Looks like a backward step - explaining games by more games, rules by more rules. — Banno
repetition — Janus
In general, though, I'd say the mountains of science about how children learn their native language should be the starting point, and all of this is armchair stuff. — Srap Tasmaner
Where, if at all, does explanation terminate?
— Janus
In action. — Banno
...truth is a concept that only exists within language... — RussellA
I'm not sure we ever squarely faced Davidson's central claim. — Srap Tasmaner
Take Lepore and Stone's example:
That's a nice soup latrine.
I think everyone would agree
1. You said "latrine" when you meant to say "tureen".
Lepore and Stone describe the situation as
2. You mispronounced "tureen" as "latrine". — Srap Tasmaner
What's still not perfectly clear is whether
3. By "latrine" you meant "tureen"'.
That is, whether you were, consciously or not, assigning the meaning of the word "tureen" to the word "latrine".
And then, finally, there's the question of whether the interpreter must say
4. In this sentence the word "latrine" means "tureen".
they do have to knowingly misattribute meaning to "latrine" by virtue of drawing a correlation between it and the referent of "tureen". — creativesoul
true belief — creativesoul
The real question, then, is what do we interpret? Do we assign meaning to the specific tokens you produce? Or is there a little preprocessing first, a little data-scrubbing? — Srap Tasmaner
...a whole lot of this post should be replaced by actual science... — Srap Tasmaner
...thoughts about its thoughts, which becomes a problem of infinite regression. — RussellA
The bear believes that there are fish in the water and as there are fish in the water the bear has, what we call, a "true belief"... — RussellA
I took the speaker to be disparaging the quality of the soup. — Banno
There is an actual difference between interpretation and attribution. The latter gives rise to the former. — creativesoul
Linguistics? — creativesoul
In which case, the speaker intended to say "latrine", and the conventional meaning of the term aligns perfectly with the speaker's intent. — creativesoul
The last couple of pages haven't added anything to the commentary. Indeed, they detract from it. — Banno
What sort of thing is a Davidsonian method of interpretation? — Srap Tasmaner
"That's a nice soup latrine" is true IFF that soup looks like shit — Banno
I'm really not sure what you think you're demonstrating here. — Srap Tasmaner
Note that S is quoted.'S' means P
Where 'S' is the sentence we want the meaning of, and P the conditions under which the terms in S are satisfied - the truth conditions.'S' is true IFF p
we invoke evidence collected about the situation and the community to render P in the T-sentence:That's a nice soup latrine
That is, the fault is the assumption that there is a thing that can be called the meaning of the sentence. Labouring the point, we are better off considering what is being done with the sentence - admiring a tureen or disparaging a soup....any decent theory of meaning would generate a statement P such that
'S' means P — Banno
And we have ready to hand a truth-conditional operator that will allow us to link 'S' with P, in equivalence. Hence a truth-conditional theory will have the form:
'S' is true IFF p
Where 'S' is the sentence we want the meaning of, and P the conditions under which the terms in S are satisfied - the truth conditions. — Banno
That is, the fault is the assumption that there is a thing that can be called the meaning of the sentence. — Banno
Davidson's whole point is that you could not possibly have learned such a rule in advance. I don't think any of us are contesting that -- of course you couldn't have. — Srap Tasmaner
The meaning of a sentence consists of more than one thing. — creativesoul
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