On Apr 2, 2010, at 7:56 PM, William Conger wrote: > Michael is wrong to say my example of a tube of red paint validates his claim that words pre-limit the meanings ascribed to them.
Another response, with a different thrust. Of course words "pre-limit" the meanings ascribed to them. Otherwise they couldn't successfully convey meaning at all. It is the property of words and other artifacts of communication that they "begin" with a fixed or primary "meaning," which allows the "union" part of communicate to happen. But the mature user of language certainly understands that words convey not only their primary meaning but also secondary meanings and further conjure up associated notions. That's word-making, to begin with, and also what poetry and other forms of speech exemplify. > A tube of red paint is not the same as the word red. The pigment in the tube has certain properties that limit its use, to produce redness being one. There are limits to what can be done with material things but not with immaterial notions. A word is not limited by inherent properties. It is immaterial in the sense that a musical note is immaterial. That's why we can use a word for any purposes we choose. If we don't use the word red to convey redness but for some other purpose, to evoke non-redness, for example, we are still making good use of the word. If we stray further from the usual notions of red to convey redness, then I suppose we are using the word poetically, or absurdly. If we use it poetically we are on safe ground since the metaphorical uses of words are unlimited. If we use it absurdly, we are either > ignorant, mistaken, or intentionally evoking absurdist content (as in Dada readings, for instance). I'd like to point out that this assertion of yours serves to buttress my other point about the fact that "art" artifacts are "fictions," that they are not subject to the norms of documentary verification. I think that fundamentally all art offers proposals about various conditions in the world that can be experienced in a provisional way without the viewer being committed to the proposal. It's Aristotle's vicarious experience. It's what has to be suspended in order to enter into the narrative of the play or movie. It's Picasso's lie of two eyes on one side of the nose that shows us the truth of ... seeing. No other realm of artifact-making is "truth-suspended" as is "art." Buildings have to stay erect, furniture has to support weight, laboratory reports have to describe the experiment in a way that others can use to replicate the experiment, X-ray or MRI scans must show the anatomical parts with reliability, etc. None of these is art, yet all of them use the same formal elements as does works of art. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Michael Brady
