11 thoughts on “Dangers of incautious parsing”

  1. You know, it took me six tries before I could parse that the way the author intended. But I think this says more about us than the article :)

  5. I should add– this also give me visions of men being gagged with Barbie dolls. Which was odd.

  7. Reading this makes me glad I’ve forsworn Freudian explanations. I mean, explaining this reading in terms of your hidden desires is way too much work.

  8. Ah. Embarrassingly, I could only see one meaning of ‘gag’ – the use pertaining to sex toy. The ‘joke’ meaning didn’t even occur to me. JJ – I’m glad you’ve forsworn Freudian explanations!

  10. I should say that by forswearing Freudian explanations, I mean avoiding those that appeal to covert (possible) desires, intentions, etc. So in a way it is radical, given the ease with which in general many, many people think they can read each others’ real meanings and intentions. In fact, I’ve been thinking of a post about this, since such readings seem often to be a good cases of epistemic injustice.

    I decided to do this about 15 or so years ago; in general, other people are way too interesting to be covered up by reading them in terms of one’s own reactions and/or experience. I certainly don’t always succeed, I hasten to say.

  11. That’s interesting JJ. Does that mean you reject any version of the simulation hypothesis?

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