I wrote:
"In my finicky way, however, I'd insist the words themselves do
nothing."
Brady responded:
"Not so. The words are a code that triggers certain
responses. Words MUST be minimally legible or audible, that is,
decodable. Otherwise they lose their word-ness and fail to convey the
message."
In fact, some time back I said here that, contrary to what you no doubt
think, there are no words out there.
"Excuse me?! Now you're saying words don't exist? I do
believe I saw words printed on paper this very day!"
No. You saw ink on paper; you've never seen a "word" in your life. Or heard
one. "Foopgoom!" Did you just hear a word? How would you tell? Run to your
little dictionary? The latest ones have lots of "new words". But they're only
sounds they've at last decided to CALL "words". What was their "is-ness" before?
"Wordness" is a chimerical "quality", another product of Plato's monumentally
confused mind. More broadly, all categories are mental fictions. "Nothing
IS anything."
Michael goes on:
"Unless your finickiness extends to the verb "do".
Indeed it does whenever the "doing" is attributed to an utterly inert object.
Michael continues:
"Words literally do nothing, but they serve in a practical way to accomplish
the task of communicating meanings, that is, notions, from on person to
another."
Agreed. Think of what you call 'words' as a kind of tool, like a hammer. The
carpenter hammers, not the hammer.
So we're agreed then? It's not so that it's not so?
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