In a message dated 7/15/10 11:43:41 AM, [email protected] writes:
> For some > reason he does not think words refer (why? I do not know, nor have I seen > an > argument that supports this claim). > I realize I've been silent, Imago, but I'm not hiding -- I'm merely temporarily engaged in finishing up a non-forum project. In the meantime, to read someone else's argument that in part supports my claim, you might look at Peter Strawson's famous essay "On Referring". Strawson was responding to Russell's even more famous essay, "On Denoting". Strawson argues there that words can't "refer", only people can. Strawson is right about the first part of that argument. Yes, I've also read Frege, Wittgenstein,Grice, Davidson, Donnellan, Kripke et al. In a real sense, I don't blame Kate for wondering what I'm talking about because I try to jam too many topics into one posting. Recall the subject line of the original posting in this thread: "The "trinary" view of "what there is"." The core point I was trying to make was that almost all philosophers explicitly concede their belief in the "existence" of a material world, and many (most?) philosophers concede there is another "substance" besides "materiality" -- i.e. "consciousness"; but almost none seems to perceive that they are also tacitly accepting that there is a third kind of "thing" -- mind-independent abstractions, of which one allegedly is mind-independent "the meanings of words". I believe they are profoundly wrong in that tacit belief. That's one of the things I was trying to talk about, Kate. Words don't have "meanings"; they have associations. If I say to you, "Ekorre," what comes to mind? But if I say that word to a Swede, what comes to his mind is a notion of a squirrel. "Oh, but that's only because he was taught the meaning of 'ekorre' and I wasn't." No; such "teaching" is solely association, repeated juxtaposition. That associating activity in a learning mind accounts for everything that "words have meanings" is said to do, and it avoids the multitudinous errors entailed by the concept of "meaning" there. It's dizzying to ponder how people who believe words "have meanings" think the words got those meanings. That the associating lump of links that is our minds would, after sufficient juxtaposition, connect an utterance with a notion - that's easy enough to accept. But they are saying it's more than mere association. They claim there is a "real", "actual" "the meaning of" of each word, a mind-independent ontic entity presumably out there in Plato-land. Picturing how any utterance or scription could come to "have the meaning" invites parody. Is the meaning injected with a syringe? When? By what injector? Using what policy for choosing? Did "God" create these meanings? Which did he create first -- the meanings or the words? Where did he keep them till humans came along? Etc. "Foopgoom!" is a sample utterance of an alleged "word" that I've often used on this forum. It is in my mind strongly associated with my notion of something very specific in the material world (I'm not a solipsist; though it is unprovable, I accept there is a material world.) I'm thinking of writing a movie called, "It's a Wonderful Philosophy", with a character named 'Foopgoom' who is sad because he knows he's only a "Word, Second Class". His quest is at last to get Plato to give him a "Meaning", after which he can happily be a "Word, First Class". Ockham's razor would have us discard the notion that there is a mind-independent entity, its "meaning", for everything we call a "word". But a philosophic barber with an Ockham hope would be disappointed. The word 'meaning' will always be with us. An optimistic philosopher might try to confine its use to something like this: "We can say the notion that comes to my mind when I hear/read a given word is 'its meaning for me'. That way we avoid talking about 'THE meaning'!" It's a fair try, but it will never catch on. There's obviously far more to say about all this, and though I know won't get it all said, I'll try to add at least some bits of interesting stuff. Till then...
