Timeline for Question about problem of universals
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
20 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Mar 7, 2021 at 4:24 | comment | added | Conifold | Even for nouns your idea is problematic. A function needs a domain, if it only has existent objects then all predicates false on all of them will be indistinguishable. If you need predicates to explain the meaning of nouns you'll need higher order predicates to explain predicates, etc. I do not see why upstream definitions need to correspond since previously held beliefs need not correspond. Anyway, this comment thread is already too long. | |
| Mar 7, 2021 at 2:45 | comment | added | causative♦ | @Conifold the meaning of propositions is a special case of that general definition. It's easy to see how the upstream definitions correspond. For the downstream definitions, it is considered that by asserting P, the speaker wishes his listeners and himself also to believe consequences of P. Thus, the downstream definitions in both cases also match. | |
| Mar 7, 2021 at 2:33 | comment | added | causative♦ | @Conifold I have given definitions only for nouns and propositions. It is possible to give similar definitions for other parts of speech and non-proposition sentences. Generally, the upstream meaning of any utterance, including a word within a sentence, consists of those beliefs, previously held, which led to the utterance. The downstream meaning corresponds to the consequences the speaker wished to result from his utterance. | |
| Mar 7, 2021 at 2:17 | comment | added | Conifold | @causative Languages also have adjectives, verbs, adverbs and other parts of speech, and even referential meaning theories, like Frege's, resort to non-referential uses to cover them all. I have no objection to the upstream/downstream idea broadly speaking, it reminds me intension/extension or stereotype/reference in Putnam's vector theory of meaning (he has two more components). As long as "what we are persuaded of" is not restricted to some sort of referential correspondence to reality, otherwise large swaths of language would be left out. | |
| Mar 6, 2021 at 8:43 | comment | added | causative♦ | For rational people there ought to be some correspondence between the upstream meaning and the downstream meaning; we ought not make a distinction (upstream meaning) without a difference (downstream meaning). And if there is a difference (downstream meaning) we ought to make a distinction (upstream meaning). | |
| Mar 6, 2021 at 8:37 | comment | added | causative♦ | @Conifold the meaning of a proposition P has two sides. The upstream side is, "what would persuade us that P holds?" And the downstream side is, "what would we be persuaded of if we accept P?" For example, the meaning of "Dave is good at fishing," consists on the upstream side of whatever evidence we would accept as persuasive of Dave's fishing prowess, and on the downstream side, whatever conditions we'd believe as a result of his fishing ability. | |
| Mar 6, 2021 at 8:25 | comment | added | causative♦ | @Conifold The meaning of a noun can be considered a predicate; a function that maps an object to T or F depending on whether the object matches the condition implicit in the noun. This works regardless of whether any physically existent objects yield T for this predicate. The meaning of the noun is the function, not its argument. | |
| Mar 6, 2021 at 8:18 | comment | added | Conifold | @causative "Referring to something that does not exist" strikes me as stretching "reference" along the lines of the same fallacy you mentioned, and even when it is done (e.g. by Meinong) one has to provide a non-referential interpretation to link it to the earth. Languages may well be meaningless, that is why one has to define meaning-relevant use, and in a way that does not involve "meaning" itself, or non-existent referents, like your proposal. Of course, "meaning is use" is just a motto, but IEP, SEP and loads of books elaborate on specifics at length. | |
| Mar 6, 2021 at 7:52 | comment | added | causative♦ | 3 separate points there. a good metaphor for the first: a null pointer is not the same as a pointer to a unaddressable memory address. The null pointer is not referring to any memory address, but the invalid pointer is referring to a memory address that isn't there. | |
| Mar 6, 2021 at 7:49 | comment | added | causative♦ | @Conifold a word may refer to an object/event/condition that does not exist; that's not the same as it not referring to anything. It seems like a no-true-scotsman fallacy to just define meaningless language as not language. Anyway, simply saying "meaning is use" does not actually let you answer the question "what does word X mean?" with any level of specificity. At best it can tell you where one might look to find the meaning of X. | |
| Mar 6, 2021 at 7:40 | comment | added | Conifold | @causative "Object/event/condition a word refers to" seems to presuppose realism and some sort of referential semantics. But even metaphysical realists are anti-realists about some discourses (e.g. fictional ones), i.e. allow meaningful words with empty referents, so "meaning" is certainly broader than referential use. I think it is broader than inferential use as well (vs what inferentialists believe). But on most use theories specifically linguistic use is delimited by some role in coordinated interaction and/or communal practice, so babbling with syntactic regularity would not count anyway. | |
| Mar 6, 2021 at 6:55 | comment | added | causative♦ | @Conifold Meaning may be derived from use, but to have meaning we specifically need to be able to say what object/event/condition a word refers to. The meaning of a word is not the same as the set of all instances in which it is used. It is possible to imagine a use of language that lacks meaning - people babbling perhaps with syntactic regularity but no content or intent. | |
| Mar 6, 2021 at 4:21 | vote | accept | Ameet Sharma | ||
| Mar 4, 2021 at 3:00 | history | tweeted | twitter.com/StackPhilosophy/status/1367308868116709377 | ||
| Mar 3, 2021 at 10:42 | comment | added | Conifold | Meaning is use, if we play some kind of game then words have "meaning" within it. On other theories of meaning they may not have it, as positivists claimed about metaphysics, but that just amounts to rephrasing. One could say that something is meaningless only when a play does not conform to the rules, but that presupposes the rules. "Eliminativism" would probably mean that universals can be paraphrased out of the language, which is, roughly, what nominalists believe. | |
| Mar 3, 2021 at 10:39 | comment | added | CriglCragl | What about a square on the surface of a sphere? Then, what about the fact we live in curved Minkowski space..? Follow the history of the philosophy of mathematics, to understand how axioms shifted from being 'self evident' assumptions, to being recognised as essential framing - anything 'true by definition', depends on the definitions. This intro is good and concise youtu.be/bqGXdh6zb2k | |
| Mar 3, 2021 at 10:29 | history | became hot network question | |||
| Mar 3, 2021 at 7:38 | answer | added | armand | timeline score: 1 | |
| Mar 3, 2021 at 3:52 | answer | added | Double Knot | timeline score: 2 | |
| Mar 3, 2021 at 2:28 | history | asked | Ameet Sharma | CC BY-SA 4.0 |