When Imago says, "I simply don't see how words can have associations but not meanings," it's possible my failure to convince him of this is a result of the inefficiency of "language" (or my inefficiency with the use of language.) It can be extremely serviceable in the kitchen, but often not when we discuss philosophical topics.
I tried to convey my point by citing the way my son became serviceably efficient in the use of the word 'horsey', and in doing it I used the words 'associate' and 'association'. I'd repeatedly point at a (physical) horse in the street and say, "Horsey!" and, I said, my son soon came to "associate" the sound "horsey" with the sight of the horse. (By 'sight' I have in mind the conscious image in his mind as he looks at the physical horse.) But instead of "associate" perhaps I should have said "connects", or, perhaps better, "links". I think of the brain as a lump of nodes and links. It is the nature of the brain that it (among other things) "links" nodes and consequent bits of consciousness. Repeated juxtaposition of a sound and a sight tends to produce in normal brains such a "link". In time I could show my son a photo of a horse, and he'd say, "Horsey". When we use the word 'reminds', the linking action is usually stirred not by prior repeated juxtaposition but by some element of resemblance. "His voice reminds me of Roosevelt's." "His batting stance reminds me of Ted Williams's." "His prose style reminds me of Thomas Browne's." "His anti-Semitism reminds me of Hitler's." One underlying inefficient and misleading trait of language is the way the same utterance/scription is often used for a noun and a related verb - e.g. 'fight'. 'Link', is also an example. 'Association' can be used to convey the activity of associating, or to cite an object - "I associate the Ford Theater with the assassination of Lincoln, and I'll never shake that association." That's only one of several reasons why 'associate' can be an infelicitous word-choice. But no word is ever a sure thing to occasion a wanted specific bit of consciousness in someone else's mind. My aim in this posting has been to describe how a word can "have" associations - and to describe it without ever needing to resort to the word (or notion of) 'meaning'. If Ockham were on our forum, I think he would say that a philosopher who would talk of "the meaning of 'horsey'" and have in mind something that is not a bit of consciousness but an abstract non-mental entity is a philosopher who is entertaining a thought of an unnecessary chimera, a non-entity that can and should be barred from philosophical chambers - though it can be allowed in the kitchen. (Nor shuold we ever accept a physical animal as "the meaning of" of a word. We'd never agree with, "Look - there's a meaning galloping down the street!") Of course there's more to say, but I'm struggling to control my bad trait of cramming a multiple of arguments into a single posting.
