Words without meaning by Christopher Gauker

"According to the received view of linguistic communication, the primary function of language is to enable speakers to reveal the propositional contents of their thoughts to hearers. Speakers are able to do this because they share with their hearers an understanding of the meanings of words. Christopher Gauker rejects this conception of language, arguing that it rests on an untenable conception of mental representation and yields a wrong account of the norms of discourse".


Has anyone read this book? I've always found it difficult to agree that if you say something even if it is embedded (for example) the unconcious will automatically decipher the meaning and thus influence you. Doesn't that assume action where none may be taken? Also it assumes common understanding of words/phrases and meaning.

What do you think??

Sometimes embedded suggestions will work, sometimes not. You would just have to calibrate when they are working.

I think most of us (especially people not trained in NLP) do a lot of inadvertent embedded suggesting, where the words we use may have different associations for the listener than the ones intended.

Frivolous examples from the NLP world include the American 'Bored Of' NLP (to be fair, when this started up, 'bored of' was an unknown construction and everyone would have said what to my ancient ear is the correct version 'bored with') and indeed the organisation I'm accredited by (I say this just to make clear I'm not having a pop at them) the 'Anal Pee'.

I haven't read Gauker's book and to be honest the promotional blurb is not making it leap off the shelf at me! For a fun example of embedded suggestions working have a look at this Derren Brown video: http://video.stumbleupon.com/#p=07si472jny

Hi Keri & Andy,

Great topic, great questions, great reply.

I have not read Gauker's book. But based on more of the description of his book from his website...

Words without Meaning contains original solutions to a wide array of outstanding problems in the philosophy of language, including the logic of quantification, the logic of conditionals, the semantic paradoxes, the nature of presupposition and implicature, and the nature and attribution of beliefs.

...methinks Christopher Gauker is over-reliant on conscious processes & responses to language, where some of his thinking may very well be useful to us. Also I think he doesn't have enough faith in our ability to unconsciously respond to language cues. (as I haven't been exposed to this guy before, and I well know I'm making some assumptions from a quick read of just some website copy, I also know I could well be wrong).

As to unconscious responses to language, the Derren Brown video is an excellent example of such.

Another would be the classic "analog marking" example from NLP books (Scratch-Nose-Handy-Uplifting-To-Face...). If you deliver something like that example effectively to a room with 50 people untrained in NLP, a significant-enough percentage will scratch their noses or chin or ear or hair within 30 seconds, & more will follow over a minute or two.

Best regards,

- Jonathan Altfeld

And so will some of us when we read about it - dammit!

Every time I read about it, my nose gets itchy....

Some people get itchy if you mention fleas....

I have a German friend who speaks perfect English and we are constantly misunderstanding meanings of what we are saying to each other in conversation.Oh,and I speak English also.
So there ya go.I think you're RIGHT Keri.
Regards,Anna

Just a thought...

Semantics vs. Pragmatics? Or semantics AND pragmatics?
Conscious vs. Unconscious processing of language? Or conscious AND unconscious processing of language?

Speakers are able to do this because they share with their hearers an understanding of the meanings of words. Christopher Gauker rejects this conception of language...snip

So basically he thinks we do not share an understanding of the meaning of words? So every person has a personalized meaning for each word? What does he mean? When I say cat someone else is understanding chair? Maybe it is as simple as words having a general shared meaning and each person giving each one a particular twist according to the context in which words are used.

Oh well why bother if no one shares the same meaning for the words I use. ;-)

Have fun exploring
Gabe

Isolated words do not contain full meanings, they seem to operate more like anchors... proper meanings are constructed based on the entire context, etc... (See Sleight of Mouth description on Dilt's book or site).

But this thread could lead us to other discussion: so called Thought Viruses or Meaningless Words. The definition of them may be that the 'noises' they do when read aloud have no links to any valid sensory based reference experiences. Dilts and Hall are granular on this.

Outside NLP aspect: it is interesting that ealry Ayn Rand wrote about the lack of meaning carried by language embedding contraditions.

I cannot reach for the book (I am onthe road) but trying to quote from memory, the paragraph would be close to:

Any thought or collection of thoughts that contains a contradiction as a cognitive assertion, invalidates the entire chain. In this sense logical collapse appears to be simlar to the collapseed anchor process, where out of clashing states some new chaos is born, which needs to be given a new meaning if it is to stay useful...

Jurek, I'm interested in what you're saying and i wanted to make sure that i'm understanding you.

You're suggesting that some sort of paradox in one's thinking will break the entire (worldview? logical structure?) into chaos, and a new structure will need to be created to provide a higher order that embraces said paradox??

As for the original topic, I'm not sure if i understand the exact sentiment of the writer, but it sounds as if he's expressing a lot of doubt that "my semantic meaning might not match yours".. which, in my experience, is usually a tremendous distortion that comes out of studying too much goddamn semantics.

as people in the same culture (and often sub-culture) I dont think that our meanings are really all that different, and if there is a difference, some major dissonance is going to become apparent pretty quickly, because of the process Jurek mentions at the beginning of his post. I also have absolute confidence as an intelligent person to understand another person's worldview and give it room.. given time, of course.. and speaking of which --

perhaps i'm misunderstanding the subject... i've got a vague feeling that i'm not QUITE on the same page with this one..

Why don't you have a look at "Thought Viruses" article in the NLP resource put together by Dilts and DeLozier, you coud find by clicking the following link:

T

PS. have a tee of cofee redy before you start, the whole book is worth examining.... and it is vaaaast!!!

Enjoy!

ah, cheers. I will take a look..