Re: Of win64 and pets

Bob Dawson <RBDawson@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
<42815cda@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> "John Jacobson" wrote
> >
> > A multiplicity of contexts does not mean a multiplicity of meanings within
> > any given context.
>
> One does not follow from the other, no, but I would not expect a student of
> the history of religion to take the notion of single and unified meaning for
> granted.

Ooh, you're good. However, I could always counter that the Western religions
do take the concept of a single unified meaning for granted. You have to go
considerably east to find things like the Tao, which is something that is
defined as undefinable. (Yes, pious Westerners do often claim an essentially
unknowable God but they then spend inordinate amounts of time talking about
the supposedly unknowable characteristics of that God, so it is not quite the
same thing.)

> Medieval fourfold exegesis comes to mind: the Word must be
> understood within multiple frames of reference or it cannot be understood at
> all.

But that is supposed to be a special case. Surely we ought not to expect to
apply Medieval theology as an analogy to conversation here in non-tech.
Though...the more I think about it, the more the analogy becomes quite apt.
<g>

In any case, it remains relatively pointless to argue that each context
> establishes its own definitive unitary meaning unless principles for
> constraining context can be established.

Well, isn't that what dictionaries, grammar and reasonableness are for?

>
> > Today, in the international foreign exchange market the dollar is
> > worth x Euro, where x is a single real number. Debates about the
> > meaning of words are like this.
>
> Not at all. This is where economics as a natural science and hermeneutics as
> a humanity part company: there is no 'big board' that defines (however
> circularly) the value of a term, and words can have multiple unrelated and
> perhaps even contradictory meanings simultaneously.

Well, my point was that even though every individual has their own meaning
for the value of a dollar, the generally accepted meaning in most public
discourse is the foreign exchange rate on the foreign exchange boards. Thus.
individual subjectivism can coexist with a single generally accepted meaning.

>
> > If you are talking about what one person meant when he
> > used a word, his intentions are the context for that meaning.
>
> As I've pointed out already, however, intentionalism is merely one possible
> locus of meaning--nothing special about it. The speaker's intentions,
> moreover, are in principle unknowable: asking him only leads to another
> statement of uncertain relation to the original (unless he merely repeats
> himself). And even to the extent knowable, unreliable: his speach may not be
> rationally motivated. If your wife says "You haven't made the bed in a week"
> then arguing that it's only been six days probably isn't to the point. So
> which word didn't I understand?

I have a problem with the phrase "are in principle unknowable", because it
makes intentions seem an all-or-nothing type of thing, such that you either
know them or you don't. In practice we usually can deal with stochastic
processes like this by formulating estimates, no matter how unconsciously, of
the probability that it is some specific value. We can estimate confidence
intervals, to lean on my statistics training, because we know the person
somewhat from his past statements. The more of this person's statements we
know, the more reliable will be this estimate.

When I say "X is wrong, statement A actually means such and such." I am
stating that X made a claim about the meaning that lies outside my estimated
confidence interval. The context here is the past statements of the person
who made the statement. Just because my statement is based on likelihood, not
certainty, doesn't make its subject unknowable.

The state of unknowability would be a case where there is "fundamental
uncertainty" not just risk. The difference here is important. If you have
enough information on the past history of the context, you can estimate
probabilities and a probability distribution that guesses where objective
reality lies. That is a type of knowledge, it just is not the absolutist type
of knowledge that is forever hidden under the philosopher's stone. However,
if you have no history of the relevant context, and nothing similar you can
use as a point of comparison, then you are out of the realm of the estimable
and into the truly unknown. In that situation, it makes sense to talk of
things that "are in principle unknowable". But this is not that situation.
This is a situation in which two people have read quite a bit of each others'
writings here and ought to be able to form reasonable estimates of the
others' meaning. When I say a suggested interpretation is wrong, I am saying
that it lies outside my estimate by a wide enough margin that I find it
unlikely to be a good, rational reading of the statement and it's context.

>
> > magazine, then the context for that meaning is the generally-accepted
> > dictionary and inferred rules of grammar.
>
> Were this true, then computer-based translation would be much more advanced
> than it is. But in fact dictionaries and grammars are little more than the
> most basic of starting points. Language is profoundly idiomatic and
> figurative.

Whoa! I never said the rules of grammar and of language in general is simple
enough for programs to emulate it well. Grammar and the language itself are
guides to proper interpretation but are far from simple. A complex
spontaneous order of that type can easily evolve past the capability of any
program someone could write, and in fact can easily evolve past the ability
of any one single human mind (which is why I speak of likelihoods, rather
than certainties).

> > You do not need to know
> > the truth in order to identify a falsehood.
>
> That is hopefully marginally true, as the experimental method of disproving
> hypotheses rather requires it. Of course, setting up an experiment can
> require a lot of knowledge ... :-)

Can, but often does not. In fact, some of the most important scientific
discovers were entirely serendipitous.

--
***Free Your Mind***

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