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From: jqb@netcom.com (Jim Balter)
Subject: Re: Reading between the lines vs reading the meaning
Message-ID: <jqbDCt7qu.81B@netcom.com>
Organization: NETCOM On-line Communication Services (408 261-4700 guest)
References: <3vtse9$8lc@nntp5.u.washington.edu>
Date: Fri, 4 Aug 1995 23:25:42 GMT
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Xref: glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu comp.ai:32182 comp.ai.philosophy:31293 sci.logic:13566 sci.cognitive:8834 sci.philosophy.tech:19166

In article <3vtse9$8lc@nntp5.u.washington.edu>,
R. Mounce <mounce@u.washington.edu> wrote:
> <PHIL@daffodif.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>>  Jim Balter (jqb@netcom.com) wrote:
>><snip> Perhaps there is some way to not "go  beyond the words", 
>
>Of course there are ways.  What limits do you put on your senses?  

I'm not sure how this relates to *not* going beyond the words.  We have to "go
beyond the words" just to recognize these ink blots or sounds or whatever *as*
words; we have to go to prior experience.  Not even Chomsky would say that the
words themselves, without some cultural experience, carry any content.  It is
the structuring of word sequences that he holds to be innate.  As someone who
invents languages for a living, and imbues words and other symbols with
interpretions, often different interpretations for the same words in different
languages, or even in different contexts within the same language, I find it
incoherent to talk of words having meaning *independent* of some interpretive
framework.  One must go beyond the words to the interpretive framework in
order to extract meaning from them.

>When I burn myself, I don't think, 'ah, intensional action in 
>response to stimulus of temperature variance between object and nervous 
>system'--no, instead, I think (and say), 'ouch!'.

There's a lot of mechanism to you beyond conscious thought.
-- 
<J Q B>

