9 Meaning, Understanding, and Use

1
9Meaning, Understanding, and Use
2

• We are so much accustomed to communication
  through language, in conversation, that it looks
  to us as if the whole point of communication lay
  in this someone else grasps the sense of my
  wordswhich is something mental he as it were
  takes it into his own mind. If he then does
  something further with it as well, that is no
  part of the immediate purpose of language. (PI
  363)

3

• This picture is reinforced by the fact that signs
  are arbitrary and conventional.
• If we replace p by t in chap we end up
  with another sign with a different meaning, but
  it is arbitrary that we should employ one word
  instead of the other to signify such and such.
• chat in English has a different meaning than
  in French. It seems that a signs meaning is
  given by what goes on in the mind when it is
  read, uttered or heard. For, by themselves sign
  are death.

4

• Hence
• Meaning and understanding seem to be mental
  phenomena.
• Understanding is conceived as the underlying
  mental phenomenon of which the behaviour is a
  symptom and our access to someones understanding
  is only indirect, i.e. by inductive or analogical
  inference, while she has direct access to her
  understanding.

5
Understanding

• Understanding as a state of the mind.
• Notice, however, that we speak of being in a
  state of excitement, depression, joy, etc. but we
  do not speak of being in a state of loving,
  fearing, hating, etc.
• Do we speak of being in a state of meaning,
  intending, minding?
• Understanding is more linked to an activity than
  to a state of the mind.

6

• If understanding and meaning are mental
  processes, experiences or states, then they
  should be accessible to introspection, like
  hearing, listening or suffering.
• Cf. Descartes methodology.
• What, though, is the specific quality or mental
  experience or state which understanding name?

7

• On this approach understanding is conceived,
  like in the Augustinian picture, as a word naming
  something.
• Besides, if understanding is a state whose
  manifestation is behaviour, then this state is
  likely to be conceived as a physico-chemical
  state of the brain (cf. Central State Materialist
  position). It is the physical state that causes
  behaviour.

8

• Meaning and understanding are not experiences.
• For experiences are neither necessary nor
  sufficient for understanding.
• The criterion for understanding lie in
  performances.

9

• Understanding is an activity.
• Now I understand is more a signal of
  understanding which is judged to be correctly
  employed by what the pupil goes on to do, rather
  than a report of an introspective experience.

10
Meaning is Use

• Understanding is not a mental process or state.
• It is more linked to an activity.
• So, understanding is an ability
• To understand a word it to be able to use it
  correctly.
• Meaning is use.

11

• For any words to have meaning, or to be
  understood as having certain meanings, it must be
  used in a certain way, to do something or other.
  Sounds or marks do not possess meaning at all on
  their own. Someones meaning or understanding
  something by a certain word on a certain occasion
  could then perhaps be explained as the persons
  engaging in a certain practice or conforming to
  the way that word is used without some such
  practice the word would have no meaning at all.
  (Stroud Meaning, Understanding, and Practice,
  Oxford UP, viii-ix)

12

• There are some interconnected central notions one
  should keep in mind when considerdeiring
  Wittgensteins motto meaning is used.
• Form of life
• The non-linguistic context is essential to the
  understanding linguistic activities.

13

• To Imagine a language is to imagine a form of
  life
• (PI, 7)
• What has to be accepted, the given, isone could
  sayform of life.
• (PI II, 226)

14

• Insofar as language has foundations, they are
  provided not by metaphysical atoms, but by
  patterns of communal activity.
• The idea that form of life provides the
  foundations of language has been elaborated in
  opposite directions.

15

• 1. Transcendental reading
• Grammar is an integral part of human practice.
  So it is subject to change.

16

• 2. Naturalistic reading
• Form of life is part of our human nature which
  determines how we act and react.
• But Wittgensteins naturalism is anthropological
  rather than biological for the natural history is
  the history of cultural, language-using
  individuals.

17

• Language game
• There are many different games and there is a
  family resemblance between them.

18

• The notion of a game allows to highlight the
  facts that games must be played, that there are
  rules which must be followed, etc.
• That one must engage in the game.
• Our language games are embedded in our form of
  life, the overall practice of a linguistic
  community.

19

• Like any other game, language games are played
  in a setting.
• Even if the setting is not involved in the
  explanation of the meaning of a given expression,
  is nevertheless relevant to that expression
  having that meaning.

20

• We learn games, how to play, etc.
• The foundation of our learning is training.
• Language games are not subject to justification
  they are rooted in our natural reactions and
  activities.

21
Wittgensteins anti-reductionism

• An ability is distinct from its vehicle.
• E.g. whisky can intoxicate (ability) because of
  the alcohol it contains (vehicle) but the alcohol
  is not identical with the intoxicating power.

22

• One can weight the alcohol but not the ability
  to intoxicate.
• So if an ability is distinct from its vehicle,
  it is distinct from the structure of its vehicle
  which may explain the ability.

23

• Hence it is misguiding to think that we can
  reduce power to the structure of its vehicle.
• E.g. sugar is soluble, but solubility
  (disposition) is not a state of sugar.
• The same for psychological dispositions being
  able to speak French, like being clever,
  charming, etc., is not a state of a person.

24

• We are not tempted to identify the horse-power of
  a car with a state of its engine although the car
  has this horse-power because of the state.
• Why, though, are we so tempted to reduce mental
  powers with the underlying neural structure?

25

• Moral
• Wittgenstein reverses the traditional direction
  of fit between meaning and understanding.

26

• While the Augustinian picture deals with
  understanding, explanation and communication
  using the concept of meaning qua correlation
  between words and objects, Wittgenstein reverses
  the order of explanation.
• Meaning is explained using the notion of
  understanding, explaining and communications.
  Meaning reduces to use.

27

• Concepts
• Concepts get their meaning, i.e. their use,
  because they are embedded in a complex form of
  life that is revealed (and is the background) in
  the way speakers live and act.

28

• Wittgenstein and Psychologism
• Conventions play a central role in
  Wittgensteins conception of language.
• Cf. the notion of rules and rules following.

29

• Conventions vs. Intentions
• Grice, Lewis, Schiffer, argue that the notion
  of convention can be analyzed in terms of the
  speakers intentions.
• Thus linguistic conventions can be explained in
  terms of the psychological notion of intention.
• We would hence have a psychological theory of
  meaning.

30

• The Psychological Theory of Communication
• Communication resumes to the transmission of
  what one has in the mind and understanding to the
  grasping of what one has in the mind, i.e. to
  grasp ones mental representation.
• The latter need not be, pace Frege, private.

31

• Words in their primary or immediate
  signification, stand for nothing but the ideas in
  the mind of him that uses them ... nor can anyone
  apply them as marks, immediately, to anything
  else but the ideas that he himself hath. (Locke
  1690 III.ii.2)
• ...
• The chief end of language in communication being
  to be understood, words serve well for that end,
  neither in civil nor philosophical discourse,
  when any word does not excite in the hearer the
  same idea which it stands for in the breast of
  the speaker. (Locke 1690 III.ix.4)

32

• The Institutional Theory of Communication
• It rests on the Division of Linguistic Labour
  (see Putnam 1975 The Meaning of Meaning).
• Meanings arent in the head.
• Mental representations do not determine what
  words stand for (reference or extension).
• Cf. twin-Earth thought experiment.

33

• We could hardly use such words as elm and
  aluminum if no one possessed a way of
  recognizing elm trees and aluminum metal but not
  everyone to whom the distinction is important has
  to be able to make the distinction. ... Consider
  our community as a factory in this factory
  some people have the job of wearing gold
  wedding rings, other people have the job of
  selling gold wedding rings, still other people
  have the job of telling whether or not
  something is really gold. ... everyone to whom
  gold is important for any reason has to acquire
  the word gold but he does not have to acquire
  the method of recognizing if something is or is
  not gold. He can rely on a special subclass of
  speakers. (Putnam 1975 227-8)

34

• Direct Reference
• Cf. causal theory, social character of
  meaning/reference,
• Reference depends on a social causal chain.

35

• Language
• It is conceived as the result of a social
  interaction and cooperation.
• The harmony between thought and reality is to
  be found in the grammar of the language.
  (Wittgenstein Philosophical Grammar 162)

36

• Theory of meaning theory of understanding
• (cf. Dummett)
• A theory of meaning deals with the speakers
  mastering the language, that is, with her
  knowledge of the language.

37

• This account can only be given in terms of the
  practical ability which the speaker displays in
  using sentences of the language and, in general,
  the knowledge of which that practical ability is
  taken as a manifestation may be, and should be,
  regarded as only implicit knowledge. (Dummett
  1978 p.101)

38

• Knowing-how vs. knowing-that
• The knowledge involved in the mastery of a
  language is a sort of implicit knowledge akin to
  a practical ability, a kind of knowing-how.