In a message dated 7/24/12 3:41:50 PM, [email protected] writes:
> All answers are always already premised on a misunderstanding - > subsequently to be sure is to mistaken > My guess is there's no one on our list more convinced than I about the inherent "incompleteness" of language as a tool for "communication". William's remark about the superiority of hand-drawing to any verbal communication is very often true. But I also believe that language can often be what I've called "serviceable". (I have subsequently discovered that Quine used the term before I did. Being beaten to a good term can be an occasion for dismay, but not in this instance: I'm chuffed to know that Quine, a very smart though incomplete cookie, also saw utility in the term 'serviceable'.) The serviceability of language in getting across what we have in mind depends on our doing everything we can to describe our notions behind all our key terms. The quintessential "description" is often what's called "ostensive definition": We hold an apple up and say, "Apple!" Then we hold up an orange and say, "Orange!" Are there possibilities for mistakes even there? Yes. But chances are we will have enhanced the possibility that we will "communicate" -- i.e. stir a serviceably apt notion -- when we thereafter utter the word 'apple'.
