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To: spirited irish
"In Noah Webster's American Dictionary of the English Language, 1828, soul and imagination are respectively defined as"

It is never a good philosophical move to quote from a dictionary. Philosophical discussion advances when terms are correctly, exactly, and unique defined.

Dictionary definitions are not about trying to uniquely define certain terms so that everyone discussing them knows what they are talking about. Dictionary definitions are about listing all of the uses of particular words. This can often lead to equivocation when a word is used to mean one thing in one part of an argument and another thing in a different part of the argument.

If you want to look like a fool in court, bring a copy of a dictionary (especially one printed in 1828) and quote from it to the judge. I have seen it done before and it is never pretty.

224 posted on 10/03/2011 5:17:06 PM PDT by who_would_fardels_bear
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To: who_would_fardels_bear

During Webster’s day, truth was sought rather than evaded, as it is now. That being the case, Webster’s dictionary was hailed as a book in which words were “correctly, exactly, and unique defined.”

Today however, nihilistic barbarism is the “norm,” which means that “If you want to look like a fool” in a court run by nihilists, “ bring a copy of a dictionary (especially one printed in 1828) and quote from it to the judge” who believes in nothing but self.


227 posted on 10/03/2011 5:30:25 PM PDT by spirited irish
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