Bernie had a heart attack literally a year ago to the day and received far less support from the Democratic elite than Trump did today for contracted a virus he exacerbated. — Maw

Things that make you go hmmmmmm......

Meanwhile only people with symptoms are tested in the UK. So we really have little idea who is infected and certainly aren't doing any kind of effective test and trace. — Punshhh

That's the knowledge that grounds a shutdown and widespread testing and quarantine. That knowledge has not been utilized in the UK or the States...

When you start out studying any of the humanities, one thing you learn pretty quickly, is none of the terms probably mean what you think they mean...

This is one of the problems with academia in general, I think. Davidson's notion of "first" being a prime example. The historical notion of "necessary" being another. Language use limits what can be said without sacrificing coherency/consistency...

The Biden campaign said it was in the process of temporarily taking down all its negative ads regarding Mr Trump.

Negative ads? Pfft.

How about using truthful ones regardless? It's not as if the Trump campaign is going to stop. What sort of sense does this make?

The lack of respect/concern for the pandemic is the direct result of false and/or irrelevant belief about it. That is in no short supply. The effects/affects of Trump are more than evident. Elections have consequences.

I just traveled to another state for a week to visit a dying family member, spending the nights in a hotel alone the entire time. Picked that hotel as a result of all the complaints in the current reviews. You see, all sorts of people were complaining about how strict that particular hotel was regarding the covid regs. Yep! That's the one I want! The one that at least attempts to enforce social distancing measures. Unfortunately, the usual breakfast spread was a no-go. Boo.

:wink:

The lack of general concern(or perhaps understanding) of the people in the area regarding the seriousness and/or danger of the pandemic was astounding. It is a Trump stronghold. He was actually there at the airport the day before my departure. Glad I missed him. I carried clorox bleach disinfectant wipes everywhere... just in case some of the Trump supporters wanted to take his words to heart and swallow them. Kidding. I did wipe down everything everywhere as if I was some sort of compulsive germaphobe; changed my mask often, and practiced social distancing nearly all the time.

I also had to exercise a considerable amount of restraint while there. I so much wanted to take a baseball bat and knock down as many Trump/Pence signs as I could, and then take pictures. I refrained.

:smirk:

I'm now in the middle of my own quarantine. Adjusting to accomodate all the regs was a cumbersome but necessary safeguard. I'll be glad to touch my better half a week from now. She is currently staying with her family who lives nearby as a result of my possible exposure. My immune system is strong. I've no symptoms at all, but that does not mean that I have not contracted the virus. I could be one of the forty percent or so of people who are asymptomatic. So, I'm happily quarantining to protect others... her especially. She's at much higher risk.

By the way, in my state we've had multiple family gatherings turn out to be super-spreader events. There are very big and close-knit families here! That's where people are most likely to be hugging and in close contact. It was very hard for me to refrain from hugging my own family members as well, especially given that that may turn out to be the last time I see one of them, so I hugged him with all I had.

Trump has just been taken into hospital... — Punshhh

Is this verified? Who's reporting this?

Thanks.

:smile:

Took me a long time to grasp that much, and I realize that I left all sorts of stuff out. I just wonder if anything I did not discuss needs discussed.

At the core of every system capable of evolving, one can usually... — Olivier5

That's not good enough for what I'm getting at. I'll keep this brief...

Rudimentary language use consists - in part at least - of simple, basic, and/or otherwise rudimentary level thought and belief. A true account of the origen of language must succeed in setting these things out, and must do so in a manner that is amenable to evolutionary terms; in a manner that facilitates and/or enables us to understand how thought, belief, and the language that they give rise to, emerges in their simplest constitution possible, and subsequently grow in complexity. The ability for thought, belief, and language to evolve requires that the basic elemental constituents thereof be capable of doing so.

The stifling problem currently is the inability to account for the transition from non linguistic meaning to linguistic meaning. That problem is one of conventional notions of language and meaning, and as such it is also embedded in this essay.

That's the last I'll say here about this. It's too far off topic... or points to the much too deeply imbedded problem of inadequacy inherent within the conventional notions(misconceptions) of language and/or meaning.

I haven't felt this good since Sanders won Nevada — Maw

:rofl:

Hard for me to feel guilty about knowing that the world is better off without some people in it. While I would not wish or hope death upon anyone, I certainly would not lose any sleep and would undoubtedly feel an odd sense of dark joyfulness should some people die.

Jane's Addiction said, "Some people should die... that's just unconscious knowledge"

Simply put, it seems clear to me that the notions of 'prior' and 'passing' theory are the result of not quite having a good enough grasp upon what language is, and how it works.
— creativesoul
The way I see it, it's a work in progress... — Olivier5

I would agree. But I meant "what language is, and how it works" in the sense of what all language consists of such that it can and does work; that it's able to evolve as it does.

(C) If his argument is valid, and we reject views well-described by his three principles, are there other approaches out there that handle malapropisms better? — Srap Tasmaner

While I'll not claim to have a complete theory of language here, I do wonder what you think about how I handled malapropisms at the bottom of page nine?

Malapropisms break the rules of conventional language use
— creativesoul

It seems that, in his article "A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs"

1) Davidson doesn't define what he means by "conventions", but infers a particular definition of "conventions".
2) He concludes by inferring that because his particular definition of "conventions" is not illuminative - then no definition of "conventions" will be illuminative. — RussellA

I think that's fair. The deeper issue, by my lights anyway, is that whatever his notion of convention includes, it most certainly does not take it's evolutionary progression into proper account.

Of course the term 'passing theory' is a bit pompous. You can translate it by "one's understanding of what happened". — Olivier5

Simply put, it seems clear to me that the notions of 'prior' and 'passing' theory are the result of not quite having a good enough grasp upon what language is, and how it works.

Can we not reduce all this to the simple necessity that language is prior to any language theory? — unenlightened

Well Un, putting that common sense understanding to good use may shed some much needed light upon the subject matter, but doing so requires a methodological approach that analytic and post moderns alike seem averse to, albeit for entirely different reasons. I'll say this much...

Because language existed in its entirety prior to any language theory, so too must all of the basic elemental constituents that such language consists of. This sort of approach is akin to Hume's Guillotine in the sense of driving a wedge between what counts as a product of language(such as theories) and what counts as a basic elemental constituent thereof. The aforementioned approach grounds my own position regarding meaning, truth, thought, and belief... all of which are required for language. However, despite the fact that I strongly believe that there are much deeper issues at hand than the apparent inability of convention to explain the success of malapropisms, I've deliberately avoided getting into all of that, because I do not want to be 'the guy' that derails the entire thread.

:wink:

Oddly enough, the approach is actually the topic of a new thread I'm still working on.

I take "passing theory" to mean a non-canonical, no literal interpretation of a sentence or text, a creative, sui generis interpretation that may be required to understand each instance of malapropism. When a sentence does not compute within correct language conventions, one searches for an alternative explanation, a 'theory' of what happened in this particular malapropism — Olivier5

Seems an extremely overcomplicated way to explain the need to misattribute meaning to words as the only means to successfully interpret meaningful but otherwise unconventional language use.

I've already explained where and how he failed. It happened long before he concluded that the third principle failed. Note that the explanation I offered for the odd success of malapropisms eliminated Davidson's notions of prior theory and passing theory. Ockham's razor applies.

Tomorrow. I've spent enough time on this for one day. The question isn't about what I've missed regarding the odd success of malapropisms. It's about how to correct and/or modify the three principles. It's about what Davidson missed. I'm hesitantly in agreement with some of what others have suggested as necessary modifications. Street earlier suggested that modifying our notion of convention would resolve the issue with the third principle. I suspect that an account of how convention becomes convention would work rather nicely for doing that. Davidson steers clear of such an endeavor.

I'm still thinking that the underlying issue at hand is(are) the conventional (mis)conception(s) of meaning. How meaning first emerges, as compared/contrasted to how we learn to use that which is already meaningful. This would modify our understanding of how convention emerges.

(I know I will be nearing a profound truth when you ask a 500 word question and I am able to give a 5 word answer.) — RussellA

Correlations drawn between different things<---------------that's what all attribution of meaning has in common; the irreducible core. Don't ask me to fill it all in though... that is to expect and/or demand omniscience.

This is all cockeyed though because language use is a cooperative game, not a competitive one. — Srap Tasmaner

Unless you're Trump. Then it's certainly a competition to get people to believe what he believes and/or wants others to believe.

:razz:

Ok. I think I've finally wrapped my head around this paper(Davidson's train of thought)...

The issue:Malapropisms break the rules of conventional language use, but they are readily understood/interpreted by the listener nevertheless, and that particular sort of success causes unresolvable issues for any strict adherence to the following three principles...



(1) A competent speaker or interpreter is able to interpret utterances, his own or those of others, on the basis of the semantic properties of the parts, or words, in the utterance, and the structure of the utterance. For this to be possible, there must be systematic relations between the meanings of utterances.

(2) For speaker and interpreter to communicate successfully and regularly, they must share a method of interpretation of the sort described in (1).

(3) The systematic knowledge or competence of the speaker or interpreter is learned in advance of occasions of interpretation and is conventional in character.



Davidson offers plenty of examples of malapropisms in the very beginning, and subsequently claims(generally speaking) that philosophers have not given malapropisms due attention. Rather, philosophers categorize such uses as erroneous, in error, or otherwise count(classify) them as being cases of 'incorrect' usage, because of the divergence from convention(correct usage). While he does not outright reject this accounting practice, he finds it "shallow". He does not think that the conventional notion of error and it's counterpart incorrect usage are up to the task of explaining how incorrect usage results in correct interpretation(malapropisms), especially if our linguistic competency(translation method) is based upon and/or otherwise satisfied by the aforementioned three principles.

So, we're faced with a problem...

The philosophically interesting aspect of malapropisms is that they succeed, and the problem at hand is explaining how a listener correctly interprets the speaker despite the speaker's 'incorrect usage' if the aforementioned three principles are sufficient for describing all cases of successful communication/translation. They seem inadequate.

When Davidson wrote all this, academia drew and maintained a distinction between what the speaker says, and what the speaker means(or rather what words mean, and what a speaker means). Davidson honors that distinction by insisting upon not even blurring it, only to blur it later. He is also denying the ability of correct/incorrect usage to take account of malapropisms, calling that notion "shallow". Aside from the blurring of the distinction(which happens later), the rest of what's said in this paragraph becomes evident by what he said below.

We want a deeper notion of what words, when spoken in context, mean; and like the shallow notion of correct usage, we want the deep concept to distinguish between what a speaker, on a given occasion, means, and what his words mean. The widespread existence of malapropisms and their kin threatens the distinction, since here the intended meaning seems to take over from the standard meaning...

I suspect now upon reading this that Davidson himself did not pay quite enough attention to malapropisms. Specifically speaking, he did not take into consideration the remarkable differences between correct usage and incorrect usage as they pertain to someone that is deliberately using the wrong words, and someone mistakenly doing so. Taking both situations(both kinds of malapropisms) into proper account is absolutely crucial for understanding the role that intention has in a speaker's meaning. Davidson gets that quite wrong as well. To expand upon all this I'll invoke the following malapropisms...

...It’s high noon someone beat him at his own game, but I have never done it; cross my eyes and hope to die, he always wins thumbs down...

There is a remarkable difference between someone saying the above intentionally, such as a means to joke, and someone saying the above in error. Earlier Davidson dismissed such nuance as unimportant, as shown below.

It seems unimportant, so far as understanding is concerned, who makes a mistake, or whether there is one...

He was very wrong in one way, while being quite right in another. While the success of the malapropism - as it happens in the wild - does not at all depend upon who makes a mistake or whether there is one(he was right about that much), our understanding of exactly how they are successfully interpreted in both cases most certainly does depend upon whether or not a mistake was made(he was quite wrong about that). Let me explain...

When someone intentionally/deliberately says "it's high noon someone beat him at his own game" as a means to be silly or make a joke, they know that they've used the words incorrectly, but they expect to be understood anyway. They did not make a mistake. They said exactly what they intended to say, and meant exactly what they intended to mean. The two are not equivalent. His notion of first meaning does not - cannot - take this into account. In addition, it also blurs the distinction between conventional/standard meaning and intended meaning. I've copied the relevant excerpts below...

The concept(first meaning) applies to words and sentences as uttered by a particular speaker on a particular occasion. But if the occasion, the speaker, and the audience are ‘normal’ or ‘standard’ (in a sense not to be further explained here), then the first meaning of an utterance will be what should be found by consulting a dictionary based on actual usage (such as Webster’s Third)

Aside from intended meaning and standard meaning being equivalent(no distinction), this part is of no further consequence, for it describes normal situations, not malapropisms. I would completely agree regarding such occasions. I also have no issue at all with a speaker's meaning and the meaning of the words being equivalent at times(It's a feature, not a flaw). That said, he then goes on to invoke the speaker's intention as part of first meaning. That's where the more serious problems begin...

A better way to distinguish first meaning is through the intentions of the speaker...

...Because a speaker necessarily intends first meaning to be grasped by his audience, and it is grasped if communication succeeds...

If first meaning is equal to conventional use and/or standard meaning, applies to the actual words used, and a speaker always intends first meaning to grasped by their audience, then the result is in an inherent inability to explain any cases of malapropism.

What's most curious about malapropisms, and what seems very problematic for Davidson here, is that the literal and/or conventional meaning of the word(s) being used is(are) not what the speaker intends, regardless of whether or not they are mistaken.

To quite the contrary, in cases of intentional/deliberate incorrect use, such as malapropism being employed as manner of joking, the joker intends to use language incorrectly, but expects the audience to understand regardless. There are also problems in cases of misspeaking that result in malapropism. In these cases, the speaker intends to use language correctly, but does not. Thus, the first meaning of their words does not correspond to their intentions here either.

So, in neither kind of malapropism do the speaker's intentions match the words they actually use. If first meaning is about the words actually used, as Davidson claims, then we've arrive at a serious problem of inadequacy. Malapropisms are understood regardless of this. Here's my take regarding how(which amounts to my answer to the problem at hand)...

When malapropism is the result of deliberate incorrect language use, such as in the case of joking, the speaker intends for the listener to attribute unconventional/incorrect meaning(not literal/conventional) to the words actually spoken. That is to say that in order for such cases to succeed, the audience must misattribute meaning to the words being used.

When the malapropism results from a speaker accidentally misspeaking, the speaker does not intend for the listener to attribute unconventional/incorrect meaning to their words, but here again the audience must do so in order to successfully interpret the malapropism. That is once again, to say that in order for such cases to succeed, the audience must misattribute meaning to the words actually used.

So while Davidson realizes that the success of malapropisms places convention into question, I strongly suspect that he does not quite recognize how. In addition, and completely contrary to what Davidson claims, malapropisms do not - at all - threaten the distinction between what words mean, and what a speaker means. To quite the contrary, they require and/or necessarily presuppose it. They are themselves existentially dependent upon that very distinction. There could be no such thing as a malapropism if there were no difference between what words mean and what a speaker means.

Here's my assessment of the three principles in question...

An interpretation method and/or linguistic competence strictly based upon(or consisting solely of) learning, knowing, and/or otherwise following the rules of convention would result in translating all unconventional usage, such as malapropisms, as though they too followed convention, and hence:The speaker would not be understood if that's how our language competence and/or translation method worked. To quite the contrary, when translating malapropisms, if our translation method and/or linguistic competence relied solely upon knowing and subsequently applying the rules of convention, then our translation method would fail. We would be correctly attributing meaning to the words, but misattributing meaning to the speaker, because the conventional/literal/correct meaning of the key words within a malapropism are not equivalent to what the speaker means. Hence, if our linguistic competence consisted solely of learning and/or using convention, then malapropisms could not result in successful communication/translation. They require correctly translating an otherwise incorrect usage, by virtue of misattributing meaning to the words actually used. If our linguistic competence and/or ability were limited to those three aforementioned principles, we could not ever know what the speaker meant, as compared/contrasted to what they said... but we do.

Did I miss anything important with regard to the odd success of malapropisms?

Hmmm...

Interesting.

Who are the plaintiffs?

...the decisionmaking process within former special counsel Robert Mueller's team over whether to charge certain people with crimes during the probe.

Knowledge of which would certainly directly answer any questions about why Trump was not charged by Mueller and his team as well as verifying/falsifying any public pronouncements made by anyone privy to the original(un-redacted) report about that.

So, Trump does everything in his power to impede, influence, and/or obstruct any and all oversight and/or investigations into his behaviour. Part of that was talking Sessions into stepping down as AG, and replacing him with Barr. Barr's very first public act was to knowingly misrepresent the findings of the Mueller report to the American public two weeks prior to it's public release.

Since then, numerous different officials heading up numerous separate investigations, many of which came out of the Mueller report, have been replaced by Barr/Trump. At Trump's request(undoubtedly) there have been a number of investigations into the Mueller investigation itself, as well as many of the officials involved. In addition, an investigation into Trump's political opponent(Biden) has been going on despite the fact that the Biden concerns were already investigated and dismissed. Trump has publicly discussed the idea that the findings would come out prior to the election, and Barr has used his influence to speed the investigations along, resulting in some officials resigning instead.

There has been no wrongdoing found by any of these investigations. None. What is a "witch-hunt" once again???



So now...

Trump leans on the fact that there are investigations(witch-hunts) into the Mueller report and/or his own political rivals - without ever mentioning the fact that he is behind them all - as adequate ground for concluding what... exactly???

:brow:

The argument proceeds by showing that it is not possible to give a coherent account of first meaning. — Banno

Which is odd, right?

I mean, it's his notion. He invoked it. He began with a more conventional notion, then set it aside in lieu of what he called first meaning...

Alleged, alleged, alleged...

Amazing?

Bullshit.

Distraction.

Mental correlations drawn between different things.



A spanner is a type of wrench. :wink:

Condemning white supremacists once while doing everything else Trump does is like condemning homosexuality with Putin's dick in his mouth.

I would agree.

If Biden just refused to acknowledge Trump, sat in silence when being interrupted allowing the moderator to quiet the manchild, but instead just continue to speak at/to the camera in a calm sobering voice about Trump and all the damage he's caused to the overwhelming majority while tremendously benefitting the uber-wealthy, it would be more than enough to leave a lasting impression.

I think Biden has it in him to not be dragged into the mud. I hope he exercises better self-regulation in the next two, because the facts are quite simply not on Trump's side here. If it's even remotely about the character of the candidate, it's an easy win for anyone who can just stay above Trump's emotionally unregulated outbursts... the spoiled five-year-old mentality that he has.

Politically speaking, I agreed with both by and in large... although I reject the Capitalism/Socialism dichotomy. Both seemed to be fairly smart fairly well educated people. Shame that the emotional self regulation wasn't up to the task. However, I can certainly relate and empathize.

Bernie or even Obama would have wiped the floor with Trump. Granted, it would have been two entirely different methods, but both would.

The sad part is that these two men are actual candidates for the presidency, and neither seemed capable of keeping it together enough to participate in what ought be a formal debate with formal rules. It's more like schoolyard kids...

Be the change you want to see...

Biden is better off patiently waiting with an incredulous stare when Trump is being Trump. Although, if the only reply to the insistent interruptions and rules violations were "Will you just shut up?", that would be appropriate as well. His mimicking of that juvenile behaviour was ill-advised.

The Great Whatever... a poster from here and the old forum who was banned.

Reminded me of TGW.

I thought the same thing... having watched a few documentaries.

It was more about Witt's remarks in OC.

...The sentence Srap Tasmaner pointed out and I missed about making a distinction between what is "literal" and what is "conventional"... that is really odd, though. I'm not sure what to make of this. — Dawnstorm

Yeah, that is very odd to me as well. They certainly ought be the same, unless there are more than one accepted use of the same term, only one of which would be "literal", and the speaker was using another conventional, but more 'figurative' or metaphorical use?