William writes: "I will insist on rock hard, informed thinking and won't coddle misinformation or its defenses such as Cheerskep's campaign against muddiness in aesthetic issues. (My claim is that muddiness is ambiguity -- the poetic sort -- and ambiguity lies at the heart of the aesthetic)."
I'll momentarily take William's "muddy" to be interchangeable with the word I us more frequently, 'muddled'. In truth, I'm against "muddled" in ALL issues. (Which is helpful here, because I'm not sure what William has in mind with 'the aesthetic'.) Kate cites Empson's SEVEN TYPES OF AMBIGUITY -- which, aptly, is a book that argues that 'ambiguity' is ambiguous. >From his earlier postings, I infer that William's notion of "ambiguity" and mine agree to this extent: We want the notion behind 'ambiguous' to be "occasioning multiple notions". In which case I have to differ with William in that I would never suggest that "muddiness/muddledness" is equivalent to "ambiguity". I'd like to maintain this distinction: I'll try to use 'ambiguous' for words/works that occasion multiple SERVICEABLY CLEAR notions. I'll save 'muddled' for notions -- and acts of "reasoning" -- that are disablingly vague, inconsistent, or incomplete. For example, everyone's notion of "relations" is muddled. Eco's argument for believing there are NO synonyms between languages is muddled. One doesn't "prove" a universal by citing instances consistent with the universal. One has to prove there are NO instances INCONSISTENT with the universal. So, contrary to William's suggestion that I'm against ambiguity in "works of art", I'm not. But I'm always against muddle, in WOA or anywhere else. Note: muddled is muddle, and that's that -- say I grandly. But a word/work can be ambiguous for one person and not the next (in the next, it may occasion only a single notion), so when we impute ambiguity, we should state "for whom". (Granted, some words/works will occasion multiple notions some of which are serviceably clear, and some of which are muddled. Kate cites Empson's SEVEN TYPES OF AMBIGUITY -- which, aptly, is a book that argues that 'ambiguity' is ambiguous. Empson's book may also be a bit muddled.) ************** New MapQuest Local shows what's happening at your destination. Dining, Movies, Events, News & more. Try it out (http://local.mapquest.com/?ncid=emlcntnew00000002)
