Language is a game of two witnesses.

Benj96

Suppose you went on a space mission to Mars we'll say. And while there you did a series of solo expeditions across the surface of the dusty red planet.

On one of your trips you encounter an alien object. The object is significantly more advanced than anything you've ever seen before and so its qualities dont quite fit any descriptions us earthlings have used in the past.

Its shape is simple. Like a circle or triangle or cube. Yet it is none of those things. We dont have a name for this new shape despite how seemingly obvious it is. Our basic shapes dont even approximate it. Its colour is again the same situation, monotone and discrete but unrecognisable. Nothing on earth has this colour. The size is unsteady, from one angle it appears large yet from a slightly different angle it looks incredibly small. The texture is unknown but upon touching is like a conglomerate of more familiar feelings. You cant quite put your finger on a description.

All in all it's a "you had to be there" experience.
You go back to report your find to the rest of the team. They are excited.
"Well tell us, what did it look like, where was it positioned? How big was it?" They demand a detailed description to send back to earth.

You realise you cant explain it. No word fits appropriately to describe any of its aspects. You decide to make up a new word for the new colour. The colour is "Phliblex". They look puzzled. Okay describe phliblex is it warm like orange and yellow or cold like blue and purple? You realise the worst has done nothing to add communicate. It has only confused matters.

So on the next day you show the team the object. They now see the colour phliblex and take a photo of it to add to the spectrum of known colours. Ah so that's what it is!

Back on earth at a conference you are talking to your colleague about how you both found phliblex such an interesting colour. You both know what it looks like. The word has meaning for you. But some others at the conference who havent seen it yet are dumbfounded. They dont understand what you are talking about until you show them the picture.

It seems words only have meaning when the experience the worst is based on is shared by more than one witness. Otherwise the information cannot be conveyed.

Banno

↪Benj96

That' a start.

Isaac

It seems words only have meaning when the experience the worst is based on is shared by more than one witness. Otherwise the information cannot be conveyed. — Benj96

Yet another conclusion about the real world (the one in which we use words to communicate with each other) drawn from a set of imagined properties of a non-real world, thus rendering the conclusion entirely useless.

If your imagined world where such a colour/shape/size is possible is like the real world, then your conclusion follows. If it isn't then your conclusion does not follow.

So why not skip the set up entirely and simply say "Imagine a worlds where its true that 'words only have meaning when the experience it is based on is shared by more than one witness'", well if such a world were like ours then words only have meaning when the experience it is based on is shared by more than one witness!

We can heartily congratulate ourselves on a another philosophical contribution to our understanding of the world.

Next I propose we imagine that the gravitational constant is 4. In such a world the gravitational constant would be 4! Wow, now we've just worked out what the gravitational constant is from our armchairs (assuming our imagined world is actually like the real one - but we can leave such trivial detail-filling to the scientists, we've done the bulk of the work by pointing out that if A=B then A=B)

A Seagull

↪Benj96

Words only have meaning in the context of communication.

TheMadFool

Well, the problem the OP's theory runs into is that it conflates stipulated definitions with conventional definitions. The word "Philiblex" begins with a stipulated definition assigned by the astronaut and doesn't need to be shared with anyone but for it to become a conventional definition it needs to be shared and approved by at least two people.

Benj96

↪TheMadFool

exactly.

Benj96

↪Isaac

Despite the fact that my analogy is fictional I could have easily used an example which is clearly the case in the real world. The Himba tribe in Namibia has no word for blue and no distinction between the word blue and green. They call the sky and the leaf of a tree the same colour despite the fact that conventionally we identify them as two different colours. Now imagine a tribe member travels to the west and is asked to define the colour they use collectively for blue and green. He points to the sky and we say yes blue. And he points to a tree and we go wait no . .green. which is it? I'm confused.

The tribe member is equally as confused. To us A = A and B = B they are separate but to the tribal man A = A and B is also = A. My point was that the shared experience of something is what gives the language between those two individuals a valid united meaning just as in the case of my alien object. For two himba tribesmen (or astronauts) there is no debate but outside their community our differing experience of colour or absence if information hinders us from understanding the "intonation" (excuse the pun) of their colour meanings.

Therefore my conclusion holds true.

TheMadFool

exactly — Benj96

What means you by "exactly"? I got the impression that you meant meaning is impossible unless shared but that, as I've shown, is clearly untrue. Ask yourself, how did words come to have meaning in our shared world? While I won't claim it's impossible, it is extremely unlikely that everyone, at the same time, thought of the same word when they saw something new. A more likely scenario is that everyone would've thought of a different word when they set their eyes on a new object. While I agree that for a particular word to serve effectively as communication in a group it must be shared, you're overlooking the fact that we can, as someone I know was wont to say, talk to ourselves. This is a fact and I'm sure you too must've conversed with yourself on many occasions. By your reckoning we would be forced to conclude that people who talk to themselves, and that's everybody, are not one person but a mutliplicity. I like the idea and there appears to be an disconcertingly large grain of truth in it but I have the feeling most everyone would think you're out of your mind.

Benj96

↪TheMadFool

Words can have meaning to the user themselves of course. I could invent 40 words for snow that no one else uses. Many a child spends some time making their own language for fun. But meaning to the one who applies meaning is internal communication which I would argue if we consider the mind as self aware is hardly communicating to or from anything at all. It is intrinsic. I simply meant in order to "bridge the gap" so to speak between to separate individuals regarding the same topic, one requires agreement on symbols. If I communicate "the ball is blue" to you in Morse code whilst you return the same sentiment to me in aramaic, while neither of us understand the meaning of the other we are still in agreement. The problem is we cannot be aware of our mutual agreement. There is no meaning in our interaction despite the fact that to both of us individually there is. However when we agree on a common symbol to represent the same observations only then do you have a language - something you can effectively use to impart information to another.

In the OP - a case of imparting knowledge of something another has not experienced yet, if the experience cannot be approximated by any previous experiences due to the novelty... then such an experience requires a "see it to believe it" method in order to get this person to understand what you're talking about.

The colour Philiblex is dislocated from other colours in that you cannot describe it as a mixture of the rest and get an effective portrayal. In this case no level of language imparts experience. It is something that you must show and then a word can be used to denote the event. Just as you could not convince someone that the spectrum if rotated fast enough onna wheel becomes white. It is not at all intuitive until someone does it and observes just that. Then when you say "I am thinking of the colour made from a blend of all colours" one would know from the experience that you are referring to is "white".

Harry Hindu

I could invent 40 words for snow that no one else uses. — Benj96

Why would you do this? What use would you have to invent words for snow for your own personal use?

It seems words only have meaning when the experience the worst is based on is shared by more than one witness. Otherwise the information cannot be conveyed. — Benj96

The same information could not have been conveyed over a live video feed of where the astronaut is?

Didn't you need to show others what you were talking about? If they saw the live video feed, would you need to show them? Seeing what you are talking about means that seeing provides the same information as talking about it. You only need to communicate with others that don't have access to that same information via their other senses.

There is no point in using words for yourself if you can see what it is.

Benj96

↪Harry Hindu

Shared experience doenst entail shared location so yes a live video feed would be the equivalent of a photograph or bringing ther person to the place. They have witnessed the same event/phenomenon.

As for the 40 words for snow. I have no use for that and wouldnt do it. It was merely an example to demonstrate what is possible. I do however have a dozen nicknames for my dog that only I use. I could use one. But I prefer the situational diversity of many.

TheMadFool

The problem is we cannot be aware of our mutual agreement. — Benj96

Correct. I wonder though what Wittgenstein meant when he rejected the idea of a private language being possible? To me, it seems perfectly reasonable to imagine someone talking to himself in an invented language which he alone knows.

Hanover

seems words only have meaning when the experience the worst is based on is shared by more than one witness. Otherwise the information cannot be conveyed. — Benj96

If you never conveyed the meaning to another but then encountered the color a month later and said to yourself "there's that phlibex again," why wouldn't that statement have meaning to you?

Benj96

Correct. I wonder though what Wittgenstein meant when he rejected the idea of a private language being possible? To me, it seems perfectly reasonable to imagine someone talking to himself in an invented language which he alone knows — TheMadFool

I also agree. Especially if we considered this person invented a device like an primitive sound recorder instead of writing in order to document and record their thoughts. Then they would definitely require a private spoken language that they could articulate out loud so they could listen to it later and retrieve the information.

Benj96

↪Hanover

that's right... perhaps I should've have clarified better by using the term "mutual meaning" or "communicable meaning". It can defintely have individual meaning

Harry Hindu

It seems words only have meaning when the experience the worst is based on is shared by more than one witness. Otherwise the information cannot be conveyed — Benj96

Words are visual scribbles and sounds. When we see or hear them we associate meaning to them, just like every other visual or sound that we see or hear that aren't words.

The private language would be this meaning we associate with our sensory experience. We only need to translate some visual, sound, smell, taste, feeling to another particular sound or visual (words) to communicate those things that aren't words, yet do have meaning as well.

Providing a new name, Philbix, doesn't help anyone if they don't know what that means. To them, it's just a noise your making.

The word had meaning for you, privately, so didnt you just contradict yourself that words need two witnesses to mean something? Words are a particular shape and color, just like Philbix, that you interpret when you experience it.

Is Philbix a color or a word?

TheMadFool

also agree. Especially if we considered this person invented a device like an primitive sound recorder instead of writing in order to document and record their thoughts. Then they would definitely require a private spoken language that they could articulate out loud so they could listen to it later and retrieve the information. — Benj96

If I maybe so bold as to contradict Wittgenstein I would like to do so by attacking what I feel is a weaker version of his no private language argument - the argument that he rejected the notion of a private language for the reason that words and meanings assigned, in a language constructed by one single person, are highly susceptible to inconsistency: for instance, one day I might call a mongoose a "tek" and the next day I might forget what I called a mongoose and given that human memory isn't up to the task, a private language would be extremely difficult to both create and maintain. Be that as it may, this memory-based argument against private language is about physical limitations of the human brain and that leaves the door wide open to the possibility that a person with photographic memory could actually construct a private language.

Have I completely missed the point or am I close enough to the truth?

Language is a game of two witnesses.

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