McEvoy, elsewhere:
“[T]here are some interesting experiences nearly all of us have while reading”
And should I include ‘interpreting’ in general, to allow for, say,
‘conversational moves’?
“- including making correct sense of what is intended even though what is
intended is not completely written or is badly expressed.”
McEvoy’s use of “badly expressed” does suggest he may allow broadening his
account to cover not just ‘reading’ but ‘interpreting’ in general.
McEvoy:
“And also often doing this unconsciously. How can the act of "reading" be the
result of a mechanism whereby 'meaning' is extracted from a build-up of 'sense
data' - or any variant of this? How can the mind supply the missing 'words', by
way of a 'sense-datist mechanism', when key words are absent as sense-data?”
Well, in a previous post, I suggested that the interpreter (or ‘addressee’)
fills in the blanks by treating, say, an ill-formed sentences AS IF IT WERE a
well-formed formula (And you know philosophers LOVE well-formed formulae, for
which they even have an acronym, WFF).
McEvoy:
“How can the mind discard, as irrelevant, words that are are present as as
sense-data? [The last "are" and "as" of that last question may be immediately
discarded in this way.].”
Or also, “NOT present”?
McEvoy:
“I read [the utterance] several times (and tend to agree with many of [the
utterer’s] points), yet each time read as if [the wff] was there. It was only
when I read [the] correction post that I re-read and realised "than" was
missing. In terms of Popper's theory of World 3 (and related theories like
Frege's and Bolzano's), this is explained because the "than" was _somehow
there_ in W3 terms”
And it is by comparing the “wff” with what is not a “wff” that does the trick.
The addressee assumes that the utterer is providing a ‘wff,’ ceteris paribus
(but cfr. Carnap, “Caesar not prime is is number,” or a variant thereof).
McEvoy:
“i.e. I knew the relevant W3 content well enough for my mind to 'suppl'y the
missing "than", and my mind supplied it (several times) below any conscious
level. This central World-3 aspect, to decoding meaning from physical signs,
also explains how we can sometimes speculate usefully about the meaning of
'ancient fragments', even where not just words but whole sequences of words are
missing from the extant text.”
Well, the speculation seems dangerous in that more than a “wff” seems to be
involved.
“This W3-aspect also helps explain how a text we once found very difficult (at
a certain stage in our W2 development) might later be read without much
difficulty - or how our evaluation and understanding of the same text might
differ greatly over time. It explains why, for example, a lawyer might
profitably read the same court decision many times to deepen their
understanding of it - or what a scientist might read a scientific paper many
times to deepen their understanding. World 3 isn't an immediately plausible
theory:- but how can World3-less 'theories of knowledge' (whether sense-datist
or a priorist or based on Cartesian grasp of 'idea') give a plausible account
of how we arrive at meaning from written text - especially where the text is
incomplete or has flaws in expression?”
In the case of an utterance which is NOT a ‘wff,’ the addressee assumes the
utterer HAS uttered a ‘wff,’ and ‘corrects.’ The idea of a ‘wff’ need not
involve a W3. In a formalistic approach alla Hilbert, it doesn’t seem to. There
is a triple interface between the syntax (what makes a “wff” an “wff”), the
semantics, and the pragmatics.
While a Fregeian ‘sense’ may be pretty detached from, say, Russell’s idea of a
‘sense-datum,’ the fact that both Frege and Russell use ‘sense’ may be a clue
(cfr. Peacocke, “Sense and content.”)
McEvoy:
“In particular, we need a World3-type theory to explain the interaction between
[W2] mind and [W3] text:- to explain the myriad processes by which meaning may
be gleaned, especially where these processes must be based on interaction
between the W2 mind and the W3 writing. My posts have many more flaws that in
[others’], yet one reason I usually do not offer corrections is that the
correction is usually obvious enough. [If you read "that" as "than", you may
agree.]”
I agree that it is usually up to the addressee to provide the ‘correction’.
Then there’s the ‘hypercorrection,’ which Gruenbaum avoided like the rats:
A: Who is it!?
B: It’s I, your classmate!
A (to C): He isn’t. He’s the master. Only the master would say “It’s I”.
--- Punch.
Cheers,
Speranza
