I agree, you do not "observe" another person's meaning, you deduce, or infer it. — Metaphysician Undercover
Even if we grant that ultimately the brain is quickly processing sense-data, the experience of others' meaning is far more automatic and instantaneous than that. — macrosoft
The automatic, and instantaneous meaning is one's own meaning, the meaning produced by one's own habituation. It is not the other's meaning (the speaker's meaning). — Metaphysician Undercover
So when the meaning interpreted automatically and instantaneously by the hearer is consistent with the meaning intended by the speaker it Is not the case that the interpreter is processing the speaker's meaning. It is only when the interpreter takes the time to consider nuances and subtle differences, putting oneself into the speaker's shoes, through empathy, that one is actually attempting to experience the other's meaning. — Metaphysician Undercover
On the other, the entire point of our massive facility with language is to generate something like the same meaning in each consciousness. Stressing the difference ignores exactly what makes stressing that difference possible. Your speech act presumes that we can share meaning in some sense -- call it what you will. — macrosoft
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