Reference, Truth and Reality: Essays on the Philosophy of Language 9781315533872, 1315533871

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ROUTLEDGE LIBRARY EDITIONS: PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE

Volume 11

REFERENCE, TRUTH AND REALITY

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REFERENCE, TRUTH AND REALITY Essays on the philosophy of language

Edited by MARK PLATTS

First published in 1980 by Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd This edition first published in 2017 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 1980 Routledge & Kegan Paul All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: ISBN: ISBN: ISBN: ISBN:

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Reference, truth and reality Edited by Mark Platts

Essays on the philosophy of language

First published in 1980 by Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd 39 Store Street, London WCZE 7DD, Broadway House, Newtown Road, Henley-an-Thames, Oxon RG9 1 EN and I) Park Street, Boston, Mass. 02108, USA Set in IBM Press Roman by Hope Services, Abingdon and printed in Great Britain by Redwood Burn Ltd, Trowbridge & Esher

© Routledge & Kegan Paul 1980 No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except for the quotation of brief passages in criticism British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Reference, truth and reality. 1. Languages - Philosophy I. Title II. Platts, Mark 401 P106 79-42859 ISBN 0710004052 ISBN 0 710004060 Pbk

Contents

1 Introduction· 1 Mark Platts 2

Truth and use . 19 Colin McGinn

3

Causal modalities and realism . 41 Christopher Peacocke

4

Moral reality and the end of desire . 69 Mark Platts

5

Tarski's theory of truth . 83 Hartry Field

6

Physicalism and primitive denotation: Field on Tarski . III John McDowell

7

Reality without reference . 131 Donald Davidson

8

On the sense and reference of a proper name . 141 John McDowell

9

Truth and singular terms . 167 Tyler Burge

10

Truth-theory for indexical languages Barry Taylor

182

11

Operators, predicates and truth-theory . 199 Colin McGinn

v

Contents

12

Quotation and saying that . 206 John McDowell

13

What metaphors mean . 238 Donald Davidson

14

Pronouns, quantifiers and relative clauses (I) . 255 Gareth Evans

15

'Most' and 'all': some comments on a familiar programme, and on the logical form of quantified sentences . 3 18 David Wiggins Index· 347

vi

1 Introduction

Mark Platts

That the meaning of a sentence can be given by stating its truthconditions is not a novel doctrine; as an explicitly held doctrine, it is at least as old as the work of Frege. Oflate, however, it has been an object of renewed interest among philosophers of language and logic. An evident stimulus to this interest has been the work of Donald Davidson. Davidson's main contributions to date have been, schematically, of three kinds: to have emphasized the import for the understanding of the truth-conditions doctrine of Tarski's seminal work upon the concept of truth in formalized languages; to have initiated exploration of the ways in which Tarski's approach might be adapted to figure in the empirical construction of theories of meaning for natural languages; and to have put forward specific truth-theoretic proposals for handling various natural language constructions of logical, or more general philosophical, importance. There has also been another, more recently influential, source of interest in the truth-theoretic conception of meaning, stemming primarily from the work of Michael Dummett. This focuses upon the metaphysical content which apparently is built into Davidson's account (as well as others' accounts) of the truth-conditions theory of meaning, a content reasonably labelled realistic. Specifically, Dummett has raised a worry as to whether the picture of the relation between language and the world apparently involved in the truth-theoretic account of meaning can mesh adequately with speakers' understanding, manifestable understanding, of their language. This volume is a collection of papers, most published here for the first time, directed to issues raised by (though not only statable in terms of) the realistic truth-theoretic conception of meaning. They might be called working papers, since few, if any, of the contributors would think of themselves as having settled the issues they discuss; the hope, rather, is to have advanced understanding of the forms of the issues and of their possible solutions, to have settled a little of the blinding dust that has come to surround them. This introduction is no more than a sketch of one framework in which the contributions might be seen - although not necessarily the framework in which the contributors themselves would wish their efforts to be seen.

1

Mark Platts The point and form of a theory of meaning What is the aim of a theory of meaning? And what form, if any, does that aim either impose upon or invite for such a theory? A theory of meaning for a language should be able to tell us the meanings of the words and sentences which comprise that language. The appearance of anodyne progress here is perhaps misleading since the notion of the meaning of a word or sentence is in part given content by the idea that it is the subject matter of a theory of meaning, and the proper conception of this is what we are trying to crystallize. Still, resisting immediate immersion in this circle, we might begin by taking over from Frege the thought that it is the sentence, not the word, that is the primary unit of linguistic meaning; for it is the sentence, not the word, that can be used to perform complete linguistic actions, and it is the linguistic actions of speakers of a given language which constitute our starting-point in the construction of a theory of meaning for that language. The meaning of a word is then seen simply as its systematic contribution to the meanings of sentences in which it can figure. That rationale for treating the sentence as primary, however, serves to remind that talk of the meanings of linguistic expressions is a theoretical abstraction from the data of linguistic usage. The character of a theory of meaning for a language, and -so the specific account to be given of the notion of the meaning of some expression in that language, is constrained by the role of that theory in understanding the linguistic behaviour of speakers of that language. (This point about the inevitably ' theoretical character of any worthwhile analysis of the notion of meaning is distinct from that made two paragraphs back about the theoretical character of that notion itself.) So we are naturally led to ask: what is involved in understanding linguistic behaviour? Suppose a native speaker of some alien tongue emits a string of noises; and suppose further - the point at which relevant theory first enters - that we take that native to be performing some intentional linguistic action. What we have to do is to make sense of that action as part of making sense of that speaker; and what that involves is redescribing that action, if possible, in such a way as to make that action, that performance, intelligible to ourselves in view of all we know and believe about the speaker. Such a redescription will issue from an overall theory of linguistic behaviour, one component of which - the theory of force for the linguistic community under study - will have at least the following structure. There will be a speech-act component which (tentatively) identifies the mode of utterance - asserting, commanding, questioning, etc. There will be a syntactic component which serves to identify (tentatively) the 2

Introduction

sentences uttered and their grammatical moods - indicative, imperative, interrogative, etc. And there will be what we might call a monistic transformational component, which pairs the sentence uttered, whatever its mood, with some sentence of the language under study of some one mood, that mood being antecedently fixed for all sentences that could be uttered. If the sentence uttered by the native is of this antecedently fixed mood, this transformational component will presumably operate as an identity function. The idea behind this third, monistic transformational, component of the theory of force is this. Within the theory of meaning (which has yet to enter the scene but which will soon do so) there must be, in Dummett's terminology, some one key concept which has application in the derivation of the meaning of each and every sentence in the language the doctrine of semantic monism. For only in this way will uniform word-definitions be possible. Any word can occur in any grammatical type of sentence - indicative, imperative, etc.; the meaning of a word is its systematic contribution to the meanings of sentences in which it can figure; but if one semantic concept figured in the derivations of the meanings of, say, indicative sentences while another, distinct, concept figured in the derivations of the meanings of, say, imperative sentences, then every word would require at least two dictionary entries one to account for its contribution to the meanings of those indicative sentences in which it can figure, another to account for its, ex hypothesi, different (because different kind of) contribution to the meanings of those imperative sentences in which it can figure. But uniform word meanings can be given, so there must be one key concept which figures in the derivation of the meaning of any sentence, whatever its mood, the thesis of semantic monism. The rationale behind the third component of the theory of force, the monistic transformational component, is that it clears the ground for the application of the key concept within the theory of meaning. (Which is not yet to argue that this is the only way in which the need for semantic monism can be accommodated.) Nearly all theories of meaning have concentrated upon the indicative mood (and the assertoric mode), suggesting that that should be the antecedently fixed mood of the output of the monistic transformational component. A minimal rationale for this is found by considering, first, the syntactic and semantic completeness of the indicative as compared with the imperative (e.g. the lack of tense in the imperative mood) and, second, the communicative completeness of the indicative as compared with the interrogative (e.g. the oddity of a language with resources primarily suited only to the asking of questions with none primarily suited to answering them 1). Many philosophers have entertained stronger theses about the primacy of either the indicative mood or the assertoric mode. No case for such a thesis has yet been made good with clear sense attached to the notion of primacy in view of the seemingly obvious

3

Mark Platts

possibility that the only linguistic actions performed within a given linguistic community might be, say, commands or might be performed using only imperative sentences. (A quite distinct, and far more plausible, primacy thesis is that of belief over, say, desires and uncertainties.) Still, perhaps tradition and the minimal rationale together give us sufficient reason for expecting the indicative mood to be the output of the monistic transformational component of the theory of force. The theory of meaning or sense now enters the picture. 2 (I do not mean to suggest that we could have all the pre-theory-of-meaning elements fIXed before we go on to construct a theory of meaning; the ordered separation of the components of the theory of linguistic behaviour in this exposition does not reflect any clear epistemological ordering.) The native speaker's emission of noise, tentatively identified as an intentional linguistic action, has also now been tentatively identified by the speech-act component of the theory of force as an utterance in a specific mode; the mood (or moods) of the sentence (or sentences) uttered has (or have) been tentatively identified by the syntactic component of the theory of force; and the monistic transformational component of that theory has, tentatively, been made to yield for each sentence of the native language uttered a paired sentence of that same language in the indicative mood. This yield is the input to the theory of meaning, a theory whose output is for each input sentence a sentence of our own language which interprets, purports to give the meaning of, that input sentence. The end result of applying such an overall theory of linguistic behaviour, the combined theories of force and meaning, is a redescription of the Original performance by the native speaker; we can move from a description of the form 'He uttered the noises .. .' to one like, say, 'He asserted that it was raining', 'He ordered us to make it true that the door is shut', and so on. Thus the role of the theory of meaning within a theory of linguistic behaviour is given. But nothing has yet been said about when that overall theory is a good theory; so nothing has yet been said about when the component theory of meaning is acceptable. To fIll this lacuna we now have to introduce the connection - or, better, the diverse and complex connections - between the redescriptions of linguistic actions delivered by the theory of linguistic behaviour and the propositional attitudes ascribed to speakers. Centrally, on the basis of someone's asserting that p we can generally take it that he believes that p and that he intended to say that p; on the basis of someone's commanding that q we can generally take it that he desires that q and that he intended to order that q; and so on. (This is, of course, far too simple a picture of the connections: irony, sarcasm, deceit, insincerity, metaphor and conversational implicatures all complicate the picture, as do the ways in which propositional attitude ascriptions themselves connect - for example, 4

Introduction

the ways in which belief-ascriptions are tacit in most, if not all, desireascriptions. This is one area desperately in need of detailed, nonsimplistic exploration.) Such propositional attitude-ascriptions, together with the view that the native has then and there expressed such and such an attitude, can be plausible or implausible in countless ways in the light of all else we believe about the speaker. But the general point is simply stated: it can be no part of understanding a speaker's linguistic actions, and so no part of understanding the speaker himself, to attribute to that speaker propositional attitudes which it is unintelligible that he should have, or to attribute to him expressions of propositional attitudes which it is unintelligible that he should have issued - unintelligible, that is, in the light of all we believe about the speaker's circumstances. The aim thus becomes that of finding a theory of linguistic behaviour which, in the light of all we believe about the speaker, issues, for each of his linguistic actions, in plausible propositional attitude-ascriptions to him, and which makes his having expressed those attitudes in his actions in the contexts in which those actions were in fact performed intelligible. To this end, any part of the theory of linguistic behaviour can be modined, even, if need be, back to the point of denying (or asserting) that some emission of noise by him was an intentional linguistic action. A theory of meaning for a language is thus seen to be an acceptable theory of meaning only if, in interaction with the other components of the theory of linguistic behaviour, it issues in plausible redescriptions of all of the linguistic actions performed by speakers of that language - plausible in view of the propositional attitudes consequently ascribed and of the propositional attitude expressions consequently attributed. 3 The aim and role of the theory of meaning is thus described; but as regards the form of such a theory little progress has apparently been made. The output of the theory of meaning will be a potential interpretation in our language of each indicative sentence of the language under study. Two further lines of thOUght suggest a more detailed picture. One is this: the indicative sentences of any natural language being potentially infinite in number, but the sentence components (words and 'unstructured' phrases) being finite in number, our theory of meaning should yield an interpretation for each indicative sentence in the language under study via assignment of appropriate semantic properties to the fmite stock of sentential components and modes of structural combination. A second, independent thought with much the same formal conclusion is this: the capacity of finite native speakers to understand a potential infinity of novel utterances - utterances of sentences that they have never before heard uttered -- will be comprehensible only if an account of what it is they understand reveals it as deriving from some finite stock of meaning-determining rules and axioms. (Note that this is distinct from claiming that their capacity is comprehensible 5

Mark Platts only if the account of how it is that they understand it reveals it as deriving from some finite stock of meaning-detennining rules and axioms, and that that is distinct again from the claim that their capacity is comprehensible only if the account of how it is that they understand it reveals them as deriving it from some finite stock of meaningdetermining rules and axioms. The threat of pseudo-explanation is ever present here.) The more detailed formal picture of the theory of meaning so suggested is this. Suppose, in accordance with semantic monism, that there is some key concept cf> such that the meaning of any indicative sentence in the language under study is given by stating, in our language, its cf>conditions. Then what is required is that possession of cf>-conditions by sentences is seen to be derivable from the possession of cf>-bearing properties by their parts together with the cf>-import of the modes of structural combination of those parts. Thus we shall have an assignment within a finite set of axioms of cf>-bearing properties to each of the primitive sentence components in the language, together with a finite set of rules giving the cf>-import of each of the possible modes of structural combination in the language. These axioms and rules should be such as logically to yield a statement of the cf>-conditions for any indicative sentence in the language under study. (This will almost certainly require that in the statement of the cf>-conditions of sentences, schematically of the form ' ... is cf> if, and only if, .. .', the 'if, and only if is read as creating an extensional context. 4 ) What, then, should cf> be? At this point we might well be tempted by a simple-seeming answer. The deliverances of our theory of meaning will be of the form (M) s is cf> if, and only if, p where s is replaced by a structural description of an indicative sentence of the language under study and p by a sentence of our language which, if the theory of meaning is indeed a good theory of meaning (in the sense just explained), gives the meaning of s, interprets it. The thought now is that an immediately acceptable candidate for is cf> will be is true; for if such an M-sentence is true, it will remain true if for is cf> we substitute is true. Entertaining this thought, we shall be struck by the parallels between the picture of the form of a theory of meaning to which we have just been led and Tarski's finitely axiomatized formal account of the definition of a truth-predicate for a formalized language. The conclusion will then be that a characterization of a truth-predicate in the style of Tarski is, in virtue of its fonn, fitted to be a theory of meaning. But whereas Tarski constrained such a characterization by the condition of translation, that p be a translation of s, we aim to obtain that condition as yielded by adopting the distinct condition that the Tarski-fonn theory 6

Introduction

be an acceptable theory of meaning by being part of a good overall theory of linguistic behaviour - one that enables us to make sense of the users of the language employed in the behaviour under scrutiny.

Understanding and reality According to P. F. Strawson, to hold that the meaning of a sentence can be given by stating its truth-conditions is to hold true 'a generally harmless and salutary thing'. 5 Even if freed of condescension, this remark is importantly not beyond dispute. The notion of truth entered the view of understanding language use just sketched rather late in the day. We had come to the thought that the deliverances of the theory of meaning should be of the form of (M) s is

rp if, and only if, p.

The tempting additional thought then encountered was this: if such an M-sentence is true, then it will remain true if we substitute is true for is rp. Hence the final connection of meaning with truth-conditions: a characterization of a truth-predicate for a language is fitted to be a theory of meaning for that language. But, really, that connection is not so readily forged. It is important to be clear about the exact points at which and exact ways in which the argument for their putative connection becomes problematic. One thought rttight be this: all we are entitled to conclude from the argument given is that M-sentences will remain true under the substitution of is true for is rp; from that, however, it does not immediately follow that they will still give the meanings of the sentences designated on their left-hand sides (LHSs). Of course, given the antecedent stipulations designed to ensure that the M-sentences are yielded by a good theory of meaning, the sentence used on the right-hand side (RHS) of an M-sentence will still, after the substitution of is true for is rp, interpret the sentence deSignated on the LHS; but it does not obviously follow that after such a substitution the M-sentence will, as it were, give the meaning of the designated sentence as the meaning of that sentence. Whether that is so or not will depend upon the capacity of M-sentences after substitution to meet any further controls there might be upon the notion of meaning. This line of thought is importantly mistaken; seeing the mistake also brings important problems for a realistic truth-conditions semantics to light. The mistake is a critical misconception of the powers of the deliverances of a theory of meaning of the general form described with or without the substitution of is true for is rp. If, as previously suggested, the 'if, and only if in M-sentences is extensional, then it will

7

Mark Platts not be by virtue of what M-sentences say - whatever 1> is - that we know that their RHSs do indeed interpret the sentences designated on their LHSs, can indeed be used to redescribe linguistic actions performed by the use of the sentences there designated; for an M-sentence of which this is true will be no truer than one derived from it by substituting another sentence with the same truth-value for that used on the RHS. Such force as there is in the line of thought under examination about the deliverances of the theory of meaning not giving the meaning as the meaning does not come to bear by virtue of the move from is 1> to is true; it arises earlier, already applying as soon as we move to the idea that the filling between the designated and interpreting sentence is of the form ' ... is 4> if, and only if, .. .'. 6 The general question thus raised is this: what more must someone know who knows the truth stated by an M-sentence (whatever 1> is to be) for him to know that that sentence gives the meaning of the sentence designated on its LHS? Whatever answer we give to that question - perhaps in terms of additional knowledge that the M-sentence is a logical consequence of a theory of sense adequate by the preceding standards - we shall then have to consider another question: does the substitution of is true for is 1> make that answer problematic? Those questions merit detailed examination;7 but there is a more general question, which has those questions as more specific components, that leads to a distinct substantial issue. Are there any further controls upon the notion of meaning which make employment of ' ... is true if, and only if, .. .' as the filling between designated sentence and interpreting sentence unacceptable? One obvious area to be explored is the territory common to the notions of meaning and understanding. This territory is at least as difficult to map as the notion of understanding is to grasp. One feature of it will not much delay us: this is that it is a necessary condition of the acceptability of an overall theory oflinguistic behaviour, and so of the acceptability of its components including the theory of meaning, that explicit propositional knowledge of that overall theory would equip one to be a competent user of the language concerned, would suffice for understanding it. This feature is neither unimportant nor unproblematic, raising as it does the questions touched upon two paragraphs back; but it need not now delay us since it concerns a suffiCiency condition which it is doubtful, to say the least, that anyone who now speaks a natural language actually meets. More realistically pressing is the matter of quite how an ordinary speaker's competence, his understanding of his language, should be seen to connect with the theory of meaning;B if we can become clear on that, we shall then be able to see whether this connection would be distorted, or broken, by the proposed use of ' ... is true if, and only if, .. .' in the deliverances of the theory of meaning.

8

Introduction

Any discussion of this issue must be controlled by two considerations. The first of these, a brute empirical fact, is the unreflective character of natural language use. People simply say things without, in general, working out what it is they are to say and how it is to be said; others, and they themselves, just understand what was said without, in general, working out what has been said and how it was said. Ordinary linguistic competence is shown by appropriate (unreflectively appropriate) verbal behaviour and by appropriate (unreflectively appropriate) response, verbal or non-verbal, to the behaviour of others. The other controlling consideration is a philosophical desideratum: any propositional knowledge attributed to speakers must be manifestable by them if that attribution is to have defensible content. The overwhelming bulk of natural linguistic activity involves the use of complete sentences. Given the two controlling considerations just adduced, this suggests that attribution to native speakers of propositional knowledge of any of the axioms of the theory of meaning specifying the meanings of sub-sentential components or of propositional knowledge of any of the rules of that theory determining the semantic import of different modes of combination of sub-sentential components will be problematic at best. 9 Such attribution is in obvious enough danger either of falsifying the unreflective nature of language use or of being an attribution without content. Still, at the sentential level, at the level of the M-sentences delivered by the theory of meaning, the prospects seem brighter. It is part of a speaker's competence that he can understand the utterances of others speaking the same language; an explicit manifestation of that competence is his ability to report others' sayings, to say things like 'He said that it was raining', 'He asserted that Britain is a one-party state', and so on. Such manifestations of understanding seem to he manifestations of knowledge of the literal meaning of what was said; they might thus also be taken as manifestations of knowledge of the M-sentences delivered by the theory of meaning. So, for example, when the theory of meaning works with is true in the place schematically occupied by is

' as 'real number determined by the infinite sequence of digits issued by this random number machine'. (There are certainly difficulties here, but they seem to be less acute for beliefs about concrete objects,z°) A similar move can be made to resolve the problem in the causal case: even if someone believes certain conditions are causally possible which are not in fact causally possible, he will not have the property specified in condition (C) if we interpret (C) in such a way that the conditions it quantifies over can be presented in the form 'the physical condition to be realized in the centre of ~-Centauri at midnight tomorrow' or 'the next physical condition to be produced in the accelerator at Stanford'. The assumption that corresponds to the assumption about the modes of presentation of concrete objects that are mentioned above is this: for any person a, if a fails to believe that @]p, then there is some mode of presentation f/> of a condition such that (a believes the condition meeting f/> obtains) 0+ (a does not believe that p). Here of course the mode of presentation f/> must be a priori neutral with respect to whether it is the case that p or not. 21 The original revision in the Ramsey quantifier condition should be welcome for other reasons too. To believe that all Fs are Gs is to believe something stronger than that all the Fs one will encounter are Gs: these two are not conflated when such modes of presentation as 'the next F to occupy such and such a region' are included. Here there is another threat of circularity. The equivalences upon which Russell's theory of descriptions is founded show that unrestricted use of 'the' within the scope of 'believes' may again involve the attribution of general beliefs. We must be able to show that the uses of 'the' required in the specifications of the modes of presentation that are invoked to solve

55

Christopher Peacocke these problems are uses that can be mastered prior to full mastery of quantification. (This has some plausibility in the case of 'the next Fin place p to be so and so'.) In developing such a programme one would expect mastery of functors such as 'the object to the north of ( )' to be important. (ii) A complication is also provided by the converse possibility: that in which some p comes to be the case that the believer thought not to be causally possible. In such circumstances it may be true that, if he were to believe it had come to be the case that p, then he would abandon belief in a law: yet the truth of this counterfactual does not show that he does not actually believe the relevant generalization to be a law. Once again there is an analogue of this situation in the case of the universal quantifier. For all a man's believing that all Fs are Gs, he might not believe of an object that 'turns up' that is manifestly F and not G that if it is F then it is G. Here it is natural to say: what matters is that if he had only the information that it is F and no singular information about whether it is G or not, then he would believe it to be G. We can make a parallel response in the causal case. It is reasonable to hope that, if we can explain what it is to believe in the causal necessity of a law, we can give accounts, derivative from that explanation, of what it is to believe in the causal necessity of other forms of statement. Since the general form of a law is VXl •••

VXn (F(Xb··. ,xn)::) G(Xh.·. ,xn»

(where F and G will in general be complex) then we have the two components F and G that allow us to revise (C) in a way parallel to the revision of Ramsey. In the case in which we confine our attention to monadic F and G and ignore the qualifications prompted under (i) above then we may say that a believes that [£] Vx(Fx ~ Gx) iff for any condition Fx such that