Necessity of Describing Things Exactly for Two Purposes
While our primal goal is to understand things accurately, legitimately accurately to be more exact, to describe things exactly is inseparable from that goal.
The term, 'exactly', may cause some misunderstandings. A description's being exact isn't necessarily being detailed, is it?
It isn't. We don't promote describing details we don't know, and synoptic descriptions have their uses. Trying to be vainly detailed is futile.
Then, what do you mean by the term, 'exactly'?
The purpose of any description is to have the receiver of the description reconstruct in the receiver's brain what's meant by the describer. If the reconstruction is an exact copy of what's meant by the describer, the description is exact.
So, you are talking about the fidelity of the reconstruction to what's meant by the describer, not the detailedness of the description.
Yes, that's what I am talking about.
As the reconstruction isn't determined only by the description, but also by the comprehension ability of the receiver, it follows that we can't judge whether a description is exact or not, only by looking at the description.
Hmm, the receiver's lack of the ability to comprehend logical reasoning isn't the description's fault, and I'm not concerned with receivers who lack that ability. However, certainly, everyone has his or her own knowledge base, and we will have to specify prerequisite knowledge for our descriptions.
So, in our definition, to describe things exactly is to specify prerequisite knowledge and to describe things so that all the receivers who have the ability to comprehend logical reasoning and the prerequisite knowledge can reconstruct in their brains exact copies of what we mean.
So it seems. Obviously, the description has to be unambiguous so that it doesn't allow the receivers to make multiple interpretations.
Aren't there descriptions that are intentionally ambiguous so that they give receivers freedom of interpretations?
Ah, as in some literary works. . . . I have a different view about them. As far as the author didn't intend to let receivers know which interpretation is correct, the correct comprehension of the description for receivers is that they perceive the intention as it is, and not try to take up a specific interpretation. That is, if the author's intentions are conveyed exactly to receivers, that isn't ambiguous.
So, if the author meant receivers to interpret his or her description in a specific meaning, but receivers couldn't judge which, that's ambiguousness, while if the author meant receivers not to interpret his or her description in a specific meaning, and receivers understand the intention, that isn't ambiguousness.
Yes. I'm talking about whether the author's intentions have been conveyed as they are.
Ah-ha. Then, why is it inseparable from understanding things legitimately accurately?
We describe things not only to convey information to other people, but also to develop our own understandings. When we describe things in the latter purpose, the exactness of descriptions is absolutely necessary to enhance the accuracy of our understandings.
So, to describe things exactly is necessary for two purposes: for developing our own understandings and for conveying information to other people.
Necessity of Describing Things Exactly for Developing Our Own Understandings
Do We Have to Use Languages to Think?
I heard several times an opinion as humans can't think things without using a language, but I doubt that. We can think things using numeric formulae, graphs, tables, pictures, or only mental images.
That depends on what you mean by 'language'.
I mean usual languages in the narrow sense.
I don't know what are usual and what are unusual. Is Eskimo unusual because it has various words that mean various states of snow?
. . . I mean languages that use words and sentences, usually spoken. It doesn't matter how many words exist to mean snow. Eskimo is definitely usual.
In that sense, languages can't be said to be the only tools for thinking.
To think is an endeavor to understand something, and an understanding is, after all, a state of the brain. Strictly speaking, in order to set our brain to a state, we don't necessarily need languages, numeric formulae, graphs, etc.
However, how can we record the state of the brain, and reconstruct the state as we wish? Tools to do that are languages, numeric formulae, graphs, etc.
We don't particularly need to stick to languages, but it's very difficult or rather time-consuming to record certain things without using languages, which is the reason why languages are used extensively in thinking. Anyway, when we talk of descriptions, those descriptions aren't necessarily in languages.
We Have to Be Able to Exactly Reconstruct Our Understandings in Order to Repeatedly Examine Our Hypotheses System Against New Pieces of Information
The necessity to be able to exactly reconstruct our understandings comes from the fact that the only method of our understanding things legitimately accurately is to build a consistent hypotheses system and to continually examine and modify the hypotheses system against new pieces of information, for unless we can exactly reconstruct our hypotheses system, how can we examine the hypotheses system?
It's important to know that we can't reach the whole truth at an instant as though it's given as a divine revelation. We nurture our hypotheses system gradually. To do that, we have to be able to accurately preserve and reconstruct improved versions of our hypotheses system. Otherwise, fruits of our efforts to improve our hypotheses system would be lost.
That is, we wouldn't be able to accumulate our improvements. We would be like Sisyphus.
Who is Sisyphus?
He is a man in a Greek myth, who was condemned by gods and had to keep repeatedly rolling the same boulder up to the top of a hill.
A poor fellow . . .
If we presume that we can exactly reconstruct our understandings by cursory descriptions because those are our own understandings, we should be overrating ourselves.
In order to make our understandings more accurate, we have to distinguish each thing from other things. That distinction is the fruit of our effort, and we have to preserve and be able to reconstruct the fruit. Then, our description will be have to something that expresses the distinction.
