LANGUAGE
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From: Bruce S.
Date: Friday, September 21, 2007, 10:14 AM
Subject: Language
Reply to: 261066
ID: 258538

Thanks for this link, James Davis -- to Alice Bailey on Wikipedia...

I did take a few minutes to bump around your "Bookreader" web site, and found a lot of interesting thoughts there...

On the meaning of words -- "dead words" -- you say

Words don't have fixed ordained meanings. Dictionaries are a fluent history of collective verbal habits. Words mean what we, the community of word users, agree they mean. They are fluid like the consciousness that gives them birth. They are a catalyst, but there is no meaning in the words themselves. They are symbols, forms, and obscure mysteries. They are in the world of dead things and only take on meaning in a moment of illumination in the mind and heart of the reader and speaker.

http://www.bookreader.org/m/page18.html

That seems very perceptive to me, very acute. I have done a lot of study in the area of semantics -- and more or less came to the conclusion that the most powerful and direct way to understand word meanings -- is to see them as "stipulative". In other words -- we "stipulate their meaning" -- words mean what we intend them to mean, in the context of the immediate moment (as you suggest in your comment) that we are actually using the word...

You say that "words mean what we, the community of word users, agree they mean". Yes, I generally agree with that -- though I would want to add some further detail -- in that, in general, "we the community" don't really "agree" in an exact way -- this kind of agreement -- this "social contract" -- can be fairly blurry...

What actually happens, I think, is -- I have a fairly good understanding of the general meaning of words, and what you will probably think they mean. So, I "say something to you". If I have estimated your interpretation more or less accurately -- you probably "get" what I am saying. If I am a little bit off in my assumptions regarding your interpretation -- I might have to "add additional meaning" -- to clarify my intent....

Just to mention this -- this theme is a big part of the "Bridge Across Consciousness" project, which shows how meaning can be mapped across descending levels of abstraction....

And who knows -- maybe some of this could help clarify these comments on Wikipedia about Alice Bailey....

(Oh, and P.S. -- there is a Holy Book out there that says "In the Beginning was the Word" -- maybe words are not always "dead"???)

---- On Thu, Sep 20, 2007, James Davis wrote ---

Some of you might be interested in this article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Bailey

And this discussion:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Alice_Bailey

Best Thoughts,

James

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