Last week i joined one of that classes that discussed about the Principles of conversation:
- The maxim of quantity, where one tries to be as informative as one possibly can, and gives as much information as is needed, and no more.
- The maxim of quality, where one tries to be truthful, and does not give information that is false or that is not supported by evidence.
- The maxim of relation, where one tries to be relevant, and says things that are pertinent to the discussion.
- The maxim of manner, when one tries to be as clear, as brief, and as orderly as one can in what one says, and where one avoids obscurity and ambiguity.
hence there are tons of articles about that from tons of people all over the web, it reminds me of some very old tale of the three sieves of Socrates, from arround 2400 years ago:
someone went to him to tell him something, but Socrates asked him to filter his story through 3 sieves:
- “The Sieve of Truth.": is it, without a doubt, True? or some made up lie?
- "The Sieve of Importance/Goodness": is it really important and/or good what you wanna tell? or is it just some rumor you heard somewhere or even worse, made up by yourself?
- "The Sieve of Usefulness": is it neccessary that you have to tell me? or isn't it useful to me at all?
the outcome wasn't good for the friend, after all.
as you see, it's a very basic version of the 4 principles above. i'd love to discuss about similarities and differences about that.
anyone wanna start?
