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DanArmak comments on Is the orthogonality thesis at odds with moral realism? - Less Wrong
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By "mean" I mean (no pun intended) that when people say a word, they use it to refer to a concept they have. This can be a semantic entity, or a physical entity, or a linguistic entity elsewhere in the same sentence, or anything else the speaker has a mental concept of that they can attach the word to, and which they expect the listeners to infer by hearing the word.
To put it another way: people use words to cause the listener to think thoughts which correspond in a certain way to the ones the speaker thinks. The thoughts of the speaker, which they intend to convey to the listener, are what they mean by the words.
Please be patient, I'm out of my depth somewhat. If I say to you "invisible pink unicorn" or "spherical cube", I would characterise myself as not having successfully meant anything, even though, if I'm not paying attention, it feels like I did.
Am I wrong? Am I confusing meaning with reference, or some such? It certainly seems to me that I am in some way failing.
In both examples I understand you to mean two (non-existent in the real world) items with a set of seemingly contradictory characteristics. So you did mean something. Not an object in the real world, but you meant the concept of an object containing contradictory characteristics, and gave examples of what "contradictory characteristics" are.
Indeed that meaning of contradiction is the reason "Invisible Pink Unicorn" is used to parody religion, etc.
Now if someone used the words without understanding that they are contradictory, or even believing the things in question are real -- they'd still have meant something: An item in their model of the world. They'd be wrong that such an item really existed in the outside world, but their words would still have meaning in pinpointing to said item in their mental model.
Hm, thoughts are tricky things, and identity conditions of thoughts are trickier yet. I was just trying to see if you had a better idea of what "mean" might mean than me. But it seems we have to get by with what little we have.
Because I share your intuition that there is something fishy about the referential intention in Eliezer's picture. With terms like water, it's plausible that people intend to refer to "this stuff here" or "this stuff that [complicated description of their experiences with water]". With morality, it seems dubious that they should be intending to refer to "this thing that humans would all want if we were absolutely coherent etc."