Uncritical Semantics Is The Myth Of A

Necessity Resides In The Way We Talk About Things, Not In The Things We Talk About.

... Two Men Could Be Just Alike In All Their Dispositions To Verbal Behavior Under All Possible Sensory Stimulations, And Yet Themeanings Or Ideas Expressed In Their Identically Triggered And Identically Sounding Utterances Could Diverge Radically, For The Two Men, In A Wide Range Of Cases.

Linguistically, And Hence Conceptually, The Things In Sharpest Focus Are The Things That Are Public Enough To Be Talked Of Publicly, Common And Conspicuous Enough To Be Talked Of Often, And Near Enough To Sense To Be Quickly Identified And Learned By Name; It Is To These That Words Apply First And Foremost.

The Strategy Of Semantic Ascent Is That It Carries The Discussion Into A Domain Where Both Parties Are Better Agreed On The Objects (viz., Words) And On The Main Terms Connecting Them. Words, Or Their Inscriptions, Unlike Points, Miles, Classes And The Rest, Are Tangible Objects Of The Size So Popular In The Marketplace, Where Men Of Unlike Conceptual Schemes Communicate At Their Best. The Strategy Is One Of Ascending To A Common Part Of Two Fundamentally Disparate Conceptual Schemes, The Better To Discuss The Disparate Foundations. No Wonder It Helps In Philosophy.

Confusion Of Sign And Object Is Original Sin Coeval With The Word.