Link to original post: [drupal=4619]Aphorisms and Distinctions[/drupal]This is a redo of the original text. I just want to go a little deeper regarding my previous blog "Aphorisms and Distinctions," and try to condense my point more briefly and directly about why technical terminology is, in some cases, very necessary, if not absolutely so.
The primary focus is the concept of intension, which is a term in semiotics (studies of signs, symbols and meaning) that means the concept which is being referred to, rather than the thing which is used to signify it. E.g. Vermanubis and Geoff both refer to the same thing: me. But they are different ways to signify different properties that indicate me.
Like any complex thing, there are multiple layers and within those multiple layers, a vastly interwoven network of meanings/correlations/implications. Technical terms are a package deal: propositions built from atomic particles to create an entirely new particle. When one skins language to a formal state, they can see plainly that words are messes of predicates, values and propositions; technical terms emerge to rectify the insufficient "propositional force" in "simple" language. In other words, anything that contains something that could be said to be "true" is a proposition, and atomic words can't always successfully construct a well-defined proposition due to conflicting intensions/meanings, or because they lack the implied meaning value that relationships of the properties contained within a given word made from several smaller ones create to spur new meanings and denote/cpnnote different things.
Example: consider the word sophistry and its meaning. Sophistry denotes (primary meaning; semantic) subtle errors in reasoning, but connotes (secondary meaning; implies) a particular method of reasoning: deceitful/equivocal. As we can see plainly, and hopefully agree, this word's meaning is at the very least two-fold and multi-layered, creating an efficient marriage of denotation and connotation to uniquely refer to a multifaceted concept. It proposes something that string of atomic words (or a "dumbed down" version) is not guaranteed to. It's a semiotic function, for every reference contained in the word (the word sophist being the signifier), a new proposition and from the different layers of propositional value (new implied meanings based on how the concepts bound in the word interact), new ideas/symbols/references with increasingly subtle differences and values that we can infer from the natures of that which are signified by the word, i.e. what is the nature of a sophist? This question highlights intensional disparities (i.e. things that may seem to uniquely indicate something, but only share properties with a closely related word and implies the concept based on context rather than directly referring to it) and identify new properties contained in more complex words that are more apt for expressing an idea/understanding an idea. Just as a mathematical equation is a proposition whose conclusion requires varying degrees of satisfaction depending on the specificity needed, so is a linguistic proposition.
Another example is if one is going to compose a masterful musical piece that modulates, mixes different tonalities, or, such as in jazz, steps out of key on purpose, they will need to know infinitely more about the technical aspects and music theory to understand how to make such a piece happen. One can't compose a masterful piece by note-by-note, as it'll eventually subtract from the broader objective of the song.
As things become more complex, new propositions need to be made, and lots of well-defined information needs to be contained into a usable package. A musical analogy would be an arpeggio sequence. One who's musically adept will know how to use arpeggio shapes in favor of composing note-for-note and the arpeggios, in an increasingly complex piece, will become atomic to an arpeggio progression and so forth. As complexity increases, the underpinnings need to be deftly placed so it can be continually and efficiently built upon.
This is why technical terminology is such a miraculous thing. It offers usable tools to express or consider complex concepts, and at a cognitive level, holds far more meaning and force than long strings of subatomic definitions like "one who intentionally employs subtle errors in reasoning for the sake of intellectual posturing" instead of just saying "sophistry." A neat example to mull over is to consider this: if you were defining a tree to someone outside of explicitly referring to the tree as "tree", how would they know that your definition of tree was not something else? That's the intensional conflict I spoke of earlier, and the very thing technical terminology exists to correct by combining several concepts into a uniform reference.
