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Ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'Grounding Concepts' and 'Aspects of the Theory of Syntax'

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4 ideas

19. Language / A. Nature of Meaning / 5. Meaning as Verification
Verificationism is better if it says meaningfulness needs concepts grounded in the senses [Jenkins]
     Full Idea: I find an updated verificationism plausible, in which we say something meaningful just in case we employ only concepts whose possession could be justified or disjustified by sensory input.
     From: Carrie Jenkins (Grounding Concepts [2008], 5.6)
     A reaction: Wow! This is the first time I have ever had the slightest sympathy for verificationism. It saves my favourite problem case - of wild but meaningful speculation, for example about the contents of another universe. A very nice idea.
19. Language / C. Assigning Meanings / 1. Syntax
Chomsky's 'interpretative semantics' says syntax comes first, and is then interpreted [Chomsky, by Magidor]
     Full Idea: Chomsky and his followers (whose position was labelled 'interpretative semantics') claimed that a sentence is first assigned a syntactic structure by an autonomous syntactic module, and this structure is then provided as input for semantic interpretation.
     From: report of Noam Chomsky (Aspects of the Theory of Syntax [1965]) by Ofra Magidor - Category Mistakes 1.3
     A reaction: This certainly doesn't fit the experience of introspecting speech, but then I suppose good pianists focus entirely on the music, and overlook the finger movements which have obvious priority. But I don't know the syntax of the sentence when I begin it.
19. Language / C. Assigning Meanings / 2. Semantics
Success semantics explains representation in terms of success in action [Jenkins]
     Full Idea: Success semantics is the attempt to understand mental representation by thinking about the ways in which representing the world can lead to success in action.
     From: Carrie Jenkins (Grounding Concepts [2008], 6.3)
     A reaction: I take this to be what is also known as 'teleological semantics'. It sounds to me as if this might help to explain success in action, but isn't going to explain the representations that result in the success.
19. Language / E. Analyticity / 1. Analytic Propositions
'Analytic' can be conceptual, or by meaning, or predicate inclusion, or definition... [Jenkins]
     Full Idea: 'Analytic' might mean conceptually true, or true in virtue of meaning, or where the predicate is contained in the subject, or for sentences which define something, or where meaning is sufficient for the truth.
     From: Carrie Jenkins (Grounding Concepts [2008], 4.3)
     A reaction: The second one says meaning grounds the truth, where the last one says meaning entails the truth.