William writes: "I think I agree with Cheerskep here. Can I ever be sure that I can fully agree with anything another says or am I agreeing to my inner creation of what another says?"
That's a perceptive and illuminating question about a highly deceptive subject. Let's distinguish between what another person says, and what he is thinking. To put that differently, should we say we agree with the other guy's "expression", or the notion behind that expression - its "meaning for him"? Let's first talk about agreeing with someone else's notion. I say William is right in his insinuation that we can never be sure our notion is a perfect replica of another person's notion. (My own view is a bit more extreme: I'd say it's not a matter of being unsure; my notion can NEVER perfectly replicate someone else's notion. This is true because no matter how ostensibly simple the notion may seem, it is always multiplex - always. My notion at any given moment is a compound of myriad previous associated memories, and the new results of the receiving and processing apparatus in my head. Moreover, No notion remains stable in my head. Whether it be a notion "of" New York, Cleopatra, "art", or any word whatever in the dictionary, as I reflect on the alleged subject of the notion, my conscious "picture" morphs. For me to speak of "my notion of New York" is a mistake, a self-deception, because it suggests a determinate, stable bit of consciousness.) Still, though perfect replication of another's notion may be impossible, the difference is -- as so much in philosophy of mind is -- a matter of degree. If I give a half hour speech explaining why I think we should not vote for Wintergreen for President, someone in the hall may rise and say, "I agree with Cheerskep," when in truth he doesn't agree with all my reasoning, but he does agree we should not vote for Wintergreen. And even as he says that, his and my notion of Wintergreen will differ in certain particulars. An interesting way in which our notions of the same man may differ though we don't differ on a "fact" about him is the "size" we give to that fact. Let's say Wintergreen is known to have said some bigoted things about gays. While one voter may shrug it off, saying there have probably been very few presidents in the past who haven't said or smiled at a bigoted remark about gays, for a second voter the remark terminates all possible allegiance to Wintergreen. In the second voter the accumulated mental associations with anti-gay bigotry were much more numerous and intense than in the first voter. The "inner creation" William cites is the mind's pulling together and manipulating memories associated with what one has just sensed (heard/seen/smelled etc). In the speaker's endeavor to convey his notion, he is always at the mercy of the assembling mind of his auditor. The words a speaker speaks are being processed by the auditor's mind in ways the speaker often does not anticipate at all. As for "agreeing" with the "expression" (as distinguished from with the notion assumedly behind the expression), I'd think of that as coming down simply to agreeing with the notion that comes to mind upon hearing the speaker's words, regardless of how close the hearer's notion is to the speaker's. "That was one bad movie!" "I agree with that." Of course, two people can have entirely different reasons -- i.e. notions --for feeling a movie is "bad", while both, with a delusion of unanimity, assent to the statement, "That was one bad movie."
