Problem with the view that language is use
Animals use noises, scents and body language to communicate, but the general consensus is that only human beings possess language.
If language is use, how do we distinguish between the kind of communication that animals utilize, and what humans do with words?
How would dolphin researchers verify that dolphins did possess language? They would do so by showing that dolphin sounds convey concepts.
Therefore, concepts play a role in meaning. The challenge for the meaning is use crowd is to show how concepts are used in a way that non-linguistic communication is not.
My guess is that concepts are not use. They are rather a neurological ability to form combinatorial abstractions and metaphors which gives rise to language.
If language is use, how do we distinguish between the kind of communication that animals utilize, and what humans do with words?
How would dolphin researchers verify that dolphins did possess language? They would do so by showing that dolphin sounds convey concepts.
Therefore, concepts play a role in meaning. The challenge for the meaning is use crowd is to show how concepts are used in a way that non-linguistic communication is not.
My guess is that concepts are not use. They are rather a neurological ability to form combinatorial abstractions and metaphors which gives rise to language.
Comments (773)
I'll try to get to your critique of "meaning is use" sometimes tomorrow when I have time, but in the meantime, you should note that linguists already have pretty good criteria for distinguishing human language from animal signaling. One place to start is Hockett's design features.
You have observed an infant learning how to talk. What seems to be happening? They are busy processing all sorts of experiences, they hear language, and they start matching words to -- what concepts? or things? experiences? "Mama" or "Papa" is associated with two particular people; it's too specific at first to be a concept. the child's favorite food gets a sound, maybe "ba ba" for "bottle" (as in "milk" or whatever it is the baby gets in a bottle). The connection between a food, sound, and specific word gets clearer. Then some words "din din", for instance, have more general meaning -- a concept. At din din one gets food of several kinds, and mama and papa eat something like the same thing. Sometimes din din is good, sometimes it gets unceremoniously spat out. And so on.
Pretty quickly the child's language starts manifesting structure and concept. Just listen to them.
So Fritz, or whatever this border collie's name was, could learn something like how to identify which object went with which word. It's a pretty big accomplishment for a dog's brain. I don't think Fritz generalized specifics, though. I don't think he could go fetch anything that was round and yellow and soft.
Bees communicate specific and useful information to other bees by using their bodies' movement capabilities. There is a certain amount of evaluative information in their bee-talk: a lot of flowers or not a lot. It's amazing that bees can do this, but I don't think they deal in concepts.
Dolphins... I just don't know. Their environment and sensory apparatus is so different than ours. They can, for instance, echo-analyze further beneath the skin than we can. I don't know how deep their perception goes. We just can't echo-analyze anything (except by ultra-sound gadgets).
I think it is the case that many animals have some sort of interior life of their minds, such as they are. Cows that much prefer to be milked from their left and not their right side for instance. (An unhappy cow's kick is not something to invite.) Or dogs that manipulate people to behave in preferred ways, just as people manipulate their dog to behave the way we want them to. They don't have to have language and concepts to twist us around their clever paws.
I'd be excited if were shown that dolphins or birds had language. Pointing out that animals use sounds and what not for communication was just a tool to show the difficulty with meaning being use.
The problem of universals shouldn't have cropped up if meaning was just use (I'm not saying that meaning can't be use, only that meaning is not entirely use). The reason it's a problem is because our language has lots of universal concepts, but the empirical world is particular. Use alone shouldn't give rise to universal ideas.
This needs to be further developed, but I see it as related to the difference between signalling, which lacks abstraction.
One could also argue from metaphor instead of universals. Why would use ever evolve into metaphorical speech? How does that come about?
No, the conceptual apparatus has to exist first, then the use can happen.
I would say that discreteness, displacement, and duality of patterning all rely on a conceptual underpinning which is required for those aspects of language, and cannot be relegated to use.
Maybe Witty would have been happy with that, but it doesn't change the fact that humans ask philosophical questions (and not just professional philosophers).
How is it that we are able to step outside the various language games and ask these sorts of questions? It's because our concepts allow us to.
Quoting Marchesk
When our retriever wants to go outside in the morning, the first step is a gentle whine. If nothing happens this is followed by nose poking. Then louder whining, finally a loud bark in one's face. This is signaling; the dog has learned to escalate if we aren't paying attention.
Oliver Sacks relates in Seeing Voices how a small group of deaf people who had very, very poor childhood education were limited by the concepts they lacked. When they were taught American Sign Language as adults, their minds were greatly expanded. Words and concepts have, it seems to me, a necessary connection. Words and concepts go together. No words, no concepts. No concepts, nothing to say. No concepts, much of the world will be either invisible or just background. No words, nobody will know what kind of hell a concept-free existence would be (for humans).
For some reason, it reminded me of this Calvin and Hobbes cartoon:
My suspicion is that use (alone) cannot explain abstract thought (or metaphor), and that's what I'm fumbling to get at.
The odor of human feces is suggested to be made up from the following odorant volatiles:[11]
Methyl sulfides
methylmercaptan/methanethiol (MM)
dimethyl sulfide (DMS)
dimethyl trisulfide (DMTS)
dimethyl disulfide (DMDS)
Benzopyrrole volatiles
indole
skatole
Hydrogen sulfide (H2S)
The pleasant odor of cinnamon is owing to cinnamaldehyde and eugenol, plus some other minor volatile agents. Clove, cardamom, lemon, anise, and so on all have distinct component odors which we could learn, and name -- which we would need to do, since clove only covers one generalized odor.
There was a popular women's perfume back in the 1980s that smelled--to me--like an old fashioned insect spray (it wasn't RAID). I swear some women were putting it on with a hose. Gawd awful.
I don't know why we don't pay more attention to odor. My nose isn't as sharp as it used to be, but I used to enjoy crushing all sorts of plant leaves to smell them. Some of them (like mountain ash) were very interesting. Matricaria discoidea, a common low-growing upper midwestern wild plant that one finds along sidewalks, has waxy blossoms that smell very specifically like pineapple. Then there is the unimaginably bitterness of some plants--which were of course of interest to me.
And would they not do so by seeing what use they made of their sounds? Is conveying concepts not a use?
I always like to draw attention to the vast ambiguity of the term 'meaning' but for a change, I'll leave out the usual quote from The Meaning of Meaning, and just point out that reference, intention, understanding, significance, are all potential candidates for consideration, and it is not clear that they are all even compatible. What do you mean (intend) by 'meaning'?
I see the Wittgenstein project here as part of his attempt to undo the Cartesian error of identification as 'thinking thing' rather than 'doing thing'. Thus language is not about a transfer of some essence of conceptual meaning from my inner world to your inner world, but something that operates in the physical world. Beetles in boxes... The concepts in your mind are uncommunicable (even to yourself) unless you do something public with them - use them.
If we consider the statement "It's raining but I believe that it is not raining" then we quite rightly take it to be an absurd thing to say, even though "it's raining" and "I believe that it is raining" do not mean the same thing. And that's because in saying "it's raining" one is (usually) indicating that one believes that it is raining, and so the statement "It's raining but I believe that it is not raining" is a performative contradiction even if not a logical contradiction (thanks to @The Great Whatever for this insight).
Yes, but that doesn't make concepts use. We use language to convey concepts. I don't see at all how that makes concepts the same as use.
Quoting unenlightened
I don't think human language gets off the ground without the conceptual machinery in place. Human language is different from animal communication (in part), because our brains evolved the ability to think that way. Otherwise, how do you account for animal communication being different?
We are thinking and doing things. Witty went too far with this. If you want to think about the mind computationally (not terribly fond of it, but it's better than what Witty was trying to do), then we have algorithms other animals are lacking that give us richer forms of communication.
Our computers will be able to communicate like us when they're sophisticated enough to form concepts like we do. Maybe the machine learning will get there someday. We'll see. But notice how Siri, Alexa, etc can use words, but lack understanding, and are not able to pass the Turing Test. I'm not for a second fooled by my interactions with Siri.
So even though I can use a screwdriver like a hammer, that doesn't mean that my use of the screwdriver that way makes it a hammer. It's still a screwdriver (and it makes a rather lousy hammer, for a reason).
But why not? What is it about concept use that puts the use-theory into question? I'm just trying to understand the actual argument behind the suspicion here.
I don't see how it gets off the ground. Say we want to use "Chair" to denote the category (or universal) for all chairs. Well how do we arrive at such a thing unless our brains are first capable of thinking in terms of categories, or universals?
How does number get off the ground, unless our brains have a capacity to quantify? There's a reason human language is full of these sorts of concepts that we've yet to detect in other animal communication (or not a lot, there may be some).
It seems like you're trying to say that there are antecedent conditions that must be fufilled in order for the theory to work, but something like that could well be incorporated without putting it into question.
I'll try.
1 Meaning-is-use says meaning is the way words are used in the context of a language game.
2. But, word use alone cannot explain the existence of universals, metaphors, math and logic in human language games.
3. Therefore, there is something more to meaning than use.
Admittedly, that's incomplete. There needs to be a couple more steps fleshing out how abstraction is different than other aspects of language, such as a greeting or singling out a particular.
The correct formulation (if we're going by Wittgenstein) is "the meaning of a word is its use in the language".
What do you mean by the use of universals, metaphors, math, etc.? Do you mean that the use of words and phrases like "redness", "life is a rollercoaster", "1 + 1 = 2" cannot be explained by referring to the use of words and phrases?
That formulation is trivial. Of course "Chair" means the universal of chairs in English, because we arbitrarily (or rather through evolution of English) decided to denote that word as being such.
That's very different from saying that the meaning behind the word is merely the use of it.
What's the difference between saying "the meaning of a word is its use" and "the meaning behind a word is its use"?
The claim is that meaning is use, and that is determined by the role it plays in a language game.
I don't dispute that words have meaning in a context. I dispute that meaning is the usage. Rather, the usage assigns the meaning.
Wittgenstein was aiming for a radical redefinition of meaning, not merely pointing out that words acquire meaning by how they're used. Everyone knows that already. Wittgenstein's approach is behavioral, not cognitive, and I take issue with that.
You must have the cognitive (thought) prior to behavior, or there are no language games. Language games can't get off the ground without cognition.
Language: a set of signs (i.e., vocabulary) having paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations (i.e., syntax), hence; semantic information.
Human Language: a set of words (i.e., vocabulary) having paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations (i.e., syntax), hence; semantic information.
Communication: the process of encoding, transmitting, conveying, receiving, and decoding information.
Biocommunication: species-specific conscious, semi-conscious and/or non-conscious communication using signals (e.g., chemical, visual, auditory, tactile, etc.).
Zoocommunication: species-specific conscious and/or semi-conscious communication using signals (e.g., chemical, visual, auditory, tactile, etc.).
Human Communication: human conscious and/or semi-conscious communication using signals, spoken sounds (i.e., speech), or written symbols (i.e., writing) expressing thoughts and/or emotions in a human language and social context understood by both sender/source and receiver/target.
Animals communicate by means of signals (a type of sign), whereas; human beings communicate by means of language (a sign system).
Exactly. Also, if Witty is right about it being impossible for us to understand talking lions, because we're not part of their language games, then SETI is wasting their time.
So what are we doing when we translate the word "hello"? What does it refer to? The meaning of the word "hello" is its use as a greeting, and we translate it with this in mind; we look to see what word(s) are used in the same way in other languages.
But this is just the conclusion you're trying to establish. You can't use it as a premise without begging the question. This is the very thing im looking for an argument to underwrite.
Yeah, but not all words are greetings. All that shows is that the meaning of a greeting is it's use.
Right. I would have to think about how to do that. It's always been my reaction that "meaning is use" can't be right.
But back to the OP, I could reformulate the argument as such.
2. Animals have their own language games were the meaning of signals is determined by use.
3. Animal language games lack abstract language features.
4. Therefore, there must be something about human language beyond use.
That was what I was originally arguing for.
The meaning of the word "hello" is its use. The same can be said of other words like "yes", "no", "please", etc. So the principle of meaning-as-use is sound. And, contrary to Harry Hindu's claim, this use is what we consider when translating these words into other languages.
So it seems to me that you (and Harry) can't reasonably reject the principle behind the claim that the meaning of a word is its use. You just reject the claim that this is the case for all (or most) words.
But then I ask; what's the difference between me saying "hello" when I meet you and me saying "it is raining" when water is falling from the clouds?
Notice that I never said meaning can't be use, just that meaning isn't exclusively use (and cannot possibly be as I see it), which is what Witty seemed to be arguing, or at least the people who have tended to agree with him.
Also, I would argue that there is something more to "hello" than just noticing that it's a greeting. There is some additional meaning. Arguably, when I greet someone, I do so acknowledging them as an individual deserving of some respect, unless it's done sarcastically.
I don't greet a rock or a tree (usually unless I'm being silly or just using it to talk to myself). But people (and pets) are greeted, because there is the meaning of a self that can respond or understand the greeting.
If meaning is use then we aren't referring to anything when we talk. We wouldn't be talking about anything.
When listening to someone else's words we aren't deciphering their use we are deciphering the intent or what it is they are referring to, or thinking about, in their mind when they are talking. Using language is translating the shapes, colors, sounds, tastes and smells in your mind into other sounds and colored scribbles for others to hear or see for them to translate them back to the things that are in the speaker or writers head. This is why seeing or hearing words trigger their meanings inside our own heads. When describing your visit to Rome, you create images and sounds and smells and tastes in the listener's mind which is your intent no?
That should demonstrate that even with a greeting there needs to be a cognitive ability underpinning it.
It would seem that Wittgenstein's argument tends to be understood in purely behavioral terms. Notice what unlightened said about how Witty wanted to get away from the Cartesian Theater, thinking that it would be impossible to communicate your beetle in the box.
So I'm guessing the language-is-use crowd might try to deny that. But that's where the argument becomes absurd.
That doesn't contradict what I said. It would just then mean that the meaning of "I greet you" is its use as a greeting, much like a handshake or a hug.
That the words are used to achieve some end is not that the meaning of a word isn't its use.
"I greet you" includes you as a meaning. If you didn't understand "you", then there would be no such greeting. The other needs to be part of one's cognitive capacity.
And to understand the meaning of the word "you" is to understand the use that the word "you" plays in the language.
That doesn't follow. All this shows is that animals don't use expressions in the same way that we do.
Yes and no. If you're just talking about he English word "you", then yes. If you're talking about the meaning assigned to it, then no.
You entails understanding that other people exist with their own thoughts, feelings, desires, rights, etc. It is fundamental to human interaction.
But Wittgenstein's argument is that 'cognition' by itself can't do anything magical that is over and above what behavior can, as far as language or meaning are concerned. If you are puzzled about the possibility of meaning, postulating some magical inner mechanisms in the mind is not going to solve the problem. This is because the philosophical questions about symbolism (i.e. representation of reality through language or though) is going to arise about inner mental states as much as it arises for written signs on paper, or behaviors. You are not going to get meaning out of something just by assuming that it is something 'cognitive', 'mental', 'inner' or whatever. And this is because you can't understand a symbolic system (whether it is language or thinking) just by inspecting the physical or mental properties of the symbols themselves (i.e., the words on the page or inner mental states).
So for example take sections 139 -142 in Philosophical Investigations, where Wittgenstein illustrates this point by showing that a mere existence of some mental state like a mental picture (in his example it is a picture of a cube) cannot by itself determine a unique meaning or use for the word (or concept) 'cube', because the picture can be interpreted in countless different ways as standing for completely different things. And the mere fact that the picture is 'mental' can't force on you just one unique interpretation which will somehow make you understand the picture as a 3d picture of a cube, and not say as a bunch of 2d rectangles (and similar considerations apply to 'interpretations' as mental entities which accompany the picture). (see also sections 73-4 where he makes a parallel point about a sample of a leaf - for something to be a sample for something else - and this is connected to your question about universals - it is not enough to consider the sample by itself, rather you must look at its use; you must consider the technique of comparing the sample with the things which it is a sample of, e.g, what circumstances are we going to count as something that 'fits' the sample (or doesn't), and what practical purpose it serves)
And so when Wittgenstein talks about 'use', what he means by that (among other things) is that you have to look at the use of symbols within a system or a praxis to understand their meaning, and this means that you have to consider how the symbols (to put it in a Tractarian way) are compared with reality: e.g., under what circumstances do we say that such and such is the case, what kinds of other propositions can we logically infer from it, and what sorts of language techniques ('language games') we need in order to make the talk about this or that subject matter intelligible (and there is a host of many pother questions that need to be answered).
Sort of, but I think at this point one would invoke Kant, because this seems rather Humean and empirical. And Kant argued persuasively that you need categories of thought to get the empirical endeavor off the ground, otherwise you just have a meaningless jumble of sensory impressions.
Similarly, you need cognition to make language work, otherwise, you just have a bunch of meaningless behavior.
I was trying to find a quote from some behaviorist in the past (Watson maybe) that I saw a long time ago. It may have been taken out of context, but it went something like this:
"I could teach an earthworm English with the right stimui."
Which is impossible because the earthworm has no such cognitive capacity to learn English, let alone lacking any sort of body that could communicate words.
I mention that because it ties back to how animals generally lack certain linguistic features that human languages possess, and this is biologically based. Behavior can't bootstrap an ant colony to English, unfortunately, because that would be fascinating. (Did read a scifi story were wasp colonies were intelligent and figured out how to go online and tell us about it. They may have been genetically enhanced, though).
Yes you can say that there is a Kantian ring to Wittgenstein's philosophy, but it has nothing to do with 'cognition' (whatever it means) as you say. Again, the point here is not that we have to look into the realm of psychology (as opposed to behavior) to understand language, rather I think that both Kant and Wittgenstein argued that you have to look at logic or norms, that is how we use the logical/normative system of language in our dealing with the world (or experience in Kant's case).
1. Meaning-as-use is language game behavior in the world.
2. The empirical world is particular.
3. But, language employs universals.
4. Therefore, language can't just be use.
it works for metaphor, math, and other forms of language that aren't merely particular. Arguably, animal language games are solely particular (with maybe a few exceptions).
How is it that anyone that read the book first will automatically know the written parts when they see the action on the screen? And didn't they already have a visual of what the book describes before seeing the movie, and wouldn't that visual be similar which is why they recognize the parts in the movie as the parts in the book?
Giving a description is giving an account of some state-of-affairs in words, or using words as a tool to relay the visual of some state-of-affairs. When we say anything meaningful we are usually, if not all the time, relaying information about some state-of-affairs that isn't the use of language.
But how does this explain the difference between animal communication and human?
Well but that's not a philosophical question but a scientific one (about the psychological conditions under which some organism is capable of learning a human-like language). This was not the kind of question which interested Wittgenstein, and therefore it wasn't the question that he tried to answer when he talked about meaning and use (therefore the topic of this whole tread simply misses its target). What interested Wittgenstein were the logical features of language that make it function as a language, not the psychological conditions which allow some creature but not another to learn language - that has nothing to do with philosophy according to W'.
As I said, it's not a philosophical question and therefore completely irrelevant to philosophical problems about language and meaning. It is not something that you can answer by armchair speculations.
Philosophy is a science. The conclusions of one branch of the investigation of reality shouldn't contradict those of another. All knowledge must be integrated into a consistent whole.
Wittgenstein said that if a lion could talk, we would not understand it, because we don't participate in the lion language games. As such, there's no meaning that we could translate from our human games to the lion games in order to arrive at a common understanding.
I think that's mistaken. The real meaning is based on how a lion understands the world by virtue of being a lion. To the extent that's similar to being a human, we should be able to arrive at some common meaning, and therefore be able to translate between human and lion language.
I'm only using animal communication as a means to critique the notion that meaning is only exclusively it's use. I don't see the difference between a bird using song to woo a mate, and human using words to seduce a mate, if use is all there is to meaning.
And yet, we do acknowledge some pretty important differences between bird song (far as we understand birds), and human language. Some of those involve the use of abstract concepts, which are pretty important. A human male seducing a female might employ the concept of earning potential to interest her. Earning potential is not something animals communicate, because money isn't a concept they form.
In other words, "hello" is just a sound we make (a social behavior) when we greet each other. We could then say that the sounds other animals make when they greet each other means "hello".
I'm calling foul there already. I don't think it's at all a consensus any longer that other animals do not have languages.
Quoting Marchesk
Human language doesn't literally transport concepts. It catalyzes concepts in the persons hearing it.
And other words are just sounds we make in particular social situations, mostly to elicit certain responses from others.
But this doesn't work either. All you've done is identify a distinction, and then assert without argument that meaning-as-use is not compatible with abstract language features. But this is another instance of begging the question. Why is meaning-as-use not compatible with abstract language features? What even do you mean by abstract language features as you understand them? What is it about (1) meaning-as-use on the one hand, and (2) abstract language features on the other, that makes the two incompatible? This is what I'm trying to get you to articulate.
It seems to me that you don't really understand what W' meant by 'use', since your critique has nothing to do with his actual views (and he certainly wasn't a 'behaviorist' in the usual sense).
Your concern is that, under a certain doctrine, all there is to using language is emitting appropriate sounds at appropriate times, mechanically, as if there were no difference between human language and the sort of signaling other animals do, and that meaning here is not so much explained as explained away. The popular alternative, around here at least, seems to be that meaning is what's going on in the minds of speaker and hearer. I guess people call this "externalism vs. internalism."
Because I find this sort of debate intensely boring, I propose instead we try together to analyse an example, leaving our pet theories aside, and see if we can discover something about meaning.
Suppose I go hiking with a friend in an area he knows but I don't. We come to a fork in the trail, and I start to go right, but he says, "This way," starting left, "That way's kinda dangerous." Also consider a version of this story where my companion is Lassie, who sits and whimpers when I start to go the wrong way. Or a Neanderthal who grunts and shakes his head, and gestures to the left.
What does it mean to understand each of these? What do we expect if something is to be called "understanding"?
That another dog walked across Lassie's grave, and if I don't go left, I'll be possessed by the spirit of the Zodiac Killer.
Unfortunately, since neither Lassie nor my cloned Neanderthal friend (DNA found mixed in with a frozen mammoth carcass a few months back, angering the ancestral spirits) can communicate that to me, I go right and then the rest is ScyFy B grade movie.
The above, although worthy of a crappy movie plot, illustrates how our language can be filled with all sorts of ideas probably missing from animal communication.
I'm thinking of meaning along the lines of how Gerge Lakhoff and Mark Johnson describe metaphors as understanding one conceptual domain in terms of another (cross domain mapping), where the domains are based on neural mapping in the brain, wired up to how our perception and motor functions work.
So for example we talk about how we "grasp" new ideas, using our ability to grab objects as a helper for understanding learning a new idea.
Okay, that is not what I expected. Well done?
Meaning as use has it's root in behavior, not cognitive science. I thought I made that clear?
Now if all Witty was arguing is that we assign meaning by how we use words in certain contexts, then no problem. But if he's saying that meaning IS behavior, then that's a problem.
Not once in our exchange have you even used the word behaviour, let alone cognitive science. So no, you have in no way made that clear. But again, I see no argument here. I'll excuse myself.
So you weren't ready the rest of the thread? I mentioned behavior many times. Did you miss all the posts on Witty by me and others?
When you say language is use, how is language used...is language's primary use for communication or is its primary use as a conveyance for thought? It seems that most of us talk to ourselves all the time, and we only communicate with others some of the time. The conveyance of thought is its primary use and its communicative use is secondary
Perhaps this its the difference between us and animals who may 'talk' to others but they don't seem to talk to themselves at all, at least not in any sort of behavior we can understand.
Agreed. Good point about talking to ourselves. Language is use is something defended by the Wittgenstein followers, although the interpretation may depend on the poster in question. I take it to mean behavior, given the talk of beatles in boxes and the impossibility of private language.
This is all well and good, but it still doesn't address the realism aspect of language. The things we talk about still occur, or exist, whether we talk about them or not and that is what we mean when we talk about things. If meaning were use, then it would be incorrect to say that we talk about things. What kind of response are you trying to elicit from others when you recall your visit to Rome, or when you describe your mother, or tell them about this philosophy forum? Aren't you trying to elicit a response to the concepts the words create in their head and not just the words themselves? When you say "internet forum", are you just making sounds or do those sounds represent some real thing in the world, like this internet forum? Is an internet forum a use of words, or a real thing that people can go to and share ideas?
The word 'chair' is used to refer to some particular chair or chairs or to a generalized imagined instance. So, it would seem that its meaning does depend on its use. But then, its use also depends on its meaning, which shows that although they are codependent they are not one and the same.
Let's say that the way we point to chairs is different to the way we point to everything else. What's the difference between the word "chair" and this particular way of pointing? I wouldn't say there is one. And the point I made above still stands; we don't explain the meaning of the pointing by deferring to the thing(s) pointed to but by its use.
'Chair' can be used in a sentence where it doesn't "point at anything", for example: "What makes a chair a chair?". The use here is very different than "Will you hand me that chair". Are the meanings of 'chair' the same in both examples despite the obviously different uses?
We can do that with pointing, too. Let's say that if we use this particular way of pointing with one hand and then shake our other hand we are acknowledging that there isn't an actual chair lined up with our pointing finger, and so we are pointing to a hypothetical chair, or chairs in general.
This is a misleading question. The sentence "Will you hand me that chair" and the sentence "What makes a chair a chair?" are used differently and so mean different things.
I can't make any sense of this.
Quoting Michael
I was talking about the meaning of the word "chair", not about the meaning of different sentences it is used in.
Here, though, you're surely at a crux where Fafner is right: you are conjuring up an imaginary Wittgenstein in order to make a point of your own. 'Philosophical Investigations' is a complex book and nowhere in it do I remember these 'arguments' that you mention. One thing I'm confident he's saying is that it's difficult to have a clear overview of language, since we only have language to do it with. What you are calling 'meaning' will involve comparing one word with another, or with a group of other words, and asserting that some greater clarity results.
I felt your original question boiled down instead to 'What is a concept?' - but like others I struggle to grasp how that becomes an argument with or about Wittgenstein or meaning-is-use.
I never took Wittgenstein to be forwarding a behaviorist argument And the idea of that would be controversial.
And by referring to something with your words, that is what you mean. Just pointing a finger means one thing - referring. Pointing to a chair means referring to a chair.
Hearing or reading words creates something other than the words in the mind. This association that we develop between the word and what they refer to when we learn our native language is what the words mean.
This man that never learned a language until late in life understood meaning.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Man_Without_Words
How did he know how to take care of himself long enough to meet someone who understood his dilemma and taught him sign language? How did he or anyone else for that matter, learn a language without first being able to see or hear AND be able to make associations between things they experience (establish meaning)?
Meaning is really just a causal relationship. Why would you say or write anything unless you had what you wanted to say or write about in your head first and what you want to say or write about aren't just other words?
I'll repeat Wittgenstein again: "the meaning of a word is its use in the language". And to give it greater context, "For a large class of cases--though not for all--in which we employ the word "meaning" it can be defined thus: the meaning of a word is its use in the language."
He's certainly not denying that we can accurately say something like "a grey cloud means that it's going to rain" or "your friendship means a lot to me".
You're creating a straw-man by equivocating.
Wittgenstein would not disagree. See sections 73-74 from the Investigations that I quoted on p.3, which talk about samples: W' repeatedly makes the point that many different things other than words (such as color samples) can belong to language and be part of the symbolism (see also section 50 about the standard meter in Paris).
What is true though is that for Wittgenstein 'meaning' is not an external relation (e.g. causal) between words and things: if word 'refers' to something then that something belongs to language, or has a symbolic function as much as the word which stands for that thing.
This makes no sense. The meaning of a yellow banana is that is it ripe. It's blackness means it is rotten. We don't need language to know this. We simply need experience with yellow and black bananas.
What does it mean "pops into your head"? Surely she isn't PHYSICALLY in your head like your brain is, so in what sense do you want to say that she is "in" your head?
If you are using a color of something to represent something else, then the color itself becomes a symbol, you don't even need words for that. I don't see how your example contradicts anything that I said.
How do you know that you have a memory of your mother, and not some other woman that just looks like her? If you consider your memory in isolation from context (or 'use') then by itself it doesn't mean or represent anything.
I addressed it by pointing out that it has no bearing on what Wittgenstein said.
But you can also see the banana as yellow without knowing that it is ripe (or even knowing that it is something edible). So just seeing the banana is yellow is not sufficient to represent it as ripe.
Why stop there? Nothing would stop you from continuing on to question whether or not you even have a memory of a woman or even a memory of a word and how it is used.
Exactly. That is why I mentioned that you need experience in eating yellow and black bananas.
I don't know if he did, but that's irrelevant, because he was only talking about the meaning of words. As as I said before, you're creating a straw-man by equivocating on the word "meaning".
Again, I'll repeat exactly what he wrote: "For a large class of cases--though not for all--in which we employ the word "meaning" it can be defined thus: the meaning of a word is its use in the language."
Yeah, that's my point - your memory, or a color of something is a symbol or a representation of something else only in its use as a symbol. Something cannot acquire a symbolic meaning just by some act of magic - it can represent only as so far as it belongs to a symbolism (whatever verbal or otherwise).
Quoting Harry Hindu
This isn't sufficient either. How do you connect between the color of something and your eating it?
In my first response to you I already said that something can be a symbol without being a word, and I also said that meaning is not just "associating" words with things, so I didn't say that a verbal language is necessary for symbolizing.
Quoting Fafner
LOL. You can't have your cake and eat it too. If meaning is use, then I can use the word "meaning" in a particular way, and that is what it means. What does "meaning" mean? If I use the word "meaning" to mean an association or a reference, which many people do use the word "meaning" to mean, then that is what it means.
I agree. It seems Wittgenstein's phrase, "meaning is use" applies only to human communication using human language modified by context.
It doesn't apply to the communication of other types of signs which also have meaning, such as:
Signals
Symptoms
Indices
Icons
Fetishes
Symbols (other than words)
"Einstein originally constructed his model of the universe out of nonverbal signs, ' of visual and some of muscular type . ' As he wrote to a colleague in 1945 : 'The words or the language , as they are written or spoken, do not seem to play any role in my mechanism of thought. The psychical entities which seem to serve as elements in thought are certain signs and more or less clear images which can be "voluntarily" reproduced and combined . ' Later, ' only in a secondary stage , ' after long and hard labour to transmute his nonverbal construct into ' conventional words and other signs,' was he able to communicate it to others."
Sebeok, Thomas A. (2001). Signs: An Introduction To Semiotics. Canada: University of Toronto Press.
https://monoskop.org/images/0/07/Sebeok_Thomas_Signs_An_Introduction_to_Semiocs_2nd_ed_2001.pdf
Apparently, Einstein's thoughts contained meaning which was independent of human language and any modifying context.
Isn't he saying via experience? Via eating a number of bananas, you notice a correlation between the color and the ripeness.
Words can have more than one meaning. The word "meaning" can have more than one meaning. Wittgenstein is only talking about one of these meanings, which is why he says "For a large class of cases--though not for all--in which we employ the word "meaning" it can be defined thus: the meaning of a word is its use in the language."
You responding to this by saying that a banana being yellow means that it's ripe is like responding to the claim "to run is to move quickly with one's legs" by saying "but my fridge is running fine and it doesn't have any legs".
What dictionaries do is to replace words which the speaker doesn't know their conventional use, with words that the speaker does know how to use, because if he didn't then the dictionary would be completely useless to him.
Then how does one get to know and therefore use their first word if we need other words to tell us what another word means?
This is exactly wrong though. Dictionaries just are catalogues of word use. This is why dictionaries constantly introduce new words, and indeed, offer multiple definitions of words in some cases. They track how words are used. 'Definitions' in dictionaries track word use, not the other way around.
We don't learn how to speak by reading a dictionary. We learn by observing how others use words, by repeating them in the right situations, and by integrating this as a habit.
But there aren't an infinite number of definitions. There are a limited amount. Again, if meaning is use, then I can use any word, or any scribble for that matter, to mean anything I want. Dictionaries become irrelevant. By arguing that dictionaries define specific ways of using words, is to say that words have specific meanings and can only be used in these particular ways and not in others.
Yes, you can. You may not be very comprehensible to others, but in principle, this is exactly the case.
But we don't always need words to tell us what another word means. when a child learns his first language, he is given demonstrative explanations for words - he is shown their use.
If the reason people use words has nothing to do with how the words come to mean, then meaning isn't use.
And indeed you can do that. Who would be stopping you?
Dictionaries report consensus, popular, influential, historically important etc. usages.
The reason people use words is to communicate. How they use the words is what they communicate. You have an idea you want to communicate and if you don't use the words just right, then you end up not communicating at all.
For one, to communicate meaning as not understood in the dictionary. (Which should be obvious.)
For example, many words were used in gang culture in a way that bore no resemblance to what you would have found in the dictionary (though dictionaries have since reported some of the more popular usages). One reason that arose was so that the speech would be impenetrable to outsiders, including law enforcement.
I would be stopping myself because when I communicate, it is my intention that others understand me. If I just used any scribble to meaning anything then I wouldn't be communicating.
How would any of that amount to arguing against meaning being associated with usage?
Sure, you could stop yourself, but if you wanted to use words in some idiosyncratic way that only you understand, you could do that, too.
Again, this is irrelevant to a thesis about how words come to mean. How words come to mean, and the motivations for their employment are two entirely different issues.
But why would I do that? My point is that words are only for communicating with others. Why would I need to communicate an idea that isn't composed of words with words to myself? I would simply think it without any use of words.
But this doesn't make the color yellow itself into a symbol for ripeness. Suppose a monkey comes to expect a banana whenever it sees a yellow object. Would we say that when the monkey sees a yellow ball it believes that the ball is ripe? Or does it believe falsely that the ball is ripe banana? From the example alone it is simply not clear what is supposed to be represented by what.
There is more to a banana that just it's color. It also has a shape that isn't the shape of a ball. It also has a particular texture. It's shape, texture and color is what defines it as a banana. We have different senses that allow us to make these distinctions between yellow balls and yellow bananas.
Why would you be mentally bracketing the color yellow as if it's something independent? The idea is yellow bananas versus green or dark brown/black bananas. (Well and purple bananas etc. if something really weird is going on.)
I'm afraid I don't get your point.
Ridiculous. If meaning is use, then how words come to mean anything is how they are employed. People change the usage of words, therefore their meaning, and that word now has come to mean something else (like slang) and then used by others in that way.
You responded as if we were saying something about the color yellow (in general, regardless of where it occurs) rather than saying something about yellow bananas.
Just to interpolate, para 7 of the PI in part reads:
OK, but I don't think that it really matters whether we talk about yellow as a color, or yellow bananas in particular. I can change my example: suppose a monkey encounters a yellow banana which happens to be rotten, should we say that the monkey infers that he made a mistake about the banana being ripe, or maybe it had the a disjunctive concept that a yellow banana represents either being ripe or rotten? (in which case it didn't made a mistake). Is there a way to decide what the monkey "means" just by knowing its causal history of interactions with bananas?
However, in the quote Fafner put up, "our method of representation" seems to be mentioned as a way of understanding what we might make of "language game." That would go contrary to behaviorism. A crow, when expressing an alarm vocalization due to the arrival of a hawk, is not representing anything with its speech. Behaviorism sort of makes us out to be like birds.
Fine, but this is not sufficient to get meaning. Being able to discriminate between objects by their properties is not the same as representing them as being in this way or other. For something to symbolize something else there must exist the possibility of truth and falsehood (that is, of representing something correctly or incorrectly), and that could only make sense within a symbolic system (and again I'm not saying that it must be necessarily verbal).
No, 'representing' is only one kind of language game (in Wittgenstein's sense) but there could be many others. However if we talk about 'meaning' - in the sense of a word standing for a thing - then I think the question of representation is the central one (but of course language has many other functions other than to represent things).
Of course. So in the quote you put up, by "our method of representation," he means the language game in play when we talk about fictional things. Where is the representation exactly?
In the quote he talks about representing the length of things via the unit of meter (or colors by a color sample).
No, the means of representation is the physical meter stick itself, and W's point is that it can function as such (as "means of representation") only if it is used as a unit of measuring within a 'language game' of measuring things (e.g. where things are compared according to their length for various purposes etc.).
That seems to imply a distinction between the physical stick and the Parisian standard.
It's a curious thing. People not intimately familiar with Wittgenstein almost always interpret the slogan "meaning is use" as an endorsement of Humpty Dumpty:
But on the other hand, there's something a bit claustrophobic sometimes about LW's language-games. (2) is a dreary affair, isn't it? And Wittgensteinians (present company excluded, of course) have this way of calling people out for violating the rules of the language-game, or illicitly taking a word from the language-game it belongs to and passing it off as something else, etc. In short, treating the rules of the various language-games as prescriptive. Exactly the opposite of the casual anti-Wittgensteinian who dreads the chaos of Humpty-Dumptyism.
And then I think of a marvelous passage from Ryle about "The Bogy of Mechanism," where he describes a scientist unfamiliar with chess studying a game being played (with the players hidden from him) and figuring out the rules. When the players are revealed, "He commiserates with them upon their bondage. 'Every move that you make,' he says, 'is governed by unbreakable rules..." He explains that when he has figured out the rest of the rules, he will be able to predict their moves even better than he can now. Ryle then distinguishes, as is his wont, from a move being governed by the rules and being ordained by them.
Which brings us back to animal signaling, I should think.
Is this entire discussion just a game of words? Is philosophy a language game? Maybe thats why philosophy doesn't produce anything useful - because it's just an artful game. Science, on the other hand, provides useful meanings through simple observations and categorizations of those observations. This entire discussion seems to be about some state-of-affairs - whether language is a game or not and that meaning is use or not, not simply a use of words. It seems to me that everything you can ever say or write is either just noise or scribbles or a reference to something else, like some state of reality.
It seems to me that "language is a game" and "meaning is use" are things a p-zombie would say. They don't have the inner experience of what words refer to - of having the intent to communicate something other than words by using words. It is my idea that isnt made up of words and my will to communicate that idea which exists prior to any use of words and it is this idea and the need to express it that causes me to speak or write. As the cause of my use of language, it is the meaning of the words I use. Intent and meaning go hand-in-hand.
"I say what I mean" is how we show someone there is an accurate representation between our words and the idea in our minds that we are expressing. What I'm saying and what I'm thinking aren't at odds. I'm not lying where lying is having an idea but using words to deflect another away from what you are thinking. In this case, you would not be saying what you mean. If meanings of words were how they are used, then how do you explain a lie? You would always mean what you say by simply using words.
Again, you can never say or write anything that isnt either just sounds/scribbles or a reference to some state-of-affairs.
I'm not trying to be troublesome here, but the standard meter in Paris is not considered to be a representation of the concept of a meter. It's a standard. It's also not intended to represent the length of anything. Unless I'm misunderstanding how "representation" is being used here.
Wasn't he saying that since we can't measure the standard (because that would require a second standard), it's sort of ordained as the standard in practical use. The reality of the standard is not related to a physical object. It's basis is actually in use. He's going beyond meaning as use, here. It's reality in use.
Not too complicated. The same is true of the average abstraction, right?
I already quoted some passages from Wittgenstein where he gives an argument (especially the sections about the cube picture) against views like yours, but you however completely ignored that argument.
That would entirely depend on whether the monkey has experience with bananas for there to be a good reason, via induction, for him to assume that yellow bananas are correlated to ripeness.
If he has an extensive history of yellow banana implying "ripe," then he'll likely assume that something unusual is going on with the bananas.
If he's just learning the correlation, then he might think he made a mistake or that he's not sure what correlation, if any, there is yet.
I don't see any reason to assume that this would be any different for monkeys than it is for humans . . . so I wonder why you're posing the example in the first place. That's not really clear to me.
You can't know (by acquaintance) anyone else's meaning per se, monkey or not. You can only know the behavioral stuff they correlate with the meanings they assign.
But the stick does define what a meter is, or at least this is how it was historically (though nowadays it is defined differently, but that's irrelevant - we can just as well talk about the invented example of the 'standard sepia'). And it doesn't really matter whether you say that the meter stick represents the length of something or not, because the main point is that it is an essential instrument in the game of measuring which Wittgenstein has in mind (in which we do in fact represent the length of objects).
Quoting Mongrel
This is not what he says - there's no sense in measuring the standard because we chose to define it as a standard (or that it has been 'ordained' as you say), and not the other way round.
And what do you mean by "the reality of the standard is not related to a physical object"?
There's ideas and there's ideas. When you use the phrase "my grandmother," I can understand you without experiencing the memories you do when you say "my grandmother." And a good thing, because I cannot experience your memories. So there's something else that I can and do get, if I understand you, and that other something is the meaning of the words you speak.
So you're saying we can disregard his use of "means of representation."? Don't you agree he's saying the instrument (whether standard meter or sepia) exists because of its function or role in our language games?
This is important to me because of a chicken/egg situation I see with meaning and use of language.
Quoting Fafner
Well we can't measure it without a second standard. Can you explain what he means when he says it is and is not a meter?
Quoting Fafner
Just that the stick is a standard because we say so. There's nothing in the physicality of the stick that says "I'm a standard."
He's being cute. Obviously measuring the standard doesn't make sense. But people can still form the sentence, "The standard meter is one meter in length," so what do we say about that? Is it true or false? It's nether. The law of the excluded middle does not apply here.
It's true?
This is very strange, because you have other posters in this thread, and other threads, like unenlightened, Michael and Banno arguing along the lines that Witty did in fact mean that. Now possibly I have misunderstood their arguments. But it comes up regularly.
That's the way I took it. The conundrum dissolves when we realize that as a species, we're conjurors.
No, for it to be true you would have to have an effective procedure for determining it to be true (as in mathematics) or some idea what would count as evidence and how you could in theory at least acquire that evidence. Because there's no conceivable way to measure the standard, you're out of luck. The standard does not have a length.
I think that your story already presupposes that the monkey can understand what 'the banana is ripe' (or that it isn't) mean - but remember, what you are supposed to explain is how the monkey acquires the ability to represent the ripeness of the banana in the first place.
This is because induction requires the ability to form a hypothesis, and then use experience to confirm or disprove it. But to confirm the hypothesis that the ripeness of the banana is correlated with its color by means of repeated observation, you need to know in advance (before you start observing) what it would be for a banana to be either ripe or not ripe (otherwise how could you tell whether your hypothesis was confirmed or not?); but how can you know that from your experience unless you already have some way of symbolically representing the state of the ripeness of the banana?
Of course you can measure the meter stick by some other units, but in this case it will be no longer treated as a standard of length.
Yeah it's something else now. But if the standard's something else, the thing in Paris is just a stick. (A really nice stick.)
If that's what you're asking, I had no idea. You weren't at all clear about that.
The monkey has that ability because it has a brain--a brain that's relatively similar in construction to human brains, and this is one of the primary ways that brains work.
Re the rest of your comment, you simply experience the color being such and such way and the banana tasting such and such way. You don't need a "hypothesis" for that, really, at least not at all in a formal way. To connect more than one occasion, you do need memory. Then on subsequent occasions, you notice that the same thing is the case, plus you have occasions where you notice that both the color is different and the taste (and texture) are different.
(I'm still not clear on what, in context, is the point is of going through all of this)
No, that's not what I'm saying. "means of representation" means something like an aid or an instrument of representation, and this is compatible with saying that the stick itself doesn't represent anything.
Quoting Mongrel
If by that you mean "why did we build the standard meter?" then yes, obviously it was created for this particular purpose.
Quoting Mongrel
Because we can't measure the stick with itself, or at least not in the sense in which we can measure tables with the stick, so it is senseless to say either that it is a meter or that it isn't a meter long because being or not being a meter long is determined by a procedure of comparison with the stick which we cannot apply to the stick itself.
Yep. He's talking about the creative power of language. Duck/rabbit style. We make the stick a standard by comparing stuff to it. See? He's talking about meaning and existence simultaneously.
You could measure it with a ruler that has been verified to be a meter in length.
I was addressing something that Harry Hindu said (and I assumed that you meant to defend his claim). He said: "the meaning of a yellow banana is that is it ripe. It's blackness means it is rotten. We don't need language to know this", and this is the claim that I was criticizing. Was your story meant to illustrate this or something else?
Good point. But the meaning of length itself does not come from using an arbitrary standard, like a stick, or someone's foot. Length is innate to us, like time and space. We don't create the meaning for those things.
My argument is that meaning and language games are built up from fundamental categories of thought that have to exist, or there is no language. Sure, a stick acquires the meaning of standard length by it's use, but length itself does not.
Therefore, meaning can't ONLY be use.
I wouldn't use the word "meaning" there. I commented on this earlier, although I didn't address that comment to you. I'm fine with saying that the yellow skin implies that it's ripe, although implication there is more of a correlation. I'd agree with him that language isn't necessary to know this, although I'd note that I'm using language in a more narrow sense there. If someone is using "language" so broadly that any mental representation counts as language, then that would be a different issue.
Yes, but it is a somewhat different issue that has to do with that quote from Plato. I only posted this passage to illustrate one particular idea (that things other than words can belong to language or a symbolic system), but there are some other questions that Wittgenstein wanted to address in this passage.
But notice we don't usually ask what a concept means. If we do, we're talking about its implications, not meaning as in: "What does that hieroglyph mean?"
My understanding is that Witt noticed that rule-following can't account for the entirety of communication because there has to be some source of normativity outside the system of rules. He looked to human interaction to find that source. You're saying we should look inward to find it.
OK. Cool, thanks.
I would dispute this interpretation.
Both, of course. Human interaction accounts for how we assign meaning. Cognition accounts for how we have concepts at all, and why human language differs from animal signalling.
Well, it's more complicated than that, because human interaction can result in combining concepts and coming up with new metaphors and relations and what not. So yeah, he's right about that.
But the reason humans can do that is cognitive, not behavioral or social. And for humans to do that, there has to be a conceptual apparatus. So along the lines of what Chomsky argued.
Maybe your buddy here would be Quine, not Chomsky. Quine laid out an impressive argument indicating that the ability to apply logic to new situations has to be apriori know-how.
BTW.. do you know much about Carnap?
Really? I gleaned it from Soames (which is about as far as my interest in Witt has ever taken me... just historical.) What do you think is wrong about it?
Where did he say this?
Well that explains it, lol
The first point is that the issue of communication is peripheral at best with respect to the rule-following problem. Secondly, he didn't think that there is anything external that you can add to any rule in order to make it work (like human interaction), rather his point is that we have to radically rethink our philosophical preconceptions about what rules or meaning must be like (such as a picture of a rule that determines its own application all in advance and in a vacuum). So his idea is that once we learn how to look at rules in the right sort of way (that is, not distorted by some philosophical requirements) the ordinary phenomena of rule-following will cease to appear as something mysterious that stands in need for a philosophical explanation (my reading here is mainly due to Cora Diamond and John McDowell - if you wish to read more on this topic).
What way is that?
Actually I changed my mind while I was cutting the grass. You were absolutely right.
It occurred to me that we could just define the length of the standard meter as 1, and make the definition of "length of an object" by cases (1 if you're the standard meter, otherwise the result you get when comparing to the standard meter). And I thought to myself, as long as you're okay saying there's this one object that has its length differently, then this is a pretty natural thing to do for standards like this ... because that's exactly what we already did. Duh.
The standard meter in Paris, when LW wrote, was one meter long by definition. You can't show that it's one meter by measuring, but you can show it by providing evidence that this particular object is the standard meter.
On the contrary, he urges his reader to think hard about all sorts of different cases and examples of the sort that usually are ignored in philosophy, which he thinks is the only way to clarify philosophical difficulties. So he says that actually philosophy is the place where we turn our brains off - we have in mind simplistic pictures of how things should be in reality, but we fail to think about the details of the application of these pictures to reality.
You really should read the book though, I can't really summarize it for you. One must go through the text by himself to really see the force of his reasoning.
OK I see what you mean, but I wouldn't put the point he is making in terms of apriori knowledge, because he wants to argue in the essay only that definitions in some sense presuppose logic, and thus logic cannot be conventionally defined, but this is a weaker claim than saying it is "apriori knowledge" (he famously argued in his "Two Dogmas of Empricism" that even logic is not apriori, that even the rules of logic are not in principle immune from revision if some weird sort of experience comes along).
edit: I noticed now that you say "apriori know-how" and not simply "knowledge" (which by itself is fine ascribing to Quine), though I'm not sure what does "a priori" mean in this context.
Yeah but that claim haunted him the rest of his career, and in later works he gets closer and closer to saying you just never revise the laws of thought.
But it's simply not true that the 1 meter stick has no length. It most certainly has a physical length, and can be measured by all sorts of means, including non-arbitrary ones found in nature.
That we decided it was a unit of 1 meter is arbitrary. That it is a definite length (so many hydrogen atoms or Plank lengths) is not arbitrary at all.
(Answered before your edit. Yeah that's how we do it now, I think.)
I get that 1 meter is assigned to the length of a particular stick to create a standard. I disagree that the standard stick has no length. It has a physical length. It's extended in space.
If you wish to define the standard meter as meaning "2 units of 1 meter" then Wittgenstein would say that what you have done is not described the physical length of the stick as an empirical proposition, but you gave a rule for how to use the stick when comparing it with other objects for describing their length.
The spatial extension of the stick (along a certain dimension) determines its length. How we measure it is a separate matter.
Of course it has a physical length, but this claim has to be distinguished from saying what exactly its length is in some unites of measurement.
Right. So tying it back into what I've been trying to argue, the concept of length is not something created as part of a language game. It's something we cognate (perceive?) about objects. How we make use of length to measure things is part of language games.
PI 251
That has an undeniable ring of plausibility to it, but I wonder whether it's an empirical claim or a logical one.
For comparison, I think the war over the Whorf-Sapir hypothesis and color words is still raging. See this wikipedia article. The nutshell would be something like this: many languages do not have separate words for what we call "blue" and "green" (just as an example); can native speakers of those languages distinguish blue from green? Common sense says so, and I tend to agree, but the research goes on.
I think that what you say is actually less helpful. Saying that the standard meter is "1 meter long" really says nothing about the use of the stick as a unit of measurement, because it appears like an empirical statement about the length of the stick (analogous to "the table is 1 meter long") which could easily lead into confusion. For this reason Wittgenstein says that its length is neither so that we will not treat the proposition as a description of the stick itself, but rather look at its use in the system of measurement.
Well, to make things more complicated, the use of language probably shapes the brain of those language speakers.
So if Whorf-Sapir is correct, then telling blue from green would be an ability developed by having words that pick out the difference. There was a Radio Lab episode on color making that very argument, and then one on Shakespear coining new terms as an example of one Researcher's claims that language connects different parts of the brain.
I guess that's a point in favor of language is use, but with a neural underpinning.
Of course the concept of 'length' is something the we have created. It really doesn't make sense to 'perceive' a length in an object as an empirical discovery, and for a simple reason: you must already have the concept of length in order to perceive something as having a length, otherwise how could you know that what you are perceiving is 'length' and not some other property? (is it merely an hypothesis that when you are seeing the length of a table, you are not mistaking it for its color? And if this question sounds like nonsense, then the claim that we have 'discovered' empirically that objects have a length is also nonsense.)
but this is not to say that we 'decide' or it is 'up to us' whether this or that object is so and so meters long - once we decide what would count as being '1 meter long' then experience can teach us what things are and what things aren't this length.
I would argues this is innate, not something language communities create. Some ability for making sense of perception must exist for language to employ concepts. And meaning would in part be built out of that.
That's why I reference Kant earlier, and how he showed that certain categories of thought were necessary to make sense out of the noise of sense impressions. Empiricism can't get going without that.
And this also explains why I'm partial to meaning-as-use. Having a concept isn't (always) about having some mental image but about having an inner monologue.
Here's the link for benighted souls that don't get the reference.
The same problem arises for innate concepts as well. How do you know that the concept of length is to be applied to the length of the table and not to its color or weight? Do we hear a voice in our heads that tells us that this is how we must think about the table? And besides, is it merely a coincidence that we happen to be born with the 'right' concepts to describe reality? Is it conceivable that someone could be born (as a result of a mutation or whatever) with the WRONG sorts of concepts? Do we have a method for checking this?
But I'm not arguing for the innateness of concepts.
Evolution would weed out concepts too out of sync with the environment. But it's probably more of an ability to form and build upon fundamental concepts, such as space, time, other minds, etc, which allows for a great deal of flexibility.
But I'm asking what would it mean for our concepts to be out of sync with reality? A concept is simply not something that you can either get right or wrong, so all this talk just doesn't make sense.
Perhaps, but what Wittgenstein clearly saw (and perhaps Kant didn't) is that innateness or aprioricity cannot make something into a concept, but instead we should consider its use, and so having a concept is not a matter of psychology, as if it is something that we can find ourselves born with (and I think that Kant already understood this); but rather concepts is something the we shape and create, and they cannot be forced on us from 'outside' (whether by experience or innate nature), because otherwise they would cease to be concepts in the logical sense and will be nothing more then behavioral instincts.
So it's a sociological explanation of meaning.
Not quite. When it is 'decided' that this and that would count as 'a length of an object' then it's not merely a claim about the society (though it certainly in some sense is), but also a claim about how objects are (say) measured, which by itself has nothing to do with sociology but the things in the world.
I don't think I disagree with anything here-- maybe-- but I think you mustn't take the further step of saying you can't perceive the length of an object without having the concept of length. You may not perceive it as a length, as something falling under a concept, but critters without concepts perceive things, know things, etc.
Well it depends on what sorts of creatures we are talking about (and there is a sense of 'perceiving' which is not conceptual), but why shouldn't we say that the more sophisticated creatures do have concepts despite lacking language?
I can't help feeling it's an empirical question, and that bothers me. I'd rather be clearer on what connection there is between language and concept. I can imagine arguing several different positions easily.
(I remember reading that he told his pupil Rhees that the Investigations is a book about logic as much as the Tractatus).
As I read the history, and I'm not quite an expert, one of the things that happens in the LW and immediately post-LW era is the rise of the Oxford school, "ordinary language" philosophy. Despite the considerable differences, there's some overlap to sort out. What I find really interesting is what happened to OLP. Austin, Strawson, and Grice--much as they fought among themselves--are all taken up by linguists building out the new sub-specialty of pragmatics. As a school of philosophy, OLP seems just to disappear, but what actually happened is that it decamped to another department. There's stuff in Wittgenstein that you can also see as reaching for a field of pragmatics that doesn't exist yet, so he has to work really hard to show what he's getting at. And this is still a kind of analysis, absolutely.
We can think about things, and that probably doesn't require language; thinking about things just is meaning. The meanings of words and sentences reflect that "thinking about things".
The contradiction arises because it's implicit that the speaker who states it's raining is the same speaker who states his belief that it's raining and it's assumed that a speaker can only assert beliefs even should he proclaim his statement as truth.
Contextually and implicitely you're saying "I believe it is raining but I don't believe it's raining," so you have a direct logical contradiction.
A performative contradiction (e.g. " I am dead" or "I ate my mouth") states an impossible performance. I cannot tell you I'm dead because death eliminates speech. I can't eat my mouth because my mouth does the eating.
The raining example you gave is 2 seperate propositions, and of a different form than my examples above.
Quoting Hanover
Shouldn't you be claiming that "It's raining but I believe that it is not raining" is equivalent to ""I believe it's raining and I believe I believe that it is not raining"? Then where is the direct logical contradiction?
"It's raining" is not equivalent to "I believe it's raining," nor does the former imply the latter, but arguably the former conversationally implicates the latter. What's odd here is that the implicature is apparently not cancelable. I honestly don't know what conclusion to draw from that.
If that were the case then if I believe that it is raining then my claim "it is raining" would be true, even if it isn't raining. That doesn't seem right. My claim is true only if it is raining.
Perhaps I wasn't clear with what I said. The proposition "it is raining but I believe that it is not raining" is not a logical contradiction, but the speech act is contradictory (in the sense that telling someone that you don't want to hurt them whilst at the same time stabbing them is contradictory). "Performative contradiction" seemed like an appropriate term for this, but I now see that it has a differently defined use already.
The complexity of a language without meaningful marks is severely limited.
To talk about an animals' language without considering the differences between thought/belief and thinking about thought/belief is to aim quite precisely at quite the wrong target.
So I wonder what Moore's paradox looks like with the factive verb: "It's raining but I don't know it's raining." As before we treated "It's raining" as implicating belief, do we also take "It's raining" to implicate a claim to know it's raining?
Whereas, a concept is an adventitious or factitious idea which denotes a class and specifies its attributes.
Concepts (e.g., categorisation) can be categorised (i.e., considered to be a member of other categories, such as "psychological functions").
Mental modelling is the cognitive and/or intuitive process of constructing a set of related concepts, arranged to represent a composite concept or system.
Mental modelling may be verbal and/or nonverbal.
I have already stated that "meaning" is the causal relationship between causes and their effects. Minds, which are just sensory information processing systems, are able to establish associations with different experiences. Hearing a voice speak is no different than hearing the waves of the ocean. It's all just noise until you establish some link, or association, with some cause of hearing some thing. Once I hear and see the waves crash, or a person speak, then I'm able to establish to a connection between the sounds and what I see.
Tree rings in a tree stump mean the age of the tree, and this isn't the result of some magical property or illusion. The tree rings are the result of how the tree grows throughout the year. The tree rings are the effect of how the tree grows which is why tree rings mean the age of the tree and it would still mean the age of the tree if no one was there to look at the tree rings.
We all believe the world is how we see it, which is why "seeing is believing" is a common phrase. Seeing something makes us think that is how some thing actually is, or exists. We seem to instinctively think that the wave isn't the sound we hear, but the thing we see, and being that the sound occurs from the direction of the thing we see, we establish an association between the sound and the visual. This is the exact same way we learn language. This is why teachers show a word and a picture so students can easily associate the word with the thing - a visual thing. Because we are visual creatures, and receive most of our information visually, most of our words are visual terms.
I keep making the argument that every time you write or say anything you are simply making noises or referring to some state of affairs. No one has yet been able to prove otherwise. All they do is say it is irrelevant to "meaning is use", or that I don't know what I'm objecting too. All these things they say is still a reference to some state-of-affairs, not some use of words, and still don't seem to understand that they continue to prove my point, not theirs. What you and the others on your side seem to think is that is all there is to language - simply using words. But that just can't be because how is it that we lie and say things we don't mean? How is it that when you simply use words but don't refer to anything with them, your words become useless and meaningless?
I don't understand what you mean by this. Perhaps you could explain the difference between saying to me "the cat is on the mat" and not referring to anything and saying to me "the cat is on the mat" and referring to something.
A handshake can be relevant or irrelevant, but there isn't anything more to it than its use.
How is that NOT referring to anything? Are you not saying that there is an actual cat ON an actual mat? Is not your visual of a cat on a mat a visual of a cat on a mat, not a visual of scribbles on a screen and that is what the words on the screen refer to? That is the visual I got when reading your words. Your words were simply a temporary replacement for the visual of a cat on a mat in order for you to communicate that there was a cat on the mat. If I were there looking at the cat on the mat with you and you say that, wouldn't it be redundant? It is redundant because communicating is simply sharing information about some state-of-affairs, and if I already see the cat on the mat, saying so would just be a waste of breath.
I don't see how this addresses my question. You said that we can use words but not refer to anything. So how can one use the words "the cat is on the mat" and not refer to anything, and how does this differ from using the words "the cat is on the mat" and referring to something?
So you accept that an expression can be relevant or irrelevant even if there's nothing more to it than its use. If that is true of a handshake, then why not also of a word?
When I said that we can use words to not refer to anything, I meant like this: "shoes make donkeys beat black" Does that make any sense to you? Is that meaningful? If simply using words creates meaning, then that string of words would mean something, but it doesn't - not even to myself the user of the words! It's simply a string of gibberish. You may even ask, "what do you mean?" You may even attempt to imbue meaning into the phrase by trying to get at what the words are referring to. Maybe the donkeys and black are two different soccer teams and the donkeys' shoes are better than the blacks, which is why the blacks get beat. In other words, meaning didn't come from my use of words, they come from you establishing a reference between the words and some real event or thing in the world.
You simply can't help yourself from using words to point to states-of-affairs. Yes, we use words, but the meaning doesn't lie in your use of words. It lies in the relationship between the state-of-affairs and the words you use to refer to that state-of-affairs.
And I keep pointing out that if meaning were use then we could never say what we don't mean. We could never lie. But everyone on your side seems to ignore that.
This shows that you don't understand meaning-as-use. Wittgenstein wasn't saying that simply speaking any old sounds makes it the case that one has uttered meaningful words.
Dancing is just the movement of one's body, but that doesn't mean that any movement of one's body is a dance.
I haven't read every post in this thread, sometimes it's moving pretty fast, but what did you give as an example for that?
Was it something like (to use our banana example again) pointing at a banana and thinking that it's yellow, but saying, "That is blue"?
The thing there, though, is that you're not really personally using "blue" for that color. You're using "yellow" but just saying "blue" for whatever reason you've decided to say "blue" instead. (Maybe just for this example.) In other words, you're thinking "That's yellow but I'm going to say that it's blue"--thus you're using "yellow" for that color.
Now, someone who hears you will either say, "What? You're crazy, that's not blue! It's yellow"--further cementing that they're using "yellow" for that color. Or maybe it's a really young kid who doesn't know his/her color terms well yet. In which case they might start calling it "blue" instead.
None of that goes against meaning hinging on use, really. It's just that maybe you're trying to squeeze what counts or doesn't count as "use" into some unusually narrow idea. "Use" isn't normaly limited to "utterance."
Meaning cannot be a causal relation. If X means Y because Y causes X (X being some mental state in our heads, or whatever you like), then you can't know that X means Y, since causality is something that can only be known through experience, but you cannot learn from experience that Y causes X, unless you already know the meaning of Y, so you get a circle here (in other words, you already need a language that can represent the causes of your mental states in order to know them, but if this is the case, then you cannot know what means what since knowing the causes of your representations requires a prior ability to represent them).
Quoting Harry Hindu
This is simply not true. What about false sentences or negative truths? They don't 'refer' to any states of affair by their very nature. For example: "Bernie Sanders is the president of the united states" (the sentence is false but meaningful despite the non-existence of the state of affairs which it represents), and "Bernie Sanders in not the president of the united states" (which is true and meaningful, despite again the non-existence of the state of affairs which it describes).
Sure, but this has no bearing on use-theory. Or if you think it does, then you don't understand what it entails. Which seems pretty clear from your posts here.
I don't agree with his view--I would say that meaning is a mental association, but I wouldn't frame it as anything about causality--but I don't understand this objection to his view. If meaning is causality on his view, why would he have to know the casuality of Y in order to know that Y causes X?
Let's say that Y is the wind and X is a paper blowing off of a table outside. The wind causes the paper to blow off the table outside. So if that's what meaning is--the meaning of the wind is that is causes the paper to blow off the table outside, then why would you have to know what causes the wind to know this?
We ignore it because you don't understand the view that you try to attack, and therefore your arguments simply don't make any sense.
The 'use' conception of language doesn't equate between meaning something (or sincerely believing it) and saying it out loud (therefore you can have the two at the same time). This argument shows that you simply don't understand what the position even mean.
This is because causes cannot be inferred apriori from their effects, but only established by empirical observation (as Hume has thought us). So if a certain event in the world Y causes a mental state in your mind X, you can't know what causes your mental state without observing the causal regularities which obtain between your mental states and events in the world. But if this is the case, then you already must have a way of identifying the relevant cause Y in order to know that it causes X; and if so, then your ability to represent Y must be independent of your knowing what causes your mental state X (either this, or meaning is inscrutable: you simply cannot know anything about the meaning of your mental states).
Quoting Terrapin Station
No that's not what I said. In my example X (the paper blowing off the table) means Y (there is wind) just in case Y causes X, and so it doesn't require knowing what causes Y.
I have no idea what that's saying really. What are "the causal regularities which obtain between X and events in the world?"
Why wouldn't simply repeated observations of Y being antecedently correlated with X be enough?
On a view that meaning is causality, what does mentally representing Y have to do with meaning?
Maybe if you give an example instead of just using variables.
Quoting Fafner
Okay, but needing to know what causes Y seemed to be your objection to his argument. So if you don't need to know that then I don't see any objection.
Yeah I meant something like that. Of course in actual science there are many complications when it comes to determining that two phenomena are causally related, but the general idea is that to know that X causes Y it is at least necessary (though probably not sufficient in most cases) to know that Y always follows X, all things being equal.
Quoting Terrapin Station
He was, quote "I have already stated that "meaning" is the causal relationship between causes and their effects".
Quoting Terrapin Station
It really doesn't matter how you call it; you can replace 'represent' by 'mean' without affecting my argument (though the concept of representation (or even that of reference) is much clearer in my opinion than meaning).
Quoting Terrapin Station
No it wasn't, where did I say this? All I said is that we need to know that a causal relation obtains between Y and X.
But you're not explaining your objection to that I can understand it. Take my example. If you say that meaning is causality, you can't know that the paper blowing off the table means that there is wind because . . . ? The objection can't be that you can't know that without observing the correlation between the wind and the paper, because that's part of the theory. You make those sorts of observations and then you arrive at the meaning. Your objection seems to be something about the wind, but I don't know what about it.
What theory?
That would be part of the theory that meaning is the same as causality.
Could you explain your objection clearly?
I don't see how it is relevant to your objection. You wrote:
Quoting Terrapin Station
But the mere fact that the theory analyzes meaning in casual terms doesn't mean that you are entitled to simply assume that we somehow know the casual relations between phenomena in advance, because clearly knowing what causes what is an empirical matter, and therefore you need observations - you can't have this for free.
Quoting Terrapin Station
First let's see what premises you don't agree with. I can't really formulate it more clearly than I already did.
It seems to me like what I wrote is very straightforward. If meaning is causality, the way you know meaning is by making observations. That would be part of the theory. So no one would be saying that you know causality a priori. I don't know where you'd even be getting that idea from.
Quoting Fafner
I'm not even clear on what your objection is in the first place. So it's difficult to tell you a premise I don't accept.
Someone says that meaning is causality.
And in a case like a paper getting "swept" off of a table meaning that there's wind, which is known because of empirical observations in the past, you'd argue that meaning can't be causality in that case because_______?
It seemed like you were saying something about what you'd be required to know about the wind, but I was very confused just what your objection was.
But I just quoted you where you contradict what you just said "The objection can't be that you can't know that without observing the correlation between the wind and the paper" - so can I object on this ground or not? Which way is it?
What in the world?? We are having serious communication problems.
It wouldn't make any sense to object based on observations being necessary, because the theory would be saying that we know causality based on observations.
Because to know empirically that the wind causes the paper to move you must first be able to observe the wind, and being able to observe the wind means that you can identify it as a wind; and if you can identify something as a particular thing (as opposed to something else), it means that you can mean it/represent it/refer to it through language or somehow in your thoughts. Thus we get into a circle:
1. Meaning can only be established by observation (since meaning=causality, and causality is an apostriori disclosable relation).
2. Observation depends on meaning (as I explained above).
3. But you cannot know the meaning of anything prior to observation (from (1))
4. So you cannot make observations (from (2) + (3)).
5. Therefore you cannot ever know what you mean by anything (or premise (1) is false).
I hope the argument is clearer now.
The problem with this is that representation, reference through language, etc. is not at all meaning on a theory where meaning is causality.
"objecting based on ..." simply means that you are using something as a premise in your argument, and since it is true (and you seem to accept it) that we know causality based on observation, then there's nothing illegitimate in basing my objection on this premise.
I use the terms interchangeably so it doesn't matter.
Representation is causality on your view you're saying?
Say that you take this series of symbols "&^#" to represent the sound "flurf."
Where would causality enter into that?
No, because I don't accept the casual analysis. I'm saying that if you define representation in casual terms, then you are in trouble (but the same argument applies to meaning if you don't like representation).
Are you asking me? It's not my theory. Ask the op.
But it's not defining "representation in causal terms." It's saying that meaning IS causality and that meaning is NOT mere representation.
I get what you're doing now. You're thinking of meaning in the way that you usually think of meaning--so that representation counts, for example, and then you're seeing the theory as attempting to say that representation (and everything else you take meaning to usually be) is somehow causality.
But I don't think it's saying that. I think it's rather saying that meaning is causality in the way that you usually think of causality, and that it's not the same thing as representation.
So if having a representation of something--like the wind--isn't having causal information about the wind, then on this view, we're not talking about meaning (when we have a representation of the wind), we're simply talking about representation, and representation isn't meaning. Meaning is causality.
But you can't say that meaning is synonymous with causality, because that will make your claim vacuous (then you will be saying in effect that causality means causality - a claim hardly worth defending). So in order to give an informative or substantive philosophical analysis of a given concept, your analysis must satisfy some pre-theoretical desiderata, which means that you first got to assume that the concept you want to analyze behaves in such and such ways (something that even people who don't agree with your analysis are likely to accept), and then show how your analysis supposed to explain why it behaves thus; otherwise you will not be offering an analysis of an existing concept (or an explanation of a phenomena) but just a pointless stipulation about words.
So in our case, I think the plausible desiderata for the concept of 'meaning' is that it involves things like representation or reference, but even if I'm wrong about this, the point is that you must assume something about the thing which you analyze before you actually offer the analysis, otherwise it will not be an analysis of anything but an arbitrary stipulation. (another strategy is to simply deny that anything in the world actually satisfies the pre-theoretical desiderata for a given concept - which in our cases will be do deny that there is such thing as 'meaning', but I don't think that this is what the op meant).
(also I'm not assuming that my account of analysis is without problems - there's the well known "paradox of analysis" - but at least this is how typically most theories or explanations proceed in the philosophical literature, and therefore I would expect from anyone who offers an analysis of a concept or an explanation to at least accept something like this framework as a background for discussion)
Sure you can say that meaning is synonymous with causality, and that's what I believe it's saying.
That's not saying that "causality means causality." Because under this view, "means" doesn't denote identity or synonymy.
A person claiming this can be claiming that the normal concept is misconceived, or that people have what meaning is wrong, etc. It doesn't have to conform to the normal concept. They might feel that the normal concept is in the ballpark, but that it's not quite right, and that realizing that meaning is just causality, synonymously, does get it right, and if folks would realize this, confusion about what meaning is would disappear.
You could feel that this makes it uninteresting or not worth bothering with, but why should the person forwarding the view that meaning and casuality are synonymous care that you feel that way? It's not as if what's the case in the world is determined by whether you like a particular way of approaching philosophy or not, or whether it's the conventional way.
It doesn't change my point. Synonymy is a trivial thing however you understand it - it doesn't prove anything if you substitute one word for another (whether 'substitute' means identity, or "sameness of meaning" or whatever).
Quoting Terrapin Station
As I said, in this case, it would be an entirely different discussion. But don't pretend to offer an analysis of something if what you really mean is to deny the existence of that thing.
Right, so it's a trivial thing and it doesn't prove anything. Well, so what? Why would you be taking anyone to be trying to prove anything anyway?
Quoting Fafner
Well, they'd be offering an analysis of the thing per what's correct about it in their view, and cutting off the stuff they think is incorrect.
If you want to persuade other people (and not just talk with yourself), then you ought to care about what they think and believe in, and attempt to present your views in such a way that they would find them plausible from their own perspective. Otherwise why should you bother with arguments in the first place? (or write anything on a forum for that matter). If someone is happy and satisfied with his own definitions and doesn't care about what others think, then he shouldn't bother other people with his 'ideas' in the first place.
A=A is not a correct analysis of A, because it is not an analysis of anything, but a pointless repetition of the same sign.
Because no one is infallible, and you can learn a great deal by talking and trying to persuade other people. Unless of course you assume in advance that you must be right about everything.
Personally, I participate on forums to share my views, not to persuade other people--which I think is a pointless, futile thing to do on message boards like this, anyway, because everyone treats them like they're at the Monty Python Argument Clinic.
I think it's worthwhile and interesting to learn something about what other people think, simply because they're other people who think different things than I do. I inquire about persons' views because I want to better understand what they think, why they think it, etc. And I operate under the assumption that that's what other people are interested in, too. I know that's not what everyone is interested in, but I prefer to operate under that assumption. This is also largely what attracted me to philosophy in general in the first place. I ran into a lot of people thinking what seemed to me to be very strange things, and that fascinated me. I wanted to learn more about what they thought and why, because it was so unusual to me.
I think it's amusing that if what was meant was that meaning was synonymous with causality (more or less), that you're misunderstanding of that is something you'd parse as the other guys' fault, because he's supposed to cater to what you want him to be doing. Hahaha.
Right. But in a case like this, it's not the same sign, and you certainly hadn't considered the view of meaning being synonymous with causality before.
It's not that either you try to prove things or you believe that you are infallible, haha. Talk about a false dichotomy.
Your views will evolve simply by going through the process of trying to explain them to others, by the way.
Which is precisely what I said...
It doesn't matter if this is not the same sign in this context. If "A=B" means something like "whenever the sign 'A' occurs you can interchange it with the sign 'B'", then "A=B" becomes equivalent to to saying that "A=A".
Quoting Terrapin Station
It's not a 'view' about anything, it's just an arbitrary stipulation which doesn't achieve anything.
Quoting Michael
Yet, any movement of one's body IS a dance if one intends it to be a dance. Again, intention comes into play, as with using words. It is your intent that a listener or reader attempts to get at as the cause of their speaking or writing. Why are they saying what they are saying? What is it that they mean (intend)? We often use "mean" and "intend" interchangeably.
What if I have the intention to mislead? I could tell someone on the phone that these bananas here are blue. They would then picture blue bananas in their head, not yellow ones, all as a result of my intent to mislead. If I never intended to mislead, the person on the phone would have never had a visual of blue bananas.
I keep hearing that my arguments are a straw-man because of how I'm using "use". (Go figure). If they would care to define "use" in such a way that makes sense in the use of words is consistent with it's other uses, I'm open-minded.
There's a thing called 'the principle of charity', which says that you ought to try interpret other people's words in the most plausible or charitable way that you possibly can, before you jump to the conclusion that they must be saying something totally absurd or plainly false (even if they do sometimes say such things).
No, it's simply that it's a particular kind of use.
Perhaps, but the dance itself is the movement, not the intention. Dances happen on the dance floor, not in your head.
And for me to understand what you're saying, it must be that the meaning of your words is publicly accessible. Your intentions aren't. We're not mind-readers. So for communication to work, meaning must be found in the things that we actually see and hear and feel. That you intend to achieve some end doesn't refute this.
Wrong. We establish causal relations all the time that we never experience, and we make good predictions from this knowledge often. What does a crime scene investigator do if not creating an explanation of causes of the effects of the crime scene - all without having been an eye-witness to the crime itself? This fingerprint along with this DNA means that this person was at the crime scene when it happened. We can predict behaviors of things we never experienced based on similarities with things of a similar kind.
Quoting Fafner
How is "Bernie Sanders is the president of the united states" meaningful, or useful?
Explanation isn't the same this as persuasion or "attempt to prove."
That's certainly the case logically once one realizes the identity (or assumes it for the sake of argument or understanding the view). But they're not the same semantically, especially if one has never considered the identity.
Quoting Fafner
Sure it is. That A and B are identical is a view, just like that they're not is a view.Quoting Fafner
Haha--piling arrogance on top of arrogance. Now not only do you expect them to be conversing in the way you prefer or it's their fault, but the way you prefer is the most charitable way to interpret something, because it's the most reasonable way to do things rather than being totally absurd or plainly false.
I don't know why that changes anything. The idea with the scenario with the kid that I presented would be an intent to mislead (at least as a joke for a minute). It's still not the case that you're using "blue" to refer to "that color" and neither would the person on the phone be in that situation.
Maybe you should stop thinking "use" is a synonym for "emit" and then a lot of this would seem less idiotic to you.
Yeah, like using a tool. You use a tool to accomplish a goal, which requires intent. Again, the tool is only part of the process so it would be wrong to say that the tool itself and how it is used is the meaning when the tool wouldn't be used at all if intent didn't precede the use.
Quoting Michael
Wrong. You can dance anywhere you want - all you need is the intent. You can imagine you are dancing in your head.
Quoting Michael
What is publicly accessible is the world we share and that is what we are talking about when we use language - or meaningful, useful words.
But you said earlier that synonymy is not sameness of meaning, so you can't appeal to semantics here.
Quoting Terrapin Station
If A and B are identical, it means that there is only one thing and not two - so there is no 'it' that you can ask about whether it is identical or not, and so there's nothing to affirm or deny.
Neither the intention nor the goal is the act of hammering. Neither the intention nor the goal is the meaning of the word.
An imagined dance isn't a dance. A dance is the movement of the body, not your intention or your goal. The meaning of a word is its use, not your intention or your goal.
The meaning of a word must be publicly accessible if we are to understand each other. Therefore the meaning of a word can't be your intention or your goal.
Wrong. The goal is always in mind while using the tool. It is what keeps you using the tool, at least until the goal was accomplished. This is why we hate people who repeat themselves. We get the idea, shut up already.
Quoting Michael
As I said, you wouldn't keep dancing if you didn't intend to keep dancing.
Quoting Michael
If all we needed was a publicly accessible word catalog, then there would never be misunderstandings. When you don't understand what someone says or writes, it is the speaker or writer's intentions you aren't getting.
He need not to be a witness to the crime, but he must know that a general rule of the form "if such and such evidence exist in the crime scene then probably a crime of type x took place" is true, and my point is that this principle is something that you do need experience to know it's truth.
Let's take your example of DNA.
1. Every person in the world has a unique DNA fingerprint.
2. The DNA sample collected in the crime scene matches the genetic profile of X.
3. Therefore, X must've been present at the crime scene.
Now, my point is that you can infer (3) from (2) only if you know that (1) is true, but you can't know it apriori since (1) is a hypotheses that could be known only via experience (it could've been false - it is false in the case of some insects for example).
Quoting Harry Hindu
But it is meaningful. (I rest my case)
Synonymy is not sameness of meaning on a view that has meaning as synonymous with causality.
My view isn't that meaning is synonymous with causality. (I explained that at the start of this subdiscussion.)
When I wrote "But they're not the same semantically", I was giving my view.
Right. And you can have a view that A and B are identical as well as a view that they are not.
A practical example:
"The man we saw from a distance in the train station was Jones." ("The man we saw from a distance in the train station" is identical to "Jones.")
versus
"No he wasn't--the man we saw from a distance in the train station wasn't Jones." ("The man we saw from a distance in the train station" is not identical to "Jones.")
Those are two different views.
If "The man we saw from a distance in the train station" is identical to "Jones" then indeed, we're not talking about two things, just one. Otherwise we're talking about two things.
How have you experienced every person on the world has a unique DNA fingerprint other than reading that to be the case by in a science journal or something like that? A lot of our knowledge is from reading books or watching documentaries, not by direct experience. Is what we read more wrong than what we subjectively experience and take as truth?
Quoting Fafner
Sure, if the meaning of your words is to make me picture Bernie Sanders in the White House, even though he isn't. Your words refer to the image of Bernie being President.
It's the same in the respect that there's an intent to deceive.
Quoting Harry Hindu
You're both using "yellow" and "blue" to refer to the same colors. You're not actually using "blue" to refer to yellow. Because you're not thinking of "blue" as the name of "that color." You're thinking of "blue" as blue and also thinking, "I'm going to deceive this person so that they think these yellow bananas are blue."
OK - but then, they are synonymous by virtue of which meaning? The meaning that you yourself stipulated for the signs, or the meaning they generally have in the language as it is commonly spoken? Because if it's the former, then the thesis is still trivial and uninformative as I already argued. But if it's the latter then you can't show that they have a certain meaning in the common language just by stipulation, and if this is the case then you couldn't simply disregard what other people think about the concepts.
Quoting Terrapin Station
Again, if 'they' are indeed identical then there are not two things here, so there's nothing about which you can affirm what you try to affirm, and so this sentence is just nonsense and not an expression of a fact or a view that someone can agree or disagree about (and equally saying that they are not identical is nonsense).
Quoting Terrapin Station
This example doesn't help you because the expressions 'Jones' and 'The man we saw from a distance in the train station' are not synonymous, and stating an identity relation between them is not a matter of stipulation, like in the case where you define the word 'meaning' via causality. So there is indeeda sense in which we are talking about two things in your Jones case, even if the identity statement is true (and I maintain that 'identity' in this example is not used the same way as an identity in the original case that we were discussing).
The issue of testimony doesn't change my point. Because for me to know (1) there must've been some scientists who did all the right experiments that confirmed it (knowledge doesn't come from nowhere). What's the alternative on your view? Do you want to say that we know all that stuff about DNA apriori and independently of scientific experiments and observations?
Quoting Harry Hindu
Well no, the meaning of the sentence is not a picture - the sentence says that Bernie Sanders is the president (not that his picture exists), and this is what it means. Your view that all false sentences are meaningless is really just incredible. It follows that whenever you understand a sentence then you can know apriori that it is true (so I know what the sentence "I'm a millionaire" means therefore it is a proof that I am a millionaire etc.).
(Also, you describe the picture as a picture of Bernie Sanders being the president, so the picture does after all has meaning despite being false? Or is there another picture which it pictures etc...?)
Quoting Fafner
On my view there is no such thing as "meanings in a language as it is generally spoken." There are no concepts in that vein either. Meanings and concepts are in individuals' heads.
Jesus.
Like many people on this board, you're either a troll or there's something seriously wrong with/dysfunctional about you
What would that have to do with whether you're a troll or something is seriously wrong with you?
You said it yourself; if there is no use (words become useless) there is no meaning (words become meaningless).
You seem to be equivocating on the word 'use'. If you just utter a bunch of words as nonsense, you can say, in one sense that you are using them, but in another sense you are not using them at all. An analogy is that if you are fiddling with a hammer, you are not really using it in the way it was designed to be used.
Well, yeah, it is the intent, or the goal-in-mind, that is the cause of the words being used.
Quoting Terrapin StationI don't get it. One thing is for sure is that when I deceive some one, I'm not referring to the thing I'm lying about as something else. I'm not referring to "yellow" as "blue". That's not how the deception develops in my mind. Instead I'm thinking about how they will behave based on what they know and what I don't want them to know, and replacing it with what I want them to know. The goal-in-mind is making them think this particular thought, NOT the other. We have a habit of putting ourselves in each other's head - of simulating other's thoughts. We are one of the few animals that can do this, and this is an ability that is required in order to deceive. Simply referring to something as something that it isn't in your own mind, isn't enough to deceive, nor is it the process that I follow when I deceive. I make a prediction of the victim acting in some way as a result of my projecting a false thought into their mind via language.
That's what YOU said - that you can only know something by experience - which I thought you meant by directly experiencing something as opposed to reading or hearing about someone else's experience. It is you that are conflating knowing by experience and knowing by hearing or reading about someone else's experience.
Quoting Fafner
When I mentioned, "picture", I meant the image of Bernie as president in your mind, as that is the only place Bernie can be president and can be the only thing that your words refer to, which is to say that is what the words mean.
I find it incredible that you think that false statements ARE meaningful. What does it mean to be false? It means that it isn't true. False statements may be useful but that doesn't mean that they are meaningful independent of the intent to deceive!
Quoting John
What I said is that you can use words, but if they don't refer to anything, then they are useless and meaningless. Yes, you can use a hammer in a way that it isn't designed, but if you have a goal-in-mind, then you are still using the hammer to accomplish a goal, which makes the hammer useful and meaningful to accomplish the goal. If you don't have a goal-in-mind, and you are just fiddling with the hammer, then that would be useless and meaningless, and you said it yourself, would still be using the hammer, but not with a goal-in-mind. Youg seem to be conflating "use" with "useful". You can use a tool, but if you don't have a goal-in-mind, then your using the tool is really useless.
Seriously though, I understand you. It is you that simply can't accept that you are wrong about meaning is use, and that's too bad.
"Meaning" can mean intention.
But the meaning of a word is not the intention of the word, because words do not have intentions.
"Meaning can also mean implication.
Footprints mean feet.
In this sense, footprints mean feet regardless of the intentions of the owner of the feet.
Scent-marking is an animal communication of territorial claim; perhaps it is intentional, or perhaps it is unconscious instinct, who knows. But it is meaningful and understandable to animals. It is hardly a language though, consisting of one smell-word - "me", though that word can itself be read into as to gender, dominance, and so on.
Now when you use the word "look" above, you presumably intend to convey something, in this case to direct the reader's attention. But the meaning of "look" does not at all depend on your intention.
Harry C. here meant (intended) to say the same thing as you, but regardless of his intentions, "banana" does not mean "look". He simply failed to use the words aright.
This is the (probably deliberate) confusion you have been spreading though the thread, based on an equivocation between the intention of the speaker and the proper use of words. It is the same equivocation, incidentally that is is at the base of Humpty-Dumpty's declaration in Alice inWonderland:
[quote=Humpty Dumpty and Alice]"When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.” “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that's all."[/quote]
Beat you to it.
I think it's much more the case that you are running two senses of "use" together and failing to make the distinction between 'use' in the (practically) useless sense of playing or mucking around, and 'use' in the sense of employing a function.
The so-called "meaning is use" argument is only concerned with the latter, so instances of the former have no bearing on it.
You may be right. But that would make no sense because words must refer to things (in various ways), and sentences must be about things, events, feelings or whatever, or else all our talk would be about nothing, would be useless and meaningless. I think 'use' just refers to the conventional ways that words come to be used to refer to things, and to make sentences that are meaningful in terms of what they are about. What they are about just is their use, I think, which seems unproblematic unless I am missing something here.
The alternative isn't all unicorns and rainbows, though. This is philosophy of mind. It's full of emotion and ontological commitments...few answers. This makes it all the more bizarre that some people feel the need to be jerks about it...as if they aren't facing Conundrum Mt. with the rest of us. Not to mention any names.
Adam gave everything its name remember. Don't think that it's easily fucked with.
I can see that.
No, entities have intentions and they use words to express their intentions. No intention prior, means no use of words at all, or at least no useful, or meaningful use of words - like I explained about using ANY tool. You have to have a goal-in-mind in order for any tool to be useful or meaningful, as a tool only becomes meaningful or useful in accomplishing a goal. Tools that don't help accomplish some goal are useless and meaningless to the goal.
Quoting unenlightened
Well, yeah, and I'd go a step further and say that any cause is the meaning of the effect. Tree rings in a tree stump mean the age of the tree and tree rings are the natural result of how the tree growa throughout the year. Our word use points to the idea in someone's head and their intention to express it. Both of these things need to exist prior to word use or the use of words would be meaningless and useless - in other words, the use of words doesn't point to any cause of their use.
Quoting unenlightened
This has doesn't go against anything I have said. As I have said all along is that meaning is the relationship between cause and effect. When some other animal smells the odor, it imbues it with meaning by associating a cause to the smell. The information one garners from the odor (gender, health, etc.) is all part of the process of imbuing it with a reference to some state-of-affairs in the world (meaning).
Quoting unenlightenedSo, you're saying that metaphors are simply failing to use words right? When I looked up the word, "page" it doesn't include anything about "arguments", as in " We are not on the same page (you don't get my arguments)". If a word like, "page" can be used in a way that isn't defined in some dictionary and it still mean something, then anyone can use any word they want to express any idea they want. It would be up to the listener to get at the true meaning - which would what the speaker or writer intended to say.
Quoting unenlightenedHeh, more like deliberate obtuseness on the part of those that don't seem to get that any use of words (or any tool for that matter) is useless and meaningless without a goal-in-mind.
Like any tool, we can use it in a way that wasn't intended, or the common use of the tool. How it is used, and whether it is useful or not has to do with the goal. I can use a chair to sit in, stand on, or as a weapon, and the way I use it goes back to my intent. I can use words in the same way.
Why don't you read your own words. You even make the same distinction yourself. You can use something uselessly or in a way that is useful. Something is only useful, and therefore meaningful, to accomplishing a goal.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Quoting Harry Hindu
So your intended meaning causes you to use the word "look" rather than the word "banana" because ... you speak English and know that "look" has the meaning you intend, and "banana" does not. You use words this way because we (English speakers) use words this way. And it is common usage that confers meaning on the otherwise arbitrary grunts and squiggles.
And we know they are arbitrary grunts and squiggles, because those damn foreigners use completely different grunts and squiggles to say la meme chose exactement.
Quoting Harry Hindu
This is blatantly banana custard, Humpty Dumpty. Word meanings can be stretched, extended, moved over time, and still mean something. But if you stretch too many of them too far, the ties to common usage are broken and your intended meaning is lost. As you quite clearly know full well.
It seems you're trying to distort what I said by not taking the full context into account. I said you can "use" something "uselessly"; that is in the practically useless sense. If you are just playing with something in a way that has nothing at all to do with the proper function of the thing then you are not "using" it in a practical sense; and it is thus, in that sense, useless.
Yeah, so far so good.
Quoting unenlightenedSure, if what you mean by "use" is to refer to a particular idea or thing or state-of-affairs that you intend to convey. Sure, if what you mean by "common usage" is the common idea, thing, or state-of-affairs that the word refers to. You can use words all day long, but if the other person doesn't know what the words refers to, then you can never understand it's use. Sure a congenitally blind person may copy someone's use of phrase, "The sky is blue". But do they really know what "blue" means? Knowing how to copy someone else's use of words doesn't entail that you know what the words mean - only how to use words. Would the congenitally blind person really understand what they are saying? Could the blind person then use the word, "blue" in a sentence that they have never heard? Could they then make their own sentence with the word, "blue" and it mean something?
If meaning were use, then ancient man could have used the word, "computer", or "space shuttle", and it mean something! None of those things existed at the time, which is what the words refer to, which is why it wouldn't mean anything even if you used the terms then as we use them today.
Does a parrot understand what it is saying when it repeats it's owners words? Does a parrot mean for you to "fuck off" when it says, "fuck off"? Isn't that why it's funny to hear parrots and young children say "fuck off" because they are simply repeating use, and don't understand what the words really mean?
Quoting unenlightenedAbsolutely, but if language were use then how can different grunts an squiggles mean the same thing as other grunts and squiggles? Other languages also use words in different order with adjectives AFTER the noun as opposed to BEFORE, yet means the same thing in English. When translating words from different languages, we aren't translating their use, we are translating what the words refer to.
I'm not trying to distort anything. It is you that isn't taking everything I have said into account. I can use a chair as a step-stool, which has nothing to do with it's "proper" function, and it is useful in accomplishing the goal of reaching something higher than I can't reach without it. So how was the chair useless? It is only if I don't have a goal-in-mind, or if the tool isn't helping me accomplish the goal, that the "use" of something becomes useless.
Saying what someone else says just to say what they said rather than to mean what they meant is not use, it's mention. A congenitally blind person cannot learn how to use color-words, only how to mention them. It's really that simple. Using a word is not just saying it, it is using it, with other words, arranged in a particular way, to do something linguistically--make a statement, ask a question, give a command, etc.
Surely I'm able to tell someone that I have such-and-such a disease even if I don't know what that disease is (e.g. I'm repeating what my doctor has told me). Surely I'm saying something meaningful, even though I don't understand it.
It's to say you're willing to assert the same proposition. If John says "Two is a prime number," we'd have to look to context to understand why John is saying this. Does he intend to correct someone else? Is he teaching math?
If you repeat that two is a prime number, you may do so without the same purpose as John, but you're still asserting the same proposition.
Use vs. mention
People did actually use the word 'computer' hundreds of years before there were machines that we now call 'computers'. From around the 1640's people who counted stuff, especially clerks, were called 'computers' because they were 'computing'. At the end of the 19th century when the first calculators appeared they began to be called 'computers' too. To distinguish, people began sometimes to say 'human computer' to mean the person and 'mechanical computer' to mean the machine. In the 1940's Turing's gang made their advances and made things called 'digital computers'. In the 1950's the digital meaning began to swamp the rest, and only complex digital counting-machines were called 'computers' from then on.
This looks to me like 'meaning is use' in action, but I have an awful feeling you won't agree.
It looks like kind of a corner case of the use/mention distinction, but I think it's not. Think of it instead as the first baby step in learning to use the expression "Schnarrglop's syndrome." You've learned a little bit about how to use the expression, but not much. Your doctor knows a lot more about how to use the expression. Use starts with bare mention, but doesn't end there.
EDIT: Not even bare mention. Even the first use will be connected to circumstances that make it appropriate, even if you're not sure what that connection is.
The point is that what I'm saying is meaningful even though I don't understand it. Therefore your claim that the meaning of a sentence is to be found in the intentions of the speaker is false.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
If that were the case then my claim that I have Schnarrglop's syndrome would be false if my doctor didn't tell me that I have Schnarrglop's syndrome. But of course that's wrong. My claim is false if I don't have Schnarrglop's syndrome.
Quoting Harry Hindu
I don't get it.
Witt was arguing against the idea that communication involves some communion of memories?
Against psychologism, same as Frege. Husserl wages the same war on a different front.
That's a good point, and I agree.
There's the sentence you actually utter, and it can be true or false independent of how you're using it. Suppose the doc told you that you have Schnarrglop's syndrome, but he meant to say "Schnarrglob's syndrome," and then you misremember and tell someone you have Schnarrglob's syndrome. What you say is true, even though it's not what you meant to say, or what the doc meant to say.
The question then is whether my "elliptical sentence" idea is any good. I'm not sure. I'm trying to say that in the context, you're not even claiming to understand what you're asserting, that the context makes it clear that you're just trying to repeat what the doc said. So there's something like ellipsis here when you just baldly state, as if you know what you're talking about, that you have whatever syndrome.
Does that make sense?
What are those?
I still don't see a distinction. We are still using words to refer to things. Words are things that can be talked about just as your ideas, your trip to Rome, or your chicken soup recipe are all talked about. The quotes around a word is the symbol that we are referring to the word rather than to what the word means (what it refers to in the world).
How is it that a sound and scribble can be associated together anyway? How is the sound of the word, "cheese", associated with the scribble, "cheese"? Isn't it just two different ways of referring to the dairy product that you can buy in blocks or in slices at your local supermarket?
It seems to me that if meaning-is-use isn't just repeating the way words (which are just sounds or scribbles) are organized in speech - that there is a relationship between a sound and scribble and the thing it represents and that words are used to convey what it is those sounds and scribbles represent via intention, then we don't have a disagreement.
Correcting someone is teaching them. It doesn't matter whether you, I, or God utters the sounds, "2 is a prime number.", we would all have the intention of relaying the information that the number 2 is actually a prime number.
When a man says "I'm a woman.", are they misusing words?
You're shifting the goalposts now. That would not simply be "playing around" with the chair, but using it in accordance with practical possibilities that are inherent in its design.
So what are some other practical uses for language apart from communication?
I know what I am, and I'm glad I'm a man, and so's Lola.
In a case like this you know something; you know the use of all the other words except for "Schnarrglop's". By telling someone you have Schnarrglop's syndrome you mean to say that you have a condition or illness. If neither of you knows anything at all about the condition or illness "Schnarrglop's syndrome" is used to signify, then the term "Schnarrglop" will be useless insofar as it does no work at all. You might as well have said "I have some kind of syndrome".
When a Harry spurge psychic dilemma because five sideways, misusing symptom communicates upside. But all that's by the bye; The point is can you understand? I you can't then call it misuse or call it ad hom, or call it a fuckwit playing games. Whatever you call it will be a misuse of words.
Apologies. I clicked the wrong 'reply' tab. It's been corrected.
Understandably >:O
There are lots of occasions where the distinction between what you literally say and what you mean, or what you communicate, matters. Logic is exclusively concerned with what is literally said. Libel law. And we manipulate the distinction in our daily lives by suggesting and insinuating and implying things we don't actually say.
Am I in the neighborhood of what you were asking?
Looking back, I don't think I ever said I agree with this.
I do think, as I said before, that this is something you'll often see with people learning a new word. And I think there are obvious limits to how far this can go.
But the other thing to note, following on what @Michael said, is that the meaningfulness of a word or a sentence is not dependent on whether you understand it, even if you're the one speaking.
And that's why "meaning is use" and related doctrines are usually expressed in the passive voice, so to speak. The user that matters for theory is not really you the individual speaker, but a fictive omni-competent speaker.
But it's your particular uses that language is put to, that make using language useful. It's as if you ask yourself, what would the ideal speaker say if she wanted to say what I want to say the way I want to say it?
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I don't think so, because I can't see the connection between what you said and what i said. I'll try to explain what I said again more clearly.
In the post of your that I responded to you said this:
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I was saying I think it is closer to the case, that when I tell someone I have Schnarrglop's syndrome and I don't know what that means it is really elliptical for "I have some kind of syndrome", although of course the implication that I was told this by a doctor (or someone who knows what Schnarrglop's syndrome is) is certainly inherent in that. The word "Schnarrglop's" is pretty much useless if neither I nor the person I tell knows what it is. I mean, basically what I am saying is that exactly the same amount of relevant information would be conveyed by using " some kind of" instead of "Schnarrglop's" in the sentence.
Perhaps my response above addresses this to some extent. I would say it is only the one part of the sentence ('Schnarrglop's') that is meaningless.
Except that "Schnarrglop's" is actually the right word. Think about teaching someone to play chess or to use a tool, teaching them any kind of skill. Their first attempts will be tentative and uncertain. "Is this right?" "Yes, that's how the knight moves." (Ain't it funny how the knight moves?) Their understanding is limited, but the training includes them doing something barely right at first. Similarly for the guy you tell you have S. syndrome. If he googles it, he'll have that statement you made to connect his new knowledge to.
Yes, that's a good point. The word doesn't convey any immediate extra information, but it is the key to getting extra information.
But for you, beyond the training and learning stuff, there's a little that you already do know that entitles you to use the word: you know it's the name of a medical condition, and you know how to use expressions in that class; you know it's something someone with a life like yours could have (it's not like malaria, say); you might know some of the symptoms if that's why you were taking to the doc. And I think the person you talk to would get all that too.
So you're not quite in the position of the congenitally blind person with color-words.
Yes, I think you can rightly said to be using a word if you know that the word has a conventional use, which your use refers to, even if you don't know what that conventional use consists in (i.e. if you don't know what the term refers to exactly, you know it refers to something, even to a certain kind of thing, as in the example, where the referent is a medical condition).
Something like that... :)
Aw, I wish I'd had a Dad like you! :-! Maybe 'conjunction' or 'convergence'?
I think that's the one.
Since we were talking of communication, it might be worth noting how redundancy carried the con-versation my son and I were having-- I knew exactly what he was trying to say, what he meant, despite his extravagantly erroneous word choice.
(That second sentence is strangely poetic.)
LOL, it is "strangely poetic" or perhaps poetically strange. So, it seems you don't hold with the dynamic interrelated cosmos of astrology?
Yes, that's interesting, and you could argue that it is only the fact of conventional use (along with the associative imagination) that allows it to happen like that.
I'm torn as to whether that's a good or bad thing. (I love some aspects of astrology, and the way the symbolism it embodies maps onto other sets of twelve, and particularly four sets of threes and three sets of fours; it's all very elegant and fruitful). But that's off-topic.
Indeed!
Then a "transgender" is misusing words when a male calls themselves a "female"?
Well, you did use those words for a reason - no? If not, then why did you post it? What was your intent in using those words? What did you mean by using those words? It must have been to make some point, or simply to confuse. Whatever you call it will be a use of words because you had a goal-in-mind when using them.
His intent in using those words is not the same thing as the meaning of those words. The sentence "when a Harry spurge psychic dilemma because five sideways, misusing symptom communicates upside" is meaningless even if he has a reason for saying it and a particular goal in mind (namely, to show that your account of meaning is a false one). The sentence doesn't mean "you're wrong" even though that's what he's trying to convey in saying it.
Again you're conflating on the word "meaning". Wittgenstein wasn't saying that a speaker's intent is his use of words (whatever that would mean). He was saying that the meaning of a word is its use.
But not only intent. Again, I'll repeat his actual words: "For a large class of cases--though not for all [my emphasis]--in which we employ the word "meaning" it can be defined thus: the meaning of a word is its use in the language."
I meant exactly what I said.
Non-referring words can have a meaning (e.g. the word "and"), and words can mean different things but refer to the same thing, e.g. "the father of Elizabeth II" and "the son of George V".
Yes, what do you use them for?
You can intentionally use words to confuse, and that is to say that you intentionally used words in a way that doesn't reference anything but your intent to confuse. It is you that can't seem to follow your own arguments. You seem to agree now that you used words in some way - to accomplish a goal. If you didn't have a goal-in-mind, then how can you say that you used words, or any tool for that matter?
I haven't said I intended to confuse anyone, and I deny that I intended to confuse anyone. In fact I specified when there had been some discussion of what I said, that I meant exactly what I said. It was you that declared an intention to confuse.
Quoting Harry Hindu
I don't doubt that you do intend to confuse people with your words, but I do not.
Quoting Harry Hindu
An 'inside' seems to imply a boundary and an 'outside'. But this is normal; most people don't speak any given language, and many languages, such as Cockney rhyming slang, French Argot, and so on, are deliberately designed to exclude, and confuse 'outsiders'. So an inside joke is understood by the community it is directed at, and the consensus of people who are excluded from that community has no bearing. But how is all this relevant to our discussion?
Quoting Harry Hindu
Does the phrase "the addition of other things" also refer to the addition of other things?
When expressions refer to the same thing, you should be able to substitute one expression for another salva veritate, in non-intensional contexts at least. So the following are equivalent in truth-value:
(1) The father of Elizabeth II was King of the United Kingdom and the Dominions of the British Commonwealth from 11 December 1936 until his death.
(2) The son of George V was King of the United Kingdom and the Dominions of the British Commonwealth from 11 December 1936 until his death.
You may not know those are equivalent in truth-value, but we'll leave that aside for now.
Are (1) and (2) equivalent in truth-value to the following?
(3) The father of Elizabeth II was King of the United Kingdom the addition of other things the Dominions of the British Commonwealth from 11 December 1936 until his death.
(4) The son of George V was King of the United Kingdom the addition of other things the Dominions of the British Commonwealth from 11 December 1936 until his death.
If not, why not?
Quoting unenlightenedBut you have confused people with words.
1st you say that meaning is use. Then you say that use is the common use of the words and that if you use words in an uncommon way, then that is misuse. You then go about arranging words in a post that isn't the common arrangement of those words and say that you "meant what you said." If you misused words then you didn't mean anything except what your intention was in posting it. So instead of contradicting yourself again by telling me you meant what you said, try telling me why you made that post. What was your intent? What was it that you wanted me to think or do after reading it?
Quoting unenlightenedIf you want to argue that correct word-use is a consensus of word-use, then how is it that Chinese (the most common language spoken) isn't the correct way to use words? If your argument is that any small group can use any symbol to refer to anything, and it actually be the correct word-use, then there can be no consensus of word use. It only takes two to agree on the symbols and what they refer to. To say that there is a consensus of word-use is to say that a particular group uses those words in that way to refer to some thing. Which groups are you talking about? If you are talking about all humans, then Chinese would be the most common way to use words. If you are talking about the United States, then all the non-English speakers are misusing words. This is absurd, so obviously correct word-use cannot be a consensus of word-use.
In the case of your "confusing" post, how is it that the one you were speaking to didn't understand, where it seemed that others the words weren't directed at did understand. So, if you "use" words where the person you were speaking to didn't understand, but others did, did you really use words correctly? The person you intended to say something meaningful to didn't get the meaning. So how can you say that you used words correctly?
Sure, but then how is that two different strings of words mean the same thing if meaning is use and how is it that the same string of words can mean different things if meaning is use? In speaking or writing there is always an intent to convey information. You can never say there is non-intentional contexts when using language. There is always intention preceding the use of words, or else how can you explain your use of words?
I hardly think I can take the credit for that. Your confusion is internal to you.
I'll also add that that is why you won't tell me your intent in making that post because you know it will expose the meaning of the words (is why you keep saying "I meant what I said", which doesn't help those who don't understand what you said, which it should if meaning were use).
So you're not going defend your claim that "and" has same reference as "the addition of other things"?
What context means in this context.
You didn't.
Have another look at my post. You'll notice some numbered propositions and a question about them.
Looking at your post again won't help. Why don't you try rephrasing your question. I really don't know what you're asking.
You made a point and provided a link in a previous post, which I debunked and you never addressed it or acknowledged it. This is getting old.
I'm afraid we're just going to keep taking past each other, Harry, so I'll take my leave. Happy philosophizing.
It's really simple, Harry, I already told you, I meant exactly what I said. I intended to say what I said, and that is what I meant.
Quoting Harry Hindu
No, Harry. the meaning, according to you, is my intention, and my intention in this post is to say what I am saying, and my intention in that post was to say what I was saying. I might make a mistake, and in that case my intention would be other than my actual post, but in these instances that is not the case.
Suppose my intention was to make your head explode. Then, if the meaning of words was the intention of the speaker, I would have to say " This sentence makes Harry's head explode.", or something similar. If the meaning of my words is my intention, I have already told you my intention by saying the words, and there is no sense asking me to say other words to express the same intention, because other words would express another intention. You are asking me to do the impossible, and then thinking you have won the argument when I can't do it, and inventing an intention for my non-expression of intention when I have already reiterated that my intention was to say what I said. My intention in not doing the impossible is nothing at all.
Quoting unenlightened That is the most ridiculous thing I've seen you write. Saying " This sentence makes Harry's head explode." displays your intention that you want to convey that that sentence makes Harry's head explode." As I have said numerous times in this thread, that saying or writing anything is a result of our intention to convey information. Your intent in saying that isn't to make my head explode, it would be to convey that that sentence makes my head explode. Because that sentence doesn't make my head explode, you made a mistake in using that string of words in trying to make my head explode (in trying to use those words to accomplish your goal).
Quoting unenlightenedIf all you needed were to say words to get at someone's intention, then we would never have a problem in understanding each other. We do. We can lie. We can say things we don't mean, which is to say that our use of words are hiding our intentions. I win the argument because you can't be consistent, nor do you answer the questions, or address the points I made, which leaves holes in your argument. Just tell me why you post anything on this forum. Isn't it because you have the intent to convey the information in your head?
Exactly. Our intentions can be at odds with the meaning of our words. That we can say things we don't intend is exactly why it is wrong to say that a word's meaning is the speaker's intention.
If the "meaning"/"use" vs. the "non-meaning"/"misuse" of words is the equivalent of following the grammatical and spelling and pronunciation rules of the language, or not, then how is it that people can misuse language in this sense and we can still understand them (what they meant (Intended) to say)?
If the "meaning"/"use" vs. the "non-meaning"/"misuse" of words is based on the listener's understanding of the words - of them getting what was said, then this is the argument I'm making. You can say that you used words when the person you're speaking to, or writing to, gets what you are saying, and you misused words if they didn't get the gist of what you were saying. So you can actually be grammatically correct and your spelling/pronunciation is perfect but you didn't use words because the listener/reader didn't get it (which happens), or you can be grammatically incorrect and spelling/pronunciation is incorrect, and people can still get what was said, (which happens).
If what you mean by "meaning"/"use" vs. "non-meaning"/"misuse" is something else, then please explain.
Quoting Harry HinduThis string of words isn't grammatically correct, nor did the reader get what was said, so how can unenlightened say that he used words, or that he meant what he said, unless he is defining "meaning"/use" differently than the above two explanations?
You haven't been paying attention, then.
What if the person you're speaking to is a young child or someone with limited English abilities? It doesn't seem right to label it as a misuse of words if most other English-speaking people would understand it.
Quoting Harry Hindu
I might use the word 'lemon' to refer to an inferior automobile, and I might do this intentionally, but the meaning of the word is (or refers to) the car, not to my intention.
Alternatively, I might use the word 'sanguine' believing it to be a synonym for and intending it to mean 'pessimistic', but its actual meaning is the opposite, and I can be rightfully admonished for my incorrect use which has caused so much confusion for my audience. However, if my unconventional (i.e. incorrect) use were to become conventional (i.e. correct), if most people started to use it that way, then that would become its actual meaning, and people would finally come around to my way of thinking. But that's quite rare.
I'd say that our meaning can be at odds with our use of words. This is why we say, "I meant to say that", or "I didn't mean to say that.", where "mean" refers to intent. That is unless we are misusing the word "mean", but then many people use the word "mean" in this way (to refer to their intent), which would mean that there is a consensus of using "mean" in this way. So our own use of words refers to "meaning" as intent, or more generally, the cause. So to keep on saying that meaning-is-use contradicts how we use the word "mean" in referring to our intent in using words.
But we aren't talking about those other people. For those other people, we would use the words differently to accomplish our goal. We would simply be adapting our speech (our use of words) to the goal at hand (getting the current listener to understand what we intend to say).
As I said, people can "misuse" words in the sense that they aren't being grammatically correct, we can still understand their intent. How is it that people can "misuse" words in this way yet we can still understand what they mean? This question needs to be addressed. I've posed it several times and it gets ignored.
Quoting Luke
Exactly. You use a word to refer to something else. That is your intent - to refer to something - to convey information. If you didn't intend to convey that the car is a "lemon", then you would have never spoken (used) those words. Can you use words, or any tool for that matter, without intent? To say that you use anything is to imply intent. You cannot separate the two concepts of intent and use. To say one, is to imply the other.
Quoting LukeBut how would they know that you meant something else to admonish you?
New ways of using words arise frequently. Look at all the metaphors we have. They didn't start as a conventional use of the word, yet they took hold in the population. This means that we can use any word we want to refer to what we want, and it is simply a matter of that way of using words becomes popular or not. But we can still convey the same information using a different string of words to a person who didn't understand the metaphor. If this is possible then how is meaning use if we can use different strings of words to mean the same thing, or the same string of words can mean something different? This is another question that has been ignored.
As I have repeatedly said, that we often use the word "mean" to refer to intent does not refute Wittgenstein's claim that the meaning of a word is its use.
If we intend to say one thing but the words we use mean something else then we have misspoken. You don't show this to be wrong simply by replacing the word "intend" with the word "mean". That would be conflation.
Homonyms are a thing – as Wittgenstein himself notes in the quote I keep posting – but your entire argument seems to ignore that.
We understand each other to a lesser extent over the phone, and we're all auspies on the intertubes or over texts. Thats way people continually improperly infer your disposition or emotional states in online discussions... and youre all able to survive my presence without being crushed by my overwhelming spiritual pressure.
You stated that it is a misuse of words simply when others don't understand you. If this doesn't apply to toddlers and people with limited English skills, then you need to amend your claim that this constitutes a misuse.Quoting Harry Hindu
Quoting Harry Hindu
It's not uncommon for a fluent speaker to understand what someone is/was "trying to say". If meaning is use (and vice versa) then the relevant misuse is a lack or alteration of meaning.
Quoting Harry Hindu
I thought you were disagreeing with Wittgenstein? If you cannot separate intent and use, then what's your disagreement with the assertion that meaning is use?
Quoting Harry Hindu
Probably based on the context in which the words were spoken. If I described a pessimistic person as sanguine, others might think I was being sarcastic or they might question my use of the word.
Quoting Harry Hindu
If you want others to understand you, then it's easier to use words conventionally rather than to say something and then wait for the conventions to possibly change in your favour at some future time.
Quoting MichaelHow is "misspoken" not equal to "misuse"? Again, you need to answer those questions in that post so that we can be on the same page.
Quoting MichaelI haven't ignored that at all. It is the point I keep making - that the same string of words can mean different things. Again, you have to explain what a "use" of a word is vs. the "misuse" of a word. Are we using words by simply making noises and writing scribbles, or is does "use" entail following the rules of grammar and spelling, or does it have to do with your listener getting the gist of what you are saying (your intent to refer to something), or is it something else?
It is a misuse of words when toddlers and people with limited English skills don't understand. As I said, We have to adapt our use of words to the listener. This isn't uncommon at all. We make assumptions all the time that people will understand us if we just use the proper grammar and spelling of words, but the fact is that they don't always understand us, even when speaking or writing properly. You can't expect everyone to know English as you do, or for everyone to have the same education level, and the same experience in speaking and writing English. Some even write better than they speak and vice versa.
Quoting LukeAs I said, we alter the use of words frequently. We create metaphors, which would be an alteration, as you put it. We also engage in inside jokes, where only a select few, maybe only two people, understand an altered use of the word. So, if you are saying that "use" vs. "misuse" is simply following the way the majority uses English, then how is it that we use words that don't follow how the majority uses the word, and we still mean to say it that way (we purposely misused words)? How can we say that we misused words if the listener reacts in the way we predicted (we achieved our goal). Do you say that you misused a chair if it accomplished the goal it wasn't initially designed for? If so, then am I misusing words when I say, "I used that chair as a step stool to reach the higher shelf." Would it be better if I said, "I misued the chair as a step stool to reach the higher shelf."? Does anyone speak like that?
Quoting LukeI didn't mean that your intent and use are the same thing. They are related causally. You can only use some tool after your intent comes to play. You have a plan in mind and then you go about executing that plan by using tools to accomplish the goal. To say that one exists, does not imply that the other exists in the moment. After all, we can have a plan without executing it. We can have the intent to do something tomorrow, well before our actual use of some thing. What I'm saying is that they are causally linked in a way that is fundamental. Use always follows intent.
Quoting LukeRight. So sarcasm would be a misuse of words per your own explanation.
Quoting LukeWhen I think about getting others to understand me, I think about putting myself in their head to know how they use words (what words they know the meaning of (what they refer to)), so that I may use words in a way that they would understand what I meant (what I intended to refer to).
When Wittgenstein says that the meaning of a word is its use, he's not saying that the meaning of a word is its individual moment-by-moment expression. He's saying that it's meaning is its conventional role in the familiar act of communication. "Hello" is what we say when we meet each other; "it is raining" is what we say when water falls from the clouds. That's why he specifically says "the meaning of a word is its use in the language-game" and not "the meaning of a word is my utterance of it".
Sometimes we have strict rules, and sometimes the rules are vague. What difference does that make?
So? That I can say "nothing's wrong" to someone and that they can see past my words and understand that I want their help isn't that the sentence "nothing's wrong" means "something's wrong". Its meaning is its conventional use in the language-game, irrespective of my intentions as I utter it.
Saying "Nothing is wrong" is the conventional use of those words when you intend to hide that something is wrong. Your intent is what chooses the words to say in order to accomplish a goal, like hiding intent.
Metaphors and inside jokes are a unconventional use of words.
I agree that we sometimes need to "adapt our use of words to the listener". But I disagree that using a perfectly sensible sentence that any fluent speaker would understand should be characterised as a misuse of language. If it's being used correctly, how can it be a misuse?
Quoting Harry Hindu
You appear to identify an effective communication as a use of language and an ineffective communication as a misuse of language. That is, you equate a misuse of language with failing to achieve the goal of effective communication.
On the other hand, I equate a misuse of language with not following the conventions/rules of language (i.e. with incorrect usage). Therefore, I can note someone's incorrect grammar yet at the same time understand what they mean.
Quoting Harry Hindu
I'm still unclear on why you disagree with Wittgenstein.
Quoting Harry Hindu
No.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Really? Sounds exhausting.
There are plenty of times where we use perfectly sensible sentences and people still don't get what it is that you mean. Just look at this philosophy forum and try to count how many times people ask for clarification, or ask "what do you mean", or talk past each other, etc. It would be a misuse, even when using the correct grammar and spelling, when you didn't take into account the reader's own understanding of words and their experience with them. Using words requires more than simply uttering sounds in the correct order, with the correct number of syllables, etc. It requires that you get into the listener or reader's head.
Quoting LukeYes, using words means communicating, while misusing words is miscommunicating.
If you can note someone's incorrect grammar, YET still understand what they mean then, using your own words, meaning isn't the same as correct grammar. You may say that you understood what they meant to say, meaning that you understood what the words they should have said in order to refer to some state-of-affairs. The state-of-affairs is what they mean, or what they are referring to, not the correct use of grammar. If you correct them, you aren't correcting their meaning, only their grammar.
Quoting LukeI did use the correct grammar and spelling, no? So how is it that you don't get my meaning if I used the correct grammar and spelling? If we can be grammatically correct and have the correct spelling and people still can't understand what was said, then meaning cannot be related to correct grammar and spelling of words.
Quoting Luke
Well, that is the difference between a good speaker/writer and a bad speaker/writer.
This is very unclear. If the meaning of a word is some physical thing that it refers to (say an apple), then if I eat that physical thing then I've eaten the meaning of the word? I can understand eating the referent of the word, but not the meaning (as per Frege's distinction between sense and reference).
Again you're conflating. There's a difference between what someone intends when they speak and what the words mean. I might intend for you to turn left, but actually say "turn right". The meaning of my expression isn't my intention. I've misspoken. Even if, somehow, you correctly understand that I want you to turn left (say, because there isn't a right turning).
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/meaning
Is Merriam-Webster conflating meaning with intent?
When the conventional use of the word "meaning" is related to intention, then it would be unconventional to say "meaning is use". Your own argument defeats itself.
You're also conflating on what has meaning. We're talking about what words mean and you respond by talking about what the speaker means.
What the speaker means – what the speaker intends – is not the same thing as what the word means. I've given you an example of such a scenario in my previous post, where I intend for you to turn left but instead say "turn right". Even though I intend for you to turn left, "turn right" doesn't mean "turn left".
It's a nonsensical scenario. Why did you say "turn right" if you intended for me to turn left? - Unless you are saying you misspoke, or didn't know the correct words to say, or you intended to lie? If that is what you are saying, then why does the phrase, "you didn't say what you meant" apply where "meant" refers to intent?
Whatever it means in the context of "the meaning of a word". According to Wittgenstein, and probably other philosophers, it would be wrong to interpret this as "the intention of a word".
Also whatever it means in the context of "my girlfriend means a lot to me". It would be wrong to interpret this as "my girlfriend intends a lot to me".
Or whatever it means in the context of "if the grass is wet then it means that it rained earlier". It would be wrong to interpret this as "if the grass is wet then it intends that it rained earlier"
And any other contexts in which the word "mean" isn't synonymous with "intend".
It's not a nonsensical scenario. It happens all the time. People often say the wrong thing, either because they weren't thinking clearly or because they don't know their left from their right. The fact is that even though I intended for you to turn left, my command "turn right" doesn't mean "turn left". Therefore the meaning of an expression isn't the same thing as the speaker's intention.
Because you intended to say one thing but instead said something else? I don't understand the relevance of this question.
Travis gives an example of a sentence that can be used in one context to say something true and in another context to say something false about the very same object. And so if Travis' example is convincing, then it shows that the meaning we associate with each word in a sentence (whatever it is) is not sufficient to determine the meaning or content of the whole sentence on the occasion of utterance (and by 'content' Travis means truth-evaluable content, i.e. that which determines the truth conditions for the sentence).
Suppose we utter the sentence "the leaves are green", and point to a bunch of dead brown leaves that have been painted green. Is the sentence true or false? It depends according to Travis on the purpose for which we use the sentence: if we are interested in the superficial color of the leaves, then we would be saying something true when we use the sentence, whereas if we are, say, interested in botany then we would say that the same sentence is false (or imagine a cease of brown leaves that are lit by intense green light, or leaves that glow green in the dark and so on).
So the moral is this: whatever 'meaning' we associate with the sentence or any of the words of which it is composed, it doesn't determine in advance what the sentence means on a particular occasion of use. Knowing what 'leaves' and 'green' mean doesn't by itself tell you how to use the sentence when you talk about some particular leaves, because you have countless options to choose from. The sentence can have a determined meaning (i.e. to say something concrete about the leaves) only if we have a clear purpose in mind for which we want to use the sentence on a given occasion.
I don't think the traditional view is that we never have to look to context to understand what's meant.
And you are correct that the 'traditional' view doesn't completely ignore the role of context in determining meaning, but unlike Travis, most philosophers believe that whenever the meaning of a sentence seem to be context dependent, then that sentence must contain some semantic 'parameter' that fixes in advance how any context of utterance can and cannot contribute to its meaning.
So a paradigmatic example for this is indexicals (like "me" "now" "here" etc.). All philosophers agree that the reference of 'I' in "I'm hungry" for example, changes on most occasions of utterance, depending on the person who utters it. However, many philosophers argue that the pronoun 'I' changes reference because of its meaning, so they regard the the word 'I' as synonymous with something like "the person who uttered the word", and this they claim explains how we can know to whom the word refers on different occasions.
And what is nice about Travis' example is that it appears very implausible that a sentence such as 'the leaves are green' should contain some sort of semantic 'parameter' or indexical that already anticipates what meaning should it have for every conceivable context (after all, neither the meaning of 'green' or 'leaves' contains a disjunction which specifies what you ought to say about any conceivable case, i.e., painted leaves, gloving in the dark leaves, brightly lit leaves; or what about leaves that are 80% green? or leaves that are 53% green? Is it semantically determined for each case when exactly should we stop calling the leaves green?).
Does Travis deny that rule-following is an aspect of communication?
Then Travis is like most philosophers who
Quoting Fafner
The parameter in question is simply that the sentence follows the rules (leeway given for creativity).
So the question is: why should we think of Wittgenstein's views as extraordinary?
So the dispute is about whether you can describe language algorithmically, such that the meaning of every expression would completely determine in advance what you should say on each occasion. Travis' and Wittgenstein's view is that the idea of such a "super rule" or algorithem is a confusion, and that rules can never replace human judgment and sensitivity, but essentially depend on them for their application (so it's a pretty deep disagreement about the nature of rules and understanding).
Putting aside for a moment which philosophers believe that, here you are explicitly using sentences as truth-bearers instead of propositions. Why are you making that choice?
Quoting Fafner
That's contrary to common sense, so the philosophers who adhere to that view have some explaining to do. You wouldn't say the majority of philosophers have made this blunder would you?
The first reason is that Travis' original argument is concerned with sentences, not propositions, so I couldn't use something else instead when presenting his argument. Secondly and more importantly, it is because we are talking about the semantics of natural language, aren't we? So we are concerned with the meaning of sentence as physical signs, since propositions (on the standard view at least of propositions as abstract entities) don't have any semantics because they are not composed of signs.
Quoting Mongrel
I can give plenty of examples. Kent Bach is one such philosopher (see for example - userwww.sfsu.edu/kbach/Bach.ContextDependence.pdf). Another example is Jerry Fodor. Here's a random example from one of his paper that I read recently: (from "Connectionism and Cognitive Architecture")
(don't ask me what "syncategorematicity" is because I don't know, but from the context it is pretty clear that he means by that something like a variable)
A sentence isn't a physical sign.
[quote=Fafner]since propositions (on the standard view at least of propositions as abstract entities) don't have any semantics because they are not composed of signs.[/quote]
A proposition is semantic content.
Quoting Fafner
Isn't Fodor talking about rules?
So they would argue that even Chomsky's famous nonsense sentence "colorless green ideas sleep furiously" says something meaningful, though false. Incidentally, I took a few philosophy classes with someone who subscribes to such view. He argued in class that whenever we say a sentence such as "everybody came to the party" what the sentence itself literally means is that "every entity in the universe came to the party", and therefore it is always false. So yeah...
Then what else could it be...?
Quoting Mongrel
Fine, but this is not the same as saying that they have a semantics like sentences.
Quoting Mongrel
Obviously yes, his whole Language of Thought theory is about syntax.
Whatever it is, it's not physical sounds or marks. You should be able to get that intuitionally by noticing that you and I can utter the same sentence. Two utterances (physical sounds or marks), one sentence.
There's an argument that buttons it up tight if your intuition fails you :) A sentence is a particular pattern of words.
Quoting Fafner
Definitely. So?
Quoting Fafner
If he's laying out rules, then he's not saying something Witt would disagree with, is he?
I just made almost exactly the same suggestion (as Fodor does) elsewhere, but about assertion & truth rather than goodness.
I'm not sure such an approach requires every possible use to have been determined in advance -- some can kick out as not (yet) defined, and we probably actually want that to happen, I should think.
You are talking here about the distinction between sentence token and sentence type, and I don't see why this should contradict what I said (that they are physical entities). We can after all talk about physical entities as particulars (a cloud) or as being a type/kind to which particulars belong ("being a cloud"). If your argument were right then it would prove that physical objects don't exist...
Quoting Mongrel
What I wanted to say is that this is not the same as saying that propositions have a semantics like sentences.
Quoting Mongrel
Witt' would definitely disagree with Fodor more or less on everything... And I don't agree at all that Witt' was "laying out rules" (whatever that means).
You utter sentence A. I utter sentence A. We uttered the same sentence.
If this was a type/token situation, then you uttered your sentence and I uttered mine. We didn't utter the same sentence. Is that what you're arguing?
Quoting Fafner
A proposition is semantic content. What do you mean they don't have semantics?
Quoting Fafner
Witt agreed that rule-following is a prominent part of communication, didn't he?
Yes, that's what I meant.
Quoting Mongrel
No, I was argueing the opposite. On the type/token distinction if you say 'cats fly' and I say 'cats fly' then we have uttered the same sentence (type), which is perfectly consistent with saying that sentences are physical entities.
Quoting Mongrel
Semantics is concerned with signs and symbolism. Since nobody claims that abstract propositions have symbolic meaning then they don't have a semantics by definition (it is fine to say that they are identical with semantic content, but it is not the same as saying that they have semantic content - it's a rather pedantic point, but this is what philosophers mean by "semantics", so it is better to follow their use in order to avoid confusion and misunderstanding).
Quoting Mongrel
I don't know, maybe, but this wasn't his main philosophical concern when he discussed rules.
Now I'm confused because Fodor explicitly says in the passage you quoted that the meaning of "good" is fixed and its varying applicability is explained by something else besides its meaning, and he called that its "syncategorematcity."
Yeah that has to be right. Sometimes "proposition" gets used to mean something like: the sentence under consideration, disambiguated, indexicals eliminated, ellipses eliminated, whatever is needed from context explicitly added in, and so on. A sentence "normalized" in whatever way is needed. That's a useful thing but I don't know a standard term for it.
Hmm I don't remember ever seeing such a use of 'proposition', can you give an example?
Maybe you mean when a philosopher just explains the content of a sentence by paraphrasing it with a longer or more detailed sentence?
Another use of 'proposition' can be found in Wittgenstein's Tractatus, where it simply means a sentence which is put to a meaningful use (or in the Tractarian terminology, a sign which is used as a symbol).
I don't think so. You have a car. I have a car. We do not have the same car (type.) We have the same type of transportation.
You utter A. I utter A.
A=A
Your utterance is not equivalent to my utterance.
A sentence is not identical to the sounds or marks that are used to express that sentence.
Quoting Fafner
Semantics is the study of meaning. Propositions are all about meaning.
Quoting Fafner
What was his main concern when he discussed rule following?
I'm unfamiliar with propositions being spoken of as having semantic content. They are semantic content.
You could just say "content" instead of "proposition" and get along just fine.
You have to distinguish between two senses of "the same". On one sense, indeed we don't have the same car (our cars are not numerically or token identical), but on another sense we do - say if our cars are of the same brand and model (they belong to the same type). This distinction should not be very controversial unless you are some sort of extreme nominalist (are you?)
Quoting Mongrel
As I said, it's just a matter of terminology. If you don't want to confuse people, then you ought not to talk about the "semantics" or propositions.
Quoting Mongrel
The false things that people say about rules and meaning.
Yeah, that's exactly my point. If propositions don't have semantic content then they don't have a semantics period (because this is what "semantics" means - a theory which assigns contents to signs).
What is a brand such that millions can own the same one? Does it have physical wheels?
OK. I don't know how this fits in to the conversation. Lost track, I guess.
Well I just tried to use that way, but I didn't get away with it.
As for paraphrase, that's an interesting thing. But I was talking about a step before you really get to content. Something like this: Jones said, last Saturday, "I've got it," referring to the money he owed. You can normalize this to: On July 1, 2017, Jones says that Jones has the money Jones owes. That's a kind of paraphrase, but the goal is just to put the sentence into a particular timeless form and remove a certain amount of context dependence.
I only answered your original question:
Quoting Mongrel
I'm only pointing out that this is a natural use of "the same". Don't you use and understand sentences such as "me and my brother have the same hair color" (e.g. blonde) outside philosophy? I'm surprised that I even need to explain this.
And the point of type identity is not to refer to a particular car with which the other cars are token identical (as I said it is not the same as numerical identity), but to say that the relevant cars belong to the same group or type of cars (and the type is not a car itself).
OK I see what you mean, but I would assume that if you press most philosophers on this, they would say something like that is not the "strictly correct" use of the term 'proposition' but only a 'loose' one.
So you utter A
I utter A
If A is a type, then there must be a token aspect to the situation. Your A (your token) is different in some way from my A (my token).
What's the difference?
Is the sentence "objects A and B have an identical color" an assertion that A and B are the same object?
Obviously tokens are not identical. Last try:
You utter A. (here we see your token of the type A)
I utter A. (here we see my token of the type A)
The tokens are not identical. Right?
You have the bigger picture in mind and I just have the quote you posted. In the quote he explains the applicability of "good" to any noun phrase as not being due to "good" having many meanings we could list, but something else. Your concern earlier seemed to be that there could be a sentence where the meaning of a word in that sentence could not possibly have been specified in advance. Fodor's thing about "good" insists that the one meaning specified in advance will, in this case, always be enough. I don't know what he says in general, though, and you do.
If they aren't identical, then what's the difference between them?
Don't answer. I'm giving up. What we might have eventually discussed was how truth figures in a scene where sentences are the truth-bearer. It's not pretty.
No, I read him as saying, at least for the word "good", that you don't need a new meaning for each new use of good, so it's easy to specify the meaning in advance. Something else deals with the unanticipated usage.
It's reminiscent of Grice's response to Strawson. Strawson argued, roughly, that the logical constants have different meanings in different situations. Grice split meaning into, on the one hand, what you might call the "literal" meaning without going too far wrong, and implicature, and argued that the variation Peter saw, quite rightly, was explainable in terms of what is (either conventionally or conversationally) implicated by an utterance on a particular occasion, rather than by shifts in "literal" meaning.
Btw, there's a (barely readable) paper by Travis called "annals of analysis" which criticizes Grice's distinction, you might enjoy it...
I realise that this is how you are using the term 'misuse', but this is not how I am using the term 'misuse'. You would be aware of this if you had checked inside my head. Did you check?
Quoting Harry Hindu
What constitutes correct grammar? Someone could use a word such as 'sanguine' incorrectly, thinking that it means pessimistic. If they had intended to use a word with a meaning opposite to 'sanguine' then my correction of their 'grammar' is a correction of their meaning. I understood what they meant to say, given the context of the utterance, but the word they actually used had the opposite meaning compared to what they were trying to say. Context plays a large part in meaning because when and where and why you use words is all a part of the use of those words. Is context a part of grammar?
Quoting Harry Hindu
Despite your impeccable grammar and spelling, you didn't state why you disagree with Wittgenstein.
Let me make this simple for you. Say I agree with you that meaning is use and by "use" we both mean the conventional use of the word. When I go and look up the conventional use of the word, "meaning", it doesn't say anything about use. It mentions intent. So, if the meaning is tied to the conventional use of a word, then all these other "uses" of "meaning" you have just provided would be a misuse of the term, precisely because it isn't part of the definition. So either you or Merriam-Webster is wrong. If Merriam-Webster is wrong, then you are wrong as well in saying that meaning is the conventional use of the word because Merriam-Webster is providing you the conventional use of the word, "meaning" yet you deny that is the conventional use. Your whole argument defeats itself.
To say, "my girlfriend means a lot to me" is to say that I value my girlfriend. Value isn't part of the conventional use of the word, "meaning" and so it would be a misuse of the word.
As I have said, numerous times, meaning is the relationship between the effect and it's cause. I'm not saying that the meaning IS the intent. It is the relationship between cause and effect - the relationship between your intent to convey something and the use of the word. That is what the meaning if a word is. This allows us to use the term, "meaning" in referring to rain causing the ground to be wet. The ground being wet means it rained earlier. It's all about causation.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/meaning
"Meaning", according to Merriam-Webster (which shows the conventional/traditional use of words), has to do with intent. To use it any other way (like meaning is use) would be a misuse of the term, "meaning".
Quoting FafnerThen what you mean is what you intend to convey. Do you intend to convey that the leaves are green because they are painted or that they are green because of photosynthesis? What did you intend to convey?
Of course there is intent in the example, but the point is that what one can 'intend' to mean is constrained by the context of the utterance; that is, the purpose for which it is used (in other words, the words that you use plus the context provide you different possible 'meanings' for the sentence to choose from, so it's not wholly up to you to decide what your words can mean).
But do you agree that the sentence 'the leaves are green' has different meanings in the two different examples?
So are you disagreeing with me? I'm not sure what is your objection (if you have any) to the argument about the leaves.
Given that using the word "meaning" in the context of talking about value, as in "my girlfriend means a lot to me", is a conventional use of the term, clearly Merriam-Webster doesn't provide an exhaustive account of the word "meaning".
Dictionaries aren't the authority. The actual ways we communicate are the authority.
What does "the relationship between cause and effect" even mean?
And how does this account for the situation where I intend for you to turn left but instead say "turn right"? Or the case of Del Boy thinking that "au revoir" is French for "hello"? The meaning of the terms has nothing to do with the speaker's intention at all.
Of course, but how does the same string of symbols mean different things? You're saying it is because of context. I'm saying it is the information one intends to convey. Is one talking about the paint or photosynthesis? It depends on what the speaker intends to convey.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Quoting Fafner
What I'm disagreeing with is your circular reasoning. You said, "the point is that what one can 'intend' to mean is constrained by the purpose for which it is used". I pointed out that "purpose" is equivalent to intent. The purpose of saying what you said is dependent upon the information you intend to convey. So what you are really saying is, "the point is that what one can 'intend' to mean is constrained by the intent (or goal) for which it is used. If the goal is to convey that the leaves are painted green, then that is what you mean. If the goal is to convey that the leaves process the energy of the sun in such a way that makes them green, then that is what you mean.
Then dictionaries are useless? I'm not sure how much further we can carry on here if that is what you really think.
Another problem you have is that another conventional use of the word, "meaning" is, "I looked up the word in the dictionary to find it's meaning." If people use the word, "meaning" in a conventional way to refer to the dictionary as providing meaning for words, then the conventional use of the word, "meaning" in this sense contradicts you saying that dictionaries don't provide the conventional use of words. People use, "meaning" to refer to the dictionary as providing the conventional use of words.
Earlier in this thread, Fafner said,[quote=Fafner;79671]What dictionaries do is to replace words which the speaker doesn't know their conventional use, with words that the speaker does know how to use, because if he didn't then the dictionary would be completely useless to him.[/quote]Fafner seems to agree that dictionaries provide the conventional use of words and both of you are making the same "meaning-is-use" argument. Maybe you two should figure out what dictionaries are for before you and I can continue our discussion.
It is true that dictionaries don't provide an exhaustive account of how every words is used. Dictionaries don't provide metaphorical uses of the words. It is possible that the misuse of words takes hold in the population and the general population begins using those terms in that way, but this is no different than someone saying something that isn't true and that falsehood gets spread around and treated as if it were truth in the general population. The misuse of words can be spread around the same way. What you have to explain is how the single misuse of a word becomes the conventional use of the word.
Another issue is that once we have several meanings for a word, we no longer have a conventional use of the word. The word now has several conventional uses, and what is to stop if from acquiring more to the point of there being no conventional use of the word? The questions you need to answer are are:
How many people must use the word in the new way for it to become "conventional"?
How many different meanings must a word acquire before it no longer has a conventional use?
Quoting MichaelThe same thing as the relationship between you and your mother, the same as the relationship between you studying for an exam and getting an A on the exam, the same as the relationship between your intent to convey information and the words that come from your mouth.
Quoting MichaelYou once said that I'm conflating meaning with intent. It is you that is conflating meaning with the conventional use of words. The way you are using meaning here is to make a distinction between what the scribbles or sounds "left" and "right" refer to. What the words refer to is what they mean, and if I intend to convey for you to turn right instead of left, then 1) I had better know what word refers to which direction if I'm to convey my intent correctly. and 2) I need to know that the listener understands what the words refer to as well, or else I fail to accomplish my goal. This is no different than having the goal to build a house and having an understanding of how to use the tools to build a house, in order to accomplish the goal of building a house. The conventional use of the tools isn't the meaning. It is the intent of building a house that is the meaning of me using those tools. What is it that you intend in using those tools (those words)?
I didn't say that. I said that they're not the authority – they don't dictate what words mean – and that if Merriam-Webster doesn't account for the "value" definition of "meaning" then it doesn't provide an exhaustive account.
So the meaning of the word is independent of your intent (or, rather, the relationship between the word and your intent, or whatever it is you're saying)?
Your statement here directly confirms the point I've been making. The meaning of the word is one thing, and the speaker's intent is something else. And this is where you conflate. Just because we can replace the word "intends" with the word "means" in the sentence "what the speaker intends", it doesn't follow that we can replace the word "meaning" with the word "intention" in the sentence "the meaning of the word".
Then you are no longer arguing for meaning is use. You are now arguing that meaning is what a symbol refers to.
If the dictionary doesn't provide an exhaustive account, then how does the conventional use of a term provide an exhaustive account? I can use the term in any way the dictionary doesn't describe then, and as long as someone else understands what I mean, I have successfully used the word in a way that is unconventional. This is how metaphors start. It is an unconventional use of the word that eventually becomes conventional, but only after users understand the new way it is used, or what it refers to, or what it means. So you have the problem of explaining how unconventional uses of words DO have meaning prior to them becoming a conventional (common) use of the word.
How did any word get it's meaning? One person had to make a sound or a scribble and then persuade others to use the sound and scribble in the same way. Before the majority used the sound/scribble to refer to something, it had a meaning, and it wasn't it's conventional use because only one person used it that way. It was what the word refers to.
When I talk about meaning referring to intent, I'm talking about causation. Your intent is the cause of your use of words. If you had no intent to convey information, then would you use words? Yes, or no? and the information you intend to convey dictates the words you use? Yes, or no?
So do you want to say something like "meaning of a sentence=intent"? If so, then I think it is very implausible that intending something by a sentence is sufficient to make it mean what you intend.
For example, can you intend to mean that it is sunny outside by the sentence "it is raining"? Suppose someone asks you what is the whether outside, and you answer "it is raining" while intending to convey to him that it is sunny; would you say that you've told a lie or the truth? (and suppose that it is indeed sunny outside). It seems to me that in this example, what you really intend has little to do with the meaning of the sentence that you are using, on a pretty intuitive notion of "meaning".
I think the moral from this story is that for a sentence to mean something that you intend, it must be (in some sense) appropriate to use that sentence to say this particular thing. And what makes it appropriate to use a sentence such as "it is raining" on certain circumstances and not some others, is not decided solely by what one intends. Therefore intention by itself doesn't look like a plausible explanation of linguistic meaning.
But what does that have to do with the meaning of the word? You might intend for me to turn left, and this might cause you to say "turn right" – but as you've admitted, this would be the wrong thing to say, given that "turn right" doesn't mean "turn left". So the meaning of the word "right" has nothing to do with your intent or its causal relationship to the actual utterance – your intent can cause you to say the wrong word (and it's still the wrong word even if the person you're speaking too recognises that you've misspoken and correctly infers your intent).
You're taking the term "conventional" too literally. I only brought it up to address your claim that if meaning is use then you can simply utter any sounds you like and, given that you've used them, they must have a meaning. That's not what Wittgenstein means by "meaning is use". "Use" isn't synonymous here with "utterance". It's closer to "function". The meaning of a word is its function or role in the language-game – which may be a language-game involving only a small number of people.
As an example, think of the expression "check!" in the language-game of chess. To explain what the expression "check!" means is just to explain its use/function/role, which is concerned with threatening the opponent's King. It would be wrong to "translate" it as being synonymous with the English phrase "your King in under threat of capture at my next move" (and even if our intent with both utterances is the same).
And as a similar example, the expression "check!" or the equivalent knock-on-table when playing a game of poker and not wanting to fold or raise.
Words are what we use to effect our intentions, that much is clear. What do we say about the meanings of words though? It doesn't seem right to say that we use the meanings of words to effect our intentions. We want to say that we use the particular words we do to effect our intentions because of what those words mean.
If our intention is to say, to utter, "It rained yesterday," we need only find the words "it," "rained," and "yesterday" in our lexicon and we're all set. If our intention is to mean, "It rained yesterday," we have more choices, because there's more than one way to say that.
Suppose it has not rained in a while; it finally rains one day and then again the next. A, on this second day, is still emotionally caught up in waiting for rain, and says to B, "Thank God it's finally raining." B could respond, "What was that yesterday? Snow?" and I would submit that what B means by that is, among other things, that it rained yesterday.
But suppose B did not want to mean anything else by what he said -- not "There's something wrong with you," for instance -- but only "It rained yesterday." Then it seems natural to say that "It rained yesterday" is the right thing to say when that is all you mean, because "It rained yesterday" means, in some special sense, "It rained yesterday." That special sense is something like "literally," because obviously just as there are many things you can say and mean "It rained yesterday," there are many things you can mean by saying "It rained yesterday."
When searching your lexicon for words you can use to mean something, it is the meaning rather than the shape of words that matters. Whether the words can be used to mean what you mean is what determines whether they are candidates for being used now by you. In many cases there will be a specially favored choice, because the words -- or, let's say, particular words arranged in a particular way to form a sentence -- mean what you mean. If you want to say something that means, "It rained yesterday," then you say, "It rained yesterday," because "It rained yesterday" means "It rained yesterday."
But we could also say that "It rained yesterday" means, literally, "It rained yesterday" in the following sense: it is what members of your speech community say when they want to say something that means "It rained yesterday," and only means that. It is how your speech community uses these words. It is what they mean by these words, and therefore it is what these words mean in your speech community.
On this account, the meanings of words are traceable to our meanings. But it is the convention of meaning y by uttering x within your speech community that makes x mean y, not your individual meaning y by uttering x on some occasion. If you are a member of this speech community and want to say something that means y, the simplest way to do that is to utter x, to follow the convention. (But also: you may have some options that are simply less popular than x, or you may find a new way of following other conventions to mean y without uttering x. Uttering x is just the simplest way to go both for you and for your hearer, who can also be expected to be familiar with x and how it is used.)
But still, I don't think that shifting the burden to communal conventions can tell you the whole story of how sentences can mean what they mean. What kind of facts make it the case that a given community uses certain words to mean X rather than Y?
Are you thinking of the context or occasion of utterance, the language-game being played, that sort of thing? I don't think I would have a problem with that at all. Above, I spoke of wanting to mean something - - but that's honestly pretty silly. It's only there to be distinguished from wanting just to utter a particular string of sounds. The intentions we actually want are intentions to do something that can be done linguistically. For that sort of thing, language-games are a pretty reasonable place to start.
Is that the sort of thing you had in mind?
And I don't want to use any loaded terms like 'language-games', especially since many people here completely reject the Wittgensteinian framework (and anyway, the term itself requires a lot of explanation and unpacking to be of any use).
Agreed.
The sort of example Grice uses (and the above is just Grice lite) is my saying, "The truck is out front," because I believe the truck is out front, and I want you to believe that I believe that on the basis of my saying what I said, and I want you also to believe it, because I do, etc. It's notoriously torturous.
At any rate, yes, the next step is to look at the occasion of utterance, the context of the utterance, and so on. Do we agree on that?
I'm not really sure what you're saying here. If you thought I was offering an interpretation of Wittgenstein, then I could see you thinking I had botched it pretty badly. I wasn't offering a version of LW though; it was Grice and a bit of Lewis.
http://journal.sjdm.org/15/15923a/jdm15923a.pdf
In the case of this sort of bullshit, language seems to be indisputably "doing" rather than "meaning".
For fun (but it's also instructive), here's a link to Seb Pearce's "new age bullshit generator".
http://sebpearce.com/bullshit/
Unique, unconventional language use happens, but for the most part, language games utilize convention.
Sure. But the challenge is not make it sound too anti-realistic or conventionalist. We want our sentences to have objective truth conditions at the end, don't we?
In my opinion, the right place to start from is actually Witt's early philosophy. If you take from the Tractatus the basic idea of the 'picture theory' (that is, of propositions having sense by virtue of being correlated with reality in a certain way), and you modify the details according to his later philosophy -- you can get something pretty interesting and promising in my opinion.
Absolutely agree, and you're right that even using the word "convention" can send people in the wrong direction. (It's not a word I would have used much until recently and I had forgotten this.)
Quoting Mongrel
Sure, but it is vitally important that the notion of use in a language game is made categorically distinct from 'conventional use'. To conflate the two is render Wittgenstein unintelligible.
If you mean he wasn't talking about any particular set of conventions, I think that's clear. Since he encouraged the philosopher to observe word usage, he appears to have been pointing directly at convention as the reason for wording choices (as opposed to ability of language to represent.)
Nope, I mean that conventions as such - if by this we mean already-established uses of language - are quite literally irrelevant to Wittgenstein's account of meaning. Or, as I said, what is at stake is 'conventionalizability' and not conventions. Or better yet: conventionalizability, use, and meaning are co-eval: to mean something with language is to use language in such a way that it can be made out according to a convention, or again better, made out according to a rule (Witty almost always speaks in terms of 'rules' and almost never in terms of 'convention'); which is not to say that it must 'follow' an (already established) rule - this being a distinction Witty makes clearly in the Blue Books where he speaks of the difference between 'a process being in accordance with a rule' and 'a process involving a rule'.
Commenting on the above passage Linda Zerilli comments: "Whereas the latter refers to actions that are explicitly followed by subjects engaged in a particular practice... the former speaks to what an observer of any practice might say when asked to explain what is being done". This again speaks to the 'rule-lizability' of use, not merely following established rules. Stanley Cavell is even more explicit when he says that the whole point of the rule following discussion is to "indicate how inessential the 'appeal to rules' is as an explanation of language." The entire discussion of the so-called 'rule following paradox' in the PI (along with it's 'resolution') is meant to bring this out. As is all the discussion of teaching and learning, to arrive at the point where one 'knows how to go on' (i.e. without rules or conventions being spelled out each time).
Or put differently again, the whole of the PI operates at the level of 'principle' and not 'fact' - meaning operates in language to the extent that the use of language accords in principle to some rule or another. Whether or not there is in fact a rule of that kind is irrelevant. Which is why everytime someone reads Wittgenstein as appealing to 'conventional use' to explain meaning in language, they misunderstand the point entirely.
What grounds meaning in his (quite agreeable view) is not convention (which is easy to think), but "forms of life" far more generally, like what is universal to the human condition, and meaning is only transferable, or made up of not only grammar, but subjective judgment which have to match, which come from living, and experience. So that, language is as universal as the form of life in which the meaning arises from. This is why a lion wielding all of the bestest grammar, would still be unintelligible.
Something like that, I figure.
You might like Cavell's writing on this: "We learn and teach words in certain contexts, and then we are expended, and expect others, to be able to project them into further contexts. Nothing insures that this projection will take place (in particular, not the grasping of universals nor the grasping of books of rules), just as nothing insures that we will make, and understand, the same projections. That on the whole we do is a matter of our sharing routes of interest and feeling, modes of response, senses of humor and of significance and fulfillment, of what is outrageous, of what is similar to what else, what a rebuke, what forgiveness, of when an utterance is an assertion, when an appeal, when an explanation - all the whirl of organism Wittgenstein calls "forms of life.". Human speech and activity, sanity and community, rest upon nothing more, but nothing less, than this. It is a vision as simple as it is difficult, and as difficult as it is (and because it is) terrifying." (Cavell, The Claim of Reason)
Which is more or less an expanded gloss of §241 & §242 of the PI: "It is in their language that human beings agree. This is agreement not in opinions, but rather in form of life/ It is not only agreement in definitions, but also (odd as it may sound) agreement in judgements that is required for communication by means of language."
That undersells convention, and what motivates convention, rather dramatically. We're not talking about which fork goes to the right of which, but the prospects for communal life and communal aspiration.
I might checks him out. Not super acquainted with Wittgenstein, which is why I rarely mention him. I read the philosopher investigations on the way out west on the train life five years ago.
I didn't oversell, or undersell convention, but simply made a distinction, and suggested that the mistake is easy to make, because the two things are similar, but convention reduces more to just agreement in general, and not the more particular agreement that I took him to mean.
(edit) Maybe I mean that convention is more particular, and less general than "forms of live", at least in the way I'd prefer to interpret it, and would be more in agreement with the thing I just said... they're different in any case is all, lol.
Convention is just like agreement in like a contractual, abstract sense, like the spelling of a word, which leaves the individual lived experience that the meaning that fills up those conventional containers come from out of it... Its like the thing I'm always going on about.
To use my Jesus bread bearer example there, and knowing them by their deeds, people can say anything, they can't do anything. This is why the person of christ, his life and deeds is what is significant, and can't simply be repeated by saying the same things. That isn't how meaning works.
That's one kind of dry interpretation of the notion 'convention'. I don't think of conventional usages of language as "contractual" at all. I believe that linguistic usages become established in a 'live' way; that is, in, and in accordance with, lived experience.
The misattribution tends to stem from Witty's insistence that language is a public phenomenon, but the 'publicness' of language refers to its performative nature, its being a practice and an activity, and not it's inscription into a community or 'a' public.
Well, words mean whatever people want, and how they use them then I guess.
I completely agree.
Yes, I probably should have said "communally established usages" because the "agreed" still smacks of the 'contractual' which I wanted to de-emphasize.
Buddha makes this clear and unambiguous distinction between convention, and actually knowing stuff, which takes actual practice, living and personal experience.
You can go ahead thinking they're totes the same, but you'll just be wrong...
I believe I understand what you're saying. Witt wanted us to observe how language is used among living humans in order to grasp how words come to have meaning.
An example would be when the Normans invaded England. The whole community began to speak in a kind of baby-talk (English as it is today is a result of that.) Thinking of that community struggling to communicate, the thing that really drives the establishment of rules comes into view. It's part of what it means to be human.
Yeah, but the really important point is not only that we must observe how language is used among living human beings, but equally that meaning in language is nonetheless not tethered to these actually-existing-practises. There is the capacity to inaugurate new uses, new meanings that may very well break with 'convention' - all the while being amenable - in principle - to becoming conventional. Or to simply go back to my original point: a language-game is not a 'convention' if by 'convention' we understand an actually-existing-use of language by a community of real life speakers.
But I don't think even logical positivists thought that. On the other hand, I think it's only by an artificial analysis that we can separate the source of normativity from the rules themselves. In practice, it's an evolving, organic whole.
Try this Mongrel. Observe any particular instance of usage of anything, such as a person using a hammer, or a person using a word. You can describe that particular instance of usage. Now look at a number of different instances of usage. You can perhaps make an inductive conclusion, from similarities in each instance, to say that the hammer, or that specific word, is used in a specific way. Recognize that this is a "rule", or "law", which you have created, by means of your inductive conclusion, that the thing is used in this particular way. You cannot proceed from here, to say that the people using this thing are following that rule, because the rule was produced by you, from your observations.
The point is, to provide a separation between particular instances of "use", and the inductive conclusion, of "use", and recognize, that "use" in general is a rule by inductive conclusion, it is not a rule which the users are following.
if you want
to continue
being
meaningful
in
your
speech.
So here we aren't talking about rules. We aren't talking about the genesis of rules. We're talking about rule-following (limitation.)
If a "convention" is simply "a way in which something is usually done" - which presumably includes the ways in which we are usually taught to do things - then I don't quite understand how it is much different to your (or Cavell's) contrasting class of "communally cultivated habits" and the like.
Cavell should suspend his terror over this considering that his knowledge of the mechanics of human language is as limited as anyone else's. It's a fruitful topic among scientists studying human origin. At this point, that science is a collection of speculations. Why on earth would Cavell imagine that he's gone further?
The object of agreement is different. For Wittgenstein as for Cavell, there is 'agreement in the form of life' at stake. It is not an agreement with respect to the conventional (by which I mean 'already-established') use(s) of language. That's the key difference. There are two analytic axes at work here: a language game and the form of life in which that language game operates. 'Agreement' operates at the latter level, as it were.
Then you are no longer arguing for meaning is use. You are now arguing that meaning is what a symbol refers to.
Quoting Michael
LOL. Now I'm taking a conventional use of the word "conventional" to literally. Then you meant (intended) something else with your use of "conventional".
Also, virtually every dictionary defines "meaning" as "what is intended". So to say that dictionaries don't exhaust every use of a word is preposterous. It is what we use we we want to know what a word means, or what it refers to so that we can use those words to express our intent, or our ideas.
The information you intend to convey dictates the words you use? Yes, or no?
But agreement in form of life and agreement in convention are both of the same type: neither are agreements of opinion. Agreement in linguistic convention is just a particular species of agreement in form of life.
Really, I am taking issue with your claim that conventional use is not at all what Wittgenstein refers to with regard to meaning-as-use. We learn the meanings and uses of words just as (or perhaps while) we learn language games. We say that someone "knows how to go on" when they demonstrate that they use words as others usually do (i.e. conventionally). And is there any word or phrase that is not "conventionalizable"? There is only the conventional and the unconventional, as well as right and wrong ways to use words.
If it is sunny outside and I intend to convey information that it is sunny outside, then I would say, "it is sunny outside". I used words that match my intentions. If I never intended to convey that information, I would have never used words at all.
If I intended to convey information that it is sunny outside, and I said, "it is raining outside", then my words wouldn't match my intention, which means I misspoke, or I didn't use words correctly.
If I intended to convey information that it is sunny outside while it is actually raining, then that means that I intend to lie - to use words in a way that matches my intentions.
In lying, I could have said, "it is snowing", or anything else, other than "it is raining". In so doing, I used words that match my intentions, not how it is appropriate to use those words to say a particular thing.
In both lying and misspeaking, I am not using words that is appropriate to use those words to say a particular thing. The difference comes from intent. I can intend to lie, but I don't intend to misspeak. Intending to misspeak is lying.
(and also as a sidenote, it's not an objection to an argument simply to change the example - you should've answered the question that I posed from within the example as I described it - if it bothers you that I included you in my example, then substitute yourself with some hypothetical person.)
This sounds awfully close to defining "use" as simply making sounds and writing scribbles. If any scribble or sound can mean anything at anytime, then use would simply making scribbles or sounds to refer to anything. Any scribble or sound is "conventionizable".
"Conventionizable" isn't even a word. You simply made up a new string of scribbles and ascribed it a meaning via your intent. Most of us knew that you really meant (intended) "conventionalized", which is a word. When there are other words that already have the meaning you intend, then making up a new string of scribbles to mean the same thing would be redundant and makes language more complex and confusing.
But of course - everything that Witty designates as 'language on holiday' or 'language as an idling engine', etc: these are uses of language where there is no possible way to grasp a rule regarding 'how to go on', where differences no longer make a difference, and there is no possible language-game to which a particular use of language belongs. This distinction simply does not - and cannot - map onto a distinction between 'conventional' (already-established) and 'nonconventional' (not-yet-established) uses of language. After all, it's clear that instances of unconventional language use still mean things, and one can quite easily learn an unconventional idiom and employ it quite successfully.
Quoting Harry Hindu
It'd be better if you didn't waste your energies on me - your posts in this thread are beneath consideration, and this one especially.
The meaning of my words only diverge from my intention when I misspeak, which is to say that my words were unintentional.
When lying, or using metaphors, or inside jokes, I am "misusing" words intentionally (I could really say that I used words as it makes no sense to say that I misused something intentionally). What makes it the case that certain words match my intention? That my intent preceded the use of words.
But In the example that I gave they were intentional.
Let me change it slightly. Imagine someone who doesn't speak English very well, and he utters the sentence "it is raining", while intending to say that it is sunny, because for some reason he believes that this is how you say that it is sunny in English. You cannot say that he was insincere or lying, or using a metaphor, or telling a joke etc; he had the intention to mean something different from what his words in fact mean. How do you explain this?
The object of agreement seems to me to be the same sort of thing as the understanding Wittgenstein talked about when he said that there is a way to understand a rule that is not an interpretation. And it is regress blocking in the same manner.
This is a interesting thread and I wish I had the time to get involved in it. Recently, while browsing the items distributed by De Gruyter, I stumbled upon a book by Avner Baz -- When Words Are Called For: A Defense of Ordinary Language Philosophy, HUP 2012. I thought it might interest some of the participants in this thread. (Charles Travis is being discussed extensively). I've placed it near the top of my reading list. Here is the overview:
"[i]A new form of philosophizing known as ordinary language philosophy took root in England after the Second World War, promising a fresh start and a way out of long-standing dead-end philosophical debates. Pioneered by Wittgenstein, Austin, and others, OLP is now widely rumored, within mainstream analytic philosophy, to have been seriously discredited, and consequently its perspective is ignored.
Avner Baz begs to differ. In When Words Are Called For, he shows how the prevailing arguments against OLP collapse under close scrutiny. All of them, he claims, presuppose one version or another of the very conception of word-meaning that OLP calls into question and takes to be responsible for many traditional philosophical difficulties. Worse, analytic philosophy itself has suffered as a result of its failure to take OLP’s perspective seriously. Baz blames a neglect of OLP’s insights for seemingly irresolvable disputes over the methodological relevance of “intuitions” in philosophy and for misunderstandings between contextualists and anti-contextualists (or “invariantists”) in epistemology. Baz goes on to explore the deep affinities between Kant’s work and OLP and suggests ways that OLP could be applied to other philosophically troublesome concepts.
When Words Are Called For defends OLP not as a doctrine but as a form of practice that might provide a viable alternative to work currently carried out within mainstream analytic philosophy. Accordingly, Baz does not merely argue for OLP but, all the more convincingly, practices it in this eye-opening book[/i]."
... "Avner Baz is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Tufts University. He has written about ethics, aesthetics, perception, judgment, and about the question of philosophical method in the works of Kant, Wittgenstein, Cavell, and John McDowell"
Yes! This, exactly. I reckon if one can grasp the import of this passage, almost the entirety of the PI falls into place.
The book sounds interesting too, although I'm actually pretty unfamiliar with the 'analytic' reception of Witty outside of a few select readers here and here (Cavell and Kripke). Tbh, my favourite readings have come from the space of, funnily enough, political philosophy. Linda Zerilli, Chantal Mouffe, Hannah Pitkin, Cavell, and even Zizek have, more than any other readers, made me appreciate the power and the singularity of Witty's thought. The 'mainstream' of Witty scholarship has been largely outside my ken, unfortunately.
But in Wittgensteinian terms, or definitions, following a rule, or "rule-following", has nothing to do with one's intention or desire. Rule-following is acting in a way which is consistent with those inductive conclusions. So if we say that symbols like "2", "3', and other words of language are used in a particular way, then using them in this way is said to be "correct" behaviour, and that is rule-following, acting correctly.
Intention, or "desire to say something meaningful", cannot enter this picture, because all there can be is desire to act correctly. And this is the desire to act in a way which is consistent with the way that others are acting. This is the question which Wittgenstein alludes to at the beginning of PI, and enters again at the so-called private language argument: what gives one the capacity to act in a way which may be determined as correct, i.e. the way which is consistent with the way that other people are acting. Under the defined terms, we cannot say that the person is following an internal principle, an internal rule, because rule-following is defined by correctness, and the internal principle which inclines one to act may not itself be a correct "rule". So Wittgenstein leaves us with no approach to the "desire to say something meaningful".
Let's assume we have achieved the Right Understanding of what Wittgenstein Really Meant.
What I want is an account of how language is possible and how it works.
I would expect a certain sort of challenge:
(1) What I want is impossible.
and/or
(2) What I want shows I am prey to a certain misunderstanding or illusion.
and/or
(3) I should really want something else.
Assuming I can run that gauntlet, then my questions would be:
(A) Does Wittgenstein provide the sort of account I'm interested in?
(B) Is it a good one?
It occurs to me that since Lewis is avowedly Humean, he might have chosen the word "custom" instead of "convention". He chose the latter to see if there was an answer to Quine.
We definitely need education, maps, systems in order to organize and share our experiences, but it's all empty yapping without the living it too. That's a pretty old idea really, and I think can be interpreted as all substantial meaning, all content is phronetic, and all that can really be criticized, understood, or apprehended besides this is form, grammar, consistency, logical validity.
As for some understandings don't require interpretation... well, I think that anything that has fallen off of anything and hurt itself, understands gravity without any need of interpretation.
What does she mean by "reveals meaning?"
Gives relatable form to the chaos of your experiences. Brings to the surface meaning that already resides in the understanding. A prompting to see what is already on some level known.
I wasn't trying to explain what Wittgenstein leaves us with. I was pointing out something cool about speech that has to do with freedom and limitation.
Precipitates... like rain from a cloud. That's what poetry does. It precipitates.
Well I haven't read the thread, it's progressed far to fast for me, but I think we've hit the nail on the head. "Language as use" provides us with no approach to this cool thing about speech which has to due with freedom and limitation. Likewise, describing any tool by its use, doesn't give us an approach to the creative force of production and manufacturing, which is the real drive behind the use of that tool. To say that the hammer drives the nail, is to tell us nothing about the art of building, which is what the hammer is really used for. It's not used for driving nails, it's used for building. To say that language is use, is to tell us nothing about thinking, which is what language is really used for, not communicating.
What your post demonstrates is just how different real "rule-following" is, from the Wittgensteinian "rule-following". Real "rule-following" is acting according to the limitations which exist within your mind, that are guiding your actions. Whether these limitations are guiding you toward right or wrong is irrelevant in real rule-following. Wittgensteinian "rule-following" is acting in a way which may be observed as being in accordance with some descriptive, inductive principles, which determine right and wrong, i.e., acting like the others.
In the Wittgensteinian sense, it is impossible that one who is following the rule is acting wrongly, to follow the rule is to act correctly. In the reality of rule-following, one who is following a rule might just as likely be acting wrongly, because following a rule is acting according to the principles of limitation which one accesses within one's mind, thinking.
Animals can merely use sounds and signs to communicate. However, animals don't know how to use them as inferential roles. This follows that animals are not use theorists of meaning at all.
Quoting Fafner
Then you are no longer arguing for meaning is use. You are arguing that meaning is what a word refers to, which aren't other words. Saying, "It is raining" or "It is sunny" are the correct use of words. You only say that they are incorrect when the words don't refer to the actual state-of-affairs of the weather outside. The listener would never know I misspoke until they went outside. Then they would be left thinking what I intended with my words. Was I joking, lying, or did I misspeak?
You don't seem to understand the contradictory nature of your own position. If one uses "raining" to mean, "sunny" as a joke or a lie, then that would be a conventional use of the word, which then makes it the correct use of the word for the person who "misspeaks". In other words, you can't say that they used words incorrectly. The only way you can get at the distinction between using a word in a way that isn't conventionally used and it mean something and using a word that is conventionally used and it not mean something is by applying one's intention in speaking. Did they intend to say what they said, or no?
The fact is that we can adapt to other people's use of words. If someone uses a word "incorrectly" to express their intent, and no one "corrects" them and they continue to use the word "incorrectly", then you will understand what they mean, and that becomes the conventional use of the word, at least between that pair of speaker and listener.
StreelightX has said we can use any scribble or sound to refer to anything we want. A scribble or sound is "convetionizable." It is up to the listener to get at the intent for the use of the word. There are basically no rules for language in this sense. You can use a scribble or sound for anything and it becomes conventional only after repetitive use, and only after repetitive use do we understand what it is the word means. Does it matter how many people use the word in that way if just one person understands what they meant?
Not at all. The view that 'meaning is use' doesn't entail that words don't refer, it only says that words refer by virtue of their use.
Quoting Harry Hindu
I don't understand what you mean. 'Correct' in what sense? Saying 'raining' instead of 'sunny' is not the conventional or correct use in English of these words, that's plainly absurd.
Quoting Harry Hindu
I don't understand what you are saying, the grammar here is all over the place. Please reformulate.
Quoting Harry Hindu
You are not getting my argument. If it is possible to intend x by uttering the word W, without making W to mean x, then it follows that intention is nut sufficient for meaning, period. If I utter the sentence "it is raining", my words will mean that it is raining no matter what my actual intention was, because this is what the sentence conventionally means in English.
Quoting Harry Hindu
So you finally accepted the view that meaning is use, congrats.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Misspeaking and saying something false are not the same thing.
It doesn't matter, because it is irrelevant to my argument. To repeat: If I utter the sentence "it is raining", my words will mean that it is raining no matter what my actual intention was, because this is what the sentence conventionally means in English.
Quoting Fafner
Exactly, the words, "it is raining", refers to the state-of-affairs outside, which aren't more words. To say that "It is raining" means "it is raining" is nonsense. That is why you used quotes to refer to your words and didn't use quotes to refer to the actual state-of-affairs.
Because you are changing the topic. As I already told you, if you want to criticize an argument, then you should stick to the original formulation and not just make up your own unrelated examples. If you don't wish to engage seriously with my arguments, then I'm not interested in this conversation.
Quoting Harry Hindu
The 'refers' part here is ambiguous. I wasn't talking about the truth of the sentence, but about it's meaning. The sentence 'it is raining' means that it is raining (if you wish, "refers to rain"), even if doesn't rain outside; so it doesn't matter if the sentence is true or false if we only want to know its meaning.
Sheesh! I'm not changing the topic. I was responding to a specific post of yours. If I'm off topic, then you are as well. You keep trying to avoid answering the question - that's all. If you can't do that then there is no point in continuing this with you.
Quoting FafnerWhy would you ever say "it is raining" without ever referring to the weather outside? You seem to be saying that words have an objective meaning independent of them ever being used. But words have multiple meanings. We can say "it is raining" metaphorically, which doesn't meant that water is falling from clouds. What would we mean if we say, "it is raining cats and dogs." That sentence means that cats and dogs are falling from they sky?
Which question?
Quoting Harry Hindu
What do you mean "referring to the weather outside"? Of course the sentence "it is raining" is about the weather outside, but its meaning is independent from the actual weather outside (because otherwise false statements would be meaningless).
Quoting Harry Hindu
You are right, but this doesn't help you. But you also seem to be affirming the meaning is determined by use, contrary to what you've been arguing, so which way is it?
I must be arguing with an idiot. How about answering every question I posed on this page that you didn't answer.
Quoting Fafner uhhh, Ok. It is about the weather outside but it's meaning is independent of the actual weather outside. How does that make any sense? In your effort to never admit you are wrong, you begin to sound incoherent.
Because you are asking many irrelevant things, and life is too short (and anyway, I don't understand most of your questions).
Quoting Harry Hindu
Simple: "the weather outside" means that it can be either rainy or sunny, so the sentence "it is rainy" can refer to the whether outside even if it is false.
After all, I can ask you what is the whether outside without knowing if it is raining (and I will still be referring to the weather--whatever it is).
I think this is a useful example of how meaning is different to reference. Both "it is raining" and "the weather outside" can refer to the same thing (if it's raining), but don't mean the same thing. So it is wrong to say that the meaning of a word (or a phrase) is the thing it refers to.
The same with my earlier example of "the son of of Edward VIII" and "the father of Elizabeth II".
So neither of Harry's proposed accounts of meaning (the other being concerned with intention) works at all.
Or my example of "Caesar's murder" from the thread about truth.
That doesn't seem to be quite the same since in the case of the earlier two examples (regarding the state of the weather, or George VI) the respective pairs of predicates, or singular terms, had the same Fregean reference (same Bedeutung) albeit different Fregean senses. But in the case of the events being referred to as "Caesar's murder" and as "Ceasar's dying" the difference in meaning runs deeper since the predicates "...was murdered" and "...died" have different Fregean references and not merely different Fregean senses. They are not two ways to single out the very same determination of the object (Caesar) but rather are ascribing different properties of him. On my view, there is no common 'event' that is being referred two under different descriptions. They are two numerically distinct events even though the very same individual is involved in both of them roughly at the same time and at the same place.
I don't agree, I think it is the same event under different description. I don't see the disanalogy between the two examples: why can't "...was murdered" and "...died" (or more accurately "the death of..." and "the murder of...") have the same reference just as "the son of..." and "the father of..."?
Really? Surely there is at least one interpretation of Wittgenstein that allows first person data about the experience of speaking.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
But don't you agree that sometimes there's value in asking if a statement is informative? To me that's a marker for ordinary language use vs unnecessary philosophical shenanigans (and sometimes other forms of bullshit.)
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Right and wrong is just settled via success in communication, right?
Well, "the son of..." and "the father of..." will only have the same reference if you fill them up with singular terms in such a way as to turn them into complete definite descriptions.
As for "...was murdered" and "...died", there just is no way to fill those up and refer to the same event (or so would I argue). In order to achieve something similar to the previous case, you would rather need something like "the ... who was murdered at (some time and place)" and "the ... who died at (some time and place)". Then, yes, you could fill them up in such a way that they would refer to the same individual (under two different Fregean senses). But this individual would be a human being rather than a historical event.
The issue with Caesar's murder and Caesar's death is that they refer to two different things that happened to Caesar. For sure, the murder could not have occurred without the death also occurring, but, as I think you already noted, the converse isn't true. And this asymmetry isn't merely a matter of the modes of presentation (Fregean sense) of the events.
Another way to highlight the difference is to notice that "...was murdered" is a determination of the determinable "...died" rather in the same way in which the property "...is crimson" is a determination of "...is red". But it is clear that an apple's being red isn't the same thing as its being crimson under two different descriptions. Likewise for, say, Fido being a dog and Fido being a mammal. Being a dog is one determinate way for an animal to be a mammal and being murdered is one determinate way for someone to die.
Again, I think the root of the illusion of there being a common "thing" being referred to under different descriptions when two separate events occur at the same place and the same time is the fact that roughly the same individuals are involved in both cases and there is a tendency to identify what happens (the 'neutral event') with its 'raw' material supervenience base, as it were. But an event singles out not just the individuals involved while merely specifying some definite time interval when the action occurs. It ascribes to them some specific relations and/or action/process forms that those individuals are involved into, and leaves out others that are irrelevant to the constitution of the event. (Hence, say, an apple falling from a tree wasn't necessarily part of WWII even if it occurred right then and there).
On edit: I think the same error underlies Donald Davidson anomalous monism. He is right regarding mental events not being subsumable under universally quantified statements of laws under those descriptions (that is, qua mental events), but he is wrong about them being token identical with physical events that are so subsumable under those different descriptions. A physical event never is something mental that is being described differently. If something mental occurs, then when one proceeds to describe what is occurring in physical terms, one is thereby talking about something else. (Which is not to say that there aren't any relationships between mental events and some of their physical underpinnings).
You should change the descriptions to "the death of Caesar" and "the murder of Caesar", and then I think it will make more sense to think that they denote the same event (and also note that it is perfectly possible for two different descriptions to denote the same event; e.g. "the death of Caesar" and "the death of the conqueror of Gaul" - I hope would you agree).
Quoting Pierre-Normand
Since "murder" just means something like "violent death", then on your view it would follow that a person can die twice (if "murder" and "death" are two distinct things that happen to everyone who's murdered), which is a pretty bizarre thing to say in my opinion.
Quoting Pierre-Normand
I'm not claiming that dying and being murdered are always the same thing. I'm only claiming that in the particular case of Caesar the two descriptions happen to denote contingently the same event (since they are non-rigid designators etc.). And there's nothing problematic in saying this. I'll try to illustrate this through your example. Crimson is a type of red, but it doesn't follow that a crimson apple has two distinct colors: crimson and red, but it has only one color that falls under two different descriptions (and this is consistent with the fact that being crimson and being red sometimes do refer to distinct colors). I hope that this makes sense.
It might be easier if we imagine that Caesar was stabbed on a Monday and died on the Tuesday. "the death of Caesar" refers to what happened on Tuesday, whereas "the murder of Caesar" refers to what happened on Monday as well.
But which events? Does the plotting before the actual assassination is part of the murder? Surely before he physically got stabbed he wasn't in the process of being murdered (say while comfortably eating lunch the day before or whatever).
Ok, I agree that you can make this distinction in some cases. But if someone is stabbed and dies immediately on the spot, then I think it is plausible to say that his murder and death denote the same event.
That would be a valid objection if my criterion for saying that 'x' and 'y' refer to two distinct events is for them to have different Fregean senses. But that's not what my criterion of non-identity is. I'm rather saying that 'x' and 'y' refer to distinct events if (among other possible differentia of events) the predicates used to characterize the actions (or processes, etc.) that are predicated of some entities, in order to individuate those events, have different Fregean references. (Predicates, and not only singular terms, do have references as well as senses. They typically refer to properties, action forms, activities, etc.) In your example above, the same event is being referred to twice since the two singular terms "Caesar" and "the conqueror of Gaul" have the same reference. If they had had different references, then the events would have been numerically distinct, obviously. And so is it, on my view, if the references of the predicates has been different (as I'll argue some more below).
I wouldn't say that Caesar died twice. I would say that he died because he was murdered. The 'violence' that is constitutive of the event's being a case of murder is the mens rea of the murderer(s). This mens rea isn't a constitutive part of Ceasar's dying. Hence, since the two events don't have the same constitutive parts, they are not the same. That is true (in this case, anyway) even when we restrict attention to what occurred in the actual world (and a fortiori if we consider the modal properties of those events).
I would not say that the apple has two different colors either, because counting as two colors a determinate quality and the determinable quality that it is a determination of would be misleading. That would be like saying that I have two pets: a cat and a mammal. But the fact that the apple is red isn't the same as the fact that the apple is crimson, is it? Likewise, (1) the fact that Pat is shorter than Chris isn't the same as (2) the fact that Pat is shorter than the Eiffel Tower. And neither of those facts are the same as (3) the fact that Pat is 5 feet tall. For all that, the properties ascribed to Pat in (1), (2) and (3) stand pairwise as determinable to determinate.
You mean the event she is thinking about and the reference of her utterance?
On edit: I think it's entirely possible that she means to be referring to Caesar's murder when she uses "his death" and be correctly understood thanks to the surrounding conversational context. For all that, someone else could refer to Caesar's death as such, and be referring to a distinct event. One might inquire, for instance: "I heard Caesar bled and suffered for many hours after he had been stabbed. Might not his dying have been abbreviated by his friends?" And this would surely not meant the same as: "Might not his being murdered have been abbreviated by his friends?" And the reason for this, I surmise, is because the murder and the death aren't identical events. (As well, we might say, of the murdering and the dying, which are the same two distinct events, correspondingly, being described from the progressive rather than the perfective grammatical aspects.)
I keep thinking, as I suggested in the other thread, that what we want here is sets of propositions ordered by entailment, but it looks like that would have to be relative to a set of assumptions or background knowledge or something. I want Pat's being 5 feet tall to buy you, as a single fact, everything it entails. A separate fact for everything Pat is taller or shorter than seems less than optimal.
It's also beginning to seem to me that what's going on in these threads is paradigmatic: that insofar as there is a problem to be solved, it's not exactly the problem of uniquely picking out an entity or meaning or event, but deciding whether two (or more) propositions or descriptions pick out the same one. And it seems to me you could do that by looking at what they entail.
I'm not necessarily disagreeing, but I have two questions (which are related): a) are you claiming that one can know the Fregean reference solely by virtue of knowing the meaning of the relevant predicates? (which clearly you can't since you cannot know apriori whether "Caesar" and "the conqueror of Gaul" denote the same person) and b) Is "the conqueror of Gaul" a rigid designator on your account? Because if it is not (and it is plain that it isn't) then I think your criteria for the non-identity of 'x' and 'y' (in the quote) becomes vacuous. Because consider that it is a contingent fact that "Caesar" and "the conqueror of Gaul" denote the same person (and you can further substitute 'Caesar' with another description to eliminate all names); but this you can know only aposteriori, so it means that on your criteria 'x' and 'y' (if 'x' and 'y' are definite descriptions) denote the same entity if their terms happen to denote the same entity, and of course everyone will agree with that...
And this is directly connected to our original example: since "Caesar's murder" and "Caesar's death" are non-rigid designators (because in some possible worlds they denote discrete events even on my view), then you cannot know apriori just from knowing the meaning of the predicates "__ died" and "__ was murdered" whether they happen to denote the same event or not, so I don't think these Fregean consideration can really help your case.
Quoting Pierre-Normand
I think that in the end it is an arbitrary matter whether we call it the same event or two different events, since we sometimes talk about the two interchangeably and sometimes not, so I don't think you can really prove that it must be the one way and not the other (and I took this example from Ramsey's paper, who might've chose a different less controversial example (and you can easily think of some like "the death of the conqueror of Gaul") - but the point remains that there's not principled apriori criterion to distinguish between co-refrential and non-coreferential descriptions).
Quoting Pierre-Normand
No, they are not the same facts, but the two descriptions (containing 'crimson' and 'red') do denote the same thing or entity in your example (an apple with a single color) :)
Say she was talking about his murder and subsequently said "his death" in a way that it was clear to her listeners that she meant his murder. I'm suggesting that the words themselves only have meaning in use, so the case could only be settled by looking to use.
Maybe you could answer this. Did Wittgenstein accept that reference can be determined? Was the point of meaning is use to show that in many cases there is no reference?
This is true, but new usages cannot "break" entirely, they must retain some link, some connection or association, however tenuous, with "convention"; I would say that link would be precisely what enables new usages to become "conventional".
Oh yeah, there are many different interpretations of Wittgenstein, that's the issue which got me into this thread.
Quoting Mongrel
I can't see the point you're making here. If a statement is meaningful, it is informative. If it were completely void of meaning it would be nonsense, gibberish, so it wouldn't even qualify as a "statement". Are you saying that there are some philosophical statements, and forms of bullshit, which are not informative, yet they are still meaningful statements? Wouldn't these meaningful statements provide some form of information, say something about the author for example, and so they'd still be informative?
So what would be the point in asking whether a statement is informative. By calling it a "statement", it is already assumed that it is in some way informative. Perhaps what you are asking is whether or not the statement is of interest to yourself. The problem with this is that what is not of interest to yourself, such that you might designate it uninformative, might be of interest to another, and be designated informative.
Quoting Mongrel
Yes, but this is not real right and wrong, is it? Real right and wrong is determined by moral principles, not by success in one's activities. Having success in doing what is wrong, doesn't make that wrongful activity right. So success cannot be used distinguish right from wrong.
Is that down to philosophical fashion? Or is there something we know that most of cognitive science doesn't?
OK, I'm interested to hear why you think we should not accept it. Also, I don't want, and have not wanted, to say that meaning is use, whether conventional or otherwise.
Quite possibly. I think cognitive science, by an large, has not kept up with J. J. Gibson, among other anti anti-representationalist pioneers; although there had been a salutatory revival of a variety of embodied/embedded/situated/scaffolded paradigms recently (See Robert A. Wilson, Boundaries of the Mind: The Individual in the Fragile Sciences - Cognition, Cambridge University Press, 2004). Cognitive scientists still tend to be mired in psychologism and representationalism when they theorizes about mental abilities and mental states in a way that construe the mind and its operations as being sandwiched in between the "inputs" from the senses and the "outputs" of motor action. (Susan Hurley characterized this as "the classical sandwich model of the mind", which goes hand in hand with representationalism). This is not necessarily damaging when they seek to understand how specific cognitive abilities are being enabled by physiology, for instance, or what are favorable or unfavorable learning conditions for this or that skill being efficiently acquired, etc. But when they theorize about the very 'person-level' skills and phenomena (e.g. the ability to remember or what it is to believe this or that) that they seek to understand, then they are being biased in their theoretical undertakings by inchoate Cartesian-empiricist presuppositions. This is being argued forcefully in Max Bennett and Peter Hacker, The Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience, Wiley-Blackwell, 2003.
Just to be clear, what anti-representationaists such as the authors mentioned above object to isn't the quite reasonable idea that brains and internal cognitive processes enable people to use language, represent the world to be thus and so, and act skilfully in the world. Neither are they denying that we are indeed representing to ourselves the world to be thus and so. Rather, they object to the construal of our abilities to represent the world (and act in it) as a matter of our (or our brains') constructing internal representations that have their contents independently of the form of our engagements in the social/material world (such as our playing language games, or our skilfully exploiting behavioral affordances).
Another paper that is quite relevant to anti-representationalism is Jennifer Hornsby's Personal and sub?personal; A defence of Dennett's early distinction, Philosophical Exploratons, 3, 1, 2000
There's also a very good paper by john McDowell "The Content of Perceptual Experience" (appears in "Mind, Value and Reality"), that argues for a very similar idea to Hornsby.
Seconded. This is a paper that ought to figure in any anthology on the philosophy of mind.
Wrong. "It is raining" is more specific (provides more information) than "the weather outside". Would you answer the question, "What is the weather outside?", with the "the weather outside"? You would use the string of scribbles, "the weather outside" when you know that the reader knows what the weather outside is, or you would use it as part of the sentence, "the weather outside is rainy." It all comes down to understanding what is it the listener already knows in order to speak efficiently (by not wasting energy speaking or writing to inform someone what they already know). If "the weather outside" and "it is raining" means the same thing, the saying, "the weather outside is rainy" would be a redundant sentence, but it isn't in the mind of the listener that doesn't know the weather outside.
"Caesar's dying" doesn't provide any information about the cause of his dying. If you were teaching someone who doesn't know anything about Caesar, about Caesar, is "Caesar dying" enough to inform them all about what happened? It seems that "Caesar's murder" is more informative, because it implies that Caesar's dying as well as informs how and why he is dying. Again, we are talking about what the listener already knows, and what it is that you intend to inform them about.
Both examples only refer to the same thing for those that know what it is that it is referring to. For those that don't know, one is more informative (means more) than the other.
I don't see how this follows. If one sentence is more informative than another then they don't refer to the same thing?
I would say that "Andrew" and "my brother" both refer to the same person, even if you don't know who the name "Andrew" refers to, or that he's my brother.
And, to repeat my previous example, "the son of Edward VIII" and "George VI" refer to the same person, even if you didn't know that George VI is the son of Edward VIII.
If "the weather outside" and "it is raining" means/refers to the same thing, then saying, "the weather outside is rainy" would be a redundant sentence, but it isn't in the mind of the listener that doesn't know the weather outside.
Even if I know that Donald Trump is the President of the United States, it doesn't follow that "Donald Trump is the President of the United States" is redundant.
"Donald Trump" and "the President of the United States" refer to the same person, but they don't mean the same thing. The meaning of a word/phrase is not the same thing as its referent.
What a word refers to is one thing. What a word means is something else.
I think this proposal raises a few problematic issues. First, through attempting to do away with the multiple realizability of coarse-grainedly specified facts, it tends to restrict our fundamental ontology to something akin to a 'fundamental' supervenience base like the set of microphysical facts, and that seems to me to be a profound error. Secondly, there is an issue regarding the nature of the entailment relations that are allowed for eliminating entailed 'facts' in favor of the 'real' or 'fully determinate' facts that entail them all. Is it only logical entailments from (ultimately) 'raw' empirical facts that are being allowed or are entailments that make use of premises expressing conceptual truths also allowed? The latter would seem to be the case if the fact that an apple is red is to be derived from the fact that it is crimson. One also needs the conceptual truth (if it is one) that all crimson things are red. (Or, at least, that crimson apples are red). Augmenting our special ontologies with a priori conceptual truths seems problematic to me since conceptual truths rather seem to belong to the transcendental background of those ontologies: the a priori conceptual truths in virtue of which empirical facts can be disclosed to us at all.
(In this post and the following one I had sketched a defence, following Haugeland, of a pragmatized Sellarsian/neo-Kantian conception of 'impure' synthetic a priori statements that are dependent on experience without them being objects of experience -- or without then 'arising from' experience, as Kant would say)
Consider the following case that has been discussed to illustrate 'contrastive' causal explanations: A pigeon has been trained to peck at red objects. A red apple that happens to be crimson is presented to the pigeon and the pigeon pecks at it. The fact that the apple is red, in conjonction with the fact that the pigeon has acquired a disposition to peck at red objects, causally explains why the pigeon pecked at the apple. The fact that the apple is crimson may also explain why the pecking occurred provided we are reminded that crimson is a shade of red. However, causal explanations of events seek not only to determine, on each occasion, why some specific effect followed some specific cause. It is no real explanation that 'explains' only one single occurrence. The real explanation of the fact that the apple was pecked at is that it was red, and this explanation unifies a whole range of similar phenomena (i.e. other instances of the same pigeon pecking at, or failing to pick at, various objects). Hence, the fact the the apple is crimson, unlike the fact that it is red, may fails to provide the real causal ground of its nomological relation with definite ranges of effects. (I may try to come up with a somewhat less contrived example. However, you can refer to the two posts liked above where I discussed an example from Newtonian mechanics and another one from the game of chess.)
It is redundant for you to say that to yourself because you already know it, so why say it?
Quoting Michael
They refer to the same person and mean the same thing presently. They don't refer to the same person, or mean the same thing, when Obama was President.
Just look up the meaning of "meaning" and "use" and "purpose" in any dictionary and you will find the word "intent" in the definition. Those arguing "meaning is use" don't seem to realize that they are arguing the same thing I am - that there is intent in the use of things, like words.
By removing intent from use, you are basically arguing that use is simply uttering sounds and drawing scribbles with no meaning (no intent).
No, of course not. First I was talking about the references of the predicates -- "...died" and "...was murdered" -- and not the references of the singular terms. And our knowledge of the references of the terms (or predicates) can be empirical, or gained through testimony, or (on Gareth Evan's account -- see chapter 11 in The Varieties of Reference) derived from our being "consumers" in a socially instituted naming practice in which some other individuals -- the "producers" -- who are directly acquainted with the named individual (or with the designated property) are participating (or participated).
Secondly, my claim was that the two events are numerically distinct by dint of the predicates "...died" and "...was murdered" referring to different sorts of actions/processes regardless of anyone's knowledge of the references of those predicates. But, of course, our knowledge of them, when we know them, isn't generally derived a priori form linguistic meanings except in the special case of so called "nominal definitions". (Though, how much can be inferred from knowledge of linguistic meaning might vary depending how you relate the idea of linguistic meaning to the Fregean concepts of sense and reference, and what the scope of linguistic 'analysis' might be. If such analysis is allowed to cover the examination of public language games for instance...)
But all I was suggesting was that, just in case Caesar wasn't the conqueror of Gaul in the actual world, then it trivially follows that the event of Caesar's death is numerically distinct from the event of that other guy's death. And so it is, I am arguing, if the event- of process-forms that specify the two event types are different. (I draw the concept of an event- or process-form from Michael Thompson). The issue is ontological and not directly tied with issues of knowledge or reference. Let me add, though, that while thinking about this case, and about criteria of event individuation, I have gained a better appreciation of the ground one may have to claim identity between the historical events of Caesar's death and of Caesar's murder. I think the case being discussed, and the implicit surrounding narratives, can be further filled up in such a manner as to warrant either one of the two intuitions depending on the kind of 'sortal concept' (or rather, the kind of 'event- or process-form', for the category of events) that most perspicuously attaches to the events being talked about and thereby determines their criteria of persistence and individuation. But I'll say a bit more about that at a later time; it also connects with the issues of occasion-sensitivity.
I appreciate your response because what I have is not so much an idea at this point as the 'aura' of an idea that has not quite yet arrived! I have classes on the brain, because of my quandary over how we make the leap from particulars to types.
My first thought was a little like what Harry's saying nearby, that "Caesar was murdered" is a fuller description of the event in question than "Caesar died," and one way to express that would be to compare the cofinal sets of propositions each entails. There are many propositions that will be true whether Caesar was stabbed to death or suffered a massive heart attack.
Suppose A has a private audience with the Emperor behind closed doors. After half an hour, A comes back out.
A: "He's dead."
B: "What do you mean? Was he sick?"
A: "I don't know."
B: "What did he die of?"
A: "His wounds."
B: "What wounds?"
A: "The ones I gave him."
One way to imagine this process, is that B initially grasps a set of propositions that he knows to be the cofinal tail of some more complete set, and there are several different candidates for what that larger set is. The process is to try out various propositions in order to more fully to determine what set you have the tail of: is it, for instance, the cofinal set of "The Emperor was sick" or the cofinal set of "The Emperor was killed"?
Thinking of this as a "more complete description" led me almost immediately to the concern you noted, that I would need to posit "fully determinate facts" at the head of such sets, and that seems a bit dubious. (They might still do as theoretical entities somehow.) But it then occurred to me that this process need not be imagined as how we pick out the unique, fully determinate facts that make up the world, but simply as comparative, that the use of the procedure could be precisely in what we've been at here, which is deciding whether two descriptions pick out the same thing or not.
It should be clear by now that in essence what I'm contemplating doing is substituting the classes of entailed propositions for concepts. (I'm testing my Fregean assumptions. Do we need concepts? Do we need propositions for that matter or will equivalence classes of sentences do?)
In your pigeon experiment, for example, it's clear that to determine whether you have the cofinal tail of "Responds to red" or "Responds to crimson," you had better test some other shades of red.[sup]1[/sup]
Your example of Pat's height is curious. (For the record, I'm just under 5'10".) I feel a little like I've wandered into the Wittgenstein-Moore conversation, because I want to say that I know every human being who has ever lived and every human being who ever will live is shorter than the Eiffel Tower. It's common sense! But how do I know that? When did I come to know that? The explanation I'm entertaining is this: it's somewhere out in the cofinal tail of "The Eiffel Tower is really tall" and I've never even looked out there.
So it's just something I'm fooling around with. No doubt something like this has been tried before and I'll discover why it doesn't work soon enough...
1. I once had a heat pump quit because it turned out there was a relay jammed with ants that had committed mass suicide on it. The repair guy told me he had seen this several times, and had actually asked an entomologist what the deal was. The explanation (hypothesis?) was that the ants happen to be attracted to the particular frequency this device hums at, not to all humming sounds.
EDIT: Should have noted that the Emperor may have accidentally brutally stabbed himself in the stomach while shaving.
I agree that at least on some cases we can know just on conceptual grounds that the same thing cannot satisfy two different description if it doesn't make sense to say that it does (e.g. to describe something both as an animal and as an inanimate object at the same time). But sometimes such identities can become aposteriori discoverable possibilities, as Kripke and Putnam have taught us about natural kinds. The interesting question here is what distinguishes the two cases and how can you know when you are confronted with the one or the other. And this brings me to another interesting thing that you said.
Quoting Pierre-Normand
I believe that you are exactly right about sortals -- and this is directly connected to the question that I just raised -- it strikes me as very plausible to say that an identity statement can be ruled out on purely conceptual grounds if the two descriptions don't employ the same sortal concept (as in my example of 'animal' and an 'inanimate object').
So perhaps a more fruitful approach to our case would be to ask whether a death and a murder fall under the same sortal concept. Personally I think that the answer is 'yes' (they are both events for start, and furthermore events that involve a death of a person). But since we are talking here about a conceptual question, would you agree that at least on some understanding of 'death' and 'murder' it can make sense to employ the two terms in descriptions of the same event? For example, what you said about the component of criminal intent present in the case of murder is of course true, but it doesn't strike me as very intuitive to attribute the murderer's state of mind to the event of murdering itself (though it is something that we use as a criteria to determine whether a murder took place).
Well, two can play the "lazy" game. Perhaps you could offer an example of a "new usage" that bears absolutely no association or link whatsoever to the conventional usages of the time in which it arose. If you can do that I might agree there is a reason to doubt what I had said. Note, also that new names for newly discovered objects do not count (although probably most, if not all, of those are associated with, and derivative of, existent usages, anyway).
If by this you mean, can we imagine a theory in which the distinction you are contemplating is deployed to pick out different entities, I suppose that would be fine, but you're not suggesting there is something like a "bare" ontological question here, outside the context of any particular theory, are you? That would seem very strange to me indeed. What's more, it seems to me the motivation for preferring either a theory that distinguishes actions from, say, occurrences, or one that doesn't, would be precisely its utility in dealing with issues of knowledge and reference. And of course the issue arose in this thread precisely as a question of reference.
At any rate, I'm not sure we are compelled to reach the ontological issue at all: clearly one could be in a position to assert that there was a death and not in a position to assert there was a murder; one could dissemble; one could be interested in the event only qua death and indifferent otherwise (the lawyer executing Caesars will). I suppose some of this is the sort of thing you would count as occasion-sensitivity.
And the unavoidable fact is that if Caesar does not die, there is no murder. Do we have a problem with theories where the existence of one entity (a murder) requires the existence of another (a death)? What about when the required entity is of a different type?
This means something like "let's eat cake".
As does the phrase - in the way I use it - "to be, or not to be, that is the question".
As does a particular series of foot wiggles I'm doing right now, which, if only you were here to see, would entail a great deal of cake for you.
--
These examples are facetious of course, but they are not only facetious...
I thought we were discussing actual novel shared usages which had the potential to be conventionalizable. In any case, those phrases are meaningless, even to you in isolation, unless you translate them in terms of conventional use. I doubt you can even silently think their meanings without resorting to it. So, I can't see how you are getting away from conventional use even with these examples.
My point is only that your "telling" has not, and cannot be, dissociated from conventional use, whether your "use" is private or shared; it inevitably relies upon it. Meaning cannot get started in a vacuum.
What language would that be?
Fair enough. What I'm wondering though is in what sense your typing was a use of language.
This capacity to be to 'projected' into further contexts (because we know what 'kind' of things we are talking about - the grammar of a language) is what minimally distinguishes a use of language as opposed to language being 'on holiday' (which is not 'misuse', as some in this thread have spoken about, but simply, not a use at all) (c.f. PI §371/373: "Essence is expressed in grammar" / "Grammar tells what kind of object anything is".). Crucially, it's irrelevant whether or not the use of language under discussion has been established through convention or not.
I'm sorry, are you saying I have to grant this, in the present case? Or are you saying that if this were an instance of language use, this is what I would be granting?
Supposing, just for the sake of argument, you have a provided a criterion for what could or should count as a use of language, what would lead me to think the criterion had been met in this case?
Nothing. At least, that's the whole point: these criteria must be 'lived', and the only thing that that guarantees their uptake (or not) is the 'form-of-life', the 'whirl of organism' in which they operate. Meaning is use means: look at the practices in which language is embedded in ("the speaking of language is part of an activity, or of a form of life"), and language or meaning cannot be grasped apart from that activity (see again the quote I put up from Cavell a few pages back: "Nothing insures that this projection will take place... just as nothing insures that we will make, and understand, the same projections. That on the whole we do is a matter of our sharing routes of interest and feeling, modes of response, etc etc..."
This is probably the hardest point to grasp in Witty: the immanence of 'criteria of meaning' to their employment. And this is what is at stake in the discussion of rule following, in which there is a way of grasping a rule that is 'not an interpretation, but which is exhibited in what we call "obeying the rule" and "going against it" in actual case'. This is why I said all the stakes of the PI are condensed in this one passage.
You're mistaken if you think I've missed that. In fact my entire point has been that there is no genuinely private use in the sense that even your 'private' ( 'private' only insofar as they might involve you and no one else) examples obviously rely on conventional public usage for them to have any meaning even to you.
Quoting StreetlightX
This analogy fails utterly because Japanese is its own system of conventional usages and doesn't require "translation" in order to be meaningful; whereas the examples you gave are completely meaningless unless they are given meaning as being equivalents to words as conventionally used in some language or other.
Eh, then you are using words in a different way than I am. That's OK, so long as we're clear. I'll only add here that this is not how Wittgenstein employs these terms, and insofar as this is a thread roughly about him, I'll continue to speak of idiosyncrasy rather than 'private' language in this case.
Quoting John
Unless? But this is only true because we're talking over the internet in a limited way (and it is also you begging the question). If I had some cake, and you were in the same room as me, and neither of us could speak to each other in terms other than in my made-up-on-the-spot language (assuming I was consistent with grammar), I wager you'd 'get' my invitation to eat cake eventually (this would be the 'rough ground' of language - life and it's being lived, language bound up with action - that secures meaning). This is how we teach children, no? Does it matter if we teach them with an already-established - i.e. conventional - language, or not?
Incidentally, it is just this rarefied, intellectualist, and 'thin' approach to language - in which meaning can only ever find its ground in more language ("meaningless... unless they are given meaning as being equivalents to words..."), shorn of any reference to human practice, lived context, and worldly action - in short, the entire order of the performative - that Witty rightly spent his entire late career arguing against. A particularly 'philosophical' failing.
Before responding to this, and also to Fafner's most recent reply to me, I wanted to read again chapter 5 -- Events and States -- in Eric Marcus, Rational Causation, HUP 2012, a brilliant book that I had last read five years ago. It is especially relevant to our present discussion since it explains sortal concepts for substances, and event-type concepts for events, as both being in the business of providing identity principles for them. While Marcus was bringing up Wiggins's discussion of 'dummy sortals' (such as 'object' or 'thing'), I wrote down the following note this morning:
"Or 'mammal'?
Maybe we could say that 'mammal' is a determinable sortal. If does some of the job of individuation, but not all of it until it has been further determined into a species concept.
Maybe this idea provides the sought after stopping points for Srap Tasmaner's "cofinal tails". Determinable properties and dummy sortals don't determine such tails, but substance-sortals and event-types possibly do since they determine as fully as one might want *what* something is. Further, specifications (or further determinations of determinables) beyond such a natural stopping point only achieves the specification of merely accidental properties (including such things as the accidental microphysical realization or material constitution of events or substances.
Where occasion sensitivity might play a role, among other places, is where determination of some determinable has established membership in an equivalence class that is thereby fine-grained just enough to satisfy some practical purpose (including the founding of a meaning convention for effective communication, in some cases."
Here is the relevant paragraph from Rational Causation:
"I hold, then, that objects instantiate sortals and that to instantiate a sortal is at least in part for there to be a principle of identity that determines the conditions under which the object persists. Objects, however, do not instantiate principles of identity as such, but rather only insofar as
they are particular sorts of objects. Here is how Wiggins puts the idea: "If a is the same as b, then it must also hold that a is the same something as b,"7 where something is a quantifier ranging over determinate sortals. Or, if a is the same as b, there must be an answer to the 'same what?' question. To say that object is not a true sortal is to say that it is not a proper answer to the 'same what?' question. In saying that a is an object, we do not say what a is. Wiggins thus distinguishes 'dummy sortals,' such as object and thing from genuine sortals such as dog and table. Terms for dummy sortals share the grammar of terms for true sortals (e.g., they are modified by articles and quantifiers), but are not associated with a principle of identity." -- Eric Marcus, Rational Causation, p. 187 (bolds and italics in the original).
I'll finish re-reading the whole chapter before responding more fully to this and another reply of yours.
They aren't irrelevant unless you are saying that your post I was asking questions about was also irrelevant.
But, what does it mean to ask irrelevant things? I was using words in a conventional manner. I used the correct grammar and spelling. So, how is it that it is irrelevant, or that you don't understand the questions. What is it that you don't understand - my intent, or my use of words (which shouldn't be a problem if meaning is use because I used the words in a conventional and grammatically correct way).
When we disagree, what is it that we are disagreeing on - our use of words, or the state-of-affairs that the words refer to? How can we disagree with our use of words when we are both using them in a conventional way and that is grammatically correct? "Is language a game", or is language a game?
Quoting StreetlightX
The only ground for the supposed meaning of your supposed use of language that you indicated was more language, that is, the translations you provided. We have been given no reason to believe there are practices in which your supposed language is embedded. You didn't even bother to fake it: you could have made up scenarios where you say "koijnufbab" to the postman each day, etc.
You might have said, here are some arbitrary strings of letters and some gestures that could conceivably be part of a language. Fine. You might have noted that the lived context of those strings and gestures includes the use of English, and that it is possible to treat those strings and gestures as loanwords from a language that happens not to exist. But by claiming there is such an unnamed language, that a few strings and gestures and their translated meanings is all it takes to have a language, it is you who have failed to take Wittgenstein seriously.
In fact, it's clear that what undergirds your claim that those strings and gestures were a use of language is something you will not say: that they were meant as language.
Quoting StreetlightX
This is a tough sell because it's extremely difficult to imagine the "no other terms" part. I think we all reach in our minds for some foundational gestures we pretend are transparent and self-grounding. (If the goal is to share the cake, the thing to do is cut each of you a piece. That's what Wittgenstein would say.)
But the most important word in here is "consistent." What you teach someone when you teach them a language, the practice you invite them to join, is precisely the consistent and regular actions (not only the utterances, but the matching of utterance to occasion, and so on) that constitute its use, in short, its conventions. No regularity, no convention, and no language.
Two things can be wrong with an argument: it is logically invalid (the conclusion doesn't follow from the premises), and/or one or more of its premises is false. Everything else is irrelevant as far as the soundness of an argument goes.
But I have been quite clear, in almost every one of my posts, that by convention I mean already-established use (of language), and not grammatical regularity. If you want to call grammatical regularity 'convention', then so be it, but then we are not talking about the same thing, and there is no disagreement.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I actually agree with this for the most part. My 'no other terms' qualifier is meant to apply to spoken or written language. I would however, modify your comment here to say not that we 'reach in our minds', but that we 'reach in our bodies', as it were. While it's not something I've mentioned yet for parsimony's sake, I'm a strong believer in the thesis that our elementary experiences of meaning are bodily. That is, what we 'share' to begin with our quite simply our physiognomies: we are (to a large extent) laterally symmetric, forward oriented, motile, and gravity bound beings with limbs for grasping and a swivelling neck, and the way in which our physiognomies interact with the affordances of our environment provides us with our 'initial', shared coordinates of meaning. It is the environmental relations we establish by means of our interactions with it that provide the germinal 'fund' of meaning out of which further meaning grows*. There's lots more to say on this, but I'll keep it short.
As far the this thread is concerned, again, one can call this shared physiographical ground a 'convention', but this would be a lexical stretch, and again, is not, and has never been, what I am arguing against.
*As argued by those like Lakoff and Johnson, David Olsen, David McNeill, Maxine Sheets-Johnston, and others (and anticipated, in fact, by Witty's famous line about a lion that could speak being totally unintelligible to us).
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Perhaps you could point out where, exactly, I make this claim. A direct quote would be nice. I did provide a couple of examples of "a 'new usage' that bears absolutely no association or link whatsoever to the conventional usages of the time in which it arose" (John's request) - which is what I was asked for, but if you think I meant these examples as 'all that it takes to have a language' then I'm afraid you're reading things that aren't there.
When we disagree, what is it that we are disagreeing on - our use of words, or the state-of-affairs that the words refer to?
Of course it's the later.
Let's call it "Cakese". You said I could call it what I like, and I've decided.
As it turns out, you never meant to imply that Cakese actually exists. Fine. It was, let's say, an imagined language, like Builders(2). Your post included no actual use of Cakese -- you were just explaining what it would be if it were a language and how it might be used. Fine.
On this reading, John's request for "a 'new usage' that bears absolutely no association or link whatsoever to the conventional usages of the time in which it arose" could be satisfied simply by imagining a new language and imagining using it. Since Cakese has just been (imagined to be) invented, it is, by definition, not conventional, not as you use the word "conventional," i.e., it wasn't a language that already existed. Huzzah!
You may be satisfied, but I seriously doubt John will be. I think he would expect to see something that counts as a use of Cakese, while having no link to the conventions of Cakese.
Is there something peculiar about English that makes it impossible to produce the sort of unconventional usage John requested in English?
What 'conventions of Cakese'? I don't understand.
Suppose you do attempt to teach John Cakese. Let's suppose also that none of the words of Cakese exist yet; you intend to make them up as you go, and then use them consistently, and you may also distinguish different sorts of words and consistently use those different sorts of words in different ways. Is that the idea? And to you, there is no convention here because you're making it all up.
(I take it we are not to imagine Cakese as your native language.)
Isn't Cakese experienced by John as something that already exists by the time he hears it? And if regular, etc., etc., then as conventional?
No I absolutely don't. I'm just trying to follow your thinking here, badly it seems. I'll take one last shot at it.
Quoting StreetlightX
Maybe if you could give me an example of each, that would be clearer: an example of an already-established use in English that is not what you would call a grammatical regularity (I assume you mean this in a wide sense); and an example of a grammatical regularity in English that is not an already-established use. (Since you use "regularity" in one and "use" in the other, I did too, but that's not an endorsement.)
It's a measure of my confusion that I have absolutely no idea what your examples will be. I hope it's plain as day to you.
That makes perfect sense to me. Equivalence is variable.
Quoting Pierre-Normand
So the idea would be that this is how you know you only have the tail of an entailment-poset -- maybe you're starting around "Something happened to him" and "Something" couldn't generate such a set, so you know there's there's something more determinate further up.
Here, we've been talking at length about a particular event and its accidental properties. If we want to know whether it was a killing, we might stop at one point in the determination process; if we want to know whether it was manslaughter or homicide, we would have to go further; if we only care that there was a death, we can stop before getting to "killing." And if we just want to know as much as possible about an event, as an historian might, we might determine everything we possibly can. If you're doing research on violent death in America, then you might employ pretty unusual sortals, such as "Death by stabbing, assailant known to victim but not immediate family."
If stopping points are all occasional, we don't need a way to tell we've only got the tail of the entailment-poset, we already know we do. We always do. The point of calling one "just a tail" is to highlight that it is insufficient for our current purpose, and that we need to further determine it.
What the ontological import of all that is, I couldn't say.
ADDED: What I haven't addressed here is how you match sortal to purpose.
Oh dear, I must have expressed myself badly indeed. By alreday-established use I simply mean something like the dictionary definition of words. To the extent that the dictionary catalogs the ways in which words are used in society, definitions in a dictionary might be considered exemplars of already-established uses - i.e. what I'm referring to when I speak of convention (and recall that dictionaries are always playing 'catch-up' to societal employment of words: definitions are added as words are used in novel ways; in other words dictionaries are descriptive, not prescriptive).
The only point I've been trying to make is that when Witty says 'meaning is use', he does not mean 'use' in the above way. The PI is simply more than an utterly banal exhortation to read the dictionary to figure out tbe meanings of words.
But to give an example of an 'unconventional' use of language, consider the wonderful emerging trend of treating nouns as verbs. I have in mind interrogatives like 'Do you gym?' ('do you go to the gym?), or 'are you pubbing later?' ('are you going to the pub later?') - or even declarations like 'let's Game of Thrones!' ('let's watch Game of Thrones now'). The reason why the former phrases, while 'unconventional', are perfectly understandable, is because the 'nouns' occupy the place of verbs in the phrases above, and can be treated as such with little to no issue. There is a consistency to the grammar of the use, even though the use itself is unconventional. And Witty's point, among others, is that so long as, within a specific form-of-life, a certain grammatical consistency is retained, novel, unconventional ('non-dictionary') uses of words will have meaning. One can, with help of these examples, learn 'how to go on' using nouns as verbs. The use is conventionalizable (perhaps dictionaries might include this new use in future editions), even though it is not, at this point, conventional.
I had begun to wonder if you were just talking about words and dictionary-meanings. Bleh.
You're talking about the conventional meaning of a word, how a word is generally used within a speech community, how a word is most often used within a language, that sort of thing.
That's important, of course, but the meanings of words are far from being the only conventions of a language or of its use, or, I would like to say, of language as such or the use of language as such.
That's off the top of my head. It's turtles all the way down.
Why yes, in a thread discussing Wittgenstein's conception of meaning, I am speaking about conventional meanings.
I can only hope the shock of this revelation doesn't incapacitate you.
Was the rewrite intended to be more snippy or less?
Wittgenstein is here by implication, but his name appears not in the thread title, and the thread itself has ranged over far more topics than just Wittgenstein's views.
Neither does the word "word" or "meaning" appear in the title of the thread but "language."
Neither does the phrase "meaning of a word" occur here:
Quoting StreetlightX
Now, for my part, I consider the tantrum exchange complete, and I'm good with moving on.
I think this is just a misunderstanding, so let me try and clear that up separately.
On my view, which is indebted to Evans's and Wiggins's neo-Fregean re-appropriations of Putnam and Kripke on the semantics of natural kind terms (as well as the metaphysics of natural kinds) just because the manner in which our words reach out to their referents can't be determined through linguistic analysis alone (where such an analytical activity is construed to be achieved from the armchair only) it doesn't follow that investigation into the objects, kinds and properties that our words purport to refer to is something that occurs outside of the bounds of the conceptual. Empirical inquiry oftentimes is the proper way for us to clarify our concepts (or, our 'conceptions', as Wiggins would characterize the Fregean senses of natural kind terms) and to better anchor them into the essential natures we seek to disclose (when there are any). What Kripke would call a posteriori (metaphysically-)necessary, though, rather corresponds to what Strawson, Sellars or Kant would call a priori, or synthetic a priori, in the case of Kant; and to what Wittgenstein calls grammatical remarks. None of those inquiries are done from the armchair, but rather are reflective inquiries into our public language games. And those language games are world involving. It's only in this sense that they are 'a posteriori'.
(A little while ago, I had posted links to a couple older posts of mine, about Kant, Sellars and Haugeland, where I sought to explain the relavant sense of synthetic a priori. That water may turn out to be H2O, on that account, and therefore 'twin-water' not to be water, would be sythetic a priori even though it can only be known by means of experiments.)
If I may just throw out a suggestion, in passing, regarding the requirement (or lack of a requirement) for there to be a convention in order that communication could be meaningful. I haven't managed to read all of the recent exchanges between StreetlightX and Srap Tasmaner. But it had seemed to to that StreetlightX was suggesting that words can be used in specific ways to achieve meaningful communication without there being an established convention for using them in that way; and Srap Tasmaner was disagreeing.
StreetlightX had also mentioned at some point, if I remember, that words are used meaningfully if the way they are used is, in a sense, conventionalizable. And that would be sufficient for effective communication to occur even if no convention already exists. That seems right to me.
But I was also reminded of Charles Travis's example of the plant with green leaves. Srap Tasmaner had brought it up to illustrate the occasion-sensitivity of meaning. (That was actually Fafner, sorry). In some contexts, if one were to request some green leaved interior plant and were offered a brown leaved interior plant that had had its leaves painted green, that would likely not satisfy her request. But if she rather had needed some decor prop for a photo-shoot, then it might have. The point of the request, which is assumed to be understood by the interlocutor, can determine what does or does not satisfy the predicate "...green" as meant by the requester. The question then is: must there be an established practice for using the predicate "...green" in just that sense for the question to be understood? And the answer would seem to be no. All that's required is that the interlocutor has a grasp of the point of the request, and this understanding may only requires something like agreement in form of life (including, possibly, a shared local culture).
Nevertheless, if there happens to be a general context where the request for a "green leaved plant" is meant to be understood to have the specific point mentioned above, then it might come to be expected that the predicate "green..." will be used in that way whenever such a general context reoccurs. This use will thus come to be conventionalized. And from that point on, the expression will be misused, and not merely misunderstood, when someone misinterprets it in that general context. What has happened, effectively, after the use has become conventionalized is that what was formerly a route from apprehension of the requester's intention to the apprehension of the (occasion sensitive) meaning of her utterance, now has become a route from the apprehension of the (conventional) meaning of her words to the apprehension of her communicative intention.
(Edited to add links to earlier comments)
I don't believe that conceptual inquiry is a way to 'disclose' the essential metaphysical nature of things (and therefore I also reject the idea of a synthetic apriori truth, at least on the traditional understanding of the term), and this is perhaps where our disagreement lies.
I think that in some sense it is an arbitrary matter whether we say that two events are identical or not (like a death and a murder), and it is a confusion in my opinion to think that analyzing the concepts "death" and "murder" can tell you the 'real' answer from the perceptive of the events 'themselves' as it were (and please correct me if I'm wrong, but I read you as saying that there is an objective answer to this question, which is determined by the nature of the events in the world).
I agree that concepts are world-involving as you said, but not by a way of reflecting the metaphysical essences of things. However, it is also not the case on my view (and I agree with you here) that "investigation into the objects, kinds and properties that our words purport to refer to is something that occurs outside of the bounds of the conceptual".
I think this you are exactly right, and this reflects correctly both Travis' view and of the later Wittgenstein. There's a wonderful paper by Putnam called Rethinking Mathematical Necessity that explores this topic further.
Thanks for this reference. It is Putnam's endorsement of Travis that motivated me to read Unshadowed Thought. Now, I think I may have developed some reservations regarding Travis's understanding of Frege, but that would be a topic for another time!
I don't believe that either. You brought up the case of Kripke's a posteriori necessities regarding the essences of natural kinds, specifically. (I'd rather speak of essences since I view the claimed "identity" of water and H2O as a matter of necessary material constitution, and, following Wiggins, I am distinguishing identity and constitution). In response to that I insisted that what can be known only on the basis of experience need not be, for that reason alone, outside of the scope of inquiry about meaning, as I take Kant to have shown (as I once argued here and there).
I agree that it is only in relation to a specific practical context, and our purposes in that context, that a death and a murder can be subsumed under the event-types (the equivalent of substance-sortals for events) that individuate them. My claim was that it isn't generally the case that they will turn out, under those pragmatic conditions, to identify the same event. And that's in part because 'event' is a dummy sortal. But I had made the concession, while responding to Srap Tasmaner's useful suggestion, that what is merely a dummy sortal, in one pragmatic context, might provide a fine-grained enough principle of individuation , in another context of inquiry (e.g. a murder investigation) to individuate the murder and the death in such a way that they are conceived to be identical events (under 'two different descriptions' we might say).
So, I am not seeking 'real' answers, but only objective truths. Objective truths can be truths about secondary qualities of objects, say, or socially instituted facts (such as the value of a currency) so objective and subjective aren't contraries.
That's my main point.
Yeah, this is a lovely genetic account of how meanings become sedimented and ossified, as it were, such that the grounds of their coming-to-mean become hidden and covered over. And I take Witty's project in the PI as an attempt, among other things, to show just how muddled philosophy can get when one approaches language from the angle of the already-established. Cavell too hones in on this when he writes that "I think that what Wittgenstein ultimately wishes to show is that it makes no sense at all to give a general explanation for the generality of language, because it makes no sense at all to suppose words in general might not recur, that we might possess a name for a thing (say "chair" or "feeding") and yet be willing to call nothing (else) "the same thing". (The Claim of Reason, p. 188)
It's a very Kantian move, a kind of Critique of Pure Language (complete with it's own account of (grammatical) transcendental illusions!: 'language on holiday', etc), which I always thought would in fact make for a fitting subtitle to the PI.
"Someone might object here that two people (e.g., J. J. Thompson(sic) and Anscombe), neither of whom could be said to grasp the ordinary concept of a murder better than the other, might disagree about the temporal boundaries of a murder and thus disagree about the principle of identity for murders. The concept of a murder, it will be said, is inherently murky. One might thus conclude that there is no determinate principle of identity for murder and perhaps for many other event-types as well. This might well be true; but if it is, it only strengthens the analogy with the principles of identity associated with different kinds of object. For one can analogously argue that an ordinary grasp of such concepts as ship, caterpillar, and person does not furnish one with definite answers to every question that might arise over the survival of a particular ship, caterpillar, or person. To argue that such murkiness undermines principles of identity for object-sortals and event-types across the board would, in effect, be to argue that there are no facts about the identity of objects and events. I take this to be an unacceptable result." --Eric Marcus (bold in the original)
Bloody murder! I had read that five years ago and quite forgotten that Marcus had chosen murder as an example. He used a bold type for murder to mark it as an event-type, a sortal concept.
"J. J. Thompson" is actually J. J. Thomson. Elizabeth Anscombe and him had had a disagreement over the interpretation of the doctrine of double effect.
Exactly. Whereas the original question in this thread involved quotes. I think you have a tendency to ignore the significance of that.
I got involved in this thread when I reacted to what someone said, after the discussion was well on its way. But I just now looked back at the original post and I am unsure what you are driving at. What quotes?
We utter sentences in order to express propositions. You have to look to context to know what proposition was expressed. You can't look at the words and know the reference, but just a possible reference. Did Frege disagree with this?
Ah! Sorry. I thought you were referring to the original post in this thread. Fafner indeed used quotes around Ceasar's murder. I am unsure what it is that you find bizarre or that I may have missed regarding the significance of those quotation marks.
Frege wouldn't disagree. He made a big point that you can know the reference (Bedeutung) of a word only through grasping its sense (Sinn). Frege's explanation of sense (Sinn), though, is very much different from what has come to be known as linguistic meaning: something akin to a tacit rule, or definite description, that language users make use of to determine the reference. He also was reaching for an ideal language free of ambiguities and imprecision, but that's something else.
Well, of course, I assumed it was indeed implied that those words have reference only in the context of an utterance. Fafner was proposing an analogy with the case of the references of "the son of of Edward VIII" and "the father of Elizabeth II" that are the same in spite of their (Fregean) senses being different on some occasions of use. So, I made the point that, on my view, "Caesar's murder" and "Caesar's death" don't merely have different senses but also different references on account of murder and death being distinct event-types. This is a difference at the level of reference, and not at the level of sense, or so I would argue.
But I also made the concession, after more exchanges with Fafner and Srap Tasmaner, that there are pragmatic contexts where both words -- "murder" and "death" -- might be regarded as referring to the same event-type, for all practical purposes, and hence that one might refer to the same event as either "Caesar's murder" or "Caesar's death".
Oh. I missed that part. You're good, then. :)
Understanding a sentence in which a novel use of a word is made is just a special case of understanding a sentence in which use is made of a word you don't know.
Making a novel use of word in a sentence may or may not increase the risk that your sentence will not be understood -- contextual definitions aren't all that risky -- but there can be good reasons for taking that risk.
In most cases when I disagree with someone it has to do with their use of words.
I don't deny this, but I would add that offering cake, being in rooms together and speaking languages are all conventional ( which really just means 'shared') practices. And of course shared worldly things, dispositions and practices are inextricably bound up with the meanings of words and the utterances they constitute. That's exactly why I said earlier that I don't mean to suggest that meaning is use.
And sure, you could teach a child some 'made-up' non-conventional language; it could become a shared convention between just the two of you. Consistency of use just is conventionality, no matter what the 'breadth' of a practice is. It is also true that grammar is an essential part of conventional linguistic practices.
Quoting StreetlightX
This is a strawman, as I haven't stated or even implied anything like what you are suggesting here.
* He's been talking about property.
Righty-o, well, as I've made clear with Srap, this isn't what I was talking about, so I guess we don't really disagree other than over the scope of the 'word' convention. But that's trifles.
Quoting John
[quote=John]The examples you gave are completely meaningless unless they are given meaning as being equivalents to words as conventionally used in some language or other.[/quote]
Seems to me like you're backpeddling on what you meant by convention (here you qualify it as that which is 'used in some language or another'), but OK, sure.
Yeah, it seems like a misunderstanding then, because it wasn't that I was wanting to confine conventionality to language, but to assert that linguistic meaning could only be defined in some language or other. I mean, the point is that what you meant to "say' about the cake in your "made-up language" wouldn't have any specific meaning beyond something very basic like "eat cake", or even just "eat" and your intention would probably only be communicable in conjunction with clues that might be given by your bodily gestures and tone of voice (indicating "invitation" rather than command, for example). We do these kinds of things with our dogs, and it is more like general signification than precise symbolic meaning.
What do you mean by 'dummy sortal'?
Consider the case of material constitution. At a given time, a particular lump of bronze can materially constitute a particular statue of Hermes. Both the properties lump of bronze and statue are substance-sortal concepts because they have associated with them (among other things) principles of persistence and individuation. When one grasps what it is for an object to exemplify a given sortal concept, one thereby grasps what the conditions are under which such an object persists in time or is destroyed. (This may of course be in large part a matter of convention regarding objects of those types). Hence, if the statue is being hammered flat, it is destroyed but the lump of bronze that was constituting it persists under a different form. We can also imagine circumstances where it makes sense to say that a statue survives the exchange of its original material constituents (through successive acts of restoration, say).
Both the statue and the lump of bronze constituting it at a time are material objects. Material object, though, is a dummy sortal because there is a need for further specification in order that a principle of identity be applied to an object that falls under it. In fact, further specification of a dummy sortal is required in order that reference to a particular material object be secured at all, even in cases where the act of reference occurs by means of demonstration rather than definite description.
For instance, suppose I were to point to a statue of Hermes and ask you whether this "object" that I am pointing at might survive being hammered flat. You can't answer unless I would specify whether I am talking about the lump of bronze, or the statue, or something else maybe. If I insist that I am thinking merely of "this material object", whatever it is, then my question is meaningless (or, at any rate, confused).
So, my view (following Wiggins and Marcus) regarding event-types is similar. The general category event, just like the general category material object, is a dummy sortal since it isn't, in the general case, specific enough to determine conditions of persistence and individuation for events.
Quoting Pierre-Normand
What you said about a murder and a death being two distinct events now reminds me of Wiggins' claim that two distinct objects can exist at the same place and time (like the statue and the piece bronze of which it is composed). I guess the two ideas are not unrelated?
It's not perfectly clear that what you call here the "lump of bronze" that constitutes the statue is an object at all. It feels more like a mereological sum of bronze bits. Your question might still be ambiguous, but not between two further determinations of a generic sortal, but between the object and the stuff it's made of (which is not an object).
If I tell you to move the statue, I'll expect you to keep it in intact. If I tell to clear the snow from the front walk of our museum, it's okay for you to change the configurations of the bits of snow, let some of them melt, etc. Swapping object and stuff in those examples would have dramatic and peculiar consequences.
No contest there. In the case of artifacts, it's very much our own interests that determine what degree of change in material constitution can be tolerated before an object will count as being destroyed. Hence, our attitude towards historical artifacts, sacred relics, or functional artifacts may vary widely. Incidentally, that's precisely how Peter Simons most elegantly solves the paradox of the Ship of Theseus in Parts: A Study in Ontology, Clarendon Press, 2000.
According to Simons, ship is something of a dummy sortal since some people may be interested in Theseus's ship qua historical artifact, or buy it in order to make use of it as a fishing boat. Those two diverging interests would coordinate with two different substance-sortals. There is, in effect, two different sorts of ship at the same place and at the same time. The planks that are making it up at a time are something else entirely. One of those ships (the fishing boat) is resilient to the replacement of the planks (and may even mandate such replacements as part of necessary maintenance), while the historical artifact isn't.
(and same can be said about a piece of bronze - e.g., imagine that a statue is melted down, and a new statue is cast from the same material - I think it is pretty intuitive to say that the new statue is made of the same piece of bronze as the old one)
And this also explains the disanalogy with your example of snow, since a heap of snow doesn't have the same unity as a piece of clay, and so we mean different things when we refer to "the same snow" as opposed to "the same piece of material X".
Yet again it is a question of interest and purpose. Are we sure there will turn out to be sortals that are never dummy sortals?
(I'm reminded of the exchange from Local Hero: "You wish to buy my church?" "Well, not as a going concern.")
I think the sense of identity here is more or less just set membership though: all the bits of stuff that the statue was made of are still here.
With some materials, we imagine the material itself by imagining objects (blocks, lumps, piles, slabs, hunks) made out of that stuff, but that could be a hindrance not a help.
I went for snow to fight the intuition of cohesion: imagine taking the instruction to clear the walk as meaning I should recreate the configuration of the stuff that was on the walk somewhere else.
A sortal that isn't a dummy is a sortal that is merely good enough for the job at hand. A similar question could be asked about meanings, generally. A explanation of the meaning of a world could be a dummy explanation, in a sense, if it would fails to disambiguate two different ways this word could be used to convey two separate meanings, in a specific context. If it is unambiguous in this context, then the definition is good enough. But even after disambiguation has occurred and two senses have been distinguished and explained, we can always imagine a new context -- Charles Travis excels at this -- where the word used in one of those previously explained senses is ambiguous again.
But you know nothing about those bits: you haven't counted how much molecules composed the statue and how much are there in the lump etc. and confirmed that they are the same. One would usually infer that it is the same bit of material just on the basis of seeing the lump emerging in the process of the statue's destruction.
What I mean to say is that, unless you can make sense of the idea of some quantity of material lumped together as a unified object, then it is not clear how could you identify all its bits as the same bits that can compose something else.
So the point is that I have to define my set by reference to the statue? Must I have an independent way of referring to it? What about before it was a statue, when it was a pallet of bronze?
Btw, I liked snow because it's more comical, but the point I was reaching for -- that it's generally clear whether we're referring to an object or some stuff -- is more clearly made with water: moving the water from a glass to a bowl means destroying the object that is a cylinder of water.
Not necessarily, but still the particles must form some sort of unity (like calling it a lump or even a heap).
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Well even if you call a cylinder of water an 'object' it is certainly not an object in the same sense as a piece of ice for example.
Why isn't set membership enough?
If you are a mereological essentialist then set membership is sufficient (and furthermore necessary!) But even if you aren't a mereological essentialist -- as you probably shouldn't be on my view -- then, in some cases, set membership might the relevant identity criterion associated to a sortal concept. A married couple, say, doesn't remain the same married couple through replacement of one of the spouses!
I'm not getting this.
If I refer to some stuff by referring to its current configuration as an object, I'm still referring to the stuff.
I guess we're thinking of stuff as a bunch of objects, water molecules, say. I could, in principle, name each water molecule, couldn't I? Even though I don't and it's impractical. In fact, not naming those bits is what makes water, for my present purposes, stuff rather than an object. Stuff is a collection of unnamed and interchangeable objects.
I think what you just said (including the corollary) is good enough a conclusion to be drawn!
So we're abolishing any distinction between natural and ad hoc sortals.
I guess I'm just still unclear what we're supposed to have learned about "meaning."
I don't think so since the substance-sortals that we use to individuate artifacts or other sorts of objects that we care about aren't merely ad hoc, on the one hand, and also "natural sortals" (e.g. concepts of natural kinds such as chemical elements of biological species) also respond to specific theoretical and technical interests that we have, on the other hand.
Sure, but the definition goes from the stuff to the molecules, and not the other way around. First you identify a bit of material as some kind of unity (something that you can hold in your hands etc.), and then you say that it must be composed of some set of particles. So the concept of a piece of material is the more basic one in our experience of dealing with material stuff, and therefore I don't see what is the purpose of reducing things like lumps of clay to 'mereological sums'.
(and there's a further question about which set exactly defines this or that piece of matter: If I remove one molecule of bronze from a piece of bronze, would it be no longer the same piece of bronze?)
I don't know. So far, I have mostly been concerned with clarifying possible misunderstandings. If there still is a mystery lurking it's quite possible that it is also a mystery for me.
It likely remains the same piece of copper but, if it didn't belong to you to start with, that might constitute theft!
Actually I think that would be a measure of how the theory refinement is done, not that it has been refined.
Agreed. One is more of an act of theoretical reason while the other is more of an act of practical reason. Either we are seeking to disclose affordances of the natural world, or we are seeking to produce new technical and/or social affordances (or we are engaging in some combinations of both theoretical and practical endeavors).
(On edit: I'm still talking about our general activity of defining and/or instituting and/or discovering sortal concepts.)
I guess there's a difference between talking about the bronze a statue is made of and the particular collection of bronze bits it's made of. The first is just the mass noun "bronze" and it's the status of the latter that's confusing. (Mass nouns just don't always come to you in discrete hunks. Air doesn't, for instance.)
So the question really is how do mass nouns behave when you qualify them in some way -- the bronze this statue is made of, the snow in the mountains, the water in that glass. Does such a qualifier make an object?
I'm not sure whether I understand your question. Are you asking under what conditions some bit of material becomes a concrete object?
As Pierre-Normand already said, it all depends on what one means by 'objects' and what is our purpose in talking about this or that particular sort of thing.
I'm thinking that for a given theory, some ways of refining or extending it will be natural and some will be ad hoc. So naturalness is also theory-relative.
The sorites arises when you try to treat a mass noun collection as an object in its own right. You can say that makes it a vaguely defined object or you could just not think of it as an object at all.
I agree. Natural scientists aim at carving "nature" at its joints. But the natural joints just are the joints that show up in empirical inquiry when the inquirer privileges matter over form, and intrinsic properties over relational properties. Since forms and relations aren't any less real than material and intrinsic properties are, this all amounts to an arbitrary restriction of the definitions of "nature". Such a restriction of the concept of nature may reflect a "fundamentalist" tendency (as when one speaks of physics being a more fundamental science than biology is, say) or a reductionistic tendency.
There's a sense of 'object' on which a heap of send would not be considered an object, but you can perhaps invent a story where it would be natural to call it an object.
I think vagueness issues are orthogonal to the question of the mass noun versus count noun distinction. Hence one might ask if a mountain that has two identifiable peaks really is just one mountain or two mountains. That is a separate question from the question whether mountains are material objects or rather are a sort of stuff. They clearly are the former as a matter of ordinary linguistic practice (since "mountain" is conventionally used as a count noun) but we could imagine a reformed language that would identify "mountain-stuff" as the presence of abnormal elevation along the surface a continuous terrain. We'd say: "there is much mountain-stuff over there..."
Likewise, I think heaps are discrete entities, but saying so just is a grammatical remark. It's not due to anything intrinsic to the structure of actual heaps (although regarding the vagueness issue about heaps, Timothy Williamson has strange ideas about them).
I suppose there's sorites on the one hand, and the ship of Theseus on the other; you can ask if you still have a heap after taking away a grain, and if you still have the same heap. (People's intuition about the latter might very dramatically.) An external constraint -- this blob is the bronze, meaning all of it, that used to be the statue -- blocks the latter but not the former. If you've lost any, you have to say this is some of the bronze.
(I feel like I'm making less sense with each post -- maybe because I'm at work now.)
Actually I'm not quite sure what is supposed to be the actual paradox in the ship of Theseus story. I think it can be formulated as either a question about identity through time (how something with different parts can remain the same object), or as a problem with vagueness (at what point exactly something ceases to be the same object) - and in the latter case I think it is indeed an analogous problem to the sorites paradox.
However, there is another distinct problem concerning material constitution, which I think clearly is not the same as the sorites paradox, and this is the story about the cat Tibbles that loses its tail, while remaining the same cat (and the problem is that this claim seem to violate Leibniz's law). So it seems to me that you can think about the ship of Theseus as either a variation on the sorites paradox or the cat's paradox.
I had this same thought because our example is a statue and one of the most famous statues of all time is missing her arms. (Great song by Television.)
One could stash a heap of sand on the deck of the Ship of Theseus and that may make things more interesting ;-)
One issue with blobs, heaps and chunks is that they are modifiers that turn mass nouns into count nouns. A bag of flour (count noun) isn't quite the same as the flour (mass noun) that's in the bag. The amount of flour that's in the bag can be more or less, but the bag of flour is one. There is an issue, of course, if one buys a bag of flour: how much flour can be missing before it doesn't count as a full bag of flour anymore? And that may depend on what's written on the bag (10kg, say). This is where a specific issue of vagueness arises.
Back to the statue. If one chips away at the bronze statue of Hermes with a scissor, then there will come a point where what remains isn't a statue of Hermes anymore. Likewise if you would hammer it flat. There will come a point where it's not recognizably a statue of Hermes anymore. And the issue of vagueness also arises in this case. It may not be possible to say exactly after how many blows of the hammer the statue doesn't exist anymore, as opposed to its merely being a badly damaged statue (or its having turned into a statue of D.J.T., possibly.)
So, when a sortal concept such as statue provides criteria of persistence and individuation, those criteria can specify (in accordance with common understanding) how much stuff can be taken away, or replaced, or how much the form can be altered, etc., before the statue is deemed not to exist anymore. And issues of vagueness may arise in all cases. Sometimes, such issues are settled in court.
The usual way it's told in a paradoxical manner is when the old damaged planks that are being replaced over time are being collected somewhere and eventually reassembled in the same form as the old ship. But there are now two ships in existence. One of them is continuous with the original and the other one matches the original both in form and material constitution (though it's not historically continuous, unless you view it as having remained in existence in disassembled form). But if both ships have a title to be deemed numerically identical with the original, that violates Leibniz's law of indiscernibility of identicals.
My favorite resolution of this paradox is of course Simons's.
But my suspicion is that this is just not true, that it's always the amount of flour we're interested in and the bag is just the obvious way of referring to how much. If bags of flour did not have weights printed on them, a grocer who emptied some of the flour from each bag would still be a cheat. "It's still a bag of flour" wouldn't be much of a defense.
Likewise if you would buy a statue of Hermes and it's damaged during transport. And then the seller tells you: "But it's still a statue! Now it has become a statue of Donald J. Trump." But what you bought was a statue of Hermes and that statue doesn't exist anymore.
So, statue is a sortal concept that may be modified by the qualifier of Hermes in order to further specify its conditions of persistence and identity. If it is damaged to the point that it doesn't recognizably depict Hermes anymore, then it may still be a statue, but it is a (numerically) different statue.
And likewise with a 10kg bag of flour. If one kilogram is taken out, then it's still a bag of flour. But it's no longer a 10kg bag of flour for purpose of sale. However, I must concede that it's still the same bag of flour, for purpose of consumption (as it's being progressively used up in your own home, say). So, you most definitely have a point.
I'm wondering now if every theory can be forced into an ad hoc refinement.
Are you thinking of substance-sortals, event-types or concepts of natural kinds as reflecting theories? Or are you thinking about something else? Surely, all scientific theories reflect some specific focus of our interests since when some empirical domain is being investigated, some features of its objects are being considered while others are abstracted away or ignored as irrelevant. As our focus changes, sometimes in response to unforeseen discoveries, then this may yield progressive refinements of our concepts. However, such refinements need not be ad hoc except in the sense that our new focus is always responsive to our present theoretical or practical interests.