Charity is basically about attributing intent to the speaker. — frank

Odd, that you say

Charity is basically about attributing intent to the speaker. — frank

Then use a quote in support of that, that does not mention intent

We can indeed use a presumption that the speaker's beliefs are much the same as our own in order to interpret their utterances, and thereby surmise their intent.

Charity is supposing that others have much he same beliefs as we do.

In about 10 years we may have... — Joshs

Been that way all my time.

Heuristically programmed algorithmic computers, parallel processing, neural networking... each promised more than it delivered.

The missing bit is that a description of an intentional state is not a description of a physical state.

a drawing, painting, photograph, etc. — Janus

I'll go over the thought again, I guess. Any definition given for art will invoke a counterplay by some artist. The act of defining art - and by association, painting or drawing or picture - stipulates a view that can be overturned.

The analogue in logic is that any axiomatic system sufficient for arithmetic will exclude some truths.

It's always open to you to stipulate that this is art, that isn't... But that'd be pretty arbitrary, and we need not accept your stipulation.

It's more fun not to.

I know you're doubtful whether there could be a useful interpretation of holy books — J

Not useful - folk do put the texts to various and varied use. But that there is one interpretation that is the correct one - that's, shall we say, undecided, perhaps undecidable.

Part of the reason is that giving an interpretation is not a single act, it's an ongoing process.

...A better interpretation... — J

Better for what? Again, no absolute scale is available.

They seem to go hand in hand...?

The idea is that there is a correct interpretation.

Amongst others. I'm not a close follower of Supreme Court process, but the idea that we can discern some imagined shared intent amongst the authors of your constitution is absurd. We might play on "author-itarian" here.

I would say that both humans and LLM's require going through a lot of complex inner states in order to engage in language use. — wonderer1

The inner state of a computer is usually described physically, while the inner state of a person is described using intentional terms - as believing this or that, wanting something to be the case, and so on. Two ways of speaking.

So the question is, do we attribute belief and desire to ChatGPT?

And the partial answer is that we do not need to do so, in order to give meaning to the sentences it produces.

Which is another argument against the idea that meaning is speaker intent.

So when someone says, "The cat is on the mat," they are not asserting that the cat is on the mat? — Leontiskos

So you just wrote "the cat is on the mat". Twice.

Did you thereby assert it?

Or can you do other things with the string of letters <The cat is on the mat>, apart from asserting them?

The question is whether it's entirely just a rules based language game or whether you're trying to find some other foundational structure. That's my point directly above related to Davidson's need to rely upon ascribing intent else he would just be a conventionalist. — Hanover

Again,

The interpreter surmises a sentence S such that the utterance of "p" by the speaker will be true if and only if S. S is confirmed or adjusted on the basis of ongoing empirical evidence.

There's no appeal to internal meaning or intention - doing so would result in circularity.

Intent might be inferred post hoc. — Banno

This account does not rely on speaker intent. Nor does it rely on setting out the intent of the speaker, although it might be used to do so.

You've heard of "the intentional fallacy" in lit-crit, right? Same issue. — J

The problem occurs in the US Supreme Court as well, apparently.

intent is a necessary component in Davidson's triangulation theory. — Hanover

It explicitly isn't.

We can attribute an intent to someone only after we have understood what they are saying. Understanding their utterances is prior to attributing an intent. Understanding their utterances is not dependent on attributing an intent.

Should Davidson not hold that way, he would lose the foundational element for meaning to exist and he would blur into a "meaning is use" position. — Hanover

I don't see that you have explained why this must be so. Davidson is in line with Wittgenstein in saying that we should look at what is being done with an utterance rather then looking for any opaque intent on the part of the utterer.

It begins to look as if we disagree on the accounts given by both Davidson and Wittgenstein.

I’m a little confused. If malapropisms “by their very nature run contrary to the conventions of language” then there are conventions of language. So the very existence of malapropisms is proof that there is a (conventionally) “correct” way of speaking (else nothing could be a malapropism). — Michael

Yep, there are conventions in language. But Davidson argues that they are not what give our utterances meaning.

I understood Tim to be arguing that it is convention that explains meaning. If that is so, it is hard to see how going against a convention, as in the case of malapropism, can be meaningful.

But the intention of its programmers, as best we know, is to impersonate intention on the part of the program. — J

Perhaps. But what I'd like to emphasis is that Davidson's theory of meaning is not dependent on intent. It assigns a truth value to an utterance. It can be used to infer an intent, but does not derive meaning from intent.

In the case of ChatGPT the sentences can be interpreted, given a truth value, and yet no intent be inferred.

That was a spellcheck error where it somehow put "not" instead of "more." — Hanover

Yep. I had given that a high probability.

Same referent though. — Hanover

Not if reference is inscrutable...

A painting is a picture — Janus

Why?

Kazimir Malevich, Black Square (1915) explicitly does not represent anything.

Also, note that "picture" does not occur in the OP.

A painting captures a moment in a narrative. — BC

I like that.

Not all paintings, then, are pictures.

"Yesterday I didn't know there was a curriculum, and today I'm writing it".

That's how it works.

I'm not seeing the relevance of your comment about the painting and the wall. — Janus

How does a Last Supper differer from a coat of off-white?

A painting is a picture whose predominant medium is paint. — Janus

...unless it was painted using Microsoft paint.

Point being, whatever rule is offered, someone will produce an exception. That's not saying you are mistaken.

But more importantly, democracy and the role it plays in our nation should be taught in schools. — Punshhh

It is.
Citizenship programmes of study: key stages 3 and 4 National curriculum in England

Sure, if you like. We can drop "intent" from that without much loss.


Added: we don't much need the bit about inferring some intent on the part of the speaker. We can do so, but it's not needed. Meaning here is not the intent of the speaker. Speaker meaning is something else.

That'll cause some folk no end of confusion. It shouldn't. It does not imply that the speaker does not have an intent.

Need not words — Hanover

But I'll give them anyway.

paint a drawing of a painting — Hanover

Painting of a (drawing of a (painting of a (house)))
The outermost quantifier determine all. So

Is a painting of a drawing of a painting a painting or a drawing? — Hanover

A painting.

Is a painting of a house a house or a painting? — Hanover

A painting.

Is it different to say say "nice smile" or "nice painting of a smile" when referring to the Mona Lisa? — Hanover

"Nice smile" picks out the smile. "Nice painting of a smile" picks out the painting.

Are these questions aesthetic questions, linguistic, or metaphysical? — Hanover

Issues of scope, so perhaps logical.

Is a representation art, symbol, or a phenomenonal state? — Hanover

Just what is the house? — Hanover

That'll depend on the use to which we put each term. There's no fact of the matter until we choose.

Davidson intends his approach to be extensional, so he avoids intentional contexts. Hence intention plays little part in his approach.

The three points of the triangulation are speaker, interpreter and shared world.

The interpreter surmises a sentence S such that the utterance of "p" by the speaker will be true if and only if S. S is confirmed or adjusted on the basis of ongoing empirical evidence.

There's no appeal to internal meaning or intention - doing so would result in circularity.

Intent might be inferred post hoc.

Just get the scope right. Not really a problem.

The second prong of Davidson's triangulation requires ascribing intent to the speaker charitably assuming rationality and logic to the speaker. — Hanover

Yes, although the point made above concerning the IEP quote applies here, too. Somewhat perfunctorily, the goal is not to expose the intent of the speaker, but to note the circumstances under which their utterances would be true.

So we have the meaning of a Chat reply if we have the circumstances under which it would be true.

In this regard, no intent need be attributed to Chat in the process of working out what it meant.

(This appears to be another argument against the speaker's intent theory of meaning...)

Yep.

So have we moved from aesthetics to Art History?

And why is there not an expression for visual arts equivalent to "musicology"?

The story we tell about the painting is different to the story we tell about the wall, even if the medium is the same. The Sistine Chapel ceiling might have had a couple of coats of nice duck-egg blue...

Further, not all paintings are pictures...

At the least, something being art is dependent on how we chose to talk about it.

"I can't think otherwise" is usually a hint at a kind of transcendental argument going on, if it be articulated. — Moliere

Nice.

Yep.

Yep. He and Davidson have that common background. They would presumably agree on some form of the indeterminacy of translation.

(I take that back - turns out Lewis was critical of indeterminacy... A new rabbit hole! Thanks again!)

No fixed set of rules (conventions) can capture all actual or possible uses of language.

The key seems to be that conventions cannot be the basis of interpretation, but that this does not mean there are no conventions.

There's the somewhat trite analogy of Gödel sentences, that cannot be produced by the rules of a system.

Thanks for that.

What is interesting here is the compatibility between Lewis and Davidson. They agree that the shared context includes both action (the utterance, in the main) and belief. For Davidson this is seen in adopting the Principle of Charity - thinking of your interlocutor as rational and mainly in agreement as to how things stand. Lewis depends on convention for this task. Both think of language as a way to assign truth functions to sentences. Both triangulating speaker behaviour and context to determine what must be true if the utterance is true.

The difference is perhaps that for Lewis convention is presupposed, while for Davidson it is secondary to the interpretation.

It is worth asking how Lewis might have dealt with malapropisms, were convention is often reversed.

A good rule of thumb is that no sooner is a convention proposed than that someone will show it's antithesis.

Thanks. That quote risks giving the impression that the meaning of some utterance is to be found in the intent of the listener or the speaker. That's not Davidson's approach. For Davidson, an utterance functions in a context by the listener interpreting that utterance in such a way as to discern the beliefs and intentions of the listener, on the presumption that the speaker and listener share much the same beliefs and are both rational.

Hence Davidson's account provides an explanation for how we are able to understand malapropisms, which by their very nature run contrary to the conventions of language.

Davidson might well say Tim's "words do have a stipulated, conventional meaning that relies on limited context, that is accessible to all speakers" is a useful fiction, but no more.

For me the interesting thing here is the comparison with Searle, who gives an excellent account of how conventions function in the construction of social reality. I don't see a strict incompatibility between Davidson's account of interpretation and Searle's account of the construction of social institutions. Paying that out would make an interesting thread.

As for Tim and Leon, from previous discussions I suspect they share a simplistic view of meaning as speaker's intent, although I may be mistaken. We won't find out, until they find a way to move past merely scoffing and actually address the discussion.

Why should I clarify an argument I haven't made?

Yes, not much here from Spain, I'm afraid. We haven't had a large wave of Spanish immigration to drive imports - Italy, Greece and Lebanon, yes... Even paella rice can be hard to come by.

Sounds like you need sleep.

You can’t say “better” in any meaningful way. — Fire Ologist

Can and do.

This thread has been better. Others will agree. That'll do.

If something can be seen by any observer — Fire Ologist

Nuh. Science looks for an explanation of what is seen that will be applicable to multiple observers.

Not the same thing.

Folk see different things. Science looks for a common explication.

Stipulations are functional, temporary versions of absolutes. — Fire Ologist

Another mere assertion.

Why not "absolutes are arbitrary invalid inductions from particle instances"?

The LNC is an absolute. — Fire Ologist

Is it? Then whence paraconsistent logic, Dialetheism, Many-Valued Logics, Intuitionistic Logic, Non-Reflexive Logics...




The pattern, were you agree with the critique of your position, only to snap back of a sudden to were you started, is repeating.

Fine by me.

Being in the middle is not being at the end or the beginning.

A stipulation, then?

"Here is a hand".

Not as asn observation, but as a stipulation - "this counts as a hand"

Something to hang the door from.

And off we go.