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Good to see you back, Shona.
Of course, as far as I am aware, it was this paradox (or one akin to it: "The set of all sets that are not members of themselves") that caused Russell and Whitehead to give up on their Principia. Also was probably what set Godel off on his Incompleteness Theorem - one of the most important epistemological results of this century (probably equal first with Heisenberg and Uncertainty). So all hail the humble paradox!
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>All rules have exceptions, including this one.
OK, please supply an example of an exception to the above stated rule.Brilliant, Max! How about: All generalisations are meaningless.Is that a higher level paradox?  What interests me is that the above statement is, as far as I'm concerned, true, meaningful and useful. I think the same applies to many paradoxes, including mav's original. Keeping true to this thread, many 'meaningless' words are similarly meaningful enough when used in context. So, contentious statements for the day: 1. Meaning has almost nothing at all to do with logic.
2. On occasion, meaning has very little to do with Dictionary definitions.
Just some moderate personal opinions.  Post-modernish Fish
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Hi Fishus, pedalling full speed ahead again ! As long as you admit that the meaning of meaning includes at least an intent to communicate, you can't avoid a certain amount of generalization: A word has to mean the same thing to at least two persons, even though their experience is necessarily different (raspberries include green and red ones). There is no communication without generalization, to paraphrase a famous '68 slogan .
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John Searle (one of America's many big gun philosophers of mind today) claims that it's all down to the difference between syntax and semantics (yay, back on the linguistic track again).
His contention (controversial, and certainly not one I agree with), is that computers, for instance, can replicate the syntax of human interaction, but can not be claimed to 'know' (oh my word, the cross references are thrilling - would this be connaitre, savoir or comprendre?), the meaning (semantics) of what they do. His Chinese Room thought experiment is one of the most famous of the last 25 years or so.
The problem that this gives one (and now we're back to philosophy, language be darned) is that of dualism all over again. If the 'mind', 'consciousness' or 'meaning' are not mechanical, then whence do they come? Searle claims they are mechanical but different from anything we are able to model ("It's life, Jim, but not as we know it"), because we will never, using the empirical third person reference pojnt, be able to investigate meaning, which requires a first person reference point.
And of course, Jerry Fodor believes we will never know what it is like to be a bat. Daniel Dennett believes he has 'Quined qualia', and Hilary Putnam believes something else altogether...
cheer
the sunshine warrior
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All rules have exceptions, including this one.
OK, please supply an example of an exception to the above stated rule.
Itself.
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(raspberries include green and red ones).... and shanks, the references go on - we're back to cockney rhyming slang here! (Raspberry tart) Glad to see my little philosophical fish has got the bicycles in gear...
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(raspberries include green and red ones).
... and shanks, the references go on - we're back to cockney rhyming slang here! (Raspberry tart)
Green heart? Perhaps we're talking of Hearts of Oak here?
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computers, for instance, can replicate the syntax of human interaction, but can not be claimed to 'know' the meaning (semantics) of what they doHi again shanks, You'll have to send me references to Chinese Rooms, bats, Dennetts etc privately, I think! But regarding the above statement, I'd probably subscribe to something like the Turing Test viewpoint: Does it matter? How can we ever really be certain anyone shares 'meanings'? To which the answer probably has to be another raspberry. (thanks for the rhyming slang reference, mav - but why don't we blow "treacles"??)I'd also say that any sharp division between form and content, or in this case syntax and semantics, is almost definitely an artificial one. We may be back to mav's Keats reference: "Beauty is Truth"! http://wordsmith.org/board/showthreaded.pl?Board=miscellany&Number=7585P.S. for those who are wondering, the Turing Test involves a person conversing with both another person and a computer by typewritten means (such as this Board  ). If the tester can't tell the computer and human apart, the computer may be called "intelligent", at least as far as the tester is concerned. For the moment, anyway.
Sort of.
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There is no communication without generalizationCertainly agree with that one, wsieb. Double-edged sword, though, as all generalisations throw the (individual) baby out with the bath-water!  P.S. Flatmoders - I'm not talking to myself, honest..
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whew! turing away from all this philosophical gas for a mim, and returing to the barber: forget the pronoun and give the barber a name, say Figaro. Figaro shaves all those in the village who don't shave themselves.
so Figaro shaves Pedro, et al; and he shaves Figaro, one way or another. not shaving would be a poor business decision.
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