Linguistic Representation PDF
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LINGUISTIC REPRESENTATION PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES SERIES IN PHILOSOPHY Editors: WILFRID SELLARS, University of Pittsburgh KEITH LEHRER, University of Arizona Board of Consulting Editors: JONATHAN BENNETT, University of British Columbia ALAN GIBBARD, University of Pittsburgh ROBERT STALNAKER, Cornell University ROBER T G. TURNBULL, Ohio State University VOLUME I JAY F. ROSENBERG University of North Carolina LINGUISTIC REPRESENTATION D. REIDEL PUBLISHING COMPANY DORDRECHT-HOLLAND / BOSTON-U.S.A. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Rosenberg, Jay F Linguistic representation. (Philosophical studies series in philosophy; v. I) Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. Languages - Philosophy. I. Title. PI06.R59 401 74-26886 ISBN-13: 978-90-277-0946-2 e-ISBN-13: 978-94-010-2301-6 DOl: 10. 1007/978-94-010-2301-6 First printing: December 1974 Published by D. Reidel Publishing Company, P.O. Box 17, Dordrecht, Holland Sold and distributed in the U.S.A., Canada, and Mexico by D. Reidel Publishing Company, Inc. 306 Dartmouth Street, Boston, Mass. 02116, U.S.A. All Rights Reserved Copyright © 1974 by D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland Softcoverreprint of the hardcover 1st Edition 1974 No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publisher DEDICATION I'd dedicate it to my wife, but we're divorced. I'd dedicate it to my daughter, but she can't read it yet. So this one is for Wilfrid Sellars, to show him what, if one isn't careful, can come of talking philosophy to someone who listens. MOTTO "Again, those are called Nominalists who show diligence and zeal in understanding all the properties of terms on which the truth or falsity of a sentence depends, and with out which the perfect judgment of the truth or falsity of propositions cannot be made. These properties are: supposition, appellation, ampliation, restriction, exponible distribution. They especially understand obligations and the nature of the insoluble, the true foundation of dialectical arguments and of their failure. Being instructed in these things, they easily understand concerning any given argumentation whether it is good or bad. " Letter from the Nominalist masters of the University of Paris to King Louis XI, 1473 CONTENTS Preface XI I: Representation and Language 1 II: A Mentalistic Theory 9 III: Rules 30 IV: Translation and Theories 49 V: Explanation and Truth 72 VI: The Protosemantics of Basic Claims 98 VII: The Protosemantics of Complex Claims 125 VIII: Representation and Man 136 Appendix I. Notes 148 Appendix II. Bibliography 152 Index of Names 156 Index of Subjects 157 PREFACE This book is nominally about linguistic representation. But, since it is we who do the representing, it is also about us. And, since it is the universe which we represent, it is also about the universe. In the end, then, this book is about everything, which, since it is a philosophy book, is as it should be. I recognize that it is nowadays unfashionable to write books about every thing. Philosophers of language, it will be said, ought to stick to writing about language; philosophers of science, to writing about science; epis temologists, to writing about knowing; and so on. The real world, however, perversely refuses to carve itself up so neatly, and, although I recognize that the real w,orld is nowadays also unfashionable, in the end I judged that one might get closer to the truth of various matters by going along with it. So I have done so. lt was Wilfrid Sellars who initially convinced me of the virtues of this way of proceeding. At this point one normally says something like "The debt that this book owes him is immense". I would say it too, were it not to understate the case, From Wilfrid, I learned to think about things. If the upshot of my thinking tends, as it obviously does, to show a general con silience with the upshot of his, it is primarily because he is so very good at it - and he had a head start. While paying debts, I feel constrained to mention a few other names. The reader who knows my work will recognize this book as the culmination of several years' studies in which the young Wittgenstein figures prominently. So this book has Tractarian roots. But it is not a book about the Tractatus (except insofar as it is about everything), and I shall not develop even my essentially Tractarian theses by talking about the Tractatus. To do so is dialectical suicide. I'd like to say that I was clever enough to figure that out for myself, but I wasn't, My friend Paul Churchland pointed it out to me one cold night in Winnipeg, and thereby established his lifetime right to be listened to. A debt of equal magnitude is owed my chairman W.D. Falk ('David', to his friends) for being so adept at juggling the departmental chaos as to arrange for me a semester without classroom responsibilities. As this benighted institution has never seen fit to institute a program of sabbaticals, XII PREFACE David's was a less minor contribution than it might initially seem to the more fortunate among you. There is a melange of colleagues and graduate students to whom lowe a more diffuse debt. This book is probably less obscure than it could easily have been. If it is, it is mostly because these colleagues and students perversely refused to understand what I meant until I said it. This is, perhaps, not a good tactic to pursue in casual conversation, but in philo sophy it turns out to be a cardinal virtue, and I am lucky to count my friends among the virtuous. While this book has Tractarian roots, it is not Tractarian root and branch. Partly, this is because the Tractatus is a book wholly without an epistemolo gy, and it doesn't work without one. Mostly, however, this is because I have changed my mind about the picture theory. It is, perhaps, rare for a philo sopher to change his mind, but it is unfortunately even rarer for one to admit it. And this is understandable. Nevertheless, I feel constrained to do so. Some of you may think you know where I stand on certain matters. And you have every reason to think so. But you'd better read the book. I some times don't stand there any more. My colleague, Paul Ziff, once wrote a book called Semantic Analysis in the Preface to which he enjoined the reader, were he to come across some thing to all appearances obviously false, stupid, or nonsensical, seriously to entertain the hypothesis that Ziff meant exactly what he said. Even the cleverest and best-intentioned persons occasionally say-things which are obviously false, stupid, or nonsensical. His injunction, of course, did no good, for a variety of commentators proceeded to remark in great detail on what he "must have meant". It applies, however, to this book as well, and, since I am somewhat enamored of the innocent Quixotic gesture, I thought that I'd mention it. And here is the point at which one thanks the loyal and diligent typist. Well, I typed it myself, and I am everlastingly grateful to me for it. University of North Carolina at JA Y. F. ROSENBERG Chapel Hill April, 1973 CHAPTER I REPRESENTATION AND LANGUAGE The essential and characteristic human activity is representation - that is, the production and manipulation of representations. Except for the new born and the severely brain-damaged, all humans, of whatever time and culture, engage in it, and, insofar as we can now say with any confidence (the verdict on dolphins and the data on Martians not yet having come in), only humans do. 'Representation' I mean to construe broadly. Phenomenologically, it is either iconic or symbolic; logically, I hope to argue, it is all of a piece. Except as it can illuminate the linguistic mode, I shall have little to say about iconic representation. Its traditional home is in the plastic, visual, arts. A representation is iconic if, as we say, it resembles that which it represents. But these are difficult and opaque notions, and so we should not take too much to be clarified by formulas of that sort. Iconic representation ranges from the Lascaux cave-paintings to Warhol's soup cans. It includes portraiture, still-life, and commemorative sculpture, and, so it not be thought essentially visual, it includes as well the whistling of the last move ment of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony for a friend to remind him of how it goes. Symbolic representation is, paradigmatically, linguistic representation. The class, of course, is broader, including systems of hieroglyphics, codes, ciphers, musical notation, maps, graphs, and charts, but it is language, I shall argue, which is logically primary and it is language which will be my prin cipal concern. With language we can say how the world is; and we can say how the world isn't - and both of these in absentia from that in the world of which we speak. I want to understand how this is possible. A system of representation allows of two different sorts of activity: representation of things and representation of states of affairs. In language this becomes the time-honored distinction between naming and saying. Linguistic representation of things is naming or reference or denotation. I shall need a special term to mark this job in language, and 'designation' seems currently to carry as little initial theoretical load as any. So I shall call the linguistic representation of things 'designation' and the bits of language which are its vehicles will be 'designators'.
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