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To: EaglesNestHome

36 posted on 03/18/2013 9:47:39 AM PDT by coloradan (The US has become a banana republic, except without the bananas - or the republic.)
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To: coloradan

Calvin always has the best answers.

Where is a location question. From and to just describe locations. Where do we come from and where are we going either have the regular meaning of Calvin or are metaphors for something else. As a metaphor, when terms are used that are ill defined, you are at the abyss of language’s usefulness. What is God? Can you give me a phone number? Where is God? Why is God? You can give all the right question words for a good essay, who what where when why and how, but when some of the important concepts are not consistent with meaning communication will fail, or at least not convey what a person is trying to communicate.

That’s why Calvin is so funny. With just a few frames, he answers the deep philosophical questions that are just illustrations of where language fails, and language is just a representation of reality, not reality itself.

God is a particular case that language is ill prepared to box into a definition. Of course just because language cannot convey something, does not mean it winks out of existence, like the joke from Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

The limitations of language is not the usual answer people like to hear, as people are hardwired to want answers, not question tools.

DK


41 posted on 03/18/2013 10:07:25 AM PDT by Dark Knight
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