• Count Timothy von Icarus
    3.2k


    Of course, ships are not alive, but I don't think the question regarding whether a corpse is the same person as the living being, only now dead, is any different. It would depend on what we mean by "person'. The point I want to make is that there is no fact of the matter in these kinds of questions, but rather merely different ways of thinking and talking.

    I would disagree. The way we talk about such things is not arbitrary. When we appeal to "our ways of talking about things," we just push the explanation back one step. The question then becomes: "why do we talk about things in this way?" After all, we have an essentially infinite possibility space open to us in how we might use sounds or symbols to represent such things, yet we settle on some, and moreover if someone offers counterproposals on how we should do our speaking, some seem plausible and others ridiculous or arbitrary.

    In general, I think there is far too much of a tendency to jump from: "one cannot give a rigid, mathematical definition of a distinction," to "thus there is no fact of the matter." One cannot give such a definition for life, either from the perspective of medicine or biology. Yet surely there is a fact of the matter as to if anything is alive, or if some individual is alive or dead. And surely organisms were alive or dead, and died, prior to the advent of human language (that is, the distinction is not dependent on human language). Hence, the difference between life and death exists, and thus we make the distinction, not "we make the distinction, thus things are living or dead."

    The vagueness problem is still acute for any philosophy that insists on substance being founded on contradictory opposition as opposed to contrariety (e.g. something is either man or not-man, not somewhere in between). However, I think the problem seems more acute than it really is if one insists on presupposing a bundle theory whereby to "be man" must involve checking the box on some set of (observable) properties that are distinct from "humanity" and essentially "add up to it."
  • Janus
    16.7k
    I would disagree. The way we talk about such things is not arbitrary. When we appeal to "our ways of talking about things," we just push the explanation back one step. The question then becomes: "why do we talk about things in this way?"Count Timothy von Icarus

    I think you have misunderstood me; I haven't said that the ways we talk about things are arbitrary. Of course they are constrained, if the talk be sensible, by the things talked about. My point was only that, in relation to the notion of identity we might say that a corpse is a dead person or that a corpse is no longer a person, and that would depend on whether we define "person" as exclusively a living entity or not.
  • Count Timothy von Icarus
    3.2k


    I must be missing something, since it seems clear enough that the sound of "dog" could be arbitrarily assigned to some different referent in each instance.

    Yes, we could arbitrary use the sound "dog." You could even use it to refer to something different in each instance. You could render "fixed by divine providence or some such nonsense," as "dog dog dog dog dog dog dog." Yet no one would understand each other if they were always making different sounds to refer to different things in each instance, so we "cannot" have a human language that works like that.
  • Count Timothy von Icarus
    3.2k


    :up:

    That makes sense. And it is very easy to equivocate in this way with some terms, "person" being a prime example.
  • Count Timothy von Icarus
    3.2k


    I was actually thinking of that as I wrote that. Clear evidence that English is a barbarian tongue. :rofl:
  • Banno
    26.1k
    Yet no one would understand each other if they were always making different sounds to refer to different things in each instance, so we "cannot" have a human language that works like that.Count Timothy von Icarus

    Bang on!

    And yet we do understand one another, at least enough to have invented social media.

    So what is your answer? How is it that "dog" refers only to the canine, and not the police officer? In virtue of what does this occur? What fixes the referent?

    The answer given previously was the Humpty Dumpty account, but that cannot explain mutual agreement any more than does "dog dog dog dog dog dog dog."
  • Arcane Sandwich
    2.2k
    Clear evidence that English is a barbarian tongue. :rofl:Count Timothy von Icarus

    Hmmm... Well, maybe. I'd say that English grammar is particularly strange in some ways. But it's a great language. I don't like reading Shakespeare in Spanish, for example. It's not the same thing as reading his works in English.
  • Count Timothy von Icarus
    3.2k


    Then even "Truman's hair is Truman-blond", if true, the negation would have to be false. So even if we aren't speaking in universal terms we can use true/false.

    Yes, I agree that you could render a proposition like that. However, Aristotle's point was about judgement. So if we judge Truman's hair to be "Truman-blonde," and "Truman-blonde" is just whatever Truman's hair is, then we cannot be wrong in our judgement. Supposing we don't call it "hair" but "Truman-hair,' we also cannot be wrong that it is "Truman-hair" that is Truman-blonde.



    So, Aristotle would also say that we cannot simultaneously judge that Truman's hair is both Truman-blond and not-Truman-blond, at the same time, in the same way, without qualification. Indeed, if Truman-blond is just whatever Truman-hair is, and nothing else, no evidence can ever suggest to us that Truman-hair is anything other than Truman-blond.

    As respects the negation, we can speak such things in the discourse of spoken words, but not in the discourse of the soul (i.e., it does not make sense to say that someone earnestly believes and doesn't believe the same exact thing at the same exact time).
  • Moliere
    5.1k
    But don't babies without language and people with aphasia who cannot produce or understand language (or both) still perceive?Count Timothy von Icarus

    Yes, and yes!

    I don't think perception necessitates language -- I do think language effects perception such that a linguistic separation is suspect, at least, though.

    I'm skeptical of such a fusion, not least because the Sapir-Worf hypothesis is supported by very weak evidence, normally very small effect sizes and failures to replicate, despite a great deal of people having a strong interest in providing support for it. For instance, different cultures do indeed divide up the visible color spectrum differently, but the differences are not extreme. Nor does growing up with a different division seem to make you any better and spotting camouflaged objects. But moreover , aside from disparate divisions remaining fairly similar, no culture has a name for any of the colors that insects experience through being able to see in the ultraviolet range, and for an obvious reason.

    Likewise, disparate cultures have names for colors, shapes, animal species, etc. They don't pick any of the vast range of options that would be available to a species that largely creates their own perceptual "concepts." I know of no cultures that mix shape and color for some parts of the spectrum, and then shape and smell for another part, etc. or any of the innumerable possible combinations for descriptions.
    Count Timothy von Icarus

    I think of becoming enlanguaged as a process which changes how one thinks and perceives the world. That we can refer at all is linguistic. The conventions come out of histhis ability to mean.

    I don't believe this would necessitate a belief in Sapir-Worf. That's not the sort of thing I have in mind here. Rather it seems to me that we can't treat the phenomena of language as we do other things in the world. That we can refer to language already requires us to be able to refer or mean things.

    I'm reminded of Wittgenstein's section 1 of the PI:

    These words, it seems to me, give us a particular picture of the
    essence of human language. It is this: the individual words in language
    name objects—sentences are combinations of such names.——In this
    picture of language we find the roots of the following idea: Every word
    has a meaning. This meaning is correlated with the word. It is the
    object for which the word stands.
    Augustine does not speak of there being any difference between
    kinds of word. If you describe the learning of language in this way
    you are, I believe, thinking primarily of nouns like "table", "chair",
    "bread", and of people's names, and only secondarily of the names of
    certain actions and properties; and of the remaining kinds of word as
    something that will take care of itself.
    Now think of the following use of language: I send someone shopping. I give him a slip marked "five red apples". He takes the slip to
    the shopkeeper, who opens the drawer marked "apples"; then he looks
    up the word "red" in a table and finds a colour sample opposite it;
    then he says the series of cardinal numbers—I assume that he knows
    them by heart—up to the word "five" and for each number he takes an
    apple of the same colour as the sample out of the drawer.——It is in
    this and similar ways that one operates with words.——"But how does
    he know where and how he is to look up the word 'red' and what he is
    to do with the word 'five'?"——Well, I assume that he acts as I have
    described. Explanations come to an end somewhere.—But what is the
    meaning of the word "five"?—No such thing was in question here,
    only how the word "five" is used.

    I'd say we'd already have to use language to be able to ask "What is the meaning of the word?"

    J mentioned Gadamer earlier, and I like Gadamer, but the idea that all understanding is done through language seems suspect. It seems like the sort of judgement a philosopher focused on language would have. But does an MLB pitcher finally have it all click and understand how to throw a knuckleball through language? Does a mechanic understand how to fix a motorcycle engine primarily through language? Or what of demonstrations in mathematics based on visualization?

    My thoughts are that language is a late evolutionary arrival that taps into a whole array of powers. It enables us in a great many ways. But thought also isn't "language all the way down." Nor do I think we need to suppose that non-verbal individuals lack understanding (or else that we have to suppose that they have "private languages" for them to understand anything) or any noetic grasp of reality.

    To my mind, part of the problem here is the ol' reduction of reason to ratio (which is maybe enabled by computational theory of mind). But my take is that reason is broader than language and that the Logos is broader than human reason.

    Now I agree that language isn't everything, and that creatures not-enlanguaged can have a kind of understanding. I'm not confident that that understanding is based in reference, though, since that seems to me a linguistic act. At least a human-linguistic act, insofar that we understand it ourselves.

    I think it changes the way we perceive, though. So while a not-enlanguaged being can perceive once enlanguaged the perception changes. Here I think more about how if I learn new words, if I read a book, this changes how I see the world -- what was once "car" is now "motor-burning-gas-turning..." etc. and all the various distinctions I know about the car that I did not know before, and a mechanic will have an even wider perception of that same vehicle because of their ability to make distinctions.

    I think it's wrapped up in how we live, however, so certainly it's not language all the way down in the small-l sense -- but maybe the big-L sense, which is the thing that is the mystery in the first place. (or, in a slogan: "Names are weird")
  • Moliere
    5.1k
    Yes, I agree that you could render a proposition like that. However, Aristotle's point was about judgement. So if we judge Truman's hair to be "Truman-blonde," and "Truman-blonde" is just whatever Truman's hair is, then we cannot be wrong in our judgement. Supposing we don't call it "hair" but "Truman-hair,' we also cannot be wrong that it is "Truman-hair" that is Truman-blonde.Count Timothy von Icarus

    I think I can follow along with this, though I'd add a temporal dimension -- so that every word ever said is always different from moment to moment.

    In some ways that's true, though the process' rate of change is such that we need to reference texts hundreds of years old to see the change. In some ways names can become predicates and vice-versa, and we can be as specific as every moment.

    What I'd say is that since here we are talking about it, and understanding it together, why would this undermine communication at all?

    When a question is particular enough I need the pluperfect tense to specify time-dates-names-tools, etc.

    When it's a family event the pluperfect can be a remembrance of good times.

    Though I remember the same time with my family at each event -- that memory we re-remember last Christmas won't be the same next Christmas when we revisit it again.

    And yet, despite all these rapid changes, we are able to communicate. Language remains useful. That's the mystery**. (not in principle, in my opinion, but just right now)

    So, Aristotle would also say that we cannot simultaneously judge that Truman's hair is both Truman-blond and not-Truman-blond, at the same time, in the same way, without qualification. Indeed, if Truman-blond is just whatever Truman-hair is, and nothing else, no evidence can ever suggest to us that Truman-hair is anything other than Truman-blond.

    As respects the negation, we can speak such things in the discourse of spoken words, but not in the discourse of the soul (i.e., it does not make sense to say that someone earnestly believes and doesn't believe the same exact thing at the same exact time).

    Would it surprise you that I disagree with Aristotle on this? :D

    Sartre's Being and Nothingness is pretty much about this ability to earnestly believe contradictory things -- to lie to oneself you have to both believe the lie as truth and that the lie is a lie.

    I think the human soul is contradictory, generally, and its only the rationalists who manage (or lucked out to be born with?*) souls which let go of contradiction. (Well, and the saints, etc.)

    *EDIT: Or, really, cursed to be born with when I think about saints, martyrs, and the ends of some of our favorite philosophers.

    **EDIT2: In lots of ways this mirrors the arguments for the problem of consciousness. That does not mean they are related, but I do think it's harder to deny that we mean things than it is to deny we are conscious.
  • DifferentiatingEgg
    199
    Here's what Quine says about it in Pursuit of Truth Chapter 3 Meaning § 20:

    "The difference between taking a sentence holophrastically as a seamless whole or by taking a sentence analytically term by term proved crucial in value matters. It is crucial also to translation. Taken analytically, the indeterminancy of translation is trivial and indisputable. It was factually illustrated in ontological relativity by the Japanese classifiers and more abstractly above by the proxy functions. It is the unsurprising reflection that the divergent interpretation of the words in the sentence can so offset one another to sustain an identical translation of the sentence as a whole it is what I call inscrutability of reference."

    Basically meaning isn't tied to words, but the interplay of terms within the whole structure of the sentence. Hence there can be multiple valid translations all with the same final meaning (because the way the words reference each on in the structure of their translations equate to the same)...hence reference is inscrutable... because it's always changing.
  • Moliere
    5.1k
    Basically meaning isn't tied to words, but the interplay of terms within the whole structure of the sentence. Hence there can be multiple valid translations all with the same final meaning (because the way the words reference each on in the structure of their translations equate to the same)...hence reference is inscrutable... because it's always changing.DifferentiatingEgg

    Thanks for posting this -- I was beginning to wonder if I'm entirely wrong and I believe that this is basically what I've been arguing for.
  • Leontiskos
    3.7k
    Thanks for posting this -- I was beginning to wonder if I'm entirely wrong and I believe that this is basically what I've been arguing for.Moliere

    This came up earlier, but you seemed to be arguing something rather different. For example:

    What is Quine's intended conclusion? I don't think it is as radical as is being assumed. In a 1970 paper he says that the gavagai example is very limited, and demonstrates the inscrutability of terms rather than indeterminacy of translation of sentences.Leontiskos

    Quine may be saying little more than that terms are inscrutable apart from context ("holism").Leontiskos
  • Moliere
    5.1k
    Probably my fault -- in responding and thinking I've been hopping between what I think and what Quine thinks.

    I have some radical conclusions that I'm exploring, but I don't believe Quine is there as much as serves as an entryway into what I'm thinking.
  • Moliere
    5.1k
    Explicitly speaking -- I've at least separated what I believe from what I believe Quine and Davidson to be saying, but only if I focus on the two sentences where I did that.

    Else, I've not attended to the differences and have been (and continue to be) engaging in dialogue and self-expression, while attempting to express why "the inscrutability of reference" can't be dismissed, from a philosophical perspective at least.
  • Count Timothy von Icarus
    3.2k


    Would it surprise you that I disagree with Aristotle on this? :D

    It might be more that I have not properly communicated the claim properly. Pace Plato, Aristotle allows that weakness of will can occur, so he wouldn't necessarily be at odds with Sartre here. The point is more about predication. So, for instance, if you go outside and see a car, and it's blue, you cannot also judge that it is not-blue, in the same way, without qualification (so a car that is blue and another color isn't a counter example here).

    So, once on this forum someone brought up the old duck/rabbit optical illusion as a counter example. But that wouldn't be one. That would be an example where we qualify our judgement.




    The answer given previously was the Humpty Dumpty account

    By who? Humpty Dumpty in Through the Looking Glass is a joke, like Molière's Imaginary Invalid. "Language is used for communicating intentions" does not entail "words mean whatever a speaker wants them to mean."

    That someone can point to a picture and say "that's a picture of the greatest general in history," and not realize that their Napoleon portrait has been replaced with a picture of David Bowie is not any more mysterious than the fact that, while smoke is a sign of fire, there can be smoke without fire, or that people can misspeak, or that listeners can mishear. The same is true for sarcasm. Sarcasm works because the information used in understanding language isn't limited to words, but includes tone, surrounding context, memory, etc.

    Language involves stipulated/conventional signs that signify things, giving us a relation akin to smoke → fire or dark clouds → rain. Signs aren't univocal. A person's words are signs of things, by convention, context, etc., but they also signs of the speaker's intentions. Likewise, when someone conveys knowledge, their words are a sign of truth in their intellect. When they speak truthfully (as in, not lying) their words are a sign of their beliefs. Lying involves words that are not signs of a person's beliefs, and yet they still can be signs of their intentions (e.g. when someone lies about being wealthy, being able to bench press 300lbs, etc., they reveal that they think these are desirable).

    There is a lot of information exchanged in speech, and a lot of parallel signification. One cannot reduce this to the words or sentences themselves. I would argue that it is better to start with simpler questions, e.g., "how does smoke signify fire?" or "how does an angry badger succeed at signifying its internal state to other mammals," before jumping into human language. Nor can one reduce all such communications straightforwardly to use, since use follows from intentions, and a key use of language is to communicate intentions (one might consider here all the, IMO quite good, arguments that chimps and other primates do not learn to use human language as language, whereas a simple view of use would end up concluding that not only chimps, but dogs can use human language).

    Not all statements are first-person declaratives. We speak in the passive voice, we try to deny assertoric force, etc. either supposing an abstract speaker or abstracting away the speaker. And this might be useful in some cases, but it is perhaps where confusion arises as philosophers try to explain how conventional signs signify outside the contexts in which they are actually used.




    Basically meaning isn't tied to words, but the interplay of terms within the whole structure of the sentence.

    This is indeed an important point. However, it is not unique to Quine, nor does it entail Quine's particular approach to reference. See the rest of the post above. From an information theoretic or semiotic perspective, there is a ton of information relevant to communication that is related to context (linguistic and otherwise), tone, body language, the identity of the speaker, the identity of the intended recipient, past conversation/stipulation, etc., in addition to convention. There is also a lot of signification going on in conversations.

    However, signs clearly do signify according to convention, else language (and any communications convention) would not be useful for communications. Such signification, when analyzed from the perspective of convention in the abstract, can be more or less ambiguous or determinant. For instance, it is possible to specify signification such that any competent speaker of a language will know exactly what object you're referring to in some cases.

    That signification is not uniquely specified by a simple correspondence analysis does not entail that it is wholly undetermined. The communication of intentions clearly does occur (to deny this is to deny meaningful communications). An analysis of conventional signs need not exclude any reference to context, tone, etc. either. It is, at least sometimes, by convention that sentences will have different meanings in different contexts. Tone is involved in signaling sarcasm, questions, commands, etc. in ways specified by convention, but has nothing to do with the exact words used.

    The mistake is to do something like "look for the meanings of words in isolation." But then it also seems mistaken to assert that "fish" does not signify fish by convention. Like so:

    The-semiotic-triangle-according-to-Ogden-and-Richards-37-The-word-Symbol-the-thing.png
  • Banno
    26.1k
    Seems to me you are on the right track.
  • Banno
    26.1k
    No one would admit to such a thing openly, of course.

    Well, almost no one.

    There is a lot of information exchanged in speech...Count Timothy von Icarus
    Language is more about constructing, rather than exchanging, information. This choice of words may mark a pretty fundamental difference between those who agree with Quine and those who do not.
  • Moliere
    5.1k
    This is indeed an important point. However, it is not unique to Quine, nor does it entail Quine's particular approach to reference. See the rest of the post above. From an information theoretic or semiotic perspective, there is a ton of information relevant to communication that is related to context (linguistic and otherwise), tone, body language, the identity of the speaker, the identity of the intended recipient, past conversation/stipulation, etc., in addition to convention. There is also a lot of signification going on in conversations.

    However, signs clearly do signify according to convention, else language (and any communications convention) would not be useful for communications.
    Count Timothy von Icarus

    My thought is that we don't know how signs signify, or even if "signs" is the correct signification for understanding reference, or language.

    "Sign", obviously, being a linguistic expression -- the sign that says "CAUTION" literally "stands for" the meaning "Be careful".

    But the linguistic sign is not the literal sign.

    I mostly think that meaning is something we don't know why it works, at this point. (hence, philosophy)

    Pace Plato, Aristotle allows that weakness of will can occur, so he wouldn't necessarily be at odds with Sartre here. The point is more about predication. So, for instance, if you go outside and see a car, and it's blue, you cannot also judge that it is not-blue, in the same way, without qualification (so a car that is blue and another color isn't a counter example here).

    So, once on this forum someone brought up the old duck/rabbit optical illusion as a counter example. But that wouldn't be one. That would be an example where we qualify our judgement.
    Count Timothy von Icarus

    I agree that the rabbit/duck illusion is not a counter-example. I think the belief would have to be of the form of a contradiction, rather than a contrary -- "P ^ ~P"

    I believe that the literal notion that we lie to ourselves -- so I am telling me a lie -- that we end up believing something contradictory, at least if its something we actually do psychologically.

    I don't think we're rational beings by nature, though, so this doesn't seem hard for me to accept. Beliefs are formed not on the basis of rationality as much as... whatever they are formed by.

    And language follows suit because it's useful even if it's contradictory.
  • Moliere
    5.1k
    Sweet, thanks.

    I recognize how odd my conclusions are, and so sometimes wonder if I'm just barmy .... :D
  • Moliere
    5.1k
    Language is more about constructing, rather than exchanging, information. This choice of words may mark a pretty fundamental difference between those who agree with Quine and those who do not.Banno

    Yup.
  • Banno
    26.1k
    The emphasis on "sign" is problematic, in that it supposes that the main purpose, or fundamental element, in language is the noun.

    It isn't. Language is about getting things done as a group. Reference is incidental to that purpose.

    Added: that, in a nutshell, is the difference between the Tractatus and the Investigations.
  • Moliere
    5.1k
    ↪Moliere The emphasis on "sign" is problematic, in that it supposes that the main purpose, or fundamental element, in language is the noun.

    It isn't. Language is about getting things done as a group. Reference is incidental to that purpose.
    Banno

    My thinking here is that after we get things done in a group we continue to be able to speak.

    And also -- yeah, the treatment of language as a noun is why I quoted Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations section 1.

    It even references a great medieval thinker, so I was thinking it might be more appreciated by our interlocutors.
  • Moliere
    5.1k
    More or less -- Saussure was wrong, and Derrida was right. ;)

    Or we can go down the Quine to Davidson path... all roads lead to Rome, as they say.
  • Count Timothy von Icarus
    3.2k


    Moliere The emphasis on "sign" is problematic, in that it supposes that the main purpose, or fundamental element, in language is the noun

    Does it? It seems neutral to me. Consider a stop sign, traffic lights, etc. Many of the most obvious conventional signs are about processes or behavior. Musical notation is about things (notes) but is also an instruction on a process, etc.



    Language is more about constructing, rather than exchanging, information. This choice of words may mark a pretty fundamental difference between those who agree with Quine and those who do not.

    Perhaps. Depending on how one frames information I am not sure if these are mutually exclusive. What is helpful about the information theoretic perspective, aside from its tremendous success in communications technology, cognitive science, and linguistics, is that it highlights the very many sources of information in verbal or written communications that are not limited to words themselves and that information content depends on assumptions that are prior to the receipt of a message.



    It even references a great medieval thinker, so I was thinking it might be more appreciated by our interlocutors.

    Yes, but unfortunately not in a particularly helpful way. St. Augustine has a very nuanced view of language and his own formulation of meaning as use, but he mostly shows up in PI to present a very naive picture of language.
  • Moliere
    5.1k
    Yes, but unfortunately not in a particularly helpful way. St. Augustine has a very nuanced view of language and his own formulation of meaning as use, but he mostly shows up in PI to present a very naive picture of language.Count Timothy von Icarus

    Fair.

    Would you at least go so far as to say that PI 1 highlights a common error, or do you think it's erroneous entirely?

    The "meaning coming with sign" thing is what I have in mind here. Like Saussure. Say/write/do sign indicates meaning in head and communication happens when two heads mean the same thing.

    That's the sort of thing I'm thinking is an illusion.
  • Count Timothy von Icarus
    3.2k


    I'd agree that Saussure's semiotics have not had a particularly helpful influence (in part because they led to Derrida :rofl: ). I was thinking more of the tripartite semiotics that tends to get employed vis-a-vis the natural science, e.g. John Deely, C.S. Peirce, and back on to the Latins. Having the interpretant in the process seems essential to me. Things don't signify to "nothing in particular." A dark cloud signifies rain to a goat or a bear as well as a man, but it doesn't signify anything to a rock.

    Edit: I should note that in the broader application, signification is happening everywhere, not just in language. For instance, in an analysis of the sensory system we might speak of light interacting with photoreceptors in the eye as the object, the pattern of action potentials traveling down the optic nerve as the sign vehicle, and then some particular resultant activity in the occipital lobe as the interpretant, or we might apply it to DNA and ribosomes, etc.

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