In the most offensive cases, it is easy to see when an estimation of the world is misplaced. Someone who confidently asserts ideas we know to be false, can often burden us with the uncomfortable responsibility to respond. In isolation, these ideas are often harmless, like viruses under strict quarantine, but ideas are never isolated forever. An idea, especially wrong ideas, lead to derivative conclusions whose veracity is intimately tied to the truthfulness of the ideas in its foundation (whether pratically or conceptually). [2] If bad ideas do not infect other people, they will nonetheless inevitably pollute our own thoughts. Thus, we cannot escape the infection of ill-formed ideas. It is this infectiousness that magnifies the urgency to quell wrong ideas, beyond eliminating them strictly for being incorrect. Upon this urgency, in focusing our responses, two categories emerge: descriptions and prescriptions.
David Hume famously stipulated that statements of what ought to be done cannot be derived from statements of what is. For Hume, this chasm between the moral world and sensory world was not bridged by logical syllogisms, but by the passions. Unfortunately, any cursory interaction with what resembles moral instruction shows that this is a deficient description.
We are always bombarded with statements of what “is” and of what “ought”, or what I call statements of Description and Prescription. When a friend recalls their day, or a testimony is given in court, or the news is engaged with, we encounter a description of things either inconsequential or significant to life and history. The descriptions, as mediated by both our own perceptions in the retelling, and the perception of the one with whom the events unfolded, are attempts at telling us something about reality. Certainly, science as a means of making systematic observations about the physician world is an attempt to refine how we make descriptions about the world. Whether or not Kant’s reservations about our capacity to experience raw reality (that instead it will always be filtered by our perceptions), our attempts to describe reality showcase the meaningful nature of describing.
What is Description?
As with most terms, when trying to come up with a definition that doesn’t smuggle in the word itself is challenging. “Description”, here, means something more encompassing than merely observing a phenomena and using words to connect with it, though that certainly is a part of this. It is this connection between our perceptions, or what goes on in the mind, as a response to decoding stimulation which is closer to what I mean. When we feel an emotion, think a thought, see, smell, hear, taste, or touch something, it is in the moment that we step back from the experience, whether in response to the stimulation or as prompting to engage, and conceptualize what the reality of it is that we have made either an implicit or explicit description. It is this conceptualizing, this ordering of the world in the mind (at times rightly and others in error) which form the basis for our actions.
Clearly, there is plenty hidden from view in this definition. We might ask how good, in general, the perceptions are in connecting to reality, or what actually causes the descriptions of reality to take root. Hopefully, it will suffice, simply to say that this definition is itself a description, and that it ought to be judged by how effectively it aids in providing a solution to the problem of prescription to be explained later on. This is the recursive nature of this chapter, as described in the previous section, both the utility and truth of it as a definition will hopefully be validated and illuminated by the end.
Examples of Description
As alluded to when attempting to define what is meant by a description, the category here is fairly encompassing. Some examples might make it more concrete. Most of what is properly called “science” is what is meant by a description.
The observations of the celestial bodies, formalized into equations, give us a description of what is going on in the heavens. Recognize how this formalization could take on the form of either heliocentrism or geocentrism, both of these are descriptions of reality. One description conceives of the orbit of the planets and sun where the sun is at the center, while the other places the earth at the center. Either conception has its reasons for making its assumptions, and certainly one is correct while the other is not (they cannot both be correct). What goes on in each is the mapping of the planets, stars, and other celestial objects, as well as their interactions with a conceptual counterpart in the mind and operates on those conceptions to articulate a complex interplay that continues to go on in reality. What this example helps to show is that descriptions can be formalized, and they can be right or wrong.
If a man chooses to defend himself when an assailant attacks him with a baseball bat, then the string of reasoning in his mind may follow something like:
A baseball bat is quickly coming towards me
I will be hurt if the baseball bat hits me
I prefer not to be hurt
Therefore, I will defend myself
Although most of this is instinctual, there is a description embodied in each premise. The eyes see the bat and the mind discerns its velocity. The faculties of self-preservation conceive of the danger. The passions and desires connect to what will likely transpire. A conclusion is reached, and an action is made. It is worth noting that I have opted for referring to “preference” here rather than an imperative for self preservation. Either might be applicable in adjacent scenarios, however, one is closer to Description while the other resembles Prescription, which will be addressed later.
Why it Matters
Whenever we engage with communication, either by receiving it or producing it, we are met with an articulated description. These descriptions, whether warranted or not, profoundly shape the way we interact with the rest of reality. If we are unable to align our descriptions more consistently and thoroughly to reality, we will be markedly deficient in living. It is unfortunate that a prescription has to be hinted at so early without defining it, but there must be an ordering to it. Since we inevitably make Descriptions, we must prescribe that they are good descriptions. The irony here, that prescription imbues description, is that good descriptions have to precede our prescriptions. Simultaneously, our prescriptions are predicated on the descriptions which they entail. Both this essay, the syntactic expression, and the practical implementation, are dependent on descriptions being well and rightly expressed. If our descriptions are not right, then anything that proceeds from them will be nonsense, or at best unsubstantiated. This is certainly the failure of most good prescriptions: the descriptions upon which they are based are faulty in some way.
Before the prescription, there is also a communicative element which proceeds from Descriptions. When we have a description, there may come a point when we must communicate it to others. This, too, fails, if the description is no good. A Description which is truly terrible will fail to relay even the most rudimentary details of itself. In a sense, this sort of Description is so divorced from reality that understanding it becomes an exercise in understanding the communicator rather than the Description itself. This may be contributing to why Psychology and the social sciences have replaced Philosophy and Theology; we have become incapable of making intelligible statements about reality to a point where most of the intellectual resources in our culture are now dedicated to the study of communicators rather than the substance of things. Depending on who one interacts with, these types of Descriptions may be rare, but it is worth mentioning their existence.
The more prevalent error is those descriptions which are incomplete in part. These are the descriptions that do the most harm, since they contain sufficient realism to be intelligible and coherent, but enough error to lead astray in part. It is often these portions of description that are abstracted to a point where they lose connection with those good and correct parts, as alluded to in previous chapters.
It is important to note how these descriptions occur in dialogue. Often, it is critical to communicate our descriptions to others who may have their own unique Descriptions. This is often the source of conflict when disparate values cause descriptions to differ. Perhaps more consistently is the fact that when Descriptions of things differ, for any reason, one of the Descriptions is wrong. The fact of this leads to the consistent failures of prescription, to be discussed later. Though it is clear that one Description must be wrong when two differ, what is unclear is how to disentangle the truth. Since this is a challenging undertaking, most people will default to some platitude to rectify it. These are almost always hasty prescriptions. Unfortunately, even good prescriptions can be soured by application into irrelevant or partially relevant scenarios. It is this conflict in dialogue which will likely encompass most of this section, as it appears to be a problem more common than it ought to be given the solution. The starting point of this is to recognize the deficiency of our own Descriptions and endeavor to refine them so that we might truly understand what is going on in dialogue with others.
To summarize, the importance in good descriptions is that they are the basis for the rest of what we do. Communicating them effectively is what bridges the gap of our conceptions with others during dialogue. To err in the beginning is to spoil the rest. It behooves us to properly orient our descriptions of the world around us, both materially and interpersonally.