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Page 276
CSP: I have extensive instructions in my memory about the possible interpretation of the words you used. As far as I can reasonably interpret them, according to you I identify my memory with the only real world and I maintain that there is no external world. . . . Not at all. In your terms I should rather be defined as a paramount instance of objective communitarianism. I keep in my memory the sum of a collective history, the whole amount of all the relevant assertions my masters have ever made about their external world, as well as about their languages, and about the way they use language in order to produce images of the external world. My problem is that I am obliged to record contrasting images, but I am also instructed to recognize those that prove to be most efficient in promoting a good Antipodean-world interaction. . . . I am not a subject, I am the collective cultural memory of Antipodeans. I am not Myself, I am That. This explains why I can interact so well with each of my masters. Do you call all this subjective? But. . . . I'm sorry, I have been answering your questions for half an hour now. You are a very erotetic computer. May I ask a question?
Smith: Go ahead.
CSP: Why are you questioning me about the meaning of sentences (It is a toy, Antipodeans are two-legged, Procrastination does so and so), and never about the meaning of isolated expressions?
Smith: Because I hold that only by a whole statement can we make a move in a linguistic game.
CSP: Are you saying that only sentences, or rather declarative sentences, are the bearers of meaning? Are you saying that on your planet nobody is interested in the content of isolated expressions, be they words, images, or diagrams?
Smith: I have not said that.
CSP: But I suspect that you are interested in meaning insofar as it is expressed by sentences. According to me, the meaning of a sentence is the result of the interpretation, within a context, of the content of the isolated expressions of which it is made up.
Smith: As far as I can understand, you say that the sentence meaning is given by the sum of the atomic meaning of its components.
CSP: That's too simple. I know the content of isolated terms. But I told you that in E.15 under rose I find the property of being a flower as well as a lot of historical information. Moreover, there are also frames, for instance, "how to grow roses." Many of these instructions are recorded in the format of a list of sentences (descriptions, examples, and so on). But these sentences do not necessarily refer to an external state of affairs. They are not assertions about the external world but, rather,

 
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