:clap:

My answer: the past exists, to the extent that the past is embodied in the present. A baby in the past is embodied in an adult in the present, since the adult causally flowed from the baby. But a past event or object which is embodied by nothing in the present, for instance, a butterfly flapping it's wings once 10000 years ago, no longer exists.

Similarly, future objects and events exist to the extent that they are embodied by present antecedents. For instance, a completed sculpture is embodied by a work in progress, but in a fuzzy manner, to the extent that the completed work can still take many forms. But future events and objects which have no antecedents yet, for instance the bar code number on a receipt given to a raven in a far future corvid civilization, does not yet exist in any sense.

Even if we accept that the accounts and quotations of Jesus are accurate in the new testament, I see no contradiction in treating him as a wise man who expressed this in the prevailing prophetic, eschatological mode of that time and place.

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/13434/the-moral-instinct

My answer is, both.

As I noted, even if it exists, it isn't evidence for your position. — T Clark

How no?

Large parental power differentials over their children leave an impression of an almighty parent after that differential is outgrown. The absence of the fictional parent-as-god is fulfilled by religion. If this were so, we would expect more religiosity in cultures where that power differential is larger, in cultures with paternalistic God figures.

I don't see any necessary connection between the conditions you describe and the results you claim. — T Clark

You just restated more verbosely. Do you agree the correlation I describe exists?

I don't see that as evidence for your point at all. — T Clark

Oh? Great. Why don't you elaborate?

https://www.khaleejtimes.com/business/miracle-girl-nandana-has-access-to-mothers-memory

I have heard of this case several times before, it is supposed to be quite extraordinary.

Presuming this is real, I wonder what is any standard of evidence would be required before it is accepted.

As noted earlier by myself and others, no evidence has been provided that this is really the way things work. It doesn't seem likely to me. — T Clark

Consider this evidence: The relationship of extreme power between parent and child is more prevalent in more conservative societies and households, and far more prevalent in the past. The more this extreme relationship holds, the more religiosity we observe. Corresponding with liberalization, and the softening of the parent-child relationship, we see a corresponding trend towards secularism.

I wrote a similar post a few months back.

I would add that a (typically) a parent occupies a overwhelming position of power in relation to their child. The parent decrees what is right and wrong, dispenses reward and punishment, at their whim as does the God of the OT. This power differential creates in your terms a mold which inevitably the parent cannot actually fill. But as you say, the mold remains, and is fulfilled by personal gods.

Reading the texts of personal god religions, the parental character of God the Father is hard to overlook.

I think what is missing from this discussion is context. Given a context, there are of course numbers which you can consider effectively infinite: c for velocities, the age of the earth for history, and so on. But there is no such thing as an effective infinity free of context. This is especially clear when you consider that when you are talking about the real big boys, Graham's Number for instance, you need their context to even mention them. Without the context of their formulation, they are inconceivable.

Another way to think about truth is in terms of possible worlds.

First, it must be acknowledged that truth is a continuum, it is non-binary (If you doubt this, consider the claim "X has $10000 in their bank account. This is true if X has $10000 or $9990, mostly true if X has $9500, not at all true if X has $50).

Every proposition P proposes not a possible world, but rather a ;large or infinite set of possible worlds. This is the only way language can work, since reality is very fine grained, whereas language is very coarse.

P is true if the actual world is one among that set of possible worlds P means, or if the distance between the actual world and the nearest possible world of P is negligible. The degree of truth declines as the actual world recedes from the cloud of possible worlds meant by P.

The same is true of the interpretation of P. An interpretation is valid if the possible world(s) the interpretation represents is contained by or closely matches the set of possible worlds which P means,, or if the distance is negligible. The correctness of the interpretation of P declines with it's distance from P.

I think it boils down to this.

There is a concept of agenthood. Like most concepts it is not binary, it is a continuum. Humans are highly agent, though debates over free will attack this. Rocks are not. Animals are, although their degree varies with the animal and with the person considering them.

Events and objects are similarly the product of agents, by proxy, to various degrees. Paintings are very agent-by-proxy. Cities are as well, though perhaps somewhat less, as there is an element of blind process in their development over time. Thunderstorms are not agent-by-proxy at all.

To be theist is to adopt a radical worldview where, in the deepest sense, agent-by-proxy is applied to everything, to the maximal degree. To be atheist is the opposite, nothing is agent-by-proxy in the deepest sense, everything ultimately results from blind process. There is a whole spectrum of worldviews in between.

cheerleading different linguistic conventions that emphasize different semantics for different purposes. — sime

I wouldn't put it that way. It is about our concepts. "Meaning" is a word for a concept. What is it? Specifically here, does it include features of objective reality, even ones we are unaware of?

The debate is factual to the extent you consider the contents of our concepts as matters of fact.

To think otherwise is to grant linguists powers of omniscient authority. — sime

Not sure what you mean here.

Would we all be wrong who say "Joe Biden is president?" — hypericin

I just did it. It is conflation.

In this case, yes we would be wrong, at least legally. Nonetheless we (by "we" I emphatically exclude batshit Trumpies) all mean Joe Biden, not Kamela Harris, not Trump, by "The President of the US".

See the SEP article on names — Michael

If this is true, then meaning is divorced from extension. Names have extension, but according to this no corresponding intension.

Let A and B be any two terms which differ in extension. By assumption (II) they must differ in meaning (in the sense of "intension").

must be wrong. Two names differ in extension, but have the same (absent) intension.

Arent we condemned to a world of ideas? — Joshs

Yes, this is why I disagree with Putnam. Putnam believes that differences in the thing in itself, differences which we have no access to, can impose change on our meaning. These differences can only impose changes in the absolute facticity of our claims.

the term "the President" refers to Joe Biden. — Michael

This is grounded in community usage, as well as in this case legalisms. My argument is that meaning derives from community usage, not objective reality. (A more analogous example would be, suppose there was some bylaw which meant that legally Kamela Harris was in fact president. This law was so obscure that on one ever noticed, now or in the future. Would we all be wrong who say "Joe Biden is president?").

In 2000BC, "The center of the universe" generally had the extension of "The earth". Factually this was incorrect. Nonetheless, that is what people meant by it.

You have to divorce the concept of meaning from factual. How would you otherwise understand the history of science? When ancient philosophers mentioned "substance" did they mean all the details of quantum theory? Factually, that is what they were referring to, but their meaning contained no trace of wave equations.

And in such a scenario if you were to say "this is a glass of water" you would be wrong because it isn't a glass of water, it's a glass of twin-water. — Michael

Suppose this change happened in 2000BC? Would everyone suddenly be wrong when they said "this is a cup of water" in their language?

That's a proper name. "Michael" doesn't really mean anything, it's just an identifier. — Michael

What is a proper name if not a word that means a particular thing?

The same example can be made without using a proper name. Suppose all the world's water was suddenly replaced with twin water. Until I learned of this replacement, I would still mean water when I said "water". Only when I learned would I mean twin water. While still acknowledging that the people who were naïve to the change still mean water.

n other words, there's no such thing as what I mean by the word "water", there is only what the word "water" means. — Michael

Imagine you were killed and replaced by an evil doppelganger. Your friend George, unaware of this, says "Hi Michael". George doesn't mean the doppelganger, he means to greet Good Michael. Only for those who learned of substitution would "Michael" mean the doppelganger.

Let A and B be any two terms which differ in extension. By assumption (II) they must differ in meaning (in the sense of "intension").

Seems very dubious when applied to differences in extension which the speaker is unaware of.

I think I agree, and I think you hit on the mistake of my op.

The full meaning of a sentence can only be gotten with it's context. The context free part, the part you understand just by knowing the language, is only part of the meaning. The other part of the meaning is the part gotten from context. This contextual meaning may include referent(s), though the actual, physical (or mental) referent is of course not a meaning.

I was confusing contextualized meaning and referent.

Hmm, good point. I think you're right.

My current thinking:
From our omniscient perspective of the posers of the thought experiment, "water" and twin "water" mean something different, for us. Nonetheless, when earthlings and twin earthlings say "water", they mean the exact same thing, for them. You can see this by imagining an earthling being transpose into twin earth, or vice versa. The alien's extension for water will exactly match the natives.

Putnam unjustifiably projects the perspective of the thought experiment onto its subjects.

I suggest they're interchangeable. — bongo fury

Compare the four sentences:

S1: The water is cold.
Meaning known, referent unknown

S2: ទឹកគឺត្រជាក់។
Meaning unknown (unless you are Cambodian), referent unknown

S3: The water in Lake Michigan is cold.
Meaning known, referent known

S4: The water in Lake Michigan is ironic.
Meaning unknown, referent known


Meaning and referent can each be independently known or unknown.

If you prefer. The point being that it clearly distinguishes meaning and reference, in contrast to your title. — Banno

You got the argument totally wrong, nothing to do with my preference.

It would be silly to suggest that someone like Putnam would be naive to the distinction between meaning and reference. Nonetheless I'm claiming that he conflated the two in his conclusion.

I suggest they're interchangeable. We all know that your sentence S refers to water in general, and cold things in general. We just don't know which bit of water you mean. — bongo fury

The use of the definite article means that S refers to a specific bit of water, not water in general.

If meaning and referent were interchangeable it would not be possible to know the meaning but not the referent.

didn't quite get it until I thought of "our only point of contact" in a sort of Flatland way -- imagine that all you know of the line is what you know as a point on it, take its point of view, and to be such a point is to see a neverending expanse of line to either side of you — Srap Tasmaner

Similarly, philosophers in Flatland will conclude that there can be no third dimension. Every point in their experience has only a left and right, forward and back. A point with additional directions would be outside of their experience, and so not a point at all.

Here is another example:

S2: "The point on the ground two feet in front of you"

This has the same meaning for everyone who reads it. I would translate it into the same words in French no matter where I was standing. And yet, for every reader, the referent is a different point.

Same meaning, different referents.

Please explain where I go wrong. :chin: — jgill

Putnam is setting up an artificial scenario where two people's mental states are identical when they use a term, and yet the term is referring to different things. Therefore he concludes that meaning must involve more than just mental state, it must be located in the state of the world.

In your case, your mental states are different when you are using the same terms, and they are referring to different things. This is just ambiguity.

So reference is to some particular item (e.g. glass of liquid), whereas meaning is reference to a wider class or extension (e.g. of water)? — bongo fury

I'm not using any philosophical jargon here.

Simply, we English speakers all know what S means. It is basic English. But we don't know to what it refers.

Therefore, meaning and reference are distinct concepts, and must not be conflated.

Therefore, it makes sense to say that water means the same thing on Earth and Twin Earth, and yet it refers to different substances.

Same meaning in each case, but different referent. Hence, the argument goes, the meaning of "water" is not its chemical composition. — Banno

Trouble is, this just isn't what Putnam says.


From the paper:

Let W 1 and W 2 be two possible worlds in which I exist and in which
this glass exists and in which I am giving a meaning explanation by
pointing to this glass and saying "this is water." (We do not assume
that the liquid in the glass is the same in both worlds.) Let us suppose
that in W 1 the glass is full of H20 and in W2 the glass is full of XYZ.
We shall also suppose that W 1 is the actual world and that XYZ is the
stuff typically called "water" in the world W 2 (so that the relation between English speakers in W 1 and English speakers in W 2 is exactly
the same as the relation between English speakers on Earth and English
speakers on Twin Earth). Then there are two theories one might have
concerning the meaning of "water."
( 1) One might hold that "water" was world-relative but constant in
meaning (i.e., the word has a constant relative meaning). On this
theory, "water" means the same in W 1 and W 2; it's just that water is
H20 in W 1 and water is XYZ in Wz.
(2) One might hold that water is H20 in all worlds (the stuff called
"water" in W 2 isn't water), but "water" doesn't have the same meaning
in W1 and Wz.
If what was said before about the Twin Earth case was correct, then
( 2) is clearly the correct theory.

No, meaning is social. It is stable whatever or whether we think of it.

Interpretation is what is in the head.

The two claims are not contradictory, so no.

My correction:
1) The symbols themselves are not concept-independent, as if sounds or markings were not already interpretive meanings.
2)The meaning of symbols can’t be divorced from its interpretation by an individual in a given context.
3)Interpretation doesnt just compare itself to an extant set of rules for meaning. It is the only place where meaning actually arises.
4) We can’t speak of objects in the world outside of the objects that we form through our conceptual interpretations — Joshs

1) Are you speaking of the difference between the physical markings and their interpretation as letters or phonemes? I agree, this should be distinguished.
2) No, it is absolutely divorced. You can see this by looking at an incompetent language user. A poor English user might understand "Water is wet" to mean water is slippery. This interpretation does not impact the meaning of the sentence, which remains water is wet
3) Languages users don't just compare, they have to actively construct an interpretation. As above, this construction is distinct from the meaning of the sentence.
4) But then, cf. the Twin Earth you cited to me.

But there seems to be an inconsistency in that you agreed "meaning is something like a social reality" then recanted with "Sentences are just tools used to induce thoughts in others". — Banno

Not inconsistent, I didn't recant. Sentences, whose meanings are something like social realities, are tools used to induce thoughts in others.

Another tack:

Sentences are just tools used to induce thoughts in others (or represent thoughts to ourselves, when thinking). It is the thoughts themselves which are true and false. A sentence is true if, when interpreted correctly, it induces true thoughts.

This is helpful because it removes the ambiguity of language which otherwise confounds the concept of truth, when truth or falsehood is applied to sentences themselves.

I agree. But meaning then must be distinguished from interpretation, which is in the head.

I see four distinct components to a sentence:

1: The symbols themselves: The sounds or markings.
2: The meaning of the symbols: This is determined by language rules and context, and may be more or less ambiguous. This is not in the listener's or reader's head.
3: The interpretation: this is the mental schema the listener or reader conjures up, using the language rules and context as best they can, attempting to match the meaning.
4: The referent: The object in the world, the phenomena, or the abstract idea the sentence is referring to.

Yep, why not? — bongo fury

If I imagine that there is a dragon on Neptune, that imagining is in my head, not Neptune. Are you claiming that meaning is something like a social reality which is not localized in any one person's head?

Eh? — bongo fury

You just claimed that meaning and reference were synonymous.



I'm not sure how your earlier post pertains.

We may or may not pretend some corresponding bolt of energy passes between the symbol and object themselves.

But I'm treating meaning as synonymous with reference — bongo fury

So meaning is both purely imaginary and not in the head, an imaginary lightning bolt from symbol to object which is also the object? This does not strike me as a particularly coherent account.

And recommends dropping it. — bongo fury

Then how does he deal with sentences with no referent? "The cat in the hat" has meaning but no reference in the world. If the meaning of "The cat in the hat" is in your head, then mustn't all meaning be in the head?

It is invented, or pretended, by people using their heads, but that doesn't locate it in the head. — bongo fury

Then where is it located?