Good point. But the meaning of length itself does not come from using an arbitrary standard, like a stick, or someone's foot. Length is innate to us, like time and space. We don't create the meaning for those things.

My argument is that meaning and language games are built up from fundamental categories of thought that have to exist, or there is no language. Sure, a stick acquires the meaning of standard length by it's use, but length itself does not.

Therefore, meaning can't ONLY be use. — Marchesk

But notice we don't usually ask what a concept means. If we do, we're talking about its implications, not meaning as in: "What does that hieroglyph mean?"

My understanding is that Witt noticed that rule-following can't account for the entirety of communication because there has to be some source of normativity outside the system of rules. He looked to human interaction to find that source. You're saying we should look inward to find it.

Yes, but it is a somewhat different issue that has to do with that quote from Plato. — Fafner

OK. Cool, thanks.

Yes we can say that "a means b" for an organism if he usually expects b when he sees a, but this is not "meaning" in the symbolic sense like the words of a language (and that was the point I wanted to make).

My understanding is that Witt noticed that rule-following can't account for the entirety of communication because there has to be some source of normativity outside the system of rules. He looked to human interaction to find that source. — Mongrel

I would dispute this interpretation.

My understanding is that Witt noticed that rule-following can't account for the entirety of communication because there has to be some source of normativity outside the system of rules. He looked to human interaction to find that source. You're saying we should look inward to find it. — Mongrel

Both, of course. Human interaction accounts for how we assign meaning. Cognition accounts for how we have concepts at all, and why human language differs from animal signalling.

Well, it's more complicated than that, because human interaction can result in combining concepts and coming up with new metaphors and relations and what not. So yeah, he's right about that.

But the reason humans can do that is cognitive, not behavioral or social. And for humans to do that, there has to be a conceptual apparatus. So along the lines of what Chomsky argued.

But the reason humans can do that is cognitive, not behavioral or social. And for humans to do that, there has to be a conceptual apparatus. So along the lines of what Chomsky argued. — Marchesk

Maybe your buddy here would be Quine, not Chomsky. Quine laid out an impressive argument indicating that the ability to apply logic to new situations has to be apriori know-how.

BTW.. do you know much about Carnap?

I would dispute this interpretation. — Fafner

Really? I gleaned it from Soames (which is about as far as my interest in Witt has ever taken me... just historical.) What do you think is wrong about it?

I have not read Carnap. Summary of his view on this topic?

Quine laid out an impressive argument indicating that the ability to apply logic to new situations has to be apriori know-how. — Mongrel

Where did he say this?

Um... I've been thinking about reading some Carnap, that's why I asked. It was kind of a random question. :)

Do you mean where can you find the argument?

Really? I gleaned it from Soames — Mongrel

Well that explains it, lol

The first point is that the issue of communication is peripheral at best with respect to the rule-following problem. Secondly, he didn't think that there is anything external that you can add to any rule in order to make it work (like human interaction), rather his point is that we have to radically rethink our philosophical preconceptions about what rules or meaning must be like (such as a picture of a rule that determines its own application all in advance and in a vacuum). So his idea is that once we learn how to look at rules in the right sort of way (that is, not distorted by some philosophical requirements) the ordinary phenomena of rule-following will cease to appear as something mysterious that stands in need for a philosophical explanation (my reading here is mainly due to Cora Diamond and John McDowell - if you wish to read more on this topic).

Yes, I mean what is your source, because it sounds to me like a very un-Quinean thing to say.

So his idea is that once we learn how to look at rules in the right sort of way — Fafner

What way is that?

Actually I changed my mind while I was cutting the grass. You were absolutely right.

It occurred to me that we could just define the length of the standard meter as 1, and make the definition of "length of an object" by cases (1 if you're the standard meter, otherwise the result you get when comparing to the standard meter). And I thought to myself, as long as you're okay saying there's this one object that has its length differently, then this is a pretty natural thing to do for standards like this ... because that's exactly what we already did. Duh.

The standard meter in Paris, when LW wrote, was one meter long by definition. You can't show that it's one meter by measuring, but you can show it by providing evidence that this particular object is the standard meter.

What way is that? — Mongrel

As I said, without laying down philosophical requirements that say how things must be for rules to be possible.

OK. It sounds like you're saying that once you master the skill of turning your brain off, you'll understand that rule following doesn't require an explanation.

OK. It sounds like you're saying that once you master the skill of turning your brain off, you'll understand that rule following doesn't require an explanation. — Mongrel

On the contrary, he urges his reader to think hard about all sorts of different cases and examples of the sort that usually are ignored in philosophy, which he thinks is the only way to clarify philosophical difficulties. So he says that actually philosophy is the place where we turn our brains off - we have in mind simplistic pictures of how things should be in reality, but we fail to think about the details of the application of these pictures to reality.

You really should read the book though, I can't really summarize it for you. One must go through the text by himself to really see the force of his reasoning.

OK. The argument I mentioned is in Truth by Convention. Peace out:)

OK. The argument I mentioned is in Truth by Convention. Peace out:) — Mongrel

OK I see what you mean, but I wouldn't put the point he is making in terms of apriori knowledge, because he wants to argue in the essay only that definitions in some sense presuppose logic, and thus logic cannot be conventionally defined, but this is a weaker claim than saying it is "apriori knowledge" (he famously argued in his "Two Dogmas of Empricism" that even logic is not apriori, that even the rules of logic are not in principle immune from revision if some weird sort of experience comes along).

edit: I noticed now that you say "apriori know-how" and not simply "knowledge" (which by itself is fine ascribing to Quine), though I'm not sure what does "a priori" mean in this context.

Yeah but that claim haunted him the rest of his career, and in later works he gets closer and closer to saying you just never revise the laws of thought.

This is true, but I think that never in his career he was at ease with the idea of apriori knowledge (think about "epistemology naturalized" etc.).

I think if you look at the bigger picture, you'll find that Quine was pointing out pretty much the same thing Marchesk is in this very thread.

Sure, but that makes his fierce commitment to classical logic likewise a little uncomfortable for him.

Maybe, and that would be pretty interesting because people hate the sort of methodological behaviourism of LW but Quine is quite definitely an unabashed mid-century behaviorist.

Perhaps, but I read Quine through Wittgenstenian glasses 8-)

"Truth by Convention" is pretty early though, so maybe the behaviorism isn't fully formed yet. Been a while since I read it.

Yes. That can't be helped... that he was a behaviorist I mean.

Are Wittgenstein glasses sun glasses?

It depends on whom you ask...