Comments on: It’s all in the name http://www.tvhe.co.nz/2009/03/09/its-all-in-the-name/ The Visible Hand in Economics Thu, 29 Jul 2010 22:40:32 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 By: rauparaha http://www.tvhe.co.nz/2009/03/09/its-all-in-the-name/comment-page-1/#comment-17879 rauparaha Mon, 09 Mar 2009 03:41:52 +0000 http://www.tvhe.co.nz/?p=3121#comment-17879 <a href="#comment-17878" rel="nofollow">@Matt Nolan</a> Thanks for the comment, Matt. I'm not sure that "if we don't use symbols then we might get awfully confused" is enough to convince me. I think that most disciplines have a fairly standardised language for talking about concepts informally. I agree that there is a language/jargon barrier when talking to people outside the discipline about technical concepts, though. @Matt Nolan
Thanks for the comment, Matt. I’m not sure that “if we don’t use symbols then we might get awfully confused” is enough to convince me. I think that most disciplines have a fairly standardised language for talking about concepts informally. I agree that there is a language/jargon barrier when talking to people outside the discipline about technical concepts, though.

]]> By: Matt Nolan http://www.tvhe.co.nz/2009/03/09/its-all-in-the-name/comment-page-1/#comment-17878 Matt Nolan Mon, 09 Mar 2009 03:36:40 +0000 http://www.tvhe.co.nz/?p=3121#comment-17878 "Can a simple renaming of primitives into symbols really help to make me more rational? I’m willing to be convinced" I would say that we need to take it a step further to state how it "increases rationality". By giving primitives identifiable symbols then we can tell when we are actually talking about the same thing using different words. By formalising ideas in this way we gain a more tractable framework with which to apply our value judgments and get conclusions - and we are able to flush any logical inconsistencies, or arbitrarily circular logic, out of our framework. “Can a simple renaming of primitives into symbols really help to make me more rational? I’m willing to be convinced”

I would say that we need to take it a step further to state how it “increases rationality”.

By giving primitives identifiable symbols then we can tell when we are actually talking about the same thing using different words.

By formalising ideas in this way we gain a more tractable framework with which to apply our value judgments and get conclusions – and we are able to flush any logical inconsistencies, or arbitrarily circular logic, out of our framework.

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