From: Stevan Harnad (harnad@ecs.soton.ac.uk)
Date: Wed Sep 18 2002 - 19:57:43 BST
On Wed, 18 Sep 2002, Srinandan Dasmahapatra wrote:
> On Tue, 17 Sep 2002, Stevan Harnad wrote:
>
> > > > I'm not yet talking, particularly, about whether "This is snow" or "Snow
> > > > is white" are true. I'm just talking about what they mean. And what they
> > > > mean "intrinsically" (or autonomously, or in and of and to themselves,
> > > > rather than to the mind of an external interpreter like us).
>
> I know what snow means if I see snow and I can point to it and truthfully
> say "this is snow" -- that is why truth comes into meaning. Or I can
> imagine a lump of snow and do the same. If I saw an eggshell and said in
> all sincerity that that was snow, I would be saying something "false" (as
> deemed by the linguistically savvy community) and it would probably
> indicate that I did not know what "snow" meant.
Ah me! We risk getting into "wide" vs. "narrow" meaning and worries
about what "know" means if we insist on that!
I leave both "truth" and "knowing" to the metaphysicians. The following
is good enough for me:
I believe-I-know what "X" means when it feels as if I know what X means,
when it seems I can pick out X's and non-X's, and when neither the world
of objects nor other speakers error-corrects me.
And that's a good enough approximation for me (and for my category
learning models, and for my symbol-grounding models, and for T3).
And I never had to commit myself to any metaphysics other than naive
realism.
Cheers, Stevan
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