Anyone who breaks one of my cardinal rules risks triggering my wrath: — S
During feeding times, a mother duck can be very aggressive towards young males when her ducklings are little. I once watched one of them bite an adolescent male by the wing and get dragged about thirty yards. It was a tug-of-war. Quite funny to witness. The male was not at all alarmed, he had been through this many times before. Par for the course, so to speak. He showed no signs of being in pain. Rather, he simply walked at a slightly faster than normal pace dragging her along with him, while she was literally planting her feet into the ground in a failed attempt to pull him the other direction. She pulled and pulled against the grain, her feet never quite gaining traction...
The funny part was that towards the end of the struggle between the two, he stopped where some food was and took a couple of bites before continuing to drag her a bit farther..
He never missed a beat...
She finally let go. — creativesoul
I still don't accept that for there to be linguistic meaning at the time, there would need to be an intentional act of associating one thing, like bell ringing, to another thing, like a melody; or with dictionary definitions and alphabetical order, at the time.
But I do accept that some sort of human act would have been required at a time in the past for there to be meaning at the time that we're talking about.
That first paragraph above is my understanding of where you were going with that, or where you would need to go for it to be logically relevant. It doesn't seem to take us anywhere new or helpful. It seems to be just a rehash of your psychologism, where you merely assert or assume that psychological requirements for other purposes, like understanding and whatnot, are somehow required for there to be linguistic meaning at the time. That last step, where you misapply these psychological requirements, is unreasonable and without foundation. Or you could be just talking past me by assuming your own interpretations of things like linguistic meaning, when I'm obviously not arguing for your interpretation, I'm arguing for mine. — S
You're reading way too much into my comments about this part. Again, I was simply saying why a mere correlation isn't sufficient. — Terrapin Station
For...? (You still haven't learnt your lesson!). For there to be meaning, I take it. Which is the same problem, — S
Which is the same problem as what? (Seriously, I have no idea what the comparison would be to there). — Terrapin Station
If you were to ask, "What does it mean?", then that removes the subject from the equation. I can give an answer to that in objective terms. — S
If we accept that there can be unknown, but decipherable meaning, in other words that there can be meaning there to be deciphered, then that would seem to commit us to accepting that meaning is not merely in the human mind. — Janus
If it's impossible to understand the meaning, because e.g. nothing that speaks any language exists, how are words in a dictionary different from random scratches in a rock, or the pattern of waves on the ocean? — Echarmion
The problem remains that I do not see the supposed logical relevance, so please skip ahead. — S
But no matter how you phrase the question, you are still talking about what people want to communicate. They can be long dead people, but we are talking about words (symbols) that are supposed to be understood by someone. Even if you differentiate between meaning and understanding, for something to have meaning it must be possible to understand that meaning.
If it's impossible to understand the meaning, because e.g. nothing that speaks any language exists, how are words in a dictionary different from random scratches in a rock, or the pattern of waves on the ocean? — Echarmion
I agree, but I don't see any relevance to the point at issue in the rest of what you say there. — Janus
The controversial assumption would be that in order for the text to have meaning, it would have to be known at the time, in practice, whether or not the text could be correctly translated. And that assumption hasn't been warranted. — S
If you agree with all of that, the point is simply that correlation isn't sufficient for meaning, because otherwise you'd have to say that the meaning of "dodge" has something to do with 12-tone music composition. — Terrapin Station
No you wouldn't. That simply doesn't follow as far as I can tell. — S
So, as I asked, what part of the second-to-last post of mine did you disagree with? — Terrapin Station
There's no logically relevant correlation as far as I can make out. — S
If we're adding "logically relevant" to correlation, then it's something other than a mere correlation, no? — Terrapin Station
Well that now seems to be confirmed as a silly tangent. I've only ever spoke of correlation in a sense that is logically relevant to my argument, not correlation in any other sense that you could randomly pluck out of thin ai — S
This is why I stressed that you were reading something into my comment that I wasn't saying. — Terrapin Station
All I said was that I'd say that meaning requires something other than mere correlation. That wasn't code for anything else. I wasn't trying to be sly. There were a number of posts that posited meaning simply as a correlation. I was simply stressing that it has to be more than a mere correlation. Maybe sometimes we can just agree and not have to argue about everything. — Terrapin Station
Exactly! When scholars attempt to decipher ancient texts, they examine patterns of repeating symbols or heiroglyphics to discover clues to their meaning, and painstakingly construct the meaning of the text. Interpretations can be wrong, at least in part.
But that they could be wrong about the meaning of an ancient text indicates that there must be a right interpretation; so it follows that the text has meaning, even if we cannot discover what it is. In something which consisted in merely random marks it would not be possible to construct any interpretation.
The fact that there are meaningful patterns in such texts is on account of their intentional nature. This is the salient difference between texts and naturally occurring patterns. Texts are intentionally produced and forever embody that act of intentional production; and that just is what we call 'meaning'. — Janus
Jesus Christ. I can't believe I got sucked in to that one. Isn't it charitable to assume that when people speak of a correlation, they're not speaking of any old random correlation, but one that is actually relevant and makes sense? Was it really worth trying to score such a superficial point? Go on then. Give yourself a pat on the back. — S
Apples and oranges often come in baskets together. Now sometimes they don't, but let's presume for the sake of argument, they do. So, now there's a correlation between apples and oranges, right? Agree, so far? Because I'm just building up to accusing you of saying apples are oranges... — Baden
...that they could be wrong about the meaning of an ancient text indicates that there must be a right interpretation; so it follows that the text has meaning, even if we cannot discover what it is. — Janus
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