Do words have a fixed meaning?

I can see by all your questions Skan that you indeed have missed the point and misunderstood my intent.

Nevertheless I will try to explain.

I agreed with her that it was a trick question.

You are too rough on people Skan and in some of your posts you seem to delight in putting people down and heaping ad hominems upon us.

My agreement with you is concerning the overall venue of the post.
How words and their dynamics are often so impotent to convey thoughts, concepts.

Another misunderstanding on your part.
The sense of the statement had an element of hope that your sense of humor would soften the harshness of my other judgmental words.

Good avice out of the mouth of a babe.
Over the passage of time a person learns the dynamics of communication, and that the actual words are only a small part of the story.

Correctly according to your criteria Skan. I did not answer although I had an answer but didn't give it for a reason I don't want to convey:

"God is love". Right or wrong that is my answer.

HankD

 

I didn't answer the question incorrectly because I didn't answer it.

I read Hayakawa in college, btw.

I read Heinlein, too. He was (is?) a sci-fi writer. I doubt anyone would ascribe to him any authority on semantics or language.

Fuller was an architect and futurist, not a language expert. Buckminster Fuller's views influenced a lot of New Age thinking. His books are found and sold on some New Age sites. Here is a sample of how he defined "universe:"

Interestingly enough, there is a book called God is A Verb by David A. Cooper - it's about the Kabbalah (favorable toward).

More on Fuller (see, I told you that you were saying to me was not new! I knew about Fuller when I was a New Ager.):

Fuller's name comes up on many New Age sites like this one:

Sacred Geometry is an occult art.

I doubt that many Christian hermeneutics profs would agree with Fuller, however brilliant he was.

As for Korzybski, he had influence on the famed Gestalt therapy:

I don't think most would agree that Fuller, Korzybski, Heinlein and Hayakawa, however brilliant they may have been, are necessarily right in their views on language nor are they necessarily the right authorities on language. They were men with certain worldviews which influence their views of language.

You think I don't understand, but I do. It is very common with atheists and New Agers, in an attempted attack on the Bible, to attack language and words. If words are merely imbued with whatever meaning we subjectively put into them, then they cannot convey truth, then how can the Bible be God's word or convey truth? This is a very common argument and New Agers will quote language and semantics experts to make it.

What is the implication of the statement that we bring a bias to our understanding of words? The implication is that we cannot truly communicate or that words are not the best way to communicate. This has become an argument used against God's word used by man skeptics and New Agers.

 

Words are coined everyday to express the concepts of the individuals doing the coining. Very often the individual doing the coining is doing so because he/she does not have a sufficient knowledge of his/her language to know the word or words that have already been coined and accepted by the more literate part of society to express that concept. Sometime, however, the individual doing the coining is actually expressing a concept for which there hitherto has been no word. This is especially the case in highly technological fields of endeavor.

Words coined by knowledgeable or well known people in works that are published or words that are broadcasted are often “picked up” by others and thereby enter into the language. Invariably, however, some individuals will read or hear these words and misunderstand the original meaning, and if this misinformation is published or broadcasted, an additional meaning will become attached to these words. Over a period of hundreds of years, the original meanings often drop out of use and the newer meanings become the only meanings currently attached to the words. And sometimes these newer meanings are very different than the original meanings, and words come to mean something entirely different in current usage than they did several centuries ago.

The publishers of Merriam-Webster Dictionaries became very sensitive to this in the 1950’s and accepted the fact there are no accurate or inaccurate meanings of any words, but only different levels a acceptability, and that these levels of acceptability are in a constant state of flux within several sub-sets of users of the English Language. And they also accepted that this applies to the spelling of words. Therefore, in their monumental Third New International Dictionary, they no longer made a distinction between correct and incorrect usages and spellings, but instead listed the usages and spellings that have been accepted for a period of time by one or more sub-sets of users of the English Language.

Prior to the publications of the Third New International Dictionary, millions of persons looked to the Merriam-Webster editorial staff as the authority of the English language and its usages and spelling, but with the publication of that dictionary, the Merriam-Webster editorial staff relinquished that authority very much to the dismay of many publishers, especially publishers of scientific works. Many of the editors of these works published reviews of the Third New International Dictionary, and about 20 of those reviews were collected and published in a book entitled, Dictionaries and That Dictionary.

 

That's your opinion Skan.

That's your misunderstanding Skan.

I've said my piece and willing to drop this line of reasoning.

Unless of course you continue to stimulate my thalamus.

HankD

 

Cults and heretical systems use this technique as well, redefining the Scripture by improper allegorization of which they alone have the key.

HankD

 

Yes, that's me. Disguised as a former New Ager and professional astrolger with a ministry to New Agers, and as someone who never reads the one copy of the KJV she owns. Pretty good disguise, isn't it?

Nice try on an ad hominem but it isn't working. I stand by what I posted -- those guys are not necessarily the last word on words, not by a long shot.

 

In the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, the Babel fish allows people to understand each other. It is said that the babel fish is the cause of innumerable wars and atrocities between civilizations. Because they understand each other.

 

rsr, is this from Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland?

HankD