Hi, Gilberto, At 12:35 PM 12/22/2004, you wrote: >>No. You are right. It's not automatic. It can vary with context. But in order >>to survive in the world, on a regular basis we have to able to reliably >>perform this correspondence task over and over again. And we do pretty okay >>most of the time.<<
Or we *assume* that we do okay. Harold Garfinkel, the developer of ethnomethodology, a methodological approach within sociology, demonstrated repeatedly the manner in which people assume that the rules they follow are rational, and that, therefore, anyone who does not follow them is, at the least, irrational and, at the most, insane. These rule-making (heuristic or normative) processes include a frequent presumption of universality regarding one's own word definitions. Frequently, one may believe that the other person has understood one's points, because she used familiar taxonomies, but her intentionalities, her meanings, were actually thoroughly different from one's own. >>Suppose I tell you "I don't eat pork" and then you actually see me catch a >>pig, kill it, cut it up, roast it on a spit, slice off a piece, put it >>between two pieces of bread with lettuce and tomato, and start to eat it. I >>would be both surprised and moved by your faith in my integrity if you >>thought to yourself "Maybe when he says 'pork' he doesn't mean what I mean >>when I say 'pork'"<< The more concrete one's references, the less likely confusion may result. However, what if one person is a Presbyterian, and the other is a Muslim or an Orthodox Jew. Perhaps the Muslim or Orthodox Jew assumes that the Presbyterian was intending, by consuming pork in front of the Muslim or Orthodox Jew, to cause offense. However, the dietary preferences of the Muslim or Orthodox Jew never crossed the Presbyterian's mind. She was simply hungry. >>They can look up words in the dictionary just as easily as you can. And >>fairly consistently they seem to be mischaracterizing their own religion and >>casting aspersions on yours. At some point, trust gets more and more >>stretched. And then broken. No?<< I would ask for further clarifications. However, in some cases, it may be valid for that trust to be broken. >>Perhaps the Bahai studies list is different from soc.religion.bahai. That >>would be a fair distinction.<< I don't know. It has been a long time since I have read the postings on that (or any) Usenet newsgroup. With regards, Mark A. Foster * 15 Sites: http://markfoster.net "Sacred cows make the tastiest hamburger" -- Abbie Hoffman __________________________________________________ You are subscribed to Baha'i Studies as: mailto:archive@mail-archive.com To unsubscribe, send a blank email to mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe, use subscribe bahai-st in the message body to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Baha'i Studies is available through the following: Mail - mailto:bahai-st@list.jccc.edu Web - http://list.jccc.edu/read/?forum=bahai-st News - news://list.jccc.edu/bahai-st Public - http://www.escribe.com/religion/bahaist Old Public - http://www.mail-archive.com/bahai-st@list.jccc.net New Public - http://www.mail-archive.com/bahai-st@list.jccc.edu
