Cheerskep: I infer that you are moving toward discriminating between social
discourse and philosophical debate. Precision has a different significance
for these activities (I submit). In discourse context and intent can/may
help us to discern meaning, if we make the effort. In a rigorous
philosophical debate, I accept that the "rules" as we enforce them, may
require very careful specification. However, we may still encounter
individuals who cling to definitions (muddifying as equivalent to ambiguous)
which may differ from our own.
I don't know German or French but I can understand a German-speaker's belief
that no English word quite expresses what he understands in the German word
"X". (Good for him that he knows so many similar, but not equivalent words.)
Aside from the exercise of looking up your words in my dictionary, I expect
that most of us would submit that the ... connotations .... of these words
were pretty similar (although I would see "craft" as resulting from the
other qualities). If the point is to demonstrate a semantic or philosophical
"notion", then I guess we'd best all be on board with the same definition.
If the point is, say, to deal with/discuss the problem of funding for the
arts, I hope that we would not need to get too hung up on defining terms
scrupulously.
Geoff C
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Reply-To: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: gift/talent/aptitude/skill/ etc
Date: Fri, 17 Oct 2008 15:15:05 EDT
The list grows longer. After today's postings it's now:
gift
talent
aptitude
skill
capacity
craft
The question I was asking was, in effect, does any lister feel that he
could
prescribe different notions for each of these words?
(Notice: I claim only muddled thinking leads one to ask the questions in
the
form, "What IS talent?" "What IS craft?" etc. The very form of that
question
"reifies": It erroneously assumes it's not a question of language usage
("This
is what I call 'craft' etc") but of what it "really is", and now it's our
job
to go discover what craft "really is".)
Would you say there's overlap (for you) in some of the notions? Would you
say
you use some of them synonymously, interchangeably? In a fairly rigorous
philosophic discussion, it's wise to sacrifice the felicity of avoiding
repetition
of the same word again and again. Banish one of any pair of "synonymous"
words. Use the same word each time you want to occasion the same notion in
your
reader.
(Forget the solemn declaration, "There are no synonyms!" Both within a
language and between languages there are plenty. I'm talking about the same
person;
a given person would admit that in his native language there are some
pairs
of words he uses interchangeably. And despite Umberto Eco's denial, a
totally
bilingual person can often supply two words in different languages that
summon
up, for him, the same notion. E.g., if you asked Eco to "translate"
'cucchiaio' I'm certain he'd say without hesitation, "Spoon." To "prove"
his
point, Eco
said this: "No English word really explains what the German word,
'Sehnsucht', means. Neither nostalgia, nor yearning, neither craving nor
wistfulness
really describes the full and exact meaning of the word.b It takes a
muddled
thinker to believe that because he can cite one word with no synonym, there
must be
NO synonyms for ANY word.)
I have another posting in draft, to Luc, in which I say I infer he uses the
word 'epistemic' synonymously with 'conscious', so I suggest he banish the
unfamiliar academicians' coinage, 'epistemic'. (But then, say I, Luc has
some
troubles with his notion of "conscious" -- but that's another posting.)
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