The answer to what linguistic meaning is can only be provided in the context of an entire theory of semantics. But I would say that clearly, 'linguistic' means 'having to do with language,' not 'concrete.'

Linguistic meaning specifically has some interesting properties that aren't reducible to 'modality' (being written, spoken, signed, etc.) That is, even linguistic meaning specifically is 'substrate-independent' and the reason we don't smell language just seems to be physiological rather than cognitive or systematic. One of those interesting properties is syntactic grammaticality. There are no 'ungrammatical' perceptions: perception doesn't form a system with a kind of prescriptive force that lets native speakers know that a certain way of perceiving is ruled out by the rules of the game. You can have weird perceptions, or unhelpful perceptions, or maybe even 'defective' ones in some sense (though here I mean normatively 'defective' rather than metaphysically or epistemologically as a realist might imply), but you can't have 'ungrammatical' perceptions.

which is something I think the phenomenologists have understood for a long time, although without ever framing their investigations in terms of semantics — StreetlightX

No, that was one of Husserl's initial concerns. It was mostly phased out by later phenomenologists who didn't have the same technical training that he did in 'analytic' issues. One thing to the credit of analytic philosophers against continental ones is that they historically have been in dialogue with linguists.

linguistic (which I take to mean 'concrete') — John

I don't know why you would take 'linguistic' to mean 'concrete.' Those words don't even mean close to the same thing.

I don't understand why I'm obligated to provide a reason when you haven't, especially since your view is clearly at first blush the more ridiculous one.

This sounds reasonable at first glance; but I am not convinced 'hello' has a linguistic meaning. — John

That doesn't strike me as a plausible position.

Because meaning is a broader phenomenon than truth. Even linguistic meaning is. Thus 'hello' is not truth-conditional, but it is linguistically meaningful. There may be notions of truth that transcend language, like having true beliefs, but it seems like the truth predicate these theorists are after are usually explicitly about linguistic truth. And clearly linguistic truth is only a part, though a major part, of linguistic meaning.

I don't know, I was just offering an opinion. I have the vague feeling that this approach results, like I said, in more correlationist paradoxes, but I can't substantiate that. The feeling is enough to want to look for a different approach though.

Maybe what you really want is just empirical, natural language semantics. It derives from philosophy of language and uses logical techniques, but always in service of treating language as an empirical thing, not a transcendental one. I'm starting to think that ultimately this is what you have to do, because the history of philosophy has gotten it backwards: whereas philosophers have been inclined to think that natural language mimics ideal logic forms, often imperfectly, I now believe that logical systems are basically crude, toy semantics, abstracted from the living complexity of natural semantics, which we're only now beginning to study seriously. That is to say, old logical 'laws' like the principle of non-contradiction are grammatical rules, like many philosophers have said, but not because they're subject to transcendental logic principles, or stipulated linguistic ones ala positivism, but rather because they're crude reflections of the way contradiction works in natural language (albeit very simplified). And so metaphysical principles once thought to be transcendental are neither stipulated nor eternal, but empirical facts about the way a certain system works. Logic is, in that sense, a stepping stone to semantics, where the real deal is. A mature semantics would know how to do precisely what you say, though of course at this stage reflections on the interface between linguistic semantics and non-linguistic semantics are still in their infancy.

By language I mean the stuff we are taught in English class in primary school, having to do with words, sentences, grammar and the like (as distinct from say, 'body language' - although we will complicate this later) — StreetlightX

A little aside here, but (first) language not only isn't taught in school, but can't be.

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I'd say that the way language is supposed to work, it pretends to have a kind of transcendental function that circumscribes the limits of the world. Of course it doesn't really, but that's what it's 'supposed' to do, and the extent to which you realize it doesn't is the extent to which you stop 'believing' in language non-ironically, and correlatively, the world.

I don't think rooting language back in the world again will help. You'll just get more dumb correlationist paradoxes. I think it would be better to work through language's logic from the inside, ironically, until it can be systematically untangled, and allow the world to collapse with it. No more realism or naturalism then.

Davidson's paper is about a theory of truth, which forms part of a theory of meaning. He accepts that there is more to a theory of meaning than a theory of truth, but also claims rightly that a theory of truth must form a large part of it.

but that truth-telling isn't important. Is there empirical evidence that it is? — mcdoodle

Why not go a day without it, or assuming anyone does, and see how far you get?

Also, it does no good to claim that truth conditional things are often prone to exaggeration, lie, custom, and so on. Insofar as these deviate from truth-telling, their effect only makes sense against the assumption that one isn't lying (in fact, it seems a convention where lying is the default doesn't make sense, since it would become the new truth). Everything you talk about is truth-conditional in the relevant sense, and that includes fictional statements as well, though of course they have a funny sort of internal logic.

One also wonders what to make of everything you just said to me...or whether in your daily routines, you're never struck by the desire or need to tell anybody anything, or ask anybody to tell you anything. Very odd perspective.

Are truth-conditional propositions a significant part of the everyday use of language? I don't think they are but I'm game to be dissuaded. — mcdoodle

???

Yes, of course they are, they're a huge part. I'm not sure why you would think otherwise?

I don't understand how 'the same sort of theory' extends beyond assertions to language that is not assertion-like. If a speaker is not making truth-conditional remarks, in what way have truth-conditions anything to do with it? — mcdoodle

Because even things without truth conditions share a compositional semantics with things that do, like commands and questions. And even things that don't even share that much are embraced by a common speech act theory, of which assertion is only one part.

Philosophy functions roughly as a research program whose output is other research programs. By that metric it's been extremely fruitful.

Semanticists don't spend quite so much time on these issues as philosophers of language do, but to the extent that they do, they're generally interested in 'bridging theories' about how theories of meaning ultimately 'cash out' in the vocabulary of other disciplines. Unsurprisingly, there is a broad 'externalist' and 'internalist' camp, one of which thinks that propositions expressed in language literally have external objects as their constituents (so if you make a semantic model, your 'domain of individuals' will literally be real things), and the latter of which thinks that meanings have to be cashed out in representational or psychological terms. I think that formal semantics of this sort offers the hope of a radically deflationary view on the matter, by which language is concerned with its own internal logic without needing to 'hook up' with anything else, whether they be representations or real-world objects. Maybe that's a kind of 'immanence.' But I think there's also hope that a better understanding of semantics can show 'metaphysical' theories of meaning to be internally incoherent (and so much of metaphysics incoherent with it -- not by stipulation as with the old positivists, but as a matter of empirical discovery).

All complete theories have partial theories embedded in them. It has to be that way if you think the phenomena are at all diverse.

But that's the goal, isn't? A full account of meaning. — invizzy

Yes, but that's not the point of the paper. It's to work on one specific aspect of a theory of meaning.

I think accounts of small portions of meaningful expressions do a disservice, and further most likely wrong. We're looking for necessary connections between all meaning and expressions not just some. — invizzy

Some pieces of language are truth-conditional, and some aren't. Clearly they aren't going to be subject to the same sort of analysis. Though at a higher level, in speech act theory, they can come together in seeing truth-conditionality being associated with certain sorts of speech acts, like assertion.

In short, no. Most of the things he mentions are areas for future research using the same sort of theory, which have been studied extensively by truth-conditional semanticists. It's work to be done in the program, not things that fall outside the scope of the program (and that work has been more or less underway for decades with significant progress).

As for the things that aren't truth-conditional, he's not offering a full account of meaning, but of the truth predicate. There's nothing stopping this account from being embedded in a larger one.

It's right here, friend:

Notice that 1) is impossible if the two are phenomenologically indistinguishable. If for any particular case I cannot tell, then it cannot be that I can tell for the most part (or in other words, there is no way by his own criteria to tell whether or how often I can tell or not). So whether or not jamalrob wants to say this (perhaps he does), he can't. — The Great Whatever

And what do you know, it's a post that quotes you right below the very post you made.

'Thank you for doing my job for me, TGW!'

I think Michael makes an interesting sociological point here, which is that direct realism is often associated with a family of philosophical views, and then when some sort of scientific 'folk-philosophical consensus' is in accord with those views, those who espouse them will use it as a defense -- and that this trick seems not to work with direct realism itself, since scientists of perception often seem to take indirect realism as obvious, or possibly a matter of scientific discovery.

So maybe the direct realists do, at least on this issue, believe that philosophy has to 'correct' science? Neuroscientists that study perception are fundamentally wrong about the way we perceive, while people who have more or less convinced themselves from the armchair that perception works another way are right? An interesting problem. Though of course, there will be citations of scientists who believe in 'embodied theories' (again, whatever that means [not much I wager]) and direct realism and so on. But that would be a risky gambit, since then the defense would buy into the logic of the argument, and the minute the consensus is revealed to be genuinely in favor of indirect realism among scientists, the direct realist is left with egg on his face. Though who knows, maybe he would just entrench again.

I often get the impression that for the direct realist, there is no potential argument or piece of evidence that could possibly get him to reconsider. That is, direct realism is something he knows pre-philosophically, is certain of, and anything that denies it must be wrong (ala 'common sense' schools of philosophy). The 'philosophical' arguments always stop as soon as the ideological point is met and never bother to deal with their own inconsistencies, because that's not the point of why I was arguing: ensuring that a view actually makes sense is boring and irrelevant. It reminds me a lot of the usual charge leveled against Plantinga and Protestant Christianity (arguments in service of a pre-made ideal rather than a conclusion reached by evidence and argumentation), but I doubt a direct realist would like that comparison or believe it fair. Nonetheless, that looks to me like what is going on. And it's repeated at the professional level too, of course -- John Searle, who is a superlatively bad philosopher in my opinion, just published a book on this subject, which might as well be titled How Not to Philosophize. He calls it 'the bad argument,' by the way, not 'the argument.' And I also get the impression he hasn't read the people he's criticizing, but what's new, huh.

[The vitriol at what I take to be intellectual dishonesty and bad scholarship is over.]

I actually did, which, again, you would know if you bothered to read before replying. Now go back, look, find it, and I don't know, feel embarrassed, or not.

Not even Jesus can make some read before answering.

Thread officially dead. Christ.

Yes, there is. That's the whole point of this conversation: that in any case, the direct realist by his own position can be mistaken about whether something is hallucinatory or not. Honestly, I wish people would read the discussion before commenting.

I've already explained in previous posts, I don't see the point in explaining again unless you say something besides 'nuh uh.' Because after all, you'll just say it again.

No, because then the question just repeats for this second experience.

Recognizing a tension in your thought is not fallacious. There is in fact such a tension; the modus operandi for the direct realist is to cover his ears, but why should it be?

Notice that 1) is impossible if the two are phenomenologically indistinguishable. If for any particular case I cannot tell, then it cannot be that I can tell for the most part (or in other words, there is no way by his own criteria to tell whether or how often I can tell or not). So whether or not jamalrob wants to say this (perhaps he does), he can't.

Could you or someone who feels they understand what he's saying summarise his argument here? I confess I'm baffled. Elsewhere, as in 'Derangement' for instance, he seems to argue for a near-Wittgensteinian position, that generalised rule-making about the way people use language is a hopeless and foolhardy task, that largely what people have to do is theorise on the fly, based on mutual understanding. What work, then, is all this intricate business about truth doing in this essay? — mcdoodle

Sure. I might go through it more thoroughly piece by piece later, but the basic idea is:

-A theory of meaning is essential to the philosophy of language
-A theory of truth is essential to the theory of meaning
-A notion of reference is essential to a theory of truth, to explain at least the function of referential expressions like proper names, demonstratives, pronouns, and 'complex singular terms' (by which I take it he means things like 'the cat we bought last week'), and the denotation of predicates (things like nouns, adjectives, prepositional phrases, and verbs), in terms of which individuals fall under their extensions (which individuals they're applicable to)

-Traditionally philosophers have tried to give an account of reference independently of linguistic function, or give an account of how reference arises in non-linguistic terms, in order to explain how this notion plays a role in language
-Others have tried to downplay the role that reference plays by just starting off by giving the truth conditions of simple sentences and building up the truth of more complex ones from those
-But neither of these options is tenable. The first doesn't work because reference only plays a role in the context of sentences as a whole, and so has no non-linguisitc characterization that can be abstracted from our whole theory of language. The second doesn't work because the smaller elements that make up simple sentences clearly have meanings of their own, and we can't just stipulate simple sentences as atomistic wholes. This is seen from the fact that we can use those elements recurseively to create simple sentences ('the cat we bought last week ate the tuna' expresses a relation between two individuals, but 'the cat we bought last week' clearly is compositionally derived from simpler expressions like 'cat' and 'week,' and if we want to understand these phrases systematically we should be able to explain how they arise from the smaller bits)
-So, we need to have a notion of reference, some way to explain the meaning of these individual bits, but at the same time there seems to be no way to do so outside of the linguistic theory as a whole

-The solution: give up on a non-linguistic characterization of reference. Insofar as there is reference, we explain it with reference to an entire linguistic theory about the role it plays in determining truth conditions. Since there are multiple ways of doing this, there are multiple ways of defining reference, according to which theory you use, and so the function of reference on your particular theory can't be described independently, but can only be seen in retrospect given how it function in that theory.

I've been a creative writer most of my life, thinking a lot about the meaning of language, and I don't understand this truth-oriented notion of a 'theory of meaning' (which in itself, as he acknowledges, is a very vague notion). If someone says 'Hello you!' or 'I wish I hadn't gone out in the rain' or 'How many times do I have to ask you not to smoke in here?' or 'Socrates flies' (a bizarre example of a sentence, but one favoured by Davidson) - I can't see what 'truth' has to do with it. Communication is about many things, of which truth-telling, or at least plausibility-while-communicating, is one element. How is truth all-embracing? In what way? — mcdoodle

That's why he says 'whatever else it embraces.' There is more to a theory of meaning than a theory of truth, but clearly the latter is an essential part of it. In the 70's philosophers were generally sensitive to the fact that more than this was needed. But the traditional focus has always been on truth conditions.

Inference to the best explanation is only a coherent option when there is evidence that could possibly bear on the matter, which the direct realist's position is forced to rule out.

1) I can tell the difference between veridical and non-veridical experience.

2) I cannot tell the difference between veridical and non-veridical experience.

You cannot claim both of these. The skeptic has nothing to do with it; you can't blame him.

Again, it's not some external position, 'the skeptic,' that threatens you -- it's that your own position is internally incoherent. Your position does demand that you address the possibility insofar as your own beliefs are in tension with each other.

But I can see you're not interested in this, so I will stop.

So, is it possible on your view that all of your experiences could be hallucinations? If not, why not?

But...this is precisely not what you've been saying? Did you even read the post you quoted?

If the distinction is senseless, then this is a problem for the realist, who is the one who wants to secure the distinction. An idealist, for example, would not be able to make sense of the idea that every experience one has is illusory. It is only a commitment to realism, which posits a distinction between two kinds of experience, real ones and fake ones, to whom such a possibility is intelligible.

I really don't see how you think this isn't a problem, jamalrob, nor can I believe that after the posts I've made you don't know what I'm talking about. I literally don't know how to say it any clearer.

Yes, there would be a meaningful distinction on the position jamalrob is advocating: this is what he posits. The result is that he draws a distinction that in principle can't have any effect on the capacity to tell that distinction, which raises the question of how such a distinction can be drawn, if by his own admission he cannot draw it!

The position that demands it is the position that (1) there are two metaphysically distinct kinds of experience, ostensible perception and actual perception, and (2) in any case, a hallucination is potentially phenomenologically indistinguishable from a veridical perception. I have already said this, many times.

The reason it forces you to confront the dreaming argument is that the result of these two propositions combined is that the dreaming scenario is not only a cogent one, but there is literally no way on your account ever to tell the difference, in principle, between that scenario and a waking one. In other words, there is no 'uncertainty' on your position, in the following sense: you are certain based on your characterization that you can never distinguish one from the other. You cannot adopt the position that makes the dreaming scenario possible, and then simply dismiss it! This is not a viable position. You have to deal with the consequences of your own position, and if your own position drives you into incoherencies you do not want to confront and/or cannot accept, it is not an option open to you to simply ignore them.

Yes, but it's your problem. That is, your own positions requires you to say not only that everything could be a hallucination, but also that you have no way in principle ever of telling whether it is or not. This is turn means that, given any experience could be a hallucination, there is no way in principle for you to have ascertained, and so draw, the very distinction that you are relying on. This is what the Dreaming Argument amounts to. And if you believe the dreaming argument is absurd, then it reflects poorly on your position, since your position is exactly what makes it cogent.

There may be a contradiction, depending on what your other epistemological commitments are.

Okay, so does that mean there are cases where you can tell whether you're hallucinating or not? If so, what differentiates the cases where you can from those which you can't? You seem to imply that there are no cases in saying that this is 'the nature of hallucination' (that is, the very possibility of hallucination entails the possibility of indistinguishability). Now surely you agree that if every instance of an experience is one that is in principle indistinguishable between the two types you've mentioned, there is a problem? Isn't it then of the utmost importance for your position to find a way that this can't be so?