Mind and Language (Wolfson College Lectures 1974)

168 Pages·1975·47.167 MB·

by  Samuel Guttenplan (editor)

Mind and
Language
WOLFSON COLLEGE LECTURES 1974
EDITED BY
SAMUEL GUTTENPLAN
CLARENDON PRESS OXFORD
-
1975
ae)
Oxford University Press, Ely House, London W. 1
GLASGOW NEW YORK TORONTO MELBOURNE WELLINGTON
CAPE TOWN IBADAN NAIROBI DAR ES SALAAM LUSAKA ADDIS ABABA
DELHI BOMBAY CALCUTTA MADRAS KARACHI LAHORE DACCA
KUALA LUMPUR SINGAPORE HONG KONG TOKYO
1sBN 0 19 824521 1
© Oxford University Press 1975
All rights reserved. No part of this publication maybe reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission
of Oxford University Press
Printed in Great Britain
byRichard Clay (The Chaucer Press), Ltd.,
Bungay, Suffolk
for
SIR ISAIAH BERLIN, O.M.
President of Wolfson College 1966-1975
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Preface
in
THE essays this collection began life as the Wolfson College Lec-
tures for 1974. These lectures, under thetitle ‘Mind and Language’,
were delivered at the University of Oxford in Hilary term 1974; they
are printed here in the order in which they were given. However, there
are many variations between the spoken and printed versions of each
the
of these essays. Most of authors include material here which they
did not have time to develop in their lectures but the contributions of
W. V. Quine and Michael Dummett are very much longer than the
originals and some comment should be made about this. Of the two
essays printed here ‘The Nature of Natural Knowledge” was Quine’s
Wolfson lecture but he allowed me to print ‘Mind and Verbal Dis-
positions’ and this is an illuminating companion to his lecture. The
Appendix to Michael Dummett’s essay developed from a seminar
which he with Donald Davidson in the term following that of
gave
the lecture series and should help to locate more precisely the bases
of his disagreement with the Davidsonian programme.
I had considerable help in organizing the original lecture series and
would like to thank Professor Dana Scott and Mr. Henry Hardy for
this. Thanks are due too to Mrs. Beryl Schweder for her secretarial
assistance with the lecture series.
SAMUEL GUTTENPLAN
Oxford

Contents
INTRODUCTION
S. D. Guttenplan, The Open University
1. THOUGHT AND TALK
D. Davidson, Rockefeller and Princeton Universities
2. MEANING AND EXPERIENCE 25
D. Follesdal, University of Oslo
3. THE FIRST PERSON 45
G. E. M. Anscombe, University of Cambridge
4. THE NATURE OF NATURAL KNOWLEDGE 67
W. V. Quine, Harvard University
MIND AND VERBAL DISPOSITIONS
5. 83
W. V. Quine, Harvard University
6. WHAT IS A THEORY OF MEANING? 97
M. A. E. Dummett, University of Oxford
Appendix 123
7. NAMES AND IDENTITY 139
P. T. Geach, University of Leeds
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Introduction
S. D. GUTTENPLAN
WHETHER as general questions about the relationship between the
so-called ‘propositional attitudes’ and linguistic meaning, or as more
specific questions about the connections between certain mental and
linguistic concepts, issues of mind and language bulk large in current
philosophical literature. In fact, of all issues, one would be justified in
labelling these as perhaps most characteristic of philosophy in our
time. Yet even a superficial survey of philosophical works since at
least the late seventeenth century would show that concern with these
questions is not merely a phenomenon of this century. This is not
because one can find one or two writers here and there before the
beginning of our century who tried to detail the relationship between
mind and language. It is because one finds developed attempts by
many writers to solve the very sorts of problems which we recognize
in
as so characteristically modern; and, the eighteenth century, these
attempts were loosely organized around a particular theme. Ofcourse,
current work on mind-language questions owes almost nothing to
these early investigations; though, to a surprising degree, the general
form of question is shared. None the less, one way of appreciating the
common background of the essays in this volume is by understanding
why they owe so little to the tradition which posed many of the
questions they consider. What follows is a very brief sketch, by way of
example, of the eighteenth-century treatment of these questions to-
gether with some discussion of how the basic contributions of the last
hundred years have made this treatment appear unfruitful. Though
there are doubtless more direct ways of introducing the subject matter
this
of this book, none can show, in quite the way that approach can,
the sort of which has been made in dealing with this kind of
progress
philosophical question; progress which forces us to view much
2S.
D. Guttenplan
previous work irrelevant or superficial, and which gives contem-
as
porary philosophy of language and mind that characteristic appear-
of self-containment.
ance
Locke, after devoting many pages of the Essay to detailing the
impediments with which language encumbers the attainment of
knowledge, felt it necessary to explain why he blamed language and
not, more simply, the users of languages:
... [when] I began to examine the extent and certainty of our know-
ledge, I found it had so near a connexion with words that, unless their
force and manner of signification were first well observed, there could be
little said clearly and pertinently concerning knowledge [words]
very . . .
interpose themselves so much between our understandings and the truth
which it would contemplate and apprehend that, like the medium through
which visible objects pass, their obscurity and disorder does not seldom
cast a mist before our eyes and impose upon our understandings.
Though Locke’s description of the ‘imperfections’ of language and
his account of the consequences of these imperfections for human
understanding do not appear profound, these parts of the Essay were
the major source of eighteenth-century interest in the philosophy of
that
language and mind. The preoccupation—for is what it was—of’
these writers was with the question: what was the origin of human
language; and the question, if not some of the answers to it, was
prompted by Locke’s Essay. By pointing out the connection between
language and knowledge, Locke made the understanding of language
a prerequisite for fixing the boundaries of knowledge. The idea that
language could be understood by discovering its origins comes partly
from the ‘plain, historical method’ tone of the Essay and partly from
Locke’s conjecture about such origins at the beginning of Book III.
Condillac, Mandeville, Adam Smith, Rousseau, James Harris, Mau-
pertuis, Turgot, and Monboddo, among many others, speculated
this in
about subject and most of them believed that, trying to uncover
the origin of language, they were investigating its nature. It seemed to
them, and can without reflection seem to us, that language as a human
activity must have had ‘origins’ in the way that, say, chess did and
that, however cloudy, these beginnings should be traceable. Further,
there was the hope that the discovery or reconstruction of these
origins would help in deciding the role of language in the exercise of
human intellectual capacities.
From our vantage-point the many attempts to reconstruct the
* An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Book III, Chap. IX, 4 21.