Thursday, February 27, 2014

Meaning and Enactment

As has been previously discussed, in at least some circumstances, the Meaning of an Utterance is the enactment of it by its addressee.  Now, that concept of Meaning is not Reference, since unlike a Referent, an Enactment does not exist at the moment of Utterance.  Nor is it a Sense, since unlike the latter, it is specific to the addressee and to the occasion, not general.  Furthermore, it is neither a Purpose, nor a Consequence, since, each of those entails a mechanical causal relation between Utterance and Action.  Finally, it is not the object of an Expression of a speaker's Intention, since, the latter can never be more than an external perspective on the addressee's private experience.  Thus, Enactment is a species of Meaning that is distinct from the varieties prominent in mainstream Philosophy of Language, unfamiliar there due at least in part to a less than thorough examination of actual Communication.

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