That the score and a performance can't be identical is shown by the fact that we can have many performances of the same score. What's being reified? — frank
the act and the performing of it as distinct things. — bongo fury
In the game of language, yes. — bongo fury
And 1. is no less a claim (or assertion) for lacking a personal endorsement (or other assertion sign).
And the string "the cat is on the mat" is no less a claim (etc.) even for being embedded in
3. It's false that the cat is on the mat. — bongo fury
Haha, 3 a step too far?
Are you back peddling on 1 also? Its being a claim and an assertion, even while lacking a prefix to that effect?
You seemed to provide confirmation on the point. But there may have been a misunderstanding. — bongo fury
What type of action did you have in mind? I was thinking predication. The pointing of a predicate at a thing. By means of a conventional agreement that the predicate term gets pointed by the sentence at the object identified by the subject term — bongo fury
I might think the cat is on the mat. But I might speak that sentence, even though I don't actually think the cat is on the mat. I only thought of the words to say."I think that the cat is on the mat" — Michael
My point is, there you almost go... reifying the act and the performing of it as distinct things. — bongo fury
Do you think that those sentence strings mean those different things as they stand? Or do you only mean that they will end up meaning the different things if and when they are later on asserted? — bongo fury
They mean different things whether asserted or not. — Michael
the act and the performing of it as distinct things. — bongo fury
Whatever narrower psychological sense of "perform" or "assert" makes us disqualify an otherwise appropriate sound event from being a performance or an assertion string from being an assertion. (Is what I feared was being reified.) — bongo fury
There is no such thing as a language, not if a language is anything like what many philosophers and linguists have supposed. There is therefore no such thing to be learned, mastered, or born with
— Davidson, A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs
There are conventions, to be sure, but those conventions do not determine the meaning of an utterance - this is shown by your example, that any phrase can serve as a password.
Incidentally, I doubt whether using it as an example of a declarative sentence or of a statement or of a proposition or of a claim prevents it being any of those. Indeed, it clouds the issue to take any clear distinction between any of those varieties of hot air for granted.
On the other hand, names seem to stand apart as a different kind of hot air. No? (E.g. they seem to be generally simpler in semantic structure and function.) And I wondered whether considering the situation of using a name as an example of a name, and this not appearing to cause it to cease being a name, might lead you to reconsider your reasoning in the case of assertions.
Perhaps I ought to have chosen a different analogy. Is a table not a table when presented as an example of a table?
If I use it mostly as a chair, perhaps it ceases being a table. But then I'm hardly presenting it as an example of a table.
What's the reasoning here:
P1: Any phrase could be used as a password.
P2: ????
C: Therefore there are no language to learn and linguistic conventions don't determine what words mean.
Prima facie, that's a ridiculous claim unless one runs back from the motte to the bailey in order to massively caveat it so as to make it an entirely different claim. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Kimhi may be correct that Frege's assumption that the unasserted proposition and the assertion are "on a par," so to speak, is the source of many problems.* It is certainly occurring in this thread. Taxonomical thinking is occluding linguistic realities. — Leontiskos
(It is even plausible to claim that the division itself is not a posit of theory, but is itself found in nature -- right up until you hit the exception at quantum scale.) — Srap Tasmaner
The notion that material strings have strict meanings without taking context and intention into account is not going to get us anywhere. — Leontiskos
What's the reasoning here:
P1: Any phrase could be used as a password.
P2: ????
C: Therefore there are no language to learn and linguistic conventions don't determine what words mean. — Count Timothy von Icarus
You and Tim pretending that the concluding remark is the whole argument is pathetic. — Banno
But words do have a stipulated, conventional meaning that relies on limited context, that is accessible to all speakers. — Count Timothy von Icarus
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