NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #26/NN_1992_26.iso/spool/bit/listserv/csgl/1446

Text File | 1992-11-10 | 2.0 KB | 37 lines

Comments: Gated by [e-mail]
Path: sparky!uunet!stanford.edu!bcm!convex!darwin.sura.net!paladin.american.edu!auvm!FAC.ANU.EDU.AU!ANDALING
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.csg-l
Date:         Wed, 11 Nov 1992 13:22:28 EST
Sender:       "Control Systems Group Network (CSGnet)" <[e-mail]>
From:         "(Avery Andrews)" <[e-mail]>
Subject:      there's more to meaning than perception
Lines: 26

Although meaning is obviously grounded in perception, I think people
may be underestimating the subtlety of the connection.  Consider
the meaning of the NP `the Iliad'.  There are many different kinds of
perceptions that this can be hooked up to.  In the benign environment
of your local library, you can ascertain that a book is the Iliad by
noting that it has `Iliad' written on its spine, or by opening up
and seeing that the text starts out `Sing, Muse, of the wrath of
Achilles',  So a wide range of different perceptual functions will
suffice distinguish copies of the Iliad from other things.  On the
other hand, you can imagine more treacherous worlds, where books
say on their covers that they are the Iliad, but have something
completely different inside, or have all sorts of omissions and
interpolations in the text, so that some expertise (e.g. a large and
sophisticated perceptual function) is required to distinguish
good copies of the Iliad from bad ones (the Ancient world was like
this, before the Alexandrians cleaned up the text).

But regardless of what kind of perceptual function you may have to
recognize copies of the Iliad, I am in the wrong if I sell you something
on the basis that it is a copy of the Iliad, & it isn't acceptable
as such to an expert (if I do this on purpose, I'm a crook, otherwise
a jerk).  So meaning depends on perceptions, but not necessarily
perceptions of any of the people actually involved in a linguistic
communication where the meaning figures.

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