[conservativephilosopher] New post at The Conservative Philosopher

[conservativephilosopher at lists.powerblogs.com]

Posted by William F. Vallicella:
<strong>Linguistic Change and Linguistic Conservatism</strong>

   May a linguistic conservative coin new expressions? Of course. A
   conservative is not one opposed to change as such, or linguistic
   change as such. A conservative is one who is opposed to unnecessary,
   or idiotic, or deleterious changes ââ the kind too many liberals love
   to introduce. An example of a change that was unnecessary was the
   renaming of the Western Division of the American Philosophical
   Association to âCentral Divisionâ some years back. This rankled this
   curmudgeon for two reasons. First, the change was wholly unnecessary:
   given that there is a Pacific Division and a Western Division, one
   would have to be consummately stupid indeed not to realize that the
   former is to the west of the latter.
   Second, this wholly unnecessary change obliterated an interesting
   piece of history, namely, that the APA once had only two divisions.
   Should Case Western Reserve University change its name because the
   Western Reserve region of Ohio is practically in the East nowadays?
   (By the way, that strange name is an amalgam of 'Case Institute of
   Technology' and 'Western Reserve University.' Case Institute of
   Technology was where Michelson and Morley in 1881 conducted the famous
   experiment that put the ether hypothesis out of commission. When I was
   visiting at CWRU, I got a thrill out of conducting some of my classes
   in Morley Hall.)
   True, âWestern Divisionâ was a misnomer ââ but only if one took it as
   a description in disguise as opposed to a logically proper name the
   meaning of which is exhausted by its reference. Recall Saul Kripkeâs
   old example of âHoly Roman Empireâ from Naming and Necessity. The
   entity denoted was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire. But that
   did not prevent the phrase in question from functioning as a proper
   name. Similarly with âWestern Division.â