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Article 2163 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: zeleny@brauer.harvard.edu (Mikhail Zeleny)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy,sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: Meaning and Agency
Message-ID: <1991Dec16.100707.6637@husc3.harvard.edu>
Date: 16 Dec 91 15:07:05 GMT
References: <1991Dec11.042430.13871@milton.u.washington.edu> 
 <1991Dec13.164821.6536@husc3.harvard.edu> <1991Dec16.070537.7377@milton.u.washington.edu>
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In article <1991Dec16.070537.7377@milton.u.washington.edu> 
forbis@milton.u.washington.edu (Gary Forbis) writes:

>I may come back to other parts of the article but here I will deal with a
>specific poor statement on my part.

>In article <1991Dec13.164821.6536@husc3.harvard.edu> 
zeleny@zariski.harvard.edu (Mikhail Zeleny) writes:

>>In article <1991Dec11.042430.13871@milton.u.washington.edu> 
>>forbis@milton.u.washington.edu (Gary Forbis) writes:

MZ:
>>(1) Saying that an agent A meant p by s is equivalent to saying that A
>>intended the utterance of s to produce a specifiable effect with the
>>propositional content p in his audience by means of their recognition of
>>his intention in the context of s.  The propositional content p can be
>>uniquely associated with the equivalence class of sentence-tokens
>>synonymous with s in the contexts of their utterance, as determined by the
>>semantic conventions of the language employed by A.  Note that p is not
>>necessarily open to the awareness of A; in other words, A doesn't
>>necessarily know what he means by s, as opposed to what he intends it to
>>convey.  He must nevertheless commit himself to the objective meaning of
>>his utterance, which transcends his subjective intention, and can only be
>>determined culturally and contextually.

GF:
>I'm a little confused by this.  May I assume that the agent "Saying that
>an agent A meant p by s" need not be A?  That is to say, the language 
>employed by A need not be available to the agent saying "agent A meant
>p by s"?

Yes on both counts.

MZ:
>>(2) Saying that s meant p is equivalent to saying that there exists an
>>intentional causal relation between the occurrence of s and an agent's
>>prior meaning p by a type-identical utterance s' meaning p.
>>
>>(3) Saying that s means p is equivalent to saying that the occurrence of s
>>can be causally associated with a type-identical possible utterance of s'
>>by an assumed agent meaning p.

GF:
>>>[For any language used by a philosopher there are a finite number of 
>>> utterances and within these utterances a finite number of symbols.
>>> The meaning of these symbols are communicated syntatically.  There exists
>>> other languages for which these same symbols uttered in the same order
>>> are syntactically correct.  Up to this point I have considered your
>>> language to be somewhat different from what I now consider it.]

GF:
>Geez, did I ever goof this up.

MZ:
>>On the contrary, Chomsky will be happy to tell you that for any language
>>used by a philosopher there is an infinite number of possible utterances,
>>each containing a finite number of symbols.  Furthermore, I believe the
>>meaning to be communicated pragmatically as well as syntactically.

GF:
>While there is an infinite number of possible utterances in any language
>there are a finite number of utterances by any particular philosopher.  Within
>these constraints there are an infinite number of possible languages for
>which the propostional contents P can be uniquely associated with the
>equivalence class of sentence-tokens synonymous with the sentences S
>uttered by A.  (well it seems formal enough, I hope it has some content.)
>I think one can refer to Geodel's incompleteness theorem for a sketch of
>such a proof.

I fail to understand your point.  My claim that the propositional content p
can be uniquely associated with the equivalence class of sentence-tokens
synonymous with s in the contexts of their utterance was only meant to
illustrate the relationship between the concept of synonymy and the notion
of a sentence expressing its propositional content.

GF:
>This being the case, I don't know how an agent can know what she means by
>any particular utterance in that even to oneself one has a finite set of
>conscious thoughts (or may I be so presumptious?)

An agent may very well ignore the meaning of his words, particularly if he
fails to use them responsibly.  We are not masters of the social convention
which determines this meaning.  However, this doesn't relieve us from the
responsibility to be commited to the meaning of our words in virtue of
having uttered them.

>--gary forbis


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