Then you have two options: eliminativism or permissivism. — Arcane Sandwich

What about "not-ordinary, and conservative"?

Some objects are real. Check. Some objects are not-real. Check.

Or "Names are weird" -- I think they really are weird and not understood.

"The ordinary objects" for a medieval baker, or the CEO of a Chinese business in 2017?

Seems like "Some of them" is the easy way out?

"Some" in a logical sense, at least. "Ordinary" seems sus

Which objects we talking about here?

;)

I have more to learn.

My thinking was that the medium-independence of meaning is weird, from a metaphysical perspective, whether we accept that meaning is real or not-real. It's unexpected from the perspective of an ontology of objects, at least if we believe there is a difference between speaking and writing.

I'd much prefer to save discussions on reality for after discussions on how we think about reality. There are currently a handful of traditions in philosophy which allow us to do that.

One thing I take seriously is that if we can, in fact, have thoughts sans-metaphysics then it must be due to language. Or something along those lines. We can communicate about whether or not Daniel Dennett was conscious and understand that perfectly, but in scenarios where we start to question the meaning of meaning -- and all the baggage that comes with self-reference -- I at least don't know how to tell y'all (not including me) that what I'm saying means nothing other than to demonstrate a contradiction**.

And, at least usually, we don't think of objects like that.

**EDIT: And to turn the confusion up to 11 -- even then, sometimes contradictions are meaningful. "Meaning is a mystery" makes lots of sense to me.

I can stop anytime I want!

:up: I'll keep it in mind.

Meaning is not found, it's made. Or better, drop meaning and reference altogether and talk instead about use. — Banno

Yeah, but I want to talk about meaning and reference :D

O shit.

It's more explosive than I had imagined, then.

Relating this back to Quine, it reminds me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plato%27s_beard

***

I'm tempted to say this is along the lines of Wittgenstein's PI 1 that I linked earlier -- that just because you have something to say that it must indicate or refer to something seems wrong to me.

Kinda weird, though, right?

Isn't it as weird as accepting that the vinyl scratches record meaning?

Shorter: it's better to have fouts and trouts, instead of not having either. — Arcane Sandwich

I prefer "names are weird"

:D

There is a tremendous multiplicity and diversity, and I'd add that a lot of it is quite observable. Every dog is different, and every person—each snowflake as well as each fingerprint. My copy of the Metaphysics has different dog ears than my professors, different coffee stains, different places where the ink didn't quite come off the press correctly. And the same person or dog is also different from moment to moment, year to year, sometimes dramatically so. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I like this description of multiplicity. That's what it feels like when I think about every fact, rather than every relevant fact.

So I was thinking we'd all want to adopt the tripartite diagram -- not as a rule, just as a distinction in trying to understand the beast that is reference. — Moliere

Though going back over a bit ...

as the dotted line an the bottom makes sure to emphasise that relation between signifyer and signified is an imputed one. — Dawnstorm

That I agree with. It's imputed. There needs to be a speaker and an interpreter for meaning to be/happen/whatever.

Yes. Thanks. I mean, that's the plot I'm seeing so far -- I was thinking that agreeing with the tripartite diagram furthered the "multiple ways" by making us able to talk about both object-reference and language-reference.

So I was thinking we'd all want to adopt the tripartite diagram -- not as a rule, just as a distinction in trying to understand the beast that is reference.

Yes, I think the tripartite structure helps to clear this up. You can, of course, signify an idea, or even a complex collection of them (e.g. "the theory of special relativity") as the "object." You can likewise signify incorporeal "objects," such as an economic recession, or hypothetical ones. However, what is signified is different from the thought that interprets it, the interpretant.

Thinking and "talking to oneself" involves signs, but clearly what is signified and the interpretant are not thereby collapsed. So that's a common difficulty, an interpretant need not be conscious, nor need they be a whole person (an interpreter). — Count Timothy von Icarus

As for the triangles: I like the first one Count Timothy von Icarus posted best, as the dotted line an the bottom makes sure to emphasise that relation between signifyer and signified is an imputed one. And I also like that the "thought" sits on top. I think the source is Ogden/Richards The meaning of meaning, but I'd have to check to make sure [it doesn't say]. I like that, because I tend to think of thought as a process: not one thought, one clear-cut piece of mental content, but a stream of consiousness, classified and edited by analysis, so we can think about that. — Dawnstorm

I quite agree.

The diagram shows a relation between symbol and referent, linked by thought. Quine, Austin, Searle Grice and others showed this to be a somewhat keyhole version of what is going on. There is more to language than just reference, so a diagram that explains only reference will explain only a small part of language. — Banno

I find myself surprised -- in many ways.

I think the main thing I'd like to be able to distinguish is between when a person is talking about an object we are perceiving and when a person is talking about all the things we perceive when perceiving an object** -- I suspect that we do not need the notion of "the sign" to do this, but if we are speaking in terms of signs then I want to distinguish between the two references because I'm contending that language is not an object in the world like the other objects.

Which I think -- and correct me if I'm wrong -- @Dawnstorm and @Banno agree with me on only because I've been agreeing with what they've been saying.

So I'm left wondering where I'm losing the plot :sweat:

**EDIT: The confusing wording is because I'm trying to avoid "thought-objects" in the expression.

I can see the point about the difference between a thread and an essay. The author would probably need to be putting across a thought or view. There probably needs to be a certain amount of openness to varying forms of expression in the spirit of creativity. As Amity says Iris Murdoch distinguishes between her fiction and non fiction. The possible forms of non fiction, as distinct from fiction, may include letters and autobiographical, or life writing, and some other forms. — Jack Cummins

I'm certainly of the opinion that openness is the selling point for participation. I have no intent on refusing any submissions, for instance. I'm trying to give just enough structure to guide creative thought without hemming people in too much.

And my intent is to respond to every submission in a non-critical style -- i.e. I'll read the essay and try to take its own terms without importing my own thoughts, and try to offer pointers to clean up the essay.

Sweet! For thems who already write philosophy essays or have submitted them to journals I'd say that this offers an opportunity for your more experimental side to receive feedback -- things you know just won't publish but that you're interested in.

My thought is the difference is mostly about structure and effort -- we make posts about an idea but they only need to be somewhat related to philosophy to be A-OK, whereas the essay should somehow complete a thought. Whereas a thread is a conversation starter an essay is intentionally written by an author to express a particular thought for a reader.

But, mostly, I don't see being too picky about what really makes the difference, and with respect to fiction/poetry etc.:

I would hope this kind of imaginative response to questions in a philosophy thread could have its place in the 'Philosophy Writing Challenge - June 2025'. — Amity

I also don't see the benefit of being too picky in defining which is what when.

Since the idea is to explore ideas together for fun and exercise, and there's not any prize at the end, I'm not too concerned with a firm set of criteria. Insofar that the participants are putting in an effort I don't see ruling out something because it's using fiction or because it's using poetry -- Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and other philosophers being prime examples of people who use a poetic expression or create whole new words even in order to pursue a point.

The guideline is there to help differentiate what makes this different more than provide a set of rules by which something will or will not be accepted. Someone could even make a point in the threads, for instance, if they feel a particular entry is too poetic/fiction based or something -- I see more value in reflecting on that on the boards than defining it ahead of time.

Cool.

Glad at least one line of flight in the thread was resolved :D

I'd agree that Saussure's semiotics have not had a particularly helpful influence (in part because they led to Derrida :rofl: ). — Count Timothy von Icarus

Oooff!! :D

It took me a long time, but I think I'm pretty much on team-Derrida.

****

I can accept the first picture over the latter. "The signified", at least in my understanding of Saussure, was always ambiguous in the sense that sometimes it referred to the idea people had and sometimes it referred to the physical object.

I don't think Derrida exploits that confusion, though. He calls into question "the sign" even here:

I should note that in the broader application, signification is happening everywhere, not just in language. For instance, in an analysis of the sensory system we might speak of light interacting with photoreceptors in the eye as the object, the pattern of action potentials traveling down the optic nerve as the sign vehicle, and then some particular resultant activity in the occipital lobe as the interpretant, or we might apply it to DNA and ribosomes, etc. — Count Timothy von Icarus

The words we use to describe these causal patterns aren't the linguistic sign. That's the mystery -- how does a bundle of quarks become able to speak and communicate and do language?

Seems kinda suss, right? :D

Yes, but unfortunately not in a particularly helpful way. St. Augustine has a very nuanced view of language and his own formulation of meaning as use, but he mostly shows up in PI to present a very naive picture of language. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Fair.

Would you at least go so far as to say that PI 1 highlights a common error, or do you think it's erroneous entirely?

The "meaning coming with sign" thing is what I have in mind here. Like Saussure. Say/write/do sign indicates meaning in head and communication happens when two heads mean the same thing.

That's the sort of thing I'm thinking is an illusion.

More or less -- Saussure was wrong, and Derrida was right. ;)

Or we can go down the Quine to Davidson path... all roads lead to Rome, as they say.

↪Moliere The emphasis on "sign" is problematic, in that it supposes that the main purpose, or fundamental element, in language is the noun.

It isn't. Language is about getting things done as a group. Reference is incidental to that purpose. — Banno

My thinking here is that after we get things done in a group we continue to be able to speak.

And also -- yeah, the treatment of language as a noun is why I quoted Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations section 1.

It even references a great medieval thinker, so I was thinking it might be more appreciated by our interlocutors.

Language is more about constructing, rather than exchanging, information. This choice of words may mark a pretty fundamental difference between those who agree with Quine and those who do not. — Banno

Yup.

Sweet, thanks.

I recognize how odd my conclusions are, and so sometimes wonder if I'm just barmy .... :D

This is indeed an important point. However, it is not unique to Quine, nor does it entail Quine's particular approach to reference. See the rest of the post above. From an information theoretic or semiotic perspective, there is a ton of information relevant to communication that is related to context (linguistic and otherwise), tone, body language, the identity of the speaker, the identity of the intended recipient, past conversation/stipulation, etc., in addition to convention. There is also a lot of signification going on in conversations.

However, signs clearly do signify according to convention, else language (and any communications convention) would not be useful for communications. — Count Timothy von Icarus

My thought is that we don't know how signs signify, or even if "signs" is the correct signification for understanding reference, or language.

"Sign", obviously, being a linguistic expression -- the sign that says "CAUTION" literally "stands for" the meaning "Be careful".

But the linguistic sign is not the literal sign.

I mostly think that meaning is something we don't know why it works, at this point. (hence, philosophy)

Pace Plato, Aristotle allows that weakness of will can occur, so he wouldn't necessarily be at odds with Sartre here. The point is more about predication. So, for instance, if you go outside and see a car, and it's blue, you cannot also judge that it is not-blue, in the same way, without qualification (so a car that is blue and another color isn't a counter example here).

So, once on this forum someone brought up the old duck/rabbit optical illusion as a counter example. But that wouldn't be one. That would be an example where we qualify our judgement. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I agree that the rabbit/duck illusion is not a counter-example. I think the belief would have to be of the form of a contradiction, rather than a contrary -- "P ^ ~P"

I believe that the literal notion that we lie to ourselves -- so I am telling me a lie -- that we end up believing something contradictory, at least if its something we actually do psychologically.

I don't think we're rational beings by nature, though, so this doesn't seem hard for me to accept. Beliefs are formed not on the basis of rationality as much as... whatever they are formed by.

And language follows suit because it's useful even if it's contradictory.

Explicitly speaking -- I've at least separated what I believe from what I believe Quine and Davidson to be saying, but only if I focus on the two sentences where I did that.

Else, I've not attended to the differences and have been (and continue to be) engaging in dialogue and self-expression, while attempting to express why "the inscrutability of reference" can't be dismissed, from a philosophical perspective at least.

Probably my fault -- in responding and thinking I've been hopping between what I think and what Quine thinks.

I have some radical conclusions that I'm exploring, but I don't believe Quine is there as much as serves as an entryway into what I'm thinking.

Basically meaning isn't tied to words, but the interplay of terms within the whole structure of the sentence. Hence there can be multiple valid translations all with the same final meaning (because the way the words reference each on in the structure of their translations equate to the same)...hence reference is inscrutable... because it's always changing. — DifferentiatingEgg

Thanks for posting this -- I was beginning to wonder if I'm entirely wrong and I believe that this is basically what I've been arguing for.

What's blasphemous about it? Is it because they're admitting their desires are erotic and pleasure-chasing?

What matters.

Didn't Kant make the point that we experience phenomena but cannot know the noumena, the cause of the phenomena? — Art48

We experience phenomena.

We cannot know the noumena.

But since we experience cause -- causation is one of the Categories which organize experience -- phenomena are governed by causality.

We're tempted to say that the noumena causes phenomena because that makes sense of the noumena, but it's only a temptation. Once we have causality we are no longer talking about the noumena.

Yes, I agree that you could render a proposition like that. However, Aristotle's point was about judgement. So if we judge Truman's hair to be "Truman-blonde," and "Truman-blonde" is just whatever Truman's hair is, then we cannot be wrong in our judgement. Supposing we don't call it "hair" but "Truman-hair,' we also cannot be wrong that it is "Truman-hair" that is Truman-blonde. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think I can follow along with this, though I'd add a temporal dimension -- so that every word ever said is always different from moment to moment.

In some ways that's true, though the process' rate of change is such that we need to reference texts hundreds of years old to see the change. In some ways names can become predicates and vice-versa, and we can be as specific as every moment.

What I'd say is that since here we are talking about it, and understanding it together, why would this undermine communication at all?

When a question is particular enough I need the pluperfect tense to specify time-dates-names-tools, etc.

When it's a family event the pluperfect can be a remembrance of good times.

Though I remember the same time with my family at each event -- that memory we re-remember last Christmas won't be the same next Christmas when we revisit it again.

And yet, despite all these rapid changes, we are able to communicate. Language remains useful. That's the mystery**. (not in principle, in my opinion, but just right now)

So, Aristotle would also say that we cannot simultaneously judge that Truman's hair is both Truman-blond and not-Truman-blond, at the same time, in the same way, without qualification. Indeed, if Truman-blond is just whatever Truman-hair is, and nothing else, no evidence can ever suggest to us that Truman-hair is anything other than Truman-blond.

As respects the negation, we can speak such things in the discourse of spoken words, but not in the discourse of the soul (i.e., it does not make sense to say that someone earnestly believes and doesn't believe the same exact thing at the same exact time).

Would it surprise you that I disagree with Aristotle on this? :D

Sartre's Being and Nothingness is pretty much about this ability to earnestly believe contradictory things -- to lie to oneself you have to both believe the lie as truth and that the lie is a lie.

I think the human soul is contradictory, generally, and its only the rationalists who manage (or lucked out to be born with?*) souls which let go of contradiction. (Well, and the saints, etc.)

*EDIT: Or, really, cursed to be born with when I think about saints, martyrs, and the ends of some of our favorite philosophers.

**EDIT2: In lots of ways this mirrors the arguments for the problem of consciousness. That does not mean they are related, but I do think it's harder to deny that we mean things than it is to deny we are conscious.

But don't babies without language and people with aphasia who cannot produce or understand language (or both) still perceive? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, and yes!

I don't think perception necessitates language -- I do think language effects perception such that a linguistic separation is suspect, at least, though.

I'm skeptical of such a fusion, not least because the Sapir-Worf hypothesis is supported by very weak evidence, normally very small effect sizes and failures to replicate, despite a great deal of people having a strong interest in providing support for it. For instance, different cultures do indeed divide up the visible color spectrum differently, but the differences are not extreme. Nor does growing up with a different division seem to make you any better and spotting camouflaged objects. But moreover , aside from disparate divisions remaining fairly similar, no culture has a name for any of the colors that insects experience through being able to see in the ultraviolet range, and for an obvious reason.

Likewise, disparate cultures have names for colors, shapes, animal species, etc. They don't pick any of the vast range of options that would be available to a species that largely creates their own perceptual "concepts." I know of no cultures that mix shape and color for some parts of the spectrum, and then shape and smell for another part, etc. or any of the innumerable possible combinations for descriptions. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think of becoming enlanguaged as a process which changes how one thinks and perceives the world. That we can refer at all is linguistic. The conventions come out of histhis ability to mean.

I don't believe this would necessitate a belief in Sapir-Worf. That's not the sort of thing I have in mind here. Rather it seems to me that we can't treat the phenomena of language as we do other things in the world. That we can refer to language already requires us to be able to refer or mean things.

I'm reminded of Wittgenstein's section 1 of the PI:

These words, it seems to me, give us a particular picture of the
essence of human language. It is this: the individual words in language
name objects—sentences are combinations of such names.——In this
picture of language we find the roots of the following idea: Every word
has a meaning. This meaning is correlated with the word. It is the
object for which the word stands.
Augustine does not speak of there being any difference between
kinds of word. If you describe the learning of language in this way
you are, I believe, thinking primarily of nouns like "table", "chair",
"bread", and of people's names, and only secondarily of the names of
certain actions and properties; and of the remaining kinds of word as
something that will take care of itself.
Now think of the following use of language: I send someone shopping. I give him a slip marked "five red apples". He takes the slip to
the shopkeeper, who opens the drawer marked "apples"; then he looks
up the word "red" in a table and finds a colour sample opposite it;
then he says the series of cardinal numbers—I assume that he knows
them by heart—up to the word "five" and for each number he takes an
apple of the same colour as the sample out of the drawer.——It is in
this and similar ways that one operates with words.——"But how does
he know where and how he is to look up the word 'red' and what he is
to do with the word 'five'?"——Well, I assume that he acts as I have
described. Explanations come to an end somewhere.—But what is the
meaning of the word "five"?—No such thing was in question here,
only how the word "five" is used.

I'd say we'd already have to use language to be able to ask "What is the meaning of the word?"

J mentioned Gadamer earlier, and I like Gadamer, but the idea that all understanding is done through language seems suspect. It seems like the sort of judgement a philosopher focused on language would have. But does an MLB pitcher finally have it all click and understand how to throw a knuckleball through language? Does a mechanic understand how to fix a motorcycle engine primarily through language? Or what of demonstrations in mathematics based on visualization?

My thoughts are that language is a late evolutionary arrival that taps into a whole array of powers. It enables us in a great many ways. But thought also isn't "language all the way down." Nor do I think we need to suppose that non-verbal individuals lack understanding (or else that we have to suppose that they have "private languages" for them to understand anything) or any noetic grasp of reality.

To my mind, part of the problem here is the ol' reduction of reason to ratio (which is maybe enabled by computational theory of mind). But my take is that reason is broader than language and that the Logos is broader than human reason.

Now I agree that language isn't everything, and that creatures not-enlanguaged can have a kind of understanding. I'm not confident that that understanding is based in reference, though, since that seems to me a linguistic act. At least a human-linguistic act, insofar that we understand it ourselves.

I think it changes the way we perceive, though. So while a not-enlanguaged being can perceive once enlanguaged the perception changes. Here I think more about how if I learn new words, if I read a book, this changes how I see the world -- what was once "car" is now "motor-burning-gas-turning..." etc. and all the various distinctions I know about the car that I did not know before, and a mechanic will have an even wider perception of that same vehicle because of their ability to make distinctions.

I think it's wrapped up in how we live, however, so certainly it's not language all the way down in the small-l sense -- but maybe the big-L sense, which is the thing that is the mystery in the first place. (or, in a slogan: "Names are weird")

"Blonde" and "black" are universals. If either we're unique terms that are only predicable of Truman's hair then they certainly couldn't fail to apply. — Count Timothy von Icarus

This isn't in response to the rest of your post, just the first question that popped to mind -- I had that thought, but suppose we allow negation. Then even "Truman's hair is Truman-blond", if true, the negation would have to be false. So even if we aren't speaking in universal terms we can use true/false.

@Arcane Sandwich -- you have thoughts on Miles Davis' Bitches Brew album?

That was the first one that popped to mind when reading @Jamal in describing jazz as harsh.

Though here's the bit where I think I'd disagree with Quine -- I like the idea of a web of beliefs, but I'm not sure they really affix reference, either. Even with Davidson it seems that charity can often fail.

And sometimes even common purpose doesn't help in assigning reference because the reason I want to know what my enemy is saying is in order to thwart them -- so related purposes, in that they are opposed, but not common.

The one thing I'm fairly certain about is that there is no public shelf of meaning from which we can judge others', and that we cannot ascertain how a particular individual is referring by reference to the language spoken and the circumstances they are in alone. Now that we live in an era where it seems writing is more permanent than speaking, where we can look things up that others' have done, I think it's easy to get lost in thinking that language behaves like other things in the world.

So easy even someone as smart as Aristotle has been caught up in that way of thinking ;)

There's a bootstrap problem involved in the sense that we can definitely tell when something does not speak (a stone) and obviously tell when something does speak (you and I), and we believe that somehow the speaking-thing came out of the not-speaking-thing.

Fostering agreement I can certainly get behind -- but I'm not sure convention answers that call. I'd think shared purpose does that more than convention. If you had to survive in a society in which you did not speak the language you could figure out some of what they mean through trial-and-error, where the error is measured by your purposes or by feedback from the other language speakers.

It's because, when we are learning a language, that we want to be able to speak to other language users that we adhere to the conventions. The conventions certainly helps us learn, as well as making it so we are able to grade who is a better speaker.

But those poetic rhythms -- which I tend to think of as the earliest form of writing recognized as writing (though speech is always writing) -- came about as conventions because there was already a meaning.

So, yeah, the old "on its head" move.

I think this gets at a few things. One is Aristotle's idea that we must use universals to have the possibility of our claims being false. If we just predicate unique terms of unique things, terms that only apply to those things, we can never be wrong. Second, language and reference must always be more general and less determinate than perception to be useful. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I'm not so sure we must have universals for a claim to be false. If Truman's hair were black then "Truman's hair is blonde" would be false, for instance, even though we're only talking about that Truman right there and not any other Truman.

I'm not sure I'd separate language from perception, either. Seems to me that language has too much of an effect on perception to think that language even could be more general than perception.

Rather than a sign over here and a world over there, the world is always-already interpreted and the sign folds into reality.

The focus on reference as a gateway to meaning or communication is kind of the target that I have in mind here -- if reference is affixed in a particular conversation, meaning by each of us agreeing that this is what we mean and having nothing to bring up then we've referred successfully.

What this doesn't rely upon is a fact about what we are referring to, or whether or not "dog", or any other sign, has some pre-assigned meaning wrapped up in it.

The focus on convention is because we live in a society which prizes being able to say who does something better than another person, and with language that indicates the need for standards to judge others' in order to give a grade.

But language will always slip away from the conventions recorded in the books. New meanings will pop up, even with old words. Entirely new forms of grammar within the same language will emerge. Shakespeare's English, while readable, doesn't sound like our English on the fora.

Basically what you say I'm doing the "on its head" move -- there are conventions, but we already have to understand how to use language in order to establish them. "Reference" must already be understood.

Does "pooch" refer to the three of us equally? Do you see how if I adopt your methodology we will be unable to communicate? — Leontiskos

You haven't given it enough time yet. That we cannot ascertain, as an individual, what "pooch" refers to before asking our conversation partner doesn't stop us from continuing to ask questions.

So sure -- "pooch" could refer to the three of us equally. It would certainly be a point in favor of there being more than one referent :D.

Which is really the argument I've been making all along against convention: sometimes convention doesn't decide the referent. But we can still successfully refer. So there must be more to reference than convention.

But you've changed the scenario. There is one dog, not three. — Leontiskos

The three dogs are you, me, and the pooch. I'd call you a sly dog in order to demonstrate that "dog"'s referrent isn't fixed by convention, but by our conversation.