I freely admit to playing fast and loose with accepted / dictionary definitions of terms in my attempts at dialogue - to the point of being positively "anti" definitions, when these are used as the basis for argument - and often draw strong criticism for my troubles.
Some weeks ago I found these words from Alan Rayner on this very subject. [QUOTE] In my experience, to call for definitions to be relaxed in a culture that is addicted to definition is to come into close encounter with stony ground, if not something like the fury of a toddler threatened with separation from its favourite toy or security blanket ! … principal among objectivity's objections to inclusionality is that the razed down simplicity that comes from defining things will 'get lost'. Personally, I rather wish that it would ! But, seriously, this objection illustrates the addictive, all or none quality of false dichotomy: either we have total definition or no definition. Definition is something we must have if we are not to get totally lost in a sea of troubles. We exclude between two stools the dynamic 'middle ground' synthesis of 'neither entirely one nor the other' … [UNQUOTE] This "addiction" to definition is part of the "logical positivist objective" meme we seemt o suffer from in expectations of argumentation and rationale. Find more from Alan Rayner here. http://people.bath.ac.uk/bssadmr/inclusionality/ Ian 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/
