In a message dated 8/16/12 5:41:46 PM, [email protected] writes:
> > Here's a nice rule to settle certain disputes. "I stipulate if it's in > > Webster's Third it's a word." > > What about "foopgoom"? > > I know you're aware that the point of my last was to lampoon those who think by "stipulating" they can affect the ontic status of anything (except, perhaps, the ontic status of the stipulation, the utterance). You may see ink on paper, but you've never seen a "word" in your life. Or heard one. "Foopgoom!" Did you just hear a word? How would you tell? Run to your little dictionary? The latest ones have lots of "new words". But they're only sounds they've at last decided to call "words". What was their "is-ness" before? You know about "is-ness" -- that fictitious "essence" thing that some people believe makes an object not just what you call it, but what it "really IS". Problem: "is-nesses" -- including "wordness" -- are mental inventions, purely notional, like unicorns. And "souls". Did you ever wonder how some lucky sounds get to become "words", while other sounds have to remain "sounds-second-class" until a bell rings? I'll tell you. One summer in Switzerland, I found a thing in my room that I called a 'foopgoom'. I thought it was so apt a label, I put my case to Plato and his word-and-thing certification-committee way up there. In their meeting last Thursday, they officially declared "foopgoom" to be a real word! And they made it official by ringing a big bell they call the verbell! That Swiss object now really IS a foopgoom! If your response is to say that that's a bad joke, my reply will be: "ISN'T it!"
