I can use the same idea, while still believing it within myself to be true of my character, and alter the sentence thus: "A minimum of two people involved in a discussion should at least agree on the definition of certain words before heading too far into a conversation, of maybe a particular matter", or, "A minimum of two people involved in a discussion should at least agree on the definition of certain words before heading too far into the discussion."
Does this change anything with regard to your response? — Dalai Dahmer
"Dog" is abstract. I doubt you and I were thinking of the same kind of dog when I used the term. "Dog" is a term used to refer to ALL breeds of dog, not necessarily a specific one.My entire comment referred to abstract terms. "dog" is not an abstract term. Can you point to 'value' or 'meaning'? — Pseudonym
...for any word to mean anything useful it must refer to something in the world.
"Dog" is abstract. — Harry Hindu
for any word to mean anything useful it must refer to something in the world. — Harry Hindu
"Meaning" is the same thing as information and I defined information as the relationship between cause and effect. So when using the term, "meaning", you are referring to some causal relationship. — Harry Hindu
The words on this screen mean what the authors intended when they wrote them. — Harry Hindu
Value" is how organisms behave in ways that show that something is important to them. — Harry Hindu
We engage in this activity because we're trying to assert power — Pseudonym
1. Cooperation is baked into language -- that much you should have learned from Wittgenstein. Vervet monkeys don't do their "predator" calls if there's no monkey near enough to hear them. — Srap Tasmaner
2. Thus if you want a purely competitive encounter with another human being, words are not the best tool for the job. You cite evidence of people straining against that limitation. That's interesting. Truly. It's a question how far you can get and what techniques you'll use to impose your will on others by imposing your will on words. As you say, that's rhetoric. But Humpty-Dumpty always falls. — Srap Tasmaner
3. From competitive use of language comes argument; from argument comes logic. Logic gives us both new ways to compete and new ways to cooperate, and it cannot do otherwise. — Srap Tasmaner
4. That's how philosophy becomes the incubator of science. Compete how you will and you are still also cooperating. (As you acknowledge -- you can gain something from my attempts to master you.) The war of all against all is, here, in this context, only a myth. — Srap Tasmaner
Have you read any Frank Ramsey? He might well say it's the other way round. — Pseudonym
you might have to join the dots — Pseudonym
"Truth and Probability" changed my life, but I'm no Ramsey scholar. What did you have in mind? What should I reread? — Srap Tasmaner
There's a natural, even evolutionary process here of local competition enabling global cooperation. That's a bit of a fairy tale, sure, but that fairy tale is part of the system, as norm and goal. — Srap Tasmaner
it would be rather like a fairy story starting 'Once upon a time there was a man who ...' or 'Once upon a time there was a frog which ...', the rest of the story going on to describe the adventures of the man or the adventures of the frog. A treatise on electrons, in Ramsey's view, starts by saying 'There are things which we will call electrons which ...', and then goes on with the story about the electrons ... only of course you then believe the whole thing, the whole 'There is ...' sentence, whereas in a fairy story of course you don't.
I was using the term abstract in its philosophical sense with regards to language. This is, afterall, a philosophy forum and this is a thread about language, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abstract-objects/ gives a good account, or a more accessible definition https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstract_and_concrete
You see the problem? We can't even agree what abstract means. — Pseudonym
Did I not explain that I used the term, "dog" as a class for all types of dogs?The abstract/concrete distinction has a curious status in contemporary philosophy. It is widely agreed that the distinction is of fundamental importance. And yet there is no standard account of how it should be drawn. There is a great deal of agreement about how to classify certain paradigm cases. Thus it is universally acknowledged that numbers and the other objects of pure mathematics are abstract (if they exist), whereas rocks and trees and human beings are concrete. Some clear cases of abstracta are classes, propositions, concepts, the letter ‘A’, and Dante’s Inferno. Some clear cases of concreta are stars, protons, electromagnetic fields, the chalk tokens of the letter ‘A’ written on a certain blackboard, and James Joyce’s copy of Dante’s Inferno. — Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
"Useful" refers to the relationship between a tool and some goal. Knowledge is a tool as much as a screwdriver. There are certain screwdrivers that are useful for certain tasks as well as certain knowledge that is useful for certain goals.And what does "useful" mean? — Pseudonym
Macbeth is a fictional character. Shakespeare's Macbeth bears little resemblance to the real 11th century Scottish king. "Macbeth" means what the author intended. Ambiguous language use one of the story-teller's favorite tools. The artist may have simply intended for their work to be open to subjective interpretation (which is basically the definition of art).I'm not sure your definition tells us anything here. If meaning is the same thing as information, then what does Macbeth 'mean' when he says
“Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.”
Surely "shadow" in that verse means more than just the absence of light cast by an object. I don't see the cause and effect capturing the meaning there. — Pseudonym
So artists are making mistakes with language? I thought that they were being "artful". Is that not what you would be doing in your language use? Sure, "dog" typically refers to an kind of animal, but it also refers to most men, if you ask any woman. Words can mean whatever we want them to mean. If we intend to get our message across, then we try to use words that we believe the listener understands.But this can't be the case otherwise mistakes in language would not be possible. If I write the word "Dog" but by it mean to refer to the King of France, 'dog' does not now mean the King of France, I've clearly made a mistake. Or, if everything does mean what the authors intend, then how are we to ever determine the meaning of any words at all? — Pseudonym
How else are we suppose to communicate the sensations and experiences (that are made up of visual, audio, gustatory, olfactory and tactile representations) that aren't words? How else do you communicate the actual color red, a sour taste, the feeling of anxiety, etc. that you experience? The color red isn't a word. "Red" refers to that color experience you have and you use that string of symbols to refer to that experience for the purpose of communicating it. I could draw examples of these terms, but that would be time-consuming.You've just replaced value with important. What does important mean in this context?
I have no doubt that we could come up with synonyms all day, but at no point does claiming one word is equivalent to some others actually dictate what the word means. — Pseudonym
Did I not explain that I used the term, "dog" as a class for all types of dogs? — Harry Hindu
"Useful" refers to the relationship between a tool and some goal. Knowledge is a tool as much as a screwdriver. — Harry Hindu
Shakespeare could have intended (meant) something specific when he wrote that, but did he leave any indication of what that was? If not, then (like the Bible) it is open to interpretation by others, which basically means that people will relate what they think Shakespeare intended with their own experiences. — Harry Hindu
Words can mean whatever we want them to mean. — Harry Hindu
How else do you communicate the actual color red, a sour taste, the feeling of anxiety, etc. that you experience? — Harry Hindu
Rather than argue over the meaning of "animal", we can just argue over whether animals have rights -- just to use your example you opened with. And we can clarify exactly what we mean by said terms as we go along, just as we would have to even when setting out our terms from the start. — Moliere
In a sense it doesn't matter what the definition of a word is as long as it is understood. The only point in providing or asking for meaning is to clarify usage, and once that is understood then the other possible uses a word can be put to are not relevant. — Moliere
I think you can still do good philosophy without providing a definition for literally everything, but when controversial terms and issues come up, then yes everyone could benefit from trying to clarify their thoughts by coming up with definitions. — Uber
Exactly, the image of a dog that crops up in your mind is not a dog. It is your class for "dog". Dogs live out in the world as animals, not in your mind as images. The dog class exists only in minds, not out in the world. There's a clear distinction if you just think a little.You said - "How did you learn what the word, "dog" means, if not establishing a connection between the string of symbols, "dog" and the image of a dog? I could show you the word, "dog", or a picture of a dog, and I would end up getting my message across all the same.". You were referring to the thing "dog", that's what you could show me a picture of. You could not show me a picture of the class 'dogs'. — Pseudonym
Okay, I would rephrase my first sentence into, "to be useful, a word must refer to something in the world." What "useful" means in that context is the relationship between the word (the tool) and the intent to communicate non-verbal experiences (the goal).You said "for any word to mean anything useful it must refer to something in the world.". I was asking what 'useful' meant in that context. So, by substitution - "for any word to mean anything (like the relationship between a tool and some goal) it must refer to something in the world" . Is this what you're claiming is necessary for a word to mean anything? — Pseudonym
I don't understand what you're saying here.I have no issue with this except that you'd said meaning was equated with information, which cannot be the case if the reader is imbuing the word with experience [information] that they already have? Surely the word must then be doing something other than imparting information in this case? — Pseudonym
What I meant was that words can mean whatever we want them to mean, but if you want them to mean something useful, then they need to refer to non-verbal experiences and your intent to communicate a particular non-verbal experience. In the case of lying, your intent is to mislead others. In this case, you know how others will interpret the words you will use. Your intent is to create a mental image of what isn't the case, but in order to do that you have to have a mental image of what is the case. You then use words to help create that false image. In this sense your words refer to your intent to mislead. Words refer to the intent as well as their commonly used referent in that particular context. There are typically more than one cause to any effect. Effects carry information about all of their causes. Meaning is the relationship between some effect and it's subsequent causes.Exactly, but you'd said "It ultimately comes down to every word refers to some other visual, auditory, tactile, gustatory, etc. sensation." I'm having trouble marrying the two concepts. Surely the word either refers one-to-one to some 'thing' in the world, or it means whatever we want it to. I don't see how it can do both. — Pseudonym
Meaning is the relationship between some effect and it's subsequent causes. — Harry Hindu
"to be useful, a word must refer to something in the world." — Harry Hindu
But you seemed to have understood what I meant with them in this thread clearly enoug. — Tomseltje
because then you get into arguments about the "correct" definition instead of just going along with the OP's meaning for the sake of the argument. — NKBJ
Odd, then, if these ideas are understood, that one should think definitions necessary.
There is a logical conundrum in the idea that the meaning of a word is given by other words - by its definition. Words form a self-referential sphere.
So how could we learn the meaning of words, if that meaning is given by more words? How do we break into the sphere of language?
The answer is of course that there is a way of understanding what words mean that is not given by more words, but found in the way words are used.
Any philosophical analysis that commences with giving definitions can be dismissed by dismissing those definitions.
Hence the need to understand what we are doing with words.
Don't look to meaning, look to use. — Banno
You can't separate the meaning of words from the use of words, Words used have a meaning. If you change the use, you might change the meaning. If you change the meaning, you change the use. Better look at both. — Tomseltje
Before anyone uses the word 'meaning', they should have to read and at least summarise the above and stipulate which of the 16 or so philosophical meanings of meaning they mean.
Or possibly we can manage without such stipulations — unenlightened
The meaning of meaning. — unenlightened
If this is the case, what sort of thing is the "meaning"? Is it the definition? Is it a thing-in-the-head of the speaker? What is the meaning, apart from the use? — Banno
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