Philosophy of Language

316 Pages·1975·18.5 MB·

by  Franz Von Kutschera (auth.)

PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE
SYNTHESE LIBRARY
MONOGRAPHS ON EPISTEMOLOGY,
LOGIC, METHODOLOGY, PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE,
SOCIOLOGY OF SCIENCE AND OF KNOWLEDGE,
AND OF THE MATHEMATICAL METHODS OF
SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
Managing Editor:
J AAKKO HINTIKKA, Academy of Finland and Stanford University
Editors:
ROBERT S. COHEN, Boston University
DONALD DAVIDSON, The Rockefeller UniversityandPrinceton University
GABRIEL NUCHELMANS, University of Leyden
WESLEY C. SALMON, University of Arizona
VOLUME 71
FRANZ VON KUTSCHERA
PHILOSOPHY OF
LANGUAGE
D. REIDEL PUBLISHING COMPANY
DORDRECHT-HOLLAND / BOSTON-U.S.A.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Kutschera, Franz von.
Philosophy of language.
(Synthese library; v. 71)
Translation of Sprachphilosophie.
Originally given as lectures at the Universitat Miinchen
and the Universitat Regensburg.
Bibliography: p.
Includes indexes.
1. Languages - Philosophy. I. Title.
P106.K8514 401 75-12877
ISBN-13: 978-94-010-1822-7 e-ISBN-13: 978-94-010-1820-3
DOl: 10.1007/978-94-010-1820-3
SPRACHPHlLOSOPHlE
Second edition published in 1975 by Wilhelm Fink Verlag, Munich
Translated from the German by Burnham Terrell
Published by D. Reidel Publishing Company,
P.O. Box 17, Dordrecht, Holland
Sold and Histributed 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 © 1975 by D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland
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
TABLE OF CONTENTS
AUTHOR'S PREFACE VII
INTRODUCTION 1
CHAPTER 1/ PRELIMINARY DISTINCTIONS 5
1. Language and Linguistic Utterances 5
2. Descriptive Statements 13
3. The Use and Mention of Signs 17
CHAPTER II / THEORIES OF MEANING 19
1. Realistic Semantic Theories 19
2. Behavioristic Theories of Meaning 59
3. Quine's Philosophy of Language 73
4. Wittgenstein's Philosophy of Language in the Philosophical
Investigations 105
CHAPTER III / THEORIES OF GRAMMAR 165
1. Traditional Grammar 169
2. Logical Grammar 182
3. Generative Grammar 218
CHAPTER IV / LANGUAGE AND REALITY 242
1. The Thesis of the Role Language Plays in Experience 242
2. The Role of Vocabulary 255
3. The Role of Grammar 261
4. The Epistemological Problematic of the Relativity Thesis 278
BIBLIOGRAPHY 291
INDEX OF SUBJECTS 301
INDEX OF LOGICAL SYMBOLS 305
AUTHOR'S PREFACE
This book has arisen out of lectures I gave in recent years at the Uni
versities of Munich and Regensburg, and it is intended to serve as a
textbook for courses in the Philosophy of Language.
In my lectures I was able to presuppose that the students had taken an
introductory course in logic. Some knowledge of logic will also be helpful
in studying this book - as it is almost everywhere else in philosophy -,
especially in Section 3.2, but it is no prerequisite.
I would like to give my sincere thanks to Prof. Terrell for his excellent
translation of the book, which is based on the second, revised and en
larged German edition.
Regensburg, May 1975 FRANZ VON KUTSCHERA
INTRODUCTION
Language has become one of philosophy's most important and pressing
themes during this century. This preoccupation with language has its ori
gins in the most diverse areas of philosophical inquiry. It has come from
the theory of knowledge by way of a turn from the critique of reason to a
critique of language; from logic as a consequence of its concern with arti
ficiallanguages and the logical analysis of natural languages; and from
anthropology by way of the emphasis on language as an accomplishment
essential to the definition of man and through the discovery of correlations
between linguistic form and man's image of the world; from ethics be
cause of its concern with the linguistic forms of ethical statements and the
demarcation of the boundary between them and descriptive sentences.
This philosophical turn in the direction of language can also be read
offin quite general terms from the change in the formulation of philosoph
ical problems. Where a question used to be raised about 'the nature of
causality', for example, or 'the content of the concept of causality', now
adays we feel it more appropriate to formulate the problem as a question
about the use of words, and to ask: "What is one saying when he says
that an event A brings about an event B?"l
During the course of this development philosophical attention has
sometimes concentrated so exclusively on language that it has simply been
identified with linguistic analysis. This is especially true of the two main
streams of analytical philosophy. It is true of the enterprise, beginning
with Bertrand Russell and continuing from Rudolf Carnap to Nelson
Goodman and Willard van Orman Quine, aimed at a logical analysis of
the language of science, especially of philosophical language, in which the
attempt is made to clarify and make precise the terms and propositions
of that language by using the instruments of modern logic. It is still
more true of the other principal direction of analytical philosophy,
originating in George Edward Moore, then stamped with the distinctive
mark of Ludwig Wl .•g enstein and developed further by the Ordinary
Language-Philosophy of the Oxford School (Gilbert Ryle, John Lang-
2 INTRODUCTION
shaw Austin), in which the attempt is made to clarify philosophical lan
guage by analyzing the ordinary usage of its terms.
In the Foreword to his Begriffschrift, Gottlob Frege says: "If it is one
of philosophy's tasks to liberate the human mind from the dominion of
the word, by revealing the illusions concerning conceptual relationships
engendered, often almost unavoidably, by linguistic usage, by freeing our
thought from the burden imposed on it by nothing but the structure of
our linguistic instruments of expression, then my Begriffschrift (concep
tual notation), further developed for these purposes, will be a useful tool
for philosophers." 2
Frege's 'if'-sentence then turns into a categorical assertion and for
Russell himself the most important task for philosophy consists "in
criticizing and clarifying notions which are apt to be regarded as funda
mental and accepted uncritically. As instances I might mention: mind,
matter, consciousness, knowledge, experience, causality, will, time." 3
And Carnap writes in the Foreword to the 2nd Edition of his book, Der
logische Aufbau der Welt: "The new definitions [of the concepts] should
fit into a systematic structure of concepts. Such a clarification of concepts,
nowadays frequently called 'explication', still seems to me one of the
most important tasks of philosophy." 4
For Wittgenstein even as early as the Tractatus, all philosophy is
language analysis 5 and in the Philosophical Investigations philosophy is
nothing but a constant struggle against "the bewitchment of our intelli
gence by means oflanguage." 6 Finally, for many adherents of Ordinary
Language-Philosophy, the turn taken by philosophy to language, the
'linguistic turn', signifies the great revolution of modern philosophy.
Thus Austin says: " ... it cannot be doubted that they [these methods of
linguistic analysis] are producing a revolution in philosophy. If anyone
wishes to call it the greatest and most salutary in its history, this is not, if
you come to think of it, a large claim." 7
In view of the large number of enterprises and directions that are
grouped together under the heading of a philosophy of language, it can be
no wonder that the title has no precise and well-defined content. We will
therefore sketch briefly the themes with which this work is supposed to
be concerned and the objectives that guide us in it.
Speaking quite generally to begin with, we will be investigating in what
follows the functional role oflanguage, and the results accomplished by it.
INTRODUCTION 3
We will pick out three problem areas from the wealth of questions which
can be put in this connection, areas that seem to us to be of a special and
fundamental significance: the problem of the grammatical articulation and
synthesis of linguistic expressions, the problem of their meaning and the
problem of the role of language in experience.
After some preliminary remarks we shall be concerned in Chapter II
with the question of what it is that makes up the meaning of linguistic
expressions, how it is established and how communication in language
functions. There then follows, in Chapter III, a discussion of the funda
mental problem ofg rammar, how the combination in language of meaning
ful expressions into new units of meaning functions. Finally, in the IVth
Chapter, the relationship between language and experience will be discus
sed, the question as to the extent in which the forms of language express
particular schemata of interpretation for experience, to what extent the
forms of language leave their mark on the way in which reality is expe
rienced.
These three problem areas are also basic problems of the linguistic
sciences, particularly of general linguistics as the fundamental linguistic
discipline. Consequently we find a great deal of overlap between philo
sophical and scientific linguistic investigation. No sharp boundary can
be drawn between the two. For that reason, the philosophy of language
must inform itself of the results in linguistics that are relevant for its
questions and must take account of them, and the opportunity arises
to lend support to theses in the philosophy of language with arguments
drawn from linguistics. Philosophy is not operating in a realm independ
ent of experience, then.
The reasons that lead us to interest ourselves here in the question con
cerning the function and the accomplishments of language are above all
the following: Language is the most elementary, the most important
instrument for all of the sciences, one that we use constantly. If we assert
something (describe, classify, formulate hypotheses or theories), argue,
lay down rules (define, prescribe forms of measurement, etc.) we make
use of language.
Since language is such an important instrument of science, a basic
knowledge of this instrument is itself very useful for work in a particular
science. Natural languages, which we apply for the most part even in
the sciences, are not made primarily for scientific purposes and for their
4 INTRODUCTION
scientific use they must be supplemented and made precise in a great many
ways. The scientist, therefore, is not only a user of language but also to a
certain extent a maker. In the latter role, at least, he can not just commit
himself with naive trust to the conventions of language, but he requires
insights into the nature of linguistic means of expression. In this sense, the
function and effect of language are one of the themes of a propaedeutics of
science.
The question of the effect of language on the formation and organiza
tion of experience is especially of paramount interest to the theory of
knowledge. Does speech consist only in the expression of contents of
thought or perception that are independent of language, changed in no
respect by the manner of their expression, or are these contents always
linguistically determined, so that the forms of our language are the forms
of our experience? But the problem of meaning, which, as we shall see,
is closely connected with this question, also has relevance to epistemology.
These two questions, from propaedeutics and from the theory of know
ledge, guide the ensuing discussions of language and determine the philo
sophical orientation of these investigations.
NOTES
1 P. Alston gives this example in [67], p. 388. -The numbers in square brackets identify
the author's work listed in the index according the year in which it appeared.
2 Frege [79], p. VIf.
3 Russell [56], p. 341
4 Carnap [28], p. X.
5 Wittgenstein [22], 4.0031.
6 Wittgenstein [53], 109
7 Austin [62J, p. 3f. - For analytical philosophy see the presentations by Savigny [70J
and Lorenz [70], Chapter I, for example. For Ordinary-Language-Phi/osophy spe
cificaJIy, see Savigny [69].