On 15/08/2007, at 9:51 PM, Ken Friedman wrote:
> To speak of "the definition game" suggests a group of medieval
> Scholastics arguing about angels dancing on pinheads. Or, perhaps
> worse, it suggests people who thought that eight-legged arachnids
> could not be spiders because Aristotle said that spiders had six
> legs, preferring the definition of a spider to a description of
> spiders. The thread here is not a "definition game," and it seems
> to me unfortunate to so label it. That's a subtle way of
> discounting a serious and interesting thread.
Only if the cap fits. The sense in which I was using was in the way
Wittgenstein talks about language games. Some games are very serious,
not to be discounted at all. I might mention the game between Carlton
and Essendon this coming week end, but that would be frivolous,
except for those of us fortunate enough to be there.
David
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blog: www.communication.org.au/dsblog
web: http://www.communication.org.au
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