From: Robert Coyote (coyyote@hotmail.com)
Date: Mon Oct 15 2001 - 13:11:11 MDT
Mere Culpa (My Bad)
May someone without an apparent "educated brain in their head" still have
tacit permission to participate in this list, or would a snobbish flogging
be in order?
Please advise, what is the (a) correct casual expression to illustrate the
idea of using words of art and context diversion to obfuscate the validity
of a statement?
Robert Coyote
Grand conduit of extropy to the trailer parks and bowling alleys of A
'Merika
----- Original Message -----
From: "Lee Daniel Crocker" <lee@piclab.com>
To: <extropians@extropy.org>
Sent: Monday, October 15, 2001 9:27 AM
Subject: Re: Just semantics (was: Re: Aging isn't a disease)
> > >but its all semantics
> >
> > This is one of those cant phrases that genuinely infuriate me, and
should
> > upset anyone with an educated brain in their head.
> >
> > *Semantics* is the discipline centrally concerned with *the meaning of
> > statements*, with *how communication works effectively to convey or mask
> > meanings*.
> >
> > So `Pah, it's just semantics,' with its implied rider `Please ditch
*that*
> > pettifogging triviality', is equivalent to saying, `That's just trying
to
> > agree on what we're talking about, and the ways we'll do it--let's
ignore
> > such dismal irrelevancies and instead just babble about whatever comes
into
> > our heads.'
>
> Most of the time I see the phrase used it's entirely appropriate--it
> points out that someone is wasting a lot of time and energy on definitions
> rather than arguments of substance, the way this list periodically gets
> all worked up about the transporter-copy issue, where there isn't a single
> interesting question of fact invovled. Sure, one must have some
> definitions to begin an argument of substance, but many people continue
> to _argue_ the definitions as if they were facts of substance
> themselves. Knowing the difference should be a basic skill of
> rational thought learned in elementary school, but people still continue
> to debate definitions as if they were facts, and get truly worked up
> about such nonsense. If they are dismissed curty, it's because they
> deserve to be.
>
> --
> Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
> "All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past,
> are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified
> for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC
>
>
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