In William's response to my lengthy post citing his faulty use of language
and comparing it to Pasteur's germs, William writes:
"Now why is it that I don't understand Cheerskep's lengthy comment? What
the hell is he really saying? He rambles. He maintains that I want to say
words have meanings, me, the champion of meaninglessness!"
Curiously, when William responded, he reprinted my post -- the one he was
responding to. But his reprint left out the whole second half of my original
post. So maybe his not understanding what I was saying was caused by his
reading
only the first half? I don't think so, because he seems to quote some phrases
from the second half, but let's pretend that's why he doesn't know what I was
saying.
William is right: I do ramble -- because there are verbal germs on all sides,
and they repeatedly make futile the effort to have a useful discussion. In
this post I'll try to do less rambling.
But I want to open with this remark: For all my rambling, despite William's
assertion, not once in my post did I claim William "wants to say words have
meaning."
So -- on to some things I did say in my original post.
The second half of that post began with my quoting William:
> "Cheerskep might do well to tell us himself
> precisely what achievement and excellence denote."
In response, I said nothing, ever, "denotes". 'Denote' suggests to many
people the absurd notion that a word points-at, picks-out, "refers to" an
object,
usually a non-mental one.
So it's absurd to ask me to tell you what 'achievement' and 'excellence'
"denote". They don't denote anything. When you hear those words all sorts of
associated notions stir in your mind, memories of earlier experience vel-croed
to the word. This is why most people think a word "means". It doesn't. In fact
a word does nothing. The mind does things -- associating sounds, images, even
smells, tastes (recall Proust's Madeleine cookie), and tactile feelings.
This is the sort of thing I said. It implies William is confused. William
ignores it. Or maybe, as he maintains, he just didn't understand it.
William also wrote:
"In fact language is all about separating things one from another." Again I
suggested William was being careless. I said, "I hope you don't really believe
that's what "language is ALL about". John Ellis, whose book Derek and the
Randians champion, also claims language's first function is to "categorize",
but
at least Ellis concedes it arose in minor part from the impulse to
"communicate".
To which I said, "Ellis is wrong. Language rose primarily to communicate."
William ignores all of this.
William then said that Cheerskep's "positivist mindset is finally out of
fashion and human feeling -- fuzzy-wuzzy -- is hot stuff again."
I said there's very little strictly positivist in what I've said, and what IS
"going out of fashion very quickly is "fuzzy logic", which didn't celebrate
fuzziness, but simply tried to "handle" fuzziness. Statisticians have largely
rejected it as a usable system by now, and philosophers find it much too narrow
to "handle" any of the basic issues of language."
William ignores all of these remarks even though they were all occasioned
directly by what he himself had written. William is not under any mandate to
respond to everything I say, but it does seem bad form to take up our time with
weighty assertions and then ignore critical reactions. And he certainly
shouldn't pretend he ignores counter-arguments because he doesn't understand
any of
it, has no idea what 's being said. It's apt that William's one attempt at a
rebuttal is a reaction to something I DIDN'T say ("William "wants to say words
have meaning.")
William's latest (below) celebrates his stupidity. But it's disingenuous. I
don't believe him. He's spent too much time on the forum making dead-serious
pronouncements about philosophical matters ("language is all about separating
things one from another"; "Perception is the synthesis of subject and object
and
that relationship can be judged, and in metaphorical ways, explained"), and
using too many polysyllabic words for abstractions. It reminds me of previous
listers who, when backed into a debate-losing corner, would claim they were
only kidding, having fun, "playing a new game that's just a little
rule-breaking."
It's too bad the likes of DaVinci didn't realize "stupidity is the route to
creativity". If only he'd been stupid, something might have come of him.
****
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
**************
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