You guys are very confused. — Olivier5

I've no idea of your background or what you have read in the past; but I do know that the folk with whom you have been chatting here are not neophytes, having been on this forum and others for more than a few years, and having qualifications in this and related topics.

Might it be, just possibly, that they are trying to show you something important that you may have missed or perhaps misunderstood?

Might it be, just possibly, that they are trying to show you something important that you may have missed or perhaps misunderstood? — Banno

Or vice versa.

Indeed. Although, given that you seem to me to have missed a point of fairly elementary logic in your discussion with Isaac...

As you might guess, my inkling is that you missed his obvious mistake: that of confusing a word with its meaning.

Let me try the tedious analytical route, see if that works... You don't say: "I have a meaning of pain in my knee", do you? So you cannot replace the word 'pain' in that sentence by the words 'meaning of pain'. Why then would you think that you can replace the word 'pain' by another symbol meaning the class of all possible meanings?

If one could legitimately say: "I have a meaning of pain in my knee", then one could transpose that meaningfully into "I have a {meaning} in my knee". But since one cannot legitimately say: "I have a meaning of pain in my knee", then one cannot assume that its transposition into "I have a {meaning} in my knee" ought to yield anything other than nonsense.

I hope this dots all the i's and crosses all the t's.

Why then would you think that you can replace the word 'pain' by another symbol meaning the class of all possible meanings? — Olivier5

Since you said...

Anything you can think of, perceive, feel, plan and do, remember, or imagine. — Olivier5

... were examples of 'meanings' and since in all other cases we can succesfully replace specific examples with general cases in any sentence.

You can indeed replace specific instances of meaning by the class of all meanings. But a word is not a meaning, so you cannot replace a word in a sentence by its meaning, and then generalize to the class of all meanings, and hope to make any sense.

You don't say: "I have a meaning of pain in my knee", do you?

Seems you missed the reductio. No, it is not legitimate to say "I have a pain in my knee". That was rather Isaac's point.

Without commenting directly on this debate - which is largely trite - it does seem to me to issue forth from an interesting oscillation: is meaning a verb, or is it a substantive? A substantive that verbs? A verb treated as a substantive?

The grammar of meaning: we say "I mean" or "To mean"; but also "the meaning" or "a meaning". This debate seems to be a confusion of surface grammar with depth grammar.

So, I've read the paper and the discussion thus far. Interesting. Particularly the parts about passing and prior theories as a means to account for the ability to understand malapropisms(and novel use as well, I gather). I do want to read it all again, at least another time, prior to joining in here.

I am curious though. Would you remind me of which discussion we've had where the differences between Grice and Davidson are similar and/or reminiscent? That way I can look for those similarities upon rereading again tomorrow.

:smile:

Section 5, for a few paragraphs from

One major difference between Grice and Davidson is that for Davidson a sentence or word only has meaning in the context of a compositional theory of meaning. When Davidson refers to first meaning, he does not mean that the meaning can exist before a speaker has an idiolect, although this is certainly what Grice seems to hold.

Davidson would not abide meaning without language; but that is Grice's abode.

Sound familiar?

it is not legitimate to say "I have a pain in my knee". That was rather Isaac's point. — Banno

Whatever the merit of this assertion (EFL here), I don't think it was Isaac's point.

Because in interpreting the meaning of the utterance I have relied on many extra-linguistic facts — Srap Tasmaner

This 'what cannot be said' is precisely the 'non-linguistic' element inherent in all use of language, and as such, co-extensive of it. Hence Davidson's conclusion: "we should realize that we have abandoned not only the ordinary notion of a language, but we have erased the boundary between knowing a language and knowing our way around in the world generally" — StreetlightX

This might be sufficient to reinstate the relevance of malapropisms — Banno

It may be that malapropisms are part of the problem, but they could also be part of the solution.

Davidson concludes his article by saying that "we should give up the attempt to illuminate how we communicate by appeal to conventions" (p. 265)

However - we should perhaps consider two types of conventions - those internal to the utterance and those external to the utterance

When we hear an expression - "A nice derangement of epitaphs" - it is true that there are initially many possible interpretations - it could be a malapropism, it could be ironic, a pun, a hyperbole, a lie, a reference or an attribution or simply explained by a standard dictionary definition. It is true there are no conventions internal to the expression that gives us any information as to which of these it is.

However - we need to consider conventions external to the expression in order to discover a reasonable interpretation. For example, our prior knowledge of the speaker, the speaker's tone of voice, the speaker's state of mind, the location of the utterance, whether in a bus station or comedy club, etc.

Yes, as Davidson said "but we have erased the boundary between knowing a language and knowing our way around in the world generally" (p 265)

One part of A nice derangement that we have not directly addressed so far is that about Donnellan: the referential and attributive uses of definite descriptions. I enjoyed the droll interplay, and the link to modal logic; and the observation that one can say something that is true, using a sentence that is false.

Isn't that the same as the distinction between prior and passing theory?

Ah, yes!

For what it's worth...

I agree with Davidson when it comes to first meaning(involving sentences and words) requiring an idiolect(their use). However, if Davidson holds that there is no such thing as non and/or pre linguistic meaning, then you know I cannot agree. This paper however does not seem to be concerned with pre and/or non linguistic meaning. Luckily.

:wink:

I am compelled by the inability for theories of language(meaning?) to account for malapropisms and novelty. They've definitely went wrong somewhere along the line. I suspect that the underlying issue is the theory of meaning underwriting the rest.

Tomorrow.

Without commenting directly on this debate - which is largely trite — StreetlightX

Yeah. To be fair I was expecting an initial response like "Fair enough, what I meant to say was..." followed by a more coherent definition, such that I could return to just reading the thread. I wasn't expecting such an heterodox defence. I don't think there's anything more useful to be said on the matter.

So you didn't like my definition of 'meaning'. You couldn't play with it the way you wanted. Now that's too bad. Allow me to apologize for not meeting your high standards.

Do you mind telling what's your definition of it? :-)

Davidson would not abide meaning without language; but that is Grice's abode. — Banno

Very broadly, I would say Grice and Lewis both approach the issue vaguely as an ethologist might; we are, after all, not the only creatures that communicate, nor the only creatures with social organization. It's a matter of seeing both the continuities and the differences. Lewis explicitly tries to build up language from a concept of signaling to see how much that will cover, what it would take to get from signaling to language, and part of that story is going to be convention. Grice starts with what he calls "natural meaning" -- "clouds mean it's going to rain" -- and part of the story of language will be convention enabling "non-natural meaning".

I haven't the competence to comment on the scientific literature -- I barely have the competence to talk about Lewis and Grice! -- but if you look, say, at Wikipedia articles about criteria for language that have been proposed over the years, models scientists will tinker with, you can see how this works: much, but not all, of the signaling we see in other animals is involuntary, so we put "voluntary" on our list; much, but not all, of the signaling we see in other animals relates to their immediate environment, so we put "displacement" on our list; and so on. I think what Grice and Lewis are up to is largely consonant with that.

By comparison, coming at things, as Davidson does, from the Tarski end looks more like a transcendental analysis. From that end, you get a solid description of what an ideal language would be and then have to account for how your model is modified in actuality and why -- just as you might introduce friction or wind resistance to account for divergence from what unadorned Newtonian mechanics might predict as the behavior of a massive body.

We all, I think, tend to expect the two approaches to meet in the middle and they kind of do. What muddies the water for the Tarski approach is that it's not just a model, but is thought in some ways to be an active participant, a substantive component of the behavior being modeled: you are thought to have a copy of just such an ideal language model instantiated in your brain, and you use it to produce and to respond to the imperfect behavior you and others engage in.

This is roughly Chomsky's story. Generative grammar and transformational grammar -- with which I had at one time some familiarity -- have their complexities but it's clear enough that syntax can be systematized, and that people don't always follow the rules, and that some of those divergences are stochastic but some are systematic and can be explained by further rules. (Before syntax, linguistics already had considerable success with systematizing phonetics, and there too the way people modify the pronunciation of a word or a syllable is sometimes random but sometimes depends systematically on the surrounding phonetic context.) What was so exciting about Chomsky's approach was precisely that you could imagine a finite machine, something that actually could be physically instantiated, that could recursively generate unlimited output, so that explaining how language in the abstract works could be a substantive step toward explaining the behavior we observe -- since the model itself is in there, generating the behavior we're modeling.

The question ever since has been how to do that for semantics, and then later whether pragmatics is just another layer on top to explain deviance from a semantic ideal. The tension arises because the core ideas of pragmatics originally come from the ethological end of things, from seeing how people actually use language. The middle where the two approaches should meet up turns out to be semantics, and the two exploratory parties turn out to have difficulty communicating.

Russell A - "However, we should perhaps consider two types of conventions, those internal to the utterance and those external to the utterance"

Isn't that the same as the distinction between prior and passing theory? — Banno

The main difference as I see it is that both conventions internal and external to an utterance have the potential to be studied and codified, whereas prior and passing theories haven't. As Davidson says "Neither the prior theory nor the passing theory describes what we would call the language a person knows" (262)

Internal conventions is the study of rules , principles, and processes, ie, a knowledge of syntax and sematic possibilities.
Whereas for the prior theory, as Davidson says "An interpreter must be expected to have quite different prior theories for different speakers" (p. 262)

External conventions are about physicalities in the world external to language that can be objectively observed and studied across a wide range of speakers, in that the speaker's tone of voice, for example, has a measurable objective existence.
Whereas for the passing theory, as Davidson says "For there are no rules for arriving at passing theories" (p. 265)

The beginnings of a family tree for linguistic philosophy! That might be a fun exercise.

...you are thought to have a copy of just such an ideal language model instantiated in your brain... — Srap Tasmaner

Not sure about this, although I'm happy to be corrected. My understanding of his anomalous monism is that no such simple order might be found in the mind. From Stanford: " Psychology... cannot in principle yield exceptionless laws for predicting or explaining human thoughts and actions.." But I may have misunderstood....

In any case it is clear that Davidson's program - the semantic theory of meaning - did not lead to the sort of radical reinterpretation (see what I did there?) of language that it at first promised. I studied it in some detail as an undergrad, and for a long while thought it may have been useful. What is most interesting for me about the present article is the implied rejection of the semantic theory.

I'm thinking that Davidson moved over time from an approach most influenced by Quine to one most influenced by Wittgenstein. There's Davidson's Wittgenstein, which seems to suport this indirectly by explicating the similarities between Davidson's and Wittgenstein's later philosophies.

We might agree that Davidson repeatedly tries, and fails, to formalise natural language, ending up looking to use.

You may be right. The present article seeks to show that theories based on convention are doomed to be incomplete, because they will necessarily be unable to deal with novel and eccentric uses. I take it that you think convention can be saved, but it's not clear to me how this might be done.

Are internal and external conventions immune to malapropisms? Why?

One part of A nice derangement that we have not directly addressed so far is that about Donnellan: the referential and attributive uses of definite descriptions. I enjoyed the droll interplay, and the link to modal logic; and the observation that one can say something that is true, using a sentence that is false. — Banno

Interesting that you should mention this, because that particular section has definitely captured my attention. Due to the overwhelming compelling interest that I have in the general subject matter, I'm very carefully studying this part at the moment. I'm reminded of a recurring issue that rears it's head elsewhere. It relates to meaning and/or reference, and seems quite relevant to the Donnellan distinction between two uses of definite descriptions and the MacKay objection to that distinction as discussed by Davidson.

I suspect that the conclusion that one can say something true by using a sentence that is false is based upon conflating the very nuanced but quite remarkable differences in both, the meaning and the truth conditions of what are otherwise identical looking statements. Neglecting that distinction is the recurring issue I'm seeing here and elsewhere(Gettier in particular). I'll try to explain concisely showing the relevance to the paper.

Identical looking statements can and do mean very different things, particularly when examined in a more general sense, such as when completely isolated from the individual speaker(what words mean according to Davidson) as compared/contrasted to what the exact same words mean when they are examined as a belief statement(what a speaker means according to Davidson). The same sentence can and does have very different meaning/reference, and thus very different truth conditions depending upon whether or not we're examining what the words mean(in general) or what the words mean when used by a specific individual speaker.

For example, and in at least partial agreement with Donnellan, I too find that "Smith's murderer is insane" is true when and if "Smith's murderer" refers to an insane individual, regardless of whether or not that individual murdered Smith. I disagree that that is a false sentence when we examine it as an individual belief statement, for the referent of "Smith's murderer" does not need to have murdered Smith. Rather, the referent need only to be insane. That holds good because "Smith's murderer" is doing the work of a rigid designator(pace Kripke in Naming and Necessity). It picks an individual out of this world, to the exclusion of all others. If the individual picked out is insane, then "Smith's murderer is insane" is true because the individual picked out is insane.

It is only when we examine the statement as a general one(divorced from the individual, and such not as a belief statement) that problems arise. That becomes a problem, because "Smith's murderer" no longer refers to the same individual that Jones picked out. Rather, when divorced from Jones and taken in general; the referent, the meaning, and the truth conditions all change accordingly. In such a general case, "Smith's murderer" only picks out the individual that murdered Smith, to the exclusion of all others. In this example, the person that murdered Smith is not insane. There is no problem however, because Jone's most certainly referred to someone else, and that person was insane, despite the fact that a misnomer was used. What we have here are two identical looking statements with very different referents, meaning, and thus truth conditions. The only problem I see is neglecting the differences between them.

That same neglect is also true of Gettier, and it is the very foundation that gives rise to 'Gettier problems'. For example, "The man with ten coins in his pocket will get the job" refers to completely different people depending upon whether we examine it in general(any man with ten coins will do here) or as a particular belief statement of Smith about himself(only Smith himself will do here). Gettier conflates the two. Smith was, of course, talking about himself. He did not believe that anyone else would get the job. Hence, the recurring problem mentioned earlier. That's worth mention, but I digress...

Contrary to Donnellan, and perhaps in some agreement with Davidson(based upon his mention of the disconnect between MacKay's objection and Donnellan's answer)I also do not think MacKay's Humpty Dumpty objection is valid as a result of all this. Rather, I think Donnellan granted far too much, because it is not at all uncommon to use language like that. Perhaps the underlying importance of intentions for Donnellan represents the bulk of the actual problem(s). It could also be the result of the distinction drawn between what words mean and what a speaker means, for that distinction does not successfully do the job needed, as shown above. Davidson also denies that the truth conditions of the statement change according to the meaning, which is very odd to me. He said the following...

Jones’ belief about who murdered Smith cannot change the truth of the sentence he uses (and for the same reason cannot change the reference of the words in the sentence).

That is a point of contention. I would strongly disagree, in part based upon what's above. In addition, I would also charge Davidson with having this the wrong way around. The truth conditions of a statement are determined by the referent and what's being said about the referent, not the other way around. It's not so much that Jones' belief about who murdered Smith changes the truth of the sentence. To quite the contrary, the referent of "Smith's murderer" and Jones' belief about the referent wholly determines it's truth conditions, in the exact same way that Smith's belief determines those things in Gettier's Case I.


Tangentially:The distinction I've set out above may pose insurmountable problems for the T sentence, because the T sentence is incapable of drawing the aforementioned remarkable distinction between the meaning and truth conditions of identical statements(in general as compared/contrasted with individual belief statements). I see no way for the T sentence to disambiguate these remarkably different truth conditions and/or meanings of identical looking statements. Perhaps, Davidson knows this and as a result denies the distinction I've set out here as a means to salvage his project(save the T sentence).

Here's a summation of the article, and a defence against it's conclusion:

2.SPE: Idiolects 3 Against Treating Languages as Conventions

But my brain hurts, so maybe later.

We can leave that bit above to the side if you like. I understand that it is tangential to the thrust of the paper. I'd not planned on focusing so intently upon that portion. I'm good with moving on, and am currently continuing past that part.

:nerd:

Take some advil.

:wink:

I'm going back to reading...

No, I want to address it. I was looking to find the original context, Donnellan's article, when I came across the above SEP piece. It's Donnellan's Putting Humpty together again, which seems everywhere to be behind paywalls. It's apparent that there is a quite extensive literature on this topic.

Oh I'd assume you're right about Davidson -- I was thinking of formal semantics in general, especially as it models itself on the relative success of Chomsky's program and Chomsky's well-known claims that there's something like a language organ in the brain. (I don't know what the last iteration of that is -- he was shifting again, as I lost track, to some more general capacity, I think, and talking a lot about how there had to be a single evolutionary jump.)

The present article seeks to show that theories based on convention are doomed to be incomplete, because they will necessarily be unable to deal with novel and eccentric uses. I take it that you think convention can be saved, but it's not clear to me how this might be done. — Banno

Perhaps one way is to rethink the notion of convention. Here's a question: can a singular, novel use, establish a convention? Can a singular, novel use, be called conventional? Can we, without bending grammar out of shape say something like: "that was a one-time convention"?

Here's MacKay: Mr Donnellan And Humpty Dumpty On Referring.

What's odd is that he disagrees with Donnellan, only to finish almost agreeing with him that it's just about making known what it is you are talking about, all the while maintaining the this is done by definite descriptions...

I now have Donnellan's article, so it's next.

This discussion was skirted around here. Successful reference was a notion that pervaded my contributions throughout that thread. The similarities here are remarkable.