Is Cheerskep blasing my fuzziness again? Drat. What
am I to do? I'll tell you. Nothing. I'll go on
being as fuzzy as I can because so many words jump up
and say "pick me, pick me!" everytime I start punching
the computer keys. So I pick them as whim allows,
knowing that if I can get them to sing the song, or
march in a row, the off-tune and out-of-step ruffians
will go along okay.
My life is all about being unintellegent, about
thinking laterally, metaphorically, allusively. It's
so much fun! I've always preferred being stupid
because that's the route to creativity. You have to
be creative to understand that. Words, like colors
and shapes, are as elastic as seaweeds, they go along
with any game. In fact, they love it.
Words also remind me of puppies. They just want to
wag their tails and run and jump, always eager for
make-believe.
And shapes are just like my grandkids, always wanting
to play a new game that's just a little rule-breaking.
Just think how much a rectangle enjoys being
relieved of its Euclidian gravitas, to twist and leap,
to be dressed up in garish color, to bounce around
with other delinquent squares. You gotta feel the
spirit of life.
Ah, the joy of unintelligence...freedom! If you can't
follow unintelligence, don't be mad. Not everyone can
be genius level unintelligent. That's why some do
neat stuff while others stand shaking their fists and
sneering at them, telling them they're not being
clear, don't read, ignore rules, etc., etc., and
Excetera!
WC
--- [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> Brian, after reading my harassing post to William
> about William's use of
> disablingly fuzzy words, writes:
>
> "All of this reads like a defense for a doctrine of
> "clear and distinct"
> ideas. Intimated in the accusation that "very often
> our effort turns to finding a
> word or phrase to "express" the blurry notion before
> we've cleared up the
> focus to a serviceable degree" is the presumption
> that distinction is always
> possible."
>
> Comfortably for Brian, he evidently missed my
> repeated posts asserting that
> ALL notion is indeterminate, indefinite, multiplex
> and transitory. Plus my many
> remarks about how language misleads by "discreting"
> -- that is, since words
> are discrete -- i.e. "distinct" one from another,
> and you can see their
> "borders", their beginning and their end right there
> in front of us -- we tend
> erroneously to assume the notions they allegedly
> label are also discrete.
>
> But even without reading those, he had all the
> evidence he needed, right in
> the post he was commenting on, to show I was perhaps
> the last person on the
> forum to champion "clear and distinct ideas".
>
> In that posting I remarked on the frustration I feel
> when I see smart people
> USE words lazily, carelessly, fuzzily. I feel a
> similar frustration when I
> see readers READ things that way, and not link the
> various accumulating remarks
> in a given statement. A dark failing as a reader
> that Brian manifests, and
> that he shares with William and Derek, would seem to
> be this: From a long
> statement they will seize some one or two elements
> to call inscrutable, or to
> disagree with, and use it as the pretext to avoid
> addressing all the other, more
> seriously rebutting arguments in the post. Though
> Brian, I admit, didn't convey
> that he even noticed or grasped that there were
> pertinent other elements.
>
> No intelligent reader of my post would infer "it
> reads like a defense for a
> doctrine of "clear and distinct" ideas."
>
> My major complain in the post to William was the
> proclivity too many of us
> have to use a word that doesn't convey our notion --
> because we simply don't
> stop to consider what a variety of notion the word
> has the potential to occasion
> in our readers' minds. In William's post I cited the
> words 'perception',
> 'synthesis', 'relationship', and 'explained'.
> William, for example, said
> "perception is the synthesis of" a painting and its
> contemplator. This, I maintain,
> is a deceptively foggy assertion, a kind of fervid,
> dreamy locution written
> by someone who hasn't really worked to make his own
> notion serviceably clear.
> Here are descriptions of the two most common notions
> occasioned by the word
> 'synthesis':
>
> As an action: "The combining of separate elements or
> substances to form a
> coherent whole."
>
> As an object: "The complex whole so formed."
>
> When I look at a painting, my
> thoughts/feelings/notion is quite separate from
> the painting causing it. So William's
> "perception", since it's said to
> "synthesize" what's in my head with what I'm looking
> at, must be different from
> what's in my head. His "perception" must be
> something other than my
> thoughts/feeling/notion. But what can anyone's
> "perception" be other than the actions of
> thinking and feeling, or, as object, those thoughts
> and feelings? It is
> romantic, murky moonshine to assert there is the
> painting, the contemplator's complex
> notion, and a third entity -- "perception" -- that
> is a "synthesis" of
> painting and notion.
>
> It reminds me of the boozy bunkum of my schooldays:
> "We are all members of
> one another!" "The world and I are one!"
>
> Look at the quote above from Brian. How could he
> possibly figure I was
> looking for "clear and distinct" ideas when I
> specifically convey I am only looking
> for a "serviceable degree" of clarity?
> ('Serviceable' is another word I've
> elaborated on to an extent William has found tedious
> in the extreme. I hope
> William has noticed that, despite how often I stress
> the serviceability of a line
> like, "Please pass the carrots," listers still
> maintain that since I feel
> communication can never be perfect I must feel no
> communication at all is
> possible.)
>
> In the posting Brian is commenting on, I explicitly
> urge speakers to sharpen
> their "notion into as clear a degree as you can
> manage". It didn't occur to
> Brian to reflect on why I don't say, "sharpen them
> until they are clear and
> distinct."
>
> Still later I explicitly agree with William's
> assertion, " everything is
> fuzzy and blurry, that nothing is so clear as to be
> without the sin of fuzzy
> edges." I add, " But it's a matter of the degree
> of sinfulness." I indicate the
