I don't see the relevance of the question. The reason people use words has nothing to do with how words come to mean. — StreetlightX

The reason people use words is to communicate. How they use the words is what they communicate. You have an idea you want to communicate and if you don't use the words just right, then you end up not communicating at all.

What reason would you use words at all if not to communicate their meaning as understood in the dictionary? — Harry Hindu

For one, to communicate meaning as not understood in the dictionary. (Which should be obvious.)

For example, many words were used in gang culture in a way that bore no resemblance to what you would have found in the dictionary (though dictionaries have since reported some of the more popular usages). One reason that arose was so that the speech would be impenetrable to outsiders, including law enforcement.

And indeed you can do that. Who would be stopping you? — Terrapin Station

I would be stopping myself because when I communicate, it is my intention that others understand me. If I just used any scribble to meaning anything then I wouldn't be communicating.

The reason people use words is to communicate. How they use the words is what they communicate. You have an idea you want to communicate and if you don't use the words just right, then you end up not communicating at all. — Harry Hindu

How would any of that amount to arguing against meaning being associated with usage?

I would be stopping myself because when I communicate, it is my intention that others understand me. If I just used any scribble to meaning anything then I wouldn't be communicating. — Harry Hindu

Sure, you could stop yourself, but if you wanted to use words in some idiosyncratic way that only you understand, you could do that, too.

The reason people use words is to communicate. How they use the words is what they communicate. You have an idea you want to communicate and if you don't use the words just right, then you end up not communicating at all. — Harry Hindu

Again, this is irrelevant to a thesis about how words come to mean. How words come to mean, and the motivations for their employment are two entirely different issues.

Sure, you could stop yourself, but if you wanted to use words in some idiosyncratic way that only you understand, you could do that, too. — Terrapin Station

But why would I do that? My point is that words are only for communicating with others. Why would I need to communicate an idea that isn't composed of words with words to myself? I would simply think it without any use of words.

Isn't he saying via experience? Via eating a number of bananas, you notice a correlation between the color and the ripeness. — Terrapin Station

But this doesn't make the color yellow itself into a symbol for ripeness. Suppose a monkey comes to expect a banana whenever it sees a yellow object. Would we say that when the monkey sees a yellow ball it believes that the ball is ripe? Or does it believe falsely that the ball is ripe banana? From the example alone it is simply not clear what is supposed to be represented by what.

But this doesn't make the color yellow itself into a symbol for ripeness. Suppose a monkey comes to expect a banana whenever it sees a yellow object. Would we say that when the monkey sees a yellow ball that it comes to believe that the ball is ripe? Or does it believe falsely that the ball is ripe banana? From the example alone it is simply not clear what is supposed to represent what. — Fafner

There is more to a banana that just it's color. It also has a shape that isn't the shape of a ball. It also has a particular texture. It's shape, texture and color is what defines it as a banana. We have different senses that allow us to make these distinctions between yellow balls and yellow bananas.

But this doesn't make the color yellow itself into a symbol for ripeness. — Fafner

Why would you be mentally bracketing the color yellow as if it's something independent? The idea is yellow bananas versus green or dark brown/black bananas. (Well and purple bananas etc. if something really weird is going on.)

Why would you be mentally bracketing the color yellow as if it's something independent? The idea is yellow bananas versus green or dark brown/black bananas. — Terrapin Station

I'm afraid I don't get your point.

Again, this is irrelevant to a thesis about how words come to mean. How words come to mean, and how those meanings are employed, are two entirely different issues. — StreetlightX

Ridiculous. If meaning is use, then how words come to mean anything is how they are employed. People change the usage of words, therefore their meaning, and that word now has come to mean something else (like slang) and then used by others in that way.

I'm afraid I don't get your point. — Fafner

You responded as if we were saying something about the color yellow (in general, regardless of where it occurs) rather than saying something about yellow bananas.

Except meaning is use in a language game. A language-game may or may not be 'actual' (may not be actively employed by a community of speakers, or any speaker in particular), so long as, in principle, one can 'know how to go on' after being inculcated into the game. It is a question of grammar ("Essence is expressed in grammar … Grammar tells what kind of object anything is" - PI §371, §373) This is why, btw, any casting of Wittgenstein is a behaviouralist is wrong.

So by "language game" he meant a method of representation?

So by "language game" he meant a method of representation? — Mongrel

Just to interpolate, para 7 of the PI in part reads:

We can also think of the whole process of using words in (2) [ a four-word language] as one of those games by means of which children learn their native language. I will call these games 'language-games' and will sometimes speak of a primitive language as a language-game.

And the processes of naming the stones and of repeating words after someone might also be called language-games. Think of certain uses that are made of words in games like ring-a-ring-roses.

I shall also call the whole, consisting of language and the activities into which it is woven, a 'language-game'. — Witt

You responded as if we were saying something about the color yellow (in general, regardless of where it occurs) rather than saying something about yellow bananas. — Terrapin Station

OK, but I don't think that it really matters whether we talk about yellow as a color, or yellow bananas in particular. I can change my example: suppose a monkey encounters a yellow banana which happens to be rotten, should we say that the monkey infers that he made a mistake about the banana being ripe, or maybe it had the a disjunctive concept that a yellow banana represents either being ripe or rotten? (in which case it didn't made a mistake). Is there a way to decide what the monkey "means" just by knowing its causal history of interactions with bananas?

Right. I've read that. And that language does fit nicely with a behaviorist's outlook (whether Witt was a behaviorist or not).

However, in the quote Fafner put up, "our method of representation" seems to be mentioned as a way of understanding what we might make of "language game." That would go contrary to behaviorism. A crow, when expressing an alarm vocalization due to the arrival of a hawk, is not representing anything with its speech. Behaviorism sort of makes us out to be like birds.

There is more to a banana that just it's color. It also has a shape that isn't the shape of a ball. It also has a particular texture. It's shape, texture and color is what defines it as a banana. We have different senses that allow us to make these distinctions between yellow balls and yellow bananas. — Harry Hindu

Fine, but this is not sufficient to get meaning. Being able to discriminate between objects by their properties is not the same as representing them as being in this way or other. For something to symbolize something else there must exist the possibility of truth and falsehood (that is, of representing something correctly or incorrectly), and that could only make sense within a symbolic system (and again I'm not saying that it must be necessarily verbal).

So by "language game" he meant a method of representation? — Mongrel

No, 'representing' is only one kind of language game (in Wittgenstein's sense) but there could be many others. However if we talk about 'meaning' - in the sense of a word standing for a thing - then I think the question of representation is the central one (but of course language has many other functions other than to represent things).

(but of course language has many other functions other than to represent things) — Fafner

Of course. So in the quote you put up, by "our method of representation," he means the language game in play when we talk about fictional things. Where is the representation exactly?

Of course. So in the quote you put up, by "our method of representation," he means the language game in play when we talk about fictional things. Where is the representation exactly? — Mongrel

In the quote he talks about representing the length of things via the unit of meter (or colors by a color sample).

Right. Talk about meters is a means of representation. The language game in which we talk about meters is a means of representation. Right?

Right. Talk about meters is a means of representation. The language game in which we talk about meters is a means of representation. Right? — Mongrel

No, the means of representation is the physical meter stick itself, and W's point is that it can function as such (as "means of representation") only if it is used as a unit of measuring within a 'language game' of measuring things (e.g. where things are compared according to their length for various purposes etc.).

I see. I was tripping up on 'to say it exists is to say it's part of our language game.'

That seems to imply a distinction between the physical stick and the Parisian standard.

If meaning is use, then I can use the word "meaning" in a particular way, and that is what it means. — Harry Hindu

It's a curious thing. People not intimately familiar with Wittgenstein almost always interpret the slogan "meaning is use" as an endorsement of Humpty Dumpty:

‘And only one for birthday presents, you know. There’s glory for you!’
‘I don’t know what you mean by “glory,”’ Alice said.
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. ‘Of course you don’t—till I tell you. I meant “there’s a nice knock-down argument for you!”’
‘But “glory” doesn’t mean “a nice knock-down argument,”’ Alice objected.
‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.’
‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’
‘The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master—that’s all.’

But on the other hand, there's something a bit claustrophobic sometimes about LW's language-games. (2) is a dreary affair, isn't it? And Wittgensteinians (present company excluded, of course) have this way of calling people out for violating the rules of the language-game, or illicitly taking a word from the language-game it belongs to and passing it off as something else, etc. In short, treating the rules of the various language-games as prescriptive. Exactly the opposite of the casual anti-Wittgensteinian who dreads the chaos of Humpty-Dumptyism.

And then I think of a marvelous passage from Ryle about "The Bogy of Mechanism," where he describes a scientist unfamiliar with chess studying a game being played (with the players hidden from him) and figuring out the rules. When the players are revealed, "He commiserates with them upon their bondage. 'Every move that you make,' he says, 'is governed by unbreakable rules..." He explains that when he has figured out the rest of the rules, he will be able to predict their moves even better than he can now. Ryle then distinguishes, as is his wont, from a move being governed by the rules and being ordained by them.

Which brings us back to animal signaling, I should think.

If you are interested, when he talks about the existence of the simple elements, he criticizes a view expressed in a passage from Plato which he quoted in section 46: (it's a bit complicated topic)

46. What lies behind the idea that names really signify simples?--

Socrates says in the Theaetetus: "If I make no mistake, I have heard some people say this: there is no definition of the primary elements--so to speak--out of which we and everything else are composed; for everything that exists in its own right can only be named, no other determination is possible, neither that it is nor that it is not ... But what exists in its own right has to be ... named without any other determination. In consequence it is impossible to give an account of any primary element; for it, nothing is possible but the bare name; its name is all it has. But just as what consists of these primary elements is itself complex, so the names of the elements become descriptive language by being compounded together. For the essence of speech is the composition of names."

Both Russell's 'individuals' and my 'objects' (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus) were such primary elements.

I couldn't really care less about whether W. is a behaviorist or not. It's simply a matter of personal experience that I don't see myself as playing some game when I speak.

Is this entire discussion just a game of words? Is philosophy a language game? Maybe thats why philosophy doesn't produce anything useful - because it's just an artful game. Science, on the other hand, provides useful meanings through simple observations and categorizations of those observations. This entire discussion seems to be about some state-of-affairs - whether language is a game or not and that meaning is use or not, not simply a use of words. It seems to me that everything you can ever say or write is either just noise or scribbles or a reference to something else, like some state of reality.

It seems to me that "language is a game" and "meaning is use" are things a p-zombie would say. They don't have the inner experience of what words refer to - of having the intent to communicate something other than words by using words. It is my idea that isnt made up of words and my will to communicate that idea which exists prior to any use of words and it is this idea and the need to express it that causes me to speak or write. As the cause of my use of language, it is the meaning of the words I use. Intent and meaning go hand-in-hand.

"I say what I mean" is how we show someone there is an accurate representation between our words and the idea in our minds that we are expressing. What I'm saying and what I'm thinking aren't at odds. I'm not lying where lying is having an idea but using words to deflect another away from what you are thinking. In this case, you would not be saying what you mean. If meanings of words were how they are used, then how do you explain a lie? You would always mean what you say by simply using words.

Again, your objection simply isn't relevant. Whatever the 'cause' of your 'use of language', it does not bear upon a theory of how language comes to mean things. Even if it is granted that what you communicate is given by your 'intent', how you communicate it - that you have to follow certain grammatical strictures, that you have to use words, phrasings and expressions at least minimally familiar to others, that you have to follow certain temporalities of communication (e.g. subject-object-verb, in that order) - is radically shaped by the need to adhere to certain manners of speaking which are not given by your 'intent' nor 'will' nor 'feeling'. You have to, as it were, enter into a language that 'precedes' your intentions in order 'take-up' that language for your purposes, and you can only do so much with it before bending it out of shape. You're confusing the 'what' and the 'how' of language, and thinking that the former functions as an objection to the latter. But it doesn't. They are simply two separate issues. What you say is not 'wrong' per se, but irrelevant.

This is a typical response from one simply wants avoid the issue. It is a simple fact that if I didnt have an inner experience of non-words nor the intent to express them I'd never even get to the use of language. I can still attempt to communicate with another entity without either of us knowing the relationships between our sounds and gestures and the idea we are expressing. After all, we both exist in the same world and experience things in similar ways, so we are bound to reference the same things, just in different ways. It is the thing we are referencing that we are trying to get at, not how they are using gestures or the kinds of sounds they make.