I gather this is from the oddly phrased comment @Joshs made. I still have not understood his point.

There appear to be folk who think of something like "the meaning of an utterance" as a platonic form, unchanging and eternal. For them, it is a surprise when the meaning of an utterance changes over time.

At the other extreme there appear to be folk who think that the meaning is some subjective response in their own mind, private an... dare I say it, ineffable.

Both views are somewhat mad.

The approach I've found useful is to drop the notion of meaning, were you can, and look instead to the use to which the utterance is being put.

Such considerations lead to something I take as undeniable, that we as a community manage to do things with words.

And we do manage to do similar things with words over time. Roughly speaking, meaning persist over time. We can still, say, make use of the allegory of the cave, or be impressed by Socrates' courage.

That's a very lucid and reassuring response.

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? Words change usage over time. Symbols come and go. Cultures change. The words may be the same for 1000 years, but we are not. Isn't it the case that the meaning of texts can depend upon prevailing ideologies and perspectives? The language itself may be static but the culture around it is not and since culture and language act together in producing meaning, meanings are modified over time.

Sure, but there is no point at which contact entirely breaks... No culture is incommensurable with our world...

I think we can adopt Davidson's argument in On the very idea of a conceptual scheme to this situation: roughly and briefly, if we recognise some behaviour as presenting a culture, then we mist be recognising that it has similarities to our own culture. 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...

Isn't that assuming that you can separate language from the culture and world from which it comes? — Tom Storm

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? I think Hegel spoke fervently about dialectics and historicism in addressing this issue at hand. I think this topic can evolve in so many ways so I'll just sit on the sidelines to see what Banno and others say.

The cultural relevance of names and symbols in the interpretation of meaning belongs to the field of semiotics, which I am very shaky in also.

Sure, but there is no point at which contact entirely breaks... No culture is incommensurable with our world... — Banno

That's probably true and I wasn't arguing for that.

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

That's definitely a strong statement. I don't know if it is accurate but its sounds right.

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

I'm not getting that fancy in my argument. I simply figure that when, for instance, Gibbon wrote The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire it was considered history. Now it is consider literature. For history of this period we now go elsewhere. Meanings and significance change as culture changes. You can see that simply by watching a very old sitcom. What was funny in 1958 may no longer be amusing and may even be rebarbative and cloying as tastes and contexts alter.

I don't know if it is accurate but its sounds right. — Tom Storm

Yep.

Dolphins. Are pods cultural?

Dolphins. Are pods cultural? — Banno

iPods are...

Meanings and significance change as culture changes. — Tom Storm

Is that really true or are you comparing social norms with the way we find meaning in what is said?

As I said, we understand things through our place in time and culture. And texts are created in a place in time and culture. In other words there is a fuzzy area or gap. That's my view. What do you think is an alternative take on the text itself as intended and as understood by an audience?

As I said, we understand things through our place in time and culture. — Tom Storm

Sure, I mean that if culture is so important than isn't history of equal importance to give a view of what the contexts might have meant or how things fit into the context of the culture of question at the time?

Yes, I included history - which I put down as time.

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?

I like this quote from Wittgenstein in Culture and Value, “People say again and again that philosophy doesn’t really progress, that we are still occupied with the same philosophical problems as were the Greeks. But the people who say this don’t understand why it has to be so. It is because our language has remained the same and keeps seducing us into asking the same questions. As long as there continues to be a verb ‘to be’ that looks as if it functions in the same way as ‘to eat’ and ‘to drink’, and as long as we still have the adjectives ‘identical’, ‘true’, ‘false’, ‘possible’, as long as we continue to talk of river of time, of an expanse of space, etc. etc., people will keep stumbling over the same puzzling difficulties and find themselves staring at something which no explanation seems capable of clearing up. And what’s more, this satisfies a longing for the transcendent, because in so far as people think they can see the “ limits of human understanding”, they believe of course that they can see beyond these.”

:fire: :100: :up:



As Banno pointed out (i.e. remembering his Wittgenstein), meaning is use: its a simple principle, but it is really useful to remember when tackling questions like this.

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. And although I'm not a linguist, I think its pretty safe to say that they do- there are usages which have persisted over relatively long periods of time (i.e. on the scale of human history), which is to say that there are linguistic communities that have maintained a particular usage for a given term/phrase/etc over a (occasionally quite long) period of time.

(on the other hand, at the risk of pointing out the obvious; meaning/use very often does change over time: different linguistic communities use similar terms/phrases/etc in different ways at different times at different places and for different purposes)

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

We're all out of our depth. :wink: I'm arguing that time amounts to culture and history. Think how US political culture was understood in 1935 and how it is understood today. That kind of thing. Think of the difference in tone and understanding between the movie Mr Smith Goes to Washington (1939) and the US TV version of House of Cards (2013). It's like different countries. Both films about faults with Washington, but the world of the first looks like a utopia compared to the latter.

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

A useful nuance.

A notable quote.

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

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(?)

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?

I would argue it is false. Meaning does not persist over time. Meaning is generated, so to speak, in an act of language, every time it is expressed or understood. The discrepancy in meaning between speaker and listener occurs because the meaning is generated at two or more different places, from two or more different perspectives, each furnished with their own levels of understanding. But meaning never breaches the skull; it doesn’t persist in the symbols; and it is gone the moment the effort to generate it is over.

The discrepancy in meaning between speaker and listener occurs because the meaning is generated at two or more different places, from two or more different perspectives, each furnished with their own levels of understanding. — NOS4A2

Understanding of what?

I'm not keen on assigning "...ism"s. Better to just look at the method adopted here to deal with the issue. So you ask "Does meaning persist over time?" and and I suggest looking a the problem by replacing meaning with use, so it becomes "Does language use persist over time?", making it apparent that the answer is dependent on what one is doing - the we do much the same sort of things with Plato as the Greeks and Romans did, but that there are some uses that have not persisted. The result is a more nuanced and detailed account of the history of language use.

Understanding of what? — Shawn

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.

So you ask "Does meaning persist over time?" and ↪busycuttingcrap and I suggest looking a the problem by replacing meaning with 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?

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

I suppose; if meaning is use, and use is a matter of social convention, then meaning is a matter of social convention. So, sure.

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

:up: Mysterious, magical, and invisible mental substances or entities: talk about a philosophical dead-end if there ever was one...

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.

Some language use is a direct breach of convention, so I'd say that social convention is also a matter of use....

Yep. One can relate that to 's love affair with rugged individualism. It's all in his head...

Instead of asking whether the “meaning” of an utterance persists over time or not I think we can simplify the situation by splitting “intended meaning” from “interpreted meaning”

The intended meaning persists (though maybe no one other than the first speaker knows what it is), the interpreted meaning doesn’t (varies from person to person and across time).

Some people seem to be talking about intended meaning and some people seem to be talking about interpreted meaning.

Some language use is a direct breach of convention, so I'd say that social convention is also a matter of use.... — Banno

Absolutely... And of course this is why, as you already pointed out, its not especially useful to invoke "isms" in such discussions, and especially when it comes to someone like W.

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

One thing to keep in mind is that language use is highly fluid and diverse, and so these sorts of definitions or analyses always get you into trouble because there will always be exceptions: as Banno pointed out, language use can also deviate from or violate social convention (this is often how linguistic change occurs, and there absolutely is such a thing as creativity in language use: people are constantly coming up with novel ways to use familiar terms/phrases/etc, some of which catch on, and some of which do not).

And so thinking or talking about these things in terms of "isms" can lead you astray, and are especially inadvisable when dealing with unique thinkers like Wittgenstein: categorization may conceal or obscure more than it clarifies.

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

We'll it seems to me that convention is a quantifier over timespans of recent past. Whereas, foundationalist interpretations are constant.

So, referencing @busycuttingcrap I believe it wouldn't be pertinent to label Wittgenstein with being a strict conventionalist even though he advocated it even in cases with formal languages such as mathematics, where it may be easier to spot where the stipulation became commonly adopted.

Just for sake of saying it, I think Kripke addresses this issue with the causal chain of reference and the initial baptizing of a name, as not depending on its status as a fact, pace early Wittgenstein.

I do like Davidson a lot though even if I didn't read him much yet.

Grice?

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

So that's not uncontroversial.

The intended meaning persists... — khaled

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.

:ok: