I like Mando's rebuttal of my comment about his syntactical clarity by saying he finally understands "meaninglessness", which is one of my favorite concepts. Listers know how strongly I've advocated ambiguity, in the poetic metaphorical sense of "multiple meanings" as relevant to art expression. In other words, nothing kills art faster than "one-liner" content. In fact, I have long asserted that the more complex the content, the more associative meanings evoked, the more seeming contradictions they put into play, the better. Of course, this sort of ambiguity and meaninglessness can be very clear and powerful. My oft-mentioned favorite example is Goya's 13th of May, 1808 (painted 1814) as a companion to his 14th of may 1808. As in picture, so too with words. A clearly written sentence can convey enormous complexity and ambiguity. wc
----- Original Message ---- From: ARMANDO BAEZA <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Sat, August 14, 2010 6:52:07 PM Subject: Re: Validity of Cheerskep's Argument The word " fuzzy", as one dictionary reads, " informal used to refer to a sentimentally emotional response or something designed to evoke such a response" an a.e. perhaps? mando ________________________________ From: ARMANDO BAEZA <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Sat, August 14, 2010 1:39:25 PM Subject: Re: Validity of Cheerskep's Argument It is to me. Musically, like " Quiet City" by Copland. A little fuzzy goes along way. mando ________________________________ From: Saul Ostrow <[email protected]> To: "[email protected]" <[email protected]> Sent: Sat, August 14, 2010 9:46:22 AM Subject: Re: Validity of Cheerskep's Argument Art and language are best when they are imprecise On 8/14/10 10:55 AM, "William Conger" <[email protected]> wrote: Can anyone say what Mando means to convey in his sentence below? In fact it's not a sentence. Mando will reply that English is not his first language but that does not excuse him when he makes claims in English presumably supported by nothing but his opinion. wc ----- Original Message ---- From: ARMANDO BAEZA <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Fri, August 13, 2010 10:52:28 PM Subject: Re: Validity of Cheerskep's Argument I think it's the fuzziness of words or grunts meanings,that appear to be like art, that can only communicate what the recipient understands or thinks he understands. mando ________________________________ From: Boris Shoshensky <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Fri, August 13, 2010 8:09:45 PM Subject: Re: Validity of Cheerskep's Argument Whitehead said:" It takes a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious." Cheerskep has one. He undertakes the analysis, but misses the obvious. The obvious is that words can't exist outside of the human society and developed human society can't exist without words. To look at words as independent stuff is a mistake. Word is not created by individual, in which case Cheerskep's logic would work. Words created by the societies necessity to survive through communication. This is obvious purpose of man-word and means a lot when used with care. Boris Shoshensky ---------- Original Message ---------- From: [email protected] To: [email protected] Subject: Validity of Cheerskep's Argument Date: Fri, 13 Aug 2010 15:03:56 EDT Boris quotes me. . .: "My lengthy earlier posting tried to convey the dangers of suggesting that tools -- whether they be words or wrenches -- have goals, intentions, "meanings"." . . .and then he writes: "Is there any purpose in having words ? To say no is absurd, but to say yes is to admit of the words purpose for speech communication, as meaningful information carrier. Two of the ancestral words from which 'slur' is derived meant 'a thin mud' and 'to slide over'. I've cited what might be called a "slurring muddle". It's when a human "purpose", goal, aim or intent is imputed to the tool used to achieve that purpose. "The purpose of that tiny screwdriver is to tighten my eyeglasses." "The purpose of that peculiar-looking wrench is to tighten nuts in hard-to-reach places." There is very little confusion when the tools are material objects like that. Most reasonable people would concede at once that the screwdriver does not "have a purpose" in the sense of aims, desires, goals, intentions. They may say, "When I say 'the purpose' of the tool I mean that's its utility, its intended function, what it was invented for." But we have to see that, even though we use the same word for both, our notion of a human's "purpose" is different from our notion of a tool's "purpose". The philosophically harmful muddle comes when the "tool" is a WORD. One of the tools we regularly use to accomplish our intended end, our purpose, is "language". Our purpose in using words is to convey "what we have in mind" -- our idea, our notion. A bit more precisely: We want to cause to arise in another person's mind a notion that serviceably replicates the notion WE have in mind (assuming that are not intending to deceive). We often speak of that notion as "our meaning": "No - you didn't get my meaning!" This sense of "meaning" is different from what we have in mind when we speak of "THE meaning of" something. "No, no - you don't get the meaning of that poem." "What's the meaning of 'apelsin' in Swedish?" (Philosophically, there is ALWAYS a certain amount of confusion when we speak of 'THE meaning of' something.) For example, down the street from my childhood home there is still the stump of a large oak tree. When I was six, there was a hurricane, and, to the horror of my mother, I managed to slip out of the house in the middle of gale. I passed by that oak tree twice that day - as I walked away from my house, and as I returned home. The next day I heard the tree had blown over and it had struck and killed another child about my age (whom I did not know). I went to look at the scene. The fallen tree was already cleared away, but there was still an enormous blood stain on the sidewalk. It did not escape me that that blood could have been mine. To this day, I might say, "That oak stump has a special meaning for me." But I know that my feelings are not "THE meaning of" the stump. (I have no illusions that there exists a "THE meaning" of that stump. I believe there exist no such abstract entities as non-notional "meanings".) To grasp the scope of the slurring muddle with words, consider this. We say, "I mean", and we say, "The word means." We talk of "my meaning", and we talk of "the meaning of the word". We discuss "our purpose," and we discuss "the word's purpose" When we say, "I mean. . .", our audience usually understands that we are
