Another interesting permutation of this is the Gene Ontology database. “High-throughput” assays in molecular biology now often result in lists of hundreds or thousands of genes. How do we tell what the common themes are within a list? We need computerized databases to keep track of them all, and yet gene products are typically described in a qualitative way: it’s expressed in these tissues, the product is in complexes with these other gene products, it’s necessary for these biological processes. Scientists will naturally use different words for these qualitative phenomenon. But to query a computerized database, they need to use a fixed ontology.

But this only works because we know what each other’s beliefs ARE.

Whether and how to show that “common meanings” in that sense are more or less common, I don’t know, and so I think it may be difficult to convincingly forward that argument. A semi-rigorous survey of some of this would be kind of fascinating, though.

And I think that in many cases it would have to be looked at regardless as a matter of degree of shared meaning — so that when you and I disagree over what “democracy” or “free will” or “morality” means, it makes more sense to talk about our respective definitions in terms of say a Venn Diagram of subdefinitions than to reduce it to a question of whether the two definitions perfectly overlap.

Is a 75% agreement in what “democracy” covers sufficient to say we have a functionally common definition, even if we disagree on fine points? 95%? Does it depend on the word?

If 90% of the population managed 75% concensus on the definition, is it fair at that point to say that there is, in fact, a common meaning even if nobody agrees 100% on the details and small minority of individuals will reject the common territory of the definition significantly or entirely?

Nice post, Josh. But I think these people are falling prey to an illusion. My contention isn’t only that there are no fixed meanings; it’s that there are fewer common meanings than people think — and that they don’t really have rigorous ways for figuring out common meanings, even if they do exist.

I do think nouns that point to simple objects have common meanings. I’m not arguing that when Bob says “dog,” he’s as likely to mean “a one-wheeled bicycle” as he is “a four-legged mammal.” (Although, he probably has a very specific image in mind, which is different from your image or my image. Maybe to Bob, a generic dog is a collie. Maybe to me it’s a pug. But those differences are subtle enough that they rarely become apparent in conversation. We don’t need to have exactly the same image in mind to get the main point of “remember to feed the dog.”)

But people rarely argue about simple nouns. They argue about “democracy” or “sexuality” or “free will.” People seem sure that everyone agrees on definitions, and — in fact — they argue based on this belief. When they argue about “free will,” they’re usually arguing about whether or not it exists. They make the assumption that we all agree on what it is, just not whether or not it exists*. In my experience, if someone says, “Before we discuss this, can we agree on a working definition,” people get frustrated really quickly.

My theory is that people hold wildly different and personal definitions for abstract, complex words. And so many arguments are not really about apples — they’re about apples and oranges.

* I hold the minority view that free will doesn’t exist, so I’ve had many arguments and discussions about this topic. Over and over, a hour into the discussion, I suddenly realize that some of the participants aren’t even talking about the same thing I am. It’s amazing how long you can discuss a topic without realizing this.

“Okay. First, assume that everyone has the same desires and experiences as you. Therefore if they disagree with you they must be stupid.”

Therefore, every definition they know is the consensus definition. The people who disagree must be stupid.

On the other hand, the lack of some unambigious single authority on standard usage (a lack that I agree with you exists) doesn’t really much undercut the general idea that standard usage and standard (intra-culture, intra-region) meanings for words are a pretty basic idea.

So it may be that when you’re having these arguments with Someone and can’t believe their asserting that X Just Means Y, Period, they’re standing on the other side of the fence there arguing with someone who seems to think that X Doesn’t Mean Y, even though it’s a common and standard and referenceable definition — and in their exasperation at your insistence on the point, they’re overstating the case.

I’m not really thinking of the folks who defend the idea of a fixed meaning in terms of La La La Energy Fields, mind you.

So I think there’s two different things going on:

1. Someone might find your willful, earnest defense of your claim to a non-standard definition of a word troubling enough that they defend the idea of the standard definition equally willfully and earnestly.
2. Someone might make really poor arguments for why X Just Means Y.
3. Someone might just actually think that words have inherent, fixed meaning.

There’s no reason that Someone can’t be doing either just one of those three, or a mix of two or even all three of ‘em. That the folks in (3) are (in my opinion as an armchair linguistics fanboy) completely deluded might lead me to conflate Someone who is actually in camp (1) + (2) as being being in camp (3), which could easily short-circuit my desire to have a rational discussion with them.