🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <73878@hydra.gatech.EDU> cegtitd@prism.gatech.EDU (Tim Dodd) writes:
>In article <1992Nov5.221645.26360@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU+ crb7q@kelvin.seas.Virginia.EDU (Cameron Randale Bass) writes:
>+In article <73795@hydra.gatech.EDU+ cegtitd@prism.gatech.EDU (Tim Dodd) writes:
>++Words can also refer to concepts.  A word can be regarded as meaningful
>++if the concept it refers to exists, but if there are no real referents
>++for the concept, then the concept is meaningless in the same way as a
>++word would be.
>+
>+     How can a concept *not* exist?  Simply actualizing it provides
>+     existence.
>
>This is true, but if the concept has no correspondence to any elements
>in reality, or is defined in such a way that such a correspndence can
>never be established, then by definition, the concept is meaningless.
>I did not say anything about concepts not existing, but about whether
>or not they should be regarded as meaningful.

     Your statement was that 'a word can be regarded as meaningful
     if the concept it refers to exists'.  So, every concept is meaningful.

>Again, you have not paid attention to what I said.  I was not speaking of
>a "subject existing outside of a conceptual universe" but of whether or
>not the "subject *pertains* to anything outside" the conceptual universe
>(emphasis added).

     I paid complete attention (or at least as complete as I'm wont to
     do).  How can there be a concept outside of the conceptual universe?

>+     Well, you have a rather odd way of looking at the concepts of 
>+     'meaning' and 'reality'.  Am I to take it that concepts are defined
>+     as 'existing' and 'meaningful' and 'real' only when *you* want them
>+     to be meaningful.  This seems perfectly consistent, but it is probably
>+     not widely shared.
>
>No, this is exactly what I am arguing against!  Meaning is established
>by the semantic mapping between words or concepts and their referents.
>Since the existence of these referents must be empirically verifiable
>in principle, and reality is something we all share, then the presence
>or absence of meaning is something we can all agree on.

     So now they must be 'empirically verifiable'?

     Have you ever said 'I love you'?

                            dale bass
-- 
C. R. Bass                                          crb7q@virginia.edu        
Department of Mechanical, 
     Aerospace and Nuclear Engineering
University of Virginia                              (804) 924-7926