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Ideas for 'Theaetetus', 'From Metaphysics to Ethics' and 'The Theory of Communicative Action'

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4 ideas

19. Language / A. Nature of Meaning / 1. Meaning
15667 To understand a statement is to know what would make it acceptable [Habermas]
     Full Idea: We understand the meaning of a speech act when we know what would make it acceptable.
     From: Jürgen Habermas (The Theory of Communicative Action [1981], I:297), quoted by James Gordon Finlayson - Habermas Ch.3:37
     A reaction: Finlayson glosses this as requiring the reasons which would justify the speech act.
19. Language / A. Nature of Meaning / 3. Meaning as Speaker's Intention
15668 Meaning is not fixed by a relation to the external world, but a relation to other speakers [Habermas, by Finlayson]
     Full Idea: On Habermas's view, meanings are not determined by the speaker's relation to the external world, but by his relation to his interlocutors; meaning is essentially intersubjective.
     From: report of Jürgen Habermas (The Theory of Communicative Action [1981]) by James Gordon Finlayson - Habermas Ch.3:38
     A reaction: This view is not the same as Grice's, but it is clearly much closer to Grice than to (say) the Frege/Davidson emphasis on truth-conditions. I'm not sure if I would know how to begin arbitrating between the two views!
19. Language / C. Assigning Meanings / 3. Predicates
6995 Successful predication supervenes on nature [Jackson]
     Full Idea: Successful predication supervenes on nature.
     From: Frank Jackson (From Metaphysics to Ethics [1998], Ch.5)
     A reaction: A nice slogan, but it is in danger of being a tautology. If I say x and y 'are my favourites/are interesting', is that 'successful' predication? Is 'Juliet is the sun' unsuccessful?
19. Language / C. Assigning Meanings / 6. Truth-Conditions Semantics
6989 I can understand "He has a beard", without identifying 'he', and hence the truth conditions [Jackson]
     Full Idea: If I hear someone say "He has a beard", and I don't know whether it is Jackson, Jones, or someone else, I don't know which proposition is being expressed in the sense of not knowing the conditions under which what is said is true.
     From: Frank Jackson (From Metaphysics to Ethics [1998], Ch.3)
     A reaction: This is the neatest and simplest problem I have encountered for Davidson's truth-conditions account of meaning. However, we probably just say that we understand the sense but not the reference. The strict-and-literal but not contextual meaning.