In a message dated 7/21/10 6:38:32 PM, [email protected] writes:
On Jul 21, 2010, at 5:33 PM, [email protected] wrote: > Michael, every usage by you of the word 'meaning" above can be replaced by > one of the terms we call a bit of consciousness -- 'notion', 'image', > sound', etc. For example, when you say, "the triggers or stimuli that produce > the > meaning", I'd argue they "trigger" a notion of some related image. Let's > agree the object observed -- like the noise when I say "horsey", and the > physical horse -- is outside the mind, but it's the apparatus in my head > that > simultaneously "hears" and "sees" and consequently associates the sound and > the sight. The next time my son heard "Horsey!" he'd look around for a horse > because his mind had associated the sound of my word with the image of the > animal. 1. I must have been misreading the phosphors on my screen in messages with your name on them, or at least I must have conjured up the wrong associations. I understood your position to be that "meaning" does not reside in the object but in the thoughts of the person perceiving the object, i.e., that the "meaning" was an array or series of some-such in the activities of your brain when stimulated by the "meaningful" artifact. 2. Not everything one can think is image-able, that is, not everything can be rendered internally as an image. The artifact may trigger something that is not an image, such as an if-then relationship or a conditional. Squiggles on the page or glowing phosphors can produce a subjunctive kind of mental construct. (But, truth be told, when I read or hear a logical argument, frequently I "see" it in my head, mentally, not perfectly and not in some visual-symbolic way, but I grasp the logical relationships spatially, if you get my meaning. Kinda hard to describe.) | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Michael Brady I certainly agree with the "Kinda hard to describe" - for both of us. I'm trying to convey an idea that is so fundamentally alien to the way people use words that, one, the vast majority can't see what's on my mind, and, two, what they do think they are garnering seems to them evidence of derangement. "This guy is saying not only that nothing means anything but that there's no such thing as meaning!" You seem to have garnered much of what I've tried to convey, but I hope I would never use the word 'meaning' while seeming to try to "refer to", "designate". "signify", "denote", or "mean" a "thing". All of those alleged actions are chimerical. No word ever "actually denotes". Names don't "actually name". No word "means". We certainly think of them as doing so -- that is, we entertain the idea that words "mean", that "names" "name", that "senses" "have" referents. We can and do often "call" our idea of something "its" "meaning", and we think we are citing more than merely bits of consciousness that we associate with a "word". But all that is happening is that a familiar sound or image causes our mind to retrieve associated bits of consciousness. The reason it does that is not because in some mysterious way an entity often called a "meaning" has come to "reside" in the word. It doesn't. The word simply "reminds" -- by causing the mind to summon up previously associated bits. A lister might respond, "But that's all I mean by 'meaning'. The bits of consciousness that come to my mind when I hear a word are the word's meaning FOR ME." Okay, but I maintain (using kitchen English) this position entails two things. The first is a concession that there is no "THE meaning of" anything, no mind-independent entity out there that our notion must "correspond to" to be "correct". Second, the position entails that (again using kitchen English) 'meanings' is effectively synonymous with 'occasioned, stirred, bits of consciousness' - of which there is a countless variety for every word (or any other occasioner). I myself would certainly never say, " that the "meaning" was an array or series of some-such in the activities of your brain when stimulated by the "meaningful" artifact." To say "the meaning isb&" suggests there is an entity there. But there is no mind-independent "the meaning", ever. Because I concede I'll never succeed in expunging the words 'means/meaning/meaningless/meaningful' from human use, I've been ready to accept a usage like this: "The bits of consciousness that arise in my mind when I read or hear a word are what I call 'the meaning for me' of that word," because this is effectively synonymous with saying, "Whatever comes to my mind when I hear a word, I call 'its meaning for me' at that moment." And that is a far cry from saying there is an entity that is "THE meaning of a word, gesture, object etc." Your second point indicts me for, in my explanatory efforts, restricting my examples to ones that most people will readily accept as admitting of "association" - e.g. the utterance "Horsey!" and the visual image of a horse. I plead guilty of this. I've done it because I figured the first step in conveying my argument was to convey how simple association - with no mention of "meaning" - could "account for", say, my son's summoning up the image of a horse whenever I said, "Horsey!" Still, my line, "I'd argue they "trigger" a notion of some related image," was typically carelessly quick and sloppy of me. I shouldn't have said 'image', which consistently has connotations of "visual image". The bits of consciousness occasioned by hearing a word don't always come in the form of something visualizable. In fact, most of the time they don't. You wonder how non-visualizable, seemingly non-sensual, more "abstract" bits of consciousness, could become "associated" with an utterance. What about a more abstract concept? I tried to hint at this by describing a child who, hearing "No!" or "Bad girl!", soon gets your idea even though it's a general, "abstract concept" and not visualizable. I assert that the more abstract a term, the more various the bits of consciousness stirred in auditors. And thus the harder it is to believe that the term "has" a mind-independent entity that is its "THE meaning". (All of which is compounded by the indeterminate, indefinite, multiplex and transitory (IIMT) nature of all bits of consciousness.) In a previous posting I gave a long list of abstract terms that do not "have" a "the meaning of". Almost any word ending in "-ism" admits of a wide variety of stirred notions when heard. You cite an "if-then relationship" as a typical abstract notion that does not seem visualizable. Logicians have a variety of ways in which they try to "express" that "relationship". "X implies Y", "For any x, if x then y," and so forth. Picture yourself describing the concept. You're likely to use kitchen English, which, in fact, is probably more serviceable in trying, however roughly, to convey what one has in mind. "It means that whenever you have an X, you have to have a Y. You can't have an X without also having a Y. For example, if there's smoke, there's fire, or if there's barking there has to be a dog." Remember, all bits of consciousness are IIMT, so the best anyone can do -- even Van Quine -- is convey a "rough idea". The history of philosophy can feel like a series of, "Jeez, I never thought of that!" moments. Russell's theories of description and reference, which seemed like real solid thinking at one time, were undermined by (among other pieces over the decades) Saul Kripke's essay NAMING AND NECESSITY. Early readers of Russell, and then early readers of Kripke, often felt that what they were reading put this problem to bed for all time. But in fact, say I, Kripke's paper is a blizzard of errors and confusions. So when you feel "This is kinda hard," you're no worse than the best of them. There is, of course, far more to be said.
