Very interesteing reading all of these experiences.


Thank you, this has been very insightful!

If you read my words and are capable of understanding you will find the answer. If you are not capable, that is not the fault of the words. Unlike that word, my words are in English.

I understand the words because I’m capable of supplying meaning to the symbols you’ve typed out. It’s true; it’s not the fault of the word. The fault, the misunderstanding, the lack of meaning that can be conveyed is yours, not the word.

If what I'm thinking of is not a "word", then what is it instead? And how should I make sense of it?

Exactly. If you point to its location, the result is no doubt biological. And no doubt the being you’re pointing to is you.

Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana.

To be honest, I thought you meant fruit flies like a banana, as in fruit takes flight like bananas do. It wasn’t until your clarification, and you telling me it was in two different senses, did I understand. So maybe it isn’t the use at all.

You can conceptualise a sculpture by the rock it's formed of or by the empty space chiselled out to make it. Either way you have a structure. So, there's a sense, yes, that words are empty but they are the emptiness that allows for the structure we call "meaning". They're nothing and everything at the same time. The way to resolve this then is not to look at form, which may lead to paradox, but process. Not what they are, but how they function. And they do function...

I understand the words because I’m capable of supplying meaning to the symbols you’ve typed out. — NOS4A2

Do you arbitrarily supply just any meaning?

The fact is, you follow the same conventions the rest of us do. In using language you do not get to have words mean whatever you want them to. That is not how language works.

Sorry, thought it was a different thread.

Glad to hear it was of benefit. :up:

The basic question is this: are words more than their symbols? — NOS4A2

Of course. Listen to your inner voice as it now speaks the word “concepts”. Words are merely signs for concepts. Concepts are built on the vast internal model of the world that we constructed throughout our lives.

To be honest, I thought you meant fruit flies like a banana, as in fruit takes flight like bananas do. It wasn’t until your clarification, and you telling me it was in two different senses, did I understand. So maybe it isn’t the use at all. — NOS4A2

Yeah, I probably both picked a bad example (too complex), and didn't phrase my question properly. Basically, I was asking about your intuition; in this example, without thinking much, do you think of "like" as one word that can be, say, a preposition one time and a verb at another; or is the preposition "like" a different word from the verb "like". I intuitively see two words, here, that happen to sound/look the same.

I'd have to think of very different answers depending on your answer to this question, because the scope of the word "word" is different.

As for the example, it's a common example in linguistics when talking about the ambiguity as a language; not as common, though, as the simpler "We saw her duck." (We saw her, as she ducked. We saw her water foul. We apply a saw to her waterfoul.)

Interpretation of language occurs in real life situation and is (almost?) never the only thing going in such a situation. Given a particular context people usually filter out interpretations that are unlikely. Most out-of-context ambiguities aren't a problem in context. The time/fruit flies example started as a pair of sentences in the context of teaching a computer parse a sentence: what people do easily is very, very hard to teach a computer to do. Later, those two sentences got drawn together, used outside of linguistics as a joke (attributed sometimes to Groucho Marx, probably falsly), and inside of linguistics as an example for garden path sentences (sentences where the likely intitial interpretation is false - hence your alternate interpretation isn't surprising, and I should have used a different sentence).

Unsuccessful communication events don't, I think, cause much of a problem for "meaning of a word is its use in the language", as once you pin down the misunderstanding you understand two potential uses, and crucially you'll be able to tell how the situation played out. Use can be pretty complex, especially since any use carries traces of past usage, including "mistakes" and usage you witnessed.

I agree that meaning resides only in brains and not in words. But language is most often a social transaction, and the way I connect meaning-as-use and meaning-in-brain is via interaction, by shifting focus from "similarity of meaning" to "compatibility of meaning as played out in successful communication events" (where success is sort of the degree of satisfaction of the participants).

I recently discovered that others can think in words. Some have even admitted to hearing an inner monologue, not so much as an audio hallucination, but as a fundamental component of their thinking. Having been unable to find these words or hear these voices myself I naturally began to envy their powers and the company they keep. — NOS4A2

This has been a bit of a phenomenon recently.

Apparently, about 60% of people have no internal monologue https://irisreading.com/is-it-normal-to-not-have-an-internal-monologue/ (good explainer).

I've found the inverse of your position baffling. I can't work out how to interact with the world if there is no internal symbolic representation of the most common and apparently effective communication mode. Perhaps this accounts for a differential in critical, systematic thinking between the two groups.

With regard the OP question; I think that inhabit minds and cause more than their form implies, but aren't that themselves.

I like your thinking. There is a lot there to mull over and it inspires me to look more into the topic. I'm not sure I can accept the "meaning-as-use" theory yet (or any theory really) because it lacks any biological accounting of meaning (as far as I know). I don't think staring at sentences or searching for answers in "blocks", "pillars", or "slabs" of text will lead anyone closer to any theory of meaning. Then again I'm not so read up on the topic and could be missing some key insights. So thanks.

This has been a bit of a phenomenon recently.

Apparently, about 60% of people have no internal monologue https://irisreading.com/is-it-normal-to-not-have-an-internal-monologue/ (good explainer).

I've found the inverse of your position baffling. I can't work out how to interact with the world if there is no internal symbolic representation of the most common and apparently effective communication mode. Perhaps this accounts for a differential in critical, systematic thinking between the two groups.

With regard the OP question; I think that inhabit minds and cause more than their form implies, but aren't that themselves.

That's what I was wondering as well: can the two opposing ways of thinking account for differences in ideology, philosophy, behavior? Who knows, but a very interesting topic.

For my own tastes, I think I'm in the extreme. I think my lack of inner monologue, such as it is, can explain in part why I believe certain things about language, metaphysics, ethics, politics, for instance my disdain of censorship and my defense of free speech absolutism. As such, I project that the opposite leads to opposing views, which to me hinge on a kind of superstition regarding language and its effects. Then again, we could all be thinking in the same way and just be using different metaphors to describe the same phenomena.

As such, I project that the opposite leads to opposing views, which to me hinge on a kind of superstition regarding language and its effects. — NOS4A2

Interesting. I have an unstoppably verbose internal monologue, to a serious fault (insomnia, I am able to induce mental illnesses etc...) and share those concerns.

Is your inner-voice hard on you? Does it tear you down and criticize you? Or is it more of an advocate and defender?

Both, in turns, but through much hard work It's overall constructive/instructive these days. I went through some seriously dark periods though.

Thanks for sharing. Perhaps it is controllable in the end.

Yes, i think this is the basis for most 'inner work' type of stuff. 'self help' being a bastardization of it.

Controlling one's inner mono/dialogue is very difficult, particularly for someone oddly perceptive, or quick to discern patterns. I have quite a high IQ and have been told this contributes to both the intensity of my internal mono/dialogues, and my ability to rationally calm it down.

I'm unsure its a reasonable expectation of someone who has both an intense internal mono/dialogue and does not have that level of rationality available.

The basic question is this: are words more than their symbols? — NOS4A2

Should you not have put down "meanings" rather than "symbols'?
Symbols? - sounds like pictorial entity. Words are made of the alphabets, and has meanings, not symbols.

Should you not have put down "meanings" rather than "symbols'?
Symbols? - sounds like pictorial entity. Words are made of the alphabets, and has meanings, not symbols

I mean pictorial or verbal units known colloquially as “words”. I’m not sure of the technical term.

Semiotics for Beginners - useful reference.

My problem is that if the word-forms conveyed meaning, we’d know what they meant by reading them. It is precisely because they do not convey meaning that we do not understand them, not unless some Rosetta Stone or human being is able to supply them with meaning. The drift of meaning over time suggests much the same. — NOS4A2

On the other hand, if they didn’t convey meaning then how could I learn something new by reading?

I mean pictorial or verbal units known colloquially as “words”. I’m not sure of the technical term. — NOS4A2

For example, Chinese words are based on the pictorials of the worldly objects, but they still have meanings, and it is the meanings they communicate on, not the pictorials.

If you are talking about the pictorial symbols with meanings, then they wouldn't be words, but would be sigils.

Thanks, but I’m talking about words.

Thanks, but I’m talking about words. — NOS4A2

I know, hence the suggestion :nerd:

If they have meanings, where would the meaning be located? Or how how do we explain where the meaning is?

a voice echoes outside the face rather than within it. I’ve observed enough brains to conclude neither words nor speakers exist in them, or anywhere else in the biology. — NOS4A2

Articulation and hearing of what's spoken happen in and through human bodies, though. (Just as writing and reading does) Language, although we often refer to it in the abstract, is grounded in the biological, surely?

(In passing; one's own voice echoes inside the head rather than outside it, which is why one's own voice sounds odd when heard, externally, from a recording, because normally one hears through one's bones)

Words/symbols are just one unit we define to divide up the language. It's hard to parse 'more than', or indeed 'less than' here. Speaking, writing, listening, reading are acts. We mostly make sense to each other by engaging in these actions, using spoken or written signs. From semaphore upwards, a sign tends to stand for something other than itself, as well as being itself.

Whatever happens in a person's imagination is secondary to the exchange of talk or writing, and different people will learn to assimilate and reflect on it differently.

Semiotics for Beginners - useful reference. — Wayfarer

Very useful. It should be right on the OP. In fact most of this thread would not exist had everybody read that.

I think I’m with you on this one. Meaning, or at least to mean, is an act of biology. My complaint is that philosophers spend an inordinate amount of time divining meaning from text without ever explicating the biology.

I alluded to Saussure’s “signs” in the original post.

If they have meanings, where would the meaning be located? Or how how do we explain where the meaning is? — NOS4A2

I am not into linguistics, so my ideas on it would be that of a total layman's. I would think that in the primitive times when there was no language as such, people would see some events such as rain, and then whenever they see the rain, they would shout out "rang rang rang" or something like that. And then they would come to a word "rain" eventually for an example.

So, I would reckon, words are the entities which are very much embedded with some situations, events or object perceptions into the naming etc in daily lives of the people which gave the solid meanings to the words.

Even now, many words seem to be being manufactured in the similar way (from the real life situations) or copied and modified from the existing words into the new words.

If you read Wittgenstein, I am sure he would have a proper and philosophical way to describe about it.