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Article: What is the meaning of words?

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Article: What is the meaning of words?
jacob7
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Posted 03/10/09 - 05:28 AM:
Subject: Article: What is the meaning of words?
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#1
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.


Edited by jacob7 on 04/03/09 - 11:46 AM
timw
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Posted 03/10/09 - 08:42 AM:
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#2
Whew! At the first I suggest a division: there is what goes on in our heads; and apart from that, there is that outside of our heads that makes or causes what happens inside of our heads to happen. There is also that inside our heads as well that makes or causes things to happen inside our heads.

I assume, probably wrongly, that you are asking about things outside of our heads, and about some of their aspects, qualities, properties that make or cause things to happen inside of our heads.

This has to be further restricted to what kinds of making and causing, and what kinds of things that are made and caused.

I think the word "airplane" is an excellent choice of an example.

I am going to anticipate a problem. It may not arise. There are those here who will argue that the word "airplane" doesn't "mean" anything at all. It, the word, is just scribble-scrabble. "Meaning" is assigned by the reader.

I happen to disagree with this—I suspect you do too. Obviously the cognitive aspect of meaning occurs in a mind. But if a reader is so gone over into solipsism that he or she believes that it is his or her mind alone that provides the meaning as a result of interpreting data-as-scribble, then that same individual has to give an account for how they interact with the world at all—or account for how some, or any, perception of the world is not scribble or differs from scribble.

In consequence, I think necessarily some component of meaning comes from the world. The alternative—no meaning comes from the world—implies utter, complete, unbridgeable isolation. Clearly that is not our condition.
ciceronianus
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Posted 03/10/09 - 12:02 PM:
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#3
What the hell is the "meaning" of the word pratyakna and its derivatives in this article?

I refuse to "Google" it.

"Let us not pretend to doubt in philosophy what we do not doubt in our hearts."--C.S. Peirce

"There is nothing so absurd but some philosopher has said it."--Marcus Tullius Cicero

"Philosophy recovers itself when it ceases to be a device for dealing with the problems of philosophers and becomes a method, cultivated by philosophers, for dealing with the problems of men."--John Dewey
Banno
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Posted 03/10/09 - 12:29 PM:
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#4
Paragraphs - Why do folk not use paragraphs!! shaking head


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
DeReel
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Posted 03/10/09 - 01:05 PM:
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#5
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 :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sign_(linguistics)
SIR2U
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Posted 03/10/09 - 03:53 PM:
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jacob7 wrote:
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.


Of course you don't need to look it up anywhere, you have learned the words assigned meaning. Go ask a guy that has never left his village in the amazon jungle what an airplane is, they probably don't even have a word close enough so that you could translate the concept. As you said it only applies to people that have had contact with the technology.

jacob7 wrote:
The meaning transcends time and space, even the duality of truth and falsity.


In what way does it transcend time? the word did not exist before the planes themselves were invented. And I think that it would be better to say that the concept is valid in fact and fiction instead of transcending truth.

jacob7 wrote:
After all, we do not even know the reason why we know what the word airplane means.

We know what a self is without knowing why


We know what the words means because we have been taught their meaning, so it does not makes sense to say that we don't know the reason why we know.

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 :


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

Unknown Alanic wiseman. "Ignorance and bad teeth have at least one thing in common. Keeping your mouth closed makes them both less obvious"
yffer
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Posted 03/11/09 - 09:44 AM:
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#7
jacob7 wrote:
What is the meaning of words?


The meaning of a word is what we, as humans decide it is. They are our inventions. But there is no more meaning in a word then there is music in the groves of an old vinyl record.

reincarnated
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Posted 03/11/09 - 11:55 PM:
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#8
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.

Lewis Carroll wrote:
‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in a rather scornful tone, ‘ it means just what I choose it to mean'


Edited by reincarnated on 03/13/09 - 06:37 AM

crumpled bits of paper, filled with imperfect thoughts...
we all talk a different language, talking in defence...
and if you don't give up, and don't give in, you may just be ok...
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DeReel
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Posted 03/13/09 - 01:16 PM:
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SIR2U wrote:

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


- 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?"
- If we take that definition of 'word' (=Sa), there is just no meaning in, under or about it.
- 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 ?)
- Saussure already made an interesting investigation on this subject, and the wiki points out its limits : the link to the article was intended to save time and confusion.

S2U, exactly how do you think this is not appropriate to the discussion ? raised eyebrow No need for an answer, obviously. Please carry on.
yffer
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Posted 03/13/09 - 01:59 PM:
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#10
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?"
- If we take that definition of 'word' (=Sa), there is just no meaning in, under or about it.


Right, meaning is not in words.


- 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.


If meaning is not 'in' words it's not in words. Period.

(words without language anyone ?)



Words are always without language. They're just sitting there, meaningless, pointless, no reason for being, in and of themselves.



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