Friday, January 19, 2024

justification for neologism



Conceptual prospecting is common in philosophical work, but may seem hermetic.

Wanting new concepts follows from working beyond confounding uses of standard ones. Experimental thinking is good! It's fun.

One can propose and explicate new senses of standard concepts (which I usually do), but new concepts can be an easier way to avoid confusion or misleading ambiguity—and avoid concealment of the better sense of a standard term (when staying with the standard term in a new way) because a reader is habituated to standard senses—seldom clear anyway, which dictionaries easily display.