News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on The Truth About Autism: Scientists Reconsider What They Think They Know. Parent comment

Re:The Truth About Autism: Scientists Reconsider What They T... by mattmaroon on Thursday February 28, 2008 @02:50PM (#125633)
That's incorrect though. That's like saying someone always called an orange an apple, and therefore their apple (really an orange) is the same as ours.

The whole point of a word is so that when I say it, you know what it means. The word "language" has an agreed upon meaning, and that meaning is not twiddling a knob.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The Truth About Autism: Scientists Reconsider What They T... by ntoshev on Thursday February 28, 2008 @03:29PM (#125653)
Apples and oranges are not the same, but they have things in common. That's why we have a concept of a fruit. You and I have never thought twiddling a knob and words have things in common, and yet another human being finds them almost identical. This is when I realized that it is really human to think about interacting with environment in the same way we interact with other people. I wouldn't have thought of this by myself.

Yes, she doesn't use the word "language" in the meaning we "normal" people have agreed to. But this is not the point.

[ Parent | on HN ]