William writes:
"Cheerskep fails to engage the subtlety of the argument that we involuntarily
assign meaning to external objects, etc. That is not to say those objects
have meaning but in fact it's almost the same thing because we can't sense the
world without a-priori experiencing it as "meaningful"."
Arguments tend to be thought "subtle" when they employ numerous unexplained
terms, and the notions behind those key are fundamentally confused.
William has never described what he has in mind with 'meaning' or
"meaningful', or 'assign meaning to' -- an alleged action like the one I infer
Kate has
in mind when she says "place meaning IN".
I've engaged the argument at length, particularly in my last several
postings. I've described what I have in mind when I say "meaning" -- i.e. it's
always
notion; the notion in the mind of a speaker when he uses a word (or any other
"sign", including gestures etc.), or the notion in the mind of someone who
contemplates the word.
I've worked hard to convey I'm not saying that's what meaning "IS", it's only
what I have in mind with the word. And I've tried to convince listers we make
a fundamental mistake whenever we hunt for "THE meaning of" a word as though
a "meaning" is some non-notional entity.
I've tried to explain why it's therefore a mistake to believe there is a
"meaning" "IN" any external objects (including words) -- a mistake regardless
of
whether the lister feels that meaning is "placed in" or "assigned to" the
object by "us".
I've maintained that listers -- and not just listers; generations of
philosophers -- have made this mistake because they are beguiled by the fact
that when
a given word is uttered, throughout the listening audience a roughly similar
notion arises. "How could that be if a word doesn't have a meaning in it?"
This similarity, I have argued, is because we in a given community have each
of us separately been repeatedly exposed to similar juxtapositions of words
and objects. Our brain is a storehouse of memories -- and it is an ASSOCIATING
apparatus. Seeing one thing "calls to mind" another.
As an example I used the word 'kayak' (I was prompted by an event in the
recent Olympics). Suppose I say 'kayak' to you. A tumble of associated images
and
remembered usages come to your mind. They're far from identical with those
that come to my mind, but they're similar enough so that a serviceably similar
image arises in your mind. Most of us got our images from tv, magazines, books,
dictionaries -- all "cultural" input.
If 'kayak' HAS a meaning IN it, why don't people in communities where it's
not a word in their language have that "meaning" pop to mind when they read the
word? Because minds in those communities have no accumulated associations with
the word. Don't say it's merely because those people haven't "been taught the
meaning". Being "taught the meaning of" 'kayak' is usually this: You're shown
a picture of a kayak, and told, "This is a kayak. Here's another picture
showing a woman doing white-water kayaking." An ASSOCIATION is being inculcated
in
your mind.
If your teacher is misinformed and shows you a picture of a rowboat and says,
"This is a kayak," thereafter when you hear "kayak" an image of a rowboat
comes to your associating mind. Eventually someone will say to you, "No --
that's
WRONG. That's not a kayak, that's a rowboat. (Modal logicians ponder arcane
problems that arise when two different communities apply the same word, like
'water' to two different sorts of objects. Where their ponderings can go wrong
is when they start asking themselves, "But which REALLY IS water?")
'IS' just doesn't come into it. It's merely a matter of CALLING. No object IS
what it's regularly called in a given community. The man who tells you your
use of 'kayak' is "wrong" is motivated by solely this: What comes to your mind
with the word 'kayak' is very different from what comes to the mind of the
huge majority of people in our community. He is justified in saying that much,
but if he insists on what a kayak IS and what a rowboat IS, he will never be a
very good philosopher.
"But 'kayak' is its name." The 'its' there is an error. It suggests the
name-word in some way "belongs to" to the object. The prominent philosopher
Saul
Kripke has written famously about names and naming. Sometimes he seems to be
arguing why a given name-word IS the name of an object, and at other times he
appears to be arguing why we OUGHT to accept the word as the object's name. But
in both cases he is evidently proceeding from a muddled notion of "is". He is
stipulating a "rule", but stipulation is never creation.
William's second sentence above -- "That is not to say those objects have
meaning but in fact it's almost the same thing because we can't sense the world
without a-priori experiencing it as "meaningful"." -- deserves a separate
posting.
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