Schemas and coinages

One advantage of being a schematic thinker is the technique exposes gaps in our vocabularies, conceptual spaces deprived of language that create intellectual blindspots (schemoscotomas?) for those whose thought is primarily verbal.

In encountering these wordless conceptual spaces my approach has been to find close matches or to resort to descriptive language to indicate what I mean. Today I’m thinking a better approach would be to simply invent words to fill in these spaces. This is likely to change the tone and substance of my work.

Some time ago my friend Jokin told me a beautiful Basque saying: “What has a name is real.” I believe that we need to invest some badly needed ideas with the reality of language, and I think it is the task of philosophy to do so.

More to come.

 

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