Does Cheerskep really want to play hardball with me?
I don't know if I'm up to it. I'm exhausted today. A
little bored and intimidated by Mr. IS standing
offstage. Perhaps he can summarize his points in
some really succinct order. What, exactly, is wrong
with one of my sentences -- any one he chooses. If I
used the wrong word, what other word is better and
why? I just can't figure out what it is that
Cheerskep is so worked up about. To be sure, there's
nothing pedantic in my wording. I try to be as clear
as I can. What I aim to say is often stretched
between words and not fully covered by any one or two.
I guess I should shave down my thoughts to better it
the handy words.
I've said it again and again. Either Cheerskep is
going bonkers trying to whip us into linguistic form
or he can't believe that anyone else already knows
that there're big slippages between thoughts, words,
stirrings and whatever else stands between us, each
other, and the rest of the world.
At any rate I've got to be more serious about this
language thing. Jeepers, I though we were supposed to
trade ideas here, not submit to some word cop who
won't tell us what the word rules are.
Some of the smart lurkers can take over now. I've got
fuzzy brushes to clean.
WC
--- [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> 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.
