Michael writes: "Cheerskep, I don't think that in the years we have all been discussing this general topic that you have addressed that tertium quid, that entity that exists between the speaker and the listener, or more accurately, between the speaker's mind and the listener's mind. You have continually focused on the NISH (notion in someone's head) and given practically no attention to how that is conveyed between parties. You just declare that an Andean shepherd said "Cleopatra" and the remote western Chinese guy thought of foopgoom."
Okay, here's how it works. When you hear any sound, this pullulating lump of links retrieves its unruly associations with the sound. You'll recall my bit about learning some Swedish. Imagine I'm holding up and apple, displaying it. I say: "Apelsin! [AH-pell-see-in] Apelsin! Apelsin!" An hour from now, if I say "apelsin", you'll connect the sound with the apple-image you just stored in your head. You'd say you've learned "the meaning of" a Swedish word. Language-learning is always like that. Say "Milk!" to a girl every time you give her a glass of the white stuff, and she'll recall the white stuff whenever she hears "Milk". You'd probably say that's obvious. What's less obvious is this: You've just explained the "learning of a word" entirely in terms of a sound and an associated memory. No alleged mind-independent "real meanings" are required -- to account for what goes on when we learn to talk -- and then talk. I'm saying words don't have intrinsic meanings. I'm not the first guy to say that -- but those others -- they were crackpots. Now a confession. I tricked you: When you say "Apelsin!" to most Swedes, the image that comes to their minds is not of an apple -- it's the image of an orange! I misled -- not about imaginary entities called "meanings", only about the conditioned workings of most Swedish minds. You've been misled about this all your life. You've been told you learn "meanings". You don't. You've been told a definition is a "statement of a meaning". It isn't. Wittgenstein said the meaning of a word is "its use" by the people in a given language-community. But this implies they all associate the same notions with a given word. They can't. Their notions are as dissimilar as their varying brains and experiences. Oh? Then how come we understand one another so much when we talk? That's because our talk-sounds often work well enough -- in the kitchen, on a ball field or a battlefield. Because we all link simple sounds like Milk! Run! Shoot! with similar raw sensations. But philosophy, politics, religion -- when we hear their psychedelic sounds -- 'freedom', 'art', 'salvation', 'understanding', 'meaning' -- we conjure notions that are abstract, fuzzy, and various. I suppose we could say that your "tertium quid" is shared experience associated with a given "word". (But since "shared" experience is never quite identical, what comes to our minds when we thereafter hear again a "word" - even one that we recently "learned" together -- will never be quite identical.) As for my confusing Cleopatra with foopgoom in Xinjian province, I take it you're saying I should brush up on my Mandarin and Uyghur. I'll put that on my to-don't list.
