DBT
Contributor
A Dictionary definition? To 'encounter' or 'undergo' is an 'experience'...exactly......how? How does a bridge, for instance, 'experience' structural damage?
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What is the primary function of the brain and nervous system?
- Thread starter rousseau
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A Dictionary definition? To 'encounter' or 'undergo' is an 'experience'...exactly......how? How does a bridge, for instance, 'experience' structural damage?
Speakpigeon
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- Rationality (i.e. facts + logic), Scepticism (not just about God but also everything beyond my subjective experience)
The reason for which something is done or created or for which something exists
There will be a reason that he came to Paris. For example that he wanted to see his sister. The reason was his. All reasons are somebody's reasons.
There is always a cause to a fire. Perhaps lightning. The cause is nobody's. It's a natural thing.
The reason for creating an airline is somebody's reason.
If a purpose is, as per the definition you yourself provided, "The reason for which something is done or created", then somebody will have thought about it. Why do this or create this? What is the purpose of doing this or creating this? The purpose is somebody's purpose. The purpose of an airliner is that which motivated the creator of it. He would have designed the thing so that it would fulfil its purpose, the one given to it by its creator. And if nobody wants to use it to fly to Paris, the purpose of it remains the same.
It's a matter of semantic and the semantic is implied by dictionary definitions. If purpose is The reason for which something is done or created or for which something exists, then any purpose implies a mind to reason the purpose that becomes the one of the action done or the object created.
EB
Jokodo
Veteran Member
Words mean what people use them to mean, and people use things like "experience structural damage" all the fucking time without meaning to imply that Bridgestone Are Self-aware.
Also: https://starkeycomics.com/2019/04/18/linguistic-prescriptivists-make-terrible-zoologists/
DBT
Contributor
Sure they do, common usage, blanket terms, equivocation, etc, yet the bridge sustains damage rather than experiences damage.
Despite common usage, a bridge cannot experience. Hence it is a figure of speech rather than an accurate description of the event.
Jokodo
Veteran Member
DBT
Contributor
Rather than being a matter of what I may or may not want, it is a matter of accurate or precise descriptions. Something that is not necessarily a part of common usage or common references.
Jokodo
Veteran Member
DBT
Contributor
Sure...the site makes my point. Precisely what I was talking about.
Jokodo
Veteran Member
DBT
Contributor
Which just shows that you either cannot understand what I said, or simply refuse to understand what I said. Even your example of a ''bridge experiencing damage'' is not common.
Why say - the bridge 'experienced' damage rather than 'the bridge sustained damage' or say, the car 'experienced' extensive damage in a collision rather than 'the car was extensively damaged in a collision'
That's not to say that is may not be phrased that way, but that it is not, strictly speaking, correct.
experience noun
ex·pe·ri·ence | \ ik-ˈspir-ē-ən(t)s
1a : direct observation of or participation in events as a basis of knowledge
b : the fact or state of having been affected by or gained knowledge through direct observation or participation
2a : practical knowledge, skill, or practice derived from direct observation of or participation in events or in a particular activity
b : the length of such participation has 10 years' experience in the job
3 : something personally encountered, undergone, or lived through
4a : the conscious events that make up an individual life
b : the events that make up the conscious past of a community or nation or humankind generally
5 : the act or process of directly perceiving events or reality
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Jokodo
Veteran Member
You are not, strictly speaking or otherwise, any kind of authority on what meanings other people can/should/do express with what words. You treat lexicology like a creationist treats zoological taxonomy.
Perfectly irrelevant since we are and always have been talking about the verb "experience".
DBT
Contributor
No, that is clearly not what I am saying. I am talking about precise terminology....something that I assume you value when it comes to accurate representation and description.
So when it comes to an accurate description of a bridge sustaining damage....it is not precise to say 'the bridge experienced damage' regardless of the fact that we know what is meant or that may be common usage.
It seems to me that you demand precision when it suits you but throw your purported standards out the window when it doesn't.....then it's, oh, well....common usage and references are fine, we know what it means.
What you have is a double standard.
Makes no difference.
experience, verb
experienced; experiencing
Definition of experience (Entry 2 of 2)
transitive verb
1 : to have experience of : undergo experienced severe hardships as a child
2 : to learn by experience (see experience entry 1) I have experienced that a landscape and the sky unfold the deepest beauty— Nathaniel Hawthorne
Jokodo
Veteran Member
Well it is. You refuse to acknowledge that words derive their meaning through usage, instead insinuating that they have a fixed, god-given meaning you're uniquely privy to.
Indeed. Now go ahead and propose a less ambiguous formulation for the sentence that had you dive into this derail: "To coordinate a near real-time whole-body response to environmental changes that may only be directly experienced by parts of the body."
Say the toes of your right foot as it touches the ground, go down further than they would if the ground were solid, or the fingers of your left hand are submerged in hot water, triggering a chemical cascade in the effected body part. It is due to the actions of the CNS that this gets translated into action by muscles in both of your legs (and balance-keeping supplementary actions by muscles in your torso) to make all of you take a step back, in a reaction to an environmental condition/change that is not perceptible at the position of those muscles themselves.
It may not be unambiguous, but as soon as the verb "experience" has acquired that meaning, it's not imprecise as long as that's the meaning intended and understood.
What you lack is an accurate understanding of how words acquire their meaning.
See how they cite "undergo" as a synonym? And what difference does it make anyway - say you found a dictionary that doesn't list any non-mentalistic meaning variants for "to experience", how exactly would that invalidate the empirical observation (accurately recorded by other dictionaries) that people do indeed use the verb that way? The only inaccuracy here would be in that particular dictionary failing to record all common usages of the word.
Jokodo
Veteran Member
Here's a very incomplete list via Google of mentions of bridges or homes "experiencing damage" or things that "experienced thermal expansion" - all of them in published texts by what appear to be academically trained English native speakers.
https://appliedmechanicsreviews.asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/article.aspx?articleid=1394881
http://www.massmaterials.com/bearing-failure.html
https://books.google.at/books?id=bM...v=onepage&q=bridge experienced damage&f=false
https://mountainscholar.org/bitstream/handle/10217/80335/Wilson_colostate_0053N_11962.pdf?sequence=1
https://www.academia.edu/23608900/Bridge_Damage_and_Repair_Costs_from_Hurricane_Katrina
https://books.google.at/books?id=2k...#v=onepage&q=house experienced damage&f=false
I rest my case.
https://appliedmechanicsreviews.asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/article.aspx?articleid=1394881
http://www.massmaterials.com/bearing-failure.html
https://books.google.at/books?id=bM...v=onepage&q=bridge experienced damage&f=false
https://mountainscholar.org/bitstream/handle/10217/80335/Wilson_colostate_0053N_11962.pdf?sequence=1
https://www.academia.edu/23608900/Bridge_Damage_and_Repair_Costs_from_Hurricane_Katrina
https://books.google.at/books?id=2k...#v=onepage&q=house experienced damage&f=false
I rest my case.
ruby sparks
Contributor
Survival.
DrZoidberg
Contributor
Increase fitness.
Jokodo
Veteran Member
All of those are equally applicable to Kinns, the lungs, or eyesight. Makes it kind of a non-answer.
DBT
Contributor
Well, there is your error straight off. I do not deny that words derive their meaning through usage. I am talking about precise definitions.
What I am saying is, according to the given definition of 'experience' an inanimate object does not experience damage, it sustains damage. A bridge, according to the given definition of 'experience' is incapable of experiencing anything.....regardless of how the word is used or the meaning it acquires through common usage, which of course everyone understands what is meant.
We all know what is meant when someone says ''the bridge experienced extensive damage'' - just as we all know that it dd not experience anything in the way that a person does.
It's a whole different meaning and application on the word.
If you can't grasp that much, there is no hope of you understanding what I am saying, you just keep arguing with your own Strawman.
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Not being able to grasp what I'm saying...you never had a case to begin with. You just argue with a Strawman of your own making, haha, never seeing the distinctions being made. Or perhaps just refusing to see.
ruby sparks
Contributor
How does it make it (survival) a non-answer?
DrZoidberg
Contributor
He demanded to have it boiled down to the single primary function. That just leaves that one. Yes, all organs in the body have this primary function.
My point is that organs exist in a context. They don't just have one function, or primary function. The brain is a Swiss knife of functions. Different parts have different functions. Primary and secondary