[Wittrs] Meaning, Intent and Reference (Parsing Fodor?)

  • From: "SWM" <SWMirsky@xxxxxxx>
  • To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Wed, 10 Feb 2010 18:38:25 -0000

--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "jrstern" <jrstern@...> wrote:

<snip>

> But regarding horse-cow or even kitty-cow, Fodor calls that the disjunction 
> problem, if you want to follow up on it.
> http://www.google.com/#hl=en&source=hp&q=fodor+disjunction+
> But, well, yes, you see quickly it is a _causal_ _theory_ of 
> _representation_, all terms that I guess you find anti-Wittgensteinian.  Yet, 
> I think the problem itself, if not Fodor's solutions (such as they are) to 
> it, remain.
>
> Josh
> =========================================

So what's the Fodor theory of meaning in a nutshell? (I took a look at one of 
the links you provided, Josh, and I have to say it looks pretty convoluted to 
me. Can it be stated in relatively simple terms?)

As I've said here before I think that meaning is a function of minds, that we 
never have meanings without minds and that grasping meaning is one of the 
features of mind (one of the characteristics of what we call "mind").

I would go even further and say that to grasp meaning is a form of 
intentionality, maybe THE quintessential form.

I would describe the process of grasping meaning as one of linking particular 
inputs to other inputs in the context of multiple mappings of prior inputs 
which combine to represent the many layers of our experience, including aspects 
of our external and internal worlds. Thus, a symbol or mental image has a 
meaning insofar as it relates (via an association) to other symbols and 
pictures we have in our minds.

When Neil saw those markings on the cellar door (or was it a tool shed?) he 
initially associated them with a more or less abstract image of a tricycle,  an 
object with which, as a child, he was already familiar. Later as he learned his 
letters he came to recognize a word in that configuration of markings and the 
recognized word superseded in his mind the former association with a mental 
picture of a trike so that, when he saw those markings, new associations popped 
up for him, e.g., that of tools, maybe some particular tool(s), etc. The same 
markings (or token) had now two meanings though one faded as the other took on 
more significance for him.

Over the years, obviously, he still recalled his early association with the 
markings but presumably the things he thinks of first now, upon seeing those 
(or remembering them) are the linguistic associations, the linquistic meaning.

I recall that experience I had driving up from the Carolinas when I saw a sign 
and didn't initially grasp the meaning of the unusual combination of words and 
then I did. What happened in the instant of grasping is that suddenly I had 
certain pictures in my head that weren't there before. Suddenly I had 
associations where before I first had nothing and then, struggling to "get" it, 
I had the wrong, and somewhat confusing, picture (a bonfire with people tossing 
light bulbs on the flames!).

The instant of understanding, of getting the meaning, though was concurrent (as 
far as I could tell) with the occurrence of a particular picture of what the 
sign was calling on me to do that finally made sense to me in the context of it 
being a road sign for drivers (it said "burn lights with wipers" and that 
suddenly crystallized for me as "turn on headlights when using windshield 
wipers"). Then I had a series of images of myself reaching across the dashboard 
to turn on the windshield wipers and then of my car driving with the wipers and 
headlights on in a rainstorm, etc.

At the time of this occurrence I had been engaged in arguing with a certain 
DRTst about the adequacy of Wittgenstein's account of meaning as use (the DRTst 
maintained that meaning was more than use and that meaning-as-use only 
accounted for one type of meaning we give to words, the so-called pragmatic 
sort, while totally missing the fixed references of Kripke). What I realized at 
that point was that there were clearly mental images associated with at least 
some occurrences of meaning (I later concluded that all the usual uses of 
"meaning" involved such mental images) but that the DRTst was wrong in trying 
to say there was one fixed reference because, if there were, then we would all 
expect to get the same associated picture all the time when the same terms are 
used and there is no reason to think we do that (and plenty of reason to think 
we don't).

I had at least two distinct mental pictures in grasping the intent of the sign 
makers, in grasping the semantic content of that sign. Moreover the pictures I 
had, which included turning on the windshield wipers from my dashboard and 
driving my car in a heavy downpour with the wipers and headlights on would most 
certainly have differed in the particulars from what others might have mentally 
"seen" if they were having those two images.

I saw a certain dashboard, certain knobs on it, and so forth. Others presumably 
would see dashboards and buttons with which they were more familiar. I saw a 
street in a heavy downpour with my car driving along while others would have 
seen different streets, different lighting (night or day, overcast or not), 
different degrees of rainfall, different cars, different traffic 
configurations, etc.

There are enough distinct constituent elements to such mental images to make it 
unlikely any two of us would have them in the same way or that we would (in 
keeping with Neil's point and Edelman's) expect to even see them twice in the 
same way. So the meaning could not be the particular associated image even if 
it was dependent on the mental pictures involved.

But if not some particular image, what then? And how would we ever understand 
one another if we couldn't recognize the same things in our various uses of the 
same terms?

The solution, it seems to me, is to suppose the kind of complex network of 
mental images that I've already alluded to. Thus we find shared meaning not in 
any particular image that we each have but in the role(s) of the various images 
we have in a larger complex of images which we do share. The larger complex 
would not be a match, part for part, with anything others have in their minds 
per se but it would match sufficiently to enable us to understand one another 
if we can "place" a given term into such a shared system.

If the larger system of related images is close enough in person A to the one 
held by person B, then they can share understandings, grasp one another's 
meanings.

And this also suggests why it is that we very often find it hard to understand 
others or why translation from language to language can often be indeterminate 
and fuzzy.

Anyway, this is where I have come on this question of what is meaning and what 
does it mean to say we grasp or don't grasp the meaning of something. What I'd 
like to better understand is how Fodor's apparently rival account provides a 
different explanation.

SWM

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