Do words have a fixed meaning?

[skanwmatos]

you misunderstood the irony, sarcasm and humor of my post and the fact that I was actually agreeing with you

So, Hank, when you said, "I agree with Marcia," you were not telling the truth? You actually meant "I agree with you" as you indicated in your second post?

And when you said "it was a trick question" you really meant "it was NOT a trick question?"

And when you made the personal attack "IMO most people feared your skulduggery and retaliations for their benighted answers" you really meant most people did NOT fear skulduggery and retaliation?

And when you say "I hope your sense of humor is as good your splendid wit and wordscraftmanship" do you really mean that or do you really mean to imply that my sense of humor is inadequate or that my wit and ability to craft words into sentences is inadequate?

I remember talking to my son several years ago and making a facetious remark about not having to do his chores because he didn't want to. He said, "thanks Dad!" and started to leave the room. I told him I was being facetious. He replied "If you would say what you really mean I might be able to understand you better." The wisdom of a 7 year old taught me quite a lot that day.

Are we learning anything?

 

[HankD]

I can see by all your questions Skan that you indeed have missed the point and misunderstood my intent.

Nevertheless I will try to explain.

So, Hank, when you said, "I agree with Marcia," you were not telling the truth? You actually meant "I agree with you" as you indicated in your second post?

I agreed with her that it was a trick question.

And when you made the personal attack "IMO most people feared your skulduggery and retaliations for their benighted answers"

You are too rough on people Skan and in some of your posts you seem to delight in putting people down and heaping ad hominems upon us.

My agreement with you is concerning the overall venue of the post.
How words and their dynamics are often so impotent to convey thoughts, concepts.

And when you say "I hope your sense of humor is as good your splendid wit and wordscraftmanship" do you really mean that or do you really mean to imply that my sense of humor is inadequate or that my wit and ability to craft words into sentences is inadequate?

Another misunderstanding on your part.
The sense of the statement had an element of hope that your sense of humor would soften the harshness of my other judgmental words.

I remember talking to my son several years ago and making a facetious remark about not having to do his chores because he didn't want to. He said, "thanks Dad!" and started to leave the room. I told him I was being facetious. He replied "If you would say what you really mean I might be able to understand you better." The wisdom of a 7 year old taught me quite a lot that day.

Good avice out of the mouth of a babe.
Over the passage of time a person learns the dynamics of communication, and that the actual words are only a small part of the story.

And, because you could not answer the question correctly,

Correctly according to your criteria Skan. I did not answer although I had an answer but didn't give it for a reason I don't want to convey:

"God is love". Right or wrong that is my answer.

HankD

 

[skanwmatos]

Originally posted by HankD:
I agreed with her that it was a trick question.

Even though it wasn't?

You are too rough on people Skan and in some of your posts you seem to delight in putting people down and heaping ad hominems upon us.

And this is pertinent to your dissimulation how?

 

[Marcia]

Originally posted by skanwmatos:
No, it wasn't a trick question. It was paraphrased from the syllabus published by the Institute of General Semantics, and was used to illustrate the fact that our presuppositions affect our perceptions and responses.

For Marcia to say the hard science of General Semantics is "self-refuting" is a prime example of a serious failure to understand.

One of the authors mentioned, Alfred Korzybski, is considered the Einstein of communication theory.

S.I. Hayakawa was President of San Francisco State College in the '60s, then U.S. Senator from California in the '70s. He authored many books and articles dealing with language and semantics, including "Language In Thought and Action." Dr. Hayakawa was editor of their journal, "A Review of General Semantics."

Robert A. Heinlein was a graduate of the United States Naval Academy and a prolific writer.

Buckminster Fuller was a fellow of the Institute and taught there in the 1950s.

These men represent some of the very best minds the world has ever produced and all were associated with the Institute.

Just because you can't understand the information does not mean the information is incorrect. And, because you could not answer the question correctly, you must believe it was a trick question. Your emotions won't allow you to be honest with yourself and say, "Wow! That's right! My assumptions led me astray!" Instead you accuse me of trickery and skulduggery. That is a classic example of the thalamic (emotional) response I have been talking about all along.

Thank you for your participation. It was very revealing.

I didn't answer the question incorrectly because I didn't answer it.

I read Hayakawa in college, btw.

I read Heinlein, too. He was (is?) a sci-fi writer. I doubt anyone would ascribe to him any authority on semantics or language.

Fuller was an architect and futurist, not a language expert. Buckminster Fuller's views influenced a lot of New Age thinking. His books are found and sold on some New Age sites. Here is a sample of how he defined "universe:"

``Universe is the aggregate of all humanity's consciously apprehended and communicated nonsimultaneous and only partially overlapping experiences.

`` `Aggregate' means sum-totally but nonunitarily conceptual as of any one moment. `Consciousness' means an awareness of the otherness.
From
http://www.cjfearnley.com/fuller-faq-2.html#ss2.2

More quotes from Buck:
Everything you've learned in school as "obvious" becomes less and less obvious as you begin to study the universe. For example, there are no solids in the universe. There's not even a suggestion of a solid. There are no absolute continuums. There are no surfaces. There are no straight lines.
R. Buckminster Fuller

God is a verb.
R. Buckminster Fuller

From
http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/R._Buckminster_Fuller/

Interestingly enough, there is a book called God is A Verb by David A. Cooper - it's about the Kabbalah (favorable toward).

More on Fuller (see, I told you that you were saying to me was not new! I knew about Fuller when I was a New Ager.):

The wide variety of people and interests in the New Age movement shows how it offers something for everyone. For example, well-known spokespersons for the New Age include futurists Alvin Toffler, Barbara Marx Hubbard, and Hazel Henderson, the late economist E. F. Schumacher, historian William Irwin Thompson, biologist Jonas Salk, psychologist Jean Houston, consciousness researcher Ken Wilber, physicist Fritjof Capra, the late anthropologist Margaret Mead, the late futurist Buckminster Fuller, retired U.N. Assistant Secretary General Robert Muller, death-and-dying researcher Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, actress Shirley MacLaine.
From
http://www.gospelcom.net/rbc/ds/q1103/q1103.html

Fuller's name comes up on many New Age sites like this one:

You will also find several online schools of Sacred Geometry including the Buckminster Fuller Institute and the San Grall School of Sacred Geometry.
http://innergardenart.com/Apg8R.html

Sacred Geometry is an occult art.

I doubt that many Christian hermeneutics profs would agree with Fuller, however brilliant he was.

As for Korzybski, he had influence on the famed Gestalt therapy:

Perhaps the most overlooked theoretical influence on Frederick Perls and Paul Goodman, who originally articulated Gestalt therapy theory, was Alfred Korzybski, the primary thinker behind the general semantics movement. Gestalt therapy's "principle of the now" and it's focus on experience and the precision of language can be directly traced to these "principles of general semantics:"

1. A map is not the territory.
2. A map does not represent all of a territory.
3. A map is self-reflexive in the sense that an 'ideal' map would include a map of the map, etc., indefinitely.

Applied to daily life and language:

1. A word is not what it represents.
2. A word does not represent all of the 'facts', etc.
3. Language is self-reflexive in the sense that in language we can speak about language.

Erving Polster, in "A Contemporary Psychotherapy" (Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice, 1966), identifies the general semantics movement as one of the distinct movements that made the here-and-now experience important in psychotherapy before it was given crucial emphasis by the existentialists.
From
http://www.gestalt.org/alfred.htm

I don't think most would agree that Fuller, Korzybski, Heinlein and Hayakawa, however brilliant they may have been, are necessarily right in their views on language nor are they necessarily the right authorities on language. They were men with certain worldviews which influence their views of language.

You think I don't understand, but I do. It is very common with atheists and New Agers, in an attempted attack on the Bible, to attack language and words. If words are merely imbued with whatever meaning we subjectively put into them, then they cannot convey truth, then how can the Bible be God's word or convey truth? This is a very common argument and New Agers will quote language and semantics experts to make it.

What is the implication of the statement that we bring a bias to our understanding of words? The implication is that we cannot truly communicate or that words are not the best way to communicate. This has become an argument used against God's word used by man skeptics and New Agers.

 

[skanwmatos]

Marcia, are you really Gail Riplinger?

 

[Dr. Bob]

I've heard with her Home Ec degree, at least Gail can bake cakes.

 

[skanwmatos]

I heard her cakes were terrible. All she can manage is cookies.

 

[Craigbythesea]

Words are coined everyday to express the concepts of the individuals doing the coining. Very often the individual doing the coining is doing so because he/she does not have a sufficient knowledge of his/her language to know the word or words that have already been coined and accepted by the more literate part of society to express that concept. Sometime, however, the individual doing the coining is actually expressing a concept for which there hitherto has been no word. This is especially the case in highly technological fields of endeavor.

Words coined by knowledgeable or well known people in works that are published or words that are broadcasted are often “picked up” by others and thereby enter into the language. Invariably, however, some individuals will read or hear these words and misunderstand the original meaning, and if this misinformation is published or broadcasted, an additional meaning will become attached to these words. Over a period of hundreds of years, the original meanings often drop out of use and the newer meanings become the only meanings currently attached to the words. And sometimes these newer meanings are very different than the original meanings, and words come to mean something entirely different in current usage than they did several centuries ago.

The publishers of Merriam-Webster Dictionaries became very sensitive to this in the 1950’s and accepted the fact there are no accurate or inaccurate meanings of any words, but only different levels a acceptability, and that these levels of acceptability are in a constant state of flux within several sub-sets of users of the English Language. And they also accepted that this applies to the spelling of words. Therefore, in their monumental Third New International Dictionary, they no longer made a distinction between correct and incorrect usages and spellings, but instead listed the usages and spellings that have been accepted for a period of time by one or more sub-sets of users of the English Language.

Prior to the publications of the Third New International Dictionary, millions of persons looked to the Merriam-Webster editorial staff as the authority of the English language and its usages and spelling, but with the publication of that dictionary, the Merriam-Webster editorial staff relinquished that authority very much to the dismay of many publishers, especially publishers of scientific works. Many of the editors of these works published reviews of the Third New International Dictionary, and about 20 of those reviews were collected and published in a book entitled, Dictionaries and That Dictionary.

 

[HankD]

Even though it wasn't?

That's your opinion Skan.

And this is pertinent to your dissimulation how?

That's your misunderstanding Skan.

I've said my piece and willing to drop this line of reasoning.

Unless of course you continue to stimulate my thalamus.

HankD

 

[skanwmatos]

Originally posted by HankD:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr /> Even though it wasn't?

That's your opinion Skan.</font>[/QUOTE]LOL! No, I am the one who formulated the question. I am the one who knows it was not a trick question, but one designed to illustrate the point I have been making (and you have been missing) all along. It is not my "opinion" it is a FACT. I know what I was thinking when I posted the question. For you to say "that's just your opinion" is just too silly to deal with!

I've said my piece and willing to drop this line of reasoning.

I don't blame you. Had I been caught publicly lying I would want to move on too!

 

[HankD]

What is the implication of the statement that we bring a bias to our understanding of words? The implication is that we cannot truly communicate or that words are not the best way to communicate. This has become an argument used against God's word used by man skeptics and New Agers.

Cults and heretical systems use this technique as well, redefining the Scripture by improper allegorization of which they alone have the key.

HankD

 

[Marcia]

Originally posted by skanwmatos:
Marcia, are you really Gail Riplinger?

Yes, that's me. Disguised as a former New Ager and professional astrolger with a ministry to New Agers, and as someone who never reads the one copy of the KJV she owns.

Pretty good disguise, isn't it?

Nice try on an ad hominem but it isn't working. I stand by what I posted -- those guys are not necessarily the last word on words, not by a long shot.

 

[Paul of Eugene]

In the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, the Babel fish allows people to understand each other. It is said that the babel fish is the cause of innumerable wars and atrocities between civilizations. Because they understand each other.

 

[skanwmatos]

Originally posted by Marcia:
Nice try on an ad hominem but it isn't working.

It wasn't ad hominem. You say that General Semantics is "new age." Architecture is "new age." Naval Engineering is "new age." Psychotherapy is "new age." That sounds more like Riplinger than Riplinger does!

 

[rsr]

Paul said:

It is said that the babel fish is the cause of innumerable wars and atrocities between civilizations. Because they understand each other.

 

[rsr]

Words have common meaning only to the extent that we agree that they do. Whether is good or bad is beside the point.

Now, I am at heart a prescriptive grammarian; I reject (what I think is) poor grammar. However, as much as I am a stickler, I realize that other people use syntax in ways that make sense to them and make no sense to me. I can maintain that they are wrong all day long, but it will not make a whit of difference to them.

As I said earlier, if we're talking about a dog, it makes perfect sense for me to correct someone who thinks a cat is a dog. But as to words about abstract things, we must define the terms before we can proceed further. This is done in many professions, by common usage and consent. Given the fractured nature of theology today, it is not possible ... except among those who are willing to agree what each term means.

 

[skanwmatos]

Does the fact that some people insist on a heterodox meaning for a theological universally change the meaning of that term?

As I said in my earlier post, "If you call his tail a leg, how many legs does a dog have?" Still 4! Just because some people insist on calling the tail a leg doesn't make it a leg! And just because some people insist on mis-defining a word the actual meaning of that word does not change, does it?

 

[rsr]

Does the fact that some people insist on a heterodox meaning for a theological universally change the meaning of that term?

To them, it does. I thought that was the point of this thread. Baptists are a breeding ground for heteredoxy, when it comes to that. Baptists were ripe for Campbellism, Adventism and, in a roundabout way, for Mormonism.

To me, "orthodoxy" is the Nicene Creed and the formulation of Chalcedon.

There is no "actual" meaning of a word.

I am confused. As Humpty Dumpty said,

"'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone,' it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less.'"

 

[HankD]

"'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone,' it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less.'"

rsr, is this from Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland?

HankD

 

[rsr]

Almost, Hank. Through the Looking Glass.

'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.'

'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so many different things.'

'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master — that's all.'

Alice was too much puzzled to say anything, so after a minute Humpty Dumpty began again. 'They've a temper, some of them — particularly verbs, they're the proudest — adjectives you can do anything with, but not verbs — however, I can manage the whole lot of them! Impenetrability! That's what I say!'

'Would you tell me, please,' said Alice 'what that means?'

'Now you talk like a reasonable child,' said Humpty Dumpty, looking very much pleased. 'I meant by "impenetrability" that we've had enough of that subject, and it would be just as well if you'd mention what you mean to do next, as I suppose you don't mean to stop here all the rest of your life.'

'That's a great deal to make one word mean,' Alice said in a thoughtful tone.

'When I make a word do a lot of work like that,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'I always pay it extra.'

'Oh!' said Alice. She was too much puzzled to make any other remark.