Cheerskep RE: 'Pavlov's dog was not memorizing a "meaning" during those past experiences. It was not a "meaning" that made the dog envision the forthcoming food. It was solely the association of the sound with the food. A bell-sound does not "mean" food, even on a big farm where the cook rings the dinner bell. Sure, a farm-hand may say, "That means dinner!" But he is not citing a "meaning", he's voicing an expectation prompted by association. If pushed, the farmhand might say the "meaning" of the bell-sound is the notion in the mind of the bell-ringer. "Well, either it means dinner is ready or the homestead is on fire."
This seems to imply that you think an animal's 'mind' is not qualitatively different from a human mind. DA -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, 23 March 2008 12:11 AM To: [email protected] Subject: "Signs", "meanings", and associations I carelessly balled up a key sentence in my earlier posting on "Sign Theory". I wrote the absurdity: " it is the repeated association of the utterance of word -- "milk", "hot", "doggy" -- with a given word that causes the notion of milk, hot, or dog to arise thereafter in our minds when we hear those words." Unfortunately I shall seize upon the need for a correction and use it as the occasion to ramble on and on. (But in truth I do it because I think the consistent failure to focus on and critically think about unquestioned key words and assumptions badly hampers this -- and most -- philosophy forums.) My position is that indeed words DON'T "have meanings". The mind is an "associating" lump of links. If you repeatedly experience two sensations conjoined -- by, say, simultaneity or immediate succession -- very soon the arrival of one will "call to mind" the other. The one is "linked" to the other, they are "associated" in the mind. Just why or how this happens -- why we are "wired" this way -- is something we can hope neurologists will "explain" one day, but meantime we can't deny it happens. This faculty of ours entails first the mind's associating, and second the mind's retrieval of associated notions. We all vary in the competence and scope of either factor. It's important to observe that there are only two elements in play here: a sensation, and an associated notion the sensation summons up. (Note: a "sensation" includes the hearing of a word, even if it's for a highly rarefied notion like 'hypostatization' or 'indeterminate'; but many common words are also far more rarefied, multiplex, insubstantial, than we initially think.) When Pavlov's dog heard the bell and began to salivate, it was because the sound of the bell was linked, associated, with the notion of a forthcoming bit of food because food had repeatedly followed the bell-sound in the past. The two elements are: his registering the sound of the bell, and his memory-notion of food. Pavlov's dog was not memorizing a "meaning" during those past experiences. It was not a "meaning" that made the dog envision the forthcoming food. It was solely the association of the sound with the food. A bell-sound does not "mean" food, even on a big farm where the cook rings the dinner bell. Sure, a farm-hand may say, "That means dinner!" But he is not citing a "meaning", he's voicing an expectation prompted by association. If pushed, the farmhand might say the "meaning" of the bell-sound is the notion in the mind of the bell-ringer. "Well, either it means dinner is ready or the homestead is on fire." Our kitchen-table talk about these things varies, and the differences stem from, and foster, lots of confusions. The biggest of these revolve around the use of 'to mean'. Hearing a word, we might on the one hand say, "Oh, that word means such-and-such," or "The meaning of that word isb&" -- in the belief the word "has" a "the meaning of". On the other hand we might say, "What it means to me isb&." Or "Its meaning for me isb&" -- in the belief that there is no mind-independent "the meaning of". This second person might say that for him the "meaning" of a "sensation" is what it "calls to mind", often in the form of what it implies: "The sound of the bell means I can at last rest my aching back." Notice: this second speaker is using the word 'meaning' to label a notion that has risen in his mind, even though he knows his notion may be quite different from what rises in the next guy's. The repeated juxtaposition of the utterance of a word -- "doggy" -- with certain images causes the mind to associate "doggy" with those remembered image-notions, and to retrieve the notions that next time we hear the word. If I utter "doggy" to a shepherd in the remote Andes, no picture of a dog will arise in his mind. But if 'doggy' "has a meaning", why doesn't that happen? Because he hasn't been exposed to repeated association of the sound, "doggy", with real dogs that his parents pointed at when they said the word. Nor, if he sees a real dog, will "doggy" come to his mind. (I'll try to cope with Derek's reservation about this paragraph in a later posting.) Don't say, "But we all have to be taught the meanings of words -- all that's happening when you repeatedly say "doggy" and point at a real dog is you are teaching the child the meaning of the word 'doggy'." No -- that's hypostatizing an unjustified third entity in what's happening. Take away the sound of the word, "doggy", the consequent image-notion of a dog that comes to mind, and there's nothing else. There's no third entity, "the meaning of". Because of the way the word 'to mean' has been habitually used in our language, when I hear "butter" and roughly the same notion comes to mind every time, I eventually come to accept that the word 'butter' "means" -- it "has" a mind-independent "meaning", and we blurrily think of it as something like a Platonic essence. (We are said to "define" by "ostensive definition" when we point at the object we call by the word. "This is called a banana." For a period, some philosophers even maintained "the meaning of" such ostensively defined words was the physical object. "That's the meaning of the words 'Eiffel Tower'." That notion of "the meaning of" was finally smothered by the observation that if the physical object were destroyed one would have to concede the phrase 'Eiffel Tower' would be "meaningless". My not-for-the-kitchen-table position is that words indeed are "meaningless" -- but for other reasons entirely.) If someone describes the notion he has in mind with a given word -- including an abstraction like 'cause', 'interpret', 'implication' etc which doesn't come with an immediate citable experience of the five senses -- we aren't learning "the meaning of the word", we are only acquiring a rough idea of the describer's notion. Even if he is reading to us an entry in a dictionary and he says it describes his notion, we aren't learning a "meaning". Dictionaries do not cite or give "meanings", they give "lexical definitions" -- which are merely the result of a lexicographer's attempt to write something the reading of which he hopes will occasion the rising of notion in our minds that is roughly, commonly, like the notion in minds of people familiar with the word. And that's all we can ask, because there are no "the meanings of" words. In sum, we are never taught "the meanings of" words -- except in a loose, kitchen-table sense. We are subject to "input" that makes us associate utterances and scriptions with notions. When you go to Google, and enter a "Search" word or phrase, you aren't asking your machine to look for a "meaning", only an electronic association with a scription. In sum, whenever you hear a word, or read it, or see a "sign" or symbol", what comes to mind isn't "its meaning". It's always just the notions your experience has caused your mind to associate with the word.
