OrangePhilosophy

2 things:

1. To say that *I* can't discover something empirically isn't the same as saying it's not empirically discoverable, right?

2. Couldn't at least part of what you're worried about be attibuted to the vagueness of 'in my vocabulary'? Some words we use all the time and know what they mean. Some words we use correctly sometimes and incorrectly sometimes, and we couldn't give a good definition for them. There are lots of words where, if I heard it, I might know what it means, but if you asked me "what's a word for..." I wouldn't come up with it on my own. Which of these count as being in my vocabulary? That question doesn't seem important.

I don't think this is a vagueness problem. It's a problem in distinguishing whether something is of a certain kind when it determinately is of that kind. What I couldn't do is distinguish between two different states that I'm in. It would be more like being able to determine whether I know something when I don't have access to why I know it.

Well, I guess if you can't recall the meaning of a word when it's seen in isolation, I'd say it's a bit *less* appropriate to say that the word is in your vocabulary than it would be if you could recall the meaning, even if it's not totally inappropriate. That's why I'm thinking vagueness. I'm also thinking vagueness (or polyguity) because I suspect there are lots of things we might mean when we say that a word is "in our vocabulary."

But anyway, some other thoughts: if I can't tell the difference between when I've just learned the meaning of a word and when I've remembered it, then you're right - it will be hard for me to do the appropriate investigations. But there are lots of things I can't do because I lack certain abilities. I can't see what's on the other side of the universe. That doesn't have any impact on whether astronomical questions are empirical questions, does it?

Also, if it's not an empirical question, then what sort of question is it? Is there a plausible alternative here?

Someone could see the other side of the universe by being there. We can't investigate it due to being here. I was thinking the sort of inability I had in mind is something we couldn't investigate because of our intrinsic limitations, and I think that's importantly different.

Your last question is what I was wondering to begin with. What could this be but an empirical question? Maybe the best answer is that some empirical questions are in principle impossible to investigate.

I'm wondering if we should think of questions like this as similar to what it's like to be a bat. If we could somehow transform our brains to be much like those of a bat in terms of perception while retaining enough of our own brains for psychological continuity, then maybe we could know what it's like to be a bat, but we wouldn't be able to know what it's like always to have been a bat. The only way to do would be to destroy psychological continuity, which some people are going to say wouldn't be me knowing what it's like always to have been a bat. It would be someone else. This depends on a psychological continuity requirement for personal persistence, but plenty of people hold such a view, and it seems a strange result if a view requiring psychological continuity results in empirical questions that are metaphysically (and not just physically) impossible to investigate.

If we have a machine tally up the different words we say (in the course of a month or year, maybe), this could be a judge of our vocabulary. And it's empirical. But what we say, especially in my case, is much less than we know. But this might be an empirical matter too. With a large enough sample size (accounting for the stratification of vocabulary amongst groups), we could figure some margin of error that is adequate. I think this would portray (atleast science fiction-ly) just what most intend by "empirical", and the MOE should minimize any possible vagueness--it would be expressed as averages or something like that.

Many of us use some of the more abstract words intuitively without being altogether certain of their precise meaning. Should such words be eligible for inclusion in a vocabulary list?

Does a subjective meaning incorrectly applied to a given word still make that word valid as part of a legit vocabulary list?

Vocabulary can be defined as "the sum of words used by, understood by, or at the command of a particular person or group". Since a common understanding is indicated in this definition, shouldn't a "bad meaning" result in disqualification?

There are likely many words people include in their vocabularly that they don't understand, incorrectly understand or only have some vague notion about. I'm sure George Bush would agree whole heartedly :)

Well, here's some empirical data that seems relevant to the question at hand: My vocabulary exceeds 20 words. You see, the negation of that sentence is falsified by this very post!

We can also investigate the quesiton by developing a sense of the total number of words in English. (No one should doubt *this* is an empirical enterprise, check out this page for results: http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2001/JohnnyLing.shtml)

Say that the maximal English vocabulary is 750000 words. Here's a test we can do now: list these words, choose some at random, see how many are in your vocabulary. You do this long enough, you will converge on a fraction which you multiply by 750000 and get your vocabulary. I think tests like this have been done.

Now I think I'm missing something...

OK, one more thing I should add. "Where are my keys?" that's an empirical question, right? Well, thanks to Heisenberg uncertainty, we can't give arbitrarily accurate measurements of position. We make rough, educated guesses about the position. This makes the enterprise no less empirical. So what I suggested above is a rough method for making an educated guess about the vocabulary question. I see no reason to treat these two questions differently. The roughness or inaccuracy of an empirical measuring procedure in no way undermines its empiricality (didn't know that was in my vocabulary, perhaps it shouldn't be!).

Great link ... interesting read.

20,000 words sounds a little high, but when you toss in slang, neologisms and such I suppose it is feasible.