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Language Thread

acropolis

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I think the problems of language are generally more manageable than some philosophers claim. Yeah, you can't collect an exhastive set of meanings for the word 'game' or any other word. Nor does any reference match its referent. The same reference will have a different referent for any two people, maybe by a little, maybe by a lot. Yet somehow effective communication is common, even across different cultures, generations, and so on.

I'm also not sure it's terribly important to know what to do with or how to properly label symbols which generate no referent.
 
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GrowingSmaller

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To me, understanding is the criterion. Without understanding from the reader or listener, the phrase is meaningless. If I say "alea iacta est," it has no meaning unless you understand Latin. If I say "gihsju ajarabi," this most likely has no meaning to anyone as it is gibberish I just made up. Even less extreme would be to say "I just Christmas tree my car." What does that mean? I understand the individual words but the sentence as a whole is meaningless under the common usage of those words.

I'm really surprised that we're having to explain how to tell if something has a meaning. I'm sure that if you ask your wife if she paid the electric bill and she answers "I paid it completely and I didn't pay it at all," you won't simply nod in understanding because you understood the individual words or phrases. The whole sentence is meaningless. You either pay the bills or you don't. I'm sure you'd ask what she means.
SO are you saying in a room with a child and two adults, a sentence can at one time have no meaning (to the child) and have a meaning (to the adults)? If so, is that saying "A and not A" and therefore a "meaningless contradiction":cool:? Wouldnt we norlmally say "the conversation is meaningful but the child does not comprehend it"?
 
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sandwiches

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SO are you saying in a room with a child and two adults, a sentence can at one time have no meaning (to the child) and have a meaning (to the adults)?
Right. However there's no need to have the parentheses there as the phrases "to the child" and "to the adults" are needed for the entire question to have the correct meaning: "A sentence can at one time have no meaning to the child and have a meaning to the adults?"

If so, is that saying "A and not A" and therefore a "meaningless contradiction":cool:?
No.

Wouldnt we norlmally say "the conversation is meaningful but the child does not comprehend it"?

Yes. We wouldn't say "the conversation is meaningful and the conversation is meaningless" unless you're equivocating. So again, unless something can be understood from the whole phrase, the phrase is meaningless even if some of the components can be understood separately. If you ask me "What shape is the plate?" and I answer "It's a square circle." You wouldn't just accept that and move because it obviously makes so much sense. Instead, you'd ask "What? What does that mean? What shape is that?"
 
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