[Arlo] Pardon me if I'm not overly worried about "dictionary definitions". Just because the status quo approach to "value" over the years has been to make it a human subjective experience gives me no desire to keep using the word in that way when given a metaphysics that posits "value" (Quality) as the fundamental source, prior to subjects and objects. Besides, we're not talking "Latin" here, our language should be flexible and adaptive, not rigid and restrictive.
[Case] When I was a lad riding around in the back seat of the family chariot listening to the grown-ups chatting in the front seat sometimes their tone or the fact that they started spelling things out suggested that there was something they knew but didn't want me to know. The suspicion grew that perhaps I only thought I knew what they were saying when they spoke normally. What if the words they were using meant one thing to children and something entirely different or even opposite to adults. Having since become the parent of small children I know today that my suspicions were correct. Adults do speak of things that children do not and often can not understand. Others throughout history have overtly done the same sort of thing. The Pythagoreans, the Gnostics and the mystery cults explicitly talked in code or conducted secret rituals. The first century Jewish philosopher Maimonides claimed that there was a common understanding of the Torah and a deeper meaning available only to the wise. Leo Strauss claims the Greeks were all speaking in a secret code that can only be translated by neoconservatives. We can bend and twist words to mean whatever we want. I can still recite the Apostles Creed if I sit down and think hard about it for a few minute before beginning. But what is gained through this effort beyond sheer obfuscation? Is there a shortage of adequate words? Must we redefine and coin phrases to make our statements intentionally less clear? This looks to me like a path that leads to Essentialism... 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.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
