I would put forward that the problem is not a misunderstanding of the word, rather that the word is being used as a short form for more than just itself. Simple elaboration clarifies the misunderstanding. — PhilosophyRunner

Is this assuming nominalism? That there is no "justice," or "good," that people can point to that extends outside the frame of "my desires and preferences?" — Count Timothy von Icarus

I don't think that's what he meant. I think @PhilosophyRunner meant that often when people talk they assume that their words will be interpreted as they interpret them, from their point of view, with all of their assumptions. Sometimes people recognize the need to spell out those assumptions, but often they don't. Philosophy is obsessive about spelling out assumptions -- witness you here bringing up nominalism -- but ordinarily people aren't, hence @PhilosophyRunner's suggestion that understanding can be improved by what he calls "elaboration," which I take to mean people spelling out their assumptions, their point-of-view. That's all.

Of course, your examples suggest, @PhilosophyRunner, that people agree less than they appear to, that for instance people who all say they want "justice" might have in mind very different things, but there may be examples that go the other way, where people don't realize they want the same thing because they use different words for it.

If figured that might be the sense of it. But it seemed like a convenient on ramp for what I hope could be an answer for:

I am interested in figuring out a framework for people with different politics, values, etc to communicate effectively with each other

If there is, at least in principle, a way to tie values back to something outside the individual, then that provides a framework for understanding how value claims gets communicated without an infinite loop of translating mental state to mental state. Our sense of values did have to emerge out of something after all.

I don't think social norms work for this because they are too malleable, we need a more general principle that stands behind social norms, hence looking to how animals view fairness. But this might be overly speculative.

lol. I picked up the Routledge Contemporary Introduction to the Philosophy of Language recently because my knowledge of the field has a lot of gaps and it amazed me to see not one mention of C.S. Peirce, Saussure, or Eco, and almost none of Augustine. These four seem like maybe the top four places to go to look for a theory of meaning, but the silo walls are apparently quite strong. I was less surprised, but still saddened to see very little mention from the Continental tradition either.

I see nothing wrong with engaging in a specific type of inquiry or tradition, but you need to look outside the silo for ideas too, especially if you've been stuck in place for half a century.

I was not suggesting nominalism in particular. Rather I was suggesting that people in political discussions elaborate and explain their world views in detail, explicitly state their assumptions and question them. There would still be much disagreement, of course, but the disagreement would be specific to where the divide actually is, rather than a sledgehammer of a disagreement that seeks to simply smash the other side.

Today Peter and Mary will shout at each other "Your views are disgusting, I want justice" while tomorrow maybe they will have a debate about Peter's nominalism and Mary's moral realism which is their actual divide. A better world would be one where people disagree with scalpels and not with sledgehammers.

I also think you monkey example is an interesting one:

"A sense of fairness has long been considered purely human -- but animals also react with frustration when they are treated unequally by a person. For instance, a well-known video shows monkeys throwing the offered cucumber at their trainer when a conspecific receives sweet grapes as a reward for the same task."

All those monkeys share a sense of fairness, but disagreements may ensure.

Should the monkeys get equal food for equal tasks? Should they get their preferred food for equal tasks (even if that is different). Should the monkeys that are hungrier and/or malnourished get more food for the same task? Should weaker monkeys get the same food even if they do not complete the same task? Should older monkeys get the same food even if they are unable to complete the same task? etc.

Those may be discussion points that would ensure in a discussion around monkey politics. What are the worldviews underpinning different stances for those questions? What common ground can be found, and what specific disagreements are there? What assumptions underline those different stances?

However what we are more likely to see in political discussion today is a slogan by one side about fairness, and a counter slogan form the other side about fairness. And that is lamentable.

I don't think that's what he meant. I think PhilosophyRunner meant that often when people talk they assume that their words will be interpreted as they interpret them, from their point of view, with all of their assumptions. Sometimes people recognize the need to spell out those assumptions, but often they don't. Philosophy is obsessive about spelling out assumptions -- witness you here bringing up nominalism -- but ordinarily people aren't, hence @PhilosophyRunner's suggestion that understanding can be improved by what he calls "elaboration," which I take to mean people spelling out their assumptions, their point-of-view. That's all. — Srap Tasmaner

Yes that's exactly what I mean (in a thread about meaning).

Try peace and prosperity. — Vera Mont

Absolutely, that would be great.

But which comes first? Peace and prosperity or better communication? I don't see peace and prosperity if people struggle to communicate with each other.

If there is, at least in principle, a way to tie values back to something outside the individual, — Count Timothy von Icarus

That might be reinventing the wheel, if language is outside the individual in some sense, even if it's not outside all individuals in the aggregate, outside at least in the sense of being explicitly a technology of cooperation. And then there's @Isaac's narratives, which serve multiple purposes as language does.

then that provides a framework — Count Timothy von Icarus

This might be a mistake, looking for a framework. It could be we have many sorts of conversations and they have different sources and structures. I care about my kids and I care about democracy -- is that the same thing just because "care" is in both descriptions? Do we talk about these the same way?

understanding how value claims gets communicated without an infinite loop of translating mental state to mental state — Count Timothy von Icarus

Same problem we have everywhere, and I don't know how to solve it. is a persuasive statement of the view, and much as I'd like to, I don't know how to get around it, and I'm not willing just to reject it by fiat.

When I come up with a solution, the forum will be the first to know.

Our sense of values did have to emerge out of something after all. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, and I don't see a better candidate for rock bottom than biology. I think everything goes back to being a living organism, first of all, and being whatever sorts of living organisms we are, which is to start with whatever we were crafted to be by evolution.

I've had some sympathy for the sort of emotive account you can get from Hume and Smith. (The moral sentiments.) I see all sorts of material to work with in the theory of cooperation, from Axelrod to Grice, which I think we can also assume has a biological basis.

My gut instinct (heh) is that we are not that different from the first Homo sapiens, and that our biology is much closer to the surface than we realize.

I don't think social norms work for this because they are too malleable, we need a more general principle that stands behind social norms, hence looking to how animals view fairness. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Obviously I think this is exactly the right approach.

When person A says "I want justice," they really mean "I want justice in line with my values and my worldview." When person B says "I want justice" they also mean the same. — PhilosophyRunner

That's kind of what I did say. They define the word according to their values. In most people's minds, justice has roughly the same meaning in the abstract, but the value systems or world-views interpret the purpose and administration of justice differently. To a liberal progressive, it means judging an act in its social, economic and psychological context and allowing for mitigating circumstances. A religious conservative believes in punishment equal to or greater than the crime, regardless of other conditions; for a Native American, it means restoring harmony to the community; to some Christians, it means healing the rift an act has created and leaving judgment to God.

And they do seem to have an underlying logic, to be something necessary rather than contingent— a solution to the game of survival. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Of course that's true. But nature and logic are not central to most human belief-systems; some belief-systems are, in fact, hostile to nature and all that is natural to a human animal. In fact, some go so far as to deny evolution and many ignore all the obvious similarities between humans and other animals.

For instance, a well-known video shows monkeys throwing the offered cucumber at their trainer when a conspecific receives sweet grapes as a reward for the same task.

Up to that point, that's a sense of grievance. It only becomes a sense of justice when it's reciprocal. Did the unfairly rewarded monkeys throw the grapes at the trainer because the other group got cucumber? In my world-view, "fair" means equitable and "justice" means a fair judgment of persons and acts, according to all available evidence. In some world-views, it would be unfair to give to a servant what is due to a master, or accord to a lesser ethnicity or gender the rights and freedoms of the dominant ethnicity or gender.

But back to language:

“Social justice,” though, is a much older idea. In 1861, John Stuart Mill described it as the principle that “society should treat all equally well who have deserved equally well of it.” A century later, Friedrich Hayek, the conservative economist, took a different view, calling social justice “the gravest threat” to the “values of a free civilization.”

Of course it does. But nature and logic are not central to most human belief-systems; some belief-systems are, in fact, hostile to nature and all that is natural to a human animal. In fact, some go so far as to deny evolution and any ignore all the obvious similarities between humans and other animals.

Logic and nature need not be explicitly central to systems of belief for them to underlie such systems. People might reject that they are a type of animal, or the products of natural selection, but that doesn't stop them from being so anymore than some ancient emperors' belief in their own godhood saved them from death. That is, if cause and effect are understandable in terms of logic, and the mind is the product of nature, the the development of "irrational," beliefs is, in its own way, rational.

Indeed, it makes perfect sense for living beings to have irrational beliefs because following through all the implications of the information we are exposed to is impossible with scarce computational resources. Computation is, in its own way, communication. To be fully aware of how one is thinking requires that you subject the initial computations to another round of analysis, and so on. Perfect self knowledge then requires infinite recursion. We do have some ability to analyze our own thinking, but it is necessarily finite.

What we care about is the "difference that makes a difference." Likewise, the amount of information we can take in from our enviornment is always limited because too much entropy destroys an organism. Imagine if we tried to encode all the entropy in the microstates of the air around us? We'd have to somehow embody the chaos therein. Extremely lossy compression, and a sensory systems that mines incoming data for relevance while discarding most of what comes in, both seem essential for our perceptual system. I imagine that the same logic is part of what causes so many headaches for us re communication, we have to use heuristics to glean meaning in a time effective way.

E.g., I can read Rumi, Chaucer, Aeschylus, or Paul's letters again and again and come away with new levels of meaning, great depths lie there, but this takes time and resources.

But, just as true is the fact that knowledge is power. Genomes work by correctly encoding information about the enviornment. Technology wins wars and technology requires knowing how the world works. So being has this strange property where it has spawned life forms who can understand it very poorly but who also seem inexorably drawn on to plumb its depths in a sort of recursive, fractally recurring process of being coming to know itself. Downright trippy if you ask me. And a big role of communication is simply to further this ability to explore and encode information about the enviornment.

That only becomes a sense of justice when it's reciprocal. Did the unfairly rewarded monkeys throw the grapes at the trainer because the other group got cucumber?

The ones who benefit from injustice don't always speak out against it. From antiquity through the American Civil War, how many slave owners spoke out against the unfairness of slavery and yet owned slaves?

That is, if cause and effect are understandable in terms of logic, and the mind is the product of nature, the the development of "irrational," beliefs is, in its own way, rational. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Okay, then. How does that rational irrationality relate to the meaning of words?

The ones who benefit from injustice don't always speak out against it. From antiquity through the American Civil War, how many slave owners spoke out against the unfairness of slavery and yet owned slaves? — Count Timothy von Icarus

A few - just the ones with a stronger affinity to justice than to self-interest - i.e. the ones who both recognized and admitted an injustice. Of course, the next logical step would be to free their own slaves and campaign against the institution, but even fewer people have that much resolve.

Okay, then. How does that rational irrationality relate to the meaning of words?

At the most basic level, if computational theory of mind is correct, then the logic of information dictates how language can convey meaning. That doesn't mean language is reducible to quantitative theories of information, but it means that they can give us a very basic starting point for understanding communications. When dealing with emergent phenomena, it helps to know what they emerge from.

In any event, I was thinking about value statements in particular with my original post. These seem particularly tricky because of the is-ought gap. That's why the logic behind seemingly inherently subjective concepts is important, it allows us to ground them in facts. Of course "x feels y," can be an objective fact IMO, but it's a fairly inaccessible one in many ways, the sort of fact it is hard to verify or quantify the way we would like.

That might be reinventing the wheel, if language is outside the individual in some sense, even if it's not outside all individuals in the aggregate, outside at least in the sense of being explicitly a technology of cooperation. And then there's @Isaac's narratives, which serve multiple purposes as language does.

Good point. I was getting a little far afield. I think such a grounding is also important for resolving the is-ought gap in the manner of Honneth, etc. but that isn't necessarily key in understanding language in general. Although, it seem helpful for understanding value claims, it might be more helpful for making them, which I have prehaps conflated a bit.

This might be a mistake, looking for a framework. It could be we have many sorts of conversations and they have different sources and structures. I care about my kids and I care about democracy -- is that the same thing just because "care" is in both descriptions? Do we talk about these the same way?

I agree. See:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/826773

IMO, the challenge is too find more general principles underscoring processes without trying to reduce different processes into one thing just to get a theory that is comprehensive. It's the difference between trying to squeeze things into a box and trying to find a box that easily holds everything you need. It's easier said than done, because finding a new box and squeezing things that don't fit into an old one are easy to mistake for one another when it comes to theorizing.

As for the referenced post:

Nowhere in the above definition is the world, as we outsiders understand it, referred to by the agent's beliefs, for the agent's beliefs are understood purely in terms of the agent's mental functioning and stimulus responses. It should also be understood that from the point of view of the agent, his observation history is his "external world".

This is fine as a definition. But the "external world," as an external world still shows up in such a description. The external world is posited as part of agent's observational history, and posited as something which the agent believes to be distinct from the observational history that contains said description— an external referent. That is, we can say "there is nothing outside the text," but the text might very well say otherwise.

This assumes the agent is self conscious of course, i.e., that they are aware, through recursive self analysis, that their observational history is different from the world. But obviously agents can have the belief that the world of appearances, their observational history, is not the "real world" (Plato), and they can even believe that such a real world exists but that they can never access it (some interpretations of Kant).

An agent that differentiates between "the tree is in front of me," and "this is my view of the tree; others to my left and right have different views, and none is privilege vis-á-vis the "truth" of the tree," has moved past this description even if:

if an onlooker were to possess perfect knowledge of the agent's mentation, then as far as that onlooker is concerned, the state of the external world would be irrelevant with regards to understanding what the agent believes.

is still the case. However, I would reject the above statement unless we are talking purely abstract models. Understanding how a phenomena occurs, in this case belief formation, requires understanding what causes it. If we only understand the observational history, we can't understand how the beliefs are actually formed for the same reason that an eye can't see itself and we can't do psychology and neuroscience just by reviewing our thoughts. E.g., neuroscientists don't just scan brains, they expose people to controlled stimuli as they scan the brain; you'd get nowhere with just one half of the equation. Plus, if we accept extended minds, etc. it's unclear where to draw the line for locating an agents' beliefs in the real world.

No finite agent can perfectly encode how it comes to all its beliefs; the observational history must have gaps. If I have a meta eye that captures every detail of how my eye works then I need a meta meta eye to capture all the details of how the meta eye works, and so on. If an external observer has perfect information about an agent's observations, they still won't know everything they could know about how the agent's beliefs have developed without reference to the external world.

Self-conscious life is not naturally at one with itself. As self-conscious life actualizes its originally animal powers, it establishes a distinction between itself and its animal powers. Whatever self-conscious life is at any given point—a perceiver, a theorist, an individual outfi tted with this or that set of dispositions—it is capable of attaching the “I think” to that status and submitting it to assessment...

The abstract meaning of “consciousness”—as a distinction between awareness of an object and independently existing objects themselves— involved the agent’s awareness of himself as not merely occupying a position in the world but as occupying a position in that world.

Pinkhard - Hegel's Naturalism

When dealing with emergent phenomena, it helps to know what they emerge from. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Language has already emerged. We have a pretty good idea where it came from and how it developed over time. We have a pretty good reconstruction of the growth and mutation of religious beliefs. We can observe how the latter distorts the former. We are already where we are, not at the dawn of time, or the differentiation of hominids or the introduction of supernatural ideation and heiratic usage.
Why go back to the making of the first wheel to figure out why your car malfunctions?

I don't think that analogy fits. We're talking about how to understand how language works philosophically, something like: "how does language convey meaning." The car analogy would be apt if the problem was something like: "why can't x understand me when I say y and how do I make them understand?"

The philosophical view is more like the question: "how does my car work?" And yes, for that question, chemistry, the history of automobile development, mechanics, thermodynamics, etc. are all relevant parts of a complete explanation.

Humans have sex, eat, breathe, blind, drink, etc. Presumably we learn something about how and why we do these things from animal studies, else I don't know why scientists spend so much time getting animals high on drugs, neuroscientists work so much with mice, etc.

I don't think that analogy fits. We're talking about how to understand how language works philosophically, something like: "how does language convey meaning." — Count Timothy von Icarus

I'm not. I'm talking about how language is altered, adapted, specialized and perverted over time.

"why can't x understand me when I say y and how do I make them understand?" — Count Timothy von Icarus

That was certainly one of the questions.

The philosophical view is more like the question: "how does my car work?" And yes, for that question, chemistry, the history of automobile development, mechanics, thermodynamics, etc. are all relevant parts of a complete explanation. — Count Timothy von Icarus

When I take my car to a garage, I never ask the mechanic any questions about chemistry or history. At $60/hour, I couldn't afford to, even I were confident that he knows those things. All i need him to know is how this particular engine operates, why it doesn't, and how to rectify the issue.

I'm talking about how language is altered, adapted, specialized and perverted over time.

Something that is very often described in information theoretic terms using a theory that was started by an electrical engineer and furthered mostly by computer scientists and mathematicians. Or it is often explained in terms of natural selection, a theory created by a biologist, but now widely applied across a host of subjects, including language evolution, both on the grand scale and in terms of changes in slang.

When I take my car to a garage, I never ask the mechanic any questions about chemistry or history. At $60/hour, I couldn't afford to, even I were confident that he knows those things. All i need him to know is how this particular engine operates, why it doesn't, and how to rectify the issue.

I'm not saying you need to unpack all the details of friction to be able to fix brakes, but having a rough idea of it helps. I wouldn't trust a mechanic who can't tell me why bald tires are no good.

Likewise, to understand language getting a PhD in biology is probably not your best bet, but reading some biology? Yeah, that might help. This is why linguists work with cognitive scientists, biologists, doctors, neuroscientists and why all scientists work with pure mathematicians, philosophers, and logicians from time to time (more often during paradigm shifts).

Another way to think of this via the distinction between proximate and ultimate questions in the philosophy of biology.

Proximate questions ask "how?"How do words convey meaning? How do children learn language so intuitively? How do salmon find their way home to spawn each year?

Ultimate questions ask "why?" Why do we use language? Why did we develop the capacity for language? Why do salmon bother expending so much energy to return to their original homes to mate?

Biologists focus on both because the answer for one often helps unpack the answers for others.

This is why linguists work with cognitive scientists, biologists, doctors, neuroscientists and why all scientists work with pure mathematicians, philosophers, and logicians from time to time (more often during paradigm shifts). — Count Timothy von Icarus

Well, that's fine for PhD work; it seems a little over the top for a simple conversation.

In most cases, though, I don't think it's the disagreement itself that alters the meaning of language, but rather the leaders and would-be leaders of a faction, who deliberately distort and misrepresent ideas in order to manipulate their followers. — Vera Mont

The desire to believe their faction's version of reality. The minions are less interested in accurate information than in reassurance and the promise of being made great again - whether they ever had been anything but puny or not. — Vera Mont

On the contrary! Jingo gives them a much louder, more persuasive collective voice than their individual intellect ever could have. Yelling slogans makes people feel strong. — Vera Mont

So in this picture we have a common sense of meaning which is distorted by desire, of a kind -- but the desire is stoked by leaders who know how to speak to people and people who like to be spoken to in a symbiotic relationship of belief-maintenance which in turn has a positive feedback loop from it being an empowering experience -- a place in the world, a social network, power, and a righteous cause all wrapped into one (though with enough moral vagaries that many are dis-affected and simply don't participate).

And we have two camps with that set of motivations disagreeing with one another on the correct way to proceed on... well, lots of things. At base, though, it seems your picture says that it's a conflict of desires to believe such and such means such and such because believing that the words mean this or that is what reassures people of their particular faction's version of reality.

And we have two camps with that set of motivations disagreeing with one another on the correct way to proceed on... well, lots of things. — Moliere

That's the picture in many countries today. But sometimes, it has been monolithic - like the suasion of the RCC in medieval Europe. Other times and places, there may be multiple parties representing interest groups or opinions, and there still be civil discourse in a single language. I see anxiety-level as the main determinant of extreme divergence and distortion. ("Fear is the mind-killer.")

I am interested in figuring out a framework for people with different politics, values, etc to communicate effectively with each other, and I see this as one of the biggest stumbling blocks. — PhilosophyRunner

A lot of misunderstanding can simply be solved by elaboration. One thing I like about this forum is the elaboration, it certainly helps healthy discussions. — PhilosophyRunner

In order to understand others you have to put yourself in their shoes. See what they see out of their skull holes. Then you hook into their frame of reference and the meaning of their utterances will be obvious.

If a person has a very rigid sense of identity, they can't take up residence in other people's positions. Or maybe they've judged the other to be evil or what not. Then they don't want to be tainted.

This doesn't undermine the idea that meaning is first shared and after that potentially private. It just means sometimes we aren't communicating. We're just talking at each other.

-- the wisdom of Asperger's. — frank

Which is all to say, I think we have good grounds for thinking justice can refer to both our individual sense of justice, social norms, OR a higher form of justice that lies implicit within the logic of being. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I'm adding you at the end @Srap Tasmaner because it seems like you're part of this thread of thought in mentioning limitations to some of the suggestions above while gesturing towards the biological as a kind of rock bottom for understanding meaning which is where you and I probably diverge the most, so maybe we'll find something here to connect on.

So the problem of meaning, in scope, is the problem of misunderstanding. We frequently understand one another, and frequently don't, and the latter has become more apparent over time -- or perhaps we have actually lost some ability to understand one another too.

I'd call your solution @PhilosophyRunner the philosopher's solution par excellence -- if the people are ignorant of what some other person means then clearly they'll misunderstand, and elaboration is a way of filling in the gaps of that ignorance. And frequently this will actually be the case, that someone has an actively false notion about some other person's belief or expression that needs only be addressed and corrected, and the misunderstanding disappears.

But @frank points out that sometimes it's not a matter of simple ignorance and elaboration. Sometimes we misunderstand because we're simply not able to see what someone else sees, to hook into their frame of reference, for instance if someone has a rigid sense of identity (to imagine that I might be elsewise is to not be me, so I won't imagine it). Basically the meaning is public, in the PLA sense, but there's more to the problem of misunderstanding than what elaboration will address.

Which is where I thought @Count Timothy von Icarus's conclusion shored up some difficulties -- in the appeal to values outside of ourselves, or a notion of justice, or social norms. Something aside from the basic meaning of the words, and something aside from the identities which are in conflict.

What I think I'd resist with respect to biology is that such explanations don't operate on the same level as these virtues which are solutions to the problem of misunderstanding meaning. From the biological perspective we'd say that misunderstanding is clearly not selected for or against, given how common both are. The evolutionary bar is incredibly low to jump over for any existing species, unsurprisingly -- and given the diversity of lifeforms on our own planet to these pressures it's clear that there are many social forms from the gregarious to the individualistic that clear the bar of evolutionary pressure.

In addition it's worthwhile to point out that the final step in evolution is extinction. From the descriptive angle "survival" isn't even enough, because eventually all species will die. It's not survival as much as species-wide fecundity that's important. What's important about this is that insofar that we're able to take care of our children such that they are able to reproduce we've officially cleared the evolutionary hurdle.

And we've done that not just with different languages, but if we go far back enough then we did it without any language whatsoever -- or, at least, that's how the story goes.

In this way of looking language is just kind of an accident that happened along the way, that came along "for free" but had no purpose at the level of a general description of species-being or speciation.

So the problem of meaning, in scope, is the problem of misunderstanding. We frequently understand one another, and frequently don't, and the latter has become more apparent over time -- or perhaps we have actually lost some ability to understand one another too. — Moliere

It would probably help if you gave a worked example. Show us an exchange that you would characterize as people misunderstanding each other, and why you would call it misunderstanding rather than something else.

In passing, I'll note that people often feel the impulse to reduce misunderstanding to (unrecognized or unacknowledged) disagreement, and disagreement to (unrecognized or unacknowledged) misunderstanding. There might be a problem with that.

And we've done that not just with different languages, but if we go far back enough then we did it without any language whatsoever -- or, at least, that's how the story goes. — Moliere

That story is inaccurate. "We" did nothing. A very long line of mammals before us, birds and reptiles before them, elaborated systems of communication that we, in our superstitious arrogance, didn't take into consideration when contemplating the origins of our language. Much older species have used vocal cues as warnings, threats, alarms, greetings, indications of mood, expressions of satisfaction, pleasure, anger, sorrow, pain, identification or solidarity. The more socially integrated a group of animals is, the better each individual's, especially those of the vulnerable young, chances of survival. The more precise and comprehensive its means of communication, the better that group's social integration and the more efficiently it can coordinate individual efforts.

In this way of looking language is just kind of an accident that happened along the way, that came along "for free" but had no purpose at the level of a general description of species-being or speciation. — Moliere

Neither. Language evolved along with the brain capacity of hominids, for the purpose of uniting and organizing social units and coordinating their individual efforts in defense, food-acquisition, evading predators and rearing the young.

It would probably help if you gave a worked example. Show us an exchange that you would characterize as people misunderstanding each other, and why you would call it misunderstanding rather than something else. — Srap Tasmaner

Let's take "socialism" -- I'm not sure I could write a dialogue demonstrating, but maybe our experiences with this word could suffice?

What does "socialism" mean?

There's more than one definition that people would offer, even among those who'd say they are socialists.

And there's a strange mixture of misunderstanding and half-understanding and pop-understanding along with more precise understandings of the meaning of socialism.

My thought on the mechanisms of misunderstanding: in a conversation where languages are shared I think it's possible to shore up misunderstanding insofar as there's sufficient trust or charity among the participants. So anything that decreases our desire to offer either would explain misunderstandings of the sort where we both share a language but have that strange feeling that we're not speaking the same language.

Or do you want something more concrete? I started flipping through the news, and then starting thinking back through labor history but then had this thought here. Good call on asking for something concrete, though.

In passing, I'll note that people often feel the impulse to reduce misunderstanding to (unrecognized or unacknowledged) disagreement, and disagreement to (unrecognized or unacknowledged) misunderstanding. There might be a problem with that. — Srap Tasmaner

One thing I've noticed is something like what you say here: there's an important step in a discussion where you have to realize that you understand one another just fine. What you can't do is agree.

But then there's another misunderstanding from that. Just because we don't agree that doesn't mean that's the end of a discussion. There's something fruitful in disagreement. And usually there's more to be said or thought about.

That story is inaccurate. "We" did nothing. A very long line of mammals before us, birds and reptiles before them, elaborated systems of communication that we, in our superstitious arrogance, didn't take into consideration when contemplating the origins of our language. Much older species have used vocal cues as warnings, threats, alarms, greetings, indications of mood, expressions of satisfaction, pleasure, anger, sorrow, pain, identification or solidarity. The more socially integrated a group of animals is, the better each individual's, especially those of the vulnerable young, chances of survival. The more precise and comprehensive its means of communication, the better that group's social integration and the more efficiently it can coordinate individual efforts. — Vera Mont

Well, I did nothing, that's for sure. And there is no "we" in the sense of a species-across-time, so I'd go that far. If the biological story is accurate then there's not really a hard distinction to be made between species, so it will be a Sorites Paradox if we try to draw a hard distinction.

Even though we share meaning with creatures and are interconnected to the life around us it seems like, say, our ability to compute sums with language is different. And humans can speak like other animals do -- like the mating lures we've created for birds to watch them. Language, in this symbolic sense that allows us to speak as other animals and compute sums, doesn't really seem to take hold with other species very well. To some varying degrees, yes, but it's not the same as what's accomplished by even children.

Which isn't to say we're over and above or somehow separate from nature or other animals. It's just that this is one way in which it seems there's difference that isn't accounted for by animal communication alone. At least, not to me. Rather I'd say the reason we're able to communicate is because we're able to construct meaningful utterances.

Language evolved along with the brain capacity of hominids, for the purpose of uniting and organizing social units and coordinating their individual efforts in defense, food-acquisition, evading predators and rearing the young. — Vera Mont

How do you know?

How do you know? — Moliere

In the daytime, I watch bluejays, crows, chipmunks, cats, dogs, human children and raccoons - they do come out sometimes in the middle of the afternoon, but are communicative only after sunset. At night, I watch documentaries and read books.

https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1992-98032-001
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-642-02624-9_2
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0963721420979580

This article is part of the theme issue ‘What can animal communication teach us about human language?’

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rstb.2018.0405

I'm interested in anthropology, cognition and language.

Have you come across anything in your reading to suggest that other animals sometimes misunderstand each other?

No, I don't think I have. I know it happens, from domestic interactions I've observed, but I don't believe it shows up much in the literature, because it's so difficult to document objectively. I know it happens only because I'm familiar with the participants and their relationships. I'm reasonably sure that researchers who work closely with other species also understand their individual peculiarities, but that's very hard to translate into scientific language.
This is a characteristic and chronic problem with communication: how to transfer one kind of understanding to a different form of expression and retain credibility.

I know it happens, from domestic interactions I've observed — Vera Mont

Could you give an example?

I'll try. Like I said, it's hard to explain.
The feral cats on back porch (a colony of 7-11 at any given time) have complicated relationships. The two indoor cats have a fairly simple relationship: the small neutered female is a bit tom-cat phobic, because of harassment in her pre-domestic adolescence. The big neutered male is mostly placid, but can be a bit of a bully when he's in a bad mood; she knows to stay clear of him then. The third domestic cat, another neutered male, spends more time outside with his native people than in here with us. So his manners are kind of rustic.
The outside cats get fed in bowls scattered all along the porch and they go back and forth, displacing one another, sharing, switching bowls: mealtimes are constant motion. D2 (aka Brown Cat) is often part of that food-shuffle. Inside, each cat has a separate feeding place: Scruffy's bowl is next to the kibble; D2's is next to the water; Sammy's is up on the counter.
But they don't necessarily eat on schedule.
D2 may come in and be the only one in the laundry room. He starts eating the first food he comes to, like they do outside. But that's Scruffy's dish. If Scruffy happens by just then, he takes this as an affront to his status; it could be a challenge. He doesn't just shove his larger head into the bowl, forcing the other one aside, as the outside cats assert seniority; he makes an issue of it. He huffs, flattens his ears and utters that low throaty mwaaa sound.
D2 turns to face him but doesn't raise his hackles or hiss; he's just like "What??" But he backs off to a safe distance; there is no confrontation. After a cautious pause, Scruffy approaches his bowl, sniffs at it and walks away on stiff legs. Property secured; status confirmed. D2 sits, licks his paws, cleans the backs of his ears ("wonder what his problem is...") and resumes eating.