Isn't it true that meaning persists over time and everything else that happens in the meantime is separate and distinct from what language itself has to convey? — Shawn
Isn't that assuming that you can separate language from the culture and world from which it comes? — Tom Storm
Sure, but there is no point at which contact entirely breaks... No culture is incommensurable with our world... — Banno
And hence inversely, if some mooted culture were so different that it had nothing in common with our culture, we would have no basis to say that it counted as a culture... — Banno
Well, I think the discussion about culture and society can addressed more precisely by invocating the significance of history to language. In how large a degree does language and historicism apply — Shawn
As I said, we understand things through our place in time and culture. — Tom Storm
I think I'm out of my depth here, so I digress. But, I would like to mention that history or what you put down as 'time' is of more importance rather than culture, no? — Shawn
So to ask whether meaning persists over time is to ask whether particular usages persist over time: do people use the term the same way. — busycuttingcrap
So to ask whether meaning persists over time is to ask whether particular usages persist over time: do people use the term the same way. — busycuttingcrap
Isn't it true that meaning persists over time and everything else that happens in the meantime is separate and distinct from what language itself has to convey?
That's a good approach. appears to think that there are two meanings to a given expression, that of the speaker and that of the listener, roughly the second response I described in my first reply here: "the meaning is some subjective response in their own mind". Nos says "meaning is generated at two or more different places, from two or more different perspectives, each furnished with their own levels of understanding", but what is happening is that the utterance is being used at two different places, for two different things. We don't have two distict uses, and a change in meaning, but just two differing uses. This should help dissipate the nonsense of "meaning never breaches the skull" and so on; no mysterious private mental substance that can't leak out of your ears - just what we do with words.Understanding of what? — Shawn
As per Banno and yourself, is it right to infer that to treat this as a bona fide case for conventionalism? I know Wittgenstein advocated that to even the formal languages of mathematics immutable to the effects of culture, society, history and time(?) — Shawn
This should help dissipate the nonsense of "meaning never breaches the skull" and so on; no mysterious private mental substance that can't leak out of your ears - just what we do with words. — Banno
Some language use is a direct breach of convention, so I'd say that social convention is also a matter of use.... — Banno
So, just to summarize what you and busycuttingcrap are saying is that conventions dictate how language use is utilized in writing or speech? — Shawn
I suppose; if meaning is use, and use is a matter of social convention, then meaning is a matter of social convention. So, sure. — busycuttingcrap
I don't want to put convention at the centre - that'd be more Davidson than Wittgenstein. And even Davidson is explicit about how language use breaches convention. Use need not be base don convention, but usually is. — Banno
So that's not uncontroversial.Three such types of cases are: (i) cases in which the speaker means p by an utterance despite knowing that the audience already believes p, as in cases of reminding or confession; (ii) cases in which a speaker means p by an utterance, such as the conclusion of an argument, which the speaker intends an audience to believe on the basis of evidence rather than recognition of speaker intention; and (iii) cases in which there is no intended audience at all, as in uses of language in thought. These cases call into question whether there is any connection between speaker-meaning and intended effects stable enough to ground an analysis of the sort that Grice envisaged; it is still a matter of much controversy whether an explanation of speaker meaning descended from [G] can succeed. — SEP The Gricean program
What an author intends by an utterance can vary over time, as that utterance is put to other uses. Can't see how this helps.The intended meaning persists... — khaled
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