Terrapin Station

Say that you take this series of symbols "&^#" to represent the sound "flurf." Where would causality enter into that?

Representation is causality on your view you're saying?

The problem with this is that representation, reference through language, etc. is not at all meaning on a theory where meaning is causality.

What in the world?? We are having serious communication problems. It wouldn't make any sense to object based on observations being necessary, because ...

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 p...

That would be part of the theory that meaning is the same as causality. Could you explain your objection clearly?

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 p...

I'm having some trouble following you:I don't get what the difference would be there, really. Inferring something due to effects is what we're doing w...

But what is correspondence with/to fact/reality? It's a judgment that people make about how propositions relate to what they perceive.

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 unders...

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 u...

Give me something that actually supports the supposed principle. (Or at least attempt to demonstrate that you have some understanding of what a princi...

I was hoping you'd finally comment on this topic.

You have zero understanding of the difference between (a) thinking about something in terms of reasons, (b) there being a reason for something, (c) th...

lol Sometimes on boards like this people disagree almost as if it's their duty to do so. That can be frustrating.

Yeah, I agree with that.

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 yel...

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 r...

Assuming that there are really reasons for anything (and it's not simply a way that we think about things), no amount of experience is going to justif...

The reason you seemed to be making a conflation was that you simply jumped from statements about usefulness to statements about identity. As I explain...

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 yell...

Federal government vs state government arguments have never resonated with me. I don't think that states are any less prone to corruption, the other p...

You responded as if we were saying something about the color yellow (in general, regardless of where it occurs) rather than saying something about yel...

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 ba...

Why wouldn't making mental associations with the sounds amount to language?

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.

How would any of that amount to arguing against meaning being associated with usage?

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...

And indeed you can do that. Who would be stopping you? Dictionaries report consensus, popular, influential, historically important etc. usages.

The Mad Fool was talking about proof, though, not just reaching a conclusion that could be modified later.

You seem to be missing that the PSR is a principle. It's not merely saying that there are sufficient explanations for various things. It's saying that...

And I didn't see the dictionary comment. A dictionary reports the usage of words. I see dictionaries as more or less journalistic items, but journalis...

Ah, I wasn't following the discussion well enough. Yeah, if he's saying that a yellow banana "means" a particular ripeness state, in the sense of ther...

Isn't he saying via experience? Via eating a number of bananas, you notice a correlation between the color and the ripeness.

For one, aside from whether "space makes x useful" is true for everything or even (at least unequivocally) for all of the examples you present, it see...

I'd say that meaning is determined by use, and if we limit our concern to language, I'd say that meaning is determined by use as/in language, but I'd ...

I'm someone who routinely uses invincibility cheats in video games. Jumping out of airplanes, for example, would be kind of like a roller coaster in t...

What I'd not do is just assume that the PSR is true. I'm not assuming that it's not true, but I'd certainly not just accept that it is true, either. I...

I never took Wittgenstein to be forwarding a behaviorist argument And the idea of that would be controversial.

I take it that you're asking what we'd do differently if we knew that we'd never age, but that we could die via accidents, etc.versus being immortal i...

Empirical claims are not provable.

Things are art or not interpretively and via social convention. That was more or less the whole point of The Fountain (as well as 4'33").

Re what you were talking about in your initial post, where composers introduce pieces, where visual artists write artist's statements, etc., it's simp...

You're bringing up a number of different topics and asking a number of different questions. Re "who is in charge" of what gets created, it obviously d...

It's a reaction often to things that we perceive. It seems like you answer your own question. Because that sort of music didn't exist yet. Why didn't ...

I disagree strongly with this. That something is beautiful is our reaction to it, and our reaction only. It's not a property of the thing in itself.

You feel that things are beautiful also "because your biology tells you to." Something being beautiful is simply your brain being in a specific subset...

Either you disprove that P or you accept that P?

That I didn't quote your entire post doesn't imply that I wasn't addressing it. Again, to be making a mental association would require that there's so...

I wouldn't be so sure of that. She has to understand something about the sounds "Where's Fiona?" in order to behave the way she subsequently does. It ...