Eh? (Use your words! As my mother used to say). — Noble Dust

Both.

This is what Davidson tried to bring out by translating natural languages into first order language. It didn't quite work. — Banno

But Davidson wants to treat language as purely extensional. We Fregeans have sense as well as reference.

Just nailing down the terminology. — Srap Tasmaner

Also, not to nitpick, but just in good faith, how accurately can we do this? Is this a deal-breaker? I could take the entire following paragraph that you wrote in your post that I just quoted and analyze the terminology, but could I nail down the terminology beyond a reasonable doubt? If we had to do this with every paragraph written and communicated, we wouldn't actually communicate anything.

Davidson wants to treat language as purely extensional. — Srap Tasmaner

That's one of the things that made it interesting. Perhaps we need a seperate thread on where Davidson went wrong.

We Fregeans have sense as well as reference. — Srap Tasmaner

Cool. But what is sense? How do we fill that out?

Both. — Banno

I appreciate your Wittgensteinian brevity, but your meaning would be more clear if you actually used more words. (Or should I say your "use"?)

(If I did, what is that? Is it a case of bad use, or incorrect meaning? :P ) — Noble Dust

Both. Bad use amounts to incorrect meaning.

Both. Bad use amounts to incorrect meaning. — Banno

So are you saying I specifically did that, or are you using my joke in that context to illustrate your point? Fine if so, but you'd need to elaborate further (use more words!).

I think it's clearest with an example: "2+2" and "4" both refer to the same object, 4, but have different senses. Thus "2+2=4" and "4=4" express different thoughts. Just as "2+2" and "4" have the same reference, so "2+2=4" and "4=4" have the same truth-value.

Also, not to nitpick, but just in good faith, how accurately can we do this? Is this a deal-breaker? I could take the entire following paragraph that you wrote in your post that I just quoted and analyze the terminology, but could I nail down the terminology beyond a reasonable doubt? If we had to do this with every paragraph written and communicated, we wouldn't actually communicate anything. — Noble Dust

I'm not clear about this. Are you talking about the impossibility of defining everything, or about some sort of indeterminacy?

I'm not clear about this. Are you talking about the impossibility of defining everything, or about some sort of indeterminacy? — Srap Tasmaner

Again, it was just a nit-pick about "nailing down terminology", and it may be tangential to the thread. But I was just questioning your admonishment that you were "just nailing down terminology". I'm saying that I don't think we can accurately do that in an exhaustive manner. I guess that's somewhat relevant to the thread topic, but I don't want to de-rail the thread.

Oh sure, I agree it can't be done. And I didn't mean at all to admonish you. I was going to reach for a more or less technical use of "reference," in which case it wouldn't be a synonym for "meaning," and just wanted to make it clear that's all I was doing. It would hardly be fair of me just to say, "That's not reference, you dunderhead!" and not say I mean something particular by the word "reference."

All good, I realize I didn't quite use the word "admonish" properly there, I was thinking of it in less critical terms. (ah, meaning! and ah, using words you have a sense of in your head, but they turn out to be not quite right! again, meaning...) I didn't at all think you were suggesting me to be a dunderhead, or whatever. All that being said, apparently we agree that "reference" and "meaning" aren't synonymous. I must have said something to suggest the contrary when I initially referenced "reference".

I'm more or less just defending Fregean orthodoxy these days until I'm convinced to stop.

There was a time when I was inclined to say that words never refer to things, but that people, by their utterances, refer to things. Only I think logic needs reference and doesn't need utterance, so I can't hand reference over to utterance.

I'm more or less just defending Fregean orthodoxy these days until I'm convinced to stop. — Srap Tasmaner

I'm admittedly very much an autodidact, and so I'm not familiar with Frege. Perhaps that contributes to the seemingly wide-spread confusion I tend to wreak on this forum...

There was a time when I was inclined to say that words never refer to things, but that people, by their utterances, refer to things. Only I think logic needs reference and doesn't need utterance, so I can't hand reference over to utterance. — Srap Tasmaner

Wait but what is "utterance"? Is it just verbally saying something?

There is a limit to how far I will explain my jokes.

So is that a philosophical argument?

But they also have the same extension. I don't see how your example works for you.

No.

Yeah, utterance is actually saying something, in a particular situation. Or at least that's how I use the word, and I think it's at least close to standard.

In general, you can mean something by what you say, and have it be different from what you literally say. Example I was cooking up: You and four other folks are heading for a life raft that will only safely hold four; when you point this out, one of the others points a gun at you and says, "Five minus one is four." Okay, the literal meaning of that is one thing, but what's meant by it is another. The literal meaning is what logic deals with; the other is pragmatics or something.

But they also have the same extension. I don't see how your example works for you. — Banno

Yeah, reference and extension on one side; sense and intension on the other.

That is, 2+2 is the very same thing as 4.

The argument would go, "when one learns that 2+2 is 4, one learns something". I'm not so sure. If one knows that 2+2 is, doesn't one already know what 4 is?

Exactly. It's why an equation can be informative. Remember that Frege came up with the whole sense/reference business to explain why saying "The morning star is the evening star" is different from saying "Venus is Venus." The first could be informative, but the second couldn't. That takes some explaining if reference is all that matters.

In general, you can mean something by what you say, and have it be different from what you literally say. — Srap Tasmaner

Ok, so utterance is intended meaning, right?

The literal meaning is what logic deals with; the other is pragmatics or something. — Srap Tasmaner

I would go so far as to say that the other meaning is poetic, in that it says more than the logical meaning could possibly say. Poetic meaning unveils further possibilities from the standard meaning of a logical proposition.

Sure. You could also say it's the stuff that logic can ignore, lovely though it may be, just as it ignores the difference between "and" and "but."

Unfortunately-- or fortunately, since I find this stuff interesting-- it's not perfectly simple to say what logic can ignore and what it can't. Indexicals (I, here, now, etc.) are hard to ignore. If a sentence is elliptical, so that some of it is understood from context, you have to drag in what was understood but not stated. It's still a distinction you have to make if there's to be any point to logic at all.

But all one has learned is a new use for the term "4".

That Phosphorus and Hesperus are the same is a better example for your purposes. But again, when we find out that Hesperus is Phosphorus, did we really find out something more than a novel use for the words "Hesperus" and "Phosphorus"?

That is, is sense any more than use?

Ok Banno...

Having read Austin's How To Do Things With Words, I readily agree with the notion that not all words refer. That is of no consequence to what's been set out thus far. However, it seems that you want to argue that not all meaning is based upon symbolism. That could get interesting.

I'll go with that. Could be fun.

Hmm... So then, can you offer an example which is exhausted by neither the semantic nor the foundational approach?

SO my argument might go more or less as previously stated:

Not all language is representation.
All symbolism is representation
Therefore not all language is symbolism.

Ah yes. I suspected something of the sort. Secondary premiss is false.