because lots of people regularly utter all kinds of sentences whose propositional content is deeply unclear.
So, suppose a pair of construction workers, Bob and Jill.
Bob: Jill, pass me that hammer.
Jill: Which one?
Bob: The one I want has a black handle.
Jill: I see it, here you are.
Let’s posit that Bob could not taboo or define ‘has’. Jill could not taboo or define ‘are’. I think most people couldn’t, but we might disagree on that. I think they are likely to have trouble with ‘that’, ‘one’, ‘want’, ‘see’ and ‘it’.
Are you saying that the propositional contents of Bob and Jill’s utterances are deeply unclear, despite the fact that their conversation goes off without a hitch, and Bob gets the hammer he wants?
I am saying that my confidence in the clarity of the propositional contents of Bob and Jill’s utterances (to me, to Bob, to Jill, etc.) does not rest solely on the fact that Bob gets the hammer he wants. (Supposing that Bob in fact got the hammer he wanted.) Specifically, it also depends on a bunch of other things that I can roughly summarize as “imagining myself in Bob’s position and thinking about what I would mean by Bob’s utterances and what I would understand by Jill’s, and similarly imagining myself in Jill’s position”.
Still less does it depend on the fact that Bob and Jill feel content with the interaction (which they might even if Bob didn’t get the hammer he wanted, but instead got some other hammer that solves his problem… or if Bob didn’t really give a damn about the hammer, he just wanted to interact with Jill… or if various other contentment-producing pragmatic utterance-evaluation frames were in play).
So, to be clear, you’re not saying that being able to define or taboo the words you’re using (or hearing) in a given sentence is a necessary condition on having a perfectly clear understanding of the propositional content of that sentence. Is that right?
I’m saying that my inability to ‘define’ (for a particular understanding of defining, closer to the LW usage of “taboo” than, say, what a dictionary does) a word in a sentence is strong evidence that I lack a perfectly clear understanding of the propositional content of that sentence.
I might nevertheless be confident in my propositional (or other) understanding of that sentence, if I had significant enough alternative sources of evidence of that understanding.
So, agreed, the ability to define/taboo the words isn’t a necessary condition, it’s a source of significant evidence.
I see. I think we disagree on the contexts in which it is significant evidence against understanding the propositional content of that sentence. For example, I think being unable to taboo ‘utility function’ probably means one doesn’t understand it and that one’s use of it in sentences is confused. This is probably true of all philosophical or scientific terms of art. I don’t think this is true of ‘should’, or what you might call more everyday language. And I’m inclined to say that the tabooing or defining of such everyday language almost always does more harm than good. But thats a matter of details.
So, suppose a pair of construction workers, Bob and Jill.
Bob: Jill, pass me that hammer. Jill: Which one? Bob: The one I want has a black handle. Jill: I see it, here you are.
Let’s posit that Bob could not taboo or define ‘has’. Jill could not taboo or define ‘are’. I think most people couldn’t, but we might disagree on that. I think they are likely to have trouble with ‘that’, ‘one’, ‘want’, ‘see’ and ‘it’.
Are you saying that the propositional contents of Bob and Jill’s utterances are deeply unclear, despite the fact that their conversation goes off without a hitch, and Bob gets the hammer he wants?
No, I’m not saying that.
I am saying that my confidence in the clarity of the propositional contents of Bob and Jill’s utterances (to me, to Bob, to Jill, etc.) does not rest solely on the fact that Bob gets the hammer he wants. (Supposing that Bob in fact got the hammer he wanted.) Specifically, it also depends on a bunch of other things that I can roughly summarize as “imagining myself in Bob’s position and thinking about what I would mean by Bob’s utterances and what I would understand by Jill’s, and similarly imagining myself in Jill’s position”.
Still less does it depend on the fact that Bob and Jill feel content with the interaction (which they might even if Bob didn’t get the hammer he wanted, but instead got some other hammer that solves his problem… or if Bob didn’t really give a damn about the hammer, he just wanted to interact with Jill… or if various other contentment-producing pragmatic utterance-evaluation frames were in play).
So, to be clear, you’re not saying that being able to define or taboo the words you’re using (or hearing) in a given sentence is a necessary condition on having a perfectly clear understanding of the propositional content of that sentence. Is that right?
I’m saying that my inability to ‘define’ (for a particular understanding of defining, closer to the LW usage of “taboo” than, say, what a dictionary does) a word in a sentence is strong evidence that I lack a perfectly clear understanding of the propositional content of that sentence.
I might nevertheless be confident in my propositional (or other) understanding of that sentence, if I had significant enough alternative sources of evidence of that understanding.
So, agreed, the ability to define/taboo the words isn’t a necessary condition, it’s a source of significant evidence.
I see. I think we disagree on the contexts in which it is significant evidence against understanding the propositional content of that sentence. For example, I think being unable to taboo ‘utility function’ probably means one doesn’t understand it and that one’s use of it in sentences is confused. This is probably true of all philosophical or scientific terms of art. I don’t think this is true of ‘should’, or what you might call more everyday language. And I’m inclined to say that the tabooing or defining of such everyday language almost always does more harm than good. But thats a matter of details.
I share your understanding of our disagreement.