There are specific circumstances in which we must say that appealing to convention is an unjustified, unjustifiable, wrong, and/or otherwise mistaken move. Some of these specific circumstances are certain kinds of discussions, particularly those involving our talking about that which existed in it's entirety prior to our taking it into account.

Successful communication via language use is one such thing.

How are appeals to convention wrong in those types of situations? In the only way they can be; the characterization, definition, and/or description of such things. We can be wrong about what such things consist of as well as what they are existentially dependent upon. The same is true regarding everything that exists in it's entirety prior to our account. It's what we say about that which exists in it's entirety prior to our discussing it that matters most here. Perhaps this be best put another way.

It is the methodological approach that matters most here. That approach involves setting some common sense standards. Any and all reports/accounts require something to be reported upon and a means for reporting. X exists in it's entirety prior to our report. That which exists in it's entirety prior to our report cannot consist of our report. That which exists in it's entirety prior to our report cannot be existentially dependent upon our report.

Successful communication with speech cannot be existentially dependent upon our account of it. Successfully communicating with speech is an event that happens before taking such events into account. We all agree that that event involves language use. We miscommunicate prior to taking such situations into account as well. We do both long before ever talking about the fact that we do. It only follows that neither are existentially dependent upon our taking them into account, even given the fact that they are both existentially dependent upon language use.

What do all successful attempts at communicating with speech require; what is the bare minimum needed in order for that to actually happen; what do such attempts consist of; what are they existentially dependent upon?

This line of reasoning/questioning has been left sorely unanswered.

Many philosophers and linguists alike hold that communication by speech requires that speaker and interpreter have learned and/or have somehow acquired a common method or theory of interpretation - as being able to operate on the basis of shared conventions, rules, or regularities. Linguistic competence, I presume is aptly described here. I've seen no adequate objection to the contrary. The odd success of malapropisms are prima facie evidence that that is just not the case; that is not enough;that no such method fills the bill. The only conclusion is that successful communication/interpretation with speech does not operate solely on such a basis.

To quite the contrary, paraphrasing Davidson...

Some successful interpretation happens in a way that is not in accordance to convention; that does not operate solely on the basis of shared conventions, rules, or regularities, but are rather also derived by wit, luck, and wisdom from a private vocabulary and grammar, knowledge of the ways people get their point across, and rules of thumb for figuring out what deviations from the dictionary are most likely, etc. There is no more chance of regularizing, or teaching, this process than there is of regularizing or teaching the process of creating new theories to cope with new data in any field—for that is what this process involves.

Creating new theories...

Novelty.

That's what's left sorely unaccounted for. The attribution of meaning to that which is not already meaningful(to the capable creature under consideration). If an appeal to conventional standards were unassailable then paradigm shift would not happen. The conventional accounting practices involved in setting out what's necessary for successful communication via language use are found wanting. The approach is the problem. The presuppositions that truth and meaning are existentially dependent upon language are the fatal flaws underwriting every bit of this discussion(at least on the academic side of it). That is not to say that linguistics and/or philosophy ought be cast aside and/or flippantly dismissed. Rather, it is only to say that it's come time to revise and sharpen some of the core tenets.

Davison made a valiant attempt. His conceptual framework was inadequate to begin with, unfortunately. To his everlasting credit, he began to shed some much needed light upon the deep seated connection between truth and meaning, especially in his other works prior to this paper. The two are existentially codependent upon one another, to put it mildly.

On a more personal level, I like Davidson, or at least what I've seen of him. His temperament was kind curiosity, worthy of emulation. Admirable. I hold him in much higher regard than many of his contemporaries as a result.

Creating new theories...

Novelty.

That's what's left sorely unaccounted for. The attribution of meaning to that which is not already meaningful. — creativesoul

Indeed. I propose that malapropisms are the random mutations of human languages. DNA too is a language, though a chemical one, and what I find interesting is how replication error (mutations) can be a strength in that they introduce novelty.

That's a bridge between two things that I've yet to have connected. Intriguing. I suspect that I will not grant meaning or truth to such simple biological mutations(replication 'errors'). Seems that causality does the trick.

Evidently DNA codes for proteins and not for thoughts like human languages do, so it stands to reason there will be major differences between the two types of code.

But both are codes, and when one codes, one may always make a coding error. It is a universal law that copying information cannot be 100% perfect all the time. Errors do creep in duplications, always.

And these errors can create new meaning, just like a DNA mutation can create a new protein.

It's all about how the system builds upon it's own errors, and uses them as a source of novelty.

I appreciate the evolutionary bent.

Interesting questions, but I think a discussion of conscious vs sub-conscious processing would be too far from the topic of this thread.

What's the intended force of this though? — Srap Tasmaner

Do you mean, what do I mean? Or some more technical question?

Are you distinguishing reference from something we do with language that is not a fantasy? — Srap Tasmaner

No.

If you aren't, why should we care? — Srap Tasmaner

Why should we care about

language, art, and money — bongo fury

?

Exactly.

Anyway, proved my point. You called reference a fantasy; implication of choosing a word like that is usually that this should influence what we think about it, perhaps we should choose to rethink our reliance on it in our theories in favor of something more substantial, blah blah blah ---

but of course it turns out this is a picturesque way of describing anything abstract and reference is keeping pretty respectable company, or it least company none of us is ditching anytime soon.

You called reference a fantasy; — Srap Tasmaner

You seem to have assumed this was an insult? I'm insulted. :wink:

but of course it turns out this is a picturesque way of describing anything abstract — Srap Tasmaner

What is? Clarification, please.

Clarification, please — bongo fury

[ "abstract" == "fantasy" ] is picturesque.

Why are you pestering this thread when there's a perfectly good Platonist to argue with in another thread? Why should I have to deal with him there and you here, when you two have so much to talk about?

I again find your thinking incomprehensible. — Banno

The only time you find my thinking incomprehensible is when I apply YOUR theory to other uses of language, like plagiarism. If integrating your theory with other uses of language makes it incomprehensible then that means your theory is incomprehensible.

If not, then you are the only one here that seems to find my posts incomprehensible. How convenient for you.

Creating new theories...

Novelty.

That's what's left sorely unaccounted for. The attribution of meaning to that which is not already meaningful. — creativesoul

Indeed. I propose that malapropisms are the random mutations of human languages. DNA too is a language, though a chemical one, and what I find interesting is how replication error (mutations) can be a strength in that they introduce novelty. — Olivier5

But there are still causes that result in mutations and malapropisms. They aren't random. They only appear that way because of our ignorance. If they were ultimately random, then there would be no way for someone to understand what was meant.

Novel intentions, or goals, are what create novel uses of some tool. Unique experiences can lead to novel intentions.

But there are still causes that result in mutations and malapropisms. They aren't random. They only appear that way because of our ignorance. — Harry Hindu

Is this a relevant consideration though? Does the source of the error matter? And if yes, 1) why does it matter; and 2) what evidence do you have that this is indeed always the case?

My point is: any code replicated long enough WILL at some point get wrongly copied, whatever the cause of the error. In practice, there is no such thing as a perfect information replication system that can always get it right.

Why are you pestering this thread — Srap Tasmaner

Pardon me? You engaged me, not me you?

I was being picturesque.

@Banno

I don't think I've ever really directly tackled how an interpreter should handle an utterance like

(1) Sure, if I reprehend any thing in this world it is the use of my oracular tongue, and a nice derangement of epitaphs!

and I think I can say why.

Let's say the utterance (1) presents a problem for an interpreter.

The question is who or what solves that problem?

It is easy enough to explain this feat on the hearer’s part: the hearer realizes that the ‘standard’ interpretation cannot be the intended interpretation; through ignorance, inadvertence, or design the speaker has used a word similar in sound to the word that would have ‘correctly’ expressed his meaning. The absurdity or inappropriateness of what the speaker would have meant had his words been taken in the ‘standard’ way alerts the hearer to trickery or error; the similarity in sound tips him off to the right interpretation. Of course there are many other ways the hearer might catch on; similarity of sound is not essential to the malaprop. Nor for that matter does the general case require that the speaker use a real word: most of ‘The Jabberwock’ is intelligible on first hearing. — p. 252

So there's what I've alluded to as how we would analyze (1) if we notice its problems, and it's relatively straightforward: System 1 comes up short ("realizes that the ‘standard’ interpretation cannot be the intended interpretation") and asks for help from System 2 which goes through all these analytical steps. If System 2 is involved, it's natural enough to say the interpreter, this person, consciously, solves the problem.

But if you don't notice and still land on the intended interpretation? Then the utterance has just been handled by System 1 for you without bothering to tell you it corrected an error in the utterance. Who solved the problem then? Or what? As you like. You can say "I did" or "my System 1 did" or, if you have a theory, you might say, "Thank you, Darwin", or any of a number of other things. I'm not sure there's an obvious right way to talk about this. I've suggested that we should just expect some robustness built into our language use as it is in any communication technology, and that means an allowance for errors and a capacity to correct them without fuss.

But what does Davidson say?

It's clear he's not interested in the straightforward problem solving described above (and paragraph after next he'll distinguish what he's after from error that is not "philosophically interesting"), nor does he seem much interested in whatever actually goes on in speech perception. Let's put it this way: not the conscious reasoning of System 2; not the unconscious processing of System 1. What does that leave?

It leaves no psychology at all, that's for sure, which is the point. What it does leave is the theory of meaning taken as unrelated to psychology entirely. We know what we're talking about there, for Davidson, but any sort of formal model of the semantics of a language will do, some Tarski or Carnap kind of thing.

It seems unimportant, so far as understanding is concerned, who makes a mistake, or whether there is one. — ibid.

Davidson is going to abstract the formal symbol system people use from the historical and psychological facts of their using it, which is no big deal, but he's going to do it a particular way: the interpretation of (1) is captured along with the utterance itself. But what's the status of that interpretation?

The coupling between the historical psychological facts of using a language and that language as a formal system is a little loose, at least in one direction: sentences may be given a non-standard interpretation, have a meaning that is not their literal meaning. But within the system itself, there is no such looseness; when Davidson captures (1) and its intended interpretation (whether you describe that as being expressed in a meta-language or in the interpreter's language) they are captured together as if quite tightly coupled, and then this version of the formal system is attributed to the interpreter.

Which, if you explained what you were doing to the interpreter, they would not accept, because the coupling was loose on their end, not tight:

"You assigned the meaning of 'epithet' to this utterance of 'epitaph'."
"Yeah."
"So in your language, 'epitaph' is a synonym for 'epithet'."
"No, of course not. That's why I had to work it out."

There's a similar story if the error correction was carried out by System 1, except the interpreter will protest that they didn't even realize Mrs. what's her name had said 'epitaph'.

The interpretation is the result of someone or something solving the problem presented by the defective utterance, but it will be captured by Davidson simply as an interpretation, slotted into a bit of model theory in the usual way with no trace of its historical psychological origins. That procedure might be fine for aggregating language use within a population, but then attributing this "passing theory" to a member of that population isn't self-justifying.

I think a discussion of conscious vs sub-conscious processing would be too far from the topic of this thread. — Isaac

Probably so, but they could be characterized in a manner that relates. A problem I see is the often implicit presupposition that consciousness is clearly delineated from unconsciousness in a way similar to a light switch; on and off; present or not; or some such accounting practice. I suspect it's much more a matter of naturally occurring 'degrees' of complexity, whereas the simplest evolve into the more complex given the necessary preconditions for doing so.

Davidson's notions of prior and passing theories 'overlap' in odd ways that allow for their evolution one into the other and must, I suspect, in order to perform the task he's placed upon them. A sort of "well, something is missing here", but what is it that is clearly needed but lacking from the current description? Something beyond the scope of what counts as acting in accordance with convention. He notes this more than once.

But if you don't notice and still land on the intended interpretation? Then the utterance has just been handled by System 1 for you and doesn't bother to tell you it corrected an error in the utterance. Who solved the problem then — Srap Tasmaner

There is no problem in such situations. The prior theories are equivalent to the passing theories. Passing theories are the 'dark matter/energy' of Davidson's position, whereas the prior theories are equivalent to current convention. Nothing is missing if successful communication happens.

The interesting thing to me, is that by virtue of creating his solution(prior and passing theories) he's actually doing what's necessary for successfully interpreting malapropisms but his accounting practice cannot take account of what he, himself has just done.

The interpretation is the result of someone or something solving the problem presented by the defective utterance, but it will be captured by Davidson simply as an interpretation, slotted into a bit of model theory in the usual way with no trace of its historical psychological origins. That procedure might be fine for aggregating language use within a population, but then attributing this "passing theory" to a member of that population isn't self-justifying. — Srap Tasmaner

The interesting thing to me, is that by virtue of creating his solution(prior and passing theories) he's actually doing what's necessary for successfully interpreting malapropisms but his accounting practice cannot take account of what he, himself has just done. — creativesoul

Aren't we saying much the same thing?

:smirk:

Aren't we saying much the same thing? — creativesoul

I'm saying Davidson chooses, as is his right under the Treaty of Abstraction, to ignore the processes that solve the problem of defective utterance, whether they are to be found in System 1 or in
System 2, but then treats the results of that problem solving as if it were a formal semantics for a language. What's more, because the problem solving is done by or within an interpreter, he believes he is entitled to attribute to them his formalization of their results. I don't think he is, and I think his thinking he is is practically a category mistake.

Is that what you're saying?

I think we're both saying that Davidson is unjustified in his move to attribute his theory to another. On my view it's a clear conflation between his accounting practice and what's being taken into account. However, earlier you expressed a resistance to such a framework.

...

earlier you expressed a resistance to such a framework — creativesoul

That's possible. In a little while I might not endorse what I just wrote.

I'm uncomfortable with this whole approach to semantics, so I keep finding new ways to reject it.

I think there's something to my last couple posts but it's still not quite satisfactory.

I'm uncomfortable with this whole approach to semantics... — Srap Tasmaner

Davidson's approach?

Is this a relevant consideration though? Does the source of the error matter? And if yes, 1) why does it matter; and 2) what evidence do you have that this is indeed always the case?

My point is: any code replicated long enough WILL at some point get wrongly copied, whatever the cause of the error. In practice, there is no such thing as a perfect information replication system that can always get it right. — Olivier5

To say that an "error" occurred, or that some information replication system got something "wrong", is saying that this system had intent to do it one way and it worked out a different way. Does DNA possess intent?

It seems to me that any system does something based on the design of that system. Nature doesn't do anything wrong or right. It just does whatever prior conditions dictate.

To say that an error occurred, or that some information replication system got something wrong, is saying that this system had intent to do it one way and it worked out a different way. Does DNA possess intent? — Harry Hindu

You'd have to ask him. But it certainly looks like DNA is getting copied a lot.

It leaves no psychology at all, that's for sure, which is the point. — Srap Tasmaner

Cool. Yes, your right, I think... Davidson in skirting around the psychological issues. But he doesn't talk about Dalmatians either; is that a criticism? That is, his considerations are in regard to the logic (considered broadly) of interpretation; that he doesn't go out of his way to talk about the physiology of the situation, nor about Dalmatians, is in a sense neither here nor there.

He doesn't talk of the snobbery inherent in play, either; Mrs Malaprop is an object of merriment because she finds herself in a social situation to which her language is maladapted.

I'm also sceptical of the use to which we might put the distinction between conscious and unconscious thought; I'm not sure that it is such a clear distinction. For instance when I do long division, I follow a systematic process, step by step, until I have my answer; and I can happily call that a conscious process. When I drive the car while thinking about something quite far off, and find that I have stoped at the red light without conscious deliberation, I am happy to call that an unconscious process. When I look for the best words to use in completing this sentence, I am both systematically running potential arrangements of words through my mind, and having new arrangements "well up" into my conscious mind; and I'm not sure that the distinction between conscious and unconscious thought has application here.

That's partly why I invoked Isaac, but as he says:

I think a discussion of conscious vs sub-conscious processing would be too far from the topic of this thread. — Isaac

Davidson's approach? — creativesoul

And related. Basically all the approaches inspired by Carnap and Tarski.

I don't know if there is any experimental evidence at all for the whole model theoretic approach to the semantics of natural languages. There is considerable experimental evidence for lots of stuff in linguistics, but not so much this, so far as I can tell.

For an example of something right next door with experimental support, there's Eleanor Rosch's prototype theory. That's not the same kind of semantics, but does actually tell you something about the semantic connections between words as people actually use them, or at least tries to.

I'm still sniffing around the landscape of semantics a little to see who's actually doing research.

I'll throw in one more point: the AI world has a broader view of logic and logical systems, with the goal of getting machines to do stuff. By contrast, you read Davidson or Lewis and it seems like research into logic and logic-driven systems ended in the thirties or forties. It looks kind of quaint, or at least provincial.

Davidson in skirting around the psychological issues. But he doesn't talk about Dalmatians either; is that a criticism? — Banno

Sure, and I'd grant him that by the Treaty on Abstraction, except he's not content to dump the behaviour of people in as data and churn out a theory (of the sort deplored above), but he then wants to attribute such theories to linguistic agents.

We don't even have to invoke mental concepts here (which might trigger you), but can just talk about behavior, and so far as that goes an agent's theory of meaning should be predictive of their behavior. So Davidson is doing psychology after all.

(I recently watched a lecture by Richard Thaler and he quoted some economist from the turn of the previous century warning that economists who try to ignore psychology end up inventing their own, badly.)

(I recently watched a lecture by Richard Thaler and he quoted some economist from the turn of the previous century warning that economists who try to ignore psychology end up inventing their own, badly.) — Srap Tasmaner

Yeah, that's accurate, for Davidson as well as Economics.

Davidson's approach?
— creativesoul

And related. Basically all the approaches inspired by Carnap and Tarski.

I don't know if there is any experimental evidence at all for the whole model theoretic approach to the semantics of natural languages. There is considerable experimental evidence for lots of stuff in linguistics, but not so much this, so far as I can tell.

For an example of something right next door with experimental support, there's Eleanor Rosch's prototype theory. That's not the same kind of semantics, but does actually tell you something about the semantic connections between words as people actually use them, or at least tries to. — Srap Tasmaner

Unfortunately I cannot open that link. Incompatible user platform, I suspect.

I'm still sniffing around the landscape of semantics a little to see who's actually doing research.

I would personally place more importance upon a theory/explanation of meaning that successfully bridges the gulf between linguistic and non linguistic thought and belief.

There is no syntax in language less thought and belief. I find that cleaving meaning into syntax and semantics results in an inherent inability to take account of that which does not consist of syntax. Meaning exists in it's entirety prior to common language use. Syntax is existentially dependent upon common language use.

Here's another attempt.

If we're going to do truth conditional semantics, we recognize we're talking about reasoning. Davidson's principle of charity, for instance, has one of those classic hallmarks of idealized reasoning in it: we strive to maximize agreement.

The question is whether this is how people reason about the utterances of others, or should, and there's a little there, sure, and whether this reasoning becomes habitual so that it's a good description of language perception and comprehension. There doesn't seem to be any evidence for that, but it might be what Davidson thinks.