🚀 go-pugleaf

swann@divsun.unige.ch (SWANN Philip) writes:

>(4) Bert Peeters, as a semanticist, takes me to task for giving
>    Stephen Stich instead of Stephen Schiffer as the author of
>    "Remnants of Meaning" and accuses me of thereby refering to
>    a non-existent entity. I knew what I meant, he knew what I
>    meant and furthermore we both know why I made the slip. But as a
>    theoretician he makes a lot of assumptions about how proper
>    names work and calculates that I can't actually have meant
>    what I did mean. Of course he doesn't actually believe the
>    results of his own calculations... This is why we don't need
>    semantics (;-)).

I must have had a couple of bad days towards the end of last week,
because I seem to have antagonised a number of people on various BB's.
Such was not my intention. In the case of Philip Swann's challenge
to semanticists to tell him why theories of meaning should exist, I
was annoyed by what I perceived as a derogatory tone, and promptly
put the same kind of tone (consciously or not, I'm not sure) in my
next few postings. I thought - and still do - it is not enough to
refer to the literature to back up one's position ("because X and Y
say so, it must be true" - what sort of an argument is that?). The
case was made worse by Swann's slip (Stich for Schiffer). I only
found out who he had in mind by checking the library holdings under
"title" rather than "author". How many people will have looked for
Schiffer's book, not finding it because the author's name had been
misquoted? This is not just about him and me, it is about all of
us who read sci.cognitive and are interested in meaning. And why he
made the slip? Honestly, I do NOT know. I do not know either whether
I really "calculated that he couldn't actually have meant what he
did mean", so all that follows from there (including "this is why
we don't need semantics" and including the smiley) is shaky. We do
need theories of meaning, to avoid misunderstandings like this one.
Taken up too much bandwith already, and I don't want to antagonise
anyone any further. My apologies to everyone who thinks I'm a bore.
Perhaps that's true.

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr Bert Peeters                         Tel: +61 02 202344
Department of Modern Languages               002 202344
University of Tasmania at Hobart        Fax: 002 207813
GPO Box 252C                            Bert.Peeters@modlang.utas.edu.au
Hobart TAS 7001
Australia