[MD] Heads or tails?

[ian glendinning]

Hey David,

I'm not knocking definitions, they have pragmatc value for sure, as
well as their deadly reifying dangers. "Definition is death" is a
slogan, not my thesis.

I was challenging Platt's assertion, and I quote
"without [defintion] we couldn't understand one another at all"

Which is fortunately entirely untrue.
I say fortunately, because if it were true, we'd have no bootstraps.
The good news is we can communicate with all sorts of allusions and
metaphors, physical, visual and aural, learning meaning through
interaction and shared exprience, long before we find useful agreed
lingusitic conventions and definitions. Agreed ?

Ian

On 4/30/07, David M <davidint at blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:
> Hi Ian
>
> I see concepts and definitions as always having a double
> action. They help certain differences to step forward and be
> seen better and more easilybut therefore pushing others
> back and so obscuring them. Hence the benefits of
> being able to see experience in different ways like SOM and
> MOQ.
>
> David M
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "ian glendinning" <psybertron at gmail.com>
> To: <moq_discuss at moqtalk.org>
> Sent: Monday, April 30, 2007 3:03 PM
> Subject: Re: [MD] Heads or tails?
>
>
> > Platt said
> >
> >> ... but without [definition]
> >> we couldn't understand one another at all.
> >
> > That is patently untrue. We value and understand many things by shared
> > aesthetic experience. Definition is something done with hindsight -
> > for good pragmatic simplification reasons, in context etc ... but it
> > is not at all "necessary" for understanding.
> >
> > It is "always" a compromise, a dumbing down, a devaluing, and is far
> > from necessary.
> >
> > 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/
> >
>
> 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/
>