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Article: What is the meaning of words?
SIR2U
The Wonderor of Why
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Posted 03/13/09 - 05:44 PM:
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#11
DeReel wrote:
S2U, exactly how do you think this is not appropriate to the discussion ?


DeReel wrote:
- The OP article reads : "Why should a word, WHICH IS JUST a certain noise in the air or mark on a page, evoke a concept in our minds?"


Where does the article answer the question "why"? All it does is explain what signs are and what they do which nobody has bothered to dispute. It does not even explain how they do it!

DeReel wrote:
- If we take that definition of 'word' (=Sa), there is just no meaning in, under or about it.


"Word" has no meaning?

DeReel wrote:
- There is meaning in a word (which some understand as Sé=Signified, some as Referent, others as Signification...) only if we take the word as a linguistic sign. (words without language anyone ?)


That has already been made clear, it says so in the OP. And how many words do you know without any linguistic usage?

DeReel wrote:
raised eyebrow No need for an answer, obviously. Please carry on.


Of course there is need for an answer, we are civilized here.nod

Please carry on? How quaint, sounds just like the films I saw years ago.

Edited by SIR2U on 03/14/09 - 06:18 AM. Reason: Misquoting. My applogizies to Yffer.

Unknown Alanic wiseman. "Ignorance and bad teeth have at least one thing in common. Keeping your mouth closed makes them both less obvious"
A Zulu medicine man does not ask his patients when they first had symptoms. He asks them when they stopped singing. - Anonymous
yffer
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Posted 03/13/09 - 06:14 PM:
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#12
SIRZU

You're misquoting.
SIR2U
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Posted 03/13/09 - 07:33 PM:
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#13
SIRZU

You're misquoting.


How so?

And it is Sir2u, please.

Unknown Alanic wiseman. "Ignorance and bad teeth have at least one thing in common. Keeping your mouth closed makes them both less obvious"
A Zulu medicine man does not ask his patients when they first had symptoms. He asks them when they stopped singing. - Anonymous
yffer
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Posted 03/13/09 - 09:24 PM:
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#14
Oh sorry, SIR2U


Read the thread. I never said anything you are quoting me as saying.


SIR2U
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Posted 03/14/09 - 06:21 AM:
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#15
Yffer, sorry about that.

I should have learned by now not to post at work with the boss around.

Unknown Alanic wiseman. "Ignorance and bad teeth have at least one thing in common. Keeping your mouth closed makes them both less obvious"
A Zulu medicine man does not ask his patients when they first had symptoms. He asks them when they stopped singing. - Anonymous
DeReel
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Posted 03/14/09 - 01:06 PM:
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#16
It is false that words are JUST group of letters or sounds. The author of the article uses a literary effect in the sentence I quoted. He's clearly not referring ONLY to the shape of linguistic signs in the article (he contradicts that definition in the same sentence).

Nonetheless, 'word' can ALSO be defined as a group of letters and sounds. I was just highlighting this as a source of possible mistakes in the OP article (and I still don't understand why S2U jumped the gun btw : the purpose of the OP is not to argue about, but rather to understand the article, you debate-addicted punk).

Now, I'll give it a try :
"We know by experience that a word refers to many things we know as well as innumerable things we don't know by experience. In other words, a word refers to a concept.

A) But what is a concept and how can it contain things we know and things we don't know by experience ?

B) And how does the word evoke the concept ? Is it maybe a magical power of the word ? And if so, where is this power to convey meaning located ?

A= A concept, that of 'airplane' for instance, is eternal, beyond perception and made of consciousness. And when the word 'airplane' is used, we learn something of airplane A and airplane B, C ,(...), be them present, past, future, real or fictitious.

B= We are able to understand a word in a (metaphoric or) metonymic use, so the concept it refers to is not predetermined (=learnt?). Like <e do the concepts of form or self, we understand the meaning of a word without effort, but we can't say why a word conveys meaning."

I will entitle myself to critic the article :
I think the article is poorly organized.
Some sentences are counterarguments to arguments that haven't been formulated (shelved concepts = words are learned ?).
Many ideas are in this way dismissed without being examined :
There is no real effort to answer part B except with magical thinking. Metaphor and metonymy happen to be key features of magical thinking AND language. This could be dug deeper.
The 'without mental effort' argument is weak. Without memory, no concept. Inference is not dealt with, really.
'eternal' sounds silly applied to airplanes. In french, I would use 'idéel'.
BUT the (buddhist?) terms make for a nice example of fictitious airplane AND concept forging in the flow of discussion (the last one being not so understandable, too close to the finish I'd say).

Now I, S2U, am all eyes.
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Posted 03/14/09 - 01:45 PM:
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#17
jacob7 wrote:
Can someone explain this to me in plain words?

“The word airplane does not apply simply to winged flying vehicles that I have had personal experience of. It refers to the Wright brothers’ first biplane and the Japanese dive bombers that attacked Pearl Harbor. I have never seen these. It refers to thousands upon thousands of propeller-driven planes, jet airliners, supersonic interceptors, and the odd top-secret experimental aircraft. I have not seen most of these either.

Every example on earth of a winged flying vehicle, in the past, present and in the future, is called airplane, or an equivalent name in other languages Flugzeug in German, bimän in Bengali, and so on. Each person on earth who is acquainted with modern civilization knows instantly what the word airplane means, and can match it with any example he or she may come to know. Yet each person on earth has had a direct experience of only a small percentage of all airplanes. So the claim that a person on the pratyakña level can only understand a word in terms of experience does not match up to our easy familiarity with the word airplane. Our pratyaksavädé might then transform into an anumäna-vädé.

Actually, the word ‘airplane’ evokes a concept, a ‘universal’ that includes all examples of winged flying machines. When we hear the word ‘airplane’, we refer to that concept. That is why we understand the word. But this just makes it more complicated. Before we had a word and innumerable examples. Now we have a word, innumerable examples, and a concept. Why should a word, which is just a certain noise in the air or mark on a page, evoke a concept in our minds? What, indeed, is a concept? Why does the concept airplane include all examples? Why does the word airplane fit any or all innumerable examples of the concept? These puzzling questions just lead us to the conclusion that there is an occult power behind words that our perceptions and thoughts fail to grasp.

Perhaps it is simpler to ask, Where is the location of the meaning of the word ‘airplane’? It is clear that it is not merely located in our experience. Nor does it sit on some reference shelf in the back of our minds, if that’s what a concept is supposed to be. I do not need to check some mental dictionary every time I hear the word airplane. Without the slightest mental effort, I know what an airplane is. The meaning transcends time and space, even the duality of truth and falsity. An airplane in the sky means the same whether it refers to the flight of an airplane here and now, or a flight ten years ago, or a future flight, or a flight that is merely being imagined. It means the same even if the speaker is lying about an airplane in the sky that isn’t there. Why do we hundreds and hundreds of millions of people instantly recognize the meaning of airplane in all these different cases?

Now, by saying, a Vaikuëöha airplane in the spiritual sky, the word airplane does not suddenly lose meaning. The meaning is as clear as it would be about any airplane outside of our experience. Perhaps a few details have to be explained. This particular airplane, the Vaikuëöha variety, is beyond ordinary perception, since it is eternal and made of pure consciousness. Another airplane, the first one flown by the Wrights, is also beyond ordinary perception, since it is now destroyed; it was made of wood and fabric that now we cannot see. In both cases, the word airplane conveys meaning. In neither case do we perceive why the word airplane conveys meaning. The logic of, We have no experience of a Vaikuëöha airplane, therefore such a thing can’t be understood, can be applied to hundreds of thousands of other instances of the word airplane for which we have no experience: a Japanese dive bomber, the Spirit of St. Louis, an Air Bhutan passenger plane. But in spite of the sceptic’s logic, we do learn about these airplanes through the medium of words.

We may not have as much faith in the sources of words about Vaikuëöha airplanes as we do in the sources of words about material airplanes. But that does not make us men and women of superior reason. After all, we do not even know the reason why we know what the word airplane means.
Similarly, we know what a form is without knowing why. We know what a self is without knowing why. As with airplane, the word-meanings of form and self are not simply our limited experiences of particular examples of material forms or bodies. Nor are they particular concepts stored in our heads. For instance, nobody thinks of the self as an automobile, unless he is crazy. Yet if a car bumps mine in city traffic, I may spontaneously shout, You hit me! Someone else hearing this statement immediately understands what I mean, even though me and automobile are dissimilar concepts. You hit me transcends both experience (since I am not perceived as an automobile) and concepts (since I don’t fancy myself as an automobile). Yet still it conveys meaning. When our pratyakñavädé argues, I can’t understand what you mean when you say ‘transcendental form’, since I have no present experience of that, we might ask him how he can understand a statement about the human form a hundred years in the future. Any talk of form in the future transcends our present experience of form.


Now I can read the bloody thing. Any idea where it is from?


Davidson: We make maximum sense of the words and thoughts of others when we interpret in a way that optimizes agreement.
Russel Morris: There's a meaning there, but the meaning there doesn't really mean a thing...
Ned: Such is life
Banno
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Posted 03/14/09 - 01:52 PM:
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#18
reincarnated wrote:
Words are tools used for communicating ideas - in isolation they have no meaning. Words take their meaning from the ways they are used in language. If the word "airplane" means anything at all, it is only because of the way that word is used in language.


Make up your mind - is the meaning of a word its use in a language, or is it the idea it communicates?


Davidson: We make maximum sense of the words and thoughts of others when we interpret in a way that optimizes agreement.
Russel Morris: There's a meaning there, but the meaning there doesn't really mean a thing...
Ned: Such is life
Banno
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Posted 03/14/09 - 01:57 PM:
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#19
ciceronianus wrote:
What the hell is the "meaning" of the word pratyakna and its derivatives in this article?

I refuse to "Google" it.

Seems to be some variation on Plato...


Davidson: We make maximum sense of the words and thoughts of others when we interpret in a way that optimizes agreement.
Russel Morris: There's a meaning there, but the meaning there doesn't really mean a thing...
Ned: Such is life
SIR2U
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Posted 03/14/09 - 06:32 PM:
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#20

DeReel wrote:
The good thing in the article is that everybody will stop raving about meanING as the result of a process.
Soem of you may want to read another article to pack the basics :


I wrote
Exactly how do you think this article adds to the discussion?


I asked because I did not see how it would help understand jacob7's homework assignment. which was very confusing in its presentation and rather a lot of blubbering after the effort to understand. Maybe if you had explained what you thought the connection to the article was it might have made some sense.

But after reading it again I still don't see how an article explaining what a sign is(even in the form of a word ) is going to understand why it would evoke a concept in our head. Especially when no one has disagreed about what a word is. Words are obviously the type of signs that have to get their signification (as linguistic entities and cultural symbols) from the users.

As for " raving about meanING as the result of a process", I pressume you are talking about mental processes. Is there any other way for meanings to be assigned to words?

DeReel wrote:
I will entitle myself to critic the article :
I think the article is poorly organized.
Some sentences are counterarguments to arguments that haven't been formulated (shelved concepts = words are learned ?).
Many ideas are in this way dismissed without being examined :
There is no real effort to answer part B except with magical thinking. Metaphor and metonymy happen to be key features of magical thinking AND language. This could be dug deeper.
The 'without mental effort' argument is weak. Without memory, no concept. Inference is not dealt with, really.
'eternal' sounds silly applied to airplanes. In french, I would use 'idéel'.
BUT the (buddhist?) terms make for a nice example of fictitious airplane AND concept forging in the flow of discussion (the last one being not so understandable, too close to the finish I'd say).


So now he knows what was wrong with his homework assignment. Personally I hate to critique things like that. It's better just to tell them they are wrong.

Unknown Alanic wiseman. "Ignorance and bad teeth have at least one thing in common. Keeping your mouth closed makes them both less obvious"
A Zulu medicine man does not ask his patients when they first had symptoms. He asks them when they stopped singing. - Anonymous
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