Video: Architecture of Grammatical Compromise. (Duration: 10:30)
In this video, I define Ontology, Grammar, and Commensurability before I use abortion as a poster child. Then, I discuss what happens when ontological grammars are incommensurable.
These thinkers follow:
Michel Foucault: Biopower, notably The History of Sexuality, Volume I.
Bernard Williams: Thick Moral Concepts from Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy.
Pierre Bourdieu: Habitus, notably from Outline of a Theory of Practice.
Karl Popper: Paradox of Intolerance.
I discuss the challenge of the promise of compromise and its three possible outcomes, none of which are true compromises.
Watch the video for context. Read the essay for fuller details.
I’ve just published a new GPT in support of my new ontology, grammar, and legibility project, Legibility GPT.
As with Languange Insufficiency GPT and MEOW GPT, it is meant to assist in the exploration of the concepts for which they were built and named. For an interesting time, analyse a concept through all three.
Simply put, Legibility GPT assesses conceptual thickness, based on the work of Bernard Williams in Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy. Thin concepts, whether containing moral content or description, carry commensurable information, so disagreement remediation may be attained. For thick moral concepts, this becomes increasingly unlikely because the moral content becomes an anchor. Generally speaking, the conflicting ontological positions either weigh the concept differently or, in extreme cases, one side doesn’t even categorise the concept as principally moral. I use legibility in the sense articulated by James C Scott in Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed.
Audio: NotebookLM concept summary podcast.
Legibility GPT
A cartographic tool for conceptual conflict. Legibility GPT analyses how ontology and grammar shape the meaning of contested terms, identifying points of admissibility, exclusion, and incommensurability. It maps disagreement without taking sides.
Usage: Input a term or concept. This GPT will output the various polysemous contexts of the concept and break out the various ontological commitments and grammatical functions with examples of valid and invalid phrases within that grammar.
This GPT will also score and sort on incommensurability. A particularly divisive concept might be abortion.
Analyses English terms and short concept phrases using the Language Insufficiency Hypothesis (LIH), diagnosing semantic stability, polysemy, connotation, and category drift in contemporary usage.
A structured analysis tool that maps any given concept onto the MEOW mediation framework (T0–T3). Produces a consistent, tiered breakdown including scope checks, applicability flags, and limits of interpretation.
Philosophics 