[assaflavie]

This sounds very Wittgensteinian. In terms of his philosophy of language, what we have here is a "metaphor gone wild". You take "intellectual" and "property", you put them together as a metaphorical phrase that on the face of it seems meaningful and semantically sound, and people start believe that there's actually such a thing; that it's not made up word-lego.

It takes careful awareness to language to be able to point this out, as Stallman does. Just because there's a word for it, doesn't make it meaningful.

[cynicalkane]

Sorry, in Wittgenstein words are meaningful if they correspond to predictable results in communication. If we can reasonably predict how the world will react to the words "intellectual property", then the phrase is "real". Meaning, for Wittgenstein, is usage.

The world, if you were wondering, will look dimly upon second-hand interpretations of a dead, legally irrelevant philosopher if you're caught in the courtroom violating someone else's intellectual property.

If you want to fight intellectual property you first have to acknowledge that, yes, it is a real thing. Our legal system has made it so. Just like physical property is a thing, corporate free speech is a thing, equal protection of the law is a thing, &c.

[assaflavie]

I'm sorry but "predictable results in communication" is not the criterion for being meaningful. If you fart in a courtroom, you get very predictable results, too. The phrase isn't 'real' just because some people use it. People use "God" quite a lot, and that doesn't make it a meaningful concept.

(why do I feel I just unleashed an unholy flame war from hell with that last analogy?)

[drdeca]

I suppose that strictly speaking, the use of a phrase by many people does not imply that it has a "meaning" (for certain definitions of meaning) (if many people inserted "whum" as an adjective into some of their sentences, but had no real idea behind it, I suppose it might not be meaningful)

However, if many people say "invisible cherry" when they are talking about a door or opening, or means of accessing something, then it would be reasonable to say both that "invisible cherries exist", and to say "the phrase 'invisible cherry' is meaningful."

Also, while there is no set of all sets, I would argue that (again, for some definition of meaningful), the phrase "the universal set(the set of all sets)" is both meaningful and useful.

Also, if you wanted to avoid a flame war with that last bit, it may have been useful to instead claim that "magic" is meaningless due to being inherently self contradictory (by definition). I would disagree with that claim, but I think it would make a similar argument without being as likely to cause a flame war (though I doubt it would happen in either case)

However, I acknowledge that you did not say magic, and I am not attempting to use a straw man as if you had.

[cynicalkane]

First you say, "In Wittgenstein, intellectual property is a meaningless phrase." But this is the opposite of the truth, because in Wittgenstein phrases have meaning if they can reliably be used to communicate. So in this example 'intellectual property' is a perfectly cromulent concept.

Now you say, "Intellectual property is still a meaningless phrase, because flamebait about God and courtroom farts." To me, it just looks like you're saying intellectual property is meaningless because it's an intangible concept you happen to dislike. This is good to impress people on the Internet, but not a good way to analyze or change the system we live in.

[lotsofmangos]

The organic food movement I find semantically irritating, I wish they would use the word sustainable or something. You have stuff claiming to be Organic Salt on sale in the supermarket and it isn't MSG.

[adrianmsmith]

"word-lego"! That's a great phrase :-)