What is speech?

Somebody please help...

I can't get my head around these ideas of speech:

What is a word?
Do words really have meaning?
What would our thoughts be like without words?
Can a word really have the same meaning between any two people and how can we know this without using words?
Do words limit us more than help us if they are infintely ambigous?

Any point in the right direction would be greatly appreciated!

If words did not have meaning, then communication between two people would be impossible, and so would thinking. Words exist in language, and language implies people who use it.

It doesn't seem to be the case that words must have the exact same meaning for each of us, since words have many levels of meaning. One such level is the personal experience attached to them; another is the general meaning that is shared by anyone in a position to understand the word. One could also point to an extremely technical use of the world shared by a limited group of people. Words to not have to have one function or one meaning; most words have all sorts of connotative meanings and all sorts of very particular ways in which they are used.

Universals are certainly words with the most ambiguous meanings and are almost without any particular content, yet they play a major part in our rational thinking.

Chair.

This (pointing to an object) is a chair. NOW it has content.

That was what I was getting at in discussing universals.

Somebody please help...

I can't get my head around these ideas of speech:

What is a word?
Do words really have meaning?
What would our thoughts be like without words?
Can a word really have the same meaning between any two people and how can we know this without using words?
Do words limit us more than help us if they are infintely ambigous?

Any point in the right direction would be greatly appreciated!

This is great progress! But unfortunately friends your answers are very much the same that i have been troubling over.

Now a word seems to be simply a sound made by the vocal cords. Can a sound have meaning? Or does the meaning remain in my mind. Also wouldnt the meaning be the same despite any sound i make? I can call a dog a dog but if i thought the word for a "dog" was "cat" (i know this would be unusual) then the meaning seems to be the same despite what i call it. However the meaning you interperate from the word can be quite different. How can we be sure that we both associate the same meaning with sounds (words) we make? Is this impossible?

When people communicate what is really taking place? I know we exchange words but isn't this simply making noises to each other and then assuming a meaning for those noises? Does this assumption become more and more inaccuate as the meaning of the words become more complex. If i told someone i saw a dog then would they really know what i mean? how big is this dog? what color? There a many kinds of dogs and it seems no two dogs are excactly the same. I know this doesnt really matter if they dont quite picture the same dog i mean but when it comes to asking someone what is truth then it seems an enormous task to even understand what that person means by truth. How can we even come close? wouldn't this take hours of disscusion to assume that we both understand the word or sound truth to be the same thing? What about asking someone the meaning of God? This would be harder again between two people. What seems even more impossible is getting millions of people to understand the word or sound God to be the same thing!! Exspecially if God is meant to be immaterial and timeless. How do you picture this? Can you picture this? Does anyone actually believe God to be the same thing or are there just millions of kinds of Gods?

Also if you can't picture what God IS only what God is NOT then doesn't anyone's belief in God become believing what God isnt?? Does it matter if we all believe in slightly different Gods? If someone believes God to be good but there interperation of good is not the same as many other people's interpertation of good then doesn't it become irrelevant that they believe in God? If you can't answer clearly and concisely what God is and still claim to believe in God then doesn't this become the same as not quite knowing what you believe in? It seems we need to know how to use words properly to even become close.

Any thoughts?

In other words ostensive definitions like, 'this is an "X"' are ambiguous, since the person need not know to what you are referring with the demonstrative pronoun, "this", or even when you point. For you might be pointing to the color, or the material, or a host of other things too. Therefore, it is not at all clear what content the term has.

But it's clearly not ambiguous if the person to whom you're speaking to understands what a "chair" is. When I point to a chair and say, "This is a chair", one shouldn't think I'm speaking about anything else but the object that is, a chair. Why would anyone think I'm pointing to the color, material, or a host of other things, if they knew what a chair was? It seems to me they would understand that what I'm referring to is the object that we call a chair. Unless, of course, there's another descriptive definition for the word "chair" which I'm not aware of (for instance, if there is a color called "chair").

Perhaps if I were speaking to someone not well-versed in the English language, and I pointed to a chair and said, "This is a chair", I would understand if they didn't understand what I meant by "chair" (in this case they wouldn't know if I was referring to the color, material, or a host of other things).

Someone had to write a dictionary though. How can anyone be certain that a word in the dictionary means the same to them as what it means to the person/s who worte it?

I can certainly undertand that a word is a sound with meaning. It is clear now that a sound without meaning is not a word. But when i make a sound with a meaning attatched to it how does anyone know for sure what that meaning is apart from guessing? If I wasn't sure of the meaning of a word then i could look in a dictionary. But a dictionary has more words in it! Written by more people! are these people that write dictionarys gifted with the skill of universally understanding the sounds people make and the meanings they attatch to them? Or is a dictionary a collection of words and a largely agreed upon assumption of what they mean? I look up God in the dictionary and it says " The supreme being, creator and ruler of the universe, concieved as eternal, omniscient, good and almighty."

This doesn't help one bit because i need to know what each of these words mean. i could look up each word but then im faced with more. Even after this painstaking proccess (which i have tried) i still come to the conclusion that these words are written on paper by someone or many people. Where did they find the meanings of the words the wrote down if it wasn't from a dictionary?

It makes sense that the way people use words is more important than the word itself. This is a problem when someone uses a word in the wrong way though. What i guess im looking for is an answer to can we establish an infinte meaning of a word? Will God ever be a God we all understand to be the same thing? Can we achieve common understandings that are the same between people or will we never know for sure? If we cant using words is there another form of communication more effective? Is this something only possible between philsophers? if so shouldnt the people with most power over society be those most qualified in philsophy? Like Plato suggested with having a Philospher King.

But it's clearly not ambiguous if the person to whom you're speaking to understands what a "chair" is. When I point to a chair and say, "This is a chair", one shouldn't think I'm speaking about anything else but the object that is, a chair. Why would anyone think I'm pointing to the color, material, or a host of other things, if they knew what a chair was? It seems to me they would understand that what I'm referring to is the object that we call a chair. Unless, of course, there's another descriptive definition for the word "chair" which I'm not aware of (for instance, if there is a color called "chair").

Perhaps if I were speaking to someone not well-versed in the English language, and I pointed to a chair and said, "This is a chair", I would understand if they didn't understand what I meant by "chair" (in this case they wouldn't know if I was referring to the color, material, or a host of other things).

It doesn't matter what a word mean for anyone. What the dictionary records (as I said) is how the word is used by the fluent speakers of the language (English in this case). And the data consist in many example of the use of the term in books, magazines, speeches, etc. The editors of the dictionary (a committee of them) then collate the data, and then extract from the collations the meaning (or meanings) of the term. It has nothing to do with what the personal association the the word happen to be, since those are not a part of the objective public meaning of the word.

But you can't point at God? Or truth or goodness. You can see these things or sense them in any way.

But you can't point at God? Or truth or goodness. You can see these things or sense them in any way.

---------- Post added 10-18-2009 at 02:14 PM ----------



Right this is beggining to make more sense.

So would it be correct to say a word doesnt have a single meaning but a widely accepted use of it?

That's true. But what has that to do with it? The term "God" has a certain use among English speakers. You can look that use up in the dictionary. The same for "truth". How fluent English speakers use the terms, "God" or "truth" is what those words mean. Just as in the case of "table" or "although".

It's becoming more evident that the meanings words have are determined by the way fluent speakers of that language use them. We should use words based on what they mean to many not to oneself?

So if the meaning of the word exist as written in the "Websters Concise Dictionary of the English language" is " to have actual being or reality or to continue to live or be or to be present" means that God does not exist. Despite any personal meaning i have of the word exist it doesn't change the fact that God does not exist as defined by the dictionary.

Why would that definition (which I don't think is in the dictionary) imply that God does not exist? If it did, it would not be a proper definition, since it is not true that fluent speakers of the language use the word, "God" so that it implies that God does not exist. A proper definition of God would have to be neutral as to whether God exists or not.
And, as a matter of fact, no definition of any term can imply that what that term refers to does not exist. For instance, the meaning of the term, "mermaid" cannot imply that there are no mermaids.

No the meaning of existence would have to determine whether Mermaids exist.

It seems i must buy myself a new dictionary as this one is giving me false definitions. If say i do search other dictionarys and find similar definitions how do i know which one is the correct one? I am curious as to what these words that i hear day in and out actually mean. Also how am i to know how fluent speakers use words? I don't have the resources to ask enough fluent speakers of the English langauge how they use words to come to an accurate conclusion.

The term, "mermaid" means something like "a woman with the lower torso of a fish". And what is means to say that, mermaids exist, is that there is something that is a woman with the lower torso of a fish. And, since that is not true, mermaids do not exist. To say that X exists is to say that a certain concept (definition) refers to something. And to say that X does not exist is to say that a certain concept (definition) does not refer to anything. So, for instance, to say that God exists, is to say that the concept of an omnipotent, omniscient, all good being, has a referent. And to say that God does not exist is to say that the concept of an omnipotent, omniscient, all good being, fails to refer to anything.