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Philosophy of Language
Philosophy of Language
Philosophy of Language
Alessandra Tanesini
Alessandra Tanesini
PHILOSOPHY A–Z SERIES
GENERAL EDITOR: OLIVER LEAMAN
Features
• Dedicated coverage of particular topics within philosophy
Philosophy of Language A–Z
• Coverage of key terms and major figures
• Cross-references to related terms.
Alessandra Tanesini
Philosophy of Language A–Z offers clear and thorough guidance on how to negotiate
the complexities of the philosophy of language.
Forthcoming volumes
Alessandra Tanesini
Oliver Leaman
Introduction and
Acknowledgements
Cardiff, Wales
May 2006
Philosophy of Language A–Z
A
A posteriori: The term applies primarily to knowledge that is
ultimately dependent on experience or observation, and is
thus dubbed ‘empirical’. The truths of natural science are
knowable in this way. Some of these truths, such as those
about subatomic particles, might be highly theoretical.
Nevertheless, they are knowable a posteriori because they
are based on evidence which is ultimately provided by the
senses. A posteriori falsehoods are those claims whose
falsity is ultimately known by means of experience or
observation. A posteriori truths are opposed to a priori
truths, which are not empirical. Until recently it was not
uncommon for philosophers to assume that the notion of
a posteriori or empirical truth was coextensive with those
of synthetic truth and of contingent truth. In other words,
they assumed that all and only the empirical truths were
contingent and also that all and only these were synthetic.
See Analytic; Kripke, Saul; Necessary
B
Bedeutung: Frege’s term for the feature of a linguistic expres-
sion which contributes to the determination of the truth
or falsity of the sentences in which it occurs. For him,
the Bedeutung of a proper name is the thing or person
it names. The Bedeutungen of sentences are one of two
truth-values: the true and the false. One-place functions
(which Frege calls ‘concepts’) from objects to truth-values
are the Bedeutungen of predicates with only one argu-
ment place (e.g. ‘. . . is red’); relations from more than
one object to a truth-value are the Bedeutungen of predi-
cates with more than one argument place (e.g., ‘. . . is west
of . . . ’). Frege’s Bedeutung has been variously translated
into English as reference, designation or meaning. It is
closely related to the contemporary notion of the seman-
tic value of an expression; that is, the contribution of that
expression to what determines the truth or falsity of the
sentences in which it occurs. Frege also distinguished the
reference of an expression from its Sinn (sense), which is
what determines the Bedeutung.
Further reading: McCulloch (1989), chs 1 and 5; Frege
(1892a)
16 PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE A–Z
C
Cambridge property: Those relational properties which
things can acquire or lose without themselves undergoing
any change. Thus, when Socrates died his wife acquired
the property of being his widow. Since these properties are
causally impotent, many philosophers do not take them
to be genuine properties at all.
Copula: One of the roles played by the verb ‘to be’. Thus,
‘is’ is the copula in the sentence ‘Edinburgh is beautiful’.
Some philosophers like Frege take the copula to be part
of the predicate which is thus conceived as an incomplete
expression with a gap that can be filled by a subject. Other
philosophers take a proposition to be composed by two
names (one of a thing and the other of a property) con-
joined by the copula.
See Predication
true (that is, the moon is made of cheese) and such that it
resembles the actual world as much as possible given the
truth of the antecedent (that is, it is a world in which the
moon is made of cheese but it is otherwise as close as pos-
sible to how things actually are), the consequent is also
true (that is, radiation from the sun melts the moon). This
interpretation treats any counterfactuals with impossible
antecedents as vacuously true.
See Semantics, possible worlds; Subjunctive condi-
tional
Further reading: Lewis (1973)
Counterpart: A notion introduced by Lewis in his modal re-
alist theory of possible worlds. For Lewis, each possible
world is a concrete universe, completely physically iso-
lated from any other possible world. For Lewis, entities
are world-bound; they each exist in only one world. How-
ever, entities have counterparts in other worlds. These
counterparts are entities existing in other worlds, but
which are similar to the entities of which they are coun-
terparts. The notion of being a counterpart is vague, since
it has borderline cases. In some worlds two separate enti-
ties could both be the most similar to an entity in another
world. In some worlds, it might be vague whether or not a
given entity has a counterpart at all. In Lewis’s view what
makes it true that Gordon Brown could have been the
prime minister of the UK in 2005 is the fact that there is a
possible world in which Gordon Brown’s counterpart is
the prime minister of the counterpart of the UK in 2005.
This view has often been met with what Lewis describes
as ‘the incredulous stare’.
See Modality; Semantics, possible world
Further reading: Divers (2002); Lewis (1986b)
Criterion of identity or identification: It provides the identity
conditions of some object or other. In other words, the
PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE A–Z 37
E
E-type pronoun: One kind of anaphoric use of pronouns. An
example is ‘it’ in ‘John picked something up. It was rot-
ten and yellow’. E-type pronouns can be substituted by
a noun-phrase constructed from the context, in this in-
stance ‘The thing picked up by John’.
See Anaphora
Excluded middle, law of: The law that states that for each
proposition either that proposition or its negation is
true. It is symbolised by the schema: A ∨ ¬ A. This law
should not be confused with bivalence, which states
that every proposition is either true or false. There are
logical systems in which excluded middle holds because
any sentence of the form A ∨ ¬ A is a theorem and yet
bivalence fails because the system admits of sentences
which are neither true nor false. Excluded middle holds
because the negations of these sentences are true.
See Bivalence
F
Fact: Some philosophers deflate this notion. In their view a
fact is just a shadow of a true claim. Thus, they might say
that to call something a fact is nothing more than say-
ing that we claim something to be true when we state it.
Other philosophers give ontological weight to the notion
of a fact. These philosophers insist that only some true
assertions are genuinely factual, while others, despite be-
ing truth-apt, fall short of stating an objective fact. Some
philosophers go even further and invoke a metaphysically
heavy-duty notion of fact to explain the idea of a truth-
maker.
See Deflationism; Truth aptness
G
Game See Language-game
H
Hermeneutics: The term is now used to refer to a specific ap-
proach to the study of the interpretation of texts, although
the etymology of the term refers to interpretation in
general. Among the founders of the hermeneutical
PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE A–Z 71
I
Icon: In semiotics, an icon is a sign that represents by resem-
bling what it is a sign for. A picture is an example of an
icon. The terminology was introduced by Peirce.
Is: There are three distinct uses to which the verb ‘to be’ is put
in English and some other languages. Each has a different
logical function and is translated differently in logic. To
confuse them is to risk equivocation. These uses are: (1)
Existence, as in ‘God is’. In these cases ‘is’ means exists
and it is translated into logic using the existential quanti-
fier. Thus, (∃x) (Gx). (2) Identity, as in ‘Eric Blair is George
Orwell’. In these cases ‘is’ means is identical; it is trans-
lated into logic using the identity symbol. Thus, a = b.
84 PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE A–Z
K
Kaplan, David (1933–): An American philosopher, at the time
of writing teaching at the University of California, Los
Angeles. He has developed the most influential theory
of meaning for indexicals. Kaplan takes the reference of
demonstratives to be fixed partly by means of a demon-
stration which is a gesture or an intention directed to-
wards an object or a person accompanying an utter-
ance which includes a demonstrative. Kaplan makes a
PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE A–Z 85
true. One such truth is, for example, ‘water is H2 O’. The
view that there is a form of necessity which is not log-
ical or conceptual was quite revolutionary at the time.
Kripke’s contribution to logic is also quite momentous
since he was the first to develop a possible world se-
mantics for modal logic. Further, in his book Wittgen-
stein on Rules and Private Language (1982), Kripke
provided a powerful sceptical argument in favour of
meaning irrealism based on Wittgenstein’s rule-following
considerations.
See A posteriori; A priori; Meaning scepticism; Modal-
ity; Reference borrowing; Semantics, possible world
L
Language: Philosophers have provided many different ac-
counts of what languages might be. Some think of lan-
guages as structured by formal logical relations; others
prefer accounts based on the idea of speech acts. Few
would deny their existence. Davidson, however, has de-
nied the existence of languages if these are understood as
governed by conventions that determine the connections
between words and what they might mean.
M
Malapropism: A misuse of words, such as ‘a nice derangement
of epitaphs’, which involves a mistake concerning words
that resemble one another. Davidson takes our ability to
understand what the utterer of a malapropism meant as
evidence that linguistic understanding does not rely on
a previous tacit knowledge of rules governing the use of
linguistic expressions.
belief, in the audience, (b) the intention that the first in-
tention is recognised by the audience, and (c) the intention
that the audience’s recognition plays a role in the expla-
nation of why the effect was produced. Grice also argued
that the linguistic meaning of a sentence is explained in
terms of what speakers regularly or conventionally use
utterances of that sentence to mean (their speaker mean-
ing). There are several problems for this account. First, it
cannot easily attribute a meaning to sentences that have
never been uttered. Second, it cannot easily explain the
compositionality of meaning; i.e., the fact that the mean-
ing of the constituent parts determines the meaning of the
sentential whole.
See Non-natural meaning
Further reading: Miller (1998), ch. 7
Metaphor: ‘The Spirit of God moved upon the face of the wa-
ters’ is an example of a metaphor. Some philosophers have
argued that metaphors have metaphorical (as opposed to
literal) meanings and express metaphorical truths. David-
son has denied these claims. For him, metaphors only
have literal meanings, and are literally true or false. What
is distinctive about metaphors, for Davidson, is not their
meaning but their use. Their point is to cause us to notice
something but not by stating what that something is.
Further reading: Moran (1999); Davidson (1991),
ch. 17
N
Name: In ordinary parlance names are contrasted with verbs
and adjectives. They include expressions such as ‘Lon-
don’, ‘Tony Blair’, ‘gold’, ‘tiger’, ‘woman,’ and so forth.
These terms can play different logical roles in different
contexts and thus are said to belong to different logical
categories in different contexts of use. Thus, ‘woman’ is
a logical subject in ‘woman is the equal of man’, but the
same word (orthographically understood) is a predicate
in ‘Margaret Thatcher is a woman’. Similarly ‘Vienna’ is
a singular term in ‘Vienna is the capital of Austria’ but
functions rather differently in ‘Trieste is no Vienna’ where
it is intended to convey the idea that Trieste is not a so-
phisticated metropolis. For this reason, philosophers do
not think of ‘name’ as a useful category, instead they use
logical categories such as singular term and predicate and
assign different uses of names, as ordinarily understood,
to different categories.
See Category; Predicable
Natural kind term: These are names for natural kinds. They
include mass terms such as ‘gold’ and ‘water’ and count
terms such as ‘tiger’ and ‘tulip’. Kripke argues that the
reference of these terms must be understood in terms of a
causal theory of reference according to which these terms
are not abbreviations for descriptions formulated in terms
of the observable properties of samples belonging to those
kinds. Instead, the reference is fixed through original con-
tacts with samples of these kinds which are identified by
their chemical compositions or biological natures. For re-
alists the distinctions between natural kinds cut nature at
its joints.
O
Object: For Frege an object is the referent of a proper name or
singular term. Thus, in the sentence ‘London is the capital
of the UK’, ‘London’ is a singular term whose referent is
the city of London.
See Concept
P
Paradigm case argument: A form of argument much in
use among supporters of ordinary language philosophy,
which concludes from the fact that there are paradigmatic
uses of an expression of a concept to the conclusion that
there are instances that satisfy the concept. Thus, for in-
stance, Antony Flew argued for the existence of free will
on the basis of the fact that there are actions which are
paradigmatic cases for the use of the word ‘free’. This
form of argumentation, together with the kind of phi-
losophy that sustained it, is not generally practised these
days.
Paradox: We have a paradox whenever by means of seem-
ingly valid reasoning we move from true premises to a
false conclusion. There are various kinds of paradoxes.
In mathematics, Russell’s paradox concerning the class
of all classes that are not members of themselves forced
the rejection of naı̈ve class theory. In the philosophy of
language a variety of paradoxes has proved recalcitrant
to any attempted solution. These include the liar paradox
and the sorites paradox.
while the extension of the relation ‘is the capital of’ is the
class of ordered pairs whose first member is a capital city
and whose second member is the related country.
See Concept; Interpretation
greater than it’. The first kind of use is called lazy be-
cause in these instances the name could be substituted for
the cross-referencing pronoun; not so in the other two
cases. In the e-type, however, the pronoun can be substi-
tuted with a noun-phrase constructed from the context.
Thus, in the example above we can substitute ‘the per-
son who picked up the glass’ for the pronoun ‘he’. In the
quantificational case, which is so called because the an-
tecedent of the anaphor is an expression that functions
as a quantifier, it is not possible to substitute a name or
a noun-phrase for the pronoun.
See Anaphora
R
Radical interpretation: A notion introduced by Davidson
which bears a close relation to Quine’s radical transla-
tion. The radical interpreter provides an interpretation of
the sentences uttered by other speakers without presup-
posing that they mean the same things by their words as
the interpreter means by hers. The problem faced by the
PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE A–Z 131
The equation for the predicate ‘red’ would state that un-
der ideal conditions, the predicate ‘ . . . is red’ co-varies
with the predicate ‘a suitable subject S judges . . . to be
red’. In other words, in those conditions, whenever some-
thing is red, S would judge it to be red, and vice versa. The
mere existence of a co-variation between being red and
being judged to be red does not settle whether the sub-
jects’ judgements infallibly track mind-independent red,
or – on the contrary – the judgements themselves con-
stitute what being red is. For this reason, Wright claims
that a predicate is judgement-dependent if and only if
its provisional equation satisfies four conditions. (1) The
a-prioricity condition requires that the equation must be
true a priori. (2) The substantiality condition requires that
the ideal conditions are not specified in a trivial way. (3)
The independence condition requires that it must be pos-
sible in each case to ascertain whether the ideal conditions
obtain independently of the truth of any attributions of
the predicate whose status as response-dependent is un-
der consideration. (4) The extremal condition requires
that there is no better account for why the covariance
presented by the provisional equation obtains than the
hypothesis that the judgements in question determine the
extension of the relevant predicate rather than merely re-
flect its pre-determined extension.
See Missing-explanation argument
Further reading: Wright (1992), Appendix to ch. 3
S
Salva veritate: A Latin expression meaning ‘saving the
truth’. Two expression are said to be intersubstitutable
salva veritate when one can be substituted for the other
PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE A–Z 141
have in the first sense of the term made the same state-
ment, but in the second sense what we have are two dif-
ferent statements with the same content.
Subject: This term has two distinct meanings: (1) In some in-
stances it is used as a synonym of ‘agent’. (2) Elsewhere
it indicates a distinct grammatical category. The subject
in a sentence is the expression which refers to the object
or objects the sentence is about.
T
T-schema: The schema first used by Alfred Tarski to formu-
late his convention T. The schema is: S is True in language
L if and only if p. There are different accounts of what
can be put in place of the place-holders S and p depend-
ing on whether the schema is thought to apply directly to
sentences of a language or propositions. If sentences, then
the place of p is to be occupied by a sentence, and that
of S by a structural description or a quote name of that
sentence. If propositions, what replaces S is the name of
the proposition that is expressed by the sentence that re-
places p. The following are instances of T-schemes: ‘La
PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE A–Z 161
U
Understanding: Contemporary philosophers tend to assim-
ilate understanding, especially linguistic understanding
with knowledge. Thus, they provide accounts of what
speakers must know in order to count as understanding
the language.
See Tacit knowledge
V
Vagueness: A term is said to be vague if its range of appli-
cation has borderline cases. Thus, for instance ‘bald’ is
vague since there are individuals who are neither clearly
bald nor clearly not bald. The phenomenon of vagueness
is complicated by the existence of higher-order vague-
ness. We have higher-order vagueness when the demar-
cation of borderline cases is also vague. Thus, we do not
just have borderline cases of application, we have also
instances where it is a borderline case whether the case
is a borderline case. There are competing philosophical
accounts of vagueness. Some see vagueness as a feature
178 PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE A–Z
W
Warranted assertibility: A sentence has this property when
one is entitled to its assertion. Wright has argued that
supporters of deflationism about truth are committed to
the identification of truth with warranted assertibility. He
also claims that such an identification is mistaken. He
concludes that deflationism is untenable.
See Superassertibility
Further reading: Wright (1992), ch. 1
Z
Zeugmas: This is a figure of speech in which one word which
qualifies other words in the sentence is used with two dif-
ferent senses. Gilbert Ryle’s famous example of a zeugma
is: ‘She came home in a sedan chair and a flood of tears’.
The use of ‘in’ in that sentence is zeugmatic because it does
two jobs: it indicates what she travelled in, and the emo-
tional state she was in. These are different senses of ‘in’.
Bibliography