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From: jqb@netcom.com (Jim Balter)
Subject: Re: Reading between the lines vs reading the meaning
Message-ID: <jqbDCxnxB.8qw@netcom.com>
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References: <3vr0qn$jhh@percy.cs.bham.ac.uk> <19950804.152358.68@daffodif.demon.co.uk> <jqbDCt6tL.62B@netcom.com> <19950807.022452.63@daffodif.demon.co.uk>
Date: Mon, 7 Aug 1995 09:05:35 GMT
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Xref: glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu comp.ai:32266 comp.ai.philosophy:31356 sci.logic:13657 sci.cognitive:8903 sci.philosophy.tech:19244

In article <19950807.022452.63@daffodif.demon.co.uk>,
 <PHIL@daffodif.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>On Fri, 4 Aug 1995 23:05:45 GMT,
>  Jim Balter (jqb@netcom.com) wrote:
>
>> In article <19950804.152358.68@daffodif.demon.co.uk>,
>>  <PHIL@daffodif.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>> >On Fri, 4 Aug 1995 04:41:15 GMT,
>> >  Jim Balter (jqb@netcom.com) wrote:
>> >
>> ><snip> Perhaps there is some way to not "go  beyond the words", but I find
>> >> the notion of words (As sounds?  Ink blots?  What level is "not beyond"?)
>> >> holding intrinsic significance (meaning? value?  something
>>            ^^^^^^^^^
>> >> non-intensional?) to be incoherent.  
>> 
>> >What on earth does this mean? [...]
>> 
>> [much wordage ignoring the word "intrinsic"]
>> 
>> If you don't know what my words mean, then they surely do not have
>> *intrinsic* significance, since I did in fact mean something by them.
>> Perhaps you should read what I wrote again and try to find a more generous
>> meaning, one that isn't absurd, trivial, or nonsensical to you.
>> 
>I agree that your words have significance, but I do not understand what the
>distinction you make of 'intrinsic significance' is supposed to be. Hence I
>ignored the word intrinsic as superfluous, though if you can explain how this
>differs from 'significance' I may revise my comments.

Someone suggested in e-mail that the reason you had responded to something
other than what I said was that my sentence was difficult to parse; I agreed
and suggested that I should have been as generous to you as I asked you to be
to me.  Now I'm not so sure.

As I said, I find this notion of *intrinsic* significance to be **incoherent**.
Now you seem to be asking me for some coherent view of the notion.

David Longley would have us not "go beyond the words".  What *are* "words",
that we are not to go beyond them?  Are they speech acts?  Ink blots?  Bunches
of photons?  Surely they are *symbols*, but how do we determine what they
symbolize?  The meaning of symbols must be established within some sort of
context.  Their meaning cannot be *intrinsic*, or they would have the same
meaning in all contexts.  There is a difference of intrinsicality between the
word "skunk" and a dead one on the road; the latter has a meaning independent
of one's familiarity with English.  The smell of a skunk "belongs to the thing
by its very nature" but not to the word "skunk".  Nor do I think that any
meaning can belong to a word "by its very nature" since I can, by an act of
will, assign it any meaning that I choose (sometimes I choose unusual meanings
for variable names in programs just so I can keep them handy as examples).

You may have some debate here, but surely you can do better than simply ignore
certain words.  The difference between "intrinsic significance" and
"significnace" is the difference between the import of something by its nature
and the import of something by other than its nature.  It's the difference
between a kick in the shins and "a kick in the shins".  If you think the
meaning of "intrinsic significance" and "significance" are "determinate" (I
looked ahead), why am I having to explain this?  If you mean they are
determinate for *me*, the utterer, I assure you that I have to reconsider what
I meant by them each time I see them, and most likely end up with slightly
different explanations each time.

>
>> >But this does not show that meaning does not exist, just that there are no
>> >such "things" in the reified sense, as "meanings". 
>> 
>> I don't know precisely what it means to say that something "exists" without it
>> being "reified".  
>
>We can use the word 'exists' in contexts that don't imply 'names an object'.
>This latter is what I understand by reification.

I think that using the word "exists" in ways other than indicating physicality
is error prone but, as I said, I'm willing to try to understand you when you
use it that way.  However, I will have great difficulty in distinguishing
between those things that do exist and those that do not.

>> Each of us attaches a somewhat different meaning to most
>> utterances.  Do each of these meanings "exist"?  If you say yes, then I am
>> willing to try to use the word that way, or at least to recognize what you
>> mean when you do.  But surely these multiple meanings, if all existent,
>> reenforce the notion that the "words themselves", as recordings on a piece of
>> parchment, beyond which we cannot go, do not have *intrinsic* meaning; the
>> meaning lies somewhere outside of the words, in comprehending minds, perhaps,
>> where the words act as signifiers to index these meanings.
>> 
>
>No, I must disagree with you here, this seems like some kind of Cartesian
>mentalism that is totally without foundation.

I have no idea how you got to that; it certainly doesn't follow from my words
as I *meant* them.  Our physical brains have persistent states; some of this
we call memory.  The meanings of words is surely related to that memory.
Therefore there is some part of the meaning of a word that is in *some* sense
"in comprehending minds".  "Cartesian mentalism" would *reduce* the connection
between what is in the brain and what is in the mind (or v.v.).  But since I
wasn't addressing mind/brain issues, your comment strikes me as off the wall.

>Meaning doesn't lie outside of
>words, but lies in their *use*: their employment according to rules.

That certainly sounds like "outside the words" to me, since the rules can
change independently of the words, and more than one rule applies to each
word.  Since there are many rules that might apply to any one word that Karl
Popper might have used, then surely we must look to the entire context that
might determine these rules in order to determine the meaning in any instance.

Are we merely quibbling about what is "inside" and what is "outside"?  If so,
it's really not worth doing, at least not to me.  Or are we arguing about
whether the rules are somehow intrinsic?  If so, you willl surely lose that
argument, since your rules for the use of the word "exists" are different from
mine.  If I want to understand what you mean when you use it, I have to go
beyond your words to a large set of experience regarding people who seem to
use the word as you do, and readings by philosophers such as Russell who
discussed the pitfalls in such usage.  I will not be able to go by "rules",
unless what you mean by that is a complex personal unformalized procedure.

>When we
>are asked to explain the meaning of a word, what our explanation does is show
>the other person how the word is being used; the explanation shows the other
>person what to do with that word, how to employ it in language. 

Certainly.  But we do much with words other than use them and explain them.
If I want to *understand* Popper's words, I need to go beyond them to
"explanation", which I cannot get directly from him, but must draw from his
other words in the same and other works, the structure and interconnectedness
of the words, his culture, his style, the arguments to which he was
responding, etc. etc.

>"The meaning of an expression is what the explanation of meaning explains.
>i.e. if you want to understand the use of the word "meaning", look for what
>are called "explanations of meaning" (Wittgenstein, 'Philosophical
>Investigations', #560). 

Which I won't get simply by staring at the words, Using my "senses", as
Longley would have it, and stopping there.  I must go to the entire semantic
and pragmatic structure that my brain machine has built out of those
sensations, which includes representations of other brain machines and other
chunks of the world.  This is all "beyond the words", at least in the context
that has been discussed in this newsgroup.

>> >It is a conceptual truth, and not an opinion of fact, that what we say and
>> >write is meaningful; to deny this is - by the very act of denial - to
>> >contradict oneself.
>> 
>> Not if one insists that it makes sense to say that what we say and write is
>> meaningful *to* someone, and that leaving that off is sort of a grammatical
>> error, like talking about "the purpose of life" without referring to *whose*
>> purpose.
>> 
>No. Logically, an expression cannot be understood by someone unless it makes
>sense - hence whether an expression has meaning is logically prior to whether
>anyone apprehends it; being meaningful is a precondition of understanding. 

Either you haven't contradicted me, or you are talking nonsense, since an
expression can have any number of meanings.  An expression has to have meaning
*to someone* before it can be understood *by that one*.  "mensa" has meaning;
it is understood; there are rules for its use.  But they *differ* among
individuals.  I deny that "mensa", without considering *who* wrote it and *for
whom* it was written, is meaningful, and I am certainly not contradicting
myself by saying so.

>> >Nobody, to my knowledge, seriously holds that there is no such thing as
>> >'meaning' (although there are criticisms that Quine's view, fully cashed out,
>> >does indeed lead to semantic nihilism). 
>> 
>> Right, so why are you going on as if someone did?
>
>Well, there seems to be a lot of loose talk in these posts about 'meaning' -
>especially in the various discussions about Quine and intensions - I was
>simply trying to make clear the distinction between the thesis that meaning
>is indeterminate (false) and the stronger (and also false) thesis that there
>is no such thing as linguistic meaning.  

I cannot see how, with or without the word "intrinsic", I could have been
taken as claiming the latter, except as a result of the impenetrability of my
syntax, which I'm willing to grant.  But I'm quite baffled by the former.  Are
you claiming that meaning is determined?  If so, what does "mensa" mean?  Just
what do you *mean* by this claim?  It certainly is indeterminate by *me*, and
therefore it is indeterminate, and I would say that claiming otherwise is
indeed self-contradictory.  If meaning is determined, it must be determined
*by* someone or something in a particular context at a particular time.

	26	00000,00001	; what does this mean?
-- 
<J Q B>

