Direction of Fit

Direction Of Fit

The technical term direction-of-fit is used to describe the distinctions that are offered by two related sets of opposing terms:

  • The more general set of mind-to-world (i.e., mind-to-fit-world, not from-mind-to-world) vs. world-to-mind (i.e., world-to-fit-mind) used by philosophers of mind, and
  • The narrower, more specific set, word-to-world (i.e., word-to-fit-world) vs. world-to-word (i.e., world-to-fit-word) used by advocates of speech act theory.

Read more about Direction Of Fit:  In General, Earlier Theories, In Speech Act Theory, In Philosophy of Mind

Famous quotes containing the words direction of, direction and/or fit:

    From the way the grass bends, one can know the direction of the wind.
    Chinese proverb.

    That reality is ‘independent’ means that there is something in every experience that escapes our arbitrary control. If it be a sensible experience it coerces our attention; if a sequence, we cannot invert it; if we compare two terms we can come to only one result. There is a push, an urgency, within our very experience, against which we are on the whole powerless, and which drives us in a direction that is the destiny of our belief.
    William James (1842–1910)

    Little do such men know the toil, the pains,
    The daily, nightly racking of the brains,
    To range the thoughts, the matter to digest,
    To cull fit phrases, and reject the rest.
    Charles Churchill (1731–1764)