Reply To: Is your house communist?

For someone with the name “nitpicker” you seem a little confused by my nitpicking.

What I’m saying is that the words you used don’t have a single specific meaning that exists in a vacuum. It seems you meant to distinguish between “tacit granting” of permission (where there was an active, though tacit granting) and “assuming” that permission would be granted (but it was never in fact granted).

But from the perspective of the user, those things are exactly the same 98% of the time. I have no idea whether when my brother left the house last time, his eyes fell upon his old shaver, and he thought, “let me leave it here, so that Veltz can use it when he comes to visit, and I hereby grant tacit permission”.

Additionally, you don’t describe what tacit permission is. What if his eyes fell on the shaver and he thought, “let me leave it here because I don’t have room in my apartment and maybe someone will visit and forget their shaver”? Is that tacit permission, or do I still need to call him? What if he thought “let me leave it here because I don’t have room in my apartment, and so I really don’t care what happens to this shaver anymore?” or “let me leave it here because one of the blades tends to cut my cheek, and better Veltz’s cheek should be cut than mine”? What if he left the house thinking, “I know I left a bunch of good stuff. Luckily Mom and Dad have lots of visitors who will be able to make use of it, because I don’t have room for it”? Can I flip through his baseball cards?