What happen to philosophers like Hume who tried to avoid “mere disputes of words?” Seriously, as much as many 20th century philosophers liked Hume, especially the first book of the Treatise (e.g., the positivists), why didn’t they pick up on that?
(I seem to remember some flippant remark making fun of philosophers for these disputes in the Treatise but google finds me nothing)
Getting hung up on the meanings of words is an attractor. Even if your community starts out consciously trying to avoid it, it’s very easy to get sucked back in. Here is a likely sequence of steps.
All this talk about words is silly! We care about actually implementing our will in the real world!
Of course, we want to implement our will precisely. We need to know how things are precisely and how we want them to be precisely, so that we can figure out what we should do precisely.
So, we want to formulate all this precise knowledge and to perform precise actions. But we’re a community, so we’re going to have to communicate all this knowledge and these plans among ourselves. Thus, we’re going to need a correspondingly precise language to convey all these precise things to one another.
Okay, so let’s get started on that precise language. Take the word A. What, precisely, does it mean? Well, what precisely are the states of affairs such that the word A applies? Wait, what precisely is a “state of affairs”? . . .
What happen to philosophers like Hume who tried to avoid “mere disputes of words?” Seriously, as much as many 20th century philosophers liked Hume, especially the first book of the Treatise (e.g., the positivists), why didn’t they pick up on that?
(I seem to remember some flippant remark making fun of philosophers for these disputes in the Treatise but google finds me nothing)
Getting hung up on the meanings of words is an attractor. Even if your community starts out consciously trying to avoid it, it’s very easy to get sucked back in. Here is a likely sequence of steps.
All this talk about words is silly! We care about actually implementing our will in the real world!
Of course, we want to implement our will precisely. We need to know how things are precisely and how we want them to be precisely, so that we can figure out what we should do precisely.
So, we want to formulate all this precise knowledge and to perform precise actions. But we’re a community, so we’re going to have to communicate all this knowledge and these plans among ourselves. Thus, we’re going to need a correspondingly precise language to convey all these precise things to one another.
Okay, so let’s get started on that precise language. Take the word A. What, precisely, does it mean? Well, what precisely are the states of affairs such that the word A applies? Wait, what precisely is a “state of affairs”? . . .
And down the rabbit-hole you go.