Philosophy of Language: A Contemporary Introduction

234 Pages·2008·3.115 MB·

by  William G. Lycan

Philosophy of Language
Philosophy of Language: a Contemporary Introduction introduces the student
to the main issues and theories in twentieth and twenty-first-century phi-
losophy of language, focusing specifically on linguistic phenomena.
Topics are structured in four parts in the book. Part I, Reference and
Referring, includes topics such as Russell’s Theory of Descriptions,
Donnellan’s distinction, problems of anaphora, the description theory of
proper names, Searle’s cluster theory, and the causal–historical theory. Part
II, Theories of Meaning, surveys the competing theories of linguistic mean-
ing and compares their various advantages and liabilities. Part III, Pragmatics
and Speech Acts, introduces the basic concepts of linguistic pragmatics,
includes a detailed discussion of the problem of indirect force and surveys
approaches to metaphor. Part IV, new to this edition, examines the four
theories of metaphor.
Features of Philosophy of Language include:
• new chapters on Frege and puzzles, inferentialism, illocutionary
theories of meaning, and relevance theory
• chapter overviews and summaries
• clear supportive examples
• study questions
• annotated further reading
• glossary
Praise for the First Edition:
“This exceptional text fulfils two essential criteria of a good introduc-
tory textbook in the philosophy of language: it covers a broad range of
topics well, all of which are the basis of current active research, and does
so in an accurate manner accessible to undergraduate students.”
Mike Harnish, University of Arizona
“. . . an excellent textbook for teaching. The examples throughout are
delightful and students will love them.”
Edwin Mares, Victoria University of Wellington
William G. Lycan is William Rand Kenan Professor of Philosophy at the
University of North Carolina. He is the author of over 150 articles as well as
seven books.
http://avaxho.me/blogs/ChrisRedfield
Routledge Contemporary Introductions to Philosophy
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Loyola University of Chicago
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Philosophy of
Language
a Contemporary Introduction
Second Edition
William G. Lycan
First published 2000
by Routledge
This edition first published 2008
by Routledge
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Simultaneously published in the UK
by Routledge
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Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Lycan, William G.
Philosophy of language: a contemporary introduction/William G. Lycan.
– 2nd ed.
p. cm. – (Routledge contemporary introductions to philosophy)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Language and languages – Philosophy. I. Title.
P106.L886 2008
401–dc22
2007038223
ISBN 0-203-93000-2 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN10: 0-415-95751-6 (hbk)
ISBN10: 0-415-95752-4 (pbk)
ISBN10: 0-203-93000-2 (ebk)
ISBN13: 978-0-415-95751-9 (hbk)
ISBN13: 978-0-415-95752-6 (pbk)
ISBN13: 978-0-203-93000-7 (ebk)
Contents
Preface i x
Acknowledgements xi
Acknowledgements for the Second Edition xii
1 Introduction: meaning and reference 1
Overview 1
Meaning and understanding 1
The Referential Theory 3
Summary 6
Questions 6
Further reading 6
Part I: Reference and referring
2 Definite descriptions 9
Overview 9
Singular terms 10
Russell’s Theory of Descriptions 12
Objections to Russell’s theory 19
Summary 29
Questions 30
Further reading 30
3 Proper names: the Description Theory 31
Overview 31
Frege and the puzzles 31
Opening objections 36
Searle’s Cluster Theory 38
Kripke’s critique 39
Summary 43
Questions 43
Further reading 44
vi Contents
4 Proper names: Direct Reference and the
Causal–Historical Theory 45
Overview 45
Possible worlds 46
Rigidity and proper names 47
Direct Reference 49
The Causal–Historical Theory 53
Problems for the Causal–Historical Theory 55
Natural-kind terms and “Twin Earth” 58
Summary 60
Questions 61
Further reading 61
Part II: Theories of meaning 63
5 Traditional theories of meaning 65
Overview 65
The Proposition Theory 68
Summary 74
Questions 74
Further reading 74
6 “Use” theories 76
Overview 76
“Use” in a roughly Wittgensteinian sense 77
Objections and some replies 79
Inferentialism 83
Summary 84
Questions 85
Further reading 85
7 Psychological theories: Grice’s program 86
Overview 86
Grice’s basic idea 86
Speaker-meaning 88
Sentence meaning 92
Summary 96
Questions 96
Further reading 97
8 Verificationism 98
Overview 98
The theory and its motivation 98
Some objections 100
Contents vii
The big one 105
Summary 108
Questions 108
Further reading 108
9 Truth-Condition Theories: Davidson’s program 109
Overview 109
Truth conditions 109
Truth-defining natural languages 114
Objections to the Davidsonian version 117
Summary 123
Questions 124
Further reading 125
10 Truth-Condition Theories: possible worlds and
intensional semantics 126
Overview 126
Truth conditions reconceived 126
Advantages over Davidson’s view 129
Remaining objections 131
Summary 133
Questions 133
Further reading 133
Part III: Pragmatics and speech acts 135
11 Semantic pragmatics 137
Overview 137
Semantic pragmatics vs. pragmatic pragmatics 138
The problem of deixis 139
The work of semantic pragmatics 141
Summary 143
Questions 143
Further reading 143
12 Speech acts and illocutionary force 144
Overview 144
Performatives 144
Infelicities and constitutive rules 149
Cohen’s problem 151
Illocutionary theories of meaning 153
Summary 154
Questions 154
Further reading 155
viii Contents
13 Implicative relations 156
Overview 156
Conveyed meanings and invited inferences 157
Conversational implicature 158
Presupposition and conventional implicature 163
Relevance Theory 166
Indirect force 168
Summary 170
Questions 171
Further reading 171
Part IV: The dark side 173
14 Metaphor 175
Overview 175
A philosophical bias 175
The issues, and two simple theories 176
Davidson’s causal theory 177
The Naive Simile Theory 179
The Figurative Simile Theory 180
The Pragmatic Theory 183
Metaphor as analogical 187
Summary 189
Questions 190
Further reading 190
Notes 191
Glossary 201
Bibliography 205
Index 217
Preface
As its title slyly suggests, this book is an introduction to the main issues
in contemporary philosophy of language. Philosophy of language has been
much in vogue since early in the twentieth century, but only since the 1960s
have the issues begun to appear in high resolution.
One crucial development in the past forty years is the attention of philoso-
phers of language to formal grammar or syntax as articulated by theoretical
linguists. I personally believe that such attention is vital to success in phi-
losophizing about language, and in my own work I pay as much of it as I
am able. With regret, however, I have not made that a theme of this book.
Under severe space limitations, I could not expend as many pages as would
be needed to explain the basics of formal syntax, without having to omit
presentation of some philosophical issues I consider essential to competence
in the field.
Since around 1980, some philosophers of language have taken a turn toward
the philosophy of mind, and some have engaged in metaphysical exploration
of the relation or lack thereof between language and reality. These adversions
have captured many philosophers’ interest, and some fine textbooks have
focused on one or both (for example, Blackburn 1984; Devitt and Sterelny
1987). But I have chosen otherwise. Whatever the merits of those sorts of
work, I have not found that either helps us sufficiently to understand spe-
cifically linguistic mechanisms or the core issues of philosophy of language
itself. This book will concentrate on those mechanisms and issues. (Readers
who wish to press on into metaphysics or philosophy of mind should consult,
respectively, Michael J. Loux’s Metaphysics and John Heil’s Philosophy of
Mind, both in the Routledge Contemporary Introductions series.)
Many of my chapters and sections will take the form of presenting data
pertinent to a linguistic phenomenon, expounding someone’s theory of that
phenomenon, and then listing and assessing objections to that theory. I
emphasize here, because I will not always have the space to do so in the text,
that in each case what I will summarize for the reader will be only the opening
moves made by the various theorists and their opponents and objectors. In
particular, I doubt that any of the objections to any of the theories is fatal;
champions of theories are remarkably good at avoiding or refuting objec-
tions. The real theorizing begins where this book leaves off.