Quotes About Context

What stands fast does so, not because it is intrinsically obvious or convincing; it is rather held fast by what lies around it.

Think, for example, of the words which you perhaps utter in this space of time. They are no longer part of this language. And in different surroundings the institution of money doesn't exist either.

In this sort of predicament, always ask yourself: How did we learn the meaning of this word (good, for instance)? From what sort of examples? In what language-games? Then it will be easier for you to see that the word must have a family of meanings.

The silent adjustments to understand colloquial language are enormously complicated.

11. I am inclined to say: I 'point' in different senses to this body, to its shape, to its colour, etc.--What does that mean? What does it mean to say I 'hear' in a different sense the piano, its sound, the piece, the player, his fluency? I 'marry', in one sense a woman, in another her money.

There is no such thing as an isolated proposition. For what I call a proposition is a position in the game of language.

to be considered an important event in the philosophical world.

Numbers never lie, after all: they simply tell different stories depending on the math of the tellers.

Harper: What are FM shoes? Drina: Ahh. These are FM shoes. Harper: And the FM stands for? Drina: Fuck Me.

coisa que não era necessário dizer, mas há leitores tão obtusos, que nada entendem, se se lhes não relata tudo e o resto. Vamos ao resto. 

Character isn't what we think it is or, rather, what we want it to be. It isn't a stable, easily identifiable set of closely related traits, and it only seems that way because of a glitch in the way our brains are organized. Character is more like a bundle of habits and tendencies and interests, loosely bound together and dependent, at certain times, on circumstance and context.

The first set of mistakes we make with strangers—the default to truth and the illusion of transparency—has to do with our inability to make sense of the stranger as an individual. But on top of those errors we add another, which pushes our problem with strangers into crisis. We do not understand the importance of the context in which the stranger is operating.

as it may be—matters. How you feel about your abilities—your academic "self-concept"—in the context of your classroom shapes your willingness to tackle challenges and finish difficult tasks. It's a crucial element in your motivation and confidence.

The three rules of the Tipping Point—the Law of the Few, the Stickiness Factor, the Power of Context—offer a way of making sense of epidemics. They provide us with direction for how to go about reaching a Tipping Point.

They were so focused on the mechanics and the process that they never looked at the problem holistically. In the act of tearing something apart, you lose its meaning.

Broken Windows theory and the Power of Context are one and the same. They are both based on the premise that an epidemic can be reversed, can be tipped, by tinkering with the smallest details of the immediate environment. This

The Power of Context is an environmental argument. It says that behavior is a function of social context.

When we talk about analytic versus intuitive decision making, neither is good or bad. What is bad is if you use either of them in an inappropriate circumstance.

What Hartshorne and May concluded, then, is that something like honesty isn't a fundamental trait, or what they called a unified trait. A trait like honesty, they concluded, is considerably influenced by the situation.

Epidemics are sensitive to the conditions and circumstances of the times and places in which they occur.

Suicide is coupled. The first set of mistakes we make with strangers—the default to truth and the illusion of transparency—has to do with our inability to make sense of the stranger as an individual. But on top of those errors we add another, which pushes our problem with strangers into crisis. We do not understand the importance of the context in which the stranger is operating.

The mistake we make in thinking of character as something unified and all-encompassing is very similar to a kind of blind spot in the way we process information. Psychologists call this tendency the Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE), which is a fancy way of saying that when it comes to interpreting other people's behavior, human beings invariably make the mistake of overestimating the importance of fundamental character traits and underestimating the importance of situation and context.

Broken Windows theory and the Power of Context are one and the same. They are both based on the premise that an epidemic can be reversed, can be tipped, by tinkering with the smallest details of the immediate environment.

What Hartshorne and May concluded, then, is that something like honesty isn't a fundamental trait, or what they called a "unified" trait. A trait like honesty, they concluded, is considerably influenced by the situation.