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    Symbols denote by convention and use, not by intrinsic re... — Carmelics
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    Challenges→Poetry can represent a body only by describing an action in which the body is made, used, or otherwise involved.

    Symbols denote by convention and use, not by intrinsic resemblance to their referents, so poetry's temporal deployment of signs does not limit what those signs can successfully refer to.

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    Reasons For

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    Reason for
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    • 1.Symbol-referent relations depend on community agreement, not physical similarity, as shown by arbitrary word-object pairings across languages.
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    • 2.Poetry's non-linear, compressed syntax can express complex referents (emotions, abstractions) that linear prose struggles to capture equally well.
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    • 3.Historical poets successfully referred to novel concepts and states of mind using inherited symbolic systems, proving temporal sequence doesn't inherently constrain reference.
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    Reasons Against

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    • 1.Temporal deployment creates ambiguity: readers encountering symbols sequentially may resolve reference differently than simultaneous presentation would allow.
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    • 2.Poetic compression and polysemy, while artistically powerful, actually multiply possible referents rather than clarify them, complicating successful reference.
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    • 3.Convention requires sufficient shared context; poetry's opacity and deliberate disruption of ordinary usage may violate the communicative conditions conventions require.
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    Key Terms

    Denote(as describing what each character in a notation must do)
    To directly refer to or stand for something; it's what a word or symbol does when it points to what it means.
    convention(Used to distinguish mere regularities from convention-governed regularities in the analysis of meaning.)
    A regularity that obtains because there is something akin to an agreement among a group of people to keep the regularity in place.
    intrinsic resemblance(in philosophy of language)
    A natural, built-in similarity between two things; the idea that something looks like or naturally resembles what it refers to.
    referent(what Russell says is the sole meaning of proper names)
    The actual thing in the real world that a word points to or stands for—for example, the referent of 'Abraham Lincoln' is the actual historical person.
    signs(Mourelatos (2008) interpretation of Parmenidean argument in DKB8/LMD8.)
    Adverbial markers that describe how what-is exists, rather than what it is.
    temporal deployment(in aesthetics and poetry analysis)
    The way something unfolds or is used over time; in this context, how words in a poem appear one after another in sequence.

    Connections

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    Aesthetics1 linked

    Related

    Convention requires sufficient shared context; poetry's opacity and deliberate d...Historical poets successfully referred to novel concepts and states of mind usin...Poetic compression and polysemy, while artistically powerful, actually multiply ...Poetry can represent a body only by describing an action in which the body is ma...

    Details

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    Perspectives
    2 (1 for, 1 against)
    Edits
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    +3 moreShow less
    Poetry's non-linear, compressed syntax can express complex referents (emotions, ...Symbol-referent relations depend on community agreement, not physical similarity...Temporal deployment creates ambiguity: readers encountering symbols sequentially...