Clear Language, Clear Mind

Link to article on SEP.

Consider the following quote:

“The term “pornography” is used in all of these different ways in everyday discourse and debate, as well as in philosophical discussions: sometimes it is used to mean merely material which is sexually explicit; sometimes it is used to mean material which is sexually explicit and objectionable in some particular way; and so on. It seems to me that we do not need to choose between these different definitions, for all of them capture something of the term’s everyday use. What matters crucially is that we know which definition is being used in a particular case. For the fact that “pornography” has different senses can have two very unfortunate consequences if these differences are not clearly noted and kept in mind: it can make it seem that there is disagreement when there is not; and it can obscure the real nature of the disagreement when there is.

Here is one topical example of how this might happen. Some feminists object to pornography on the grounds that it harms women. Other feminists claim that pornography may not always be harmful to women, and may even sometimes be beneficial. It seems that there is genuine disagreement here. But is there? Not necessarily. For the two sides might mean different things by “pornography”. Suppose that feminists who object to pornography are defining “pornography” as sexually explicit material that subordinates women. So pornography, for them, is that subset of sexually explicit material that in fact harms women. This definition makes it an analytic truth that pornography, wherever it exists, is bad from a feminist point of view. Feminists who defend pornography, however, may be using “pornography” to mean simply sexually explicit material (regardless of whether it is harmful to women). There may thus be no genuine disagreement here. For both sides might agree that sexually explicit material that harms women is objectionable. They might also agree that there is nothing objectionable about sexually explicit material that does not harm women (or anyone else). If protagonists in the debate are using “pornography” in different senses in this way, they may simply be talking past each other.”

It seems to me that it is important to keep this to mind when using a word that has different meanings in a debate. It is entirely gereralizeable to other issues that are not pornographic.

Is it worth reading if you are interested in meaningfulness, contradictions, names and ontological arguments.

W.v.O. Quine – On what there is

Again I’m quoting Paul Ziff’s Semantic Analysis:

41. [...]

Consequently, if my contention about meaning is correct, then the first ‘do’ in ‘Please do not do it!’, unlike the second ‘do’, does not have meaning. This is testified to by the fact that generally the first ‘do’ in ‘Please do not do it!’, unlike the second ‘do’, will not admit of being stressed. Thus ‘Please do not do it!’ unlike ‘Please do not do it!’ is somewhat odd. Again, notice that the same is true of ‘to’ and ‘through’ in ‘I want to go through Istanbul.’. There is nothing odd about ‘I want to go through Istanbul.’ but ‘I want to to go through Istanbul.’ is generally quite odd. And this should not be surprising: if an element does not have meaning in an utterance, stressing the element is not likely to be, and indeed can hardly be, significant.

(There is a case, however, in which the ‘to’ in question will bear a stress. If I say ‘I want to go through Istanbul.’ and someone says ‘You want not to through Intanbul?’, I may reply ‘I want to go through Istanbul.’. An explanation of this is not hard to find. If I say ‘I want him to go.’ and someone says ‘You want them to go?’, I may reply ‘I want him to go.’, stressing the word after the verb for that was the point at which the utterance was misunderstood. But if I say ‘I want to go through Istanbul.’ and someone says ‘You want not to go through Istanbul.’, the confusion is owning to the insertion of ‘not’ after the verb. Thus in reply one is likely to stress whatever occurs over the segment immediately after the verb. Thus not ‘to’ but the stress it bears is significant in ‘I want to go through Istanbul.’: the stress contrasts with ‘not’ in the previous sentence.)

Meaning and meaningful words in sentences

Why do I quote this passage? Because I sometimes suggest this thesis in discussions:

1. A sentence is meaningful ⇔ Every word in that sentence is meaningful.¹

This might seem obvious to some and it seems interesting to me. There is an, perhaps, obvious type of possible counter-example too. Here are a couple:

2a. kjjd is not meaningful.

2b. The word “kjjd” is not meaningful.

(2a) appears to be a counter-example to (1) since there is a word² in it that is not meaningful. However, (2a) is an unclear sentence and perhaps grammatically incorrect.³ A more refined version is (2b) where it is clear that the sentence is about some word. There are a couple of solutions or explanations that spring to my mind about this.

One, one could see “the word “kjjd”” as a noun phrase that refers to the word “kjjd”. This seems unproblematic to me.

Two, one could try to limit (1) to some particular subset of sentences. One idea is to exclude sentences that are about words or phrases (meta-language). Though this seems excessive to me.

Three, one could exclude words that start and end with quotation marks (“) or whatever character is used to mark words or phrases. (Some people, like Ziff above, use apostrophes (‘).)

I favor the noun phrase theory or some similar theory. If that theory is true, then sentences like (2a) are not a problem for my thesis, that is, (1).

Meaningless words in meaningful sentences without metalanguage

In the quoted paragraph Ziff argues that some words in some meaningful sentences are not meaningful. His two examples are:

3a. Please do not do it!

3b. I want to go through Istanbul.

I think that it is uncontroversial whether these sentences are meaningful, they clearly are.⁴

Ziff thinks that:

4. A word in a sentence does not admit of being stressed without it being odd ⇒ That word does not have meaning.

This seems somewhat plausible and it is a problem for my thesis, that is, (1). Since (1) implies that all words in (3a) and in (3b) are meaningful but (4) implies that there is at least one word in (3a) and in (3b) that is not meaningful. How might one resolve this? Obviously one can simply deny that Ziff’s claim is true though it does seem rather intuitive to me, and I guess to many other people too.

Tokens and types

One might try to fix the problem by introducing the token-type distinction.⁵ Is (1) about types or tokens?:

1a. A sentence is meaningful ⇔ Every word token in that sentence is meaningful.

1b. A sentence is meaningful ⇔ Every word type in that sentence is meaningful.

Is (4) about tokens or types?:

4a. A word in a sentence does not admit of being stressed without it being odd ⇒ That word token does not have meaning.

4b. A word in a sentence does not admit of being stressed without it being odd ⇒ That word type does not have meaning.

The relationships between (1)’s and (4)’s are less clear. Let’s examine them in turn.

One, (1a) and (4a)

This appears to be the same situation as before.

Two, (1b) and (4a)

(1b) seems true to me but it is rather unclear what it means to say that a word type is meaningful. They do not seem inconsistent; The word type “to” is meaningful in (3b) and there is according to (4a) both a meaningful and a meaningless word token of “to” in that sentence. It is curious that some type can be meaningful yet tokens can be both meaningful and meaningless. (In the same language of course.)

Three, (1a) and (4b)

(4b) is false. Consider examples similar to the (3)’s, (4b) materially implies that the word type “to” and the word type “do” is both meaningful and meaningful. Contradiction.

Four, (1b) and (4b)

This is even worse than the case above. (4b) is false for the same reason as above, and (1b) materially implies not-(4b).

The type-token distinction did not help much, even though it clarified some things. (4b) is to be avoided, and (1a) and (1b) are interesting and problematic.

Meaningful phrases

An idea is to reject (1) but accept some similar thesis:

1c. A sentence is meaningful ⇔ Every word token in that sentence is meaningful or is part of a meaningful phrase token in that sentence.

This seems more plausible than the other (1)’s so far to me. It also seems consistent with Ziff’s examples since the meaningless “to” tokens are part of a meaningful phrase token “want to”.

It also avoids the question of what it means to say that a type is meaningful.

Stress and word-parts

Notice that in the above paragraph that it is not odd to stress parts of words. (I stressed “less” and “ful”. “Less” functions as a logical negation in this case and many others.) Is this an indication that word parts are sometimes meaningful too? It doesn’t follow from (4)’s but if we created general principle out of (4):

4c. A language part is able to be stressed with it being odd. ⇒ That language part is meaningful.

(4c) materially implies that word parts (morphemes) are sometimes meaningful too.

Chomskyan counter-examples

And yet, there are still other counter-examples (1c). Consider this famous sentence:

5. Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.⁶

(5) is clearly a counter-example to (1c) since all the words in this sentence are meaningful, and yet the sentence itself is meaningless. Perhaps another thesis similar to (1) is needed:

1d. A sentence is meaningful ⇔ Every word in that sentence is meaningful or is part of a meaningful phrase in that sentence, and all words are meaningful in the relation they are stand in or are part of a phrase that is in a meaningful relation.

This seems to effectively deal with sentences similar to (5).

Notes

I quote Swartz:

“What sort of thing is my pen’s  being on my desk? We are inclined to say such things as “My pen’s being on my desk is true,” which would suggest that my pen’s being on my desk is a proposition; but we are also inclined to say such things as “My pen’s being on my desk annoyed my wife who was looking for my pen in the bureau drawer,” which, on one reading, would suggest that my pen’s being on my desk is a physical state or an event that has causal consequences. (No proposition has causal consequences; they are not the sorts of things that do.)”[i]

I have a few things to say about meaning, cognitive meaning, propositions, statements, impossibilities and category errors.

Meaningfulness

This predicate applies to statements (in this context). Broadly, if a statement is meaningful that means it is understandable for someone. The someone has to know the correct language (e.g. English), sometimes the context it is used in etc. Consider this example:

E1. KLskjn asdkasdkasdjknjab 2ksdan.

E1 is not meaningful (for me or anyone else). It is also grammatically ill-formed. Note that statements can be meaningless even though they are grammatically well-formed. Consider:

E2.  Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.[ii]

So, as we can see this statement does not mean anything but it is grammatically correct. This is because that even though the words are used grammatically correct they do not convey any meaning in the relation they are used in. Philosophers call this a category mistake or category error.

Keep in mind that the meaningfulness I’m concerned about here is in relation to semantics and language, and not, say, actions. Sometimes we say that an action was meaningless, and by that we mean that it had no purpose.

Cognitive meaningfulness

Cognitive meaningfulness is different from meaningfulness itself but it is a proper subset. So, all cognitively meaningful statements are meaningful, but not conversely. A statement is cognitive meaningful iff it conveys a proposition. A statement expresses or conveys a proposition iff it is descriptive. Consider this example:

E3. Go clean the dishes!

E3 is not the kind of statement that describes something, thus it’s not descriptive. And, thus, it is not cognitively meaningful. Some philosophers have thought that moral or ethical statements were statements of this kind, that is, that they didn’t convey propositions. Instead they thought that they had other purposes such as conveying information about the feelings of the speaker, or served as orders.[iii]

Propositions

Propositions are not the statements themselves. No statement is true or false but we usually speak of them like this because it’s easier. Consider this example:

E4. The sky is blue.

E4 is a meaningful statement, and it is a cognitively meaningful statement. Thus, E4 conveys a proposition. It is the proposition that it either true or false.

Meaningless impossibilities?

Consider this example:

E5. There exists a four-sided triangle.

People tend to have different intuitions or opinions about this example. Is it cognitively meaningless? Some think it is. I think it is not. The same people that think it is cognitively meaningless also sometimes think that four-sided triangles are impossible. I contend that these two claims are incompatible in a broad sense.

Recall that if a statement is cognitively meaningless, then it does not convey a proposition. So, I’m curious as to what exactly these people think is impossible. ‘Impossible’ and ‘possible’ are propositional properties, i.e. they are about propositions. But since there is, according to these people, no proposition conveyed by E5 and similar statements, there is nothing relevant that can have the property of being impossible. Perhaps they think that it is the statement itself that is impossible, but this would be a category error. Their position thus implies giving nothing a predicate (or property) or the category error of ascribing ‘impossible’ to a statement.

I contend that E5 conveys a proposition and that that proposition is impossible (and thus false). All triangles have precisely three sides. If a figure has precisely three sides, then it does not have four sides. Thus, the triangle both has four sides and has not. Impossible.

Ambiguity

Consider this example:

E6. He ate the cookies on the couch.[iv]

Suppose we were to assess this statement (i.e. the proposition that it conveys). What are we to make of it? This statement is ambiguous and could mean either of the propositions conveyed by these:

E6a. He ate the cookies that were on the couch.

E6b. He ate the cookies when he was sitting on the couch.

So, an ambiguous statement is a statement that conveys more than one proposition. Usually we use ambiguous language because it is shorter, and the meaning can usually be inferred from the context.

Category errors again

Recall the quote in the beginning of this article. The reason I quoted it was this: In the last part of it Swartz writes that “[n]o proposition has causal consequences”. However, does this make sense? Not really, as much as it does not make sense to say that propositions have causal power, it does not make sense to deny it either. There is no proposition conveyed that can be affirmed or denied. What can be affirmed and denied is that the two words convey a meaning in the relation they are used in. This was what Swartz meant with the second statement “they [i.e. propositions] are not the sorts of things that do”.

We should be very careful when we talk about propositions and meaning. We are inclined to respond “No cars are hungry.” to a person if a person says that his car is hungry, but when we think of it, that statement does not make sense. “My car is hungry” is meaningless and conveys no proposition. Thus, there is nothing we can deny.

We should also not take language completely literal for sometimes people use language non-literally. In the example from above the person might mean that his car needs gas.

An approach to cognitive meaning of statements

It has been suggested that statements are meaningful iff they describe a possible state of the world. But I think this is a bad analysis. First, what kind of possible are we talking about? I will suppose it is logical. Given the thesis above, any statement that describes (more on this) an impossible state of the world is not cognitively meaningful. So, there is no proposition that claims that something is impossible that is true. This is false so the thesis is wrong.

Furthermore, it does not make sense to say that statements describe anything. Propositions describe things. Going by the thesis, if a statement conveys a proposition that describes some impossible statement of world, then the statement is not cognitively meaningful. If the statement is not cognitively meaningful, then it does not convey a proposition, but this contradicts that previous claim that it does, and therefore the thesis is false.

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[i] Norman Swartz, The Concept of Physical Law, p. 47, http://www.sfu.ca/philosophy/physical-law

[ii] It is a well known example. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorless_green_ideas_sleep_furiously

[iii] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noncognitivism . See emotivism for the theory about emotions and perscriptivism for the theory about orders.

[iv] Taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambiguity#Linguistic_forms