ONT Re: Differential Logic
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Gary Richmond wrote:
>
> Jon,
>
> There appears to be a contradiction in your note
> on "Obstacles to Applying the Pragmatic Maxim."
> On the one hand you write that the purpose of
> the maxim
>
> > ... would be the clarification of concepts ... to the point
> > where their inherent senses ... would be rendered manifest
> > 'to all and sundry interpreters'.
>
> but then you write that the maxim:
>
> > promises no ... finality of unindexed sense,
> > but 'ties what you conceive to you'.
>
> (emphasis added in both quotations) Comment?
yes, that is an interesting phenomenon, is it not?
a person who says the same thing over and over
in enough different ways to enough different
interpreters is almost bound and determined
to commit an error of approximation in time
or an excess of rhetorical emphatitude.
so let this be a lesson to me, and to
us "all" i might add, but i won't,
as that might be the "all" that
breaks the camel's humph.
and that is the very reason why one of our main blandishments with
regard to "charity of interpretation" (coi) has long been to go for
the big topic, the main intent, the mean thrust of meaning, and not
for the extremes of approximal local formulation. perhaps you see
another potential singularity there, but i think it's inessential.
now, i know the forms of casuistry and sophistry that are available to me
for wriggling my way out of this particular fix of disbelief, but let's
just skip all that, and see if we can work out together what i should
have said, were i to say it effably and eptly enough.
| the clarification of concepts ... to the point where
| their inherent senses ... would be rendered manifest
| 'to all and sundry interpreters'.
versus
| promises no finality of unindexed sense,
| but 'ties what you conceive to you'.
well, a phrase like "all and sundry" is a clear sign
of a rhetorical bluff ahead, and there is, of course,
a fairly standard, shakey but all the same serviceable
rope bridge, that i might toss across the yawning chasm
of the gaffe, as if to say that all i really mean to say
here is "to whom it may concern", in effect, yet another
reference to the "community of interpretation" (coi).
after all, who else could it mean? but maybe that
would sound like a sophism. i guess that a harder
question that lies behind the question would be:
what does it take to qualify as an interpreter?
i think you will recognize the form of that.
as to the seaming conflix between the "the" and the "thee",
between the "all and sundry" and the indited second person,
i have to ask: does the one tie really exclude the other?
it appears to me that people who think that are perhaps
biased by some hidden dyadic axiom, that forbids the
fullest multiplicity and the richest connectivity
of collective address. but i agree that there
is something about the relationship between
the local and the global that needs to be
worked out and made more explicit here.
in time ... perhaps ... bit by bit ...
jon
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