Content
The space between symbol and substance.
The essence of something; what it simultaneously contains and is contained by.
The natural enemy of fallacious arguments, which are specifically designed to obscure or circumvent dealing with the subject at hand with any clarity.
Deliberately avoided by most people in most situations because it does not conform to our narratives, it is too challenging, or it is trying to sell us something. It may also be that we do not possess a toolkit robust enough to assess it accurately.
Juliet Capulet understood content, even when the majority conspired against her.
In Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, this fictional 13-year-old girl defended her beloved against the presumption that all Montagues are to be reviled.
“A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”
Juliet ‘gets it.’
It matters not if Romeo is a Montague, he should be judged by the content of his character, intentions, actions, dedication, and his reverence for her. He is a Montague to be sure, both in name and bloodline, but do these factors manifest destiny? In some ways they do, but in others, they do not. Romeo, by any other name, would still be himself, albeit framed somewhat differently. The language we ascribe to him may change how we perceive him, but reality is not a plaything of language.
This argument sounds a lot like many that are common these days, where it is claimed that language and categories are insufficient at effectively parsing things, including humans. As a result, we are bound by arbitrary labels and we are permitted to identify as whoever or whatever we would like. This is not the same argument at all, but it does an excellent job tricking people. It confuses the essence of something with how the essence is perceived.
Here is a basic breakdown of the Juliet’s logic:
‘If Romeo is categorically kind, then being kind means something in particular. It includes certain things and excludes others. If he behaves in all the ways that kindness is described, and avoids behaving in all the ways that are unkind, then he is kind. Once we establish these as sequitur, describing him as cruel and deceitful is false.’
This is cogent logic that also happens to be true because each of the premises are true. Each one is simple enough and does not make additional unverified claims that need to be examined separately. Juliet accepts that labels are not arbitrary, Romeo is indeed a Montague, whether she perceives him this way or not. She is simply claiming that, despite the fact he is a Montague, he is still an individual, and his own unique combination of qualities and traits should be considered equally worthy when we assess his merit. He is not merely a collection of prescribed Montague traits.
While they share some of the same premises, the arguments put forward these days are engineered in a radically differently way. The logic is something like this:
‘If Romeo is categorically kind, then being kind means something in particular. It includes certain things and excludes others. If he believes himself to be kind, and others perceive him as kind, then he is kind. If he believes himself to be kind, and at least one other person does not perceive him to be kind, then this demonstrates that there are intrinsic and irresolvable differences between perception and reality. As a result, it is impossible to claim that anything or anyone is something in particular, because language and categories fail to coalesce in all circumstances in the minds of all people. Therefore, categories and the language we use to discuss them are arbitrary because perception is the assessment tool. Once we establish these as sequitur, describing someone as something is arbitrary, and so we are given primacy to dictate who or what we are due to the agency we have over our own body and mind, regardless of what others claim.’
This is the tricky part - this is cogent logic, but it happens to be false because one or more of the premises are false. PERCEPTION is not a substitution for truth or reality, and so it is not an effective assessment tool. Disagreements about who or what someone is does not eliminate truth as a description of objective reality – it does not recognize differences of opinion. Language does not convey truth, it conveys information. And elevating our subjective interpretation of the world above all other considerations is pathological narcissism that is unlikely to remain consistent with reality. Many of the claims are convoluted, possess foregone conclusions, or contain additional unverified claims that are never examined. These are not the same argument at all. It assumes false claims to be true while disregarding claims that we have discovered to be true.
Juliet’s claim can be further dissected to exemplify the accuracy of her epistemology.
She describes Romeo as a rose. A rose is a thing that possesses many qualities within a specific variance: it has a root, a stem, leaves, and petals. It has a particular shape and petal arrangement, set colours, and a sweet aroma that Juliet highlights, and these are just the more obvious potential characteristics. It has a season of growth, a specific set of reproductive parts, chromosomes, and unique genetic material. Additionally, a rose is not just a thing with these traits, it is also defined by what it is not. A rose does not sprout wings and fly, it does not hunt buffalo, it does not breastfeed its young, and it does not do a million other things. Knowing or establishing what a category includes and excludes assists us in identifying its essence.
Will a rose still smell as sweet if we were to give it another name? It depends on which standards we are applying, and whether it is the name or the thing to which we are applying them. In this instance, Juliet is referring to the thing, because she feels the name is simply a word used to describe the thing so that we can communicate effectively. This is why Romeo should be treated as an entity with his own traits and his own worth, not merely a Montague. If the thing is what we are referring to, then any name you give a rose will not eradicate its ‘roseness’, that is, the essence of that which makes it a rose.
It may not be called a rose, but the thing itself is not a plaything of human language, it cares not for what we call it, the configuration of its unique traits makes it what it is, regardless of any name by which we refer to it. Essentially, to be a particular type of thing is to embody that which makes it what it is. Describing a rose as a ‘shitlily’ would invite curious remarks about why such a sweet-smelling flower has such a foul name – we would not begin to believe it smells like feces. We know how to distinguish between smells.
Even once this is acknowledged, arguments persist about how the categories are established, what they include or exclude, and according to which methodology. This is the point where different epistemologies clash, each attempting to usurp the established categories so they may dictate knowledge. The scientific method was established precisely to address these situations, where universally-accessible methodologies that are reliable and reproducible can be used to formulate a picture of reality that we hope we can build on over time.
The traits of a rose were not perceived, they were discovered using modest tools of observation and verifiability. SCIENCE is an approach that brings us closer to the space between symbol and substance – the content of reality.
If Juliet, a 13-year-old fictional character recognized this, then what is your problem?
Then again, maybe it is because she is fictional that she ‘gets it.’
Posted: 25 Mar 2023
