• creativesoul
    11.4k
    The question is as fundamental as they come. A discussion on meaning could transform into the endless common pitfalls of historical discourse, but this discussion need not suffer that fate, for that same discourse has also shed light...

    Method is paramount. I will grant historical discourse in it's entirety and without prejudice by virtue of inviting current convention to decide the starting point. I will not revisit classical problems unless warrant for my doing so has been clearly, simply, and strongly argued for.

    Convention places theories of meaning in two distinct categories; semantic, which sets out the meanings and/or semantic contents of linguistic expressions(within a community of speakers), and foundational, which sets out what it is about the community of speakers and their circumstances that gives those expressions of language semantic content. We can bookmark the difference between the two by looking into what sorts of questions each asks. The former pursues questions such as, "What is the meaning of this or that symbol (for a particular person or group)?", and the latter would ask, "What relevant facts regarding that person and/or group result in the symbol having the meaning that it does?" I'll not draw further contrast between the two because the question at hand requires further comparison. So I point towards their common basis:symbolism and confidently say that the spade does not turn up at this point. To quite the contrary...

    By virtue of lifting the veil from atop symbolism, I intend to argue that all instances of symbolism are adequate for meaning, and that some instances of symbolism are prior to language. My answer to the question at hand necessarily follows...

    Yes. Meaning is indeed prior to language as it must be.
  • T Clark
    13k
    Yes. Meaning is indeed prior to language as it must be.creativesoul

    I don't think I'll have much to contribute to this discussion. Whatever you come up with and wherever you go, you should take into account the fact that the capacity for and structures of language are genetically wired into our nervous system before birth.
  • creativesoul
    11.4k


    Interesting claim, particularly the part about "structures of language" being genetically wired into our nervous system before birth. Care to unpack that? I mean, what sort of thing can a structure of language be if it is something capable of being 'genetically wired'? And... what counts as being genetically wired?
  • T Clark
    13k
    Interesting claim, particularly the part about "structures of language" being genetically wired into our nervous system before birth. Care to unpack that? I mean, what sort of thing can a structure of language be if it is something capable of being 'genetically wired'? And... what counts as being genetically wired?creativesoul

    I am not a cognitive scientist, so I will rapidly get in over my head. Here is a link to Wikipedia's write up on psycholinguistics. Look at the discussion of "language acquisition" for a discussion of the issue. See section 3.1.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psycholinguistics
  • Noble Dust
    7.8k


    Prior is a tricky word, but I would argue that meaning is "inside" or "the driver of" language. The meanings of words change, which I think is evidence for meaning being "located" within language, or a catalyst for language. Consider other forms of expression, like art forms for instance. Creating art is driven by a need to express; the content of that expression comes after the fact, but the expression is prior. Language works the same way. Human experience is a situation in which we need to express things, and so language comes after that fact as a fulfillment of a requirement. But other forms of expression also exist.
  • Banno
    23.1k
    Is counting prior to number?
  • Noble Dust
    7.8k


    Wouldn't the proper analogy here be "Is number prior to counting"?
  • Banno
    23.1k
    Wouldn't the proper analogy here be "Is number prior to counting"?Noble Dust

    Counting, and meaning, are the action; number, and language, the tool.
  • Wayfarer
    20.6k
    Whatever you come up with and wherever you go, you should take into account the fact that the capacity for and structures of language are genetically wired into our nervous system before birth.T Clark

    But that assumes that the capacity to grasp meaning and language is something that can be understood in biological terms - that it is the product of genetics. This naturally must see the evolution of language and the ability to grasp meaning as a kind of linear progression of abilities which exist in a more rudimentary form in other species, like the use of twigs to poke termite-nests being a rudimentary example of tool use.

    However there is

    a radical dissimilarity between all animal communication systems and human language. The former are based entirely on “linear order,” whereas the latter is based on hierarchical syntax. In particular, human language involves the capacity to generate, by a recursive procedure, an unlimited number of hierarchically structured sentences. A trivial example of such a sentence is this: “How many cars did you tell your friends that they should tell their friends . . . that they should tell the mechanics to fix?” (The ellipses indicate that the number of levels in the hierarchy can be extended without limit.) Notice that the word “fix” goes with “cars,” rather than with “friends” or “mechanics,” even though “cars” is farther apart from “fix” in linear distance. The mind recognizes the connection, because “cars” and “fix” are at the same level in the sentence’s hierarchy. A more interesting example given in the book is the sentence “Birds that fly instinctively swim.” The adverb “instinctively” can modify either “fly” or “swim.” But there is no ambiguity in the sentence “Instinctively birds that fly swim.” Here “instinctively” must modify “swim,” despite its greater linear distance.

    Animal communication can be quite intricate. For example, some species of “vocal-learning” songbirds, notably Bengalese finches and European starlings, compose songs that are long and complex. But in every case, animal communication has been found to be based on rules of linear order. Attempts to teach Bengalese finches songs with hierarchical syntax have failed. The same is true of attempts to teach sign language to apes. Though the famous chimp Nim Chimpsky was able to learn 125 signs of American Sign Language, careful study of the data has shown that his “language” was purely associative and never got beyond memorized two-word combinations with no hierarchical structure.

    ...

    Is there an ontological discontinuity between humans and other animals? Berwick and Chomsky arrive, on purely empirical grounds, at the conclusion that there is. All animals communicate, but only humans are rational; and for Berwick and Chomsky, human language is primarily an instrument of rationality. They present powerful arguments that this astonishing instrument arose just once and quite suddenly in evolutionary history—indeed, most likely in just one member of Homo sapiens, or at most a few. At the biological level, this involved a sudden upgrade of our mental machinery, and Berwick and Chomsky’s theories of this are both more plausible than competing theories and more consistent with data from a variety of disciplines. But they recognize that more than machinery is involved. The basic contents and meanings, the deep-lying elements of human thought—“word-like but not words”—were somehow there, mysteriously, in the beginning.

    Stephen Barr review of Why Only Us: Language and Evolution, Berwick and Chomsky

    That suggests to me that what evolves is the capacity for language and abstract reasoning, which is inextricably intertwined with the capacity to recognise meaning. Perhaps in some rudimentary way, any living thing 'recognises' meaning, in the sense that 'sweet means nourishment' or 'heat means danger'; but it is only in humans (or other rational beings, should there be any) that language, thought and mind reach the point of being able to represent those things as facts or propositions.
  • Srap Tasmaner
    4.6k

    Many other species have some ability to communicate, have calls and such that might qualify as symbols. I am coming to believe that the peculiarity of language is that it is a far more powerful tool than we could have needed just for communication at the time when language emerged. Granted, we now use it for more nuanced sorts of communication than any other species, but those other species get along pretty well with what they have. I think either language answered to other purposes (than communication) from the beginning, or, my guess, it's an accident that we ended up with so much more than we needed.

    It's just speculation. But if you're going to explain what language is or how it works, you ought to try not to leave out whatever it is that makes language distinctive from other sorts of animal communication.

    (I see @Wayfarer has chimed in with a related point as I was writing.)
  • Noble Dust
    7.8k
    Counting, and meaning, are the action; number, and language, the tool.Banno

    I was thinking of number as a concept; quantity, not number(s). So Counting and language would be the action, meaning and "number" are the catalyst of the action. After all, numbers are just representations of quantity. Language seems to be a representation of meaning.
  • Noble Dust
    7.8k


    Right. So how is meaning an action?
  • Banno
    23.1k
    Meaning is what we do with language.
  • Noble Dust
    7.8k


    Can you elaborate? I disagree; I say language is what we do with meaning.
  • Banno
    23.1k
    See Wittgenstein, L: Philosophical Investigations; and elsewhere.
  • Banno
    23.1k
    Or, if you prefer, Austin, J.L.: How to do things with words.
  • Noble Dust
    7.8k


    I've read some of Investigations, but these days I'm not so into it. I was asking for your thoughts, not reading recs.
  • Banno
    23.1k
    It appears that implicit in the OP is the notion that words represent what we mean. That strikes me as a misguided approach to the relation between meaning and language. It is misguided to take statements as the whole of language.

    Creative and I have had much the same discussion for years. Do I know you of old, Nobel Dust?
  • Noble Dust
    7.8k
    It is misguided to take statements as the whole of language.Banno

    I don't think words representing what we mean is equal to statements being the whole of language. If you're talking about "the whole of language", how does meaning being a function of language (what I interpret your argument to be) better deal with that whole?

    Creative and I have had much the same discussion for years. Do I know you of old, Nobel Dust?Banno

    So you're saying that because we don't know each other, but you and creative do, my argument's aren't worth your time? lol. But who's this Nobel guy?? Alfred "Dusty" Nobel??
  • Banno
    23.1k
    you appear to not want to debate this with me.Noble Dust

    What are we debating? I like debates.

    I said meaning is not separable from language, and hence that it is an error to suppose that meaning can be prior to language.

    Meaning is not separable from language because meaning is what language does; hence the example: counting is what numbers do.

    What was your reply? I must have missed it.
  • Noble Dust
    7.8k
    What was your reply? I must have missed it.Banno

    Here:

    I don't think words representing what we mean is equal to statements being the whole of language. If you're talking about "the whole of language", how does meaning being a function of language (what I interpret your argument to be) better deal with that whole?Noble Dust
  • Cavacava
    2.4k


    Yes I think very young, pre-linguistic children come to understand that if they cry someone will typically come around to see what's up, when they hear the word 'no' while initially I don't think they really understand it, they soon pick up the fact that this sound means that they need to aware of something.

    The connection between language and computation is interesting. Do you think language is reducible to computation (for the most part), I didn't think so, but Google translate seems to be a pretty good refutation of that position. Counting may be more important for survival from an evolutionary standpoint than communication . Language is thought by many to be a fairly recent achievement, estimated at about 60000 to 100,000 years old.
  • Banno
    23.1k
    Meaning is not a function of language; meaning is something we do with language.

    But better: forget about meaning altogether and just look at what we do with language.

    Corollary: not everything we do with language is making statements.
  • Srap Tasmaner
    4.6k
    Meaning is what we do with language.Banno
    Counting, and meaning, are the action; number, and language, the tool.Banno
    Meaning is not separable from language because meaning is what language doesBanno
    Meaning is not a function of language; meaning is something we do with language.

    But better: forget about meaning altogether and just look at what we do with language.
    Banno

    You seem to be saying several different things, Banno.

    If language is a tool we mean things with, then it's conceivable we could mean things with something else. If you're saying there's nothing else we can mean things with, you'd need to argue for that.

    Unless it turns out you were defining the word "meaning" here as "what we do with language." Then you could save the tool talk, I guess: "meaning" would mean "using the tool language." On the other hand, how informative would such a definition be?
  • Banno
    23.1k
    You seem to be saying several different things, Banno.Srap Tasmaner

    Really? I'd understood that I said much the same thing four different ways.

    It is more than conceivable that we could mean things in other ways than with language. Such as:
    172efc3a327dcbf696c3d609fcfa6aa7.jpg

    As for definitions - they are fraught. No, I am not defining meaning as what we do with words.
  • Wayfarer
    20.6k
    I only know snippets and snatches of Wittgenstein, but one of them is, 'if we were to set a limit to thinking, we would have to think both sides of the limit'. I *think* this is part of the same general attitude as 'that of which we cannot speak....'

    But the problem with that is, that if a consequence is that we have to derive the nature of meaning from within the limits of language and meaning itself - then there is always going to be a problem of the circularity of reference, in my view. I think what I'm getting at is that meaning seems like a kind of Indian rope trick - that it dangles down from 'above' in some sense, and we can use the rope to suspend all kinds of things from, but we can't really see what's at the top end, holding it up. Whereas the typical reductionist accounts of 20th century philosophy always want to understand it by looking 'downwards' into the apparently undirected activities of matter shaped by darwinian necessity.
  • Srap Tasmaner
    4.6k
    Meaning is not separable from language because meaning is what language doesBanno

    So meaning is separable from language, because we can mean something with a painting, but language is not separable from meaning because all we can do with language is mean things. Is that right?
  • Banno
    23.1k
    Yes, although I suggest we avoid reifying meaning.
  • Metaphysician Undercover
    12.3k

    No, I think meaning ought to be reified, and it can be reified so long as it is not understood to be any particular thing, it is more like relations between things. It's value which cannot be reified, and when we interpret, we bring values to bear upon meaning.
  • Banno
    23.1k
    I think what I'm getting at is that meaning seems like a kind of Indian rope trickWayfarer

    Very much so.

    Hence the distinction between showing and telling; You can show someone the rope; from there, they can climb up or down.
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