Owen -
Its starting to get lonely here!
It is kind of a "dogpile" here... with Doug now perched on top! <grin>
I am *sympathetic* with your desire to have the (mostly formal) language
you are most familiar/comfortable with to apply more *directly* to one
you may merely have romantic ideas about. But romance does not an
isomorphism make?
Maybe we can reframe the discussion in a way that lets you out from
under the crush... Is it possible that you are asking something more like?
/Why isn't the language of philosophical logic (ala Bertrand
Russell)/ sufficient for all philosophical discourse? And if it
is, can it not therefore be mapped completely (and obviously) into a
specification suitable for automated processing by a computer
program? And who wouldn't want that kind of automated verifiability?
Nick cornered you (with his breathy Marilyn Monroe voice and Groucho
eyebrows) in the cocktail conversation. I *think* his point was at
least partly that even *IF* you could reduce all philosophical discourse
to being equivalent to computer science, it wouldn't help make the
conversation accessible to anyone without significant
experience/training/exposure to the specialized language involved?
Maybe the rest of us are just jealous if we imagine that you could
"glibly" get away with such cocktail conversations (and by get away
with, I mean successfully make the point to someone with limited
domain-specific knowledge, not just get them to pretend to understand as
they sidle off toward the exit or the group playing Twister in the
corner)? But that image (embellished by me of course) was Nick's, not
yours so it isn't really fair to beat you with that one.
In a nod to Doug (perched smugly on top of the pile), I have to
acknowledge the precision of his choice of the term "abstruse"... I had
to look it up (not because I didn't have a working knowledge, but
because I wanted to see if he and I likely use it the same way):
ab·struse
/ab?stro?os/
Adjective
Difficult to understand; obscure.
Synonyms
obscure - recondite - deep - profound
I have to admit to having always treated it as a portmanteau word formed
roughly from "abstract" and "obtuse". Not *quite* as generous as the
definition given above: "Annoyingly Insensitive" compounded with
"dissociated from any specific instance". Wait... maybe that *is* his
use?
ob·tuse
/?b?t(y)o?os/
Adjective
1. Annoyingly insensitive or slow to understand.
2. Difficult to understand.
Synonyms
dull - blunt - dense - slow-witted
^1 ab·stract
/adjective/ \ab-?strakt, ?ab-?\
1
/a/ *:* disassociated
<http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/disassociate> from any
specific instance <an /abstract/ entity>
/b/ *:* difficult to understand *:* abstruse
<http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/abstruse> </abstract/ problems>
/c/ *:* insufficiently factual *:* formal
<http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/formal> <possessed only an
/abstract/ right>
2
*:* expressing a quality apart from an object <the word /poem/ is
concrete, /poetry/ is /abstract/>
3
/a/ *:* dealing with a subject in its abstract aspects *:* theoretical
<http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/theoretical> </abstract/
science>
/b/ *:* impersonal
<http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/impersonal>, detached
<http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/detached> <the /abstract/
compassion of a surgeon --- /Time/>
4
*:* having only intrinsic
<http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/intrinsic> form with little
or no attempt at pictorial representation or narrative content
</abstract/ painting>
--- *ab·stract·ly* /adverb/
--- *ab·stract·ness* /noun/
- Steve
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