violence to language-dishonest rationalization

[_Tarski]

Fictional story:

Before BCSpace's wife left on a three week vacation she told him not to let the dogs in the house since his record of monitoring their need to defecate is know to be poor.
While she was gone he let the dogs in the house many times (and they shat many times).

He put them back outside 5 minutes before she returned home and, upon returning, she lets the dogs in the house. To preempt any question about the dogs being in the house while she was gone BCSpace tells her:


"Before you got home there were no dogs in the house."


In his private mind, BC is rationalizing as follows:

"By 'before' I mean during a period of five minutes just prior to my wife returning."

Is BCSpace honest or is he distorting implicit norms about the default meaning of common speech acts?



Read BCSpaces apologetics about "no death in the world before the fall"

It should be read as follows:

"The was no death in the "world" (wink wink) ..."before" (wink wink) the fall."

Notice that in BCSpace's way of rationalizing, there were never dinosaurs in the world (since the "world" was not yet "finished" being "created" (by natural selection !?!?) and so there was no world.


Actually, I think it is worse than mere rationalization. To me this apologetic is simultaneously ridiculous and sociopathic in its attempt to deceive by violence to semantic norms--- "playing with words".

Of course, just as my story about BC is fictional, so is the biblical account of the garden of Eden.

[_Buffalo]

Nail on the head

[_Some Schmo]

Of course you are correct, Tarski.

I would economically say that apologists are full of crap (so full of crap, in fact, that in many cases they don't even realize it), but your comments are clearly more explanatory.