maia comments on [Poll] Less Wrong and Mainstream Philosophy: How Different are We? - Less Wrong

38 Post author: Jayson_Virissimo 26 September 2012 12:25PM

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Comment author: maia 26 September 2012 05:31:32PM 8 points [-]

Other: Seems like a semantic problem about the word "meaning".

Comment author: Wei_Dai 01 October 2012 08:10:02AM *  3 points [-]

Other: Seems like a semantic problem about the word "meaning".

Not really. We can frame the debate between Russellianism and Fregeanism in pragmatic terms: is it useful to model expressions as having or relating to Fregean "senses" (ways of thinking about, objects, properties, and relations) in addition to "intensions" and "extensions"? Note that philosophers of language are already quite aware of the need to avoid purely semantic debates about the word "meaning". As evidence, see this paragraph from the SEP:

Here we face another potentially misleading ambiguity in ‘meaning.’ What is the real meaning of an expression—its character, or its content (in the relevant context)? This is an empty terminological question. Expressions have characters which, given a context, determine a content. We can talk about either character or content, and both are important. Nothing is to be gained by arguing that one rather than the other deserves the title of ‘meaning.’ The important thing is to be clear on the distinction, and to see the reasons for thinking that expressions have both a character and (relative to a context) a content.