• PL Olcott
    626
    Why can't the expression "cats are very large plant-eating mammals with a prehensile trunk" be part of the body of analytic knowledge?RussellA

    Do you understand that lies are not true and only truth is included in knowledge?
  • RussellA
    1.8k
    Do you understand that lies are not true and only truth is included in knowledge?PL Olcott

    Who determines that the semantic meaning of cat is "animal" rather than "very large plant-eating mammals with a prehensile trunk"?

    It could be that person A stipulates that "cats are animals" and person B stipulates that "cats are very large plant-eating mammals with a prehensile trunk".

    Who determines whether person A or B is correct, if the person making the determination is not allowed to look at the world using their sense data through their their sense organs?

    How can there be knowledge that cats are "animals" and not "very large plant-eating mammals with a prehensile trunk" without being able to look at the world?
  • PL Olcott
    626
    Who determines that the semantic meaning of cat is "animal" rather than "very large plant-eating mammals with a prehensile trunk"?RussellA

    It is difficult to understand how words acquire semantic meaning, perhaps this is too difficult for you? There is no guy named "Bill" that has complete authority to write all the dictionaries in the world. That is simply not the way that reality works.

    In the correct body of analytical knowledge the attributes of {cat} are assigned to the otherwise totally meaningless finite string "cat". The same process works this same way for every human language.
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