He compares the meaning of words to the value of currency. Words that fall out of use can no longer be used meaningfully in conversation just like coins belonging to a currency no longer in use. This comparison underscores a point that he credits to Putnam: that we are able to use language meaningfully in part because we belong to a community of language users, including those who, perhaps unlike us, know how to apply the terms correctly. For example, says Noe, he can speak meaningfully about the difference between two kinds of trees (elms vs. oaks) even though he himself cannot distinguish one from the other.
Here is a summary and comments on the essay Freedom and Resentment by PF Strawson. He makes some great points, and when he is wrong, it is in such a way as to clarify things a great deal. My non-deterministic position is much better thanks to having read this. I’ll summarize it in this post and respond in a later one. In a nutshell: PFS first argues that personal resentment that we may feel toward another for having failed to show goodwill toward us would have no problem coexisting with the conviction that determinism is true. Moral disapprobation, as an analog to resentment, is likewise capable of coexisting with deterministic convictions. In fact, it would seem nearly impossible for a normally-constituted person (i.e., a non-sociopath) to leave behind the web of moral convictions, even if that person is a determinist. In this way, by arguing that moral and determinist convictions can coexist in the same person, PFS undermines the libertarian argument ...
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