Geoff asks:
If forum members read and remember new definitions -- of, say, Peircean terms
-- then:
> do individuals in the community alter their
> vocabularies?
>
First make sure you have a serviceably clear idea in mind when you say
'vocabulary'. When we hear a word...
(I'll pause there to address our excellent verbal-inconsistency watchdog,
Michael Brady: Yes, in one of my more formally philosophic modes, I've said
there "are" no words. I stand by my argument for saying that (don't worry -- I
won't repeat it here!). But in this less formal forum context right now, it's
serviceable to use the term. It's true -- almost everyone who reads the
scription 'word' will conjure a somewhat muddled notion, but it is unlikely to
be
muddled in a way that prevents my communicating the core notion I want to
convey
at this moment. Everything -- including both muddlement and communication -- is
a matter of degree.)
So, to continue from the point where I was so tediously interrupted: When
we hear a word, the notion that arises in our mind may be thought of as being
of two sorts: The public associations, and the private ones.
We tend to use 'vocabulary' to indicate words with generally accepted
public notions -- the notions we can expect most of the pertinent community to
entertain. These are the notions that dictionary-definitions aim to occasion.
If
we say Jones "has a very large vocabulary" usually what we intend to convey is
that Jones's memory contains a very large number of words with which he
associates notions that are at least roughly like the notions that will arise
in the
minds of most people in a given community. Thus we may talk of a "Peircean"
vocabulary, a Swedish vocabulary, and the vocabularies of various "cultures" --
the "art world", the internet, and even obscene words.
So, yes, we may reasonably say a vocabulary is altered when you "learn new
words". Notice: a new "definition" acquired does not regularly mean all the old
notions are displaced, eradicated. Thus much of what we think of as
"alteration" is ADDITIONAL notion that stirs with a given word.
Peirce was his own worst obstacle in two ways.
The first was in his invention of a superfluity of neologisms, and of new,
unique notions he wanted to be conveyed when he used old, familiar words --
e.g.
his notions of 'sign' etc. He was usually motivated by a salubrious
intention: to reduce confusion -- but, accept for those willing to put in an
immense
amount of study of Peirce without yet much evidence he was worth it, he
compounded confusion. Everyone who knew Peirce agreed he was very smart -- but
regularly exhibited bad judgment.
The second was in his acceptance or invention of cripplingly mistaken
notions. Frances, in a spurt of her admirable industry, recently posted over
8,000
words of Peirce teachings. I shake my head at the teachings' combination of
opacity and error -- most of which error is not unique to Peirce. One
example:
the assumption that signs -- e.g. words -- DO things.
But words are inert. They do not "signify", "designate", "refer to". Inert,
insensate, ink on paper DOES nothing. The contemplating mind carries out all
the action -- especially in its associating a scription with remembered
previous
notion. That general error is manifested to this day by philosophers as
revered as Saul Kripke who thinks "names" "pick out" subjects.
Underlying this error is the mistaken conviction that there is some sort of
illy-thought-out, mind-independent "connection" between a scription and that
other mind-independent entity, the word's "meaning". A Fregean might say,
"Well, it's not the word that does anything, it's the MEANING of the word."
Which
simply compounds the errors involved.
Allied to this misake is the curiously unexamined notion behind the word 'to
have'. Too briefly, I'll assert the alleged action of "having" is a chimera.
Nothing "has" anything (in particular a "meaning'). You don't even "have"
money in the bank. Look hard: if you examine that notion closely, you will see
it
is a cluster of predictable observable actions and outcomes -- none of which
entails the existence of the action "to have" (or "own", or "belong" etc --
all similar chimeras.)
(Classical positivism as a philosophic position crashed and burned -- but
it's a mistake to believe that mut imply there was no worth to any of it
(including some essentially Peircean notions).)
'To have' is a word that has emerged to "account for" the results of the
mind's repeated associations, all of which are easily "accounted for" by
repeated juxtapositions in our experience. Point at a dog repeatedly, and say
"dog"
to your child. As the child gets older you'll be pointing at other things and
saying the likes of, "That's a computer." Then the word 'to mean' will creep
into your teaching. "That's what URL means." "That's the meaning of
'server'." Then, as your kid come to know more than you, "What does 'blog'
mean?"
"What's the meaning of 'hits' as distinguished from 'requests' on your
website?"
or, "Does 'hits' have the same meaning as 'visits'?" Presto! -- We're there.
We're all conditioned to believe words "have", and that one of the things they
have is "meanings". (Notice the veiled work of the word 'of': it always subtly
suggests posessession -- "having".)
But it's not just public notions that come variously to our minds when we
hear or read a word. I have a friend whose husband was drowned while
kayaking.
She will never hear the word 'kayak' again without thinking of him and that
event. She would say that personal notion is now part of what 'kayak' will
always "mean".
One of the geniuses of poets is spotting seemingly private associations that
are registered immediately by a large audience. I often cite Emily Dickinson's
line, "There's a certain slant of light/On winter afternooons/That oppresses
like the weight/of cathedral tunes." Do you feel that line as I do? How do
you suppose that happens? It seems to me true that, if I hadn't myself seen in
my New England boyhood those November ramps to eternity, and heard seemingly
sourceless, ominous, organ wails in the cavernous vaults of a church, I
wouldn't have acquired the associations Dickinson was tapping into.
**************
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