> I grant that the patterns and tones of English are different from those of other languages, but I don't grant Michael's unsupported assertion that they are "inherently meaningful".<
Then why they (patterns) were created in the first place? Boris Shoshensky ---------- Original Message ---------- From: [email protected] To: [email protected] Subject: Re: "What is happening during an 'a.e.'?" Date: Sun, 4 Apr 2010 13:40:38 EDT Michael writes: "Your Andean shepherd is "deficient" in English, so the inherently meaningful configurations of English "have no meaning" to him only to the extent that they are inaccessible to him because he doesn't speak English. If he did speak English, he could access them, and even if they referred to, say, "bangers," the Andean could be shown how to access whatever that word's configuration conveyed." The only thing "conveyed" to the Andean's receiving apparatus is sound waves. An English-speaker receives exactly the same sound waves - nothing more. Michael implies that if the sound waves are "English", they have "inherently meaningful configurations". I grant that the patterns and tones of English are different from those of other languages, but I don't grant Michael's unsupported assertion that they are "inherently meaningful". I assume Michael is in part prompted to call them "meaningful" because some auditors - those who "speak English" -- upon hearing the sounds, will find rising in their minds certain notions. The notions are familiar and they regularly occur in correlation with specific sounds. Michael's position apparently is that this occurs because something he calls "meaningfulness" is inherent in the sound-patterns. I deny this. I claim that when we hear an utterance that we "understand", it is not because a "meaning" is inherent in the sound configuration. It is because certain sound configurations have, in our past experience, been associated with certain notion. That is all "understanding or learning a language" is. It is not learning the "meaning" inherently in certain sounds. It is learning to associate certain sounds with certain notions, and this "learning", this associating, comes about by our being repeatedly exposed to a juxtaposition of the sound with other notion. Pavlov's experiment contains the following lesson: there is nothing in the sound-configuration of a bell that inherently "means" food-is-coming, and yet for the conditioned dog the sound of the bell came to "mean" food-is-coming. The "conditioning" was solely the repeated juxtaposition of the sound with the experience, the notion, of food. The English-speaker's received sound waves do not have within them, like tree-spirits, a second entity that the Andean's receptions lack - a "meaning". The only thing the English-speaker can "access" that the Andean cannot is remembered past associations with the sound. That is all that "learning a language" ever is: the accumulation of notions associated with various sounds (or scriptions) by virtue of past juxtapositions to the sounds. My son sees a dog. I point at the dog and say, "Doggy!" After I do that a few times, when he sees a dog the sound "Doggy!" comes to his mind; moreover, if I later say "Doggy!" the notion/picture of a dog comes to his mind and he looks around for a non-notional dog. I could do that with the Andean. But if when I initially say "Doggy" to him I don't point at a dog, if, in other words, I do not juxtapose any other notion to the sound - and thus I do not create an association between the sound and another notion -- a visual one in this case -- he will not "learn the word". That's all so-called "understanding" a word is: associating its sound (or scription) with notion sufficiently like notion that arises in the minds of people familiar with the word. When the Andean finally, because of a repeated juxtaposition, regularly retrieves an appropriate notion upon hearing an utterance, it is not because he has finally somehow acquired the ability to pluck the "meaning" from within the sound, or from some mind-independent sphere containing all "the meanings", from some skull-external world where the class/category/set of all the meaning-entities obtain. He is simply now retrieving from memory a notion associated with the sound by past experience. It is not the case that both the Andean and the English-speaker receive sound waves AND a meaning but only the Englishman can "access" the meaning. The difference between the two hearers is that the sound of "Doggy!" does not "remind" the Andean of anything, but it does remind the English speaker of previous notions associated with the sound of "Doggy!" Put it another way: There is not, dwelling inside those sound waves - or inside the ink of a printed scription -- an abstract imp called "the meaning of" the word that carries out unceasing, motionless, abstract activity: "meaning", "naming", "picking out". The more one dwells on Michael's notion of the entity he calls "meaningfulness", the more untenable it may seem. I take it, Michael, you think of it as not simply a retrieved memorized associated notion. You see as a non-notional entity. Something "out there" that is "the meaning of XXX." Consider the learning of new words like 'microchip' or 'chad'. We didn't learn 'chad's "inherent meaning". We learned what other people had in mind when they used the word. "This is a chad," said the Florida official, pointing to a hanging shred of paper on a voting-ballot. Describe the moment when this entity's mind-independent "meaning" initially "came into existence". You can't, because there is no such mind-independent entity. What do you have in mind with your notion of "accessing" such an entity? For me, the accessing is merely the retrieval from memory of an associated notion. When people do what you would call "come up with the wrong meaning", I'd "explain" it by saying either their memory fails them or they were taught the wrong association to begin with. "Your Dad was wrong to say that's a dog. That's a coyote." How would you explain it with your "accessing the meaning" theory? Consider my specimen utterance "foopgoom". What would you accept as evidence proving it does - or does not - "have" a "meaning"? If I tell you that when I say "foopgoom" I am entertaining a notion of a material (i.e. non-notional) entity, and the notion is as vivid in my mind as my notion of my car or the coffee-mug here on my desk, would you conclude the utterance must indeed have a mind-independent "meaning"? Even though my uttering "foopgoom" does not occasion the rising of a similar notion in the mind of any auditor? Can there "be" "meanings" for which there has never existed an in-some-way correlated notion? That is - a meaning that no one has ever "thought of"? Again, the more I dwell on Michael's notion of the entity he calls "meaningfulness", the more untenable it seems. My position is that when people say such things as, "That isn't the meaning of XXX," they have let their minds reify a mind-independent entity that does not exist. I believe that the theory I've been propounding can "account for" all the events that others use the word 'meaning' to explain, and tghe theory never needs to use the word 'meaning' or reify any such mind-independent entity. I also think the theory similarly indicts and convicts many key philosophical uses of related terms like 'denote', 'refer', 'signify' and many more. There's every chance I've entirely missed what's on your mind, Michael, in which case say so. And tell me if in your judgment my position leaves "unaccounted for" anything that your notion of "meanings" takes care of. I'm betting that Ockham is on my side.
