Meaning 2

Meaning 2

Previously

I relayed the definition of "meaning" that I consider best, which is generally accepted in semiotics:

X means Y just if X is a reliable indication of Y

Lameen Souag asked a good question

how would [meaning as reliable indication] account for the fact that lies have a meaning?

Lies

"Reliable" doesn't mean foolproof. Good liars do abuse reliable indicators.
Second, when we have seen through a lie, we do use the term "meaning" in that way. When you know that someone is a liar, you might say "what she says doesn't mean anything" (doesn't reliably indicate anything). Or you might speak of a meaning that has little to do with the lie's literal words, but accords with what it reliably indicates: "When he says `trust me', that means you should keep your wallet closed."

Language interpretation

Perhaps you were speaking of a more surface sense of the lie's meaning? Like, you could say "Sabrina listed this item on Ebay as a 'new computer', but it's actually a used mop." Even people who considered her a liar and her utterances unreliable could understand what her promise meant; that's how they know she told a lie. They extract a meaning from an utterance even though they know it doesn't reliably indicate anything. Is that a fair summation of your point?
To understand utterances divorced from who actually says them, we use a consensus of how to transform from words and constructions to indicators; a language.
Don't throw away the context, though. We divorced the utterance from its circumstances and viewed it thru other people's consensus. We can't turn around and treat what we get thru that process as things we directly obtained from the situation; they weren't.
If Sabrina was reliable in her speech (wouldn't lie etc), we could take a shortcut here, because viewing her utterance thru others' consensus wouldn't change what it means. But she isn't, so we have to remember that the reliable-in-the-consensus indicators are not reliable in the real circumstances (Sabrina's Ebay postings).
So when interpreting a lie, we get a modified sense of meaning. "Consensus meaning", if you will. It's still a meaning (reliable indication), but we mustn't forget how we obtained it: not from the physical situation itself but via a consensus.

The consensus / language

NB, that only works because the (consensus of) language transforms words and constructions in reliable ways. If a lot of people used language very unreliably, it wouldn't. What if (say) half the speakers substituted antonyms on odd-numbered days, or when they secretly flipped a coin and it came up tails. How could you extract much meaning from what they said?

Not all interpretations are created equal

This may sound like All Interpretations Are Created Equal, and therefore you can't say objectively that Sabrina commited fraud; that's just your interpetation of what she said; there could be others. But that's not what I mean at all.
For instance, we can deduce that she committed fraud (taking the report as true).
At the start of our reasoning process, we only know her locutionary act - the physical expression of it, posting 'new computer for sale'. We don't assume anything about her perlocutionary act - convincing you (or someone) that she offers a new computer for sale.

1. She knows the language (Assumption, so we can skip some boring parts)
2. You might believe what she tells you (Assumption)
3. Since the iterm is actually an old mop, making you believe that she offers a new computer is fraud. (Assumption)
4. Under the language consensus, 'new computer' reliably indicates new computer (common vocabulary)
5. Since she knows the language, she knew 'new computer' would be transformed reliably-in-the-consensus to indicate new computer (by 1&4)
6. Reliably indicating 'new computer' to you implies meaning new computer to you. (by definition) (So now we begin to see her perlocutionary act)
7. So by her uttering 'new computer', she has conveyed to you that she is offering a new computer (by 5&6)
8. She thereby attempts the perlocutionary act of persuading you that she offers a new computer (by 2&7)
9. She thereby commits fraud (by 3&8)

I made some assumptions for brevity, but the point is that with no more than this definition of meaning and language-as-mere-consensus, we can make interesting, reasonable deductions.

(Late edits for clarity)

Review: Ray Jackendoff's User's Guide To Thought And Meaning

A User's Guide To Thought And Meaning

Previously

I just finished A User's Guide To Thought And Meaning by Ray Jackendoff, a linguist best known for X-bar theory.

Summary

I wasn't impressed with it. Although he starts off credibly if pedestrianly, the supporting arguments for his main thesis are fatally flawed. I found it annoying as I got further into the book to see him building on a foundation that I considered unproven and wrong.

His main thesis can be summarized by a quote from the last chapter:

What we experience as rational thinking consists of thoughts linked
to language.  The thoughts themselves aren't conscious.

A strange mistake

The foregoing quote leads me to the strangest assumption in the book. He says that our mental tools are exactly our language tools. He does allow at one or two points that visual thinking might qualify too.

That may be true of Ray, but I know for a fact that it's not true of me. I often have the experience of designing some piece of source code in my head, often when I'm either falling asleep or waking up. Then later I go to code it, and I realize that I have to think of good names for the various variables and functions. I hadn't used names before when I handled them mentally because I wasn't handling them by language (as we know it). I wasn't handling them by visual imagery either. Of course I was mentally handling them as concepts.

There are other indicators that we think in concepts: The tip-of-the-tongue experience and words like "Thingamajig" and "whatchamacallit". In the chapter Some phenomena that test the Unconscious Meaning Hypothesis, Ray mentions these but feels that his hypothesis survives them. It's not clear to me why he concludes that.

What is clear to me is that we (at least some of us) think with all sorts of mental tools and natural language is only one of them.

If he meant "language" in a broad sense that includes all possible mental tools, which he never says, it makes his thesis rather meaningless.

Shifting ground

Which brings me to a major problem of the book. Although he proposes that all meaning is unconscious, his support usually goes to show that some meaning (or mental activity) is unconscious. That's not good enough. It's not even surprising; of course foundational mental activity is unconscious.

To be fair, I will relate where he attempts to prove that all meaning is unconscious, from the chapter What's it Like To Be Thinking Rationally? He does this by quoting neuropsychologist Karl Lashey:

No activity of mind is ever conscious.  This sounds like a paradox but
it is nonetheless true.  There are order and arrangement, but there is
no experience of the creation of that order.  I could give numberless
examples, for there is no exception to the rule.  

Unfortunately, Lashey's quote fails to support this; again he gives examples and takes himself to have proven the general case. Aside from this, he simply pronounces his view repeatedly and forcefully. Jackendoff says "I think this observation is right on target" and he's off.

One is tempted to ask, what about:

• Consciously deciding what to think about.
• Introspection
• Math and logic, where we derive a meaning by consciously manipulating symbols? Jackendoff had talked about what philosophers call the Regression Problem earlier in the chapter, and I think he takes himself to have proven that symbolic logic is unconscious too, but that's silly. He also talks about the other senses "all" being misleading in syllogisms, but that's a fact about natural language polysemy, not about consciousness.

None of this is asked, but one is left with the impression that all of these "don't count". It makes me want to ask, "What would count? If nothing counts as conscious thought, then you really haven't said anything."

One last thing

In an early chapter Some Uses of ~mean~ and ~meaning~, he tries to define meaning. Frustratingly, he seems unaware of the definition I consider best, which is generally accepted in semiotics:

X means Y just if X is a reliable indication of Y

Essentially all of the disparate examples he gives fall under this definition, either directly or metonymically.

Since the meaning of "meaning" is central to his book, failure to use find and use this definition gives one pause.