How are the various uses you mention above divorced from the sign-referent sense of meaning? — TheMadFool

Define: "the sign-referent sense of meaning".

Define: "the sign-referent sense of meaning". — Olivier5

How did you come to disagree with me without having understood me? There must be a sense in which you grasped the sign-referent concept of meaning. Use that!

Try not to be evasive...please (there's the magic word).

:flower:

How did you come to disagree with me without having understood me? — TheMadFool

Sorry but I did not disagree with anything, was just answering your question about alternative use of words. But I can try again, with more disagreement. :-)

In his discussion of the beetle and in imagining a private language (and a boiling pot), we take Witt to be intent on destroying the referent/the object/the thing-in-itself/the essence/our experience. — Antony Nickles

Or showing that it can't serve the explanatory purpose that folks think it does, showing that it's parasitic on the same synchronization of public behavior which it is supposed to explain.

This is the picture solipsism has of itself. It comes from the desire to remain unknowable, to have and keep something fundamentally special about me. — Antony Nickles

That's part of it, but isn't it also about an obsession with certainty? "I can't be wrong about seeing this patch of redness. That at least is something I can count on." "Sensation" or "appearance" is the name of something one cannot be wrong about. Or so runs the grammar, which is mistaken for a deep, metaphysical principle, as if we don't just happen to usually use the words that way.

But "clearing up the ground" implies readying it for another project: — Antony Nickles

One project could be a better linguistics. Another project might be more personal, to talk less confused nonsense, to pay more attention to worthier issues.

Notice the "if" in his quote at the top. If the grammar of the expression of sensation is not construed on the model of 'object and designation', than we are not irrelevant. — Antony Nickles

:up:

I agree that the "if" is important. It's something like a reductio ad absurdum. It's a logical-grammatical slap in the face to wake us up from this incautiously inherited nonsense.

And what is done with language is un-theorizable in advance. — StreetlightX

:up:

Just because one can illustrate a concept via a picture or a painting doesn't imply that the nature of concepts is to be found in images. Vice versa, just because the meaning of words is elusive and cannot be fully captured by a definition doesn't imply that it's inexistant. In the silence of the mind, we know what words mean to us. — Olivier5

I hear you, but this is a retreat to the beetle-box. A theist could use the same logic for God.
Witt used the picture metaphor because "seeing" meaning in the privacy of the mind suggests something static and luminescent. In simple cases the referent theory makes sense enough. We can point at the cat on the mat (even this is not so simple, really, but nevermind.) We extend the analogy to talk as if we all gaze on the same form of Justice or 23 (or suffer the same ineffable pain-stuff.) We (talk as if we) can reason in the privacy of our mind as if we were "handling" such forms with an inner organ, examining how they fit together, as if they were immaterial legos. Platonism is like the miasma theory that preceded germ theory. It's easy to see its appeal. It takes time to sniff out its failings ---to see that it is parasitic upon the synchronization of public behavior that it is supposed to explain.

Note that the immaterial private soul gazing on immaterial essences is something like the official theological background of philosophy. Even skeptics and solipsists are happy to start there and forget to doubt this captivating picture (flies in the bottle of the "obvious" (contingent, inherited, habitual but optional.))

Sorry but I did not disagree with anything, was just answering your question about alternative use of words. But I can try again, with more disagreement. :-) — Olivier5

Oh! My bad. So, explain your answer then please. :smile:

Update

Meaning is use doesn't stand up to closer examination.

Wittgenstein is of the view that, uses the word "game", people use words correctly despite not being able to define them. This is problematic because of the following reasons:

1. When Wittgenstein claims that people can't define words, he uses the standard definition of "meaning" with the logical AND operator, the meaning of a word being the conjunction of essential features.

2. When Wittgenstein then claims that words are being used correctly it can only mean that definition amounts to a disjunction, the logical operator is OR, of essential feautures.

Meaning is use doesn't stand up to closer examinatio — TheMadFool

It just means there's no eternal dictionary somewhere. It's really not complicated or controversial.

Some words are so old their roots are prehistoric. For us, those words seem eternal:



"You, hear me! Give this fire to that old man. Pull the black worm off the bark and give it to the mother. And no spitting in the ashes!"

"It’s an odd little speech. But if you went back 15,000 years and spoke these words to hunter-gatherers in Asia in any one of hundreds of modern languages, there is a chance they would understand at least some of what you were saying.

"That’s because all of the nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs in the four sentences are words that have descended largely unchanged from a language that died out as the glaciers retreated at the end of the last Ice Age. Those few words mean the same thing, and sound almost the same, as they did then."

--WP

The beetle in the box: The word is same - "beetle" - but what it refers to maybe different. Wittgenstein's aim is not to come up with a solution, it seems impossible, but to do an exposé of the problem. — TheMadFool

The picture of a word and its object (referent) as the only way anything is meaningful is the exact thing which makes a "solution" impossible. Imagine an example: "I have a pain in my throat" "Hey, me too!" "But mine is congested at the top and scratchy as it goes down." "Mine too! That's funny; we have the same pain." Now does the possibility that our pain might have turned out to be different seem less scary? Say: "Oh well, mine is more just dry and constricted, but sorry you're not feeling well!" which is, nonetheless, my knowledge of the other's pain, in knowledge's sense(use) of my acknowledgment of your pain, as: "I know you are in pain."

So, explain your answer then please. — TheMadFool

I'll try to see where the examples I provided lead me.

In crossword puzzles, we must discover words based on the number of letters and non-canonical definitions invented by the crossword composer. These definitions can be ambiguous and there lies one of the tricks played by composers to solvers: the definition may not mean what it seems to mean, prima facie; IOW there's an obvious meaning to the definition, but it often hides another one, occult in a way, which offers the key to the solution.

An example that comes to mind, not a great one: "a third person" in 3 letters --> she. Third person is to be understood grammatically, not literally.

This is thus a language game about the borders, the limits of meaning, its infinite echoes, and the solver progressively explores a sort of no-man's-land of meaning. The fact that crosswords are solvable at all is a testament to the power of meaning. So it's not really a counter-example for your thesis I guess

The case of poetry is different, of course, and more noble and all that. I can't even try to deal with it here, except for stressing that a great deal of its beauty lies in euphonia, i.e. words used as music, as sounds. There we do have a use of words that is not (only) referential but also aesthetic.

Magic is again about the power of the verb, a power that is thought of as physical: if I say "abracadabra" a flower will bloom or a rabbit will vanish or or a person will get sick. It is therefore a use of words beyond reference as well, and in fact those magic words like "abracadabra" often have no meaning at all other than as a spell. You can't buy an abracadabra on the market.

Or showing that [an internal referent of sensation] can't serve the explanatory purpose that folks think it does, showing that it's parasitic on the same synchronization of public behavior which it is supposed to explain. — hanaH

Only here I'm trying to show that the point is not to replace the internal referent with an external one, as if the problem was just the assumption of an internal thing, and not that the grammar of sensations is entirely different even than public behavior.

but isn't [the picture of a referent] also about an obsession with certainty? "I can't be wrong about seeing this patch of redness. That at least is something I can count on." — hanaH

I didn't want to open another door from this discussion, but, absolutely; the desire behind this word-"essence" picture (or appearance-reality or irrational-rational) is the need for something to be certain, determined ahead-of-time, complete in its applications, predictable, based on math-like rules. I was simply contrasting the personal desire to have or be something certain that no one else has or is (something ever-present as much as certain) with the fact that there is a (rational) grammar for our sensations apart from that (and from simply equating "behavior" with a sensation). (In the same way, the grammar of color is that, if we agree that the color is the same between two objects, than it is one color, not a quality of the objects or a correspondence of that to some impression in our mind.)

"Sensation" or "appearance" is the name of something one cannot be wrong about. Or so runs the grammar, which is mistaken for a deep, metaphysical principle, as if we don't just happen to usually use the words that way. — hanaH

Yes, but to say we "don't just happen to usually use the words that way" is to simply flip to the other side of the same (generalized) coin, instead of seeing that sensations have their own logic that is entirely different, rather than simply the negation of the internal referent.

But "clearing up the ground" implies readying it for another project:
— Antony Nickles

One project could be a better linguistics. Another project might be more personal, to talk less confused nonsense, to pay more attention to worthier issues. — hanaH

I wouldn't say Witt is dismissing our personal life in relation to our sensations/experience, and certainly does not simply believe it is a matter of words (rather than seeing our ordinary criteria for how those concepts work), but, as I said, that our relation to our experience and the expression of others is simply entirely different than how we wanted to picture it in philosophy (for certainty), yet that it (or ordinary criteria) is oddly familiar (Cavell will call this uncanny; Plato/Heidegger/Witt say we remember it).

I enjoy the conversation.

Only here I'm trying to show that the point is not to replace the internal referent with an external one, as if the problem was just the assumption of an internal thing, and not that the grammar of sensations is entirely different even than public behavior. — Antony Nickles

IMV the grammar of sensations is public behavior though. Toothaches and stopsigns both get their "meaning" (if we insist on taking such a concept seriously) from what happens outside us, in between us.

Yes, but to say we "don't just happen to usually use the words that way" is to simply flip to the other side of the same (generalized) coin, instead of seeing that sensations have their own logic that is entirely different, rather than simply the negation of the internal referent. — Antony Nickles

To be clear, I'm emphasizing that we inherit our participation in the communication system, are trained into it. We learn to follow the line implied by the pointing finger. I was trained into English, and we can look and see how English has evolved, how the "same" words gained and lost various uses. We can compare this to the "same" Yield sign being treated differently on average by drivers over time. Aphoristically, the life of the sign is in the world. I take Witt to say that we should look & see how signs function publicly. Nothing is hidden.

if I say "abracadabra" a flower will bloom or a rabbit will vanish or or a person will get sick. It is therefore a use of words beyond reference as well, — Olivier5

:up:

Also certain greetings famously have no reference, like "Helo".

Coming back to picturing words... That's how writing was invented originally. Ideograms were the first symbols invented, eg by the Egyptian. The hieroglyph for "duck" is

Note the little bar next to it. It means "1 duck." It also imply the writer is talking of a real, countable duck, and not some other use if the same hieroglyph.

Because ideograms are inherently limited. You can't really have one sign per concept, there are too many concepts. And some of them cannot be pictured at all, for instance higher philosophical concepts, i.e. the concept of" idea", or that of "law". This posed a problem to the ancient Egyptians who were trying to write these things down.

The solution them scribes found was to use all these 2 or 3 thousand ideograms they had invented ALSO as phonograms, as coding NOT for the thing represented, but for the sound of the word, i.e. one, two or three syllables, rebus style. So the duck sign now also codes for something else: the sound "sa". It appears most frequently to mean "the son", the human male offspring, likely because in ancient Egyptian, the word for "son" sounded like the word for "duck".

E.g. Son of Ra is written (pretty much everywhere) as: duck of the sun.



And note there is no little bar next to that little duck above under the circle (ideogram for Ra, the Sun), so we're not talking of a literal duck here, and ambiguity is minimized.

Now the scribes could code for the sound of those words for which they couldn't find a good picture, such as the words "law", they could write them down at last... And with this alteration of the original ideographic system, with this injection of a bit of phonetics, classic hieroglyphics were born. They would ultimately lead to our alphabets.

And this inovation probably happened because certain words cannot be pictured.

Them scribes still needed in their system an ideogram (more precisely, a determinative) for all these high concepts which could not be pictured. They chose the sealed papyrus scroll. Y1 in Gardiner's list



Note the papyrus scroll, placed vertically on the left of the pic. It denotes a "bookish" concept.

[Witt is saying] people use words correctly despite not being able to define them. — TheMadFool

[Meaning is use] just means there's no eternal dictionary somewhere. It's really not complicated or controversial.

"That [we can understand 15,000-year-old sentence is] because all of the nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs in the four sentences are words that have descended largely unchanged from a language that died out as the glaciers retreated at the end of the last Ice Age. Those few words mean the same thing, and sound almost the same, as they did then." — frank

The picture of a word-referent clouds our ability to see that language works differently in each case (concept). Here, we are generalizing the case that a word can be defined (fulfilling our desire for a fixed meaning). This is the picture that makes us think that if we know/have defined each word, we understand the expression (as a fixed meaning), but sentences cannot be defined. As an example: the oversimplification-internalization of "meaning is use" is because we see "meaning" and we have the picture Word=Meaning (definition, referent) and we think "use" is simply a substitute (or language-game, form of life). In fact "use" would be considered a term, but it is not simply an issue of defining it, as it is only holding a place in relation to the entire story. ("To understand a sentence means to understand a language." PI #199)

To be clear, him saying "The meaning of a word is its use in language" is to say that concepts have various possibilities (including being extended) depending on the context, as in options. These are the uses or senses of a concept (as nouns). As @hanaH said, this is why "cat" and that thing there on the mat can be more complicated then even word-referent, as expressions involving cats have the uses of not only identification, but description, anthropamorphication, etc.

Another confusion is that Witt says that "we use" language or a concept, etc., but this is not the picture that we manipulate language or cause the use (also he says "our use", but this is to say, not mine, but the possibilities open to everyone in our language). You say something, and, to see how it is meaningful, we look at which criteria of a concept it meets (which use)--was what you said a promise? or a veiled threat (or both)? you say you know, but in the sense that you can remember? or that you are an authority? This expands the idea of a fixed essence (meaning), but still allows us to get at what is essential about an expression.

The picture of a word-referent clouds our ability to see that language works differently in each case (concept) — Antony Nickles

I think you're exaggerating. If language really worked differently in each case, language would be useless.

Here, we are generalizing the case that a word can be defined (fulfilling our desire for a fixed meaning). — Antony Nickles

Misguided psychoanalysis. Living languages continuously evolve due to random, exuberant creativity.

To be clear, him saying "The meaning of a word is its use in language" is to say that concepts have various possibilities (including being extended) depending on the context, as in options — Antony Nickles

I don't think so. He just meant language users are embedded in a world. Pulling language out of that worldly setting won't help us understand ourselves, or our speech and thought.

the grammar of sensations is public behavior though. Toothaches and stopsigns both get their "meaning" (if we insist on taking such a concept seriously) from what happens outside us, in between us. — hanaH

Well, yes, "public" as culturally, not something individual (special). But to understand how sensations are meaningful (the essence of them) is to understand the criteria for judging how they are what they are, do what they do--their place in our world (their grammar). And so stop signs and toothaches do not "get their 'meaning' " in the same way, much less necessarily "from what happens outside us". The point being that, in removing the imposition of the fixed criteria of certainty that we want for our/your experience (the internal referent), Witt makes room for our private life (the personal, the secret). So it does matter what happens inside us; just in the sense of whether we deny our experience (to ourselves), repress our expressions (to you), withhold our acceptance regarding our toothache or what is just.

To be clear, I'm emphasizing that we inherit our participation in the communication system, are trained into it. — hanaH

Yes, of course, and that is also to say that our (all our) interests and judgments and criteria are baked into our lives/concepts, and so each are different in how they are meaningful to us.

I enjoy the conversation. — hanaH

Yes, nice to be able to point out small differences than try to get someone to look behind them.

If language really worked differently in each case, language would be useless. — frank

Well, saying "language works differently in each case" is to say, poorly, that we have different concepts, like: thinking, promising, seeing, believing, etc. and each is meaningful in a different way; based on different criteria--what matters to us about seeing is not the same, and not accounted for in the same way, as promising; so it is an oversimplification to say we have (or can have) a single generalized theory of meaning (and thus language); say, of just word--referent/essence.

Here, we are generalizing the case that a word can be defined (fulfilling our desire for a fixed meaning).
— Antony Nickles

Misguided psychoanalysis. Living languages continuously evolve due to random, exuberant creativity. — frank

You do not explain how you think that is misguided but it appears you might take it that I am making this statement rather than this is Witt's estimation about why we (humans) want to have a certain picture of how language works. "For the crystalline purity of logic was, or course, not a result of investigation: it was a requirement." (#107) (Also, attributing motivations is not about repressed or unconscious anxiety or insecurities, etc.) Additionally, since a "fixed meaning" comes from the desire for certainty (which, again, is not my claim), I agree that there is evolution, say of our lives and thus our language; and also that there are impromptu creative expressions--the criteria we use to judge adherence to a concept also allows for the extension of them into new contexts or expressions.

To be clear, him saying "The meaning of a word is its use in language" is to say that concepts have various possibilities (including being extended) depending on the context, as in options
— Antony Nickles

I don't think so. He just meant language users are embedded in a world. Pulling language out of that worldly setting won't help us understand ourselves, or our speech and thought. — frank

I don't know how to see what you object to in what I said, but to simplify Wittgenstein's framework as we are just "embedded in a world" seems unobjectionable (if pointless) except that you follow that with the assumption that I mean to be "pulling language out of that worldly setting". Are you claiming that it is meaningless (or impossible) to examine the possibilities of "knowing" or "promising" or "seeing" or "believing"? and that we learn nothing about ourselves in investigating our language, as part of our lives, e.g., the distinctions we find important, the interests we have in each thing, the methods by which we judge the conditions for identity, completion, evolution?

except that you follow that with the assumption that I mean to be "pulling language out of that worldly setting" — Antony Nickles

No, I wasn't accusing you of that. You seemed to be saying that Witt helped us understand that words have various senses. Frege had already covered that.

I think Witt was more about the embeddedness of language in communities, in life.

Also certain greetings famously have no reference, like "Helo". — Olivier5

I almost mentioned that one myself. Consider also if, and, never, false, ...

Coming back to picturing words... That's how writing was invented originally. — Olivier5

Actually I've read about some of this. Derrida talks about this stuff. Writing tends to be cast as a dead thing, as opposed to speech which is living. But, as you mention, speech is not so pure in relation to writing. In both cases we have repeatable tokens. In both cases we can quote in new contexts.

And so stop signs and toothaches do not "get their 'meaning' " in the same way, much less necessarily "from what happens outside us". — Antony Nickles

We can't currently agree here it seems. "Toothaches" and "God" and "justice" and "truth" are, in my view, tokens, just like the cries of the vervet monkey, albeit caught up in a far more complicated system. It might be helpful here to think of individual social organisms as relatively closed systems that signal one another "materially" (as opposed to a telepathy of rarefied concept-stuff.) As I see it, the point is synchronized behavior. So looking inside a single organism for meaning seems misguided, though one might naturally inquire how the sign system is "stored" as it is learned, etc.

Interesting post.

Toothaches" and "God" and "justice" and "truth" are, in my view, tokens, just like the cries of the vervet monkey, albeit caught up in a far more complicated system. It might be helpful here to think of individual social organisms as relatively closed systems that signal one another "materially" (as opposed to a telepathy of rarefied concept-stuff.) As I see it, the point is synchronized behavior. So looking inside a single organism for meaning seems misguided, though one might naturally inquire how the sign system is "stored" as it is learned, etc. — hanaH

What about the idea that my talking and thinking and sensing to myself is already a form of sociality that submits my sensations and thoughts to contextual
alteration? From this vantage , there is nothing ‘closed’ about an individual social organism , even when it is reflecting ‘privately’ on its own experience. This is the basis of a phenomenological analysis of perception. Not the solipsism of a closed system but a continuous exposure to and being affected by an outside.

What about the idea that my talking and thinking and sensing to myself is already a form of sociality that submits my sensations and thoughts to contextual
alteration? — Joshs

Note that a closed system is not a dead system. Yes, we can talk and act when we are alone in ways that end up changing the way we talk and act around others. But unwitnessed actions (including speech acts) don't change signaling conventions/habits directly. (Unless telepathy or something?)

Derrida talks about this stuff. Writing has tend to be cast as a dead thing, as opposed to speech which is living. But, as you mention, speech is not so pure in relation to writing. In both cases we have repeatable tokens. In our different handwriting we can write the "same" letter or word. — hanaH

Yes, according to Derrida the logocentrism plaguing Western philosophy for centuries has fiven preference to speech over writing. Speech was supposedly immediate and a direct conveying of intended meaning. Writing was seen as mediated, indirect, and thus prone to distortion and contamination.
As you point out, speech is designed to be repeatable. In fact, a meaning conveyed in speech must be repeated in order to continue to exist. And as soon as we repeat a meaning we subject it to contextual alteration, which destroys the purity of its intended sense.

And as soon as we repeat a meaning we subject it to contextual alteration, which destroys the purity of its intended sense. — Joshs

I agree that we alter context as we speak. Is the intended sense ever fully present? This is the heart of Derrida for me. We never know exactly what we are talking about. The river nymph maintains her cruel virginity, is never quite possessed.

Not the solipsism of a closed system but a continuous exposure to and being affected by an outside. — Joshs

Just to be clear, I'm aiming for something like the opposite of solipsism, insisting on the material (or sensual, if you like) nature of communication. We can't synchronize our behavior without at least indirect bodily interaction. Our nervous systems aren't omnipresent or telepathic.

My starting point is bodies together in a "material" world that need to work together. That's my path into Wittgenstein or perhaps my path on the way back.

Yes, we can talk and act when we are alone in ways that end up changing the way we talk and act around others. But unwitnessed actions (including speech acts) don't seem unlikely to change signaling conventions/habits directly — hanaH

But do not these group habits and conventions themselves originate as person, context and perspective based? If everyone , in their ‘private’ experience, is continually, incrementally changing the sense of the language they share with a larger community, then one could say that the shared language is already changing even before any specific language interaction among people. Certainly if there were a severe and prolonged enough breach in communication among participants ina community, then the shared norms would break down.
So there seems to be a reciprocal relation between private and public language.

I agree that we alter context as we speak. Is the intended sense ever fully present? This is the heart of Derrida for me — hanaH

For me too. For Intended meaning to be present to itself it must come back to itself , and in doing so, it already means something other than what it intended. Heidegger conveys something similar with his notion of temporality.

But do not these group habits and conventions themselves originate as person, context and perspective based? — Joshs

To me this is drifting in the wrong direction, from the unhidden back to the hidden, from public doings back to the pseudo-explanatory entities of the metaphysicians. We can't be rational or scientific about junk that is unknowable in principle (grammatically).