" Wittgenstein's assertion that "a word's meaning is its use in the community". I see nothing wrong in it. It is obvious that meanings of the same words are changing depending on surrounding words and intentions. Those meanings are community created reflecting subjectively objective reality. What we call abstraction is a real information 'translated' or interpreted by the brain in the various forms depending on our physiological and psychological Sense ability plus knowledge. Boris Shoshensky
---------- Original Message ---------- From: [email protected] To: [email protected] Subject: The Trinary View of 'What There Is' Date: Sun, 18 Jul 2010 11:06:07 EDT We regularly puzzle ourselves by using the word 'meaning' with two different notions in mind. To make that clearer, first consider the way we also use the word 'sound' with two different, quite distinct senses in mind - and how that practice pushes us into bafflement. We've all heard the alleged profound conundrum, "When a tree falls in the forest, and there's no one around to hear it, does it make a sound?" The bogus puzzle hinges on the fact that sometimes what we have in mind with the word 'sound' is the mind-independent vibrations in the air outside our skull, and sometimes it's the aural/mental experience in our mind. Throughout these postings, with the word 'sound' I hope to have in mind the aural notion. For those external vibrations instead of 'sound' I'll use the word 'noise'. Thus my answer to the conundrum would be that though there is noise in that forest, there is no sound (not counting what animals might hear). There is no right or wrong to either of these usages. But my stipulated distinction dispels the puzzlement for me. ("Oh but not all noise is "noise"b&") About 'meaning'. We've all been in the following situation: We hear someone use a word, and we suspect he has it "wrong". We ask him to describe what he has in mind. He does it, and that often prompts us to say, "But that's not the meaning of the word!" When we say that, we're in the grip of the belief that "THE meaning of the word" is somehow a mind-independent entity. We've also been in the situation where we are observing two people in a discussion, and one says something that convinces us he is not "understanding" the other. "That's not Mike's meaning," we might say. Here we are thinking of the 'meaning' not as some sort of mind-independent entity, but as an entity in Mike's mind, his notion. Unfortunately, these two notions of "meaning" have no obvious different verbal handles to distinguish them the way 'sound' has 'sound' and 'noise'. Recall - I'm a dualist. Though I can't prove it, I believe there are material things outside my skull. And I believe "consciousness" - comprising my feelings, images, ideas - is the other kind of "thing" that "exists". There is materiality, and consciousness. (I shrink from calling consciousness, as some philosophers do, a "substance", but that's only because my idiosyncratic collection of notions that I associate with 'substance' contains too much that feels, to me, alien to consciousness.) What I do not believe in is a third kind of entity -- non-material, mind-independent "abstractions" like "meanings", "categories", "qualities", etc. I certainly believe we have conscious bits, "notions", of all these things. In commenting on the second usage of 'meaning' above - "an entity in Mike's mind, his notion" - Imago asks: "Why isn't that simply meaning then? Why would this not produce a functional account of 'the meaning of xxx'??" I agree a given notion could serviceably be termed "The meaning of xxx FOR A GIVEN PERSON". And I agree that most of us who speak the same language are likely to have roughly the same notions with many given utterances or scriptions. (I'm semi-content at this stage to term such bits of consciousness "entities", even though they are IIMT. Though it bothers me that I'm also inclined to call consciousness as a whole an "entity".) But I submit that when one speaker says, "John, that's not the meaning of the word!" and John says, "Well, that's the meaning for me," they have in mind quite distinct notions behind their use of the word 'meaning'. The first speaker believes that regardless of what Mike thinks, the word has a "THE correct meaning", an entity that is mind-independent, and because Mike's notion does not "correspond" to "THE meaning", Mike is flatly wrong. Mike might reply, "Look, when you say that word that's what comes to my mind, that's what it means to me. I can't be wrong about what the word means to me." (En passant: Wittgenstein's assertion that "a word's meaning is its use in the community" has several faults, one of which is its insinuation that there is a uniformity to each word's use in the community. Wittgenstein would have been a bit closer if he had said, "a word's meaning is its effect in the community" - that is, "a word's meaning is the notion it occasions when heard by the audience in the community". That's still faulty - it too insinuates a uniformity where there isn't any - but it avoids the vast ambiguity of 'use'.) My idea of "mind-independent meaning" may be clearer when I plug in specific words: "Mike, that's not what 'murder' means!" Or, "Mike, that's not the meaning of the play!" The speaker of both those lines clearly believes in the existence of "meaning-entities", abstractions that are neither material things, nor solely notional things. In sum, I believe the notions behind those two usages of 'meaning' are quite distinct. So when Imago says, "Why isn't [Mike's notion] simply meaning then? Why would this not produce a functional account of 'the meaning of xxx'??" I have to suspect he either isn't seeing or he simply rejects the idea that the notions behind those two usages of 'meaning' are distinct. Those who believe in mind-independent abstract meaning-entities believe Mike's personal notion of xxx can be outright wrong. Imago's remark, "After all, [Mike's usage] will produce the appropriate inferential relations that allow people to keep track of one another's usages," turns out not to be true in practice. Too often, disputants don't realize that they are arguing at cross-purposes because they are entertaining different meaning-notions of the same word. Again, my central point in "The Trinary View of 'What There Is'" is that there is no realm of non-material, non-consciousness "things" -- abstractions. That alleged world of abstract entities is imaginary. I also maintain that the point has an importance. One of those alleged abstractions is "meaning". My point entails that none of the following terms in any way except notionally "means", "denotes", "refers to", "names", "picks out" anything except notions, ideas that vary from mind to mind to mind. THE meanings of categories qualities sets forms absolute standards referents relations language referents beauty sin justice terrorism art Freedom Fighters Freedom Flotilla Islam Catholicism Humanitarians Soul Justice Massacre Slaughter Aggression New Same Life Fair New York Racism Elitismb& I repeat: The list is effectively endless.
