I still don't see how there is any benefit to be gained from speaking in a way that most people cannot even understand what you're saying let alone "understand the truth of it", as you put it. It seems trivially obvious that, if talking about something contentious or for which you are drawing a lot of criticism, doing both is pretty much always superior.
In your mathematician-postmodernist analogy, were the mathematician to face entire populations of otherwise intelligent, interested people claiming that he is saying nothing meaningful, it would be a relatively trivial matter to sit down for a few hours and break down his claims, filling in the blanks with "true enough"... (read more)
I still don't see how there is any benefit to be gained from speaking in a way that most people cannot even understand what you're saying let alone "understand the truth of it", as you put it. It seems trivially obvious that, if talking about something contentious or for which you are drawing a lot of criticism, doing both is pretty much always superior.
In your mathematician-postmodernist analogy, were the mathematician to face entire populations of otherwise intelligent, interested people claiming that he is saying nothing meaningful, it would be a relatively trivial matter to sit down for a few hours and break down his claims, filling in the blanks with "true enough"... (read more)