Trent W. Buck via luv-talk wrote:
Rick Moen via luv-talk wrote:
I tend to think in operational terms, and the USA Libertarian Party seems to have only erratic and inconsistent adherence to any specific theoretical framework for 'libertarianism'. The latter term is so ill defined in USA political discourse [...]
[...] 'libertarian' (in USA discourse) is just a political football and means any of a variety of rather different things depending on the speaker. Cf.
The word "Fascism" has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies 'something not desirable'. -- George Orwell in "Politics and the English Language"
Productive intercourse is impossible with people using such terms.
Some (me for example) would claim that Continental philosophy is rife with such terms; not to mention much idiosyncratic jargon and scholasticism. So though I sympathise with Hume's complaint: “If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance;........." eg :http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7327-if-we-take-in-our-hand-any-volume-of-di... The subsequent attempt in Positivism and Analytical Philosophy to restrict discourse to objective langauge; seems to have had the effect of reducing philosophy to the aridity of symbolic logic Perhaps the problem is that if the word 'science' is used in the narrow sense of an "objectively falsifiable theory"; then a science of langauge (the claim of linguitics.) is not strictly possible since words as the fundamental, contituents of language, consist of objective symbols AND an associated phenomenological (ie subjective) meaning. If one comes from a scientific or technical background ; the suggestion that a dictionary definition is a theory ; which SHOULD be a: "Concise, precise, exhaustive and reductive description of prefered usage(s) in a given demographic " probably doesn't seem all that contraversial. What would seem contraversial is my suggestion that the thing it describes (ie the meaning); is a phenomenological category ! ........but I digress from the serious matter of politics !:-) regards Rohan McLeod