Communication by necessity involves a communicator and a recipient. The meaning of what is communicated hinges on what the former intends to convey, although they might do such a poor job of sharing what they have in mind, such as by using language in an especially vague and arbitrary way, that the latter is not at fault for being confused. However, sometimes people treat the way something is communicated or its emotional or broader psychological impact as if this is what reveals the content of the communication to them. Similarly, they might think that this is what reveals the emotions or personal motivations the speaker harbors. As with so many other things, perception does not require anything except that the perception exists and so cannot prove anything more than this.
The feelings experienced by the recipient of the communication in no way dictate the intention of the communication. Likewise, this must by necessity be true of how the exchange is perceived even aside from emotional impact. Thus, the feelings and other perceptions of the audience do not determine or reveal the validity of anything communicated or the motivates connected with it. The speaker could have been utterly passionless inside, and if the recipient feels targeted by extreme anger, for instance, it does not even matter if it appears like the message had anger behind it. It did not because that was not the intention. There is and could be no exception; how a message is passively perceived or actively interpreted has no inherent overlap with what was intended, and so it is never relevant to knowing the speaker's actual mental states.
Now, it is likely that many people will act as if the way that something is communicated, especially with explicitly philosophical ideas (though of course everything is philosophical), and even the way they feel separate from the way it was communicated is a valid reason to dismiss, deny, or ignore a concept. Kindness tailored to their arbitrary emotions and mere preferences is what they will latch onto and treat as if it is of utmost metaphysical and epistemological importance. Though it might be absolutely obvious to any rational person what is being conveyed and whether or not the exact idea is true or false, logically possible or impossible, verifiable or unverifiable, the typical person of my experience will not look past the way something is conveyed and how it made them feel.
There is absolutely no reason to particularly care about objections based upon how communication is received, even so, unless the means of sharing it was misleading so as to be irrational in itself. That is, there is none other than sheer pragmatism. What is pragmatic or not or personally appealing has nothing to do with whether one is right or righteous in whatever one is conveying. For example, a rationalistic person who corrects a non-rationalist (of which there are many to stumble into in life) kindly might opt to make the things being said more "appealing", as if appeal is anything more than a subjective and consequently irrelevant factor. Pragmatically, such communication is better for reaching people--in one sense. It is just that the person being reached, if a fool, cannot deserve to have their sensitivity considered by nature of rejecting reason for the inherent errors of emotionalism or assumptions, giving them only baseless or false footholds to stand on.
Besides how speaking as if one means something different than what was said or the way it was said (communicational incompetence), which is already problematic itself, it is up to each person how they will communicate in light of these truths. Beyond not saying anything invalid, not inflating the emotion/attitude paired with the words to misalign with the intended meaning, and wording statements so that they do not intentionally seem as if one has suggested a very different meaning, there is nothing irrational about writing or speaking without painstaking intentionality regarding how a specific audience or individual might receive the communication--that is, how they will interpret it, however erroneously. How will the audience receive the statements otherwise? That is entirely on them. If they believe in some non sequitur or red herring, or if they think their feelings actually have anything to do with what was said to them and what was meant by it, they are delusional.
Logic, people. It is very fucking helpful.
No comments:
Post a Comment