When we disagree, what is it that we are disagreeing on - our use of words, or the state-of-affairs that the words refer to? — Harry Hindu

Of course it's the later.

Let's call it "Cakese". You said I could call it what I like, and I've decided.

As it turns out, you never meant to imply that Cakese actually exists. Fine. It was, let's say, an imagined language, like Builders(2). Your post included no actual use of Cakese -- you were just explaining what it would be if it were a language and how it might be used. Fine.

On this reading, John's request for "a 'new usage' that bears absolutely no association or link whatsoever to the conventional usages of the time in which it arose" could be satisfied simply by imagining a new language and imagining using it. Since Cakese has just been (imagined to be) invented, it is, by definition, not conventional, not as you use the word "conventional," i.e., it wasn't a language that already existed. Huzzah!

You may be satisfied, but I seriously doubt John will be. I think he would expect to see something that counts as a use of Cakese, while having no link to the conventions of Cakese.

Is there something peculiar about English that makes it impossible to produce the sort of unconventional usage John requested in English?

You may be satisfied, but I seriously doubt John will be. I think he would expect to see something that counts as a use of Cakese, while having no link to the conventions of Cakese. — Srap Tasmaner

What 'conventions of Cakese'? I don't understand.

Suppose you do attempt to teach John Cakese. Let's suppose also that none of the words of Cakese exist yet; you intend to make them up as you go, and then use them consistently, and you may also distinguish different sorts of words and consistently use those different sorts of words in different ways. Is that the idea? And to you, there is no convention here because you're making it all up.

(I take it we are not to imagine Cakese as your native language.)

Isn't Cakese experienced by John as something that already exists by the time he hears it? And if regular, etc., etc., then as conventional?

Again, if by conventional you simply mean grammatically regular, than sure, it's 'conventional'. But as I've noted for about the third time now, this was never what I was arguing against to begin with. I've been speaking about 'conventional' as distinct from the 'unconventional', the non-established, the abnormal, the outside-the-regular. If you want to say that convention of use exists at the moment of it's birth - so there is no 'unconventional' by dint of every use being conventional as a matter of principle - then you are talking about something different from me. At the very least, you'd be speaking about 'convention' in a very idiosyncratic manner (no one 'on the street' would call Cakese conventional), one I'm not sure John is talking about either. But let's let him speak for himself.

If you want to say that convention of use exists at the moment of it's birth — StreetlightX

No I absolutely don't. I'm just trying to follow your thinking here, badly it seems. I'll take one last shot at it.

by convention I mean already-established use (of language), and not grammatical regularity — StreetlightX

Maybe if you could give me an example of each, that would be clearer: an example of an already-established use in English that is not what you would call a grammatical regularity (I assume you mean this in a wide sense); and an example of a grammatical regularity in English that is not an already-established use. (Since you use "regularity" in one and "use" in the other, I did too, but that's not an endorsement.)

It's a measure of my confusion that I have absolutely no idea what your examples will be. I hope it's plain as day to you.

Where occasion sensitivity might play a role, among other places, is where determination of some determinable has established membership in an equivalence class that is thereby fine-grained just enough to satisfy some practical purpose (including the founding of a meaning convention for effective communication, in some cases." — Pierre-Normand

That makes perfect sense to me. Equivalence is variable.

Maybe this idea provides the sought after stopping points for Strap Tasmaner's "cofinal tails". Determinable properties and dummy sortals don't determine such tails, but substance-sortals and event-types possibly do since they determine as fully as one might want *what* something is. Further, specifications (or further determinations of determinables) beyond such a natural stopping point only achieves the specification of merely accidental properties (including such things as the accidental microphysical realization or material constitution of events or substances. — Pierre-Normand

So the idea would be that this is how you know you only have the tail of an entailment-poset -- maybe you're starting around "Something happened to him" and "Something" couldn't generate such a set, so you know there's there's something more determinate further up.

Here, we've been talking at length about a particular event and its accidental properties. If we want to know whether it was a killing, we might stop at one point in the determination process; if we want to know whether it was manslaughter or homicide, we would have to go further; if we only care that there was a death, we can stop before getting to "killing." And if we just want to know as much as possible about an event, as an historian might, we might determine everything we possibly can. If you're doing research on violent death in America, then you might employ pretty unusual sortals, such as "Death by stabbing, assailant known to victim but not immediate family."

If stopping points are all occasional, we don't need a way to tell we've only got the tail of the entailment-poset, we already know we do. We always do. The point of calling one "just a tail" is to highlight that it is insufficient for our current purpose, and that we need to further determine it.

What the ontological import of all that is, I couldn't say.

ADDED: What I haven't addressed here is how you match sortal to purpose.

Maybe if you could give me an example of each, that would be clearer: an example of an already-established use in English that is not what you would call a grammatical regularity (I assume you mean this in a wide sense); and an example of a grammatical regularity in English that is not an already-established use. (Since you use "regularity" in one and "use" in the other, I did too, but that's not an endorsement.)

It's a measure of my confusion that I have absolutely no idea what your examples will be. I hope it's plain as day to you. — Srap Tasmaner

Oh dear, I must have expressed myself badly indeed. By alreday-established use I simply mean something like the dictionary definition of words. To the extent that the dictionary catalogs the ways in which words are used in society, definitions in a dictionary might be considered exemplars of already-established uses - i.e. what I'm referring to when I speak of convention (and recall that dictionaries are always playing 'catch-up' to societal employment of words: definitions are added as words are used in novel ways; in other words dictionaries are descriptive, not prescriptive).

The only point I've been trying to make is that when Witty says 'meaning is use', he does not mean 'use' in the above way. The PI is simply more than an utterly banal exhortation to read the dictionary to figure out tbe meanings of words.

But to give an example of an 'unconventional' use of language, consider the wonderful emerging trend of treating nouns as verbs. I have in mind interrogatives like 'Do you gym?' ('do you go to the gym?), or 'are you pubbing later?' ('are you going to the pub later?') - or even declarations like 'let's Game of Thrones!' ('let's watch Game of Thrones now'). The reason why the former phrases, while 'unconventional', are perfectly understandable, is because the 'nouns' occupy the place of verbs in the phrases above, and can be treated as such with little to no issue. There is a consistency to the grammar of the use, even though the use itself is unconventional. And Witty's point, among others, is that so long as, within a specific form-of-life, a certain grammatical consistency is retained, novel, unconventional ('non-dictionary') uses of words will have meaning. One can, with help of these examples, learn 'how to go on' using nouns as verbs. The use is conventionalizable (perhaps dictionaries might include this new use in future editions), even though it is not, at this point, conventional.

I had begun to wonder if you were just talking about words and dictionary-meanings. Bleh.

I'm not sure how I gave the impression I wasn't. What else would already-established uses/conventional uses of language refer to?

You're talking about the conventional meaning of a word, how a word is generally used within a speech community, how a word is most often used within a language, that sort of thing.

That's important, of course, but the meanings of words are far from being the only conventions of a language or of its use, or, I would like to say, of language as such or the use of language as such.

• There are vague, abstract conventions about communicating in certain ways (rhetoric, Grice's maxims).
• (There's probably a truth-telling convention, but that one's hard to formulate well.)
• There are conventional things to say in particular situations in each language (manners).
• There are conventional ways of talking that are context-dependent (formal and informal, preaching and sportscasting, political speeches and domestic disturbances).
• There are performative conventions like the words spoken in wedding ceremonies.
• There are conventions of grammar ranging from abstract classifications (pre- and post-position for adjectives modifying nouns) and more specifics within each language.
• There are conventions of what Fowler would have called English usage.
• There are conventions of word-formation.
• There are conventions of spelling.
• There are conventions of pronunciation that vary by region and dialect.
• There are conventions for what phonemes we use, with some variation, and conventions for how we use them (some sequences of sounds that English-speakers do make are not English).
• My use of English rather than some other language is down to English being the language conventionally spoken within the speech community I was born into.
• My use of spoken language rather than gestural or something else, likewise.
• My use of language at all, I think likewise.
  
  (And what goes for me, goes for everyone in the appropriate way.)

That's off the top of my head. It's turtles all the way down.

You're talking about the conventional meaning of a word... — Srap Tasmaner

Why yes, in a thread discussing Wittgenstein's conception of meaning, I am speaking about conventional meanings.

I can only hope the shock of this revelation doesn't incapacitate you.

Why yes, in a thread discussing Wittgenstein's conception of meaning, I am speaking about conventional meanings. I hope the shock of this revelation doesn't incapacitate you. — StreetlightX

Was the rewrite intended to be more snippy or less?

Wittgenstein is here by implication, but his name appears not in the thread title, and the thread itself has ranged over far more topics than just Wittgenstein's views.

Neither does the word "word" or "meaning" appear in the title of the thread but "language."

Neither does the phrase "meaning of a word" occur here:

I'm not sure how I gave the impression I wasn't. What else would already-established uses/conventional uses of language refer to? — StreetlightX

Now, for my part, I consider the tantrum exchange complete, and I'm good with moving on.

You're right of course, I mean, who, on a philosophy forum, would associate 'language is use' with either Wittgenstein or meaning? The bombshells keep landing! And snippy? Me? Never!

I agree that at least on some cases we can know just on conceptual grounds that the same thing cannot satisfy two different description if it doesn't make sense to say that it does (e.g. to describe something both as an animal and as an inanimate object at the same time). But sometimes such identities can become aposteriori discoverable possibilities, as Kripke and Putnam have taught us about natural kinds. The interesting question here is what distinguishes the two cases and how can you know when you are confronted with the one or the other. And this brings me to another interesting thing that you said. — Fafner

I think this is just a misunderstanding, so let me try and clear that up separately.

On my view, which is indebted to Evans's and Wiggins's neo-Fregean re-appropriations of Putnam and Kripke on the semantics of natural kind terms (as well as the metaphysics of natural kinds) just because the manner in which our words reach out to their referents can't be determined through linguistic analysis alone (where such an analytical activity is construed to be achieved from the armchair only) it doesn't follow that investigation into the objects, kinds and properties that our words purport to refer to is something that occurs outside of the bounds of the conceptual. Empirical inquiry oftentimes is the proper way for us to clarify our concepts (or, our 'conceptions', as Wiggins would characterize the Fregean senses of natural kind terms) and to better anchor them into the essential natures we seek to disclose (when there are any). What Kripke would call a posteriori (metaphysically-)necessary, though, rather corresponds to what Strawson, Sellars or Kant would call a priori, or synthetic a priori, in the case of Kant; and to what Wittgenstein calls grammatical remarks. None of those inquiries are done from the armchair, but rather are reflective inquiries into our public language games. And those language games are world involving. It's only in this sense that they are 'a posteriori'.

(A little while ago, I had posted links to a couple older posts of mine, about Kant, Sellars and Haugeland, where I sought to explain the relavant sense of synthetic a priori. That water may turn out to be H2O, on that account, and therefore 'twin-water' not to be water, would be sythetic a priori even though it can only be known by means of experiments.)

If I may just throw out a suggestion, in passing, regarding the requirement (or lack of a requirement) for there to be a convention in order that communication could be meaningful. I haven't managed to read all of the recent exchanges between StreetlightX and Srap Tasmaner. But it had seemed to to that StreetlightX was suggesting that words can be used in specific ways to achieve meaningful communication without there being an established convention for using them in that way; and Srap Tasmaner was disagreeing.

StreetlightX had also mentioned at some point, if I remember, that words are used meaningfully if the way they are used is, in a sense, conventionalizable. And that would be sufficient for effective communication to occur even if no convention already exists. That seems right to me.

But I was also reminded of Charles Travis's example of the plant with green leaves. Srap Tasmaner had brought it up to illustrate the occasion-sensitivity of meaning. (That was actually Fafner, sorry). In some contexts, if one were to request some green leaved interior plant and were offered a brown leaved interior plant that had had its leaves painted green, that would likely not satisfy her request. But if she rather had needed some decor prop for a photo-shoot, then it might have. The point of the request, which is assumed to be understood by the interlocutor, can determine what does or does not satisfy the predicate "...green" as meant by the requester. The question then is: must there be an established practice for using the predicate "...green" in just that sense for the question to be understood? And the answer would seem to be no. All that's required is that the interlocutor has a grasp of the point of the request, and this understanding may only requires something like agreement in form of life (including, possibly, a shared local culture).

Nevertheless, if there happens to be a general context where the request for a "green leaved plant" is meant to be understood to have the specific point mentioned above, then it might come to be expected that the predicate "green..." will be used in that way whenever such a general context reoccurs. This use will thus come to be conventionalized. And from that point on, the expression will be misused, and not merely misunderstood, when someone misinterprets it in that general context. What has happened, effectively, after the use has become conventionalized is that what was formerly a route from apprehension of the requester's intention to the apprehension of the (occasion sensitive) meaning of her utterance, now has become a route from the apprehension of the (conventional) meaning of her words to the apprehension of her communicative intention.

(Edited to add links to earlier comments)

Empirical inquiry oftentimes is the proper way for us to clarify our concepts (or, our 'conceptions', as Wiggins would characterize the Fregean senses of natural kind terms) and to better anchor them into the essential natures we seek to disclose (when there are any). — Pierre-Normand

I don't believe that conceptual inquiry is a way to 'disclose' the essential metaphysical nature of things (and therefore I also reject the idea of a synthetic apriori truth, at least on the traditional understanding of the term), and this is perhaps where our disagreement lies.

I think that in some sense it is an arbitrary matter whether we say that two events are identical or not (like a death and a murder), and it is a confusion in my opinion to think that analyzing the concepts "death" and "murder" can tell you the 'real' answer from the perceptive of the events 'themselves' as it were (and please correct me if I'm wrong, but I read you as saying that there is an objective answer to this question, which is determined by the nature of the events in the world).

I agree that concepts are world-involving as you said, but not by a way of reflecting the metaphysical essences of things. However, it is also not the case on my view (and I agree with you here) that "investigation into the objects, kinds and properties that our words purport to refer to is something that occurs outside of the bounds of the conceptual".

The question then is: must there be an established practice for using the predicate "...green" in just that sense for the question to be understood? And the answer would seem to be no. All that's required is that the interlocutor has a grasp of the point of the request, and this understanding may only requires something like agreement in form of life (including, possibly, a shared culture). — Pierre-Normand

I think this you are exactly right, and this reflects correctly both Travis' view and of the later Wittgenstein. There's a wonderful paper by Putnam called Rethinking Mathematical Necessity that explores this topic further.

There's a wonderful paper by Putnam called Rethinking Mathematical Necessity that explores this topic further. — Fafner

Thanks for this reference. It is Putnam's endorsement of Travis that motivated me to read Unshadowed Thought. Now, I think I may have developed some reservations regarding Travis's understanding of Frege, but that would be a topic for another time!

I don't believe that conceptual inquiry is a way to 'disclose' the essential metaphysical nature of things (and therefore I also reject the idea of a synthetic apriori truth, at least on the traditional understanding of the term), and this is perhaps where our disagreement lies. — Fafner

I don't believe that either. You brought up the case of Kripke's a posteriori necessities regarding the essences of natural kinds, specifically. (I'd rather speak of essences since I view the claimed "identity" of water and H2O as a matter of necessary material constitution, and, following Wiggins, I am distinguishing identity and constitution). In response to that I insisted that what can be known only on the basis of experience need not be, for that reason alone, outside of the scope of inquiry about meaning, as I take Kant to have shown (as I once argued here and there).

I think that in some sense it is an arbitrary matter whether we say that two events are identical or not (like a death and a murder), and it is a confusion in my opinion to think that analyzing the concepts "death" and "murder" can tell you the 'real' answer from the perceptive of the events 'themselves' as it were (and please correct me if I'm wrong, but I read you as saying that there is an objective answer to this question, which is determined by the nature of the events in the world).

I agree that it is only in relation to a specific practical context, and our purposes in that context, that a death and a murder can be subsumed under the event-types (the equivalent of substance-sortals for events) that individuate them. My claim was that it isn't generally the case that they will turn out, under those pragmatic conditions, to identify the same event. And that's in part because 'event' is a dummy sortal. But I had made the concession, while responding to Srap Tasmaner's useful suggestion, that what is merely a dummy sortal, in one pragmatic context, might provide a fine-grained enough principle of individuation , in another context of inquiry (e.g. a murder investigation) to individuate the murder and the death in such a way that they are conceived to be identical events (under 'two different descriptions' we might say).

So, I am not seeking 'real' answers, but only objective truths. Objective truths can be truths about secondary qualities of objects, say, or socially instituted facts (such as the value of a currency) so objective and subjective aren't contraries.

I agree that concepts are world-involving as you said, but not by a way of reflecting the metaphysical essences of things. However, it is also not the case on my view (and I agree with you here) that "investigation into the objects, kinds and properties that our words purport to refer to is something that occurs outside of the bounds of the conceptual".

That's my main point.

Nevertheless, if there happens to be a general context where the request for a "green leaved plant" is meant to be understood to have the specific point mentioned above, then it might come to be expected that the predicate "green..." will be used in that way whenever such a general context reoccurs. This use will thus come to be conventionalized. And from that point on, the expression will be misused, and not merely misunderstood, when someone misinterprets it in that general context. What has happened, effectively, after the use has become conventionalized is that what was formerly a route from apprehension of the requester's intention to the apprehension of the (occasion sensitive) meaning of her utterance, now has become a route from the apprehension of the (conventional) meaning of her words to the apprehension of her communicative intention. — Pierre-Normand

Yeah, this is a lovely genetic account of how meanings become sedimented and ossified, as it were, such that the grounds of their coming-to-mean become hidden and covered over. And I take Witty's project in the PI as an attempt, among other things, to show just how muddled philosophy can get when one approaches language from the angle of the already-established. Cavell too hones in on this when he writes that "I think that what Wittgenstein ultimately wishes to show is that it makes no sense at all to give a general explanation for the generality of language, because it makes no sense at all to suppose words in general might not recur, that we might possess a name for a thing (say "chair" or "feeding") and yet be willing to call nothing (else) "the same thing". (The Claim of Reason, p. 188)

It's a very Kantian move, a kind of Critique of Pure Language (complete with it's own account of (grammatical) transcendental illusions!: 'language on holiday', etc), which I always thought would in fact make for a fitting subtitle to the PI.

I can't pass quoting another bit from Eric Marcus, Rational Causation. This is footnote 22 on p.195:

"Someone might object here that two people (e.g., J. J. Thompson(sic) and Anscombe), neither of whom could be said to grasp the ordinary concept of a murder better than the other, might disagree about the temporal boundaries of a murder and thus disagree about the principle of identity for murders. The concept of a murder, it will be said, is inherently murky. One might thus conclude that there is no determinate principle of identity for murder and perhaps for many other event-types as well. This might well be true; but if it is, it only strengthens the analogy with the principles of identity associated with different kinds of object. For one can analogously argue that an ordinary grasp of such concepts as ship, caterpillar, and person does not furnish one with definite answers to every question that might arise over the survival of a particular ship, caterpillar, or person. To argue that such murkiness undermines principles of identity for object-sortals and event-types across the board would, in effect, be to argue that there are no facts about the identity of objects and events. I take this to be an unacceptable result." --Eric Marcus (bold in the original)

Bloody murder! I had read that five years ago and quite forgotten that Marcus had chosen murder as an example. He used a bold type for murder to mark it as an event-type, a sortal concept.

"J. J. Thompson" is actually J. J. Thomson. Elizabeth Anscombe and him had had a disagreement over the interpretation of the doctrine of double effect.

He used a bold type for murder to mark it as an event-type, a sortal concept. — Pierre-Normand

Exactly. Whereas the original question in this thread involved quotes. I think you have a tendency to ignore the significance of that.

Exactly. Whereas the original question in this thread involved quotes. I think you have a tendency to ignore the significance of that. — Mongrel

I got involved in this thread when I reacted to what someone said, after the discussion was well on its way. But I just now looked back at the original post and I am unsure what you are driving at. What quotes?

Around Ceasars murder... there were quotes. So it was kind of bizarre considering the title of the thread that a discussion ensued about the reference of the words.

We utter sentences in order to express propositions. You have to look to context to know what proposition was expressed. You can't look at the words and know the reference, but just a possible reference. Did Frege disagree with this?

Around Ceasars murder... there were quotes. So it was kind of bizarre considering the title of the thread that a discussion ensued about the reference of the words. — Mongrel

Ah! Sorry. I thought you were referring to the original post in this thread. Fafner indeed used quotes around Ceasar's murder. I am unsure what it is that you find bizarre or that I may have missed regarding the significance of those quotation marks.

We utter sentences in order to express propositions. You have to look to context to know what proposition was expressed. You can't look at the words and know the reference, but just a possible reference. Did Frege disagree with this?

Frege wouldn't disagree. He made a big point that you can know the reference (Bedeutung) of a word only through grasping its sense (Sinn). Frege's explanation of sense (Sinn), though, is very much different from what has come to be known as linguistic meaning: something akin to a tacit rule, or definite description, that language users make use of to determine the reference. He also was reaching for an ideal language free of ambiguities and imprecision, but that's something else.

Wouldn't quotation marks signify an utterance? How could you know the sense without knowing the context of the utterance?

Wouldn't quotation marks signify an utterance? How could you know the sense without knowing the context of the utterance? — Mongrel

Well, of course, I assumed it was indeed implied that those words have reference only in the context of an utterance. Fafner was proposing an analogy with the case of the references of "the son of of Edward VIII" and "the father of Elizabeth II" that are the same in spite of their (Fregean) senses being different on some occasions of use. So, I made the point that, on my view, "Caesar's murder" and "Caesar's death" don't merely have different senses but also different references on account of murder and death being distinct event-types. This is a difference at the level of reference, and not at the level of sense, or so I would argue.

But I also made the concession, after more exchanges with Fafner and Srap Tasmaner, that there are pragmatic contexts where both words -- "murder" and "death" -- might be regarded as referring to the same event-type, for all practical purposes, and hence that one might refer to the same event as either "Caesar's murder" or "Caesar's death".

But I also made the concession, after more exchanges with Fafner and Srap Tasmaner, that there are pragmatic contexts where both words might be regarded as referring to the same event-type, for all practical purposes, and hence that one might refer to the same event as either "Caesar's murder" or "Caesar's death". — Pierre-Normand

Oh. I missed that part. You're good, then. :)

Understanding a sentence in which a novel use of a word is made is just a special case of understanding a sentence in which use is made of a word you don't know.

Making a novel use of word in a sentence may or may not increase the risk that your sentence will not be understood -- contextual definitions aren't all that risky -- but there can be good reasons for taking that risk.