Frankly, I think you philosophers are lost in the wilderness. Derek keeps talking about the shallowness and confusion re aesthetics and beauty but fails to engage any developed philosophical view on the question with the aim to show its strengths and weaknesses on its own terms. Isn't that what philosophers do? Cheerskep is insisting that we must offer language that can transmit our meaning intentions to a hearer, when in fact, we never have any control over the hearer's response. We hope for empathy, or submission. I suppose symbolic logic would work to ensure communication but few people are skilled in the art and it's very close or nearly identical to mathematics. We can ensure exact communication with mathematics but few people are skilled with it.
Both philosophers (artists are too unruly to be philosophers) I mean Derek and Cheerskep, seem to want to exclude lyrical, descriptive, metaphorical language in favor of exact correspondence between a word and the supposed meaning that, like Cinderella's shoe, neatly fit it. Oops, there I go again, using an picture-image to suggest an analogy for the quest for exact language. I suspect it's a vivid one, however, more functional than the very abstract linguistic notions. I suspect the fundamental cognition is pictorial. We sense pictures and then try to clothe them in words...while they act like restless kids. Thus Cheerskep gives himself wiggle room, saying that more than one word might be serviceable but deep down he'd prefer it was unnecessary. I wish you guys would get it settled. Is the tennis ball of reality in the subjective court or the objective court? Or is it the net that defines reality? WC
