A few weeks ago I posted the following
status to facebook:
"A shovel, by any other name,
would still shovel dirt. A rose, on the other hand, would it still
smell as sweet?"
This was the end result of one hour of
deliberation, and it has significant philosophical depth. Apparently,
facebook is not the place for something like that, so let me explain
to you what it means. (I meant to do this two weeks ago, but you know...)
First one has to associate to it the
well known saying by Shakespeare (said by Juliet in 'Romeo and
Juliet', which is a good enough read, and written in funny English
(by the way, has anyone noticed the similarities between Shakespeare-talk,
and Yoda in Star Wars?)):
"What's in a name? That which we
call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet."
By any other name would smell as sweet."
Modern research would answer: "Yeah,
no, not really". Words, by their sound, and by their relation to
other words (associations, connotations), does carry quite a bit of
'subconscious' prejudice.
How can this be? Studies show how the
expensiveness of wine makes you like it more. So that if you don't
know the price, most wines are equal (or even more expensive wines do
poorer), but if you know that a wine is expensive, then you like it
more. Now, you are probably thinking that the subjects reported to
like it more, so that we can only conclude that the price affects how much we think we should
like it. But no, alas, it also affects the amount of pleasant your brain generates. So the conscious price-information is taken into
account when your brain decides how much it likes the wine on a
subconscious level!
This should explain the second sentence
of my facebook status, but what is the deal with the shovel?
Well, even if you are told that the
shovel was expensive (maybe it's lined by gold or something) what happens? If it
breaks, or is unable to contain enough dirt, then whatever it's
called and how it's priced does not matter at all. Perhaps you like
the expensive gold-shovel more, but the shovel that is best at
shovelling dirt is the 'best shovel'.
To clarify, there is a distinction
between two different values here. On one side it is the beauty, or
the artistic value of a rose; it is summer and happiness, joy and
love. On the other side it is the usefulness or practical value of
the shovel. Even though it shovels dirt (a word with negative
connotations) it is important to us. And this practical value would
not be changed by renaming it.
As any other pair of concepts these are seldom seen apart. More
often than not, the two values are entwined in any given object; there is a combination
of artistic value and usefulness. But ideas, I think, are more
powerful when we are able to distinguish between them.
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