> Michael quotes me: > > I like the point -- though I'd want to change it to: "green can SUGGEST > the > red not present", in the sense of "call to mind". > And he then asks: > > How can an inanimate object--or in this case, an abstracted quality--do > anything active like suggest? Isn't it you who are doing something > suggestive? > Michael is right in his objection to what I wrote. I was going to append a disclaimer of sorts to my last, claiming that I knew I was using many terms in ways that I criticize elsewhere but I do it with the confidence that the "kitchen English" will serviceably convey my notion in a particular context without involving other errors. But I forgot to append it.
In any case, in writing the line Michael cites, I was NOT circumspectly choosing kitchen wording over my more guarded phrasings that employ the likes of 'occasion' instead of 'suggest' or 'evoke', etc. I simply screwed up through carelessness. I'm especially subject to a failing like that when my "eye" is on a later, larger point than a current phrasing that I'm rapping out almost on automatic. Which is exactly what my "larger point" was trying to criticize: philosophers using terms without an acceptably clear notion in mind as they (I) babble. Even my "call to mind" has the effect of erroneously attributing action to an inert piece of scription. The scriptions/utterances DO NOTHING. They do not "refer", or "denote", or "mean", or "pick out". They are the occasion for mental acts by the associating mind of anyone who happens to contemplate the scriptions. I'll send this posting alone, though it addresses only the first para of Michael's good posting. More to come. (At some stage someone is likely to look up 'scription' in a dictionary. Unless you go to the OED, you won't find it defined quite the way I use it, and the OED calls my usage "Archaic". I'll try to convey my notion of it like this: As 'utterance' is to a spoken word (or "sound"), 'scription' is to a written one. 'Inscription' comes close.)
