Making meaning

I don't know if intent is really true here, seems like meaning and purpose go hand in hand. You can't create purpose without meaning and a purpose means nothing unless you make it so.

So while his remark might sound like purpose comes first it really just sounds more like one in the same.

For me, meaning is semantic (i.e. contextual) and purpose is pragmatic (i.e. functional), thereby not synonymous or necessarily dependent on each other.

Reply to 180 Proof Yeah that's what I thought, or had some instinct towards that. When I reread his stuff it doesn't really track that well.

Meaning is primarily driven by use. Even dictionary definitions are driven by use. A word might have many different meanings, depending on how many uses there are in a language. It's not context-driven, although context is important, because you can still use a word incorrectly within a context. So, it's use within a culture of language users.

Reply to Sam26

A.C. Grayling challenges the strict reduction of meaning to use with examples like "e.g." and "QED," where people might very well use them properly without knowing what they mean. However, I think a more serious objection might be the plot of A Canticle for Leibowitz.

As Alasdair MacIntyer describes the general plot:

Imagine that the natural sciences were to suffer the effects of a catastrophe. A series of environmental disasters are blamed by the general public on the scientists. Widespread riots occur, laboratories are burnt down, physicists are lynched, books and instruments are destroyed. Finally a Know-Nothing political movement takes power and successfully abolishes science teaching in schools and universities, imprisoning and executing the remaining scientists. Later still there is a reaction against this destructive movement and enlightened people seek to revive science, although they have largely forgotten what it was. But all that they possess are fragments: a knowledge of experiments detached from any knowledge of the theoretical context which gave them significance; parts of theories unrelated either to the other bits and pieces of theory which they possess or to experiment; instruments whose use has been forgotten; half-chapters from books, single pages from articles, not always fully legible because torn and charred. Nonetheless all these fragments are reembodied in a set of practices which go under the revived names of physics, chemistry and biology. Adults argue with each other about the respective merits of relativity theory, evolutionary theory and phlogiston theory, although they possess only a very partial knowledge of each. Children learn by heart the surviving portions of the periodic table and recite as incantations some of the theorems of Euclid. Nobody, or almost nobody, realizes that what they are doing is not natural science in any proper sense at all. For everything that they do and say conforms to certain canons of consistency and coherence and those contexts which would be needed to make sense of what they are doing have been lost, perhaps irretrievably.

In such a culture men would use expressions such as ‘neutrino’, ‘mass’, ‘specific gravity’, ‘atomic weight’ in systematic and often interrelated ways which would resemble in lesser or greater degrees the ways in which such expressions had been used in earlier times before scientific knowledge had been so largely lost. But many of the beliefs presupposed by the use of these expressions would have been lost and there would appear to be an element of arbitrariness and even of choice in their application which would appear very surprising to us. What would appear to be rival and competing premises for which no further argument could be given would abound. Subjectivist theories of science would appear and would be criticized by those who held that the notion of truth embodied in what they took to be science was incompatible with subjectivism.

This imaginary possible world is very like one that some science fiction writers have constructed. We may describe it as a world in which the language of natural science, or parts of it at least, continues to be used but is in a grave state of disorder. We may notice that if in this imaginary world analytical philosophy were to flourish, it would never reveal the fact of this disorder. For the techniques of analytical philosophy are essentially descriptive and descriptive of the language of the present at that. The analytical philosopher would be able to elucidate the conceptual structures of what was taken to be scientific thinking and discourse in the imaginary world in precisely the way that he elucidates the conceptual structures of natural science as it is.

Nor again would phenomenology or existentialism be able to discern anything wrong. All the structures of intentionality would be what they are now. The task of supplying an epistemological basis for these false simulacra of natural science would not differ in phenomenological terms from the task as it is presently envisaged. A Husserl or a Merleau-Ponty would be as deceived as a Strawson or a Quine/

We could well imagine a world like A Canticle for Leibowitz or Warhammer 40,000's "technopriests." Yet we could also imagine a world where science is rediscovered. But if this occurred, would we want to say the words of the scientific lexicon changed with this disaster and then changed back to their original meaning with the rediscovery of science?

There is also the problem of vagueness. Sometimes people pretend to an expertise they don't have, and sometimes they genuinely overestimate their own level of understanding. When this happens, they can often use terms correctly. Indeed, the pretender might stick very closely to sources of authority on purpose in order to safeguard against misuse. Sometimes you can get very far into a conversation, particularly online where people can simply copy and paste from sources, before it becomes clear that an interlocutor, while using words correctly, does not understand their content.

Robert Sokolowski's The Phenomenology of the Human Person is pretty good on this:

Sometimes we use words and think we use them correctly, but in fact we do not understand what they mean. Husserl describes this phenomenon as the vague use of words.14 We may be familiar with the word tree, and we may be acquainted with trees, but we may still fail to understand both the word and the tree (these are not two understandings but one). We do use the word tree, and seem therefore to target the tree, but what we go on to say about it shows that the intelligibility of the tree has not appeared to us; the tree is present to us, but the intelligibility of trees remains absent. The name is used by association, not with logical insight, and other people, those who do understand trees, will see that we use the word but do not know what we are talking about. It is true that we would probably need to recognize at least the shape of the tree, and so we would need to grasp at least that much of the tree’s intelligibility and to know at least that property; without that much of an inkling of what it is, we probably could not use the name at all. But if we are speaking vaguely, we would know practically nothing more of its essentials. We might, for example, expect it to bleed if someone cut it, or we might expect it to reproduce by generating little trees inside itself (these are far-fetched possibilities, but they help make the point).

Because we have the word and the thing but not the intelligibility, our speech about the tree is unstable. We may in fact say something true about trees, but this happens more by accident than by knowledge. We may have heard people say things about trees and might repeat what they say; or we might just take a chance and manage to say something true; but as we continue to speak about trees, the inadequacy of our knowledge becomes obvious to anyone who knows anything about trees. The specific intelligibility of trees is absent to us. It is not that we are altogether ignorant of trees; we are indeed trying to think and speak about them, and we are using what seem to us to be the appropriate names and predicates that belong to this thing, but we use the words vaguely, without thinking and without insight into what the thing is. This intelligibility is not there for us; this specific understandability– not just any one at all, but the one belonging to trees– is absent to our minds.15

My example of the intelligibility of trees is, as I have conceded, rather far-fetched. It is hard to imagine anyone with any intelligence and even a minimal acquaintance with trees being so entirely devoid of insight into what trees are. But it is much easier to imagine that people use words like democracy, politics, freedom, and happiness, or even atom or electricity, in a vague way.16 The phenomenon often occurs when academics pretend to know something about quantum mechanics or Godel’s Theorem. Such vague usage sometimes embarrasses the user. Often enough we want to impress others with our “knowledge”; we want to “fake it” for some reason or other. Wesay a few things and may, by accident, seem to have gotten them right, but then, as we try to hold forth further, our inadequacy to the thing, the absence of the thing’s intelligibility to our minds, shows up more and more. This inadequacy shows up most vividly in the vagueness of our syntactic articulation of the thing, but it is also present in our very naming of the thing, in our use of a vocabulary. It is not just the syntax that has been vaguely executed; the name has been vaguely used as well. The content as well as the form of our speech is inadequate. We do not possess the eidos of the thing in question.

Such an absence of intelligibility is a public phenomenon. It occurs in the same public domain as the judgments we make for and before one another, and it is dependent on the vocabulary that we have as a resource. A speaker can be profoundly confused about democracy precisely because there is a word, democracy, floating around in his linguistic environment, being used by many people. He enters into conversation with them and, very likely, his use of this term and others related to it will be vague at the start. If he is insightful and willing to take in the way things are, his use of the word and others associated with it will become more distinct and clear, but if he lacks insight or does not want to learn, his usage may remain confused for the rest of his life. The intelligibility behind the term democracy, the intelligibility in democracy, will remain absent to him even as he seems to make it present

That's a lot of quotes! Well, the OP was short on content, I figured I'd add a bit!

Reply to Count Timothy von Icarus First, it might sound simple (i.e., that you're reducing meaning to something simple) saying that use is meaning, but Wittgenstein spent quite a bit of time explaining it. It's not reductionist.

Second, nothing I've read in that long post does anything to dispel the idea that meaning is primarily derived from use. Some of it shows that people can start using words differently from their intended purpose, but even if this happens, the new use will drive the new meaning. Use is not absolute; it changes, and new uses are formed. Sometimes incorrect uses morph into new language games and that incorrect use becomes accepted as just another use within a certain part of a culture.

How do you think people learned the meaning of words before there was writing? They observed how people used words/language.

Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus

That's a lot of quotes! Well, the OP was short on content, I figured I'd add a bit!

None of that is really related to the points in the original about purpose and meaning.

And I didn't really understand what they were saying in that bit about science being wiped out.

Quoting Sam26

First, it might sound simple (i.e., that you're reducing meaning to something simple) saying that use is meaning, but Wittgenstein spent quite a bit of time explaining it. It's not reductionist.

Sounds similar to what the dude on quora meant but I'm guessing not.

Reply to Darkneos

If we see a note on a refrigerator according to our use of words we can understand what it says. However it should be noted that the note has an active role in us shaping our language and selecting the use we are going to give it. But here "giving a use" is misleading, since it seems that the subject is the one who has the only active role. However, we cannot explain our choice of word use other than from the note on the refrigerator. That is, the note has an active role in shaping the use. The role of the note is so active that in my opinion the idea of use is very restrictive to the subject. That is why I prefer to speak of transcription and of active non-subjective sign systems that interact with us.

Quoting JuanZu

If we see a note on a refrigerator according to our use of words we can understand what it says. However it should be noted that the note has an active role in us shaping our language and selecting the use we are going to give it. But here "giving a use" is misleading, since it seems that the subject is the one who has the only active role. However, we cannot explain our choice of word use other than from the note on the refrigerator. That is, the note has an active role in shaping the use. The role of the note is so active that in my opinion the idea of use is very restrictive to the subject. That is why I prefer to speak of transcription and of active non-subjective sign systems that interact with us.

I don't think the note has an active role in anything, it's just a note. We know what it means because we know what the words mean. It's that simple. There is no selecting a use, it's just to communicate.

The note has no active role in shaping us or anything like that. The idea of use is not restrictive either, it just is.

You can speak of "Transcription and non-subjective sign systems" but that's not what's going on. Sounds like your overcomplicating things. Also not related to my original post.

Though I feel like there's a simpler way to say what you're saying without the "philosophy speak".

Quoting Darkneos

I don't think the note has an active role in anything, it's just a note. We know what it means because we know what the words mean. It's that simple. There is no selecting a use, it's just to communicate.

You are ignoring that the use we think we can make of the note is delimited by the note itself. It is like a command that interacts with us. And above all it is the reason why we understand a specific use and not any other. This is an active role that transcends the subjectivity of the subject and its intentionality. That is why the notion of use falls short, because the use is anchored to a subject, or to a way of life. Today with artificial intelligence we see more clearly how non-subjective sign systems interact with us.

Quoting JuanZu

You are ignoring that the use we think we can make of the note is delimited by the note itself. It is like a command that interacts with us. And above all it is the reason why we understand a specific use and not any other. This is an active role that transcends the subjectivity of the subject and its intentionality. That is why the notion of use falls short, because the use is anchored to a subject, or to a way of life. Today with artificial intelligence we see more clearly how non-subjective sign systems interact with us.

Not really no. The note is just the medium, it's someone else interacting with us. The note is just a note. We understand what it means by what we know about the person be it friend, family, or whoever. There is no active role, that's just your imagination. It doesn't transcend anything.

We aren't seeing that with AI today either, quite the opposite. I swear the more you write the LESS sense you make, might wanna work on that. Heck I understood Icarus above better than that.

Quoting Darkneos

Not really no. The note is just the medium, it's someone else interacting with us.

That is in fact false. Because the mental contents are not in the note as a ghost in the letters. The note is alone and it is exerting a constraint on our language. That's why when you are asked why you interpret the way you interpret what the note says you actually have to show the note and say "the note says so". I maintain that it is because there is an active role of the note in the refrigerator. It is partly the reason why we understand what we understand. Partly because the subject also has an active role and both roles interact with each other.

Quoting JuanZu

That is in fact false. Because the mental contents are not in the note as a ghost in the letters. The note is alone and it is exerting a constraint on our language.

It's not and the mental contents are in the note that is why they wrote it, that's also how poetry works among other writing. The note is not alone or exerting anything, again just imagination.

Quoting JuanZu

I maintain that it is because there is an active role of the note in the refrigerator.

And you are (still) wrong in that assessment and haven't shown otherwise.

Quoting JuanZu

It is partly the reason why we understand what we understand. Partly because the subject also has an active role and both roles interact with each other.

Or because we just use the same language and understand each other. Again you're not coming through here and just dig a deeper hole for yourself. There is a simpler way to say all this instead of convoluting it to give the impression of something deeper that isn't there.

Quoting JuanZu

That's why when you are asked why you interpret the way you interpret what the note says you actually have to show the note and say "the note says so".

You're not really being asked that, the note says something, plain and simple. You can sorta guess intent based on the person and your relationship to them.

Again...making less sense with every post. This isn't even related to my original post. Though looking at your username I sorta got a sense of your thought process so I'm not surprised.

Reply to Sam26 :up:.

Quoting Darkneos

It's not and the mental contents are in the note that is why they wrote it, that's also how poetry works among other writing. The note is not alone or exerting anything, again just imagination.

Quoting Darkneos

Or because we just use the same language and understand each other.

You are doing nothing other than categorically denying what I state. But without argument.

That language we share is actively exposed in the note, but not by another person, because this one is absent. But as I said the note acts in the absence of its author, it acts in us who read and understand it. In part the note actively is its ordo cognoscendi, by its syntax, by the place in which it is found (a refrigerator), by its style, etc.

The purpose here is absent because the absent of the autor and is partly a cause for misunderstanding. Because the interpretative power of a note by itself can be extremely variable. That is, you can interpret many things from the note. A person can say something to another person and still be misunderstood. Uttering words is like leaving a note on the refrigerator. There is some independence of the "medium" from the message. But this independence is active as I have shown.

Reply to Sam26

First, it might sound simple (i.e., that you're reducing meaning to something simple) saying that use is meaning, but Wittgenstein spent quite a bit of time explaining it. It's not reductionist

I wasn't thinking of Wittgenstein in particular there. A lot of people have worked with the idea of meaning as use, some in quite reductionist terms, some less so.

I am fairly certain that in PI Wittgenstein says specifically that meaning is often, but not always, use.

Second, nothing I've read in that long post does anything to dispel the idea that meaning is primarily derived from use

But what determines use? Wouldn't the causes of use and usefulness play an important role in explaining language too?

For instance, the way we use words, the reason we find it useful to use them in certain ways, is dependent on the properties of what the words refer to. Across disparate languages that are developed in relative isolation, the use of terms for certain natural phenomena will be similar because the things the terms describe are similar. Hence, meaning can be traced back, in at least some cases, to reference. Otherwise, our use of "dog" would have nothing to do with dogs, which doesn't seem right. But if the usefulness and use of "dog" is determined to some large degree by dogs, then use is going to be in some sense downstream of being.

Meaning is, of course, not always reference either.

Second, I had forgot Grayling's full example. People can use "QED" and the like consistently, in the correct way, and not know their meaning. However, consider "kalb." It means dog in Arabic. You now know what kalb means. However, if you don't know Arabic, you don't know how to use it in a sentence.

Some of it shows that people can start using words differently from their intended purpose, but even if this happens, the new use will drive the new meaning. Use is not absolute; it changes, and new uses are formed. Sometimes incorrect uses morph into new language games and that incorrect use becomes accepted as just another use within a certain part of a culture.

If people can use terms correctly enough to get by in conversations without actually knowing what the terms mean, then it seems obvious than one can know how to use terms without knowing their meaning. Yet if meaning were nothing but use, knowing how to use a term correctly should be identical with knowing what it means.

Or for a similar example, you can think of people who can get through assisting in a Latin mass but have hardly any idea what the words they are saying mean (because they don't know Latin). They are using the terms correctly, yet the meaning of the Latin used in the mass is clearly not just "what one says when doing a mass."

I would say that use is an important factor that is constitutive in meaning, but by no means the only factor.

Quoting JuanZu

You are doing nothing other than categorically denying what I state. But without argument.

Well you haven't really made an argument or given evidence so what else is there to do?

Quoting JuanZu

That language we share is actively exposed in the note, but not by another person, because this one is absent.

Nope, it's expressed by another person, the note didn't write itself. Again it's the medium.
Quoting JuanZu

But as I said the note acts in the absence of its author, it acts in us who read and understand it.

You can say that all you want but it's not acting in any form whatsoever, hence what I meant by imagination being used here. You can insist all you want but the note is nothing more than medium.

Quoting JuanZu

In part the note actively is its ordo cognoscendi, by its syntax, by the place in which it is found (a refrigerator), by its style, etc.

In English? As I'm beginning to suspect this just sounds pretentious rather than saying anything of substance. The note isn't anything other than a note. You're just incorrect here?

Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus

Second, I had forgot Grayling's full example. People can use "QED" and the like consistently, in the correct way, and not know their meaning. However, consider "kalb." It means dog in Arabic. You now know what kalb means. However, if you don't know Arabic, you don't know how to use it in a sentence.

Yeah but that's still use according to him, what a word means is how it's used. Hence why in my OP I think the dude in wrong in that meaning and purpose are two sides of the same coin.

Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus

But what determines use? Wouldn't the causes of use and usefulness play an important role in explaining language too?

Use determines use, paradoxical it may seem.

Quoting Darkneos

Again it's the medium.

The purpose here is absent because the absent of the autor and is partly a cause for misunderstanding. Because the interpretative power of a note by itself can be extremely variable. That is, you can interpret many things from the note. A person can say something to another person and still be misunderstood. Uttering words is like leaving a note on the refrigerator. There is some independence of the "medium" from the message. But this independence is active as I have shown.

The medium in a certain sense can betray the message and the author's intention. But the note as the words we utter imposes its conditions, there is no absolutely transparent medium, which means that there is an active role of the medium beyond the purpose and intention of the agent.

Reply to Darkneos

Use determines use, paradoxical it may seem.

Sure, but it cannot be "use all the way down," unless the human use of language spawns for the aether uncaused. For example, presumably, if ants didn't exist, human languages wouldn't have a word for ants. Ants' existence is a cause of the word "ants." Ants have existed much longer than human languages though. Their existence is prior to our having a use for a term denoting them. The term is useful because ants exist. It seems plausible then that the term's meaning can be tied to ants themselves, rather than language being a hermetically sealed circle of use referring only to use.

Likewise, while different human languages organize the color spectrum differently, they all organize it in roughly the same way. No human culture has ever come up with names for the colors in the ultraviolet spectrum that are visible to insects, but not to the human eye. I think this is an obvious case where biology is prior to usefulness. If we had birds' or insects' photoreceptors, we would find different patterns of language useful. Wittgenstein gets at this vaguely with the notion of a "form of life," but I think we could certainly expand on that a great deal more, as a means of showing how human biology determines use and usefulness.

Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus

No human culture has ever come up with names for the colors in the ultraviolet spectrum that are visible to insects, but not to the human eye.

Funny thing about that, apparently people had names to describe language in colors we can't describe. Like the Greeks and the Wine red sea.

Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus

Wittgenstein gets at this vaguely with the notion of a "form of life," but I think we could certainly expand on that a great deal more, as a means of showing how human biology determines use and usefulness.

Biology plays a role but it does come down to how it's used. There is also some arguments about how language makes things exist but that without it there is none. It's some of the weirder stuff of eastern philosophy, mostly Buddhism (some branches).

Quoting JuanZu

The purpose here is absent because the absent of the autor and is partly a cause for misunderstanding.

Nope, also you seem to be allergic to making sense. This just screams pretentious. The purpose is not absent hence the note.

Quoting JuanZu

That is, you can interpret many things from the note. A person can say something to another person and still be misunderstood. Uttering words is like leaving a note on the refrigerator.

You could but they'd be wrong. Uttering words isn't even close to leaving a note on the fridge because you have tone, context, and everything else. You're not good at this are you?

Quoting JuanZu

There is some independence of the "medium" from the message. But this independence is active as I have shown.

You have not shown anything, merely insist it is so and I have to keep pointing out how you're mistaken. There is no independence of the medium, the medium and language are dependent. There is nothing active, you merely assert it as such and fail.

Quoting JuanZu

The medium in a certain sense can betray the message and the author's intention.

The medium cannot betray anything, it only shows what they wrote or whatever message they did. Any meaning is on the part of the person and they can get it wrong or not. You're failing hard here dude.

Quoting JuanZu

But the note as the words we utter imposes its conditions, there is no absolutely transparent medium, which means that there is an active role of the medium beyond the purpose and intention of the agent.

Laughably false, all mediums are transparent as they only show what you put on them. The words we utter don't impose anything, the medium has no active role, it merely carries the message. How people interpret that is on them, the context, prior knowledge. In short it's purely subjective, but they can be wrong. It also depends on the note, a shopping list likely doesn't leave much ambiguity as a love letter might.

You're just wrong dude, and off the mark of the OP and by everyone else talking. This is just pretentious nonsense, a medium isn't active in any capacity no matte how you insist it might be. Jeez this lacks more substance than your post on my other topic.

Quoting Darkneos

With making meaning I don’t think you need purpose to do so.

Quoting Darkneos

Use determines use, paradoxical it may seem.

Can you give any example of use that is devoid of any purpose and hence of any usefulness or benefit?

----------

Here’s a language use: When one is asked, “what did you mean by ‘dream house’,” one can well reply, “I intended such and such by the term”. I have however yet to hear the reply of, “I used the term as such and such (or else, in this or that way [correction: with the possible exception of, "in this or that sense" ... but this exception would be raising the question of meaning all over again, which again seems to reduce to intent]).”

Use entails intentioning which entails intent (with purpose equating to either intentioning or intent). They’re not the same thing though. Intentioning X is not the same as making use of X. The latter presupposes the former, but the former can occur without the latter.

Reply to Darkneos

In fact the purpose is absent in the note. I repeat, this is because if it were not absent we would be talking about something similar to the ghost in the machine, in this case the ghost in the ink.

Uttering words is very similar to leaving a note. Both can lead to misunderstandings. Why is that? Precisely because there is an active part of the "medium", without this active part there would never be a possible misunderstanding. Medium transparency is an illusion you have invented. The possibility of misunderstanding proves otherwise. But in fact there are misunderstandings, ergo I am right. There is an independence of the medium that is active.

Quoting JuanZu

I repeat, this is because if it were not absent we would be talking about something similar to the ghost in the machine, in this case the ghost in the ink.

Wouldn't this "ghost in the ink" then be the intentioning of the agent which produced the ink forms on the paper? In which case the purpose is not absent in the note ... but only open to interpretation by the agent which reads the note, thereby allowing for misinterpretation.

Quoting javra

Can you give any example of use that is devoid of any purpose and hence of any usefulness or benefit?

That's why I said it's two sides of the same coin.

Quoting javra

Use entails intentioning which entails intent (with purpose equating to either intentioning or intent). They’re not the same thing though. Intentioning X is not the same as making use of X. The latter presupposes the former, but the former can occur without the latter.

They seem the same to me. You're intending to make use of something unless you're just some unconscious robot carrying out orders.

Quoting Darkneos

You're intending to make use of something

That's what I mean, if we analyze this proposition: "Intending to make use" of something is not the same as "making use of something".

Here, "making use of something" is the intent, the goal, of the intending which has been addressed. Which, as an intending, might well not come to fruition, in which case one would not have succeeded in "making use of something" - even though one intended to do so.

Use of X presupposes intentioning, but intentioning "that one use X" can occur without X ending up being used.

Quoting JuanZu

In fact the purpose is absent in the note. I repeat, this is because if it were not absent we would be talking about something similar to the ghost in the machine, in this case the ghost in the ink.

Uhhh, no. There is a 'ghost in the ink' and it's whoever wrote it and their intention. Purpose is not absent in the note, only a fool would think that. Mediums can carry the feelings of whoever uses them and different mediums let you do that. That's how art is a thing.

Quoting JuanZu

Uttering words is very similar to leaving a note. Both can lead to misunderstandings. Why is that?

Because different people have different backgrounds, vocabulary, history, and understanding. There...I answered it.

Quoting JuanZu

Precisely because there is an active part of the "medium", without this active part there would never be a possible misunderstanding.

You manage to get right up to the point and just blow right past it. The medium has no role at all other than carrying the message, thats it. Again you insisting otherwise doesn't change that.

Quoting JuanZu

Medium transparency is an illusion you have invented. The possibility of misunderstanding proves otherwise. But in fact there are misunderstandings, ergo I am right. There is an independence of the medium that is active.

The possibility of misunderstanding is due to different subjective frameworks between people. Medium transparency isn't an illusion it's what is. It carries the meaning we put into it, nothing more or less.

Your last part doesn't track at all, I just explained how there are misunderstandings and you just try to shoehorn in your (incorrect) theory. There is no independence of the medium, at this point it's faster to just call you an idiot. The medium does nothing but carry or contain the message someone puts in and nothing else. We do interpret it and assign meaning to try to understand what is being done. Some mediums are better than others, like film or painting or photos to try to communicate what language cannot. But in the end it's down to our understanding and frameworks we are working with.

Again, you're still wrong....and it's tiresome to keep proving it.

Quoting javra

"Intending to" make use of something is not the same as "making use of something".

Effectively it is to me, especially since we are talking about language where use does determine use. We aren't talking about objects or anything else so your argument doesn't apply.

Quoting javra

Use of X presupposes intentioning, but intentioning "that one use X" can occur without X ending up being used.

Still doesn't change what I mean about two sides.

Quoting Darkneos

Still doesn't change what I mean about two sides.

I was working on the presumption that you do not interpret meaning and use to be different in any respect. Is this correct?

Quoting Darkneos

Effectively it is to me, especially since we are talking about language where use does determine use. We aren't talking about objects or anything else so your argument doesn't apply.

Let me clarify: the question in my previous post was strictly addressing the context of language.

Quoting javra

Wouldn't this "ghost in the ink" then be the intentioning of the agent which produced the ink forms on the paper?

Yes, it would. But that is precisely what does not hold. If intentions and purposes were somehow in the ink (for me that is pure fantasy) there would be no possibility of misunderstanding. In this case we are talking about the materiality of the signs, the sounds uttered, the ink, etc.... From a materialistic point of view, mine, there is no possibility that intentions travel through the air or are inside the ink. That is mentalism.

But misunderstandings are a fact of life. Which implies that if we accept the materialist thesis that denies that kind of mentalism we must assume that the medium, the sound, the ink, etc, has some independence with respect to purpose and intentionality, and an active role in the creation of meaning for a receiver (the hearer, the reader, etc).

Reply to Darkneos

Just in case I might be correct in my presuppositions, here is a more concise example to the contrary:

Instances such as slips of the tongue do occur. In instances such as this, one intends/means to communicate concept A but, because one’s unconscious impinges word Z instead of what would have appropriately been word X, the meaning which one in fact wants to express does not obtain. So, here, the use of the term does entail an intent, in this case the intent of one’s unconscious mind rather than of oneself as conscious mind, but the intention/meaning which one as a consciousness holds in mind nevertheless does not manifest.

This, again, being in line with “use presupposes intentioning, but intentioning can occur without use (in this case, use of terms)”

This to me being one example to illustrate that meaning and use – although most often unified – are in fact not one and the same thing. Again, such that use is dependent upon meaning, with the latter being intentioning.

It gets more complex when addressing language as constituted of commonly understood words, but the same point, I believe, would still remain. Although, again, in vastly more complex ways.

But I'll just stick to this one example of slips of the tongue to evidence my claim.

Quoting Darkneos

There is a 'ghost in the ink'

End of discussion. :meh:

Quoting JuanZu

If intentions and purposes were somehow in the ink (for me that is pure fantasy) there would be no possibility of misunderstanding.

One: Its not a physical attribute of the ink. The intentions are what caused the ink to have the shapes that it does. And so it is inferred from the ink's shapes. It is as much in the ink as might be a spark in an exploding dynamite.

Secondly: How do you reason there would be no possibility of misunderstanding were this to be so (again, as just described)?

Quoting javra

I was working on the presumption that you do not interpret meaning and use to be different in any respect. Is this correct?

Meaning and purpose to be exact.

Reply to javra

I have no problem with an intention being the cause of the characteristics of something written in ink. But it is one thing to be the cause and another to be the ghost in the ink or in the sound. Since the sound comes out of our mouth the intention is left behind.

If there is ghost in the ink it means that the intention and the purpose are transmitted without any imperfection or defect. So the listener or reader receives the intention, purpose and meaning completely, accurately and absolutely clear without any distortion.

Quoting Darkneos

Meaning and purpose to be exact.

OK. Got it. But it leaves me curious: how then is the following proposition in the OP to be interpreted in the context of "meaning and purpose are not different in any respect"?

Quoting Darkneos

With making meaning I don’t think you need purpose to do so.

(It might have been a slip of the tongue, in which case I could easily understand.)

Quoting JuanZu

End of discussion.

Wasn't really much of one, you clearly don't understand meaning and how it works and think the medium does anything.
Quoting javra

One: Its not a physical attribute of the ink. The intentions are what caused the ink to have the shapes that it does. And so it is inferred from the ink's shapes. It is as much in the ink as might be a spark in an exploding dynamite.

Secondly: How do you reason there would be no possibility of misunderstanding were this to be so (again, as just described)?

I wouldn't bother, they just repeat the same thing over and over hoping it's true.

Quoting JuanZu

In this case we are talking about the materiality of the signs, the sounds uttered, the ink, etc.... From a materialistic point of view, mine, there is no possibility that intentions travel through the air or are inside the ink. That is mentalism.

It is not, that is how meaning is made. From the lines we take to be words to mean certain things there is a "ghost in the ink". However due to our various histories and subjective views that meaning changes. There is nothing about the medium doing it.

What you're talking about isn't materialism, it's just dumb...

Quoting JuanZu

But misunderstandings are a fact of life. Which implies that if we accept the materialist thesis that denies that kind of mentalism we must assume that the medium, the sound, the ink, etc, has some independence with respect to purpose and intentionality, and an active role in the creation of meaning for a receiver (the hearer, the reader, etc).

Not even by materialism does that track for reasons already stated.

Quoting JuanZu

If there is ghost in the ink it means that the intention and the purpose are transmitted without any imperfection or defect.

It does not mean that, but there is intention in the ink in the word choice, even writing style, so much. There is nothing about the ink itself.

Quoting JuanZu

So the listener or reader receives the intention, purpose and meaning completely, accurately and absolutely clear without any distortion.

You're just making this up as you go along aren't you? Not to mention not even listening. Repeating something doesn't make it so and no materialist would agree with you. Though to be clear people can receive the intention, purpose, and meaning clearly without distortion depending on the relationship they had with the person. What is meaningless to someone is everything to another.

Like I said, you really don't understand how any of this works...

Quoting JuanZu

I have no problem with an intention being the cause of the characteristics of something written in ink. But it is one thing to be the cause and another to be the ghost in the ink or in the sound. Since the sound comes out of our mouth the intention is left behind.

For my part, I don't think its as easy as "leaving the intention behind" - this since it's the intention which is transmitted to another via the sound or ink or braille - but OK. We seem to at least agree in terms of the sounds, written letters, or braille patterns being intentionally caused by an agent, and this so as to transmit meaning from one agent to another.

Quoting javra

For my part, I don't think its as easy as "leaving the intention behind" - this since it's the intention which is transmitted to another via the sound or ink or braille - but OK. We seem to at least agree in terms of the sounds, written letters, or braille patterns being intentionally caused by an agent, and this so as to transmit meaning from one agent to another.

But the point is that they think there is something about the physical nature of the medium when that's not it. It's only the meaning we make out of such things, the medium just carries it. Sounds only have meaning because we assign it as such, otherwise it's nothing to us.

Even how you say something, the tone, the context, all that changes the meaning, not the medium itself. It's really all us, hence why straight materialism has limits in what it can explain (like emergence). We have misunderstandings because people have different subjective experiences, the medium isn't the issue.

I'd often cite the Barbie movie for how people thought it was lying to folks who said they thought it was for kids (they clearly didn't see the trailers). Or how people thought WandaVision was endorsing her reaction to enslaving a town (the series very clearly shows her response to losing Vision is BAD). The reason for these is different experiences and filters people interpret things through, not the medium.

Reply to javra

From my point of view even the notion of transmission is problematic. Intentions and thoughts do not travel through the air. The only thing we have at hand as listeners and readers is ink and sound. So how can anything be transmitted? The thing is that nothing is transmitted. When we open our mouths to emit sounds to a listener what we do is cause meaning effects in that listener, causing the listener to invent meaning for himself. But nothing is transmitted. That meaning that is invented by the listener may be in communion with our meaning, but then it is a case of coincidence in meanings. In this sense sound and ink have an active role in the creation of meaning, because they are direct causes.

Quoting JuanZu

In this sense sound and ink have an active role in the creation of meaning, for they are direct causes.

They don't, they only have the meaning we give them. They aren't direct causes because they are inherently empty.

They have meaning because we have agreed on what certain arrangements and sounds communicate and how to interpret them. Without that context nothing happens.

So something is transmitted in a roundabout way. We also convey meaning through tone, context, imagery, etc. Nothing "causes meaning effects" because unless you are taught what all this sounds and etc are or mean then the medium does nothing. The listener doesn't invent meaning, not entirely. How we make meaning is a complex psychological affair, the medium has nothing if very little to do with it.

Quoting JuanZu

That meaning that is invented by the listener may be in communion with our meaning, but then it is a case of coincidence in meanings.

It's not because that's not how language or communication work. This is why straight materialism is limited in how it can understand the world, chiefly by positing anything material to begin with.

Quoting JuanZu

The only thing we have at hand as listeners and readers is ink and sound. So how can anything be transmitted?

By one agent interpreting the ink and sounds' forms in addition to discerning whence they originated and thereby understanding the intentions of the agent(s) from which these inks and sounds were resultant. Most of which we're so accustomed to that it occurs pretty much in fully unconscious manners on what some term "autopilot mode".

Also by not espousing the particular species of materialism you seem to currently endorse - which seems to preclude the very possibility of this.

Quoting javra

Also by not espousing the particular species of materialism you seem to currently endorse - which seems to preclude the very possibility of this.

That's what I meant by ignoring them because what they said does not track. If it were the medium and not us we wouldn't have so many cultures with different interpretations of reality. There is a "Ghost in the ink" because there is intent and purpose to a message being said and (like you mention) by trying to understand everything behind it you can understand what they were trying to convey. That's pretty much what historians do along with literary analysis in Literature.

His views just aren't supported by reality, if anything they're effectively arguing against communication and (ironically) refuting their case since apparently nothing they said is being transmitted to us. By their logic art wouldn't have the impact it does to people.

Never mind that materialism itself doesn't hold up in light of recent findings in quantum physics and that eliminative materialism is self refuting. Our understanding of the world is a model, built on concepts that only exist in our heads that we use to navigate the world, and our experience of reality shapes how we interpret things. Matter is useful for our day to day but according to new quantum physics findings what we take to be "solid" might not be such. Heck we don't even know what's at the fundamental level, all we can do is measure probabilities and hypotheticals.

Quoting javra

By one agent interpreting the ink and sounds' forms in addition to discerning whence they originated and thereby understanding the intentions of the agent(s) from which these inks and sounds were resultant.

If you look closely at what you have said, in no case is there a transmission of something. You speak of indirect relations as that of an agent presupposing what another agent means. But as it happens you are simply inferring from the ink and sound, but you never get inside the mind of the other agent, so to speak. Since there is no such thing as passing from one head to another, you have to infer from the ink and sound (and also from its context), which implies an active role for both. Here inferring is nothing other than creating meaning for itself which we indirectly link to another agent. But there is nothing that is transmitted.

Quoting JuanZu

If you look closely at what you have said, in no case is there a transmission of something.

There is though, you're doing it now. Language is transmission albeit mentally because these words only make sense in a shared understanding. It's why Wittgenstein argued that a private language is incoherent.

We assign meanings to words and use them to communicate, that's why we use certain ones when we feel a certain way. But this is imperfect and prone to error. But javra is right, when you "Decode" so to speak their message then their feelings and purpose and meaning are transmitting. Hence why materialism (your version of it) doesn't explain what's happening, and can't.

Quoting JuanZu

Since there is no such thing as passing from one head to another, you have to infer from the ink and sound (and also from its context), which implies an active role for both.

There is no active role in the ink or sound, it's all the person. The ink and sound only carry meaning if there is someone else. It's like the zen koan of one hand clapping.

Quoting JuanZu

Here inferring is nothing other than creating meaning for itself which we indirectly link to another agent. But there is nothing that is transmitted.

Again, there is. That is literally the point of language. Otherwise by your logic you have said nothing. It's not indirectly, these sounds and ink only have meaning to us because we made it so, that's as direct as you can get. Yeah inferring is part of the imperfection because they could be lying or not finding the words, but ink and sound are only one method of transmitting something.

Again, you can't see how your logic breaks down when you really look closely at this. You keep insisting it's the ink or sound when all evidence shows that's false.

It's weird that you are hung up on whether it's indirect or not, because our whole experience of reality is indirect. The brain just constructs a best guess of what's out there and it's a smoothed version for our convenience.

If you want to get technical with your materialism, sound doesn't exist. Outside our heads it's only pressure waves, our brains take that and convert it into sound. Same thing with color. So as you see, a lot of reality is our interpretation of it. The only meaning is what we make and assign and that allows us to transmit how we are feeling and thinking.

Language is a public sphere so the very act of writing and talking is transmitting something, despite your insistence otherwise.

Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus

I am fairly certain that in PI Wittgenstein says specifically that meaning is often, but not always, use.

There are a lot of nuances to use as meaning (ostensive definitions, family resemblance, etc), but use is king in the PI.

Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus

But what determines use? Wouldn't the causes of use and usefulness play an important role in explaining language too?

For instance, the way we use words, the reason we find it useful to use them in certain ways, is dependent on the properties of what the words refer to. Across disparate languages that are developed in relative isolation, the use of terms for certain natural phenomena will be similar because the things the terms describe are similar. Hence, meaning can be traced back, in at least some cases, to reference. Otherwise, our use of "dog" would have nothing to do with dogs, which doesn't seem right. But if the usefulness and use of "dog" is determined to some large degree by dogs, then use is going to be in some sense downstream of being.

Language users determine use, and it's important to recognize that no one person determines use. If someone, a scientist, creates a new word to express a new idea, that word will not get a foothold unless other language users start using it in the same way.

Sure reference, for example, ostensive definition is a way of learning words, but ultimately use is the driving force. If I teach a child by pointing to a pencil and saying, "Pencil," that is a tool that informs use. How do we know if the child understands? We observe how they use the word across a wide range of contexts or language games. If the child points to a cup and says pencil, then we know that they aren't using the word correctly. There has to be community agreement (cultural and social practices otherwise referred to as forms of life).

Use, for the most part, isn't determined by the thing itself (the dog); it's determined by language users and the explicit or implicit rules involved in the respective language game. What we use as a name for a dog could be almost anything.

Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus

Second, I had forgot Grayling's full example. People can use "QED" and the like consistently, in the correct way, and not know their meaning. However, consider "kalb." It means dog in Arabic. You now know what kalb means. However, if you don't know Arabic, you don't know how to use it in a sentence.

I don't think that people can use a word correctly (consistently) without having some idea of what the word means. Maybe they can't express the meaning, but they still use it correctly. As long as they are using the word correctly in a variety of language games, then they know how to use the word. Meaning again is use, not determined by giving some dictionary definition.

I might not be able to use "kalb" in a sentence, but I can say "kalb" and point to a dog. This demonstrates that I understand how the word is used in Arabic. Use doesn't always require complete sentences.

I tried to answer most of your concerns.

Reply to Darkneos

Don't bother. You really believe that thoughts, feelings, intentions and purposes travel through the air when two people talk to each other. Imagine a tape recording where something you say is recorded. You have the tape and you literally believe that there are thoughts, emotions and so on on the tape. That is a type of mentalism and magical thinking that I do not share and is patently false.

Quoting Sam26

Sure reference, for example, ostensive definition is a way of learning words, but ultimately use is the driving force. If I teach a child by pointing to a pencil and saying, "Pencil," that is a tool that informs use. How do we know if the child understands? We observe how they use the word across a wide range of contexts or language games. If the child points to a cup and says pencil, then we know that they aren't using the word correctly. There has to be community agreement (cultural and social practices otherwise referred to as forms of life).

Use, for the most part, isn't determined by the thing itself (the dog); it's determined by language users and the explicit or implicit rules involved in the respective language game. What we use as a name for a dog could be almost anything.

That's sort of why Wittgenstein said a private language is incoherent, language is exclusively public and carries the meaning we agree it does. It's how we can communicate anything.

Quoting JuanZu

Don't bother. You really believe that thoughts, feelings, intentions and purposes travel through the air when two people talk to each other. Imagine a tape recording where something you say is recorded. You have the tape and you literally believe that there are thoughts, emotions and so on on the tape. That is a type of mentalism and magical thinking that I do not share and is patently false.

Because that's literally how language works. Thought, intent, feeling, purpose, these are what make the sounds and lines into words that carry weight. It's how you can type and argue your point. Under hard materialism this would be impossible because there would be no words or meaning.

There are thoughts, emotions, and "so on" on the tape because that's how language works. It carries the meaning we imbue onto it and our intent and emotion and what we want to get across. That's why we use it. You're thinking too narrowly about it. Heck the different cultures with different worldviews around the globe prove your position wrong.

It's not "mentalism" or "magical thinking" it's literally how language functions, you're doing it whether you accept it or not. If your logic was right you'd be wrong because nothing you said would carry meaning or anything like that because it would just be a bunch of "lines" and not even that. Ink would not be ink and sound would not be sound, I wouldn't even be able to read what you're arguing. I'm guessing you wouldn't understand art either or other forms of communication.

You really don't understand how your "materialism" isn't supported by reality and is self-refuting. You seem to think language exists in a vacuum and that's obviously false, never mind the differences across cultures proving you wrong.