Holte's corner

Logic and Confusion

There is a lot of talk, logic and thought that goes into developing law and legal theory. Not being a lawyer, this stuff is both strange and fascinating to me. however it is "jargon" and it is jargon that makes perfect sense to the initiated but often is unintelligable to the rest of us. I wouldn't touch the subject myself except that I don't feel satisfied that I understand what my "rights" really are, what they should be, or with the direction the country is going. Law does not 'belong' solely to the lawyers. Rather lawyers are simply the paid (and certified) experts on the subject. We can't afford to let them 'own' it -- because any monopoly tends to lead to tyranny -- and because the law defines the attributes of our society, business and property, power and security.

Worst some of the people that keep trying to inform me about rights and definitions seem more confused about the subject than I am. So I started looking at the words, and analyzing them. What do the authors really mean? This is a meditation on the subject that I've been doing for some time now, and it is beginning to bear fruit for me in that I at least feel I'm starting to understand what the terms mean, and the meditating on the subject has helped me figure out where I "should" stand on issues logically as well as subjectively.

This confusion I'm referred to is all over the place. Look at the word Subject and Object. Does the meaning of the term pop out at you? What happens when you read that the meanings in philosophy, political science, computer science and grammer seem completely different. Even within computer science the word "object" has multiple meanings. You would think there would be a clear consistency between the definitions -- yet the way they are used shows that we human beings (at least English Speaking ones) don't really have the definition down. The words are used radically differently between disciplines:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subject
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object

A simple word "subject", or "object" has so many meanings. For that reason in my meditations I've been first trying to create definitions of them that I can apply generally and that are consistent between these different dictionary meanings. I've been able to do that. That, is one reason why this "meditation" seems -- to me at least -- worthwhile. Much of our confusion as a society comes from the confusion as to what these principles are.

And by the way "confusion" is one of the negative attributes of lawlessness.

Chris

Posted by cholte at March 24, 2007 12:00 AM