Epistemic Perspective : Meanings ARE in the head

[rudinreader]

.. Maybe it doesn't really matter whether we understand how language refers to objects...

I don't want to interrupt your discussion, it was a mistake to jump in here. If you really want to understand what I was getting at, I can recommend Sobolev to you. See this link: https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=205459

So please, continue on.

 

[Drachir]

octelcogopod in #43 you wrote:

Abstract thought is in a way a side effect of written language then.

I think you have it reversed. Spoken language facilitated abstract thought. The idea to represent a spoken word by a graphic symbol is an abstract idea that had to arise before there could ever be written language. Written language was a side effect of abstract thought.

In the same post you also wrote:

We are able to separate all the different abstractions because the words are physical things which helps our mind make a clear distinction between them.

Words are not physical things; they are mental symbols we use to represent meanings stored in the brain. I am sure your considering words to be physical things is simply a mistake. A real inability to distinguish between physical things and mental things is a form of psychosis.

In the same post you also wrote:

Without language we may have had an intuition about the different things we see, but I don't see how we could clearly abstract one from another, in a useful or coherent way.

Fortunately we have never been without language. Bacteria communicate with a chemical language. Birds communicate aurally with their calls, visually with their body language, and with their touch language. We, too, have always communicated with visual, aural, and touch languages.

You are right though. An abstraction would be is pretty useless if it didn’t have a word to represent its meaning. We can recall visual memories to recognize what apples, roses, sunsets, and blood have in common or to recognize what egg yolks, ripe bananas, and ripe lemons have in common without the use of words. However, without words to represent the meanings of those common properties it becomes difficult to recognize what those common properties have in common. Without words it would be impossible to recognize the meanings represented by the words ‘Physics Forums.’

 

[Drachir]

Lord Ping, in #44 you wrote:

I'm not sure if we need language for abstract thought. Without language, I can look at a plank of wood and imagine it being shorter than it in fact is. I can imagine something that is the same thing but with a different length. Can I do that without possessing some abstract notion of what a length is?

Yes, you can do that without possessing any abstract notions at all. You can do that by first recalling (imagining) your observations of something that changed its length. Next, with analogical imagination you can imagine anything else doing the same thing,

Abstract thought is thinking about or with abstract ideas. I’m sure we need language to think about physics, which is an abstract idea.

(Having worked with many wood planks, I particularly enjoyed your choice for an example. Thinking about this response, I realized that I always imagine them with grain patterns and free of knots.)

You also wrote in #44:

Interestingly, Donald Davidson claimed that without language we can't have any concepts at all - an argument I find vaguely
terrifying.

There, there, Lord Ping. Don’t be terrified. Drachir is here.

If by the word ‘concepts’ Donald Davidson meant general notions or general ideas, then, since such notions and ideas are abstract ideas, we can happily and without fear agree with him. See the paragraph preceding my wood planks and my response to octelcogopod above. Without abstract ideas all that would be in the mind would be current perceptions, memories of past perceptions, and communication symbols (a rudimentary language). If Davidson meant something else by ’concepts,’ I would think he was misusing the word.

By the way, in order to form abstractions an animal must not only have a language, it must also be able to think about its thinking. A recursive process like that would require some neurons and reentrant ‘wiring’ in the brain. I doubt that the Aplysia snail has any neurons and synapses available for that task.

Not only can we think about our thinking, we can even think about our thinking about our thinking. I can hold on to it for four levels. I imagine that a chess master could hold on to it for several more levels.

 

[Drachir]

Lord Ping, in #41 you wrote:

I would also recommend Kripke to you. One of Kripke's most helpful examples is Godel. All Kripke knows about Godel is that he proved the incompleteness theorem. Yet a counterfactual like "If Godel hadn't proved the incompleteness theorem, I would never have heard of him" is intuitively* either true or false. But for it to have a truth-value, "Godel" has to refer in a scenario where Godel never did the only thing we attribute to him. The meaning of his name must be something different from merely what we know about him.

Please disregard my previous attempt at a disproof of that argument. Here is a more cogent one.

A word is a symbol for the meaning it represents. Usually that meaning is given in terms of several other words. A name is a word that is a symbol for a particular person or group of persons; its meaning is also usually given by several other words. Sometimes substituting their meanings for words or phrases in a sentence exposes covert self-contradictions. Let us try the substitution technique with that argument.

From the sentence “ All Kripke knows about Godel is that he proved the incompleteness theorem” it follows that for Kripke the name ‘Godel’ means the person who proved the incompleteness theorem. Now, in your argument, let’s substitute that meaning for all references to the name. Let’s also substitute meanings for relevant words or phrases. The original sentence and the sentences with substitutions will be recognizable below.

(1o) All Kripke knows about Godel is that he proved the incompleteness theorem.
(1s) All Kripke knows about the person who proved the incompleteness theorem is that he proved the incompleteness theorem.

(2o) Yet a counterfactual like "If Godel hadn't proved the incompleteness theorem, I would never have heard of him" is intuitively* either true or false.
(2s) Yet a counterfactual like "If the person who proved the incompleteness theorem hadn't proved the incompleteness theorem, I would never have heard of the person who proved the incompleteness theorem" is intuitively* either true or false.

(3o) But for it to have a truth-value, "Godel" has to refer in a scenario where Godel never did the only thing we attribute to him.
(3s) But for it to have a truth-value, "the person who proved the incompleteness theorem" has to refer in a scenario where the person who proved the incompleteness theorem never proved the incompleteness theorem.

(4o) The meaning of his name must be something different from merely what we know about him.
(4s) The person who proved the incompleteness theorem must be something different from merely the person who proved the incompleteness theorem

Now let us examine the substitution sentences.
Sentence 2s’s counterfactual is not “intuitively either true or false”; it is necessarily true. That renders the remainder of the argument inconsequential.

Sentence 3s can be interpreted in two ways. The first is that the person who proved the incompleteness theorem does refer to the person who proved the incompleteness theorem in the scenario. The second is that the scenario is self-contradictory since it requires the same person to have proved and not have proved the incompleteness theorem. Either interpretation renders the remainder of the argument inconsequential.

Sentence 4s is a self-contradiction.

I hope that is a sufficient disproof of the argument. Words remain symbols for meanings that are in our heads. If we attach words to incomplete or wrong meanings, we will misuse those words and produce tangled thoughts and miscommunications.

 

[Lord Ping]

From the sentence “ All Kripke knows about Godel is that he proved the incompleteness theorem” it follows that for Kripke the name ‘Godel’ means the person who proved the incompleteness theorem.

(4o) The meaning of his name must be something different from merely what we know about him.

Okay... how can these claims be consistent? In fact, (4o) is exactly what Kripke thinks (and I think!), whereas your preliminary assumption is not something he agrees with at all.

I don't think you'll succeed in attacking the logic of Kripke's modal argument, and if you do it will only be because I've expressed it wrongly. It's better to think about the issues it raises and whether you agree with it. Some people (e.g. John Searle) take the point that a speaker doesn't have to know the full meaning of a name to use it to refer, but dismiss all this "essential properties" talk I have occasionally lapsed into.

 

[Drachir]

Lord Ping, more about the argument

All Kripke knows about Godel is that he proved the incompleteness theorem. Yet a counterfactual like "If Godel hadn't proved the incompleteness theorem, I would never have heard of him" is intuitively* either true or false. But for it to have a truth-value, "Godel" has to refer in a scenario where Godel never did the only thing we attribute to him. The meaning of his name must be something different from merely what we know about him.

Thanks for directing my attention to the first sentence. That sentence, “All Kripke knows about Godel is that he proved the incompleteness theorem”, is a thinly veiled fallacy because the sentence implies that Kripke also knows Godel’s name. Thus, “Godel” is the name of the person who proved the incompleteness theorem. The meaning of his name is merely what we know about him: that he was so named and that he proved the incompleteness theorem. We could stop here, but since you might think that the remainder of the argument could invalidate this quick conclusion, let’s continue.

The word ‘Godel’ has two meanings; i.e., (1) the name of the person and (2) the person so named. To avoid confusing those meanings in what follows, “Godel” will mean the name of the person, while Godel will mean the person named “Godel.”

To correct the fallacy in the argument’s first sentence, it should be rewritten as:
All Kripke knows about Godel is that his name is “Godel” and that he proved the incompleteness theorem. Now we can continue with the remainder of the argument.

Yet a counterfactual like “If Godel’s name hadn’t been “Godel” and Godel hadn’t proved the incompleteness theorem, I would never have heard of him” is intuitively either true or false.

But for it to have a truth-value "Godel" has to refer in a scenario where Godel never was named “Godel” and Godel never proved the incompleteness theorem. Notice that now “Godel” in the requirement does refer explicitly to “Godel” in the scenario as well as to the “Godel” implicit in the meaning of Godel. As a consequence, the counterfactual can now have a truth-value without a mysterious difference of the meaning of his name from what we know about him,

Again, “Godel” is the name of the person (Godel) who proved the incompleteness theorem. The meaning of his name is, after all, merely what we know about him.

 

[Lord Ping]

You pick up on a slight problem with using Godel as an example, in that, as far as I know, Godel really was called "Godel" by his contemporaries, and this might conceivably be something else I know about him.

However, it doesn't follow that Godel was called "Godel" from the statement "All I know about Godel is that he proved the incompleteness theorem". In fact, I can refer to a particular person by a particular name without knowing they were called by that name at all. So there is no "fallacy".

For example, "All I know about Pliny is that he was a famous Roman philosopher." Here I am using an anglicized name for a referent who was never called that at all while he was alive.

 

[Drachir]

Lord Ping{/b] in #57 you wrote:

However, it doesn't follow that Godel was called "Godel" from the statement "All I know about Godel is that he proved the incompleteness theorem".

What does follow from that statement is that you called the person who proved the incompleteness theorem Godel and imply that his name is “Godel.”

For the argument you presented in #41 it is immaterial whether Godel was real or imaginary, or, if real, what others may have called him, or whether what is attributed to that person is real or imaginary. You could just as well have written “All I know about person X is that X did Q”. However, you cannot escape the fact that you know that X’s name is “X”, especially since the remainder of the argument will refer to both the person and the person’s name. Thus you know two things about X: X’s name and X’s act Q.

Even if you attribute an act to a nameless person, you will know that the person is nameless and that the person performed the act. Thus, since you must, of necessity, know more about a person than just the person’s act, it is a fallacy to claim that all you know about the person is the person’s act.

An attributer attributing an attribute to an attributee must somehow identify the attributee in order to differentiate the attributee from all else. Therefore, the attributer must know both an identity of the attributee and the attribute attributed to the attributee.

 

[Rade]

... This example shows how ridiculous it is to think of "identity" as being something objective or special, over and above "what we subjectively define it to be"...(from POST #22)

I both agree and disagree. Imo, it is ridiculous to equate any specific "something objective" metaphysical given with "identity" (such as the boat that changes over time), but, this view misses the point. But first, let me say that I am in the camp of those that conclude that "meaning is in the head", yet I also hold that "identity" (in a certain way) is "objective" (which I think is not what you are saying Moving Finger--please correct me if I error?). Let me explain.

IMO, it is the sum total of all that exists, existence, that equates with identity--leading to a fundamental truth--Existence is Identity, which derives from a fundamental law, the Law of Identity, A=A. Once this is accepted as a fundamental, it is a simple next step to deduce the role of Consciousness--the Identification of Existence. Associating "meaning" (understanding) with existence is a type of mental calculus--a process of first differentiation of the metaphysical given (MG), (that which is given to the mind), then of the process of integration to form concepts. (Of course one can take a MG and use imagination to transform it, add it with others, etc.)

So, this is why I would agree that "meanings of the metaphysical given are in the head" (where else can they be ?). But I would disagree that there is no relationship of "identity" with "existence" -- for it is the sum total of the metaphysical given, as given to the head, that represent the objective reality of existence. This above is a summary of Objectivist Philosophy of Ayn Rand as I understand it.

 

[basePARTICLE]

Very fine progress as the historian Carr, would put it. All the viewpoints have one thing in common: there are all collecting various bits of truth from the world, bundling them together and calling the single parcel meaning. The infrastructure of their work is the collection of truth and itz emergent factor is called meaning.

However in our world when constructing propositions using truth as a basis, a whole different set of rules apply. What is nice about those rules is that they are well defined.

View attachment TPM.bmp

One problem with Putnam and his XYZ, water on Twin Earth, is that is an impossible possible world since Pauli would reject it off hand. I don't like philosophy which has no meaning to humans on Earth.

Clearly, when working with truth we have to realize there are various types of facts, and their source or extension as some call it, play a major part in knowing the truth. Any question which concerns knowing the truth intrinsically entails a demonstration of some form. With this point of demonstration in mind, let me turn to your meanings.

Static meaning which lies in your head and then the demonstratable meanings which play out in the real world do not conflict because of the lack of truth barrier.

 

[Lord Ping]

An attributer attributing an attribute to an attributee must somehow identify the attributee in order to differentiate the attributee from all else. Therefore, the attributer must know both an identity of the attributee and the attribute attributed to the attributee.

This just shows you've not engaged with the topic at all. The whole question is "how do we refer"? How, in your words, do we "identify the attributee"? We have a name. The name refers; it has a referent; it has reference; it is "something's name". What is it that binds the name to the referent?

You suggest that if I have a name Godel (or Pliny, Socrates etc.) in my vocabulary, I know that, if "Godel" refers, Godel was the object to which "Godel" refers. Well yes, obviously. This is a tautology. A lot of tautologies are true of Godel. If he was a bachelor, he was unmarried. If he had two sons and two daughters, he had four children. But how is that going to help me specify the reference of Godel? It can't.

Imagine if you opened a dictionary and under "water" it said: the stuff to which the word "water" refers, if it refers. You would get a little pissed off, right? Of course, even the standard dictionary definition doesn't quite tell the whole story.

 

[basePARTICLE]

I wanted to add two points about meanings which are in the head. The first point is: using the memory system of the head, to store memories which carries meaning, is not an absolute necessity. This is true because I can transfer some of the information which will carry meaning onto paper and refer to that paper/notes when I need to resolve the meaning of something. I do this often.

The second point about meanings in the head, is to actually have meaning, some of that information has to transition into the physical world, the same physical world where Putnam claims meaning is grounded, as a result of his XYZ hypothesis, and subsequently transition back into the mental/head world. Once you claim that meanings are in the head, and you are constantly encountering problems in the real world, then it implies your meaning differs from the rest, even if your meaning may be correct.

From my earlier point which demonstrates memory as essential to meaning, together with the fact that a human in search of meaning can utilise external memory sources to abstract meaning, we find ourselves in a unique position to viewing meaning as a sum of histories.

---

The Putnam question may be rephrased as: A couple have identical twins and name both of them Sam. Who answers when Sam is called?

 

[Drachir]

Lord Ping in #61 you wrote:

The whole question is "how do we refer"? How, in your words, do we "identify the attributee"? We have a name. The name refers; it has a referent; it has reference; it is "something's name". What is it that binds the name to the referent?

To identify an attributee an attributer must first recognize one or more attributes of the attributee other than what the attributer intends to attribute to the attributee. We identify anything by its attributes, where the noun ‘attribute’ means a character, characteristic, property, or quality considered to be possessed by a group, person, thing, etc.

The binding of a name to a referent is in our heads. A name is bound to a referent by our creating or adopting the name as a word symbol for the referent and by remembering both that word and the identity of the referent. At a physical level the neurochemistries of short and long term memory produce the binding.

In that same post you also wrote

You suggest that if I have a name Godel (or Pliny, Socrates etc.) in my vocabulary, I know that, if "Godel" refers, Godel was the object to which "Godel" refers. Well yes, obviously. This is a tautology

A tautology is a needless repetition of an idea in different words. “Godel” (the name of a person) and Godel (the person so named) are not the same idea. Thus, there is no tautology.

 

[Drachir]

BasePARTICLE in #62 you wrote:

I wanted to add two points about meanings which are in the head. The first point is: using the memory system of the head, to store memories which carries meaning, is not an absolute necessity. This is true because I can transfer some of the information which will carry meaning onto paper and refer to that paper/notes when I need to resolve the meaning of something. I do this often.

Certainly we can store information in many ways other than in the head; however, such storage is symbolic and is meaningful only to someone who understands what the symbols represent. The memory system of the head is absolutely necessary not only for that understanding, but also for comprehending the intended meaning of a series of symbols such as those representing a sentence.

In that same post you wrote:

The second point about meanings in the head, is to actually have meaning, some of that information has to transition into the physical world, the same physical world where Putnam claims meaning is grounded, as a result of his XYZ hypothesis, and subsequently transition back into the mental/head world.

If by ‘physical world’ Putnam means the world outside the mind, then I disagree with his claim. The reasons for my disagreement, as given in my post #37 on page 3 of this thread, are:

Meaning presupposes significance. Significance presupposes signs.
Signs presuppose symbols. Therefore, meaning presupposes symbols.

The unknown can only be explained in terms of the known. Meaning of the unknown can only be given by meanings of the known. Therefore, meaning is equality with possessed symbols.

Any animal’s first assignment of meaning to a previously unknown thing requires inborn symbols (templates, pre-wiring, etc. of the brain).

New symbols representing specific combinations of possessed symbols can be formed and memorized (learning).

The neural system --- the connection between the mind and the world outside the mind --- is the epistemic foundation for all animals.

Meanings can only be in the head (brain).

In post #62 you also wrote:

From my earlier point which demonstrates memory as essential to meaning, together with the fact that a human in search of meaning can utilise external memory sources to abstract meaning, we find ourselves in a unique position to viewing meaning as a sum of histories.

In light of what I have previously written in this post, the use of external memory sources does not bear on the point you are trying to make. Furthermore, your conclusion does not follow merely from memory being essential to meaning. If meaning is to be viewed as a sum of histories, those histories must be the evolutionary changes that led to our brains having the ‘pre-wiring’ implied in our DNA. I consider the most eventful of those changes to be the one that allowed us to find meaning in our act of thinking and so enable us to think about our thinking. That is what made it possible for us to go from the cave to the moon.

 

[Lord Ping]

To identify an attributee an attributer must first recognize one or more attributes of the attributee other than what the attributer intends to attribute to the attributee. We identify anything by its attributes, where the noun ‘attribute’ means a character, characteristic, property, or quality considered to be possessed by a group, person, thing, etc.

This seems to be very much not the case in some of the counterfactual scenarios I have mentioned.

I can say straightforwardly: "If Aristotle had died aged two he would never have taught Alexander." What's the referent of "Aristotle" here? Not any object with any of the attributes I know the actual Aristotle to have had.

A tautology is a needless repetition of an idea in different words. “Godel” (the name of a person) and Godel (the person so named) are not the same idea. Thus, there is no tautology.

(1) "X" refers.
(2) X is the object to which "X" refers.

I thought (1) probably entails (2) here. Maybe it does, maybe not. It's not important. I didn't mean that it was a tautology. Sorry. It's a word people use too freely, like "fallacy," "clearly," "therefore" and "thus". In any case, the amazing God-like insight required to infer (2) from (1) doesn't tell us anything about how reference works. If I'm trying to account for reference, I can't just state that "X" refers, and thus that "X" refers to X - the whole point is to show how this is so. The whole point is to account for this everyday feature of our language.

"How do I account for the way in which I determine the reference of 'water'?"
"Ah, that's easy - it's water, dumbass."
"Shut up."

 

[basePARTICLE]

Certainly we can store information in many ways other than in the head; however, such storage is symbolic and is meaningful only to someone who understands what the symbols represent. The memory system of the head is absolutely necessary not only for that understanding, but also for comprehending the intended meaning of a series of symbols such as those representing a sentence.

In that same post you wrote:
If by ‘physical world’ Putnam means the world outside the mind, then I disagree with his claim. The reasons for my disagreement, as given in my post #37 on page 3 of this thread, are:
In post #62 you also wrote:
In light of what I have previously written in this post, the use of external memory sources does not bear on the point you are trying to make. Furthermore, your conclusion does not follow merely from memory being essential to meaning. If meaning is to be viewed as a sum of histories, those histories must be the evolutionary changes that led to our brains having the ‘pre-wiring’ implied in our DNA. I consider the most eventful of those changes to be the one that allowed us to find meaning in our act of thinking and so enable us to think about our thinking. That is what made it possible for us to go from the cave to the moon.

I have found a way to extend my brain into the world. It only works, that is arrive at a non-confusing state, when all the elements are connected. Yes at the point all the elements are connected, the meaning resounds in my head, but it is not resident! It is a consciously computable instant. I know certain of my meanings are part in my head, part outside my head.

You yourself claim the unknown can only be explained in terms of the known, making the case, where some explanations are derived from facts, to be analagous to what Putnam claims!

 

[basePARTICLE]

I would like to draw everyone's attention to four kinds of meanings:

(0) The meaning of life. (transcendental)
(1) The meaning of gravity aka the gravitational force. (physical)
(2) The meaning of loving someone other than yourself. (collective)
(3) The meaning of your own survival. (mental)

Does the argument meanings ARE in the head apply squarely to all four items?

 

[Drachir]

The Case of the Vanishing Referent

Lord Ping in #65 you wrote:

I can say straightforwardly: "If Aristotle had died aged two he would never have taught Alexander." What's the referent of "Aristotle" here? Not any object with any of the attributes I know the actual Aristotle to have had.

Aha! Another now you see it, now you don’t’ trick --- a kind of misdirection. In this counterfactual you are not referring to Aristotle Onassis; you are referring to Aristotle the person who taught Alexander. You hope that by not mentioning the identity of the Aristotle in the counterfactual, we will forget about his factual identity; however, we cannot. See what would have happened if you had straightforwardly identified your Aristotle in the counterfactual. It would have become “If Aristotle the person who taught Alexander had died aged two he would never have taught Alexander.” Then the referent of “Aristotle” is clearly the person who taught Alexander. One cannot use a name and deny its implications. This reasoning also applies to your Godel counterfactual.

I think there is something you are losing sight of in your counterfactual scenarios. Because they are counterfactual they are imaginary scenarios. That means that someone is doing the imagining and asking the reader to imagine with him. However, to imagine a counterfactual scenario, one must first know the facts on which it is based. Imagining the counterfactual scenario does not obliterate those facts from ones mind.

In post #65 you also wrote:

(1) "X" refers.
(2) X is the object to which "X" refers.

I thought (1) probably entails (2) here. Maybe it does, maybe not. It's not important. I didn't mean that it was a tautology. Sorry. It's a word people use too freely, like "fallacy," "clearly," "therefore" and "thus". In any case, the amazing God-like insight required to infer (2) from (1) doesn't tell us anything about how reference works. If I'm trying to account for reference, I can't just state that "X" refers, and thus that "X" refers to X - the whole point is to show how this is so. The whole point is to account for this everyday feature of our language.

Does “Ggyrxvh” refer? To answer that question we would first have to know whether it referred to anything or not. Therefore you have your sequence in reverse order. It should have been:
(1) X is the object to which “X” refers.
(2) “X” refers. (= “X” does refer)
No special insight or inference is required. (2) is given explicitly by (1).

 

[Drachir]

basePARTICLE, in #66 you wrote:

I have found a way to extend my brain into the world. It only works, that is arrive at a non-confusing state, when all the elements are connected. Yes at the point all the elements are connected, the meaning resounds in my head, but it is not resident! It is a consciously computable instant. I know certain of my meanings are part in my head, part outside my head.

I would like to understand what you have written, but I cannot. Perhaps the problem is mine. Meanwhile, since the brain is a mass of soft tissue encased in a rather rigid bony container, how can you extend your brain? Or do you really mean something other than physical extension of the brain. Please be so kind as to explain what you mean in each of your sentences, including the last sentence of your post:

You yourself claim the unknown can only be explained in terms of the known, making the case, where some explanations are derived from facts, to be analagous to what Putnam claims!

 

[Lord Ping]

In this counterfactual ... you are referring to Aristotle the person who [actually] taught Alexander.

Yes, though I have added "actually" (in the actual world, not the counterfactual possible world) for clarity.

“If Aristotle the person who [actually] taught Alexander had died aged two he would never have taught Alexander.” Then the referent of “Aristotle” is clearly the person who [actually] taught Alexander.

Yes.

The point is that, when imagining the counterfactual (some people think these possible worlds are as real as our own, but let's go with your suggestion that they are imaginary), something must specify who Aristotle-who-actually-taught-Alexander is. What's for certain is that it's not the person teaching Alexander in this possible world, because our guy is dead by this point.

Imagining the counterfactual scenario does not obliterate those facts from ones mind.

Sure, but those facts don't pick out the referent of the name in the possible world. So something else must pick out the referent - i.e. the essential properties it shares in the actual and possible worlds. Not contingent properties like being the teacher of Alexander.

 

[basePARTICLE]

<snip>

The unknown can only be explained in terms of the known. Meaning of the unknown can only be given by meanings of the known. Therefore, meaning is equality with possessed symbols.

<snip>
New symbols representing specific combinations of possessed symbols can be formed and memorized (learning).

<snip>
Meanings can only be in the head (brain).

<snip>.

Drachir, you equate meaning with posessed/memorized symbols. Why do you deny me, my symbols which I posess on paper, that gives meaning to some of my personal memories? (I hide these symbols from myself, simply because I do not need that sort of meaning resounding/rebounding in my head all the time, otherwise, I become dsyfunctional!).

Drachir, you yourself claim the unknown can only be explained in terms of the known.
Primarily, for something to be known, you should be able to show, it is indeed the configuration you posess in your head. To show this known case, you have to submit yourself to the external world, and compare/refine your meaning, which is essentially what Putnam claims - you are not a solipsist.

Here are two interpretations of meanings in your head:

(1) You can say meanings are in your head = you are a solipsist.
(2) You can say meanings are in your head = your head is a storage mechanism.

p.s. The difference to me reflects the division of labour between creating the meaning and discovering a meaning.

 

[Drachir]

Lord Ping in #70 you wrote:

“If Aristotle the person who [actually] taught Alexander had died aged two he would never have taught Alexander.” Then the referent of “Aristotle” is clearly the person who [actually] taught Alexander.

Yes.

The point is that, when imagining the counterfactual (some people think these possible worlds are as real as our own, but let's go with your suggestion that they are imaginary), something must specify who Aristotle-who-actually-taught-Alexander is. What's for certain is that it's not the person teaching Alexander in this possible world, because our guy is dead by this point.

Now, after agreeing to the idea of an imaginary world, you can’t get out of the habit of calling it a possible world. By the way, it does not follow that all imaginary worlds are possible worlds. But, I digress.

You are completely right where you wrote, “…something must specify who Aristotle-who-actually-taught-Alexander is”; however, that ‘something’ is you. You wrote a counterfactual about the historical fact that Aristotle taught Alexander. Intimately connected with that fact are other facts that you assume your readers to know: e.g., Aristotle was a philosopher of ancient Greece, and Alexander of Macedonia conquered most of his world.

The referent was implicit in your mind when you imagined and then wrote the counterfactual and is implicit in the mind of anyone that reads and imagines the counterfactual. The acts of imagining, writing, or reading a counterfactual do not in themselves produce an imaginary world in the minds of the writer or reader. If one chooses to imagine such a world one must have the facts, the counterfactual, the referent of the word ‘Aristotle’, and the imaginary world all in one’s mind simultaneously. What is shared by the real facts, the counterfactual, and the imaginary world it that they are all in the mind or a writer or reader.

Are you perhaps trying to have one foot in this world and another in that imaginary world? If it were possible for you to be in that other world, you would find that no one there would know anything about an Aristotle who taught Alexander. Maybe someone might know of a toddler named Alexander who died at age 2. They might think anyone a little addleheaded to ask about an Aristotle who taught Alexander. In their world Alexander became great because of his teacher Speusippos, who in that world switched at the last moment of his schooling to be a philosopher rather than an astronomer.

Why is it necessary that the referent in our world be the referent in their world? And why would failure to have a referent in their world imply something missing in our identification of the referent in our world, especially in light of all of this being in our own imaginations?

Meaning for our world is not to be found in imaginary other worlds. Meaning is in our heads.

 

[Drachir]

basePARTICLE, in #71 you wrote:

Drachir, you equate meaning with posessed/memorized symbols. Why do you deny me, my symbols which I posess on paper, that gives meaning to some of my personal memories? (I hide these symbols from myself, simply because I do not need that sort of meaning resounding/rebounding in my head all the time, otherwise, I become dsyfunctional!)

I do not deny you your symbols on paper. What I would deny is the notion that the symbols on paper or in computer memory are meanings. The meanings of the symbols and of certain combinations of symbols are in your head, in your subconscious memory. At anyone time we can only be conscious of an extremely small portion of all that is in our memory. I use external symbol storage as a backup method to prevent loss of information in the event of memory failure, whether mine or the computer’s.

In that post you also wrote:

Drachir, you yourself claim the unknown can only be explained in terms of the known. Primarily, for something to be known, you should be able to show, it is indeed the configuration you posess in your head. To show this known case, you have to submit yourself to the external world, and compare/refine your meaning, which is essentially what Putnam claims - you are not a solipsist.

Fundamentally, knowledge is recallable memory. If you cannot recall where you put something, then you do not know where it is. If you cannot recall a poem, you do not know the poem. If you cannot recall your last thought, you do not know your last thought. For something to be known you should be able to recall it from memory; no reference to the external world is required for that. Furthermore, if one has knowledge of and finds meaning in abstractions such as the class of all classes, one need not submit oneself to the external world and compare/refine ones meaning. In that case submission to the external world and comparison/refinement would be meaningless.

One can, of course, have erroneous or insufficient knowledge of something. Correction of those deficiencies often requires access to the external world. Be aware, also, that some new knowledge can be acquired by ones own thinking. Euler’s relationship e^(i*pi) –1=0
is a good example. He was able to derive and validate that relationship with his own knowledge without reference to his external world. He did not have to submit himself to his external world to compare/refine his meaning in that now famous equation. Are you sure that Putnam would essentially claim otherwise?

In that post you also wrote:

Here are two interpretations of meanings in your head:

(1) You can say meanings are in your head = you are a solipsist.
(2) You can say meanings are in your head = your head is a storage mechanism.

An interpretation gives the meaning of something. Let’s see if your interpretations give valid meanings.

A solipsist is one who believes that only the self exists and that everything else is a figment of the self’s imagination. Therefore, merely believing that meanings are in the head does not imply solipsism. Thus, since (1) is false it fails as an interpretation of meanings in ones head.

As I wrote earlier in #37

Meaning presupposes significance.

Significance implies a being to which something can be significant: the self for example. That self resides in the head, as do also consciousness, the subconscious, the memory storage mechanisms, the memory retrieval mechanisms, the memory manipulation mechanisms, etc., etc. Therefore, the head is much more than merely a storage mechanism. Therefore (2) is also false and fails as an interpretation of meanings in ones head. How about the following:

(3) You can say meanings are in your head = you are catching on to the point of this thread.

 

[basePARTICLE]

I do not deny you your symbols on paper. What I would deny is the notion that the symbols on paper or in computer memory are meanings.

Drachir, would you deny me a collection of symbols that give meaning?

He was able to derive and validate that relationship with his own knowledge without reference to his external world. He did not have to submit himself to his external world to compare/refine his meaning in that now famous equation. Are you sure that Putnam would essentially claim otherwise?

Hmm, as a solipsist, he accomplished quite a lot, but what bothers me is why are you talking about his meaning, and how did you come about to be sporting Euler in your head?

Drachir, I think there is some thing you are hiding from me, something like a hidden variable, working along with, your meanings in the head thing!

 

[Drachir]

basePARTICLE, in #74 you asked:

Drachir, would you deny me a collection of symbols that give meaning?

I cannot deny you anything, nor would I want to. If you want to think that symbols give meaning, fine. Maybe it’s just a language thing that separates us. For me a symbol is merely a token or placeholder. When we sense a symbol it stimulates our mind to find the memory (or memories) we have previously associated with that symbol. Without such previous association a symbol would be meaningless. I have never studied any language that uses the Cyrillic alphabet. Their symbols and combinations of symbols, whether written or spoken, are meaningless for me. If I were to learn the Russian language, i.e. put it into my memory, then its symbols would be meaningful to me. Perhaps my saying that symbols stand in place for meanings equates with your saying that symbols give meaning. Perhaps your use of ‘gives meaning’ is metaphoric, much as would be ‘leads to meaning’.

You also wrote:

Hmm, as a solipsist, he accomplished quite a lot, but what bothers me is why are you talking about his meaning, and how did you come about to be sporting Euler in your head?

I wrote about his meaning because it is an example of an idea whose meaning is not suggested by the world outside the mind. Euler is never far from my conscious mind because I studied advanced engineering math and at one time worked as an electronics engineer.

You also wrote:

Drachir, I think there is some thing you are hiding from me, something like a hidden variable, working along with, your meanings in the head thing!

Are you suggesting an ulterior motive? Not at all. I have been interested in epistemology since the late 50’s and its relationship to neurology since the mid 70’s. My mind is even open to presently unexplainable ways of knowing. I have always had a desire to understand all kinds of things. I think that knowledge should always be shared and frequently tested.

 

[octelcogopod]

octelcogopod in #43 you wrote:
I think you have it reversed. Spoken language facilitated abstract thought. The idea to represent a spoken word by a graphic symbol is an abstract idea that had to arise before there could ever be written language. Written language was a side effect of abstract thought.

Ah, that seems correct. But I do think that without the evolution of written symbols we would not be able to have evolved to this level of clarity in our abstract thought.
I think it may have had a snowballing effect, we started with symbols for the sun, clouds and other things we saw in nature and that snowballed to creating a proper language while both things developed at the same time (abstract thought and language.)
Certainly the way humans create symbols in their heads has gone on way before written language, but I do think the development of written language helped us get practice and gain intelligence. Same with knowledge, the more we read the more our brain understands a concept, so it's like a large web of symbols that represent meaning to each other, and this web grows with the vocabulary of the person..

In the same post you also wrote:

Words are not physical things; they are mental symbols we use to represent meanings stored in the brain. I am sure your considering words to be physical things is simply a mistake. A real inability to distinguish between physical things and mental things is a form of psychosis.

Well, what I meant by physical was that we write them down and they become ink on paper. Or we speak them out and they become audible soundwaves. I do not think we would be able to develop a language without the physical components.

In the same post you also wrote:

Fortunately we have never been without language. Bacteria communicate with a chemical language. Birds communicate aurally with their calls, visually with their body language, and with their touch language. We, too, have always communicated with visual, aural, and touch languages.

That's true.

You are right though. An abstraction would be is pretty useless if it didn’t have a word to represent its meaning. We can recall visual memories to recognize what apples, roses, sunsets, and blood have in common or to recognize what egg yolks, ripe bananas, and ripe lemons have in common without the use of words. However, without words to represent the meanings of those common properties it becomes difficult to recognize what those common properties have in common. Without words it would be impossible to recognize the meanings represented by the words ‘Physics Forums.’

Yeah, so my thought was that all abstract thought means is we separate a unique quality in reality, and see it independently of everything else.
Written language helps the brain create clear distinctions between these qualities, and in essence everything that exists is created a word for, and a meaning.
This meaning is derived from the person seeing it, hearing it, touching it and so forth, and then other words are used to describe it again, along with the inherent experience of it via the senses.

I hope that makes sense to everyone.

 

[basePARTICLE]

When we sense a symbol it stimulates our mind to find the memory (or memories) we have previously associated with that symbol. Without such previous association a symbol would be meaningless.

That is beautifully expressed as far as my neural model can tell. I would defer though, to a statement which finalized the sequence using, Without such previous association a symbol would be without referent. I accept this necessary condition.

Perhaps your use of ‘gives meaning’ is metaphoric, much as would be ‘leads to meaning’.

Very true,the term, leads to meaning, gives an indication that all paths converge at the mental state of consciously knowing, what message, a symbol or group of symbols intend to convey. Because a message is a symbol or group of symbols, the base symbols are known signals.

So we can have something called meaning, and this is where your philosophy stops, Drachir, with the claim that meanings are in the head because the base symbols are known head signals.

I agree with you, but I ask again about the hidden variables that allowed Euler entry into your book of subsequent meanings. In other words meanings are in the head does not explain everything about what we humans call - meaning.