Table Of Content

Language and Thought Lang uage and Thought John L. Pollock Princeton University Press Princeton, New Jersey Copyright @ 1982 by Princeton University Press Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, Guildford, Surrey ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data will be found on the last printedpage of this book This book has been composed in Monophoto Times Roman Clothbound editions of Princeton University Press books are printed on acid-free paper, and binding materials are chosen for strength and durability Printed in the United States of America by Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey TO MY PARENTS, WHO WEREN'T Q UZTE S URE WHAT I WAS UP TO, BUT ENCOURAGED ME ANYWAY. Contents Preface I. The Statemental Theory of Meaning 1. The Traditional Theory of Language 2. Propositions 3. Statements 4. Sentence Meaning 5. Lexical Meaning 6. Stating, Sending, Referring, and Predicating 6.1 Stating 6.2 Propositional Sending 6.3 Predication 6.4 Reference 11. Traditional Theories of Proper Names 1. Introduction 2. The Connotation Theory 3. Searle's Theory 4. The Denotation Theory 5. The Historical Connection Theory 111. The Meaning of a Proper Name 1. Introduction 2. Referring 3. De Re Propositions 3.1 The Existence of De Re Propositions 3.2 The Subject of a De Re Belief 3.3 De Re Propositions 3.4 Propositional Designators and Concepts 4. Statements and Propositions 5. The Sense of a Proper Name 6. Hereditary Designators 7. Proper Names and Rigid Designation 8. The Meaning of a Proper Name IV. Singular Terms 1. Introduction 2. Definite Descriptions 3. Other Hereditary Singular Terms 4. Token Reflexives 4.1 'I' 4.2 'Now' and Temporal Reference 4.3 'Here' V. The Traditional Theory of Predicates 1. Introduction 2. Analytic and Synthetic Predicates 3. The Historico-ScientificT heory VI. Synthetic Predicates 1. Synthetic Predicates and Social Knowledge 2. Change of Sense 2.1 The Radical Sense Change Theory 2.2 The Conservative Sense Change Theory 2.3 Nomic Equivalence 2.4 Nomic Kinds 3. Synthetic Attributes 4. Meaning VII. Nons ynthetic Predicates 1. Conceptual and Definitional Predicates 2. Definitional Predicates 3. Conceptual Predicates VIII. The Alethic Modalities 1. Propositional Modalities 2. De Re Necessity 3. Statemental Modalities 4. Sentential Modalities IX. Doxas tic and Epist emic Sentences 1. Introduction 2. Propositional Doxastic Sentences 3. Nonpropositional Doxastic Sentences 4. Knowing What t Is 5. Believing To Be 6. Doxastic Quantification 7. Reflexive Knowledge and Belief 8. Knowing What Some F Is X. Languages, Institutions, and Conventions 1. Introduction 2. Three Kinds of Rules Contents 3. Participation 4. Conventional Institutions 5. Languages as Institutions XI. Stating 1. Stating as Participating 2. Semantical Rules 3. Stating 4. The Sent-Proposition XII. Nondeclarative Sentences 253 1. Meaning and Nondeclarative Sentences 253 2. Requests, Commands, and Yes/No Questions 259 3. Wh Questions 262 Appendix: A General Statemental Semantics 265 1. Introduction 2. Diagrams and Intensions 3. Compositionality 4. Semantical Occurrences 5. Lexical Sending 6. The Path of the Analysis Bibliography 289 Index 29 5 Preface A philosophical theory of language can aim for completeness in either of two senses. It may strive for "horizontal completeness", which would require it to give an account of all parts of language- singular terms, predicates, verbs, adverbs, adjectives, nondeclarative sentences, speech acts, etc. Alternatively, it may strive for "vertical completeness", analysing some linguistic notions in terms of others, but ultimately providing an analysis of language which does not take any semantical or linguistic notions as primitive. Vertical completeness requires that the theory not presuppose notions of meaning, reference, semantical rules, etc., but instead provides analyses for these notions in terms of nonlinguistic and nonseman- tical notions. The theory of this book aims at vertical completeness. The objective is to start with nonlinguistic notions and build up a complete theory of language out of them. To assess the extent to which this goal has been achieved, the reader is referred to the final section of the appendix where the path of the analysis is reviewed. The book also attempts to achieve a certain amount of horizontal completeness, but that is more of a task for linguistics than phi- losphy, and no claim is made to real horizontal completeness in this book. I first began thinking about this material in 1965 in response to the attack on analyticity by Quine and Putnam. The orientation of the work has changed over the years, and it now touches on analyticity only peripherally. Nevertheless, in my mind it lays to rest the ghost of those early concerns. I began serious work on the book in 1975, and a first draft was completed in 1977. The book has subsequently gone through two complete rewritings and several somewhat less extensive revisions, but the philosophical content has remained roughly constant. The changes have been mainly concerned with style of presentation. This book reflects my feeling that is a lamentable lack of precision in most contemporary work in the philosophy of language. This is true even of those works that give the appearance of precision by making heavy use of logic and formal semantics. Such works Preface have tended to ignore the question of how formal semantics is supposed to bear upon more fundamental philosophical questions. I have tried to achieve a much greater degree of precision in the current work. But there is a problem inherent in such a goal. Pre- cision and readability are to some extent incompatible with one another. Readers of early versions of this book were unanimous in their opinion that the book was too hard to read. Thus the bulk of the revisions which the book has undergone have been concerned with striking a reasonable balance between precision and readability. No doubt many will complain that the book is still too hard to read, but I feel that it would be a mistake to sacrifice further precision in the interest of readability. Because the philosophical content of the book was substantially completed four years ago, I have not been able to keep the refer- ences entirely up to date. I am sure that there are some highly relevant recent publications that have been overlooked in the bibliography, and I apologize to those authors for my oversight. While I am on the topic of the bibliography, let me confess to another habit which may or may not be a bad one. I frequently develop my own position in response to criticisms of other views which I term 'traditional views' or 'the received view', but I rarely accompany the description of such views with extensive biblio- graphical citation. These are always views that I feel are or have been current, but it is not always easy to pin them on individual philosophers. It may even be that no one has ever held them. This does not really make any difference. They are views that I think are worth discussing regardless of who has held them. The ultimate business of the philosopher is to get at the truth on various issues, and not to say who said what. Although insofar as possible one should give credit where credit is due, in the last analysis it is the business of the historian rather than the philospher to trace views to their originators. Very little of the material in this book has been published in the form of articles. This is partly because the presentation is highly systematic and the material does not lend itself to being split into article length portions. It is also partly because I kept thinking that I was about ready to publish the material in book form and did not wish to put the effort into writing separate articles on the material. There are, however, two exceptions to this. Much of the first chapter was published in an article entitled "Propositions and statements" in The Pacific Philosophical Quarterly. The material xi