[MD] Doug Renselle & Language

[Matt Kundert]

I was going to teach Freshmen composition students about a 
"uniform critical vocabulary."  Then I thought again, after surmising 
that it might be more sophisticated than can usefully be approached.

So the idea behind "MoQish" isn't bad, just probably limited in utility.  
Just think of all the sophisticated, tightly-bound philosophical systems 
with their very specific vocabularies--Whitehead's a good example.  
Nobody does philosophy with them, except for rare acolytes that 
nobody reads.  Whitehead's metaphysical system is wonderful, and 
quite advanced in terms of the spirit of 20th Century philosophy, but 
nobody wants to learn a sophisticated language that no one else 
understands.

What works much better, I think, are systems that can be potted in a 
few very simple concepts and slogans.  These are more easily 
disseminated as tools because of they can be picked up without 
worrying about everything else going on.  Robert Brandom's 
philosophy of language, for instance: once you learn the basics 
behinds implicit/explicit, committment/entitlement/incompatability and 
a few others, everything just locks into place, but you don't need to 
wield his 700+ page book, you just need those easy ideas.

And Pirsig's system already has the simple concepts and slogans in 
place.  So I've never thought much of Doug's neologisms.  New 
words are maybe even worse than old ones used in specific, odd 
ways.  In terms of dissemination, of course.

Matt

> Date: Wed, 18 Aug 2010 13:00:21 +0100
> From: ian.glendinning at gmail.com
> To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
> Subject: [MD] Doug Renselle & Language
> 
> I often get caught making smart-ass comments that much of our
> "problem" expecting to reach definitive conclusions on any aspect of
> MoQ .... is basically linguistic. Some of you don't find this helpful
> ;-)
> 
> In my real day-job life, I spend a lot of time on (effectively)
> linguistics .... standardizing terminologies shared between businesses
> .... and often find myself preaching to people not to expect to find
> one language to suit (literally) all situations unambiguously. Those
> with high expectations don't always find that helpful either. Hey ho.
> 
> One thought that often springs to mind, is Doug Renselle's
> idiosyncratic quest to develop and promote MoQ ... where he has his
> own invented language, to distinguish specific MoQish uses of terms
> from everyday use. I hear myself saying "it'll never work Doug" ...
> and invoke Wittgenstein's "private language" argument, but .... an
> open question ...
> 
> Does anyone see value in working towards a MOQish language ?
> 
> Ian
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