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From: jqb@netcom.com (Jim Balter)
Subject: Re: Reading between the lines vs reading the meaning
Message-ID: <jqbDCt6tL.62B@netcom.com>
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References: <3vdlm6$8ve@percy.cs.bham.ac.uk> <3vr0qn$jhh@percy.cs.bham.ac.uk> <jqbDCrror.789@netcom.com> <19950804.152358.68@daffodif.demon.co.uk>
Date: Fri, 4 Aug 1995 23:05:45 GMT
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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.

>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".  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.

>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.

>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?
-- 
<J Q B>

