Monday, February 24, 2014

Understanding and Meaning

In #2 of the Investigations, the assistant's adequate understanding of the utterances of the builder consist in his knowing what to do upon hearing them.  Now, such knowledge incorporates at least some proprioceptive components, e. g. memories of his having fetched a block.  But, those components are opaque to the builder.  So, insofar as the 'meaning' of a builder's utterance is what the assistant understands by the words, it is not a pre-existing object of such understanding, but is first created in the latter process.  Likewise, more generally, Meaning is not conveyed, by an Utterance, from a speaker, as across a bridge, to an addressee, but originates in the latter.

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