When Truth Isn't Enough

This is one of my favorite posts yet, but I'm not sure I understand your full chain of reasoning. I understand you to be arguing that we should only be affected by the denotational content of a statement, and ignore connotations as best we can. I entirely agree we shouldn't confuse the two, but I don't see how to go from that to your full conclusion. Is the danger of confusion so great it is worth giving up the extra expressiveness of connotation? I'd appreciate some clarification.

I really like the idea of an acronym, but I'd like one that can be used naturally as a verb. My best shot is "agree denotationally but oject connotatively", e.g I adboc that the rich party while the poor starve.

Does anyone have a good acronym for "I agree with your reasoning, but the fact that you're applying it only here and nowhere else probably proves something bad about you"?

This may be excessive nit-picking, I'm not sure; but I just don't think that your examples of the Connotation Game provide connotations as you define them. "demagogue" and "eloquent" have different denotations - it's not just the emotional aura of the words, their actual meanings are different. Ditto for "patriotic" and "jingoistic" and so forth. The point of the game is that the same person/act can be described by flattering, neutral and disparaging words, but even though the same behavior is described by different words, the meanings of the words are different. The game points out inherent subjectivity present in those meanings.

If you used e.g. "black", "colored" and "African-American", then it'd be about connotations. But that's not how the game is played.

More generally, I think you're trying to give the concept of a connotation a larger role than it's used to. Connotations are about differences in phrases like "ultra-rich", "stinking rich", and "independently wealthy". In the phrase about the ultra-rich you quote, it seems difficult to assign the subtext being carried to connotations, unless you want to use "connotation" in the sense of "subtext, any implied meaning". But I don't think those shoes will fit the word.

Subtexts are very important, and are used insidiously all the time. They're not always emotional; sometimes they exploit logical structure, as in the canonical example "Have you stopped beating your wife?" It's difficult to stand your ground against them, and forcing them into the open, demanding that they be made explicit, as you suggest, is a useful technique. Unfortunately, it usually won't work on someone who feels entitles to use a subtext against you - due to either intentional demagoguery or misguided self-righteousness, for instance.

One framework that seems to make a careful study of implied meanings is that of framing. I don't really know what they're doing with this and whether it's more than a useful metaphor. But, to repeat myself, I think that "connotations" might be too straight a jacket to use for the notion.

I feel like I might have seen this game on Overcoming Bias before, but I can't find it there

The game is familiar to me from Yes, Minister, a TV programme which was an expert satire on British politics. Bernard Woolley, a senior civil servant, would refer to these as "irregular verbs". From the quotes page at IMDB: "That's one of those irregular verbs, isn't it? I give confidential security briefings. You leak. He has been charged under section 2a of the Official Secrets Act. "

More irregular verbs here.

Objections to this statement seem to be 1) the highly loaded descriptions of the rich and the poor and 2) the juxtaposition of the descriptions without an explicit relationship.

While an examination of word choice might allow you get to a less loaded formulation of its content. eg. The rich, who have much, enjoy luxury while the poor suffer. It doesn't get to the fact that the statement is an attempt to draw us into an implicit connection between the two descriptions. The statement is only connected by a "while", which might connect any two facts, but in practice we only bring the facts together in order to contrast or compare them. This is a nice set up for the rhetorician because the connection we make is ultimately our own, and often not explicitly known to ourselves. The capitalist objects, but is not sure to what, precisely, because he can't find it in the statement.

Now if I object to the statement of the grounds that it is emotionally loaded, I am not directly addressing this implicit point of the statement. I could fall into the trap of being seen as an apologist for the rich if I only object to their description but not the implication.

But I wonder if I should object that statement is not untrue as such, but that the point of it isn't clear, would that be taken to mean that I just don't get the implicit point of it? That I'm simply unsympathetic to the emotions of the statement?

Why not make the implicit explicit (as it can be)? Why not treat the statement as if was an explicit statement of what it tried to be implicitly?

I think that point of the statement is to assert either that the rich are directly responsible for the condition of the poor, or at least that the rich fail in their moral obligations toward the poor; response:

Sorry, are you saying that the rich are directly responsible for the condition of the poor, or just that the rich fail in their moral obligations toward the poor?

This is a nice way of summing up something I do with my clients, teaching them to remove the negative connotations of belief statements. For example, a statement like "life has no meaning and everything I do is pointless" can be denotationally true, but that doesn't automatically make it a bad thing.

One easy way to expose connotations in your own thinking is to ask "So what?" or "What's bad about that?" or "What's good about that?".

(The latter's a lot less useful though, since the majority of motivated reasoning is negatively-motivated. "What's bad about that" is at least 10-20 times more likely to produce a useful answer, within the context of my work anyway.)

This reminds me of something I heard someone say recently - that much of the content of speech is actually sleight-of-hand. It isn't there to inform us, but to distract us into evaluating and agreeing with its denotation while it slips in its connotation unnoticed.

I though this had a name: spin.

I find just saying "and?" has a similar effect without requiring explanations.

Quoting someone else's comment from another thread:

there is also the matter of the habit that some intellectuals have of shocking the bourgeoisie. If you say that the bad guys think that they're the good guys and we're the bad guys, you probably won't raise any eyebrows. But if you make the statement in a way that implies that you agree with the bad guys' assessment, or that you are positioning yourself as a neutral party who favors neither side, then you will probably raise some eyebrows. And based on my own experience, an awful lot of people like to present the rather familiar and tired and unremarkable view that the bad guys think that they're the good guys, in just such a way, so as to maximize their effect on their listener. This seeming undercurrent of support for the enemy is something that can be easily avoided without changing the factual content of what you're saying, but it is in my experience often not avoided, indeed, it seems to be sought out and nurtured. And then, when the predictable reaction occurs, like clockwork Mr. Epater-les-bourgeois loudly complains about the impossibility of making obviously true statements in front of the the foolish masses.

I usually use the phrase "only literally."

I feel I must point out that 'connotation' and 'denotation' tend to be used differently by professional philosophers. 'connotation' refers to intension, while 'denotation' refers to 'extension'. That is, 'denotation' refers to a word's referent (the set of things in the world to which it can refer), while 'connotation' refers to its meaning.

Forgive me if I'm repeating anyone here, but it seems to me that there's a very large problem with reducing a statement like this to a strict statement of fact that's independent of phrasing or specific connotations of the words used.

The problem is that a human brain automatically interprets the statement as having been issued by an agent, with an agenda. Therefore it becomes not an unbiased sample from truth-space but a deliberate selection, chosen with intent. Phrase it how you like, you've still made an implicit statement about the importance of all the other things you didn't say. If I were the capitalist I imagine my reaction would be to think, fine, but... [some other true fact I consider more important]. It's the prioritization of the original statement that I take issue with.

For some reason I'm a critic this evening, forgive me, but I don't think this one meets the standards of your previous articles; it feels to me that this doesn't move us far beyond the widely appreciated fact that for every portion of direct implication an utterance has, there's usually a generous side-salad of connotation. Am I missing a key novel move?

There's an old quote that poor people are crazy and rich people eccentric... I'm sure someone can come up with a third word to fill in the trio.

I think this technique is often useful in arguments, and I imagine most people here use it to some extent. A reasonable summary of "YSITTBIDWTCIYSTEIWEWITTAW", is "true, but so what?" (although we might need something with a less aggressive connotation...). Although this may be part of the "Dark Arts", it's often very unnerving when you're arguing with someone when they accept without question factual statements you were all set to have to defend to the hilt.

I'm well-off, you're wealthy, they're ultra-rich.

Conversations seem to occur on several levels simultaneously. There's a level of literal truth. There are also multiple dimensions of politics. (What I call "micro" and "macro," in a way analogous to the application to economics.) There's even a meta-level that consists of just trying to overwhelm people with verbiage.

Something related happens with me every once in a while when someone makes a statement of the form A -> B and I say 'yes' or 'ok' in response. By saying 'ok' all I am doing is to acknowledge the truth of the statement A -> B, however, in most cases, the person assumes that I am agreeing that A is true and hence ends up concluding that B is true as well.

One example is this -

I go to a stationery shop and ask for an envelope. The storekeeper hands me one and I start inspecting it. The storekeeper observes this and remarks, "If you want a bigger envelope, I can give you one." I say, "Alright." He hands me a bigger envelope.

The word "connotations" is cute but it's a bit of a dodge. It's a non-label label. "Everything else". Fair enough, but everything else how? The statement is denotationally pretty tight, no wiggle room. There isn't a hidden channel in HTML text. Where's the connotation communicated?

I conclude: the connotation exists in the relation of the statement to the context. First order connotations are the denotation in relation to the world as seen by the speaker or listener. Second order, as seen by the speaker guessing what the listener sees, or vice versa. And so on.

The payload in the phrase discussed above is a third order connotation: the speaker's moral weighting of what he guesses to be the listener's ethical analysis of the denotation.

(more to come)

The word "iffy" in your acronym should be replaced, I think.

a quick look at the economic data shows they do control the majority of our planet's wealth

Not really, actually. The ereason is a bit subtle.

A very large portion of the planet's wealth consists of the capacity of people to earn income by working. Most people have an asset - the value of their labor - which is no counted in standard tabulations of wealth.

Wealth in terms of financial capital is indeed distributed in a very skewed fashion, for a number of reasons. Wealth in terms of ability to earn income is still skewed, but far less skewed.

You can see this when you look at the distribution of financial wealth versus the distribution of financial income.

The difference is enormous. I consider this to be an example of a factoid - true but misleading.

What do we need the acronym ADBOC for? If we agree on denotations, our rational evaluations of the argument will be the same.

Our judgments will differ only when our judgments are affected by the emotional associations of the words or phrases, and those associations are irrelevant to the logical structure we're supposed to be evaluating.

Checking up on the guest lists for cocktail parties and customer data for salons, we find that these two activities are indeed disproportionately enjoyed by the rich, so that part of the statement also seems true enough.

P implies Q does not imply Q implies P, surely.

I think the "...and that's terrible" is pretty clearly implied. What exactly is wrong with the quote? It looks like you're dissecting a straightforward appeal to people's (stated or real) anti-unfairness values, as if it's a given that it's dishonest. I don't get it.

"All three statements in a sentence have the same denotation"

Alas, that's not the case.

Also, we already have access to a language that is purely denotational, with all of the connotations excluded. We call it mathematics. It's useful and nifty.