Definitions

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It came to my attention in another thread that there may actually be huge differences between people in terms of the how strictly a word is defined. I was also wondering that this could be an autism difference, and seems likely the reason some people have a hard with non-literal use of words.

For me, probably most words are very loosely (and I'm using the word 'loosely' here because I cannot think of another word for what I'm trying to convey, even though it probably exists) defined. Like, the concept that goes with a word is fare more broad than any strict definition of the word itself. I think this less-strict sense of defining concepts might help me create new connections to other ideas more easily than for people who have stricter definitions.

For instance, people like saying that autism is a continuum. Well, most things to me are a continuum, and it feels somewhat unnecessary of a thing to state about something.

But then again, I wonder about other concepts that are very strictly defined. Diabetes for instance. The definition is that there's insulin-resistance in your body. That's a very strict definition. BUT at the same time, the insulin resistance is not actually measured when you find out if you have diabetes. Rather, you get your blood sugar tested and then through that people deduce that you probably have insulin-resistance. (Ha, even this is partially wrong though, I guess I'm talking only about type 2 diabetes.) Regardless, my point is that there is an understanding outside the scope of what the measures are, for type 2 diabetes. And even the definition is different than 'has high blood sugar'.

For something like autism, it seems that people like to define it as measures that represent it, but don't actually define it for what it IS at all. But some people take the measures of it and then make that the definition. Which is all we can do when we don't have more information about it, but it's the difference between measuring behavior and understanding why that behavior exists. It makes sense to me that someone could have autism without many outward traits, because autism seems to me to be a gradient of awareness of information processing, and that most outward identifiable traits of autistic people are actually quite poor measures of the differences in thought processing that someone with autism has compared to someone without autism.


Ack, this post has gotten off-track. It wasn't supposed to be about the defintion of autism, but rather the definition of all words in existence, and if you define words strictly or loosely, and to discuss how that might affect your perception of the world around you.

The start of the problem is that words are conceptual and the real world is not.
Words apply bounds to a reality without bounds.

I don't think that my need for clarity in language means that I form fewer conceptual associations or have more rigid thinking than someone who uses words more loosely/vaguely/non-specifically. Nor does it mean that I think all terms should have only one definition or a super strict definition...although that would be easier for me. (It might say something about my working memory -- that I can't juggle all possible meanings. It also says indicates that I have a hard time with abstract language, but that doesn't mean I don't have any abstract thoughts/can't do abstraction.) My understanding and use of language doesn't reflect my thought process the way you might think it does because I don't think in words to begin with.

Being specific rather than vague just makes it easier for me to translate the words and understand what other people are talking about. If a word has a hundred different possible meanings, it can be a lot more difficult to work out/guess which meaning(s) might apply in what that other person is saying than if it has only one or two meanings.

Language is such that even for people who think in words and have no difficulties with language at all, meaning lost in translation of words from one person's mind to another is a normal thing; When you don't think in words, have language problems and/or have theory of mind problems, the meaning lost gets bigger (especially when your theory of mind problems are not so much that you get it wrong guessing what other people are thinking, but just go totally blank and can't think of anything -- even if your mind actually does contain knowledge of theoretical possibilities, nothing triggers a thought process to pull any of them out and apply them to this particular person's mind in this particular context... or, if you do think of any possibilities, you think of them very, very briefly but don't have any idea where to begin to figure out which, if any, of those possibilities might apply and can't hold onto them all for long enough anyways -- which isn't strictly a theory of mind problem, it's just that in the end you wind up in a similar place to if you'd literally thought of nothing at all). Specific definitions and clarity can minimize the meaning lost in translation (for everyone).

I do not think in words to begin with either, words are a secondary thing. Actually speaking them is sort of? a 3rd step for me.



I'm guessing that many people, when faced with a word that to you has multiple different meanings, instead of having all those individual meanings, instead has one or 2 much larger meanings with giant, fuzzy boundaries. They aren't searching for the appropriate definition of the word most of the time, since the word itself encompasses all those things all at the same time.


I would postulate that when nothing triggers the thought process, it could easily be a result of a lack of connections that would, in other people, be connected to that thing.


I guess bringing both these ideas together that I've talked about here, it makes sense to me that someone who thinks with smaller boundaries for a word (and probably the whole concept behind the word), would likely have more connections to other ideas, not fewer, since there are probably more unique concepts there TO connect in the first place. AND it also could explain why, as you described above, might not seem to have that triggering of how to act/respond. The connection still is not strongly there for an automatic trigger, but it's not there because you have grabbed the wrong definition out of your handbag of 100 things, while the person talking to you has used a definition to them that only has, 3 or 4 meanings, and so it is far more obvious which one they are using. Also, all those connections you have for all those individual things? They're also attached in the other person, (or a lot of them will be presumably), but they're coming from what to them, is 1 concept.

This all fits into my own theory of what autism is; that the conscious mind simply enters into the...dissemination of information that the brain does, at an earlier point than for allistics. If working memory is generally going to be the same size for everyone, if you are working with smaller pieces of information from everywhere, suddenly it gets filled up a lot faster.

I could very easily not have anything right either about all this. I just like thinking about how minds might work.




Our very perception applies bounds to things that have no bounds. eg: We view things as whole shapes, but the reality is that different matter is there compared to matter beside it, and only at the scale that our senses pick up. We perceive that, then put it into a shape and say 'this is a single thing' when in reality there is no such thing. It's all just molecules moving around.

Hi,

I'd love to reply in detail, but don't have the time right at the moment - so I'll just leave a few quick thoughts that may be useful.

I have been studying Linguistics at Macquarie University for the past 3 years, and in my first year here, I was diagnosed, by a psychologist, with Aspergers. As you may have guessed, my focus interest is in the area of language - more specifically, I'm interested in how we use language. So, your question relating to the ways in which various people variously define things sparked my attention.

First, most peolpe, when attempting to provide a formal definition, describe the manner in which the phenomenon in question functions. That is, they attempt to articulate what it is that the object, (concrete or abstract,) does.

The second quick point I'd like to make is that our experience of the world is socially defined. If you were the only person in existence, there would be no need to communicate, and hence, no need for words. However, because we exist in relationship to one another, and are always attempting to relay our experiences to each other, we need some sort of socially negotiated codified system that allows us to be understood by each other. As Edward Sapir, a linguist of the mid-20th century, said, "We see and hear and very largely experience as we do because the language habits of our communities predispose certain choices of interpretation."

I hope is provides some help, and I'd love to discuss it at greater length if you are interested.

Graeme

Why do you think that smaller boundaries for a word (not sure I even know what you mean by this) means smaller concepts or fewer conceptual associations when words and concepts are 100% separable things?



Nope. When I have no trigger to think of something, that means I literally think of nothing -- no possibilities. I either don't see a handbag or I see an empty one. That's very different from thinking of many possibilities (a handbag with 100 things) and choosing the wrong one, and again different from thinking of many possibilities and having no basis for choosing any of them combined with an inability to actually see all of them at once (and I am not totally blind to the fact that these scenarios could all be grouped together as a single thing in a thought process -- e.g. because of their similar pragmatic outcome -- just because I can see them as distinct and perceive the distinction as important in the context of this discussion).

You misunderstand. There's an extra layer there you missed. How to explain...

-The premise I am working with is that when there is nothing triggering a response, there is no connection.
-There is no connection because whatever definition you have in your mind at that moment does not have a connection to a response.
-The definition that is in your mind is the 1 of 100 definitions that you yourself described earlier.
-How to got to that definition is not part of my discussion; it could be conscious or unconscious, getting to that definition.
-Someone without autism chose a definition of 1 of 4, say. Automatically or not, again, doesn't matter.
-The brain makes connections via individual concepts, not words, unless the word is perceived as an individual concept.
-Compare a person with 4 concepts of a single entity compared to a person with 100 concepts of a single entity
-The person with 4 concepts has 4 different sets of connections to each of their 4 concepts. The person with 100 concepts for 1 entity has connections for each of those 100 concepts.
-The person with 4 concepts is using 1 of them, and they talk to you about it.
-You pick up the word, but you don't get the same concept as they do; you actually do not fundamentally have the same concept because you have parsed that single entity down farther.
-The person who has used the 1 of 4 concepts expects that you will then act appropriately to that concept, and presumably, IRL, it is quite obvious which of those 4 concepts applies in the situation.
-The person with 100 concepts has chosen only 1 of them.
-Recall that each concept, not entity/word, (I have used them interchangeably, sorry!!), is what gets connections to other things.
-That concept that you have brought into your head, when there is a blank, is not actually attached to anything else that is at all pertinent for the specificity of this encounter with this other person, (even though there of course going to be connections of that concept to another concept), so you do nothing because nothing is pulled.


Let me give you a poor but simple example. You and your friend are looking at a forest, the input for both of you is the same, an entire field of view. But you parse it as trees and your friend parses it as forest. Perhaps your friend makes a comment like 'Oh wow, the forest doesn't look healthy' because...I dunno, maybe it's too homogenous or something. You, on the other hand, who are parsing every individual tree and no individual trees look sick to you, so you don't understand the comment.
In this example you have a concept of trees and a concept of healthy, but because you don't have a concept of forest, there is no connection between forest and sick. You of course have plenty of connection between tree and sick though, but that's not what your friend was talking about.

Last edited by cavernio on 14 May 2015, 7:10 am, edited 1 time in total.

Oh, also, I backpeddled on the total number of concepts if you didn't notice. I said that there are likely more connections for you because you have more concepts than I do.

Second; words and concept are NOT totally separate things. Words represent concepts, albeit, not always very well. Regardless, that you do not even see them as being the same just supports my theory.

I love talking about stuff like this, although I am coming at more from a cognition side. Of course it's all connected however.

Are you aware of the concept of exemplars?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exemplar_theory

It actually makes sense to me that people who are not involved socially with people much would develop/keep concepts that are not well-defined by the languages they use; granted, I suspect there's a lot more going on than just that, probably a propensity to subdivide things more in the first place,

I postulate that autistics don't have quite a vast network of prototypes or exemplars, as allistics do. I could see some people not having any! I would guess they'd be the lower functioning individuals.

Ah, words. It's an interesting but complicated topic, so... I'm just going to ramble.

Anyway, words are just labels for concepts, so most words have to have broad or loose definitions because the universe just has way too many things going on for each concept to have its own word.

It might be worth distinguishing "loose" versus "broad" definitions? A word can be a category for other things and still have a very precise definition. For example, "mammal" is pretty strictly defined as a category of animals that have mammary glands and you can't really use that word any other way, but there are lots of totally different animals that fall in the definition of "mammal."

A certain word can have a different definition in different contexts. (Compare what "fruit" means in botany versus culinary versus US tariff laws.) I feel like scientific and medical fields tend to enforce a strict definition on words... except for mental health which is a really nebulous and chaotic field that hardly anyone knows anything about. That's probably one of the reasons "autism" has such a wishy-washy definition while no one argues about "diabetes." I think another reason is that there is a cluster(?) of related or similar concepts that don't have their own word, so when people want to talk about those things, they just have to use the next most similar word, which is "autism." Since those things don't have their own word, I think a lot of people are likely to not even realize they are different concepts.

People often have different definitions for words. This is why legal documents and contracts tend to have a "definitions" section to make sure everyone involved is using the same definition. Unfortunately, providing your definition for a word doesn't always work. Some people have very strong pre-conceived notions about the definition of a word and will not comprehend any other definition. Sometimes they will argue against the definition provided (even though which word labels which concept is fairly arbitrary), but sometimes they won't even acknowledge that a definition was provided.

It seems, colloquially, words are defined by consensus! Whatever's in the dictionary is actually just a recommendation, apparently. I'm not even talking about connotation. This first occurred to me when I saw this article, which hinged on the word intention/intentional/intentionally but didn't provide a definition for the word. When people were given two similar scenarios and asked if the character in the story did something "intentionally," NT people and autistic people tended to disagree on one of the two scenarios. Someone came to the odd conclusion that autistic people have a different understanding of intentional action, but what actually happened was that NT people were using the popular definition of the word while autistic people went by the dictionary.

Maybe people who do less socializing are more likely to use the dictionary or "official" defintion whereas people who socialize and converse a lot will often use a seperate popularity-based definition?

When people have a highly entrenched preconceived idea about a word, it can be quite a communication barrier. For example, I once saw an article about how some study found that being well-liked by your peers is the biggest factor in most people's career success. You'd think the response would be a resounding, "Well, duh!! " (even if you think it shouldn't be true, you probably still think it IS true). But the article started off saying that "popularity" was the biggest factor, and a few sentences in, it specified that "popularity"; means "being well-liked by one's peers." The article comments were filled with arguments that it was't true. It seems like people saw the word "popularity" and their minds immediately went to the villianous characters on various high school sitcoms?

The problem with one word being used for multiple concepts is that people don't always acknowledge that it's the case. They think one word equals one concept, even if different contexts. This is why so many people think autistics are sociopaths. Autistics and sociopaths both lack "empathy," and a lot of people (even some that really ought to know better ) don't realize that the word "empathy" is being defined two different ways.

The second most annoying word that people refuse to acknowledge multiple definitions for: "marriage."

Honorable mention goes to "theory."

No, you misunderstand.



That is perfectly clear.

One thing that's not clear, that I should ask about is this: What are you referring to when you say "connection"? Are you talking about static connections (like what you know, the way that you have organized information and know it can be organized) or dynamic connections (which particular organization you may be using at a particular time)? (If you refer to both, then what you're saying is not valid because static and dynamic mental connections are not the same even thought they are closely related -- it's possible to be familiar with the many ways that stuff is connected and to have conceptual associations between those things without always thinking about those connections or associations in a given situation...... Also, knowing something is not the same as recognizing it's relevence in the moment or being able to recall it on demand/reliably -- whether or not you think about a connection between x-number of things, or how broad/narrow your thoughts about something are at any particular time may have absolutely nothing to do with how you conceptually organize information in general.)



This makes no sense at all. All I know is that you still assuming that when I say I think of nothing, there actually is a definition that I'm thinking of. YOU are misunderstanding in that you continue to believe there is a definition when there isn't one; There is NOTHING. "NOTHING" MEANS, LITERALLY, NOTHING. No definition. No meaning. The words are, LITERALLY, MEANINGLESS.



Again, no definition. You're working with faulty premises.

....

This is starting to really piss me off: I tell you how I think and what actually happens in my mind, and you just continue to insist that I think a different way. I can't tell for sure whether the problem is that you just don't understand/can't imagine what I experience or if you're actually operating with the assumption that you know my thoughts better than I do, but I get the strong impression that it's mostly (if not entirely) the latter..... If you're not going to even bother listening to me then I'm not going to keep trying to talk to you about this anymore.

Actually you misunderstand me -- again.

I said they are "separable" -- meaning a person can have lots of concepts with lots of inter-relations between those concepts without having any language or words or at all. Concepts can exist in the complete absence of words. And words can be nothing but visual shapes and sounds in terms of what they are to a person, with absolutely no connection to any concepts.

I did not mean, as you seem to think, that there is no connection between words or that there can never be any blurring of words and concepts -- while I can't imagine how this works at all, I know that for some people there is no separation at all because all of their thoughts are in words.

"I tell you how I think and what actually happens in my mind, and you just continue to insist that I think a different way."

No, I'm just not conveying my idea properly, because you continually counter-argue a point that, with how the idea is in my head, isn't a counter-argument at all. Unless when you say you think of 'nothing' you are also dead to the outside world, as in, no visual, auditory, touch etc input, but that is not what you have said.

You know, when I say something that makes no sense at all, (which you explicitly said), perhaps don't automatically think I'm being an idiot and not actually listening to what you're saying, because I'm actually using that as an important piece of information. How can you argue against something that doesn't make sense to you in the first place anyways?

Whatever, get pissed off, I'm done trying to explain my idea for now regardless.

Part of this is exactly my point. You have lots of concepts that there are no words for. But it doesn't make sense for humanity to have lots of concepts for which there are no words...what's the point of having words in the first place if they are poor representations of what exists in your head?
The idea is that an autistic has -more- concepts than there are words for them compared to an allistic because they parse things as parts compared to wholes....(or rather, as smaller pieces that are not already integrated into something that we then call 'whole' but the word 'whole' in this case is really just comparative since the word 'whole' might mean 'complete' to some people, but I do not want it to mean 'complete' here)