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From: desj@brahms.BERKELEY.EDU (David desJardins)
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc
Subject: Re: The meaning of language (was Re: Characterization)
Message-ID: <16078@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: Fri, 10-Oct-86 05:24:25 EDT
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.16078
Posted: Fri Oct 10 05:24:25 1986
Date-Received: Thu, 16-Oct-86 06:54:16 EDT
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Reply-To: desj@brahms.UUCP (David desJardins)
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In article <350@husc6.HARVARD.EDU> hadeishi@husc4.UUCP (mitsuharu hadeishi) writes:
>	My simple point was that, for example, a language created by
>some intelligent creatures who have all died out would become a
>"meaningless" set of symbols (assuming that language consists of
>strings of symbols or sommething of that nature.)  If humans were to
>try to interpret that language, they would only have the barest chance
>if there were some way to associate their symbols with our own
>human experiences (i.e., if the language were pictoral, we could
>associate their symbols with our own conception of the relationship
>between our visual world and the objective world.)  However, if these
>creatures' experiences and modes of expression differed too greatly
>from our own, we would have no points of reference and therefore would
>not be able to decipher the language.

   This is what you believe.  However, since you offer no evidence or
justification for this opinion, why do you expect others to accept it?
Exactly the opposite seems true to me; that no matter how different the
experiences and descriptions, the necessary internal consistency would
be enough to decipher the language, given a sufficiently large sample.

   Without argument or justification how can we call the discussion
conducted in this group 'philosophy'?

   -- David desJardins