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An Attack on Indexicality

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An Attack on Indexicality

Schlitz
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Posted 05/08/09 - 07:18 AM:	#21
Cuthbert wrote: On that view I think you'd have to grant that 'I am bert1' has a different meaning depending upon who utters it. So it means the same as 'bert1 is bert1', but only on condition that the speaker is bert1. Otherwise, it means something different. But is that plausible? Surely it's the fact that it means the same thing, no matter who utters it, that enables us to determine whether or not it's true. But 'I am bert1' does have a different meaning depending on who says it! Just like 'I ate eggs for breakfast,' 'I love my wife,' 'I am hungry,' and so on. These mean, whoever the speaker is, he ate eggs for breakfast, he loves his wife, and he is hungry. Who is 'he?' It depends on who said that he ate eggs for breakfast, loves his wife, or is hungry. What enables us to determine if any given utterance of 'I am bert1' is true is not that it means the same thing regardless of who says it, but rather our knowledge of how the word 'bert1' works and our knowledge of how to determine the truth of sentences of the form '[indexical] is [name]'. Every individual utterance of 'I am bert1' does have definite truth-conditions, but this is because the reference of 'I' is fixed whenever 'I' is used, and it is fixed by the act of using it. You could write 'I am bert1_Schlitz', 'I am bert1_bert1', and so on to distinguish different utterances. 'I am bert1' is an open sentence like 'x is even' is an open sentence, but with the added rule that an act of saying 'I am bert1' is what it takes to fix the reference of 'I' and so make a sentence that is either true or false. That's the difference between an indexical and a variable. Edited by Schlitz on 05/15/09 - 07:25 AM

Schlitz
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Posted 05/08/09 - 07:31 AM:	#22
Incision wrote: Now Schlitz, I'm not eager to disagree with you in phil of language, but it seems neither you nor Aexitintro have addressed Perry's argument, to which I admit sympathy. My belief that my post count should be increased (partly) explains why I write this post. If the reduction works, then Incision's belief that Incision's post count should be increased explains why Incision writes this post. But it seems not to. I conceivably might not know that I am Incision. And how would you explain that to me without indexicals? ("Incision is Incision." "Well, I know that much." "This person here is Incision." "But those are indexicals.") It seems "Incision" is missing something. Even if you (and I don't mean this generally) don't know who you are, when you say 'I wrote this post," this sentence has the same meaning as "Incision wrote this post." I don't think your state of mind has much to do with the meanings of either of these sentences. And if I wanted to show you how to use the word 'Incision' as a name for yourself without using, say, 'yourself,' then I could walk you in front of a mirror, point to you, then say 'Incision,' then point to your image and say 'Incision!'.

Cuthbert
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Posted 05/08/09 - 07:32 AM:	#23
Schlitz: #21 seems a reasonable account of why indexical statements have different truth conditions depending upon the context of utterance. But I don't see the point of holding that identical indexical statements also have different meanings, depending upon context. I don't want to be dogmatic about it, however. If I was asked to state my general criteria for the identity of meanings of any statements - indexicals or not - then I'd be at something of a loss. So I can't say that you're using the wrong criteria, because I can't confidently state the right ones. But it doesn't seem to me to be a position with any benefit - it may risk confusing meaning with truth conditions.

Schlitz
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Posted 05/08/09 - 09:03 AM:	#24
Cuthbert wrote: Schlitz: #21 seems a reasonable account of why indexical statements have different truth conditions depending upon the context of utterance. But I don't see the point of holding that identical indexical statements also have different meanings, depending upon context. I don't want to be dogmatic about it, however. If I was asked to state my general criteria for the identity of meanings of any statements - indexicals or not - then I'd be at something of a loss. So I can't say that you're using the wrong criteria, because I can't confidently state the right ones. But it doesn't seem to me to be a position with any benefit - it may risk confusing meaning with truth conditions. Aha! So here's another point of disagreement. I do maintain that a sentence's meaning is its truth-conditions, and I assume this when I articulate my position above, as you've rightly noticed. But it isn't clear to me where your coming from, since there are (at least) a few ways to dispute that a sentence's meaning is its truth-conditions. What's your angle?

bert1
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Posted 05/08/09 - 11:08 PM:	#25
Schlitz: You've made some very interesting points and I've enjoyed reading your posts, but I don't see anything in what you've said that suggests to me that we can do without indexicals. And that was Aetixintro's original project. The reason you have not translated any of our indexical-ridden examples into indexical-free alternatives is because it is impossible to preserve... what? meaning? significant communicative function...? Something anyway. Maybe you you're not claiming that they can be got rid of, though. Maybe you're just making the reduction purely in terms of meaning, and the difference between me saying "I am bert1" and "bert1 is bert1" is not one of meaning but one of implicature. I'm still not sure even about this. the Stanford Encyclopedia on implicature wrote: H. P. Grice (1913–1988) was the first to systematically study cases in which what a speaker means differs from what the sentence used by the speaker means. Consider the following dialogue. 1. Alan: Are you going to Paul's party? Barb: I have to work. I see in this example how the implied meaning is different from literal meaning. It's still meaning, though, just implied meaning. I don't see how implicature escapes meaning, but maybe you don't mean that. How is the implied meaning of "I am bert1" different from the literal meaning of "I am bert1"? Is it that there is no literal meaning of that sentence, because we haven't fixed a referent? Is there ever an instance of the sentence "I am bert1" which hasn't been written or spoken by someone? There just is always a context which fixes the referent of "I" isn't there? Could you clarify things a bit? Edited by bert1 on 05/09/09 - 01:34 AM
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Cuthbert
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Posted 05/10/09 - 11:27 PM:	#26
Schlitz wrote: [quote=Cuthbert] Aha! So here's another point of disagreement. I do maintain that a sentence's meaning is its truth-conditions, and I assume this when I articulate my position above, as you've rightly noticed. But it isn't clear to me where your coming from, since there are (at least) a few ways to dispute that a sentence's meaning is its truth-conditions. What's your angle? My angle is that I'm -or at least was - confused. In one post I said that if two statements have different truth conditions then they have different meanings. Then I complained that you had merely shown indexicals to have different truth conditions in different contexts, but you had not shown they had different meanings. So I contradicted myself. On reflection, I don't think having the same truth conditions is either necessary or sufficient for two statements to have the same meaning. In the case of indexicals, a statement with a single meaning has different truth conditions, depending upon context. I can tell that 'I am Cuthbert' has a single meaning (not the same truth-conditions) regardless of context, because I can reliably translate it into French as 'Je suis Cuthbert.' That's not a knock down argument, and I frankly don't know any robust criteria of meaning-identity. In other cases, statements with different meanings have identical truth conditions. 'Every triangle has three sides' has the same truth conditions as 'Every triangle has three angles', but the meanings are different. I tend to think we can often infer or explain the meaning of a statement by referring to it's conditions of truth. But the truth conditions are not identical to the meaning.

RosenP
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Posted 05/11/09 - 03:10 AM:	#27
Aetixintro wrote: People... I have been reading "The Problem of the Essential Indexical" by John Perry and I have a proposal in reaction to it. I consider here the three indexicals, I, here, and now. Only these! We want to have a timeline. So here I'll try to remove now by: A human by the name Jesus, social security number so-and-so, white robe, long hair is dead, therefore we are in year 0 (zero). We want to mention a certain place. So here I'll try to remove here by: A place is at the coordinates so-and-so in the system of planet Earth. We want to mention a certain person. So here I'll try to remove I by: A person by the name so-and-so, with the social security number so-and-so, perhaps a description and a history so-and-so. So, are indexicals necessary? I suggest that they are wholly ripe for elimination, theoretically. They are around because they are practical. Let's say we have an actual, obvious space and in it is an object. By giving the right description, we can remove the need for pointing and thus the definite need for indexicals disappears. Let's try with an example from John Perry's article. John Perry writes something like this: "I'm looking for the person who is making a mess in the supermarket. After a while I find that the person who is making the mess is myself. I'm making a mess. I'm taking action to limit the mess." If I'm to explain this without indexical, I: (John Perry is making a mess at time, t₁, in the supermarket, but he does not know this.) John Perry is looking for the person who is making a mess in the supermarket at time, t₂. After a while at time, t₃, John Perry finds that the person who is making the mess is himself. John Perry has been making a mess. John Perry takes action at time, t₄, to limit the mess. F**k the indexicals! What do you think? Can we do without the indexicals? If something is unclear, please point it out! P.S.: Hans Reichenbach is developing something similar in "Elements of Symbolic Logic, 1947", §50: Token-reflexive Words. We are in the same direction, I believe, with me being a bit more radical. Sure, it is not necessary. It is also not necessary to have sex, but we still do it. We do it because it is fun. Some do it because it is practical.

hurburble
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Posted 05/11/09 - 04:16 AM:	#28
You might all want to check out David Lewis article titled 'Index, context and content'. Edited by Benkei on 05/11/09 - 04:34 AM

Schlitz
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Posted 05/11/09 - 04:30 PM:	#29
Cuthbert wrote: My angle is that I'm -or at least was - confused. In one post I said that if two statements have different truth conditions then they have different meanings. Then I complained that you had merely shown indexicals to have different truth conditions in different contexts, but you had not shown they had different meanings. So I contradicted myself. On reflection, I don't think having the same truth conditions is either necessary or sufficient for two statements to have the same meaning. In the case of indexicals, a statement with a single meaning has different truth conditions, depending upon context. I can tell that 'I am Cuthbert' has a single meaning (not the same truth-conditions) regardless of context, because I can reliably translate it into French as 'Je suis Cuthbert.' That's not a knock down argument, and I frankly don't know any robust criteria of meaning-identity. It's not knock-down argument, but is true, and it's a good point. However, my position can accomodate it, just so long as it makes sense to translate a partially uninterpreted sentence. IT seems like this might be done on the basis of syntactic classifcation (both "I" and "je" belong to the same syntactic category), or on sameness of what the word would mean if the word were uttered in any possible world. If this is the same, then translation is a go without mapping across specified interpretations. Cuthbert wrote: In other cases, statements with different meanings have identical truth conditions. 'Every triangle has three sides' has the same truth conditions as 'Every triangle has three angles', but the meanings are different. I don't think it's quite right to say that "Every triangle has three sides" has the same truth-conditions as "Every triangle has three angles." Certainly, they both have the same truth-value. And, whenever one is true, so is the other and whenever one is false, so is the other. So they are materially equivalent. But this does not mean that they mean the same. It just means that the following sentence is true: "Every triangle has three sides iff every triangle has three angles." This sentence is, if true (and it's true), an a posteriori-ly true meaning postulate that could have turned out otherwise. It could have been that not every triangle has three sides iff every triangle has three angles, and there just might be a geometry where this comes out true, although I'm not a geometer, so I can't furnish it. So, we agree that the meanings are different, and I'd like to persuade you that so are the truth conditions- even if meanings aren't the same as truth-conditions. Let me put it this way: "Every triangle has three sides" is true just in case every triangle really does have three sides. It's true if there is no four-sided triangle, for instance. Likewise, "Every triangle has three angles" is true just in case every triangle has three angles. Sides and angles are different things altogether, so these sets of truth-conditions are different. It does happen that whenever you have a 3-sided figure, you also have a 3-angled figure, so "Every triangle has three sides" is true iff "Every triangle has three angles" is true, but the truth of this just expresses a relation between truth-conditions similar to, but weaker than identity, called material equivalence. While any two materially equivalent sentences always have the same truth-value, this does not mean that any two materially equivalent sentences always have the same truth-conditions.

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Posted 05/12/09 - 02:33 AM:	#30
I guess you're right. My position might entail that every true proposition has the same truth conditions as every other true proposition, which perhaps makes the notion of 'truth conditions' indistiguishable from 'truth value'. Either that, or I could offer a defence in terms of the necessary mutual entailment of 'every triangle has three angles' and 'every triangle has three sides'. (I'd have to hold that alternative geometries are using a different sense of 'triangle', 'side' etc.) Then it can't possibly have turned out that 3-sided polygons were anything other than 3-angled. If p's having different truth conditions from q entails that it could have been the case that p and not the case that q and vice versa, then I can conclude that the truth conditions are identical, though the meanings are different. Why I would want to go through those contortions is not so clear to me now, however. Perhaps you're right.

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