Is fuzziness a certainty in art?
mando
On Nov 1, 2008, at 9:06 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
When I got to Harvard grad school in philosophy, there was a happy
event for
me in the first week. The course was Epistemology, and it was being
taught by
Roderick Firth, internationally recognized at the time as a leading
scholar in
the subject.
Firth wrote four definitions of "certain" on the board, and before
he'd put
the chalk down I was on my feet to protest defects in the four. To
my delighted
surprise I discovered I was one of about seven grad students
standing up and
yammering at Firth. As an undergraduate I was usually the only
blabber-mouth
in class. I said to myself about Harvard, "This must be the place!"
The point of the anecdote here: The word 'certainty' is now being
used on the
forum by folks who have not described their notion when they use
the word.
Try describing it, gang. You won't find it easy.
The reasons for describing what you have in mind are, first, that,
without
making your notion serviceably clear, you may be talking past each
other -- i.e.
each has a different idea of what's at issue. Second, you may
discover your
unexamined notion is fatally fuzzy.
Unfortunately, it can't be addressed adequately without some technical
considerations -- e.g. the alleged certainty of tautologies, and
the possible
differences between "analytic" and "synthetic" statements.
Still, when you use the word, you tend to think you have a
serviceably clear
notion in mind, so take why not a shot at it?
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