Wherein is Language Social, Burge
113
1. Language is social in two senses.
a. interaction with others is necesary to learn a language.
b. dialects of countries, cites, etc are shared.
Shared, by social
groups.
114
1. But, still, Burge notes that individuals do not often accord with public
usage.
2. And if we want to have an individual psychology, perhaps 'there is some
point is abstracting away from social or public patterns.'
3. But he notes that 'this view is limited.'
4. By, the fact that 'there is wide variation among people.'
5. For, after all 'peoples beliefs depend upon their experiences.
6. Hence, to account for all this, via Chomsky, 'there is a universal grammar,
that is universal and individual.'
115
1. Chomsky develops a ideal speech community, where all people have the
same linguistic capacities.
2. But, not just grammer, but 'relations to others enter into semantical
kinds.'
116
1
1. Thought is individuated nonindividualistically.
The 'nature of thoughts
depends on the envirionment in which we interact.'
2. 'What information, say perceptions, we process' says Burge 'is dependent
upon properties in the world which members of our species interact with
perceptually.'
3. And, what 'empirical concepts' we think of is dependent upon external
items.
4. We must distinguish what individuation is.
a. our thoughts do not supervene on our bodies.
b. actual thoughts depend upon nature of actual
wide
envirionment.
c.
now, can have the different thoughts, though body
effects
causally the same.
d. the 'kind of thought that one thinks' thus 'is not
supervenient on the body.'
e. so 'thought kinds are individuated in a way that bears on
relations to the envirionment.'
117
1. Failure of supervenience however does not cast doubt upon the fact that
'there are neural realizations of mental structures.'
2. Mental kinds depend on, cognitive function, obtaining information.
3. Likewise, a heart depends on its function in a body that it is in.
4. And, failure of supervenience 'does not entail that psychology must study,
or make reference to the relations of individual and envirionment.
5. They, actually, are just presupposed; perhaps philosophy can study these.
118
2
1. Burge dilineates some of the aspects of the nonindividualism claim:
a. it is that referents of a persons words could vary,
though
effects on body stay same.
b. and, the referents are not themselves part of the
individuals
point of view.
c.
many
of
those
aspects
of
seemingly
personal
meaning
or
thougt, are too nonindividualistically individuated.
d. 'what a word means, even in an individuals ideolect, can
be
nonindividual'
Note: In footnote five, Burge notes that the failure of local supervenience,
hence nondindividualism, is a product of Kripke's work.
on
reference
show
'the
individual's
proper
He says that views
names,
kind
terms
demonstratives.... have definite referents.... even though the individual could
not discriminate the referents.'
Note: I think the point here is that no supervenience does not mean
indefinateness of referent.
The referent is still definite for us, though we do
not know it.
119
1. In a sense some meanings in language is universal.
2. When we perceive things when we are very young, like early vision, this is
independent of language.
3. But, this triggers innate responses, to edges, lines, etc.
4. So, because of biology, because of evolution, etc, such things are set.
5. And, such perceptual notions are nonindividualistically individuated.
6. Create a thouht experiment:
3
a. different optics
b. different interactions with fellows.
c. so different perceptions, different info.
Now,
d. but we can conceive of one of these beings, an individual
whose by some strange fate, his perceptual notions like
e. even if, by some chance, his body is like ours, his
ours.
'meanings
and
senses for perceptual properties will be different.'
7. Burge notes Marr in footnote, that 'perceptual states are individuated by
physical properties that bear appropriate relation to the envirion or our
ancestors.'
8. Burge notes atop of next page that this is not social, 'the failure of
individualism results entirely from the relation of the individual and physical
envirionment.'
120
1. Burge says that he wants to show how nonsocial individualism underlies
social individualism.
2. He notes that often there is a division of linguistic labor, which Chomsky
picks on, and this does not mean that reference is ever indeterminate.
121
1. Deference to experts does not make reference more definate, just more
clear.
2. Burge gives usual examples of this, helium, water, etc.
does not change the referent, alter, but only clarify.
4
Learning more
3. Reference is not determined or dependent upon what the individual knows.
4. This means though that Chomsky's account is incomplete.
Individuals
'explicational ability' does not suffice to 'fix the referent.'
5. In other words, I think, what is in the head, does not of itself fix referent.
6. Burge makes a group of distinctions between dictionary type meaning, and
in the head type meaning.
7. On the public side, there is, a lexical item, a word, which has a concept.
This public concept has what Burge calls 'translational meaning.'
8. On the head side, there is an head item, an entry for a word, as Burge
says.
This has an 'conceptual explication.'
And, this has an 'explicational
meaning.'
Note: This seems just to be the difference of public and speaker concepts and
meanings.
Note: Burge notes that it is often assumed that explicational and translational
meanings are interchangible.
Well, it is not true.
For two reasons.
a. the referent plays a key role in individuating
translational meaning.
b. and, because of the role of nonexplicational abilities
play in the
individual's application of the concept.
He says that he hopes to show the difference between lexical and
explanational meaning.
122
1. All our words like mud, fish, walk, shadow, edge, bread, and the like, are
not indexical.
They do not depend on context time, or shift meaning with
5
context, time, etc.
2. The 'constancy of application' is a 'feature of the meaning' of such
nonindexical words.
3. Now referent is a restraint here for 'a word has a different meaning if its
constant referent, or, range of application, is different.'
123
1. Now, reference is not fixed by explicational meaning is substantiated:
a. by the reference idea, that reference is definite, though
you
do not know it.
b. and, considering the personal dialictic by which we
arrive
at
conceptual explications, or lexical ones.
2. To support this latter, perceptually fixed examples typically determine the
application of our words, like chair or water, before conceptual explications
come along.
3. Conceptual explications are 'typically inferences from these perceptual
examples.'
4. When refining
conceptual
explanation, first, recognizes
perceptual
examples as veridical, and then one tries to make sure one's inferences fit
them.
5. So, perceptual examples come first, 'they do not derive from conception
explications.'
Note: Burge gives chair and water examples, where, even when we learn that
stools are also chairs, compositions of water, learn something new, still, such
revisions are but improvements upon a reference that is already fixed.
Note: As he says 'in such cases, it remains possible for me to have thoughts
6
about water as water.'
Knowning 'that there may be other similar liquids I
cannot discriminate, and will confuse with water.'
6. So, 'there is a sense in which the translational meaning of the word stays
the same, even though the expicational meaning changes.'
124
1. Yet, from this view, we cannot infer that correct explications are tacitly in
our heads.
2. Nor, that tacit conceptual explications exaust our concepts in general.
3. First, 'we have the materials in our mental repetoirs' to form 'a better
conception.' But that does not mean the meanings themselves are already
there.
4. The claim is just that 'mental structures for deriving recognition' are in
place.
So, ideally, in situation 'will lead to recognition.'
5. Second, we have perceptual storehouses.
These are nonconceptual. Thus
materials are put together, and worked up into conceptual explications.
6. The claim again, is not that these deep down percepts are knowledge.
They are not.
Note: Burge intends the two above reason to apply to the tacitly in our heads
view.
The next two are about exausting concepts.
125
1. Third, erceptual ability to dicriminate leads to explicational concepts in
home world.
2. Say the ability to discriminate any and all types of sofas round here.
3. Yet, say on other worlds such concepts might have an application.
7
4. But, we might not be able to discriminate look alikes there.
5. So, explicational ability does not exaust the concepts we have.
Note: This argument requires a case where discriminative ability of x's works
here, but not there.
Yet, the concept of x is applicible in both places.
a concept seems to conflict with anti individualism though.
Such
It seems it would
be a molinium, or crackdow.
6. Fourth, then we get our references fixed, the relation to examples is
perceptual.
7. Of course perception is often wrong.
8. When we get to conception, we inherit this fallability.
9. Yet, such wrong seeings, and thinkings, are still genuine instances of the
concepts.
10. Explicational abilites, thus, do not exaust the concepts they explicate.
Note: I assume this argument is that after explicational abilities, including
errors, are layed out of 'water,' there is a stable, residual, concept of 'water,'
that we still have, which is not accounted for by such abilities.
This too
seems problematic.
Note: The problem is that once we admit that we get perception wrong, and
conception wrong, in what sense do we have the concept which is stable,
residual.
It seems that we do not have that concept at all.
126
1. We want to get examples right.
So we defer to someone else's linguistic
authority.
2. For the authority is 'better placed,' has 'has superior empirical insight'
8
3. Burge notes that we all have access generally to the same stuff.
We all live
in a world with, and want to talk about chairs, contracts, water, and fish.
4. And, a 'persons access to such examples' often, 'is through others.'
It is
through the testimony of others that we get concepts fixed.
Note: That is, we all talk about the same subjects, but experts often know
them better.
127
1. Such dependence on others for access to examples grows as one learns
more.
2. In other words we 'rely on their experience to suppliment out own.'
3. And, this is key 'we accept correction because they have better access to
the examples that determine the nature of our concepts.'
4. And, 'if experts had provided different examples... we would have different
concepts.'
Note: Burge is here talking about translational meaning.
meaning is dependent upon interaction with others.'
referents.
'Translational
He is talking about
And, how others let us see them.
128
1. Burge says he will summarize the argument, that 'an individual's ideolect
cannot be understood... without others.'
a. numerous empirical words are nonindexical.
b. they have different translational meanings.
e. our explicational meanings do not fix the referents of
these.
d. our explicational abilities do not fix our translational
meanings.
9
e. our conceptual explications and lexical meanings require
much
correction, to insure their accuracy.
f. we cannot do this correction for our cognitive relations to referents
is fallable.
g. so, others are in a better position to do this for they
have better
access to the referent.
1. for, we all speak of same stuff.
2. and other have access we do not.
h. since translational meaning is dependent upon referent,
since others get to the referent, if others told you
and
about
different
referents, you would have different translational meanings.
Note: Burge makes a rather odd extention in a footnote.
view.
It seems to bely his
He says that from difference in referent, you get difference in concept.
But, he says, the difference first might just be in communal standards or
access.
Then, you might also have different concepts.
Note: The reason that this is odd is that it goes against the object fixing
concept idea.
The idea that the extension makes a difference is no more.
I think that perhaps this was a bit of a slip.
129
1. Burge says this argument makes it plausible that 'people share
translational meanings,' and this 'regardless of their beliefs about the world.'
2. The applicable concepts like shoe, fish, house, etc are fixed by.
a. experienced references, others references, and/or
produced by evolution of species.
b. rudamentally conceptualizations of said examples.
10
references
c. preconceptual perceptual abilities, and kind forming
assume this would include visual processes,
abilities.
I
etc.
3. Burge notes that, thus, there is an element of meaning which is shared.
Translational meaning.
Thus surely is not narrow however.
130
1. The two senses of social, thus, are:
a. people defer to others in explanation
b.
individuation
of
concepts
is
access.
11
often
dependent
upon
others