A deictic utterance is such that the question of what the referent(s) are of the utterance isn’t possible to answer without knowing:

1. Who said the words to whom
2. And/or where the speaker was, and/or where the listener was
3. And/or when the words were said

For example: “I ate here yesterday.” Without knowing who said the words, there’s no way to know who “I” is. Without knowing where the words were said, there’s no way to know where “here” is. And without knowing when the words were said, there’s no way to know when “yesterday” was.

Put differently, there’s:

1. The speaker of the utterance
2. The listener of the utterance
3. The location in space of the speaker
4. The location in space of the listener
5. The location in time of the speaker and the listener

If we can refer to the speaker (i.e., the so-called “1st person”), and we can refer to the listener (i.e., the so-called “2nd person”), then we can also refer to he who’s neither the speaker nor the listener (i.e., the so-called “3rd person”), for that’s just a negation of the foregoing. And if we can refer to the location in space of the speaker, then we can refer to the thing that’s near that location. Same for the 2nd and 3rd person.

Thus, there’s:

1. The speaker (e.g., “I,” “me”)
2. The listener (e.g., “you”)
3. Neither the speaker nor the listener (e.g., “he,” “she”)
4. Something near the speaker (e.g., これ)
5. Something near the listener (e.g., それ)
6. Something near neither the speaker nor the listener (e.g., あれ)
7. Where the speaker is (e.g., ここ)
8. Where the listener is (e.g., そこ)
9. Somewhere away from both the speaker and listener (e.g., あそこ)
10. The past with respect to the utterance
11. The present with respect to the utterance
12. The future with respect to the utterance

The first conjugational distinction:

1. Something permanent about the whole thing (e.g., 彼はサッカー選手です)
2. Something permanent about part of the whole thing
3. Something temporary about the whole thing (e.g., 彼はサッカー選手として活躍しています)
4. Something temporary about part of the whole thing

Put differently: There’s the temporal aspect, which can either be “whole-whole” or “whole-part,” and there’s also the spatial aspect, which can also either be “whole-whole” or “whole-part.” To be temporally whole-whole is to be permanent in the delimited context of the utterance, and to be temporally whole-part is to be temporary in the delimited context of the utterance. For example: (a) “He’s the goalkeeper” (his whole temporal existence being as the goalkeeper in the delimited context of the utterance, i.e. the present game of soccer). (b) “He’s reading a book” (only part of his whole temporal existence being reading the book, in that it’s natural to imagine, say, asking him a question, which would make him take a break from reading). Furthermore, to be spatially whole-whole is for the whole of the spatial existence of the subject to be such that the predicate describes it, and to be spatially whole-part is for only part of the whole of the spatial existence of the subject to be such that the predicate describes it. For example: (a) “That’s a house” (every spatial point making up the referent of the subject being a house). (b) “That house has a chimney” (only some of the spatial points making up the referent of the subject being the house’s chimney).

For clarity, and to recap, the first conjugational system again, put appositionally:

1. Temporal whole-whole (i.e., permanent), spatial whole-whole
2. Temporal whole-whole (i.e., permanent), spatial whole-part (e.g., 彼は鼻が高いです)
3. Temporal whole-part (i.e., temporary), spatial whole-whole
4. Temporal whole-part (i.e., temporary, spatial whole-part

The second conjugational distinction:

1. Past
2. Present
3. Future

The third (and final) conjugational distinction:

1. Static
2. Dynamic
3. Static, agent-oriented
4. Dynamic, agent-oriented
5. Static, patient-oriented
6. Dynamic, patient-oriented

For a verb to be static is for the verb to describe an unchanging state, and for a verb to be dynamic is for the verb to describe a change of state. For example: (a) “The mouse is dead.” (b) “The mouse died.” Furthermore: For a verb to be agent-oriented is for the verb to describe what the agent did (which had an effect on the patient). And for a verb to be patient-oriented is for the verb to describe what the effect on the patient was. For example: (c) “The man shot the woman” (shooting being what the agent did, with the effect left unspecified). (d) “The man killed the woman” (being killed being what happened to the patient, with the cause left unspecified).

Interestingly, it’s possible in English to put the agent-oriented and the patient-oriented together. For example: “I sang her to sleep.” Here the agent sang to the patient, which had an effect; the effect was sleep. Analogously: “He shot her dead.”

I should also be clear that whether agent-oriented or patient-oriented, what’s static or dynamic is the patient’s state. Either the patient’s state is kept the same, if static, or made to change, if dynamic. For example: In “I sang her to sleep,” the verb “sang” is dynamic and agent-oriented, for singing is what the agent did that changed the state of the patient, and the verb “sleep” is dynamic and patient-oriented, for sleeping is what the state was that the patient changed to.

To recap:

1. Static (e.g., これは赤い)
2. Dynamic (e.g., これは赤くなった)
3. Static, agent-oriented
4. Dynamic, agent-oriented (e.g., “the man shot the woman”)
5. Static, patient-oriented
6. Dynamic, patient-oriented (e.g., “the man killed the woman”)

Let’s imagine that a father says to his son: “When you get from your year in Europe, I expect that you’ll go to college.” Is this just a dry prediction? No, in saying that he “expects” his son to go to college, the father is using social pressure to hopefully tip the scale in the direction that he would be happy with. It’s equally natural, though, for a person to use that same word for something that’s indeed just dry prediction: “We expect that the hurricane will show up on our shores no later than tomorrow evening.” Interestingly—and this is my point—there are countless examples in natural language of words that are ambiguous in this way. This I can personally attest to in English and Japanese, but theoretically speaking I’m convinced, at least for the time being, that this pattern is universal.

Why, though, is natural language such that there’s often this ambiguity? The answer is related to the coordination of action, to the cooperation of agents. That answer is: The more consistent a pattern of action becomes, the more that pattern of action comes to be relied upon as an assumption for other patterns of action. That increasing consistency, which increasingly justifies even the driest and most socially detached of prediction, becomes (by virtue of its increasing consistency) a stronger and stronger bedrock for other kinds of action, which in turn makes a stronger and stronger case for using social pressure to keep people from breaking that consistency. For example, consider: “Japanese people take their shoes off when they go into the house.” Is this just a dry prediction about what’s to be expected of a Japanese person? Or does this expectation also bring with it social pressure to conform to the pattern, to the consistency? Obviously it’s both prediction and social pressure. The more empirically true the proposition becomes as an observation, the more reasonable it would be for the people who build houses in Japan to not worry about making the floors able to withstand the abuse of walking on them with shoes for years and years. Eventually, anybody who’s an exception to the rule finds themselves living in a society that’s no longer made for them.

Before I go on, I should be clear about what my goal is in this essay. My goal is to explain why it is that many people, especially nowadays, reject scientific thought and communication about human action and the human mind.

What I’ve written so far suggests that at least one of the reasons is that science, although ideally a purely descriptive mode of thought and communication, makes propositions that come off to many people as no less prescriptive than descriptive. In natural language, which is a reflection of natural psychology, there’s systematic equivocation between description and prescription when talking about the human mind and human action. That is, the same linguistic “form” is used for two distinct “substances,” one logical and one social. Science, by contrast, does its best to untangle description from prescription and give a prescriptionless description. And this, being artificial (in the best of ways), is difficult for anybody without a talent for science or enough instruction in science.

This natural description-prescription ambiguity makes it so even the most prescriptionless description about, e.g., how attraction works between men and women, is likely to make many people, again especially nowadays, uncomfortable. This uncomfortable feeling is something like: “Don’t tell me who I’m supposed to be attracted to and who I’m not!”

1. Just as a businessman can choose, by their own free will, to set a price in a way that conflicts with the law of supply and demand, in the same way an adult male can, by their own free will, reject masculinity (or an adult female can, by their own free will, reject femininity). However, such people quickly make themselves irrelevant to the analysis—and that’s the point to be made here. That is, such people quickly select themselves out of relevance: To succeed on the market, businesses must by and large set their prices in accordance with the law of supply and demand. Analogously, to succeed on the “sexual market,” if I may use that term, men and women must by and large be masculine (if a man) or feminine (if a woman). The economic law of supply and demand, then, along with the “sexual law of masculinity and femininity,” then, aren’t, like in physics, thoroughgoingly deterministic laws. They’re laws about what you must do in order to win (e.g., in the game of the market, in the game of the “sexual market”). The quasi-determinism comes in because the losers disappear from the analysis. It looks, at least when looking through a very abstract lens, like businesses must follow economic law, like a planet orbiting the sun must follow physical law, but actually it’s just that the non-economic-law-obeying businesses quickly disappear from the market. There’s something of evolutionary logic here: The winners are, let’s say, the persisters.
2. One of the key conclusions, perhaps, is that we’re more free to do what we want on the micro level than on the macro level.
3. There’s also the question of how to set the preconditions for the flourishing of the market. Analogously, perhaps, it may be worth asking what the preconditions are for the flourishing of the “sexual market.” What gets in the way of a healthy economy? A healthy “sexual economy”?
4. The game of sex rewards masculinity in men, rewards femininity in women, punishes femininity in men, and punishes masculinity in women. Analogously, the game of the market…
5. Many people in feminism and social justice argue that “just having a penis” doesn’t mean that you’ll be a certain way personality-wise, and “just having a vagina” doesn’t mean that you’ll be a certain different way personality-wise, as if it’s trivial to you as a person what genitalia you just so happen to have. But “just having a penis” means, among other things, that the sex is over, and your sexual partner is potentially disappointed, when you orgasm. As a result, men are incentivized, sexually, to train a kind of self-control that women aren’t incentivized to train. That air of self-control even manifests socially: Women look for men with that air to them, whether they know why or not.
6. A society without a law against murder quickly becomes no society at all. Thus, it’s a “law” of society (evolutionarily speaking) that there must be a “law” against murder (legally speaking).
7. It’s reasonable to use an object for your own self-interested purpose, for the object has no such purposes of its own. Furthermore, objects aren’t free to do anything other than mindless obey physical law. Thus, for a man to “objectify” a woman—and here I hope to give a documented definition of this term—is for the man to use the woman for his own self-interested purpose, as if she’s an object with no such purposes of her own, and to control the woman so thoroughly as if to take away her free will, as if to make her mindlessly obey. Built atop the metaphorical substructure of English is the term “objectify” (as in, e.g., “to objectify a woman,” “the objectification of women”).
8. The “laws of physics” are naturally thought of as exceptionless, for objects have no will of their own; they have no choice but to mindlessly obey. The “laws of economics,” however, along with the “laws of attraction and sex,” are naturally thought of as having exceptions. But there must of course be plenty of free-will-challenging regularities to be found in human action and the human mind.
9. What’s universal about what women find attractive? For example, is it possible, psychologically speaking, for a woman to not lose attraction if focusing all of her attention on the fact that her hand is bigger than her husband’s hand? Probably not, but that doesn’t mean that a woman can’t just systematically avoid focusing on that fact. There’s no straightforward determinism in attraction because the woman (or man) can choose to ignore some aspects; what’s focused on, rather than what’s actually there, is what determines attraction.
10. A man may be free to marry under his potential and even be sexually satisfied, but he may not be free to do so without training a kind of selective focus that bleeds over into the rest of his life.
11. Even two people with a very high level of attraction for each other won’t necessarily follow through sexually, for it’s possible that one or both of them will override their feeling(s) with willpower.

1. Some sensory complexes bring with them positive valence, and other sensory complexes bring with them negative valence. Metaphorically speaking, we’re “pulled to move toward” the former kind and “pushed to move away from” the latter kind.
2. Some sensory complexes have more positive valence, or less negative valence, than others. (a) We prefer higher positive valence to lower and lower negative valence to higher, and (b) in making choices, we try to maximize any possible positive valence and minimize any possible negative valence—those two propositions just being tautologically true, of course. But—and here’s the important point to be made here—some sensory complexes are equal to each other in expected valence. That is: Some sensory complexes are unequal to each other in that respect, and other sensory complexes are equal to each other in that respect. We may have a preference for X over Y, but we also may instead be indifferent between X and Z. For example: Imagine that you’re at a supermarket choosing whether to buy an apple or an orange to eat as a snack. After a moment of thought, you may find yourself reaching into the tray of apples, thus revealing a preference for an apple over an orange. But which apple will you choose? In choosing, you may ignore whether the apple does, or doesn’t, have a stem; such is indifference between a “stemmed” and an “unstemmed” apple. Your hierarchy of value in the moment of choice was such that 🍎 > 🍊 but unstemmed 🍎 = stemmed 🍎.
3. Empirically speaking, we’re a mixture of preference (e.g., 🍎 > 🍊) and indifference (e.g., unstemmed 🍎 = stemmed 🍎). That proposition can be treated as a true a posteriori postulate in the science of human action and the human mind. But let’s consider the respective logical implications of the two empirically false, but nevertheless useful and interesting, contraries of that a posteriori postulate: (a) the postulate of no such mixture in the sense of all preference and no indifference and (b) the postulate of no such mixture in the reverse sense, i.e. no preference and all indifference.
4. With all preference and no indifference, what’s logically entailed is choice (i.e., action) without categorization—unless, of course, even a “category” of only one sensory complex is admitted, definitionally speaking, as a “category.”
5. With no preference and all indifference, what’s logically entailed is no choice/action because everything is put together into just one single category.
6. Logically entailed in the (empirically true) mixture of preference and indifference, then, is a system of categorization. For example: It’s in sometimes preferring apples to oranges, but sometimes being indifferent, in turn, among the different kinds of apples, that we justify the category “apple.” And it’s only because some people, at some moments, prefer to eat a Honeycrisp instead of a Fuji, or a Granny Smith instead of a Red Delicious, that we further distinguish the supercategory “apple” into the various subcategories thereof: “Honeycrisp apple,” “Fuji apple,” etc.
7. Consider next that there’s not only positive and negative valence but also neutral valence. That is, a sensory complex can be desirable, undesirable, or neither desirable nor undesirable.
8. It’s common, though, for a yet uncategorized range of sensory complexes, all of them originally neutral in valence, to all take on an equivalently positive or negative valence, and thus become categorized, because the agent comes to believe that the originally neutral range of sensory complexes X is the cause of an already positive or negative category of sensory complexes Y. That is: Something originally neither desirable nor undesirable becomes either desirable or undesirable because the agent comes to believe that it’s the cause of something else, that something else being what’s more fundamentally desirable or undesirable. The valence of the effect is imputed to the cause. For example: Let’s say that your grandfather recently passed away and you’re looking through his belongings, which he bequeathed to you. An old clock sitting in the attic of his house looks like nothing to you, just junk to get rid of. But then you find a note from your grandfather saying to be careful with the clock because it’s an antique worth $5,000. The originally neutral valence of the clock—you didn’t care about it one way or the other—suddenly takes on the already positive valence of $5,000 (assuming, of course, that you believe that your grandfather’s note is true).
9. If you desire the effect Y, and X is the cause of that effect, then Y is the end and X is the means—definitionally speaking.
10. To summarize all of the foregoing: (a) With every preference comes a distinction in category (e.g., 🍎 vs. 🍊), and with every indifference comes no distinction in category (e.g., an 🍎 is an 🍎 whether it has a stem or not). (b) Our more fundamental preferences and indifferences, which determine our more fundamental categories, bring about, in accordance with our beliefs in cause and effect, our less fundamental preferences and indifferences, which in turn determine our less fundamental categories. (c) Thus, “our” system of categorization—the micro and macro, or in other words the psychology and sociology, of “the” system of categorization, to be analyzed elsewhere—is a function of belief and value.
11. That is: Out of our beliefs in cause and effect, along with our most fundamental values, comes all of our other values, and together all of that determines how we take all of our familiar sensory complexes and put those sensory complexes into categories. The most elegant generating function possible for our system of categorization takes as its input (a) our beliefs in cause and effect—perhaps our “ultimate” beliefs of that kind, whatever that may turn out to mean—and (b) our ultimate values.

1. I may want to write a treatise on attraction and sex. Principles of Attraction and Sex may be a good title—the analogy here being with Principles of Economics, which is a title often used.
2. In the treatise, first I’d explain that, psychologically speaking, it’s natural for people to reject propositions purported to get at the laws of human action and the human mind, because such propositions, even if they’re meant to be purely descriptive, seem like they’re sneaking in prescriptiveness through the back door. Second, I’d explain how to formulate purely descriptive propositions about human action and the human mind, taking special care to also clarify the epistemological status of such propositions. And third, I’d actually use the foundational work then done: I’d actually build a properly scientific system of insight about attraction and sex on that foundation.
3. Description and explanation. The former is the most elegant possible generating function, and the latter is why that generating function is there in the first place.
4. An example of a law of attraction and sex, which is a subset of the laws of human action and the human mind, is the law that men approach and women wait to be approached. Sure, there are exceptions (cf. 逆ナン). But like any law, breaking it brings with it the potential for punishment. A woman who takes the initiative will be significantly more likely to end up with a man who’s not sustainably interesting (to them) or interested (in them)—the mechanism of which to be explained elsewhere.
5. Some laws in economics, and in the study of attraction and sex, aren’t deterministic laws of cause and effect constraining the possible action of people on the micro level. Instead, they’re laws constraining what’s possible for the great majority of winners on the macro level. For example, the individual has the free will to price their goods and services however they want, but the businesses which grow bigger and bigger, and more and more influential, by and large won’t contradict the law of supply and demand (or any of the other laws of economics). In short: The type of game “determines” the type of winners, which is a different kind of “determinism” than the cause and effect of, say, Newtonian physics. Individuals who consistently break the laws of economics simply select themselves out of further consideration on the group level.
6. Are there any properly deterministic laws on the micro/individual level, though?

I used to make a distinction between the phenomenalist intension and extension, on one hand, and the physicalist intension and extension, on the other hand:

1. The “phenomenalist intension” of a set distinguishes between the possible-to-imagine sensory complexes belonging to the set and the possible-to-imagine sensory complexes not belonging to the set. For example, the phenomenalist intension of the word “fish” is such that anything possible-to-imagine is taken as possible input, and it tells you, as its output, yes or no: It tells you whether any given possible-to-imagine sensory complex is, or is not, a “fish.”
2. The “phenomenalist extension” of a set generates, one by one, all of the possible-to-imagine sensory complexes belonging to the set and none of the possible-to-imagine sensory complexes not belonging to the set. For example, the phenomenalist extension of the word “fish” would generate 🐟, 🐡, etc., endlessly—for there are, presumably, an infinite number of possible-to-imagine sensory complexes belonging to that set.
3. The “physicalist intension” of a set distinguishes between the physically existing beings belonging to the set and the physically existing beings not belonging to the set. For example, the physicalist intension of the phrase “university professor” tells you whether any given person, actually existing physically (whether in the past, present, or future), is, or is not, a “university professor.”
4. The “physicalist extension” of a set is all of the physically existing beings (again, whether in the past, present, or future) belonging to the set. For example, Hayek was a university professor but Hume wasn’t.

Originally, I thought that I was just naturally falling into a phenomenalist perspective, which is the more fundamental perspective, and the mainstream was just naturally falling into the physicalist perspective—obviously the mainstream doesn’t use definitions #1 and #2. But I now understand why the mainstream defines the terms “intension” and “extension” as they do: The work that my system does elsewhere, the mainstream does here. The word “Hemingway,” as a set, has a different intension, but the same extension, as the phrase “the author of The Sun Also Rises.” Those two words/phrases, then, can be freely interchanged in a proposition without there being any way that the truth value will change: If “Hemingway committed suicide at age 61” is true, then “the author of The Sun Also Rises committed suicide at age 61″ is also true—well, assuming that Hemingway is indeed the author of that book.

Interestingly, though, interchangeability can be lost: While—as I wrote above—”Hemingway committed suicide at age 61″ implies “the author of The Sun Also Rises committed suicide at age 61,” adding the subjectivity of a phrase like “John knows” causes the interchangeability to be lost: “John knows that Hemingway committed suicide at age 61″ doesn’t imply “John knows that the author of The Sun Also Rises committed suicide at age 61.” Why? Because John may not know that Hemingway is the author of The Sun Also Rises.

1. 箸 and はし both have the power of bringing to mind 🥢. That is, when a writer intends to get a reader to think of 🥢, both 箸 and はし work for that purpose.
2. Of course ハ↓シ, which is the phonemic form of the same word, also has that power.
3. The (formal) graphemic categories 箸 and はし, and the (formal) phonemic category ハ↓シ, are all different forms of the same word, which is in turn associated with the (substantial) category 🥢.
4. Logic is the explicit study of the always-explicit, and linguistics is the explicit study of the often-implicit.
5. Intension and extension, connotation and denotation, Sinn and Bedeutung. Each pair of terms has the same stipulated definitions as the other pairs.
6. The intension of a set is the input system that can tell whether any given thing is a member of the set. The extension of a set, on the other hand, is the output system that can give you, one by one, everything that’s a member of the set—in theory that’s possible, but in practice that’s of course impossible (well unless you’re a powerful enough computer).
7. How do those logical concepts relate to linguistics? With a representative enough sample of Japanese people saying ハ↓シ (in various ways) while using 🥢 (of various kinds), you’d then understand the word and be able to use it. How does that relate to the intension of the word? To the extension? A “representative enough sample” isn’t logically exhaustive, of course, but for some reason it’s linguistically sufficient.
8. See any manifestation of 🥢 and think of some manifestation of 箸, はし, or ハ↓シ. Also, see or hear any manifestation of 箸, はし, or ハ↓シ and think of some manifestation of 🥢.
9. How do the logical concepts of intension and extension relate to the linguistic concepts of recognition and production? What about input and output?

If you happen upon a watch lying on a beach, then you’d of course assume that there was a watchmaker responsible for that watch: a designer of that watch. Even the most rational people who lived in the age of religion, before the triumph of science, found it natural to think the same about plants, animals, etc. There must be a designer of nature, for nature is too orderly to not have a designer.

Analogously, most modern people—even those very familiar with science—look at society and think that there must be a designer, here not God but the State: When society seems intelligently ordered such that good things happen systematically, then surely there’s an intelligent and benevolent individual (or group of individuals) who made that order deliberately. And when society seems intelligently ordered such that bad things happen systematically, then surely there’s the evil counterpart of the aforementioned: an intelligent and malevolent individual (or group of individuals) who made that order deliberately. But the idea of natural order makes it clear that even the most orderly system needn’t have a “watchmaker,” a designer. We don’t need to invoke God to explain nature, and we don’t need to invoke the State to explain society. The invisible hands of Darwin and Smith show how the order in nature and society actually came about, viz. via evolution.

1. Linguistics is the scientific study of natural language. Semiotics, by contrast, is the scientific study of any kind of symbolic system, whether natural or artificial, whether verbal or not.
2. A symbolic system is a system of “things standing for other things.”
3. Words aren’t the only kind of symbol, of course. Even the visual conventions of manga and anime count as symbols (e.g., 💢).
4. Ultimately, a language is a system of categorization “externalized” phonologically, orthographically, or cherologically—among other possibilities. The system of categorization can be abstracted out because the word forms, whether phonological or any other kind, are incidental to the system of categorization.
5. The internal categorizational system (of a given individual) can be more or less matched up with the external categorizational system (of a given group).
6. I’d like to take my internal categorizational system, which is so different than the external categorizational systems (e.g., English, Japanese, logical and mathematical notation), and externalize it.
7. “Cat” and 猫 are both associated with the same set. Ceteris paribus, saying “there’s a cat right there 👉” would establish joint attention on the same referent as saying そこは猫がいるよ👉.