I voice a repeated theme about how our slipshod use of language on our forum confuses all of us and dooms one thread after another. My theme has been called a dead horse, but I think of it as more like a virus -- and it sure isn't dead.
The infection takes two forms. The first is "reification". Because we have a word -- and a conviction that words "mean" something, that they "refer to" things -- we regularly assume that a "referent" of the word must exist. We then compound this error by assuming what WE think of as the referent -- our own notion of it -- is what's going to come to the minds of everyone who reads the word. The second form is not strictly "linguistic". It's our readiness to proceed in a discussion with no awareness that our own notions are woefully fuzzy, muddled, unserviceable. I have in draft a long posting about "relations", in which I claim that the notions that come to the minds of everyone who reads that word are disastrously unclear -- and they are unaware of it. By 'everyone' I don't mean just laymen, but every philosopher whom I've read, beginning back before Aristotle. The most astonishing thing to me is not that their notions are blurry, but that none seems to realize it. Over the last twenty-four hours on the forum, these two forms have been manifested in most listers use of key words such as these in the two ongoing threads: Porn Art Aesthetic Aesthetic experience Epistemic Morality "intrinsic connection" Granted, some listers have expressed doubts about whether or not everyone is "meaning the same thing" with certain words, but then those very listers will go on to use other words with apparent surety that all of us have the same thing in mind when we hear them. Listers occasionally pay lip-service to the notion that "Of course words don't "have" meanings, of course when I say a word means I mean its meaning FOR ME is. . ." but then they go on to write in a way that persuades me they can't help believing the words are NOT drawing on solely their own personal, idiosyncratic notions. They believe their words are drawing on in-common singular "meanings" and "referring to" extramental abstract objects. Go back and look at the usages of 'porn', 'art', 'aesthetic', etc See if you don't feel the writers often assume "everyone knows what the word means". ************** New MapQuest Local shows what's happening at your destination. Dining, Movies, Events, News & more. Try it out (http://local.mapquest.com/?ncid=emlcntnew00000002)
