Quote:
Originally Posted by Cynthetiq
Wolf is that the same thing as making a catalog of all books and that you cannot include the catalog book inside the catalog? If you include it then it's not the catalog if you don't then it's not the entire catalog since that book is now outside of the catalog.
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EXACTLY! General semantics deals with "the meaning of meaning". One of the many types of "unsanity" (as opposed to insanity) that occur in the world results from people confusing the word with the object. People who fear snakes become terrified when someone says the word... obviously not a perfectly sane reaction. A second type is such as when a person bitten by a dog a year ago on a day that dog had been badly abused, may refuse to believe the dog is not now a danger, no matter what assurances are given. Labelling the two situations with Dog-last-year, and Dog-this-year tends to help eliminate that problem.
Finally, as with your catalog (a map of your books), a perfect map would include the map itself, which would include a smaller map, ad infinitum. Obviously this cannot happen, so just as we must not confuse the word with the object or the spatio-temporal successor with its predecessor, we must not confuse the map with the territory. The two are NOT the same.