Frances to Cheerskep and others... If his theory of meaning were correctly identified as either objective or relative or subjective, this identity alone may not justify it being dismissed. The probe might then turn of whether his particular thrust is indeed a good one. In any event, the task of making a theory of meaning is clearly a thorny tackle, because the whole sphere of meaning remains very ambiguous. It is however unclear to me if the root of his thrust is mainly syntactic or semantic or pragmatic, or a vague combination of these.
Cheerskep wrote... Thanks, Frances. Realize that if he takes it a premise that "meaning" and "meanings" are "objective entities in the outer world", my position will be that he is assuming the very question at hand. The huge majority of philosophers do that. They say, "Words MEAN," (or "Words have meanings"), and they take their question as, "How do they do it?" My position is that words are, so to speak, inert ink on paper. 'To mean' is a verb. Words don't "mean", because they don't act. The mind, contemplating a word, summons up previous ASSOCIATIONS with the sound or scription. The word 'carrots' was constantly associated with an experience of that vegetable, so when someone hears 'carrot' the image etc of the vegetable comes to mind. Understandably, we tend to say, "That's the word's meaning for me." Which implies it's solely notional.
