Pointing is a use. — Harry Hindu

Sure. But not every thing we do with words is pointing.

What other uses does a word have? — Harry Hindu

Hello.

Hello.

This is a scribble or sound used to point to the start of communication, similar to how computers establish "handshakes" with each other across a network before they actually begin the transfer of data over the network. When the computers are finished with transferring data, they close the connection in a way that is similar to saying "goodbye". These sounds/scribbles that we make are pointing to the opening and closing of an exchange of information.

↪Banno

What other uses does a word have? — Harry Hindu
— Harry Hindu

This sounds like a fun game. We say a word and Harry tells us what it's pointing to. Can I try one...

The "Na" in...

" Na na na na na na na na na na na na na " - My Chemical Romance.

Obviously plenty of words in most sentences, and all in some, don't point directly or at all. Not so obviously, even the direct pointing (just as plentiful) is a game of pretend. (Quine's insight.) People who worship definitions probably don't get that.

But what raises us above the beasts in the field and the chess-playing computers, as yet, may well be the ability to trace and hypothesise about pretended mappings from words into the world. It's unfortunate that the disillusion of one brilliant early investigator has led to so much incredulity about that possibility.

Kids arrive at five by playing with beans, moving them around, sharing them, sorting the beans from the marbles, cooking them, embedded number in their lives.

Pointing is a gross oversimplification. — Banno

But as Piaget argued, all of that playing and sharing and using and sorting enables her to set up potentially a clear mapping or pointing, i.e. a counting out.

Of course pointing isn't evident in a lot of meaning. Maybe the child can't demonstrate an understanding of a correspondence. But pointing is the (invented, pretended) basis on which we clarify and interpret each other's utterances.

↪Banno Hello.

This is a scribble or sound used to point to the start of communication, — Harry Hindu

Yes exactly.

The "Na" in...

" Na na na na na na na na na na na na na " - My Chemical Romance. — Isaac

Lots of the meaning in speech is musical meaning: like the meaning in all decorative and expressive arts, it points up patterns and qualities and attitudes. Goodman suggests that we can quite coherently interpret this kind of meaning as things pointing back at their potential labels, and even indirectly back at other things. "Na" in the musical work cited appears to exemplify (point up) qualities of articulation in an electric guitar riff, etc.

Ugh just read the opening sections of the PI and everyone can go home. Pointing. Pft. 2020 and people still think words are pointing. Must be all the cuts to the education budget.

"Na" in the musical work cited appears to exemplify (point up) qualities of articulation in an electric guitar riff, etc. — bongo fury

Wow, so the Barber of Seville must have been astonishingly ahead of it's time. Or does "La" point to something different to "Na". Do tell.

A cool observation, but I cannot concede that definitions are arbitrary because we don't need them to grasp a thing or concept. When discussing ideas, a word can evoke any number of things in a given person's mind. I don't think the issue people face when communicating is a loop of definitions. They usually agree on meaning or don't. Human understanding has more to do with how experience and observation translate into meaning than meaning in and of itself.

This sounds like a fun game. We say a word and Harry tells us what it's pointing to. Can I try one...

The "Na" in...

" Na na na na na na na na na na na na na " - My Chemical Romance. — Isaac

What makes some scribble or sound a word, and not just a scribble or sound?

What makes some scribble or sound a word, and not just a scribble or sound? — Harry Hindu

You appeared to understand what I meant when I referred to it as a word. Is there some other arbiter of correct language use you have in mind?

So are you for it, or agin it?

Or just confused, like poor Harry. "Hello" doesn't point to the beginning of a conversation; it doesn't point to anything. It is an act done in speaking. Like "Get fucked!"; but not like "Ouch!".

:up:

Always a pleasure to have one of your pointed remarks in my threads, Street.

Sure. But not every thing we do with words is pointing. — Banno

So the corollary is that every thing we do is largely pointing? Harry is thus largely correct?

That does not follow.

If you say that isn’t the logical corollary of your proposition, then you are agreeing the statement was vague.

Sounds legit.

Do you have a point?

If... — Banno

Does one say “not everything” to mean “almost nothing”. Or to mean “well, there are exceptions”. A simple exercise in the logic of quantifiers one might have thought. Apparently not.

There must, therefore, be a way of understanding a word that is not given by providing its definition.

Now this seems quite obvious; and yet so many begin their discussion with "let's first define our terms". — Banno

There is no dichotomy between a definition and usage. The way of understanding a word is by understanding how to use it. And one way to understand how to use it is to look in a dictionary at its definition. That is because dictionary definitions are derived from observing usage. Offering a definition, at least in part, is informing people of how a word is intended to be used.

Do you have a point? — Banno

Apparently not. — apokrisis

Offering a definition, at least in part, is informing people of how a word is intended to be used. — bert1

Yes, I agree. Notice that the dictionary definition, as a description of use, is post hoc? The use precedes the definition.

The question to hand is "which is to be the master?"; and my answer is, the use is the master of the definition.

Do you have a point? — Banno

Clearly. Will you pretend not to see it? Undoubtedly.

This is a silly game you play, Apo. Folk hereabouts recognise the passive-aggressive stance you love so much, and they will call you on it.

What's your problem in answering this question exactly?

Does one say “not everything” to mean “almost nothing”? Or to mean “well, there are exceptions”?

No need to get so huffy. Just tell us what your words mean. Point to the right answer. :grin:

So are you for it, or agin it? — Banno

For pointing, agin definitions.

"Hello" doesn't point to the beginning of a conversation; it doesn't point to anything. — Banno

How the certainty? Is pointing or not pointing a matter of fact?

The OP presents arguments to the conclusion that there are ways of understanding a word that are not given in a definition. Harry suggests that words are to be understood by determining to what they point. The reasonable response is to point out, as I and others have done, that there are words that do not seem to point. You at first seemed to agree:

Obviously plenty of words in most sentences, and all in some, don't point directly or at all. — bongo fury

But then say you are

For pointing, agin definitions. — bongo fury

SO we are both agin definitions; we agree that not all words point; we agree that some words do indeed point.

What is your disagreement with what I have said?

Have a great day.

Harry suggests that words are to be understood by determining to what they point. The reasonable response is to point out, as I and others have done, that there are words that do not seem to point. — Banno

No, that completely misses the point (sorry), which is whether the determination of pointing that does go on should be regarded as something that can be (or already is) fixed, or as a much more precarious and subtle cooperative game.

The question to hand is "which is to be the master?"; and my answer is, the use is the master of the definition. — Banno

Qualified assent. Dictionaries are compiled by people who pay careful attention to use, at least one hopes. And the definitions they write deserve some respect, and should not be dismissed because one does not perceive or recognise one's own usage in some of the senses listed in the dictionary. I'm talking about 'consciousness' here, obviously.

The whole "meaning is use" shtick is not wrong, but clearly also not the final word on language as a semiotic phenomenon. We want a properly general theory that covers "everything" in a nicely totalising fashion.

Such a general theory is that language is about placing limits or constraints on uncertainty. And precision - a "definitional" strength usage - boils down to a sign (a verbal construction) dividing the world with a logical force. The sign has to split the thing in question into what it is, in terms of what it is not. If the goal is precision, this is arrived at via the logical machinery of a dichotomy.

So this gets at the pragmatics of what language does, why it has such extraordinary power, but also why it is at root a vague business.

The meaning of any locution is a game. The words could be taken to mean "anything". But what they mean this time is how they function to divide the uncertain world into some binary Gestalt opposition of figure and ground, event and context.

If there is pointing going on - and in some sense there always is - it is a pointing to some relatively defined thing, but a pointing that involves also pointing away from its "other", the holistic context needed to construct the thing as "that thing".

So a locution is relative in its logical claim. It is only precise to the degree that it precisifies the "other" - the negative space, the context - that must also be "spoken of" in a definite fashion.

The fact that language is often not used with that level of precision is a reason why meanings or definitions - the "right habits" of interpretation - feel unstably communicated.

And there is then the deeper ontological point that the world itself is uncertain or probabilistic. It resists accurate definition because it is not some naive realist "state of affairs" or "set of concrete particulars". It actually is vague or unstable. And language - aiming at crisp bivalence - is simply cutting it to fit its Procrustean bed.

Offering a definition, at least in part, is informing people of how a word is intended to be used. — bert1

My argument is that language - as a semiotic tool - has this natural goal. It wants to do the powerful thing of regulating nature. And power is maximised by binary precision - the logic of the dialectic. Being able to present a "precise definition" is thus a demonstration of one's mastery of language as just such a tool.

But we should also remember that we can only point towards something if we are simultaneously seen to be pointing away from something - its dichotomous "other". That is the act that reduces the most uncertainty or entropy, creates the most meaning or information.

And we should remember that the world we speak about is not itself so crisply divided into a clutter of parts. We do violence if we cut across the actual holism of the world which - pansemiotically - can be regarded as itself a system of sign. A "conversation" nature is having with itself so as to impose a relatively bivalent state of organisation on its own fundamental uncertainty.

The semiotic view of language is thus a truly general explanation of language as a phenomenon. It is how the Comos itself organises in principle.

Anyway, summing up, language is a technology of reality stabilisation. For us humans, words allow us to co-ordinate our Umwelts - share our points of view.

There is always irreducible uncertainty in every stab at creating such a state with words. And yet the dialectical logic - the way words can act as a binary switch - means it is possible to aim as high as we like in asserting some precise state of affairs. While also, the pragmatism of language - the fact that we are social beings operating at many levels of "world-making" - is where the "language games" shtick comes in. Our practical purposes may be quite low brow when shooting the shit with mates.

Language gives us the means to aim as high as we like. But by dichotomistic definition, the same means can be used to be as vague and ambiguous as one wishes. On the surface, the two can pretend to look the same thing. :wink: