As i've always said,the essence of anything is impossible to duplicate,
All we can sense or create is our own Fuzzy personal choice.
mando
On Oct 20, 2008, at 5:20 PM, William Conger wrote:
I'll try to use 'ambiguous' for words/works
that occasion multiple
SERVICEABLY CLEAR notions.
Fine, but then whatever is serviceably clear is the hearer's task
as much as it the speaker's. If I say something you don't find
serviceably clear is it always my failing? No. It might be your
failing.
I'll save 'muddled' for notions -- and acts of
"reasoning" -- that are
disablingly vague, inconsistent, or incomplete.
You didn't finish the above sentence. The absent words are "to
me". Of course, we have yet to know what it is you say is
reaoning. So far, you insist that since words have no meaning
and since meaning is fully subjective, then all meaning depends on
some truce of notions. But if, therefore, meaning is an explication
of reasoning, and meaning is fully subjective, then reasoning is
fully subjective. That's the logic of solipsism. Solipsism
contradicts the objective reasoning and instead favors fully
subjective opinions.
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.
In language, all merit is the context of words taken together, as
in a sentence or phrase, not in the words alone. In the the
contextual sense, I agree with Eco. In the dissected sense of
words, one by one, I agree with Cheerskep. But Cheerskep's view
cannot be put into practice. As soon as we make a sentence or
phrase, the pure synonym vanishes.
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.
Whose muddle? It might be yours. Also, art thrives on
contradiction (a form of purposeful muddling) just as crops thrive
on decay.
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".
Yes, I agree. Some people cannot cope with art ambiguity. They
prefer correspondence aesthetics even when it's never possible. My
claim is that everything/anything always evokes something else
(what it is not; what is absent).
(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.)
To you? Yes, to you. How can a thing be muddled if a thing has no
inherent meaning? Since you make the meaning you make the muddle, too.
WC
