dmb said:
...I'm talking about concepts and definitions, not reality. ..., I do NOT mean
to say that proper definitions are reality. ...This is not a claim about
ultimate realties. It's about the english language and the nature of reasonable
philosophical discussions. Who thinks the riddle of the universe can be found
in a dictionary? Nobody, that's who. But you know what CAN be found in the
dictionaries? Definitions. Words. Lots and lots of words. Lots and lots of
concepts. And they all relate to each other, mean what they mean in relation to
each other.
John replied:
Ok fine. Nothing surprising in any of this - all obvious. I've challenged
you to go a bit deeper and consider where dictionaries come from, but that,
like this, is probably all just a waste of time because you are not a searcher,
dave. You're an expounder.
dmb says:
I don't consider that a serious challenge to anything I've said because
dictionaries were invented within historical time and their origins are more or
less traceable. I mean, your question is one for an historian not a
philosopher. The origins of the spoken language go back much further than
recorded history, of course. The Oxford English Dictionary is a very long way
from the gestures and grunts of our primate ancestors and nobody knows how many
steps it took but the idea that language evolved is hardly controversial.
In any case, the dictionary is just a record of what words mean when people use
them. A dictionary does not create definitions so much as it records them. Good
ones will include information about the first known use of each word, pinning
down it's written origins to some extent. According to my Webster's dictionary,
the word "dictionary" is medieval Latin for "manual of words" and it was first
used in 1526.
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