty Python saw this very well, when they 00:09:25.353 --> 00:09:29.920 produced their little clip called, The Man Who Speaks Only In Anagrams. 00:09:30.135 --> 00:09:35.892 Our first guest into the studio tonight is a man who talks entirely in anagrams. 00:09:36.108 --> 00:09:39.130 Patsee Greot. Do you enjoy this? 00:09:39.346 --> 00:09:42.944 I dom certainlyodd revychumso. What's your name? 00:09:43.160 --> 00:09:46.829 Hamrack, Hamrack Yeterot. So the point is obvious. 00:09:46.829 --> 00:09:52.658 Language is shared and once it's shared then it make sense to actually follow the 00:09:52.658 --> 00:09:56.760 conventions of society even if you don't like them. 00:09:56.760 --> 00:10:02.867 Overall then, language is important, and it's conventional in ways that might seem 00:10:02.867 --> 00:10:07.014 arbitrary, but actually, is limited in important ways 00:10:07.014 --> 00:10:11.690 by the fact that language is also representational and social. 00:10:11.690 --> 00:10:14.856 But it's kind of cheap to say language is conventional. 00:10:14.856 --> 00:10:19.099 Which are the conventions? Which are the rules that language follows? 00:10:19.099 --> 00:10:23.461 And this is actually extremely complex, because language follows rules or 00:10:23.461 --> 00:10:27.584 conventions at many different levels. Just take a real simple example. 00:10:27.584 --> 00:10:30.990 You walk into a pizza shop and you say, Gimme pepperoni. 00:10:30.990 --> 00:10:34.500 Well, the person then fixes a pepperoni pizza. 00:10:34.734 --> 00:10:37.933 And you pay for it. But how did that work? 00:10:37.933 --> 00:10:43.347 That you said, Gimme pepperoni. Well, first of all notice, that you had to 00:10:43.347 --> 00:10:48.043 use words that were meaningful to the person you were speaking to. 00:10:48.043 --> 00:10:51.379 Gimme wasn't a word in English, a long time ago, 00:10:51.379 --> 00:10:56.537 but this person understands gimme as a word, and therefore they can understand 00:10:56.537 --> 00:10:58.984 it. But in addition to those semantic 00:10:58.984 --> 00:11:03.349 constraints, you also have to have physical production constraints. 00:11:03.349 --> 00:11:07.978 You have to say it loud enough. If the pizza shop is really noisy, then 00:11:07.978 --> 00:11:13.665 you have to speak pretty loudly to get the person behind the counter, to understand 00:11:13.665 --> 00:11:17.435 what you're saying. You also have to put the words in the 00:11:17.435 --> 00:11:20.808 right order. If, instead of saying, gimme a pepperoni 00:11:20.808 --> 00:11:23.980 pizza, you said, Pizza a gimme pepperoni, 00:11:23.980 --> 00:11:27.069 they might not understand at all what you're saying. 00:11:27.069 --> 00:11:31.346 So there are structural combination rules that you have to follow as well. 00:11:31.346 --> 00:11:35.980 And there are also etiquette rules. In some pizza places if you just said, 00:11:35.980 --> 00:11:39.176 Gimme pepperoni, the waiter might say, Well, forget it, sir. 00:11:39.176 --> 00:11:41.900 I don't serve such impolite people. 00:11:41.900 --> 00:11:46.233 I certainly would say that to my son if my son said, Gimme pepperoni. 00:11:46.233 --> 00:11:50.133 I wouldn't get him a piece. I'd say, you need to ask me properly. 00:11:50.319 --> 00:11:55.395 So rules of etiquette can also get in the way of communication and cooperation. 00:11:55.395 --> 00:11:58.119 So language operates at all of these levels. 00:11:58.119 --> 00:12:02.948 Physical production, semantics, or the meanings of words, syntax, or the rules of 00:12:02.948 --> 00:12:07.576 grammar, and etiquette. Now all of this might seem obvious to you. 00:12:07.576 --> 00:12:13.953 And it probably should be obvious to you. But the rules of language are not always 00:12:13.953 --> 00:12:17.920 obvious. And that's what we're going to be learning 00:12:17.920 --> 00:12:22.275 throughout this course. I'll start with a simple example. 00:12:22.275 --> 00:12:24.919 What's this? Well, that is a finger. 00:12:24.919 --> 00:12:26.552 Okay. But what's this? 00:12:26.552 --> 00:12:28.341 Aaaah. That is a singer. 00:12:28.341 --> 00:12:31.530 This is not a finger. That's not a singer. 00:12:31.530 --> 00:12:39.352 Why do we pronounce the word finger with a hard G and the word singer with a soft G? 00:12:39.352 --> 00:12:46.709 That's a rule that we all follow, but very few people know the rule behind that 00:12:46.709 --> 00:12:50.248 pronunciation. So, do you know the rule? 00:12:50.248 --> 00:12:58.320 Take a little while and think about it. . 00:13:08.020 --> 00:13:11.916 Have you got it yet? Okay, I'll tell you the answer. 00:13:11.916 --> 00:13:17.761 When a word ends in N, G, E, R, and it's derived from a verb that ends in NG, then 00:13:17.761 --> 00:13:22.826 you get a soft G, like singer. But when the word that ends in N, G, E, R, 00:13:22.826 --> 00:13:28.827 is not derived from a verb that ends in NG, then you get either a hard G, like 00:13:28.827 --> 00:13:32.334 finger, Or a kind of medium G like plunger or 00:13:32.334 --> 00:13:36.215 danger. Now when you get that medium G or that 00:13:36.215 --> 00:13:40.532 hard G that's a trickier question. And I don't know the answer to that one, 00:13:40.532 --> 00:13:45.257 which shows that we can all use language according to rules, without knowing what 00:13:45.257 --> 00:13:48.582 the rules are. We don't have to be conscious of the rules 00:13:48.582 --> 00:13:51.440 at all. And a lot of what we're going to be doing 00:13:51.440 --> 00:13:55.932 in this course is looking behind our language to try to figure out the rules 00:13:55.932 --> 00:14:00.483 that govern the way we use language, especially when we're making arguments in 00:14:00.483 --> 00:14:03.049 order to better understand what we're doing. 00:14:03.049 --> 00:14:06.900 Some of the answers we give will be obvious once you mention them. 00:14:06.900 --> 00:14:10.060 But, I bet you hadn't thought of him before.