Folks

My view of conceptual analysis is as concerned with the meanings of terms (i.e. their reference conditions, i.e. the conditions that would have to be satisfied for them to refer successfully). This is because I’ve never seen, or been able to come up with, a convincing account of how conceptual questions differ from semantic ones.

It’s against this backdrop that I ask the following question. Is the meaning of a term determined by

a) its originator,
b) a group of authority figures, or
c) the majority of speakers who use it?

I want to be specific about the question I’m asking here. I’m not asking about technical terms such as ‘energy’ and ‘atom’ (in their scientific uses); I’m asking about everyday terms of philosophical interest, such as ‘knowledge’, ‘mind’, ‘freedom’ and ‘right’. And I’m not asking how a term’s meaning is originally fixed; I’m asking how its meaning is sustained or changed after it has been originally fixed.

Suppose, for example, that the term ‘water’ was introduced into the language to rigidly designate H₂O. Suppose further that nowadays the vast majority of people who use the term intend it to refer to any substance that has the familiar empirical properties of H₂O, regardless of its chemical composition. In this situation, does ‘water’ refer only to H₂O or also to any other substance that has H₂O’s familiar empirical properties?

It would be very helpful to me to hear what, if anything, is the orthodox view in this area.

Thanks

Remster

A Poster He or I

Thanks for your reply. I've taken on board everything you've written (I think) but just want to pick up on a couple of points.

A Poster He or I wrote:To my mind, language is how language is used. The "meaning" of water exists within its usage, which encompasses both the intent of the speaker, the understanding/expectation/bias of the listeners, and the practical consequences which follow.

I agree. Looking again at my original post, I can see I didn't make it at all clear that what I'm interested in is a term's reference (or, as I prefer to say, reference conditions).

A Poster He or I wrote:So, of your offerings, #3 comes closest, although I don't see where any "majority" is needed, and it leaves out the situational context of the utterance, which is a critical ingredient for determining meaning.

Well, I assume you wouldn't want to say, like Humpty Dumpty, that you can make words mean whatever you want them to mean whenever you use them (if, that is, you intend to speak English, a public language, and not some private language of your own). The idea behind my #3 is that there's some critical mass of English speakers whose usage determines what a term refers to in English. This seems to be the assumption behind a lot of usage guides, for example.

Remster

A Poster He or I

A Poster He or I wrote:I feel compelled to point out that concepts do not exist in one-to-one correspondence with words (more specifically, with morphemes). ...

Agreed. I was just tying to make my initial post as brief as possible.

A Poster He or I wrote:The idea of a "critical mass" of speakers holding common referents must first consider the scope of the community of speakers one is considering. ...

Absolutely. Again, for the sake of brevity, I omitted to say in my original post that I'm talking about everyday terms like 'water', and not technical or dialectal terms.

A Poster He or I wrote:In short, words can NOT mean anything you want them to: they have to mean what your listeners think they mean or else communication becomes problematic.

Okay, consider this situation. In a conversation with two friends in the pub, I use the word 'water' and want it to refer to beer, while my two friends think it refers to lemonade. I assume you'd agree with me that it still refers to H₂O as long as I'm intending to speak English, and this is due to how a sufficient proportion of English speakers habitually use it. Right? In other words, meaning within a particular language is indeed relative, but it's relative to the habitual usage of all speakers of that language and not to the usage of each speaker on each occasion of use.

Remster

Edit: Substitute 'I assume you'd agree with me that it still refers to water' for 'I assume you'd agree with me that it still refers to H₂O' in my last paragraph.

Hilda

Thanks for your reply.

hilda wrote:I mean, a term can be uniquely developed by an individual. ...

True, but I'm interested in terms as used in ordinary language, which is what I take conceptual analysis to be about.

hilda wrote:So I would say the everyday language of philosophy knowledge, mind, freedom, right does not exist and as matter of fact I would say "freedom" is a very rare word indeed ethnic English. ... typical English uses of the other three are restricted to "to my mind", "to the best of my knowledge" and "I think that would be right".

Yeah, I think you're right – up to a point. Perhaps 'knowledge' and 'freedom' don't feature in everyday language, but 'know' and 'free' do. I'm not sure about 'mind', but related terms like 'think' and 'thought' are common enough. And I completely disagree about 'right' (except in so far as it's rarer than 'wrong').

hilda wrote:H20 in English is distilled water: a type of water. I mean a certain degree of impurity is assumed; surely it refers to natural fresh water. If one means natural fresh water one can omit the "fresh" and "natural" but not in "sea" water or "distilled" water.

I don't know. I was only providing a hypothetical example for discussion (unless you're alluding to my last post, which I've just amended to bypass this problem).

hilda wrote:Is wasser the same"term" as water to you?

No.

Remster

Addendum (for A Poster He or I): Here’s a better example. Suppose again that I’m in the pub but this time I’m at the bar. I say to the landlord, ‘Can I have a glass of lemonade please?’ I want ‘lemonade’ to refer to beer, while the landlord thinks it refers to water. Assuming I’m intending to speak English, what does it actually refer to here: lemonade, beer or water?

A Poster He or I

You can take the scenario at face value. The pub is an ordinary British (or American) pub, where most English-speakers would expect to get (and would normally get) lemonade if they asked for lemonade. If you need the rest of the scenario filled out, let’s say I want ‘lemonade’ to refer to beer because I think I might be charged less; and the landlord thinks ‘lemonade’ refers to water because he’s just had a knock on the head. It really doesn't matter: the point is simply that words don’t ‘have to mean what your listeners think they mean’ any more than they have to mean what you want them to mean. Their meaning is determined by everyone who, if you want to put it that way, belongs to the culture and not just those involved in the conversation.

A Poster He or I wrote:If you and the landlord belong to a common culture whose cultural manifestations concur or at least overlap, then you will both have a common meaning for lemonade, assuming no outside cultural element is introduced.

Presumably by ‘common meaning’ you don’t mean ‘common understanding’, or else it would follow (by modus tollens) that any two people who understand any one term differently belong to different cultures.

Remster

-- Updated Fri Oct 21, 2011 2:34 pm to add the following --

As a postscript to that last post, let me ask you something. Are there ever situations where you hear someone use a word in a certain way and say (or think, if you’re too polite to say anything) ‘That word doesn’t mean that in [standard] English’?

A Poster He or I

A Poster He or I wrote:Understanding is subjective. Meaning must have some objective component (culturally circumscribed) to bridge the subjectivity of understanding.

I’d probably say ‘intersubjective’ rather than ‘objective’, but as long as we both mean something like ‘independent of any given individual’s understanding’, we’re on the same page.

A Poster He or I wrote:

Remster wrote:Are there ever situations where you hear someone use a word in a certain way and say (or think, if you’re too polite to say anything) ‘That word doesn’t mean that in [standard] English’?

Sure, lots of times.

Then I think we’re in a position to return to the point of my original post. You replied, ‘#3 comes closest, although I don't see where any "majority" is needed … .’ And I in turn replied that ‘majority’ was just supposed to capture the idea that the usage of some critical mass of users (within a culture) determines the meaning of a term (within that culture). But if not a majority, then what sort of proportion? And are there users whose usage counts for more than that of others?
Remember that I’m asking here about terms that seem to be common property, and not about specialist terms like ‘wetware’.

Remster

-- Updated Sat Oct 22, 2011 7:47 am to add the following --

Dodaive

What about ‘know(ledge)’, ‘free(dom)’, ‘mind’ or ‘right’ (see my original post)?

Remster

CSU Philosophy Nerd

Thanks for your reply.

I'm familiar with Putnam's discussion. I think he argues successfully that, assuming we share his intuitions, natural kind terms are rigid designators (though not that intensions don't fix extensions, since intensions can be rigidified).

However, that issue cuts across the one we're discussing. Even supposing 'water' is a rigid designator, the question of whose usage determines its reference still arises. It might be that 50% of people within the culture of standard-English speakers use it with the intention of rigidly designating H₂O, while 50% use it with the intention of rigidly designating whatever substance fills the rivers, lakes and seas. So whose usage determines its reference in standard English (i.e. relative to the culture of standard-English speakers)?

Remster

CSU Philosophy Nerd

Well, it can't be just the chemical makeup of water that determines the extension of 'water'. It must be that plus the resolution of an individual or group to use 'water' to rigidly designate this substance (imagine I'm pointing at some water), assuming the theory of direct reference is true. And since that's the case, it's possible for another individual or group to resolve to use 'water' to rigidly designate that substance.

(Please pardon the split infinitives if you don't like that sort of thing.)

Remster

-- Updated Mon Oct 24, 2011 8:01 am to add the following --

Addendum: I should make it absolutely clear that I'm talking about two individuals or groups on Earth (not one on Earth and another on Twin Earth) and two substances with different sensible qualities as well as different chemical makeups (unlike H₂O and xyz, which have different chemical makeups but the same sensible qualities).

A Poster He or I wrote:It frankly surprises me when I see this type of argument brought up as a criticism of philosophical or cultural relativism. It demonstrates that the critic has no regard for how relativism operates.

I just want to back Putnam for a moment here (though I realise you're addressing CSU Philosophy Nerd and not Putnam). When Putnam argues that xyz wouldn't have been water even if it, rather than H₂O, had had all the surface properties of water - which is what the Twin Earth thought-experiment is designed to show - he isn't (or at least needn't be) subscribing to the sort of absolutism you reject. He's arguing that when we use the term 'water' to talk about some counterfactual situation, we're still using it to refer to H₂O and not to whatever substance in that situation has the surface properties that water has in our situation. It's an argument about our usage, not about proper usage.

A Poster He or I wrote:I'm compelled to observe that who fixed the intension prior to science's discovery of distinct chemistry for the 2 planets' waters is very much relevant to answering Remster's opening post if you find this scientific discovery irrelevant (as I do) to the meaning of water in 1750 (as circumscribed by the Twin Earth scenario).

Who fixed the intension is very much relevant either way! The term 'water' didn't drop from the sky with its meaning already assigned to it. The dispute in which Putnam is engaging isn't about whether someone fixed the meaning of 'water'; rather, it's about how they fixed its meaning (by ostention/description) and what sort of meaning they assigned to it (rigid/flaccid designation).

CSU Philosophy Nerd

Hmm, I don't think you've got the causal theory quite right. The causal chain starts at the point that someone decides to use 'water' to rigidly designate this substance, whatever it may be, which is long before anyone discovers that this substance is H₂O. Then the next person decides to use 'water' as the last person used it, and so on, until (and after) the discovery of water's chemical makeup is made.

Then the question still stands: How long does the causal chain have to be before this usage becomes standard English? I could pick my nose and resolve that the substance on the end of my finger was to be rigidly designated 'flibble', and then you could come round and help me establish its chemical makeup, but that wouldn't make this usage of 'flibble' standard English.

Remster

PS I'd like to add that all of Putnam's arguments (I think) and most of Kripke's are about rigid designation and not direct reference. The latter entails the former but not vice versa: the definite description 'the man who actually invented the zip' is a rigid designator, but it doesn't refer directly.

CSU Philosophy Nerd wrote:I guess the only answer to your "flibble" question is that if every person that referred to the 'substance on the end of your finger that is resultant from your finger reaching in to the inner recesses of your nose and procurring it' as flibble and understanding what it is that makes it flibble. Then I suppose however long it takes a word to be inculcated into people and be considered as a standard name of that reference in English. That's a cop-out answer, in regards to length, but I am unaware as to how long that process would take. I think the rub of the matter lies in the initial naming and the following understanding that results from other people connecting that particular name with that particular reference.

I don't suppose there's a definitive answer, but you seem to be siding with option 3 from my original post.

CSU Philosophy Nerd wrote:I guess the only answer to your "flibble" question is that if every person that referred to the 'substance on the end of your finger that is resultant from your finger reaching in to the inner recesses of your nose and procurring it' as flibble and understanding what it is that makes it flibble. Then I suppose however long it takes a word to be inculcated into people and be considered as a standard name of that reference in English. That's a cop-out answer, in regards to length, but I am unaware as to how long that process would take. I think the rub of the matter lies in the initial naming and the following understanding that results from other people connecting that particular name with that particular reference.

I don't suppose there's a definitive answer, but you seem to side with option c from my original post.

Just looked up 'santorum' ...

Philosopher8659

It's kind of annoying, but also understandable, when someone replies to an OP without having read the whole thread, which frequently contains clarification of the original post. As far as I can tell, nothing in this thread contradicts your claim. Indeed, my original question can be expressed in your terms:

Is the English-language association of a term determined by

a) its originator,
b) a group of authority figures, or
c) the majority of speakers who use it?

Remster