...parasitic reference... — Srap Tasmaner

It's not at all clear to me what sort of act a "parasitic reference' might be; I can think of a few possibilities: repeating a name without knowing the referent, ironic, fictive, or pretend speech; quoting someone else's use.

What do you have in mind?

This process seems to me to assume that assigning properties to individuals presupposes the assignation of names to their references. — Ludwig V

Not sure what you are asking.

Giving an interpretation to a formal language involves assigning individuals to the individual variables (names, in a natural language) involved. a to "a", b to 'b" in the exemplary case.

Properties, or more properly predicates, are not something apart from those individuals, but sets of individuals. f={a,b,c} or whatever.

Of course, that's not a problem if we are simply using natural language as opposed to constructing one. — Ludwig V

Not sure you can seperate these. For example, Wittgenstein points out that ostension is already a part of the language. One has to understand the activity of pointing to follow a pointer.

shared intentionality and cognition first. . . . — Srap Tasmaner

Good, and your experience with your granddaughter illustrates it beautifully.

The private language argument shows the incoherence of a language that in principle cannot be shared. It remains that something – a reference – may be in fact unshared yet not unsharable. — Banno

That's where I come out too -- "private language" is a bizarre if useful thought experiment, whereas a reference may be private or not, depending. As you say, it's the difference between something that in principle would have to be unsharable, and something that just happens not to be shared.

I think this highlights the question we're discussing. I'm just thinking this through myself, but there has to be a difference between "private language" and "private reference," doesn't there? As frank says, we don't need a private language to refer privately. We can use the community language we all know. That's not what's private about private reference -- rather, I'm arguing that it's the independence from "triangulation" or the need to have a listener comprehend the speaker's reference. I read Srap as talking about language, not reference, and if that's so, then what Srap says is clearly true: Robinson Crusoe needs to have inherited and practiced a non-private language before he can make up any designations for the flotsam that washes up on his beach. But once he does that, why would we deny that he's referring to said flotsam when he thinks about it, or perhaps makes a list of tasks? — J

What are we doing when we use a word in the community language differently (ie slang, etc)? It takes time for that use to propagate throughout the community. When does it go from being a private use to community use? Does this mean that language is rooted in private reference that has been simply been agreed upon by the community? Who invented each language? How did each language become a language? Was it the local shaman that found scribbles useful for keeping track of natural events and then taught the use of the scribbles to the community?

Giving an interpretation to a formal language involves assigning individuals to the individual variables (names, in a natural language) involved. a to "a", b to 'b" in the exemplary case. — Banno

Yes. But that assignment happens before the assignation of individuals to predicates. So, presumably, predicates can play no part in assigning individuals to individual variables. Hence only rigid designators can be used here.

Properties, or more properly predicates, are not something apart from those individuals, but sets of individuals. f={a,b,c} or whatever. — Banno

I didn't think I was questioning that.

Not sure you can seperate these. For example, Wittgenstein points out that ostension is already a part of the language. One has to understand the activity of pointing to follow a pointer. — Banno

Yes, he does. But ostensive definition was thought at one time to be the way that language reaches out from the circle of words (as in definitions) to attach to the (non-linguistic) world. Has that changed?

I erred in saying "individual variables" when I should have said "individual constants". So it should read "Giving an interpretation to a formal language involves assigning individuals to the individual constants involved.

But ostensive definition was thought at one time to be the way that language reaches out from the circle of words (as in definitions) to attach to the (non-linguistic) world. — Ludwig V

When they (my elders) named some object, and accordingly
moved towards something, I saw this and I grasped that the thing was
called by the sound they uttered when they meant to point it out. — Augustine

Do you have in mind something like this, from the first page of the Investigations?

Wittgenstein continues:

These words, it seems to me, give us a particular picture of the
essence of human language. It is this: the individual words in language
name objects—sentences are combinations of such names.——In this
picture of language we find the roots of the following idea: Every word
has a meaning. This meaning is correlated with the word. It is the
object for which the word stands. — PI§1

It's a part of the story, not the whole of it. In particular that juxtaposition of a linguistic and non-linguisitic world needs some critique. The individual a and the individual constants "a" could not inhabit seperate worlds if we are going to do things with the one by using the other.

So it's not quiet that "predicates can play no part in assigning individuals to individual constants". We might assign "a" and "b" to a and b becasue we already assigned "a" and "b" to "f"; we might assign "sports car" and "sunset" to the sports car and to the sunset becasue those words were already predicated to "red". It makes no difference if we first assign names, then predicates, or if we first assign predicates and then names.

Nor are we restricted to only rigid designators. We also have at hand the individual variables x,y, and z, the indefinite noun phrases of a natural language that work with quantification. So we have "Something is red" and "Nothing is red" and so on.

But your general point carries here, in that the separation between syntax and semantics in a formal logic is deceptively simple, and so somewhat unlike the semantics of a natural language.

That's where I come out too -- "private language" is a bizarre if useful thought experiment, whereas a reference may be private or not, depending. As you say, it's the difference between something that in principle would have to be unsharable, and something that just happens not to be shared. — J

Yep. Cool.

This might be the most common error made by folk attempting to critique private language - "But I do talk to myself privately!", and by mistaken defenders of private language arguments who supose that we cannot do something we indeed do.

What the argument shows is that the meaning of "red" is cannot be our private sensation of red, and that rather than looking for a meaning here as the thing that "red" refers to, we should look at how we use it to reach agreement on which apples we will purchase.

The puzzle is why the extension of "red" includes these apples and not those ones.

:up:

Yep. Cool.

This might be the most common error made by folk attempting to critique private language - "But I do talk to myself privately!", and by mistaken defenders of private language arguments who supose that we cannot do something we indeed do.

What the argument shows is that the meaning of "red" is cannot be our private sensation of red, and that rather than looking for a meaning here as the thing that "red" refers to, we should look at how we use it to reach agreement on which apples we will purchase.

The puzzle is why the extension of "red" includes these apples and not those ones. — Banno

I don't need to agree with anyone to know when an apple is ripe and when it isn't. To know when an apple is ripe or not (and to know that red means ripe and black means rotten), I interact with the apple, not people.

Female peacocks don't need language or to agree with anyone that one male's plumage is more attractive than another's and means they would be a better mate.

Once an infant obtains the sense of object permanence, they understand that their mind is not the world and their experience of their mother does not exhaust what it means to be their mother, but is representative of what it means to be their mother, and that their representation can be maintained and talked about in the absence of their real mother.

Sure. Why are you telling us this?

To show that you and I are using the scribbles to inform others of some state of affairs, and by "using", I mean representing.

The scribble, "red" is no different than the red apple in that we all privately interpret what the red of an apple means and what a scribble means and how to use it (if the apple is red eat it, if it is black throw it in the trash, if the scribble is a word then you can use it to represent things in the world, if not then you can interpret the scribble as the outcome of purposeless natural processes, or art). A scribble is a thing like everything else that we privately interpret using our own senses and our own brain. You seem to be positing the existence of an omni-mind where the meaning of some scribble is contained.

It's a part of the story, not the whole of it. In particular that juxtaposition of a linguistic and non-linguisitic world needs some critique. The individual a and the individual constants "a" could not inhabit seperate worlds if we are going to do things with the one by using the other. — Banno

Yes, of course that's right. I was lazily using what I thought was a standard formulation. Let me try to put the point another way. A dictionary defines word in terms of other words. It is surely obvious that, if that is all there is to it, there will be a massive problem in actually using language for many of its standard purposes, such as shopping lists. Of course, Wittgenstein was right to say that ostensive defition requires an understanding of "where the word is stationed in the language", but he didn't suggest that ostensive definition didn't work, did he?

It makes no difference if we first assign names, then predicates, or if we first assign predicates and then names. — Banno

I get that. But my, possibly naive, point is that whichever we assign first, we must be assigning without the use of whichever we assign second. If we have assignd names to constants, we have something we can assign to predicates. Obviously, we cannot at the same time use predicates to assign names to constants. The same applies, mutatis mutandis, the other way round.
I had thought that the point of the concept of a rigid designator was that the assignation of names to constants was, from the logical point of view, arbitrary, so the problem didn't arise. (The causal account of naming could safely be seen as beyond the scope of formal logic.) I seem to have got that wrong.
I feel forced to a view that names and predicates require each other and so must be interdefined by a process that defines both at the same time - unless in some way the point is the structure and not the process of construction.

But your general point carries here, in that the separation between syntax and semantics in a formal logic is deceptively simple, and so somewhat unlike the semantics of a natural language. — Banno

H'm. I don't know enough logic to comment. But I would be surprised if there were no difference between formal logic and natural language in that respect. The concept of syntax (grammar) was invented long after natural languages developed - and I find it hard to believe that the latter was developed in a systematic way.

The puzzle is why the extension of "red" includes these apples and not those ones. — Banno

I agree entirely with both your points. But I don't see what the puzzle is? That could only be puzzling to someone who couldn't perceive the difference.