Coercive Theories of Meaning

[@KaneB]

My own case against unintelligibility arguments is made here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/r4rEn2ahqdKena8 Moore's argument against skepticism: kzbin.info/www/bejne/n2jdpWCqer6jpbc

[@bo6686]

The statement about your peers taking the madman seriously is dependent on you being a philosopher. If you're an ordinary person dismissing the philosophical community as a colony of lunatics is very much a live option.

[@StatelessLiberty]

I think when someone says a statement like “god created the universe” is meaningless, they mean something like this. They mean: you can infer many consequences from this statement, but these consequences taken together yield something pragmatically inert. The many consequences do not collectively link up with the rest of language in the right way to make the sentence useful. I would analogise it to a key that doesn’t fit into any lock. A consequence of this point of view is that what sentences are meaningful is not independent of our point of view, knowledge, and many other contingent facts. I think this is one of the main ways the later Wittgenstein rejected the Tractatus: the idea that meaning is not independent of contingent facts.

[@duder6387]

So you take a pragmatic theory of meaning? If so, Kane addresses the problems with this in the video. Who are you to say that the statement “god created the universe” is “pragmatically inert”? For many people, that statement makes them happy which sounds pragmatic at least in some sense. If meaning is dependent on our subjective experiences, then surely it also applies to what is and isn’t pragmatic.

[@StatelessLiberty]

@@duder6387 All I’m saying is it makes sense to draw inferences from “meaningless” statements. For example someone might argue that saying “god created the universe” is meaningless on the grounds that it has the structure of an explanation but isn’t able to function in the same way as a “real” explanation (perhaps due to the nature of God). In other words, the sentence has properties but these properties prevent the sentence from playing the role it’s supposed to be playing. It might be true that the sentence makes me happy but making me happy wouldn’t count as functioning as an explanation.

[@hearts-on-sleeves]

​@@duder6387That's a very low bar for what counts as pragmatically relevant. Experiencing happy music makes me feel good, as does experiencing a good meal. The cognitive element of the music and the meal itself don't qualify as meaningful beliefs - it's not parseable. If you're talking about "Believing in God makes me feel good" then, I agree, such a statement isn't pragmatically inert. But without context "God created the universe" is pretty pragmatically inert. It's the accompanying beliefs and context "God is the yardstick for Good, and would disapprove of Y" which do the work.

[@duder6387]

Firstly, what is a real explanation, and what role are sentences supposed to play? Secondly, how does the statement about God not function as an explanation? I’m assuming you’re using the criterion of falsifiability. If you are, I recommend watching Kane’s video of falsification and looking up Holistic underdetermination (aka the Duhem-Quine thesis). Essentially, it argues that all hypotheses are unfalsifiable, and therefore we should throw out or reconsider the criterion of falsifiability.

[@duder6387]

What counts as pragmatically relevant? Also, I’m confused why you think statements need to be parsimonious to be considered pragmatic. Pragmatic just refers to what someone finds useful. However, I am not familiar with the different schools of pragmatism, so if you have a particular flavor of pragmatism you follow, please let me know what it is so that I can better understand you. Also, I don’t understand how the statement “God created the universe” is pragmatically inert. Some people like the idea that the universe was constructed rather than spontaneously appearing due to natural processes; I don’t think statements about God being the yardstick of morality are required. The statement alone makes people quite happy; that seems pragmatic to me.

[@kappasphere]

I think this discussion is applying "meaning" to the wrong kind of thing. "meaning" doesn't apply to a concept, it applies to an utterance. The word "ye" can mean anything, but when I say it to a specific person, I mean something specific, because my utterance has a specific intent. If an English person asks me if I want extra sugar, it means that I want just that. If I say the same thing to a Japanese person in the same context, it means that I don't want sugar. When an utterance has "no discernable meaning", that isn't an attribute of just the contents of the utterance or even the ideas that the speaker had in mind, it's just an attribute of the communication as a whole. So in short, this whole discussion just seems to be a big category error. But there's one problem with what I just said: The idea of a "category error" seems to be in itself another coercive theory of meaning, which asserts "this word has a definition where it can only apply to this category, so you're just ending up with nonsense when you try to apply the word to that other category". A way that I think this can be salvaged is to appeal to some "neutral listener" who can be seen as the imaginary recipient of the utterance. I still think this is a nebulous and subjective concept, but I also think that this is the nature of this kind of discussion. I can see why Wittgenstein would call the discussion itself to be nonsense.

[@ogsus5773]

jesse, what the hell are you talking about?

[@IntegralDeLinha]

What if I ask someone about a concept and he says it's primitive and can't even be defined ostensively. Can I now accuse him of unintelligibility?

[@MarshmallowRadiation]

Let's say I have a concept, and I claim that it's completely devoid of meaning. However, now that I've said that, I've referred to the concept itself, and to one of its alleged properties ("devoid of meaning"), which is itself meaningful. I guess the only way for a concept to truly be unintelligible is to not have a concept at all? On the other hand, lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consecteteur adipiscing elit. ...never mind. Even if that has no intrinsic meaning, it has plenty of extrinsic meaning that can be unpacked. There's no escaping it, is there?

[@lanceindependent]

I wouldn't jump straight to that conclusion. I would ask them what they mean by primitive and why they think the concept in question is primitive. There are going to be more questions here. Are they able to communicate the meaning of the concept to you even if it's primitive? If so there might not be an issue. If not why not? Essentially I would just take such a claim to be a reason to move the conversation towards addressing the claim of primitiveness.

[@IntegralDeLinha]

​@@MarshmallowRadiation , lol, loved the lorem ipsum part. I like Amie Thomasson's approach. I think she would say that a word is meaningful if it has rules of use. If you don't know what conditions must be satisfied for the word to be applicable, then you didn't establish any linguistic conventions and the word has no meaning for you.

[@IntegralDeLinha]

@@lanceindependent Hey, you're THE Lance Bush! Saw some of your videos. Loved the conversation about moral realism between you and Kane B. Good point, btw. Principle of charity. I guess what I really meant was that if someone talks about a concept that is primitive and can't be defined ostensively AND that person is using "primitive" and "defined ostensively" in the same way that I use these expressions, then her concept should be meaningless.

[@KaneB]

If a person invents an entirely new word, where no definition is provided and we can't figure out any particular rules for how to use it, then I assume that Pigden would grant that this is meaningless. This is rarely the case in philosophy, though. For many of the concepts that have been criticized as meaningless, the words already have an established use ("god", "cause", "value" etc.), and obviously there are more specific rules for how to use the word within philosophical discussions. Even if you think that, say, philosophical arguments about God meaningless, you can identify what patterns of language would tend to get good marks in essays, or would have a shot at being published in philosophy journals.

[@BumbleTheBard]

Philosophical theories that claim certain areas of discourse are meaningless are surely examples of error theories. Your argument at the end seems to imply that any error theory (of anything) is wrong since it is rejecting the data. While error theories are contrarian and require good justification, they cannot be rejected out of hand just for being error theories. Maybe you could make a video about error theories.

[@darrellee8194]

I find your talks stimulating because I often disagree with you. It makes me feel smart when I can anticipate the arguments and counter-arguments, before you get to them. It almost always helps me clarify my own thinking on the topic, rather than being handed a position.

[@DeadEndFrog]

09:00 humor and philosophy, this is why kane b(est)

[@garryrus8557]

Meaninglessness and true gibberish include logical contradictions. Yes “meaningless” gets applied to meaningful metaphysical claims, because some metaphysical entities are not properly understood, but true contradictions can never be understood. Not capable of being understood is what makes it meaningless (see the liars sentence). We can quibble where the meaningful/meaningless boundary is based on the context, but meaninglessness certainly includes true logical contradictions.

[@realSAPERE_AUDE]

Have you seen Kane’s coverage of dialetheism?

[@garryrus8557]

@@realSAPERE_AUDE yes, dialetheism is still BS. You can’t have a sentence thays both true and not true (happy to link my Substack article on this point if you’re interested)!

[@garryrus8557]

@@realSAPERE_AUDE yep dialethisim is BS, there can be no sentence which is both true and false

[@xiutecuhtli15]

You might be able to like, assume a claim has meaning, from this conclude that it fails to meet the criteria for having meaning, and by proof by contradiction, conclude it does not have meaning. When you assume the term has some meaning, you might not understand it, and just figure that it must follow the things the users of the term say about it. But the things the users of the term say about it entail that it is meaningless, so you know that there can't be any sensible picture behind the term.

[@sebleblan]

Could there be a conflation of meaning and intent? Linguistically the meaning of a word could be expressed as a set of coordinate in a semantic space right? I dont see what remains to be said of "meaning" after that... When we say "what you do you mean?" aren't we in fact trying to say "what are you trying to communicate?" or "what information do you intent to convey?"

[@localman7017]

Did you get rid of your discord, Kane?

[@veganphilosopher1975]

Ah, yes. The prelude to the continental shift of Kane B in 2024. Truly a historic moment in whatever era of philosophy we're currently in.

[@Xidnaf]

anyone know why kane b deleted the discord? i always meant to go check it out sometime

[@KaneB]

There wasn't any reasoning that motivated the decision. I recall having the thought "it would be amusing to do this" and then I just did it. Basically I felt the inclination to do it, and that was that.

[@cunjoz]

holy shit it's Xidnaf 😮

[@AdamLapisLazuli]

​@@KaneBYou were bored? Not sure if that's an appropriate action... :Dd

[@seger602]

@@KaneB You really gave in to the intrusive thought huh

[@realSAPERE_AUDE]

@@AdamLapisLazuliwhy wouldn’t that count as appropriate?

[@realSAPERE_AUDE]

Hi Kane. Interesting video. Lots to think about. I’m wondering if there’s room for some dispute about different senses of words/phrases/propositions/etc in terms of trying to determine if they count as having meaning in one particular sense as opposed to another. For example, the phrase “what it’s like” could mean different things in ordinary language having to do with expressing some relations between things but then maybe when we consider whether that phrase can sort of transfer its ordinary use into some more technical context in philosophy of mind we can consider if it is helpful to make something like phenomenal properties or qualia useful/meaningful/etc.. Basically it seems like there could be some cases where words and phrases are perfectly intelligible but then they’re forced into other contexts where the ordinary use no longer applies but is gestured towards in order to take advantage of the credibility given by the ordinary use. Excuse my clumsy explanation. Hopefully my point comes across..

[@slouch186]

world's smallest nitpick but i think "theory of meaning as coercion" would have worked better than "coercive theories of meaning" since the concept is meant to describe the application of the theory rather than the theory itself.

[@index3876]

"Theory of meaning as coercion" suggests a theory which regards meaning itself as intrinsically coercive or something-that's not what this is about. In this case, it's the theories themselves which are coercive, with respect to meaning. And there's also more than one. So "coercive theories of meaning" is about as accurate as you can get.

[@darrellee8194]

7:49 The whole point of labeling a Theory 'meaningless' is that the theory has no consequences. But the consequence of any 'meaningless' theory is that we can discuss it endlessly. So we label it meaningless to end a pointless discussion.

[@darrellee8194]

12:29 - There absolutely are empirical observations that would tend to confirm that God created the Universe. We just aren't seeing them. God or Jesus could appear and perform miracles that would tend to demonstrate they are who they say they are, and He could testify to having created the universe. That would be empirical evidence, that we just don't currently have. We can also easily argue that it's an analytic statement. By "God" we mean preciely that which created the Universe, and if the universe is eternal or self-created, then God is the Universe, by definition, God exists. I think that was what Descartes was getting at--the very idea of God is all that is necessary for its existence.

[@whycantiremainanonymous8091]

There are two different senses of "nonsense", though. There's the "entirely unintelligible" sense, regarding which these arguments hold. But there is also the "apparent meaning disintegrates upon closer inspection" sense, which these arguments don't address at all. For example, much of the kind of BS you find in advertisements (say, "[Product] gives you more!"; more of what? more than what?) is quite intelligible on the surface level, but is still nonsense if scrutinised even for a second.

[@mobatyoutube]

1. All meaning empiricist theories are meaningless by their own standard because they are not derived from sensations. 2. For all meaning empiricist theories, all meaning is radically personal because all sensations are unique to individuals.

[@BlueEyesDY]

Its unclear what a coercive theorist means by _meaningless._ I understand _meaningless_ to mean there is no relevant equivalence principal in the current logical context. For example, the word _gato_ is meaningless in the context of the English language.

[@Thanatos562]

Did something happen to your discord?

[@realSAPERE_AUDE]

Yeah he deleted it lol

[@gk10101]

what if all concepts are limited to being only representations of reality. what if knowledge has a hard boundary, like the bowl that a goldfish swims in. the goldfish peers outside his bowl and conceptualizes everything he sees. but all his wonderful theories aren't reality, only representations. perhaps his intellect is only a small part of his existence

[@RestIsPhilosophy]

Aside from the discord, you also don’t seem to be using Reddit? What’s happening amplified cactus and why are you so busy?

[@jeevacation]

What happened to the discord server?

[@hari.sheldon]

It was deleted

[@KaneB]

I deleted it.

[@KaneB]

@Monk_Chud That had nothing to do with it. I'm not even sure it's true that there was an influx of redditors, but I wouldn't have deleted it for that reason anyway.

[@joe6839]

@@KaneB damn any specific reason why?

[@ahuk]

Got Banged.

[@darrellee8194]

10:06 Significance vs meaning.

[@dumbledorelives93]

🎵 "A little nonsense now and then... is relished by the wisest men..." 🎶

[@xiutecuhtli15]

Sometimes I want to call something meaningless when I struggle to understand what someone is even saying. After I keep trying to agree on an explanation in terms I already use, or probe them for a more explicit answer, eventually I give up. I might say "it seems like they're just mishmashing words together for some vague intuition they have, or poorly repeating something they heard from someone else without getting a good handle on it. Since all my probing and offered explanations failed, and shouldn't have failed if they knew what they were talking about, it was probably nothing." If I frequently reach this conclusion in conversations regarding a certain term or field, or reach this conclusion with the person who originated it as they explain what they conceived, I might call the term or field itself meaningless nonsense, and not just the explanation. Even if I call a term nonsense, it might still be a noun, and I can use it in a syntactically correct sentence, or say several sentences in a way similar to the normal usage of that term. But I will have no idea what the sentences are supposed to mean, I won't really grok it. I only really call a person's explanation nonsense if I like don't respect them. I might otherwise think there's something of merit behind the words that is just being poorly explained, or that I am having trouble understanding it.

[@crimm2465]

It goes yuh!

[@darrellee8194]

Yes, I think we are talking about (at least) two kinds of meaning here. The first we can associate with understanding and the second is associated with Value. "I understand the meaning of your theory, but it has no value to me or relevance to the human condition. "

[@fireinthesky2333]

The sound quality is worse than a ghetto, late 1980s fast food drive-thru window.

[@ahuk]

טרלול פרוגרסיבי

[@darabunbeans]

I'm in the interesting position of being a theistic person who enjoys AJ Ayer and theological noncognitivism. The idea that "God" is a contentless variable or is something that evades mutual description is not a dealbreaker to me, in fact it probably enhances my appreciation of mystical-thought. If "God" is meaningless, that wouldn't really contradict any particular way the term is used, given that many people regardless of whether they have religious beliefs or not, have attributed every possible property or framework about God. Tl;dr, idk if igtheism inherently entails atheism or lack of faith, in-fact it seems like it could just be a valid religious perspective.

[@bishopbrennan3558]

I'm conflicted; on the one hand, I'm happy to see Kane do a video on one of the most based philosophy articles out there, but on the other, I'm sad that it's no longer as niche, diminishing my special attachment to it

[@ahuk]

,,,,,חדל

[@tomripleyro]

If this is philosophy, I don't think much of it.

[@RestIsPhilosophy]

Huh?

[@xiutecuhtli15]

for no reason

[@nevetstrevel4711]

It's not philosophy is way more interesting

[@hearts-on-sleeves]

??? Who asked lol. Don't watch what you don't think much of ;)

[@DarrenMcStravick]

If this is philosophy, this is good philosophy because it can be weaponised against continentals lol

[@alvaromartinez6853]

Super early!!!!

[@ThomasYoung-my4qi]

Naturalism in analytic philosophy is a coercive project.

[@InventiveHarvest]

When I think about uninteigibility, I think of politicians like Kamala Harris. They just throw words at questions they don't have answers to. When asked about solving the inflation problem, they will say something like "this issue is very important and we will put that on the table so we can see what could be, unburdened by what has been. The problem of inflation is the problem of inflation , so we can come together on this in a meaningful way.". The criteria that I use to call such a word salad meaningless, is that at the end of it, I still have no idea about what they are actually going to do to solve the problem. There is no way to drive an actual answer to the question from the mumbo jumbo that was said.

[@KaneB]

I'm inclined to think that the issue there isn't meaninglessness, but just failure to address the question. If I ask somebody, "where are my car keys?", and they respond, "your car is red," their response isn't meaningless to me -- I know what it means to say that my car is red -- it's just unhelpful and irrelevant. I expect that most politicians usually choose words carefully to give responses that are uselessly vague but that might sound practical to an inattentive audience. But the difference between, say, a vague statement and a more precise one is a difference in what the statements mean; it's not that one lacks meaning and the other has it.

[@sjmurphysj39]

Covfefe

[@cunjoz]

​@@sjmurphysj39 Obamna

[@jindrichjochec296]

So ur saying that trump is any better in that reguard?

[@Caligulahahah]

Oh boi you should give a listen to this guy trump, maybe you’ve heard of him, but this dude is spitting some gibberish left and right, you’d be amazed!