Plato's Beard

[axocanth]

re above, and usage throughout entire thread (I've been doing it too for simplicity)

The terminology usually (but not always) goes like this:

The word referent is used for a singular person, object, place, etc. Thus Frank Sinatra (the dude) is the referent of the name "Frank Sinatra".

When it comes to general names or general terms -- e.g. cat, table -- you'll usually see the word extension used instead. Thus, the extension of the term "table" is all tables.

The intension of a term, by contrast, is something like the definition, what you'll find under "table" in the dictionary, for example.

 

[exchemist]

You're either a chemist or you're not so I'm confused, how can you be an ex-chemist. If you were in the past but aren't now, the past isn't real is it so are you currently real? I'm confused...

And Dickens’s Little Dorrit has no meaning because, well, it’s a novel, so it is entirely about imaginary people, situations and events.

 

[axocanth]

It's all very easy to mock, but Magical's thoughts on the subject are not at all unlike the "verifiability criterion of meaning" proposed by the Logical Positivists in the early 20th century. Its subsequent influence over the following decades was prodigious, thoroughly infecting many areas of both philosophy and science, as well as academia as a whole, whether the mockers here are aware of it or not.

On this view, the only meaningful statements are those that are either analytically true (e.g. vixens are female foxes) or those that can be verified. All else -- including statements of metaphysics, religion, ethics, and yes Dickens and unicorns -- are quite literally meaningless or nonsense.

Indeed, it's not rare to hear the resident atheists in places such as this dismiss all god talk as meaningless -- "How could you ever show that any of this is true ??!!" I'd suggest that's a vestige of Logical Positivism. If Dickens talk is meaningful, why is God talk not?

Verificationism - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[axocanth]

How many times have we heard quantum physicists dismiss such-and-such a question about their theory as meaningless? - what's happening to that cat inside the box before anyone peeks, say.

"We can't address statements like that! It's meaningless! It's metaphysics! Now shut up and calculate!".

That's the invisible influence of Logical Positivism speaking. Of course, many of their peers -- the scientific realists -- feel that such questions are perfectly meaningful, indeed it is duty of good science to address them.

 

[Seattle]

And Dickens’s Little Dorrit has no meaning because, well, it’s a novel, so it is entirely about imaginary people, situations and events.

How can we know that Dorrit was little? How can you be little if you aren't even real?

 

[Magical Realist]

This is a great article on the emergence of logical positivism and Carnap's feud with Heidegger. I have to admit much of Heidegger's terminology seems obscure and senseless to this day. Carnap's attack on all of metaphysics because it consists of meaningless statements eventually failed though. I'm glad because I love metaphysics. Wittgenstein is right though: "The limits of my language are the limits of my world."

Heidegger v Carnap: how logic took issue with metaphysics | Aeon Essays

Does philosophy reside in the unsayable or should it care only for precision? Carnap, Heidegger and the great divergence

aeon.co

 

[TheVat]

You're quite right. Well spotted! With a typical subject-predicate statement such as "Dogs eat meat", we normally take this to be asserting both "there are dogs" and "they have the property of eating meat". We first assert their existence and then predicate something of them.

A statement such as "Unicorns don't exist" has exactly the same superficial structure. It therefore does appear to be asserting both "there are unicorns" and "they have the property of not existing" - a contradiction.

Frege, Russell et al warn us not to be misled. Superficial structure can be misleading as to what a statement is actually asserting. And they have their respective ways of analyzing the apparent contradiction away.

When slimming down, I eat only the holes in doughnuts. Or the tender loins of unicorns.

 

[TheVat]

I cheated and looked up the definition of gravity. It's largely defined as the force of attraction between objects made of matter. But I know modern physicists have problems with calling it a force in the Newtonian sense. Does the word gravity refer to something that exists.? Maybe not.

Gravity, taken in the context of General Relativity, refers to a pseudoforce. And a pseudoforce, as a linguistic construct to describe that which can behave like a force but isn't really a force, definitely permits a speech act which refers. Just as The Morning Star (Venus) which isn't exclusively a morning phenomenon nor is it a star, can refer. It happens to be a way to refer to Venus which is saddled with obsolete notions of celestial bodies. I think this all points to an adage I'm going to make up on the spot: concepts are easy, semantics are hard.

 

[TheVat]

P.S. But surely there is no such difficulty with a sentence like "Unicorns are common in Japan".

I'd want to say: (i) it's perfectly meaningful, (ii) we can all understand it with no difficulty, (iii) the subject term fails to refer, and (iv) the statement is not true.

I forget the terminology but there's a way to say the statement is true if the word's connotation differs from its denotation. Unicorns might denote "an equine species with a horn growing from its forehead," but in a certain context unicorns could have the connotation "a fantasy creature in certain literary traditions." As such, if unicorns appear in many Japanese stories, then the sentence is true.

We all know the dude of course, but can you offer a description that uniquely identifies him, that singles him out from every other person who has ever lived? How about Karl Popper, say?

If you can't, then according to a strict descriptivist theory of reference, you cannot refer to Richard Feynman. When you use his name, with the best of intentions, you are not talking about anyone.

Similarly, we have denotation (a person or other entity called Richard Feynman) versus connotation - we are speaking of important personages in modern physics, so the guy who played bongos and held classes spellbound at CalTech is here uniquely identified.

So in some cases, meaning can also knock on the door of reference, right?

 

[axocanth]

Gravity, taken in the context of General Relativity, refers to a pseudoforce. And a pseudoforce, as a linguistic construct to describe that which can behave like a force but isn't really a force, definitely permits a speech act which refers. Just as The Morning Star (Venus) which isn't exclusively a morning phenomenon nor is it a star, can refer. It happens to be a way to refer to Venus which is saddled with obsolete notions of celestial bodies. I think this all points to an adage I'm going to make up on the spot: concepts are easy, semantics are hard.

Glad to have you with us, Mr Vat.

The Morning Star first (Frege's famous example) . . .

Now again we have to be careful: On Frege's account, meaning is a 3-way relationship between (i) a name, (ii) the sense associated with that name, and (iii) the referent. The sense (not the name) determines the referent, if there a referent at all.

I suspect you're confusing the name with the sense (but shout if you disagree). In this case the three are as follows:

Name: "The Morning Star"
Sense: The brightest object in the sky just before sunrise
Referent: The Morning Star (= Venus) - the heavenly body


The name itself then is irrelevant to determining reference. Call it anything you like! Call it "Frank Sinatra"! Yes, its referent may not be exclusively a morning phenomenon, and it may not be a star, as you note above, but this is irrelevant. The Canary Islands may have no canaries but "The Canary Islands" is only a name. Renaming them "The Unicorn Islands" is irrelevant to how the name secures its reference.

Now, if the sense associated with the name ("The Morning Star", "Venus" or "Frank Sinatra") -- e.g. "the brightest object in the sky just before sunrise" -- uniquely picks out a particular object then reference is successfully achieved . . . via the sense, not via the name.



Gravity next . . .

On a descriptivist account of reference (not the only kind!), the term "gravity" refers, if at all, to the thing which the description associated with that name uniquely identifies. If that description is, say, "the curvature of spacetime" and that description uniquely picks out something in reality, then the name refers. Otherwise it fails to refer.

Likewise, if the description is "an attractive force inherent in all massive bodies, etc., etc.", and that description uniquely picks out something in reality, then the name refers. Otherwise it fails to refer. The majority opinion among physicists nowadays, as far as I can discern, is that nothing in reality satisfies that description, and if they're right about this (a matter of epistemology) the name "gravity" as used by a Newtonian, say, fails to refer.

Whether successful reference to anything is achieved, then, depends on the description associated with that name.



Consider Voltaire's witticism that the Holy Roman Empire is neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire (cf. your "The Morning Star is neither a star nor a purely morning phenomenon"). Does it follow, then, that the name "Holy Roman Empire" refers to nothing? It never existed?

Well, if Voltaire is right above, and the description associated with the name "Holy Roman Empire" is "the empire which was holy and Roman", then nothing satisfies that description and the name fails to refer. There never was such a thing!

Surely, though, we can't make something vanish from history as easily as that! Wiki describes it as follows:

"The Holy Roman Empire,[e] also known as the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation after 1512, was a polity in Central and Western Europe, usually headed by the Holy Roman Emperor. It developed in the Early Middle Ages and lasted for almost a thousand years until its dissolution in 1806 during the Napoleonic Wars."

. . . and we're obviously referring to something real.

Once again, reference is not achieved via the name, but the descriptive content associated with that name. Otherwise I could rename you "The Wicked Witch of Rushmore" and refer to nothing.

 

[axocanth]

When slimming down, I eat only the holes in doughnuts. Or the tender loins of unicorns.

You'll lose even more weight if you spell it as "donuts".

 

[axocanth]

I forget the terminology but there's a way to say the statement is true if the word's connotation differs from its denotation. Unicorns might denote "an equine species with a horn growing from its forehead," but in a certain context unicorns could have the connotation "a fantasy creature in certain literary traditions." As such, if unicorns appear in many Japanese stories, then the sentence is true.

Denotation without connotation? Well, that's what John Stuart Mill said, it's what Frege and Russell deny, and it's back in vogue now with the Kripke-Putnam causal theory of reference.

None of them will tell you that statements about unicorns are true though.

(Whether such statements containing non-referring terms ought to be assigned a value of "false" or "neither true nor false" is disputed.)



Any self-respecting philosophy of language has to deal with awkward cases, though, such as the statements of fiction. Yes, we do sometimes assert the truth of "Sherlock Holmes lives at 221b Baker Street", perhaps in a trivia quiz.

If pressed, though . . . "Hey, Wicked Witch of Rushmore, are you trying to tell me there really is a dude called Sherlock Holmes and that he really does . . . "

. . . I suppose you'd either make a hasty retreat or melt away into a puddle.

How would you reply?

 

[axocanth]

P.S. Saul Kripke actually does argue -- in "Naming and Necessity", I think -- that if . . . er, unicorn-like creatures were discovered in the unexplored highlands of New Guinea, say, they would not be unicorns.

Our use of the word "unicorn", he argues, is not linked in the right way to these beasties. Our use of the word "unicorn" would not refer to them.



EDIT : @ Magical. If you haven't read "Naming and Necessity" it is an absolute must.

 

[axocanth]

And why is any of this important?

Well, since this is mainly a science site, I'll try to illustrate the importance of theories of reference to science.

First note that one can simply make a blind assertion -- e.g. "Jesus loves you" or "God is real" -- but to do so is to risk incurring the ridicule of our resident Red Guard militant atheists. On a site like this we expect assertions to be justified somehow or other, by appeal to argument or evidence.

Presumably the very same scoffers would want to assert something like the following:

"It's true that theory change is common in science, but through it all, duly noting a few dead ends (e.g. phlogiston), what we see is a progression of ever-better theories about the same things. All the way from Dalton in 1800 to modern theories of atoms, say, scientists have been talking about the same things. Earlier scientists may have had a few wrong ideas about atoms, but we keep moving forward to a more accurate account. Likewise, Einstein may have corrected Newton on a few things regarding gravity, nonetheless both men proposed theories which refer to exactly the same thing. Einstein's work is a continuation of Newton's. Science is self-correcting."


Now unless the mockers are able to justify the above assertions, in blindly asserting that science is self-correcting, say, they find themselves in the same embarrassing position as those who blindly assert "Jesus loves you" or "God is real".

And for any hope of justification, it's to theories of reference in the philosophy of language that one must turn.


Given the descriptivist theories of reference we've considered so far, it is not the case that Dalton, Thomson, Rutherford, Bohr, et al, are referring to the same thing with the word atom. It is not the case that Einstein and Newton are referring to the same thing, even if they both use the same word (i.e. gravity).

Indeed, it's far worse. The most likely conclusion based on descriptivist theories of reference is that Dalton, Thomson, Rutherford, and Newton were referring to nothing at all. Since their descriptions of words like atom and gravity are not satisfied by anything in reality (at least by modern lights), they quite literally were talking about nothing -- instrumental efficacy aside, they might as well have proposed theories about unicorns.

On this view, as the meanings of terms change through a succession of scientific theories, so does the reference.


Anyone wishing to argue for continuity in science requires an account that holds reference fixed even as meanings of terms like atom change.

 

[axocanth]

Similarly, we have denotation (a person or other entity called Richard Feynman) versus connotation - we are speaking of important personages in modern physics, so the guy who played bongos and held classes spellbound at CalTech is here uniquely identified.

So in some cases, meaning can also knock on the door of reference, right?

Here again we have to be very careful. How do we determine whether a particular name refers? The answer given by descriptive theorists (Russell, Frege) as we've seen is this:

A name refers, if at all, to that which uniquely satisfies a description associated with that name.


The name itself is no part of that description, otherwise circularity ensues. The description doesn't have to be satisfied by something or someone which is called that name by us. E.g. to refer successfully to Neil Armstrong -- a particularly easy case! -- your description might be:

The guy who was the first person to step on the moon.

but not . . .

The guy called Neil Armstrong who was the first person to step on the moon.



I'm not sure if that's what you were implying, but I point it out anyway for clarity. This danger of circularity is most easily seen in cases of historical figures or in foreign cultures. Say, for example, you wanted to refer to Confucius, and your description is . . .

The guy called "Confucius" who lived in ancient China and . . .


We can stop right now. You're not gonna refer to anyone! There was no one called "Confucius" in ancient China. It's not a Chinese name. We can rule out his existence a priori ! You're not gonna find anyone called "Jesus" in 1st century Palestine either.



So are you referring successfully to Richard Feynman (on the descriptivist view)? Well, it depends whether or not there was a unique individual (or physicist) who played the bongos and held classes spellbound at Caltech -- no other person of any name satisfies the description.

Was there?


In case this is not clear, it's precisely because of deficiencies such as this that Kripke criticized the descriptivist account as inadequate. Intuitively, it does seem that we can all talk about (= refer to) Richard Feynman without offering a description that uniquely identifies him. Indeed, we might offer a description that is partially or even completely wrong yet still refer successfully.

But how?

Of all the countless numbers of individuals out there, past and present, called (by us!) Richard Feynman, or Alexander, or Adam, or even Louise, how is it that we can hook onto a particular one?

Did your kitten just open one eye? Yes, I was talking about her.

 

[axocanth]

Presumably the very same scoffers would want to assert something like the following:

"It's true that theory change is common in science, but through it all, duly noting a few dead ends (e.g. phlogiston), what we see is a progression of ever-better theories about the same things. All the way from Dalton in 1800 to modern theories of atoms, say, scientists have been talking about the same things. Earlier scientists may have had a few wrong ideas about atoms, but we keep moving forward to a more accurate account. Likewise, Einstein may have corrected Newton on a few things regarding gravity, nonetheless both men proposed theories which refer to exactly the same thing. Einstein's work is a continuation of Newton's. Science is self-correcting."


Now unless the mockers are able to justify the above assertions, in blindly asserting that science is self-correcting, say, they find themselves in the same embarrassing position as those who blindly assert "Jesus loves you" or "God is real".

And for any hope of justification, it's to theories of reference in the philosophy of language that one must turn.

Now compare with post #366 from the "Why Do People Believe in God?" thread . . .

"Not everyone is talking about the same thing when they use the word "God". It's helpful to know what we are trying to discuss." - gmilam


It's a common criticism from the atheists: "These God botherers can't even make up their minds what "God" means. Every one of them tells a different story about their gods. They can't all be talking about (i.e. referring to) the same thing! It's obviously a load of bollocks!"


The very same people, though, are liable to assume that Newton and Einstein are talking about the same thing when they use the word "gravity", even though the stories the two men have to tell could scarcely be more different.

 

[axocanth]

Same poster, same thread, post #385 . . .

"Even among professed Christians I have found many concepts of God. Everything from Hairy Thunderer to Cosmic Muffin. "God is love" to "God hates fags". I regularly come into contact with everything from evangelicals to unitarians. All laying claim to the Christian banner.


Compare:

"Even among evolutionary biologists I have found many concepts of species (about 30 last I checked) . . . all laying claim to the evolutionary biology banner."


Conclusion: Both are a load of bollocks? Or what?

 

[axocanth]

Oh, and the "bad guy" -- the one who is taken to be terribly confused -- responds . . .

"There is only one God.
Many names aspects, and attributes
But one God. Hence the term monotheism."

-- Trek, post #387



Now there's a Fregean answer if ever I heard one!!

Cf. "There is only one Frank Sinatra (or gravity or Venus). Many names, aspects and attributes."

Frege calls his notion of Sinn (sense) the "mode of presentation". John Searle calls it the "aspectual shape". (see Trek above)

Compare what Magical posts in #85 here (previous page) . . .

1. The sense of different names is different, even when their reference is the same. Frege argued that if an identity statement such as "Hesperus is the same planet as Phosphorus" is to be informative, the proper names flanking the identity sign must have a different meaning or sense. But clearly, if the statement is true, they must have the same reference.[2] The sense is a 'mode of presentation', which serves to illuminate only a single aspect of the referent.

 

[TheVat]

From all this, I would gather that the success of speech acts in referring rests also with the person(s) hearing the speech act. For the naive listener, "Louise" refers to no creature in particular. For that listener, "Louisa May AllCat, a 7 week old kitten presently lodged at the Vat household at 51 Bedlam St, Spearfish SD, USA" would add information sufficient to generating reference. For a more informed listener trusting in the speaker or writers veracity, Louise is sufficient.

Similarly, "Richard Feynman," would succeed as unique descriptor if one were speaking to a scientist in a conversational domain we'll call "science chat." To another listener who is innocent of all science lore and knowledge (e.g. millions of Americans), the name could fail to refer or mis-refer to, say, "my brother's dentist who lives in Scranton."

Sense seems to arrive from a set of transactions between speaker and listener. When a physicist speaks of gravity now, I stipulate that he will mean in the sense of a pseudoforce arising from the curvature of spacetime around massive objects, whose effects are observable everytime I pluck Louise off my leg and drop her to the floor as a reminder that my blood supply is limited. Though Ike Newton could emerge from a time machine and use the same word, I would stipulate a different sense of that word which, though it accounts satisfactorily for dropping Louise, does not account for spacetime curvature, the precession of Mercury, etc.

 

[TheVat]

Louise, a few weeks ago....

Hmm. File attachment not working here?