Cheerskep: I heartily agree that there is an unfortunate, and probably
unavoidable, tendency among list members to use and define and understand
words and concepts in different ways on the list (as a long time list
member, of course). However, I am reminded of a lament of a professor of
biology (entomology, to be exact)of my acquaintance. He opined that "we
should get back to the proper meaning of words so that we could all be
clearer in our communication with each other". Aside from anomalies such as
the conflicting meaning of cleave: to one's wife vs. separating objects, I
think it is fairly obvious that, like it or not, language evolves.
Philosophy may be, at least in part, a means to encourage people to think
and communicate clearly.
Between the evolution of language and the varying sophistication and
discipline of .. members of the list, communicating clearly and consistently
will be a problem (not to mention the Piercian and Lockians and Sartrians).
I wonder if it must be all one way - can the more sophisticated members of
the list be patient with the rest of us; can the rest of us strive to
understand others' points?
Geoff C
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Reply-To: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Expertise and aesthetic experience
Date: Sun, 12 Oct 2008 15:53:34 EDT
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)
