Hi Arlo, Dictionary definition - just two word short-hand for your 10 line paragraph ... but yes OK.
So ... that evolution involves people using the language beyond existing understood explicit meanings - implying, glimpsing, evoking alternative possibilities. Obviously anyone (me included) "starts" from existing understood definitions - but they're enabling tools as you said - we don't "end" with that, only a pedant involved in some tight logical construction is constrained by those. Ian On Thu, Feb 14, 2013 at 2:57 PM, ARLO JAMES BENSINGER JR <[email protected]> wrote: > [Ian] > Constraining - not necessarily - not constraining "within" any boundaries. A > pedant can choose to work within dictionary definitions of the words used and > the formal syntax of the sentences composed - but any good writer / > communicator - like Pirsig does NOT do this. > > [Arlo] > Really? How did you understand a single word in his books? Seems to me that > he "relied" a great deal on shared definitions and syntax (can you point out > ONE sentence in his books that did not follow a culturally-shared syntax?). > "Dictionary definitions", by the way, is a ridiculous straw man (and I'm a > little surprised you use this). Of course the "meanings" of individual > "words" (and the shared use syntax) evolve over time, who has ever suggested > otherwise? The point is not that such-and-such a word is forever etched in > iron, but that we can never "think" outside "language", any more than we can > "breathe" in a "vacuum" (aka, "our intellectual description of nature is > ALWAYS culturally defined" [emphasis added]). (By the way, if you respond to > this by implying I deny a pre-intellectual experience or pre-language > awareness, I will reach through the nether and slap you. ;-)) > > Sidenote: for those "struggling" with the idea that "language" is a prison to > be escaped from, I suggest reading the works of Helen Keller. As she > describes it, having-no-language was the prison, and acquiring language is > when she was "born". > Moq_Discuss mailing list > Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. > http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org > Archives: > http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ > http://moq.org/md/archives.html Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org/md/archives.html
