Cheerskep writes: "Derek -- How 'bout my last line that posting. You agree? Disagree? " I don't trust anyone who insists that a given word is "the only one" that can serviceably convey what he has in mind."
I didn't reply to this because I wasn't quite sure what - or rather who - you had in mind, though I had an uneasy feeling it might be me... But anyway, to reply: I wouldn't have any real problem with such a person. If they felt there was only one word that captured exactly what they meant, that's OK with me. In fact, it could help discussion. At least one would know what one needed to focus on. My complaints re 'aesthetic', 'beauty' etc (mainly those two) is precisely that they are commonly used with more than one meaning in the course of the one analysis, which leads to utter confusion. If someone uses, say, 'aesthetic' in one paragraph apparently meaning 'pertaining to the senses' (one of its several meanings), then three lines down it seems to mean 'relating to beauty', then in the next paragraph it seems to mean maybe both, and then in the next it seems to mean 'pertaining to art' (another common meaning) and so on, what kind of analytical success can we expect from such a writer? He/she is ignoring the elementary rule that one must be clear in one's use of words, especially key terms. This is a bit of caricature of course but less perhaps than you think. I have read many many aesthetic texts - often from so called 'analytic' aestheticians (!!) - in which the word aesthetic, though used as a key term, seems to float in a totally arbitrary way between a range of meanings as in the above. To me that is not philosophy at all - analytic or otherwise. It is just annoying waffle. Derek Allan http://www.home.netspeed.com.au/derek.allan/default.htm
