It seems you're trying to distort what I said by not taking the full context into account. I said you can "use" something "uselessly"; that is in the practically useless sense. If you are just playing with something in a way that has nothing at all to do with the proper function of the thing then you are not "using" it in a practical sense; and it is thus, in that sense, useless.

So your intended meaning causes you to use the word "look" rather than the word "banana" because ... you speak English and know that "look" has the meaning you intend, and "banana" does not. — unenlightened

Yeah, so far so good.

You use words this way because we (English speakers) use words this way. And it is common usage that confers meaning on the otherwise arbitrary grunts and squiggles. — unenlightened

Sure, if what you mean by "use" is to refer to a particular idea or thing or state-of-affairs that you intend to convey. Sure, if what you mean by "common usage" is the common idea, thing, or state-of-affairs that the word refers to. You can use words all day long, but if the other person doesn't know what the words refers to, then you can never understand it's use. Sure a congenitally blind person may copy someone's use of phrase, "The sky is blue". But do they really know what "blue" means? Knowing how to copy someone else's use of words doesn't entail that you know what the words mean - only how to use words. Would the congenitally blind person really understand what they are saying? Could the blind person then use the word, "blue" in a sentence that they have never heard? Could they then make their own sentence with the word, "blue" and it mean something?

If meaning were use, then ancient man could have used the word, "computer", or "space shuttle", and it mean something! None of those things existed at the time, which is what the words refer to, which is why it wouldn't mean anything even if you used the terms then as we use them today.

Does a parrot understand what it is saying when it repeats it's owners words? Does a parrot mean for you to "fuck off" when it says, "fuck off"? Isn't that why it's funny to hear parrots and young children say "fuck off" because they are simply repeating use, and don't understand what the words really mean?

And we know they are arbitrary grunts and squiggles, because those damn foreigners use completely different grunts and squiggles to say la meme chose exactement. — unenlightened

Absolutely, but if language were use then how can different grunts an squiggles mean the same thing as other grunts and squiggles? Other languages also use words in different order with adjectives AFTER the noun as opposed to BEFORE, yet means the same thing in English. When translating words from different languages, we aren't translating their use, we are translating what the words refer to.

It seems you're trying to distort what I said by not taking the full context into account. I said you can "use" something "uselessly"; that is in the practically useless sense. If you are just playing with something in a way that has nothing at all to do with the proper function of the thing then you are not "using" it in a practical sense; and it is thus, in that sense, useless. — John

I'm not trying to distort anything. It is you that isn't taking everything I have said into account. I can use a chair as a step-stool, which has nothing to do with it's "proper" function, and it is useful in accomplishing the goal of reaching something higher than I can't reach without it. So how was the chair useless? It is only if I don't have a goal-in-mind, or if the tool isn't helping me accomplish the goal, that the "use" of something becomes useless.

Sure, if what you mean by "use" is to refer to a particular idea or thing or state-of-affairs that you intend to convey. Sure, if what you mean by "common usage" is the common idea, thing, or state-of-affairs that the word refers to. You can use words all day long, but if the other person doesn't know what the words refers to, then you can never understand it's use. Sure a congenitally blind person may copy someone's use of phrase, "The sky is blue". But do they really know what "blue" means? Knowing how to copy someone else's use of words doesn't entail that you know what the words mean - only how to use words. Would the congenitally blind person really understand what they are saying? Could the blind person then use the word, "blue" in a sentence that they have never heard? Could they then make their own sentence with the word, "blue" and it mean something? — Harry Hindu

Saying what someone else says just to say what they said rather than to mean what they meant is not use, it's mention. A congenitally blind person cannot learn how to use color-words, only how to mention them. It's really that simple. Using a word is not just saying it, it is using it, with other words, arranged in a particular way, to do something linguistically--make a statement, ask a question, give a command, etc.

Saying what someone else says just to say what they said rather than to mean what they meant is not use, it's mention. — Srap Tasmaner

You need to use the dictionary to look up the word, "mention". It means to refer to something. By using words, you are mentioning something. To mean what they meant is to say that you share their same intentions.

To mean what they meant is to say that you share their same intentions. — Harry Hindu

Surely I'm able to tell someone that I have such-and-such a disease even if I don't know what that disease is (e.g. I'm repeating what my doctor has told me). Surely I'm saying something meaningful, even though I don't understand it.

To mean what they meant is to say that you share their same intentions. — Harry Hindu

It's to say you're willing to assert the same proposition. If John says "Two is a prime number," we'd have to look to context to understand why John is saying this. Does he intend to correct someone else? Is he teaching math?

If you repeat that two is a prime number, you may do so without the same purpose as John, but you're still asserting the same proposition.

Use vs. mention

If meaning were use, then ancient man could have used the word, "computer" — Harry Hindu

People did actually use the word 'computer' hundreds of years before there were machines that we now call 'computers'. From around the 1640's people who counted stuff, especially clerks, were called 'computers' because they were 'computing'. At the end of the 19th century when the first calculators appeared they began to be called 'computers' too. To distinguish, people began sometimes to say 'human computer' to mean the person and 'mechanical computer' to mean the machine. In the 1940's Turing's gang made their advances and made things called 'digital computers'. In the 1950's the digital meaning began to swamp the rest, and only complex digital counting-machines were called 'computers' from then on.

This looks to me like 'meaning is use' in action, but I have an awful feeling you won't agree.

If my doctor tells me I have Schnarrglop's syndrome, but I don't know what that means, and then I tell someone I have Schnarrglop's syndrome, I think the second sentence is really elliptical for "My doctor told me I have Schnarrglop's syndrome." If the person you talk to says, "What's that?" it's coherent to answer, "I don't know. That's what the doc told me."

It looks like kind of a corner case of the use/mention distinction, but I think it's not. Think of it instead as the first baby step in learning to use the expression "Schnarrglop's syndrome." You've learned a little bit about how to use the expression, but not much. Your doctor knows a lot more about how to use the expression. Use starts with bare mention, but doesn't end there.

EDIT: Not even bare mention. Even the first use will be connected to circumstances that make it appropriate, even if you're not sure what that connection is.

Maybe it would help if you explained what viewpoint Witt was trying to counter with "meaning is use."

sure you can, but then you'd just be repeating sounds you've heard which people on the side of meaning-is-use say that isnt what they mean by "use".

To you? Or you mean to someone else? Because I've already explained it to someone else.

sure you can, but then you'd just be repeating sounds you've heard which people on the side of meaning-is-use say that isnt what they mean by "use". — Harry Hindu

The point is that what I'm saying is meaningful even though I don't understand it. Therefore your claim that the meaning of a sentence is to be found in the intentions of the speaker is false.

I think the second sentence is really elliptical for "My doctor told me I have Schnarrglop's syndrome." — Srap Tasmaner

If that were the case then my claim that I have Schnarrglop's syndrome would be false if my doctor didn't tell me that I have Schnarrglop's syndrome. But of course that's wrong. My claim is false if I don't have Schnarrglop's syndrome.

Perhaps, but the dance itself is the movement, not the intention. Dances happen on the dance floor, not in your head.
— Michael
Wrong. You can dance anywhere you want - all you need is the intent. You can imagine you are dancing in your head. — Harry Hindu

Knowing how to write "cat" doesn't make the word appear on the paper. You also have to know how to move your hands and hold a pencil and then tell your hand to move in such a way in order to do it. — Harry Hindu

I don't get it.

There's ideas and there's ideas. When you use the phrase "my grandmother," I can understand you without experiencing the memories you do when you say "my grandmother." And a good thing, because I cannot experience your memories. So there's something else that I can and do get, if I understand you, and that other something is the meaning of the words you speak. — Srap Tasmaner

Witt was arguing against the idea that communication involves some communion of memories?

Against psychologism, same as Frege. Husserl wages the same war on a different front.

So he was promoting semantic externalism?

If that were the case then my claim that I have Schnarrglop's syndrome would be false if my doctor didn't tell me that I have Schnarrglop's syndrome. But of course that's wrong. My claim is false if I don't have Schnarrglop's syndrome. — Michael

That's a good point, and I agree.

There's the sentence you actually utter, and it can be true or false independent of how you're using it. Suppose the doc told you that you have Schnarrglop's syndrome, but he meant to say "Schnarrglob's syndrome," and then you misremember and tell someone you have Schnarrglob's syndrome. What you say is true, even though it's not what you meant to say, or what the doc meant to say.

The question then is whether my "elliptical sentence" idea is any good. I'm not sure. I'm trying to say that in the context, you're not even claiming to understand what you're asserting, that the context makes it clear that you're just trying to repeat what the doc said. So there's something like ellipsis here when you just baldly state, as if you know what you're talking about, that you have whatever syndrome.

Does that make sense?

Sure.

So if Harry were to argue for intensional definitions, would he be arguing against Witt? Or just talking past him?

intensional definitions — Mongrel

What are those?

I said, ancient man. None of what you said takes away from my point. Notice you couldn't say the same thing in regards to "space shuttle".

Use vs. mention — Srap Tasmaner

I still don't see a distinction. We are still using words to refer to things. Words are things that can be talked about just as your ideas, your trip to Rome, or your chicken soup recipe are all talked about. The quotes around a word is the symbol that we are referring to the word rather than to what the word means (what it refers to in the world).

How is it that a sound and scribble can be associated together anyway? How is the sound of the word, "cheese", associated with the scribble, "cheese"? Isn't it just two different ways of referring to the dairy product that you can buy in blocks or in slices at your local supermarket?

It seems to me that if meaning-is-use isn't just repeating the way words (which are just sounds or scribbles) are organized in speech - that there is a relationship between a sound and scribble and the thing it represents and that words are used to convey what it is those sounds and scribbles represent via intention, then we don't have a disagreement.

It's to say you're willing to assert the same proposition. If John says "Two is a prime number," we'd have to look to context to understand why John is saying this. Does he intend to correct someone else? Is he teaching math?

If you repeat that two is a prime number, you may do so without the same purpose as John, but you're still asserting the same proposition. — Mongrel

Correcting someone is teaching them. It doesn't matter whether you, I, or God utters the sounds, "2 is a prime number.", we would all have the intention of relaying the information that the number 2 is actually a prime number.

Harry C. here meant (intended) to say the same thing as you, but regardless of his intentions, "banana" does not mean "look". He simply failed to use the words aright. — unenlightened

When a man says "I'm a woman.", are they misusing words?

You're shifting the goalposts now. That would not simply be "playing around" with the chair, but using it in accordance with practical possibilities that are inherent in its design.

So what are some other practical uses for language apart from communication?

I know what I am, and I'm glad I'm a man, and so's Lola.

Sorry, I'm really not getting what you're saying here.

In a case like this you know something; you know the use of all the other words except for "Schnarrglop's". By telling someone you have Schnarrglop's syndrome you mean to say that you have a condition or illness. If neither of you knows anything at all about the condition or illness "Schnarrglop's syndrome" is used to signify, then the term "Schnarrglop" will be useless insofar as it does no work at all. You might as well have said "I have some kind of syndrome".