RE: words, words, words.......YES....a salute to definitions

[Roger Key <roger.key@onet.co.uk>]

Hi All,
I guess that this thread and the thread on KNowledge are more intertwined
than usual.  If we look to epistemology we find that (for example) C I
Lewis identifies language as being primarraly a tool of social or group
cognition, Ayn Rand and Leonard Peikof identify language as being primaraly
for individual cognition.  The ralities we hold are created in language.
The work done by Bandler, Grinder, Dilts etc in the field of NLP and that
by others in the broarer field of Psyco Linguistics indicates that we can
make powerful interventions into the creation and management of reality
through the use of language.  Another aspect that comes out of psyco
linguistics is that of definition and distinction.  Simply put, until
somthing is defined and distinguished in language it does not exist.  From
this we can see that the importance of OpDefs etc.  We are not just
building consensus when we define something we are acting on the reality
held by the group and creating a shared cognition, a new reality, for which
each individuals experiance will be similar to the others - whilst not the
same it should have a very low level of ambiguity.  Having developed this
shared cognition the secondaryt purpose of language can come into play -
that of communication.  Attempting to communicate without this cognitive
element secure just allows us to pass words back and forth, not communicate.

This is what I think has happened with 'quality' (reference Myron post and
his discussion on weasel words) it is a word that has been used as a direct
replacement for specification (not just in the press and popular use but I
think on the DEN as well).  There has not been the reality built whithin
the shared social cognative processes to make a clear meaning real for it.
It is not defined and distinguished, so essentially it does not exist.  It
may be as Myron suggests that the meaning was sucked out leaving only the
empty shell, or was just an empty shell built in the first place?

I guess this is why Bandler and Grinder called two of their books "The
Structure of Magic"  (I and II)

Or so I understand....

Roger C. Key
Prescient - The Whole as One
[mailto:roger.key@onet.co.uk]
(44) 01639 871062
=========================================================================