And what makes it appropriate to use a sentence such as "it is raining" on certain circumstances and not some others, is not decided solely by what one intends. So I think that intention by itself is not a plausible explanation of linguistic meaning. — Fafner

Words are what we use to effect our intentions, that much is clear. What do we say about the meanings of words though? It doesn't seem right to say that we use the meanings of words to effect our intentions. We want to say that we use the particular words we do to effect our intentions because of what those words mean.

If our intention is to say, to utter, "It rained yesterday," we need only find the words "it," "rained," and "yesterday" in our lexicon and we're all set. If our intention is to mean, "It rained yesterday," we have more choices, because there's more than one way to say that.

Suppose it has not rained in a while; it finally rains one day and then again the next. A, on this second day, is still emotionally caught up in waiting for rain, and says to B, "Thank God it's finally raining." B could respond, "What was that yesterday? Snow?" and I would submit that what B means by that is, among other things, that it rained yesterday.

But suppose B did not want to mean anything else by what he said -- not "There's something wrong with you," for instance -- but only "It rained yesterday." Then it seems natural to say that "It rained yesterday" is the right thing to say when that is all you mean, because "It rained yesterday" means, in some special sense, "It rained yesterday." That special sense is something like "literally," because obviously just as there are many things you can say and mean "It rained yesterday," there are many things you can mean by saying "It rained yesterday."

When searching your lexicon for words you can use to mean something, it is the meaning rather than the shape of words that matters. Whether the words can be used to mean what you mean is what determines whether they are candidates for being used now by you. In many cases there will be a specially favored choice, because the words -- or, let's say, particular words arranged in a particular way to form a sentence -- mean what you mean. If you want to say something that means, "It rained yesterday," then you say, "It rained yesterday," because "It rained yesterday" means "It rained yesterday."

But we could also say that "It rained yesterday" means, literally, "It rained yesterday" in the following sense: it is what members of your speech community say when they want to say something that means "It rained yesterday," and only means that. It is how your speech community uses these words. It is what they mean by these words, and therefore it is what these words mean in your speech community.

On this account, the meanings of words are traceable to our meanings. But it is the convention of meaning y by uttering x within your speech community that makes x mean y, not your individual meaning y by uttering x on some occasion. If you are a member of this speech community and want to say something that means y, the simplest way to do that is to utter x, to follow the convention. (But also: you may have some options that are simply less popular than x, or you may find a new way of following other conventions to mean y without uttering x. Uttering x is just the simplest way to go both for you and for your hearer, who can also be expected to be familiar with x and how it is used.)

Of course there's a story to be told why certain words are appropriate for saying that it rained yesterday, and not some others, but I intended to remain neutral on that question. And I don't doubt that their 'conventional meaning' plays a very import role here (though Travis' argument shows that conventional meaning doesn't fix completely what words mean on any given occasion of use).

But still, I don't think that shifting the burden to communal conventions can tell you the whole story of how sentences can mean what they mean. What kind of facts make it the case that a given community uses certain words to mean X rather than Y?

Mm, the 'use' in 'meaning-as-use' has never referred to 'conventional use' but 'use in a language game' - and to be in a language game is to be not 'conventional', but to be 'conventializable' - to be, in principle, the kind of thing that can be used conventionally, even if it never, in fact, becomes conventially used. A word employed in a particular language game may be used once in a particular way, and for whatever, totally contingent reason never be used that way ever again by anyone else living or dead, and it would still fall under the rubric of 'meaning-as-use'.

But still, I don't think that shifting the burden to communal conventions can tell you the whole story of how sentences can mean what they mean. What kind of facts make it the case that a given community uses certain words to mean X rather than Y? — Fafner

Are you thinking of the context or occasion of utterance, the language-game being played, that sort of thing? I don't think I would have a problem with that at all. Above, I spoke of wanting to mean something - - but that's honestly pretty silly. It's only there to be distinguished from wanting just to utter a particular string of sounds. The intentions we actually want are intentions to do something that can be done linguistically. For that sort of thing, language-games are a pretty reasonable place to start.

Is that the sort of thing you had in mind?

I just wanted to pose an open question without trying to answer it :)

And I don't want to use any loaded terms like 'language-games', especially since many people here completely reject the Wittgensteinian framework (and anyway, the term itself requires a lot of explanation and unpacking to be of any use).

Agreed.

The sort of example Grice uses (and the above is just Grice lite) is my saying, "The truck is out front," because I believe the truck is out front, and I want you to believe that I believe that on the basis of my saying what I said, and I want you also to believe it, because I do, etc. It's notoriously torturous.

At any rate, yes, the next step is to look at the occasion of utterance, the context of the utterance, and so on. Do we agree on that?

I'm not really sure what you're saying here. If you thought I was offering an interpretation of Wittgenstein, then I could see you thinking I had botched it pretty badly. I wasn't offering a version of LW though; it was Grice and a bit of Lewis.

Sorry if this has been covered (I'm not up to reading all 28 pages of this thread), but Gordon Pennycook's work on Psuedo-profound bullshit seems to speak to the performative element of language in a way that is rarely dealt with in philosophy:

http://journal.sjdm.org/15/15923a/jdm15923a.pdf

In the case of this sort of bullshit, language seems to be indisputably "doing" rather than "meaning".

For fun (but it's also instructive), here's a link to Seb Pearce's "new age bullshit generator".

http://sebpearce.com/bullshit/

Mm, the 'use' in 'meaning-as-use' has never referred to 'conventional use' but 'use in a language game' — StreetlightX

Unique, unconventional language use happens, but for the most part, language games utilize convention.

Secondly, the concept of language-games points at the rule-governed character of language. This does not entail strict and definite systems of rules for each and every language-game, but points to the conventional nature of this sort of human activity. — SEP Wittgenstein

At any rate, yes, the next step is to look at the occasion of utterance, the context of the utterance, and so on. Do we agree on that? — Srap Tasmaner

Sure. But the challenge is not make it sound too anti-realistic or conventionalist. We want our sentences to have objective truth conditions at the end, don't we?

In my opinion, the right place to start from is actually Witt's early philosophy. If you take from the Tractatus the basic idea of the 'picture theory' (that is, of propositions having sense by virtue of being correlated with reality in a certain way), and you modify the details according to his later philosophy -- you can get something pretty interesting and promising in my opinion.

But the challenge is not make it sound too anti-realistic or conventionalist. We want our sentences to have objective truth conditions at the end, don't we? — Fafner

Absolutely agree, and you're right that even using the word "convention" can send people in the wrong direction. (It's not a word I would have used much until recently and I had forgotten this.)

One more thought on convention: if the worry is that people will think saying x is just following convention, that it's like playing a word game, that, in short, saying x doesn't mean anything, then the antidote is right there: you say x when you mean y, and by saying x meaning y, you're doing something - - making an assertion, giving a command, asking a question, christening a ship, etc.

Nah, my comment wasn't really directed at you in particular.

Unique, unconventional language use happens, but for the most part, language games utilize convention. — Mongrel

Sure, but it is vitally important that the notion of use in a language game is made categorically distinct from 'conventional use'. To conflate the two is render Wittgenstein unintelligible.

Oh Wittgenstein loved to introduce such ambiguities, to lead the unsuspecting reader into one's own equivocations, rendering what he actually said as unintelligible.

For poor readers of his perhaps.

One ought to be aware, and on the lookout for Wittgensteinian traps. That is the way that he used words, to set traps. That was his game. So it is a matter of knowing how to read, rather than assuming that you know what he is saying without actually understanding it.

Sure, but it is vitally important that the notion of use in a language game is made categorically distinct from 'conventional use'. To conflate the two is render Wittgenstein unintelligible. — StreetlightX

If you mean he wasn't talking about any particular set of conventions, I think that's clear. Since he encouraged the philosopher to observe word usage, he appears to have been pointing directly at convention as the reason for wording choices (as opposed to ability of language to represent.)

If you mean he wasn't talking about any particular set of conventions, — Mongrel

Nope, I mean that conventions as such - if by this we mean already-established uses of language - are quite literally irrelevant to Wittgenstein's account of meaning. Or, as I said, what is at stake is 'conventionalizability' and not conventions. Or better yet: conventionalizability, use, and meaning are co-eval: to mean something with language is to use language in such a way that it can be made out according to a convention, or again better, made out according to a rule (Witty almost always speaks in terms of 'rules' and almost never in terms of 'convention'); which is not to say that it must 'follow' an (already established) rule - this being a distinction Witty makes clearly in the Blue Books where he speaks of the difference between 'a process being in accordance with a rule' and 'a process involving a rule'.

Commenting on the above passage Linda Zerilli comments: "Whereas the latter refers to actions that are explicitly followed by subjects engaged in a particular practice... the former speaks to what an observer of any practice might say when asked to explain what is being done". This again speaks to the 'rule-lizability' of use, not merely following established rules. Stanley Cavell is even more explicit when he says that the whole point of the rule following discussion is to "indicate how inessential the 'appeal to rules' is as an explanation of language." The entire discussion of the so-called 'rule following paradox' in the PI (along with it's 'resolution') is meant to bring this out. As is all the discussion of teaching and learning, to arrive at the point where one 'knows how to go on' (i.e. without rules or conventions being spelled out each time).

Or put differently again, the whole of the PI operates at the level of 'principle' and not 'fact' - meaning operates in language to the extent that the use of language accords in principle to some rule or another. Whether or not there is in fact a rule of that kind is irrelevant. Which is why everytime someone reads Wittgenstein as appealing to 'conventional use' to explain meaning in language, they misunderstand the point entirely.

Well, no one understood Wittgenstein in Wittgenstein's opinion...

What grounds meaning in his (quite agreeable view) is not convention (which is easy to think), but "forms of life" far more generally, like what is universal to the human condition, and meaning is only transferable, or made up of not only grammar, but subjective judgment which have to match, which come from living, and experience. So that, language is as universal as the form of life in which the meaning arises from. This is why a lion wielding all of the bestest grammar, would still be unintelligible.

Something like that, I figure.

To flip him off some though... this is why he was so pissed off and/or deeply depressed all of the time too... he was the specialist of snowflakes... and just couldn't relate.

What grounds meaning in his (quite agreeable view) is not convention (which is easy to think), but "forms of life" far more generally, like what is universal to the human condition, and meaning is only transferable, or made up of not only grammar, but subjective judgment which have to match, which come from living, and experience. So that, language is as universal as the form of life in which the meaning arises from. This is why a lion wielding all of the bestest grammar, would still be unintelligible. — Wosret

You might like Cavell's writing on this: "We learn and teach words in certain contexts, and then we are expended, and expect others, to be able to project them into further contexts. Nothing insures that this projection will take place (in particular, not the grasping of universals nor the grasping of books of rules), just as nothing insures that we will make, and understand, the same projections. That on the whole we do is a matter of our sharing routes of interest and feeling, modes of response, senses of humor and of significance and fulfillment, of what is outrageous, of what is similar to what else, what a rebuke, what forgiveness, of when an utterance is an assertion, when an appeal, when an explanation - all the whirl of organism Wittgenstein calls "forms of life.". Human speech and activity, sanity and community, rest upon nothing more, but nothing less, than this. It is a vision as simple as it is difficult, and as difficult as it is (and because it is) terrifying." (Cavell, The Claim of Reason)

Which is more or less an expanded gloss of §241 & §242 of the PI: "It is in their language that human beings agree. This is agreement not in opinions, but rather in form of life/ It is not only agreement in definitions, but also (odd as it may sound) agreement in judgements that is required for communication by means of language."

What grounds meaning in his (quite agreeable view) is not convention (which is easy to think), but "forms of life" far more generally, like what is universal to the human condition — Wosret

That undersells convention, and what motivates convention, rather dramatically. We're not talking about which fork goes to the right of which, but the prospects for communal life and communal aspiration.

I might checks him out. Not super acquainted with Wittgenstein, which is why I rarely mention him. I read the philosopher investigations on the way out west on the train life five years ago.

I didn't oversell, or undersell convention, but simply made a distinction, and suggested that the mistake is easy to make, because the two things are similar, but convention reduces more to just agreement in general, and not the more particular agreement that I took him to mean.

(edit) Maybe I mean that convention is more particular, and less general than "forms of live", at least in the way I'd prefer to interpret it, and would be more in agreement with the thing I just said... they're different in any case is all, lol.

How are conventions really different than 'communally agreed usages', which, I would have thought, just are what grow out of "forms of life" and what also ground "language games"?

Convention is just like agreement in like a contractual, abstract sense, like the spelling of a word, which leaves the individual lived experience that the meaning that fills up those conventional containers come from out of it... Its like the thing I'm always going on about.

To use my Jesus bread bearer example there, and knowing them by their deeds, people can say anything, they can't do anything. This is why the person of christ, his life and deeds is what is significant, and can't simply be repeated by saying the same things. That isn't how meaning works.

Convention is just like agreement in like a contractual, abstract sense, like the spelling of a word, which leaves the the individual lived experience that the meaning that fills up those conventional containers come from out of it... Its like the thing I'm always going on about. — Wosret

That's one kind of dry interpretation of the notion 'convention'. I don't think of conventional usages of language as "contractual" at all. I believe that linguistic usages become established in a 'live' way; that is, in, and in accordance with, lived experience.

Wittgenstein never actually speaks of communally agreed usages though. And when the topic of agreement is broached, what is agreed upon is a 'form of life', which is in turn qualified as a kind or matter of 'activity' ("The word “language-game” is used here to emphasize the fact that the speaking of language is part of an activity, or of a form of life" §23 // "It is in their language that human beings agree. This is agreement not in opinions, but rather in form of life" §241). Again, despite the popular misconception, neither convention nor 'communally agreed useages' play much of a role - if any - in Witty's understanding of meaning and language (the same can't be said of something like 'communally cultivated habits, dispositions, affects, and activities' and all the stuff Cavell puts under the heading of the 'whirl of organism').

The misattribution tends to stem from Witty's insistence that language is a public phenomenon, but the 'publicness' of language refers to its performative nature, its being a practice and an activity, and not it's inscription into a community or 'a' public.

Well, words mean whatever people want, and how they use them then I guess.

I don't think of conventional usages of language as "contractual" at all. I believe that linguistic usages become established in a 'live' way; that is, in, and in accordance with, lived experience. — John

I completely agree.