Abel ch. 7 questions

Abel: Man is the Measure
Ch. 7: Meaning & Naming

1. How do Mill and Frege disagree with Russell about grammatical sentences and meaning?
Mill and Frege think that "the meaning of a sentence ought to depend only on the meaning of the words that constitute it"(64) whereas Russell thinks that there can be grammatical/"meaningful" sentences without meaning.

2. Abel provides 8 distinguishing features of meaning. Please provide your own example for each.
1. Indication: "Your fever means you have the flu."
2. Cause: "What does this bite out of the cake mean?"
3. Effect: "This means no dessert for you!"
4. Intention: "I meant to show you how much I love you."
5. Explanation: "What does the song mean when it says 'I am a walrus'?"
6. Purpose: "She meant to capture his attention when she dropped her pencil."
7. Implication: "If I get a C, that means I can't go the game tomorrow."
8. Significance: "Did her apology even mean anything?"

3. Why does Abel believe that science and metaphysics is involved in the discussion of linguistic meaning?
He says that not only language and logic are needed for decision, but science and metaphysics also because "We can talk meaningfully about the world only if we take into account what the world is like"(65) because certain sentences, even though grammatically correct (noun, verb, object or whatever rules apply) don't make sense or have no real meaning to our brains because they do not correspond with the way the world really is; Abel uses the example of saying that the clam, the flower, or the rock have hopes for a life after death is meaningless to us vs. a Priest having hopes for the afterlife, since that follows the rules of science (humans can think and hope, but not a rock).

4. Aristotle provided 10 categories that defined “the range of applicability of a term.”(p. 65). Please provide your own example for each.
1. Substance: "My mother is a woman."
2. Quantity: "She is 5'2"."
3. Quality: "She is very kind."
4. Relation: "She is the daughter of Alice."
5. Place: "She is in her room."
6. Action: "She is there at 5:00."
7. Action: "She is typing."
8. Passion: "She is being summoned."
9. Situation or Position: "She is sitting down in the chair."
10. State or Condition: "She is thirsty."

5. How does Abel differentiate between Reference and Naming?
Abel says "Reference is how language bites on to the world" whereas "Naming is the direct application of a word to a thing."(66). Abel says "nothing stands between a thing and its name"(67); naming is the most elementary way in which to refer, and cannot be reduced to, or explained by, a simpler activity. Reference is less specific and is "what the words point to, or designate"(67).

6. On page 66, Abel explains the historical significance of naming. Can you think of any examples he left out? Is there any contemporary example of which Abel would not be aware?
Besides the biblical renaming of Abraham and Sarah by God, and the general tendency of humans to leave out a name when trying to make another human/pet, etc. seem cruel or worthless ("the dumb DOG" instead of "stupid Sam"), I can't really think of anymore examples. A more modern example would be when Clinton said "I did not have sexual relations with THAT WOMAN", trying to separate himself from her by leaving her nameless.

7. What is the main function of naming? What doesn’t it do?
The main function of naming is to point something out without describing it; Abel says on p. 67: "A name identifies; it is a tag...; it does not describe."

8. What is the difference between sense and reference?
Reference is more of a targeted meaning, "what the words point to or designate"... there has to be something to point to, which is why the description "the heavenly body farthest from the earth", which we do not KNOW, has no known reference but has sense (which always has the same meaning, but not really; i.e. "I, here" which we KNOW what they mean, the "meaning" just varies depending on the speaker...)

9. How does Abel differentiate between Connotation and Denotation? What about Intension and Extension?
Abel describes Connotation as what anything would have to be to be that word/thing (i.e. "bachelor"= adult unmarried man) whereas Denotation is "all the actual persons you can so designate" (i.e. Jim down the street). Abel differentiates between Intension and Extension in a similar way; He defines Intension as the definition or "what you have in mind" by the term, whereas the Extension "is all the actual bachelors in the world."(68)

10. What does Abel mean when he says: “Though meanings require words, they are not identical to words.” (p. 68)?
He means that even though we usually need to SAY something (at least when talking about language) to get meaning across, and what we say does communicate meaning, what we mean might not be the exact same as what we say (based on the way we say it, the way our sentences are structured, our word choice, etc.) or our words can communicate more/less than what we intended with our words.

11. What is the connection between names and descriptions? Do you agree with Abel that we use ‘linguistic symbols to organize experience” (p. 69)?
Abel says on p. 69: "Naming and describing may overlap when one uses a name as a description... or a description as a name." We can use certain known people's names to describe another person such as "another Stalin" or "another Hitler", and we can sometimes use descriptions as names such as "King of kings" etc.
I do agree with Abel that we use "linguistic symbols to organize experience" because when we experience something in life, we like to be able to organize it in our minds and others' with words, to communicate it with a linguistic symbol which on its own has no real meaning and is just marks on a paper, but when combined with the connotation of the human experience (which could also be seen as meaningless until given a name/'linguistic symbol'), is something meaningful that we and other humans can comprehend.

12. Why is referential opacity a problem? Be sure to mention his specific examples.
Referential Opacity is a problem because even though 2 names/2 descriptions may refer to the same particular thing, there are certain linguistic contexts in which you cannot substitute one for the other, so it gets confusing when you try to use Name (or description) A which means the same thing as Name B but Name A does not make sense here. Abel uses the example of how even though Samuel Clemens and Mark Twain are the same person, you cannot say "Mark Twain adopted the pen name 'Mark Twain' to conceal his identity." Abel also points out that even though "The number of stated in the United States is fifty" and "Fifty is necessarily less than fifty-one", you cannot say "The number of states in the United States is necessarily less than fifty-one."

13. What is the problem of creating a “subsistent entity”? (p. 70)
If you deny the existence of something, then there had to be something to refer to, (how could we think of it if there were not?) so does it exist or not? Does something have to have a denotation in order for it to have a connotation? Luckily, Russel distinguished between descriptive phrases and names and established that descriptive phrases can be without denotations , for example "The golden mountain."

14. How does Russell differentiate between “descriptive phrases and names” (p.70)?
Russel says that descriptive phrases are different than names because they can have no denotation; Abel adds that "You must have direct acquaintance with something in order to pin a name on it"(71).

15. What is the connection between language and Knowledge by Acquaintance and Knowledge by Description?
Both Knowledge by Acquaintance and Knowledge by Description contribute to the formation of language; knowledge by acquaintance leads to naming (i.e. Adam naming all the animals he saw) and knowledge by description leads, obviously, to descriptive phrases with which to describe and communicate objects, occurrences, etc.

16. What is a word? What is an icon? What is an index?
A word is a device by which one thing can signify something else; it is a conventional symbol used for the purpose of reference. An icon refers to something by "looking a little like it", such as a photograph or a road map. "The index is casually connected with what it refers to", such as smoke is an index of fire, and footprints the index of an animal.

17. Why is it important for philosophers to “clarify thought by clarifying language”? Why are Scientists "offenders” (p. 72)?
It is important for philosophers to do that because if they use ambiguous language, noone knows what they are talking about or what they mean by such phrases as "Being and nothing are one and the same".
Abel says scientists are also "offenders" because they use phrases like "absolute space", "racial unconscious", and "the group mind" which "have no clear denotation or extension; no way appears whereby to correlate them unambiguously with what can be observed."(72)

18. What does Abel mean when he says “Just as meanings are not the same things as words, so meanings are not the same things as operations or methods or uses” (p. 73)?
He means that MEANING is hard to be discerned because just like words can have no/different meaning than intended, there is not a sure way to secure something's meaning through describing its uses or how you arrive at it (operations and/or methods). It is similar to the problems of justifying knowledge (authority can be corrupt, memory and senses can fail us, etc.) in that all of them have certain issues in certain cases. And, life defies our phrases; how can you pinpoint certain meaning of words through simply operations or methods or...anything?