IV*—KNOWLEDGE OF MEANING

by Bernhard Weiss

ABSTRACT The paper is sympathetic to the idea that speakers have implicit
knowledge of the semantics of sub-sentential elements of language, loosely, of
words. Implicit knowledge is knowledge which the subject need not be capable
of articulating yet which is a genuine propositional attitude and it is to be con-
trasted with tacit knowledge which refers to an information-bearing state which,
however, is not a genuine propositional attitude. I begin by defending the
implicit knowledge conception of speakers’ knowledge of the meanings of words
from a challenge articulated by Evans and then go on the offensive against
positions which attempt to replace the notion of implicit knowledge in semantic
theory by that of tacit knowledge.

A Defence of Implicit Knowledge. Proponents of the notion of

implicit knowledge in the philosophy of language conceive
of such knowledge as informing speakers’ use of language yet
concede that speakers will not be able to formulate the content
of such knowledge—will not, indeed, be able to recognise an apt
formulation of it. For the formulation will appeal to concepts
(some technical) which ordinary speakers need not possess, which
they will, perhaps, be incapable of mastering and which philos-
ophers and linguistic are still struggling to articulate. It doesn’t
take a great deal of exertion to make the notion of implicit
knowledge seem somewhat suspect. Crispin Wright summarises
the worry as being composed of two elements. First, one wonders
how implicit knowledge—knowledge which isn’t, in some sense
readily available to consciousness—can function as a rule guid-
ing speakers’ use of language. Secondly, there is the problem of
vindicating ascription of knowledge whose content would seem
to involve concepts which the knower patently does not possess.
Wright goes on, however, to defend the concept of implicit
knowledge against these two concerns. He notes that it is by no
means obvious that it is absurd to think of practitioners as
intending to uphold a set of conventions—and thereby to follow

*Meeting of the Aristotelian Society, held in Senate House, University of London,

on Monday, 8 December, 2003 at 4.15 p.m.
76 BERNHARD WEISS

a rule—which they are incapable of articulating. The crux of the

matter will depend on whether it is legitimate to conceive of there
being intentions in cases where the subject is incapable of articul-
ating the content of the intention and, prima facie, it would seem
so. Witness, for instance, our practice of ascribing intentions to
pre-linguistic children and to some animals. Precisely similar con-
siderations indicate that we also have a practice of ascribing
explanatory intentional states to animals despite the fact that
articulation of the content of these states involves concepts which
they patently do not possess (and where the prospects of war-
ranting ascription of any apt conceptual expertise seem bleak
indeed). But a defence of implicit knowledge is not yet a defence
of implicit knowledge of the meaning of words. The special prob-
lem faced by implicit knowledge of the meanings of words is that,
since one is only able to make use of a word in uttering a sen-
tence, the role of knowledge of the meaning of words is restricted
exclusively to the formation of beliefs about the meaning of sen-
tences. Thus it would suffice to attribute to speakers, not implicit
knowledge of the meanings of words, but implicit knowledge of
the meanings of sentences.
A natural response is to point out that linguistic competence
cannot consist in implicit knowledge of the meanings of sentences
since, if it did, the ability to speak a language would involve an
ability to possess indefinitely many separate pieces of knowledge.
Explanation of the phenomenon of linguistic creativity—the
ability of speakers to understand novel utterances—seems to
require that we see speakers’ ability to form beliefs about the
meanings of sentences as derived from a (de)finite knowledge
base. And this justifies ascription of implicit knowledge of the
meanings of words to speakers. But before this response can be
accepted we need to be sure that the role of beliefs in the mean-
ings of words in forming beliefs about the meanings of sentences
is one which can be reconciled with their status as genuine beliefs.
Gareth Evans argues that no such reconciliation is possible.
According to Evans for a state to qualify as one of belief we
need to see that state as interacting with other intentional states
in the service of a range of potential projects. To motivate that
thought he asks what distinguishes a rat which has acquired the
disposition to avoid a certain foodstuff that has previously
caused illness when ingested from a human’s—let us say,
 KNOWLEDGE OF MEANING 77

Jones’s—belief that the stuff is poisonous. He then suggests that

the answer can be arrived at by observing that the rat’s state
manifests itself behaviourally only in its avoidance of the stuff in
question. In contrast Jones’s belief will manifest itself in many
ways depending on the circumstances of her other beliefs, desires
and intentions. If our intuitions follow Evans’s on this then it
will seem that it is a necessary condition for a state to qualify as
one of believing that it be available for use in a wide variety of
projects, whether these be to do with the establishment of other
beliefs or performing one or another activity. And now the claim
is that implicit knowledge of an axiomatic clause of a theory of
meaning stating, say, a word’s meaning does not have this wide
variety of possible uses and thus fails to qualify as a genuine case
of belief. He writes,
The possession of tacit knowledge [of syntactic and semantic rules]
is exclusively manifested in speaking and understanding a lan-
guage; the information is not even potentially at the service of any
other project of the agent, nor can it interact with any other beliefs
of the agent (whether genuine beliefs or other ‘tacit’ beliefs) to
yield further beliefs.
A supposed implicit belief in the meaning of a word is not genu-
ine since such a putative belief only plays a role in forming beliefs
about the content of a sentence or utterance. To be sure those
beliefs may well be at the service of a variety of other projects
but the beliefs governing the syntax and semantics at the sub-
sentential level have only this one role.
A version of Frege’s Context Principle certainly plays a role
here. Since a word only has a use in the context of sentences, a
putative belief about its meaning only has a role in forming
beliefs about the content of sentences. One wonders whether, if
this lesson is apt, it should be extended. Since a sentence only
has a use in an utterance, a putative belief about its meaning will
only have a role in forming beliefs about the content of an utter-
ance. Thus there would be no genuine beliefs in the meaning of
sentences and no dissecting a competence in interpreting utter-
ances into an ability to form a belief about the content of the
utterance—given by the meaning of the sentence uttered—and a
sensitivity to the type of utterance made—assertion, question,
command etc. This makes it hard to see how an understanding
of utterances is arrived at. But let us set this worry aside.
78 BERNHARD WEISS

Now one way of responding to Evans’s challenge to the idea

that linguistic competence consists, in part, in knowledge of word
meaning is to focus on the content of such putative beliefs. One
might want to argue that there are two potential explanations
for a state failing to exhibit the sort of rich involvement with
other beliefs, desires and intentions in pursuance of a range of
projects that Evans highlights; one sort of explanation might be
just what Evans suggests—the state in question is not one of
possessing a belief—but there may be another sort of explanation
available: it may be that a certain state fails to exhibit this rich-
ness, not because it is not a state of believing, but because the
content of the belief precludes it from participating in the rich
interplay. The rat would therefore fail to possess a belief because
its state doesn’t interact richly and because the only plausible
candidates for the content of the state, viz. that the stuff is
poisonous, harmful etc., won’t explain the state’s restricted role.
In contrast, there would be no censure of the putative semantic
belief, since here the content of the ‘belief’ precisely explains its
restricted role. The function of such a belief is precisely and
restrictedly to enable the formation of beliefs about the content
of utterances, so its failure to achieve a more ambitious role need
have nothing to do with its credentials as a belief.
In favour of the response one might point to examples such as
one’s knowledge of the best strategies in chess for mating when
one has only two bishops. The relevant beliefs will be manifest
in one’s performance in chess but need not manifest themselves
in projects other than those whose aim is check-mating one’s
opponent.
The problem with the response is this. The argument was
aimed at certain beliefs which are purely implicit. There are, how-
ever, explicit beliefs which have the same content as these implicit
beliefs. And these explicit beliefs pass Evans’s test. So the failure
of the implicit ‘beliefs’ to pass the test is not, contrary to what
was just suggested, explicable by appeal purely to the content of
the putative belief.
Why do the explicit beliefs pass Evans’s test? Well, once a
belief is explicit it can figure in any number of potential projects.
My belief about chess strategies may be recruited in a project to
impress you, if I have a desire so to do and believe that you are
impressed by people with a good knowledge of chess. Or I may
 KNOWLEDGE OF MEANING 79

express my belief in justification of my claim to have been trying

to end the game as quickly as possible so as not to be late for a
dentist appointment. Similarly a belief about the meaning of a
word may figure in my justification for thinking that one lan-
guage is related to another, or that the answer to a crossword
clue is such and such or, again, it may be articulated in offering
a learner an explanation of that meaning. The limits to the pro-
jects one can envisage are a function of the poverty of one’s
imagination rather than constraints imposed by the content of
the (explicit) belief.
So if there is a fault in Evans’s argument it has to be found
either in the assumption that the role of putative beliefs about
word meaning in forming beliefs about the content of utterances
is not so impoverished a role as to deny these states the status of
belief or in the assumption that implicit ‘beliefs’ about word
meaning do have this restricted role.
The first assumption does indeed seem questionable. Is the role
of an implicit belief about a word’s meaning in forming beliefs
about the contents of the multifarious sentences in which it
occurs really analogous to the rat’s disposition to avoid ingesting
a certain substance? The question is surely highly debatable.
However, I want here to focus on the second assumption.
Let’s consider a simple example. I may utter the sentence ‘The
apple is red’ in an attempt to explain the meaning of the word
‘red’. The utterance is made with a certain explanatory intention
and it seems there are just two candidates for this intention. It
may be the intention to convey that ‘red’ means such and such
or it may be the intention to convey the meaning of ‘red’. On the
first scheme the implicit belief in the word’s meaning enters into
the content of the intention. Though clearly, since the belief is
implicit, what we place in the position of ‘such and such’ will
only be an explicit representation of the content of the implicit
belief.
On the second scheme the belief about the meaning of ‘red’ is
not part of the content of the intention. But then that belief will
necessarily play a role in one’s judgement about whether the
utterance is, in the circumstances, instructive; not just any true
assertion involving an expression can be put to explanatory use.
To be sure, that’s obvious enough. What isn’t quite so obvious
is that there’s no way of accounting for an explanatory use of a
80 BERNHARD WEISS

sentence in terms of beliefs about the world and beliefs about

sentential content. But the prospects look dim. Seemingly the
teacher will have to use a sentence which contains the target
word, which is true and which can be known to be true by the
learner. But that just won’t do. Many sentences can be known
to be true in ways which don’t shed light on the meaning of the
relevant word—logic, for instance, may suffice. What we seem
to need is a truth which the learner can know to be true in the
right way. And I don’t see how the teacher arrives at that insight
without utilising her knowledge of the meaning of the word. One
might think that stating obvious truths by using the word would
do, but what has to be obvious is not the truth of the sentence,
but which truth the sentence asserts. So, for instance, no amount
of utterances of obvious truths in a context involving only red
discs and blue squares will convey that ‘red’ means red rather
than, e.g., circular. And recognising that such a context is inap-
propriate for explaining the meaning of ‘red’ will involve one’s
belief about that meaning.
Evans’s point assumes that the only conceivable role for an
implicit belief in word meaning is in arriving at a belief about
sentence meaning. But, additionally, it then assumes that the
belief about sentence meaning is at the service of intentions which
are given or which can be acted on independently of beliefs about
the meanings of words. So what it ignores is that the intention
or the process of rationally appraising the aptness of an action
in fulfilment of that intention may need to be characterised in
terms of beliefs, indeed implicit beliefs, about word meaning.
Thus when a speaker makes an assertion with the intention of
thereby explaining (or contributing to an explanation of) a
word’s meaning the belief about the word’s meaning will either
figure in the content of the intention or in the appraisal of an
utterance in relation to that intention: the process of arriving at
a judgement that a certain use is indeed appropriately instructive
will involve the implicit belief about the word’s meaning.
Actually what I think the above shows is that what Evans
thinks is a necessary condition for a state to qualify as a genuine
belief is, in fact, a sufficient condition. We are warranted in
ascribing an implicit belief in word meaning because a rational-
istic explanation of an attempt to explain the meaning of a word
requires us so to do; a speaker’s use of language to explain a
 KNOWLEDGE OF MEANING 81

meaning is unintelligible unless we ascribe to her a belief about

the meaning of the word. Parenthetically we should also note
that this means that Evans’s original thought experiment is ten-
dentious. Evans asks us what distinguishes the rat’s state from
Jones’s state, and offers what seems a plausible disanalogy
between the two, which accounts for the fact that only Jones’s
state qualifies as a belief. But what the last few paragraphs sug-
gest might make the difference is the fact that in Jones’s case,
but not in that of the rat, a rationalistic explanation is called for.
That is, the relevant difference might best be sought not simply
by focusing on each of the states but by considering why in the
one case we have a distinctively rational activity requiring a
rationalistic explanation whereas in the other we do not.
However, I think it is clear that once we have delineated this
role for beliefs about word meaning we can then see that they
satisfy Evans’s criterion since if an implicit belief in word mean-
ing is involved in the intention to explain that meaning it is also
involved in intentions to mislead someone about the word’s
meaning, or to create the impression that one doesn’t know its
meaning or, humorously, to pretend to be confused about mean-
ings. If, lacking the explicit belief in the word’s meaning, I can
judge a certain use to be aptly instructive I can also make judge-
ments about uses which are misleading, obviously wrong, subtly
wrong or humorously wrong. Beliefs in word meanings play a
role in cultivating or frustrating another’s linguistic competence
or in exhibiting or concealing one’s own competence.
Writers fail to appreciate this point because they simply focus
on the activity of assertion, overlooking the potential linguistic
import that the goals of assertion might have by dismissing these
en masse as not essentially linguistic. In effect, writers assume
that since assertions aim at truth their role is to convey infor-
mation (about the world). Whereas it is quite clear that in many
cases the role of the assertion is not to bring a fact about the
world to another’s attention but to convey something about lan-
guage, given that a certain fact about the world is in scope of
another’s attention.
It would be worth pausing to clarify just how the above suc-
ceeds in responding to Evans’s argument. Evans had claimed that
the restricted role of putative implicit beliefs about word meaning
entails that there can be no genuine beliefs of this sort. In
82 BERNHARD WEISS

response, I’ve claimed that such beliefs plausibly play a much

wider role since they can be involved in determining the content
of certain intentions or of judging whether a certain speech act
is an apt means of fulfilling an intention. The intentions I had
lighted on were all intentions involving word meaning. So there
might be a sense in which I can be accused of begging the ques-
tion. Evans precisely had challenged the idea that word meaning
can be employed in an intentional account of speakers’ use of
language. My response seems to assume that it can figure in such
an intentional account and then goes on, unsurprisingly and irrel-
evantly, to conclude that, in that case, there’s no objection to its
so figuring.
My assumption is, however, rather different and is rather
weaker than the one which gives rise to the truistic conclusion.
I’ve assumed only that there is an aspect of linguistic practice,
namely, the offering of explanations of meaning, which, when
given a rationalistic explanation, requires attribution of implicit
beliefs about word meaning, and that when so attributed these
can be seen to be genuine beliefs immune to Evans’s challenge.
So I conclude that Evans has failed to discredit the notion of
implicit beliefs in word meaning.

II
A Rejection of Tacit Knowledge. It is one thing to show that
nothing has been proved against the idea of implicit knowledge
of the meanings of words, quite another to illustrate its explana-
tory value. In this section I want to move towards a sense of
this value by drawing out weaknesses in other accounts. In my
conclusion I’ll turn fleetingly to the task of characterising this
sense more positively.
The notion of implicit knowledge of the meanings of words
has two interrelated roles. On the one hand, as we noted towards
the beginning of the last section such knowledge would seem to
have a role in accounting for linguistic creativity. On the other,
vindication of such knowledge would be to vindicate ascription
of implicit knowledge of the semantic axioms of a compositional
theory of meaning thereby paving the way for an account of the
sense in which such a theory would explain speakers’ linguistic
capacities and justifying a conception of the semantic structure
 KNOWLEDGE OF MEANING 83

of the language. So the question before us is to consider how

alternative proposals subserve either or both of these aims.
Evans recommends that the project of constructing compo-
sitional meaning theories will find a place in the attempt to con-
struct a theory whose derivational structure mirrors the structure
of speakers’ dispositions to arrive at beliefs about the meanings
of sentences. We justify ascription of tacit rather than implicit
knowledge of a compositional theory of meaning to a speaker by
discerning distinct dispositions which she possesses in relation to
each expression for which the theory provides a distinct axiom.
Evidence for the possession of such dispositions will be garnered
from the patterns of gain and loss of competence with sentences.
We don’t need to pursue the proposal in any more detail now.
As Evans notes, however, the focus on dispositions deprives the
account of any force to explain linguistic creativity. Secondly, as
Evans again acknowledges, the dispositions are only exercised in
arriving at judgements about the meaning of sentences and thus
are never exercised singly but always in conjunction with at least
one other disposition. Thus the dispositions are inter-defined.
Wright argues that this inter-definition of dispositions gives rise
to a pernicious circularity. Finally, Evans insists ‘It is essential
that the notion of disposition used in these formulations be
understood in a full-blooded sense.’ The ascription of tacit
knowledge—possession of which is the possession of a certain
disposition—does not merely report upon the regularity. Rather
‘It involves the claim that there is a single causal state of the
subject which figures in a causal explanation of why he reacts in
this regular way to all sentences containing the expression.’ It’s
worth noting that even if we characterise the state in terms of
satisfying a certain subjunctive conditional (rather than exhibit-
ing a mere regularity) we don’t avoid this appeal to an underlying
causal explanatory state since a speaker may possess the dispo-
sition but fail to exhibit it in the specified conditions as a result
of some interfering mechanism, or may misleadingly satisfy the
subjunctive conditional because another mechanism comes into
play. To circumvent these problems we seem to need to focus on
the single underlying state which both partially causally explains
a speaker’s judgements about the meanings of a range of sen-
tences and which partially causally explains her judgement about
the meaning of a new sentence, and conversely for patterns of
loss of competence.
84 BERNHARD WEISS

Martin Davies thus recommends that we frame the appropri-

ate constraint not in terms of dispositions to form beliefs about
the meaning of sentences but directly in terms of the underlying
causal explanatory states. A descent to the categorical causal
level solves Wright’s problem about circularity, presumably
because the relevant operative states can be characterised separ-
ately. Also an account framed in terms of the underlying causal
basis of speakers dispositions, unlike one framed directly in terms
of those dispositions, promises to be explanatory of linguistic
creativity.
Davies’s basic thought is that we are warranted in ascribing
tacit knowledge of an articulated semantic theory just in case
there is a mirroring between the causal explanatory structure
underpinning speakers’ semantic competence and the deri-
vational structure of the semantic theory. More precisely, a sem-
antic theory, T, is tacitly known by a speaker just in case the
following biconditional holds:

(MCause) the operative states implicated in the explanation of the

speaker’s beliefs about s1, s2, ..., sn are jointly sufficient for a causal
explanation of the speaker’s belief about s; and those first states
together with the revision of the speaker’s beliefs about s provide
an explanation of the speaker’s corresponding revisions in his
beliefs about s1, s2, ..., sn’ iff, in T, the semantic resources which
are sufficient for canonical derivations of meaning specifications
for s1, s2, ..., sn are jointly sufficient for a canonical derivation of
the meaning specification for s.

In addition Davies goes on to argue that ‘[f]or tacit knowledge of

a particular articulated theory there should be within the causal
explanatory structure, an explanatory locus of systematic
revision corresponding to each proper axiom or rule of the
theory’.
Now the essential point about both accounts is that each
despairs at the possibility of giving a structured account of speak-
ers’ competence based on discerning structured rational processes
underlying that competence. Instead each replaces the rational-
istic account with an account which alludes to the structure of
an underlying causal mechanism whose existence is supposedly
supported by the empirical evidence of the interrelations between
a speaker’s semantic competences. But both programmes are
 KNOWLEDGE OF MEANING 85

supposed to be capable of being partially implemented in

advance of the causal account based purely on evidence of this
sort. So, in practice, rather than applying (MCause) one would
apply a constraint having roughly the following form:
(MCap) S’s capacities with respect to s1, s2, ..., sn are correlated
with a semantic capacity with respect to s; and revision of S’s sem-
antic capacity with respect to s is correlated with corresponding
revisions in semantic capacities with respect to s1, s2, ..., sn iff, in
T, the semantic resources which are sufficient for canonical deri-
vations of meaning specifications for s1, s2, ..., sn are jointly
sufficient for a canonical derivation of the meaning specification
for s.

And this programme would be pursued together with a commit-

ment to there being appropriate distinct causal explanatory
states. Now it seems to me that a project of this form could be
initiated. What I am thoroughly perplexed by is its end point.
Two points should be noted. First, we can collect the appropri-
ate evidence only for a language in which we are competent. In
that case we rely on our non-reflective, first order capacities as
competent speakers to make ascriptions of understanding to our
subject and then discern patterns of gain and loss of competence
which hold, given these ascriptions. Secondly, the evidence we
collect may well—as both Evans and Davies admit—be decep-
tive. We rehearsed these reasons above: no mere regularity (or
even fulfilment of a subjunctive conditional) will carry the requi-
site force. And it is precisely for this reason that we need to make
the commitment to underlying causal explanatory states. So,
quite correctly, ascription of tacit knowledge is only fully justified
given fulfilment of the mirror constraint—(MCause)—itself.
And satisfying (MCap) is no guarantee of satisfying (MCause).
Thus it just isn’t clear quite what project would be pursued sim-
ply by implementing the above constraint in advance of the cas-
ual account. This isn’t to deny that, in practice, the project is
likely to be reliable. But, for us to be warranted in believing it to
be reliable and for the commitment to underlying causal explana-
tory states to be anything but hollow, we need to have in place
an account of what would be involved in a fully justified ascrip-
tion of tacit knowledge based on the constitutive account of tacit
knowledge.
86 BERNHARD WEISS

Consider then what would be involved in applying (MCause).

We would need to verify that the causal structure of a speaker’s
competence satisfied the LHS which would involve isolating
operational states which causally explain certain semantic com-
petences, viz., the ability to form certain beliefs about the mean-
ings of sentences. When we discussed application of (MCap) we
noted that the application was dependent on our non-reflective
ability as competent speakers to ascribe understanding reliably.
In applying (MCause) this non-reflective ability no longer suffices
since we’ve shifted to a theoretical level in which we have to
recognise, not competence itself, but causal explanations of com-
petence. There is no recognising such a causal explanation unless
we have an explicit account of what we are supposed to be
explaining, namely, the semantic competence itself. And now it
seems to me the project seems to be asking a distinctly odd ques-
tion. I don’t see how we could have an explicit representation of
a speaker’s semantic capacities yet not know how those capacities
are structured; if one had an adequate, explicit representation of
a speaker’s semantic capacities with respect to s1, s2, ..., sn and s
then it will be a matter for (philosophical) reflection to determine
whether possession of the former set of capacities will suffice for
possession of the latter capacity. Why should anything other
than a reflection on the nature of these capacities provide any
sort of response?
The tendency not to appreciate this point arises from a crude
view of what it is to understand a sentence. Take the view that
understanding is seen simply as grasp of a truth-condition with-
out consideration of how the truth-condition is determined and
combine it with a conviction that these semantic capacities must
be structured and one arrives at the unsurprising conclusion that
something else—causal structure, say—must come into play.
But, as I try to elaborate below, not enough is done to show
that causal structure is indeed relevant, given that the semantic
capacities themselves are admitted to be semantically unarticu-
lated. The temptation here can be avoided if we see through to
the inadequacy of the crude view of understanding: we grasp a
truth condition by grasping it as the condition that, say, an object
presented thus and so possesses a certain property.
What exactly is my objection? It is that my opponent must
admit that the semantic capacities themselves aren’t semantically
 KNOWLEDGE OF MEANING 87

articulated—otherwise her causal account is rendered redun-

dant—but insist that a semantic structure is there to be found in
the causal basis of these capacities. And my question is simply:
why should we take the insistence seriously in the face of the
admission? As a matter of fact, I think that the admission is
inept and that the causal account gains currency through the
admission. But that’s by the by as far as my basic challenge goes.
To make the challenge a little more vivid note that two speak-
ers might have the same semantic capacities relative to the same
sentences yet diverge in the causal structure of their competence.
Different compositional theories will according to Davies’s
(MCause) be ascribable as tacitly known in either case. Are we
to say that these speakers speak different languages or the same
language? If the languages are said to be the same then we’ve
failed one of our aims, which was to motivate a choice of compo-
sitional semantic theory for the language. And, although we need
not require this choice to be uniquely dictated, there’s clearly too
much latitude available in the above scenario. If they are said to
be different then we are owed an explanation of this distinction
between languages which isn’t based on a semantic difference.
Indeed there’s a flat contradiction here with Davies’s own, and
not implausible, suggestion that we identify a language in terms
of a set of sentences together with a set of meaning specifications,
one for each sentence in that set.
Davies’s strenuous efforts at trying to show the semantic rel-
evance of causal structure don’t succeed in addressing this ques-
tion. His general strategy is to tighten the constraints on what
causal structure is seen as having semantic relevance by beefing
up the semantic competences that the causal structure is to
explain. So, if causal structure can have semantic relevance then
Davies may have provided a way of determining when it does
so. However, he doesn’t provide an argument for accepting the
antecedent. And, to emphasise, he would have to do so while
admitting that the relevant semantic capacities are semantically
unstructured.
It is quite true that only a semantic theory stands a hope of
satisfying (MCause). But this is simply because the RHS of
(MCause) requires the theory to issue in meaning specifications
for sentences. If these are to be deriûed from axioms discerning
sub-sentential structure then those axioms had better include
88 BERNHARD WEISS

semantic content. So if the causal structure delineated by the

LHS of (MCause) drives us towards ascription of a structure
discerning theory it will be one which is a compositional semantic
theory. But that isn’t an answer to the question before us. To
accept (MCause) is to accept that causal structure is to be
reflected in the derivational structure of a semantic theory. Our
question was: Why echo causal structure in a semantic theory,
given that the fundamental semantic competences, i.e., those
relating to sentences, are not semantically complex? And this is
strictly prior to an acceptance of (MCause).
The answers we’ve been given are inadequate because they
attempt to ground the semantic relevance of causal structure in
the semantic capacities which are the subject of the causal expla-
nation. And this fails to explain why, as semantic theorists, we
should be interested in causal structure nor why we should not
opt for a causal account which lacks any sub-sentential seman-
tics. A more promising tactic would be to attempt to ground the
semantic relevance of causal structure in the nature of the prac-
tice itself. A response of this sort is elaborated by Elizabeth
Fricker who thus offers what appears to be the most effective
response to our question. She argues that there are a priori prin-
ciples of interpretation which explain the semantic relevance of
causal structure. So, for instance, she suggests that the following
(transcendent) definition holds of what it is for an expression to
be semantically primitive:
(SPT) An expression e is semantically primitive iff L-speakers’
understanding of sentences containing e is the product, inter alia,
of a distinct causal capacity associated with e.

(SPT) is supposed to be an a priori constraint of interpretation.

Fricker motivates it as such by canvassing intuitions about how
we interpret one another. Specifically she points out that we
would not interpret one speaker as meaning the same by a set of
sentences as another if the one but not the other was able to
understand a novel sentence based on familiar semantic primi-
tives drawn from that set. Maybe so, though it is not clear that
this isn’t in conflict with the claim that the semantic competences
are semantically simple: if the semantic competences are simple
then both speakers might share competences with respect to the
original set of sentences, in which case, why exactly are they
 KNOWLEDGE OF MEANING 89

being interpreted differently? Fricker might ignore this question

by going descriptive: this is simply a feature of the way our
(English speakers, actual speakers, possible speakers of possible
languages?) practice functions. Again, maybe so. But it’s hard to
tell since our intuitions are weak; the sort of inability Fricker
alludes to is very infrequent since it needs to be both pervasive
and inexplicable on other grounds, e.g., a cognitive failing. Surely
it’s more plausible to suppose that she may be right about the
way we interpret one another but that we do so because differ-
ences in capacities to understand novel utterances are conse-
quences of differences in semantic capacities in relation to the
original set of sentences. Maybe Fricker is right too in supposing
that her intuition about interpretation tells in favour of discern-
ment of distinct capacities associated with semantic primitives.
But why insist that these are causal?
Moreover, if her proposal is intended to motivate a structure
discerning semantic theory in a way that circumvents the prob-
lems with ascribing implicit knowledge of the meanings of words,
it is simply mistaken. Many, if not all, of the worries about
implicit knowledge will re-emerge in relation to such principles
as (SPT). Such a principle does not explicitly inform speakers’
practices of interpretation, rather it implicitly informs it. But
then with what right do we ascribe the principle as operative
in a speaker’s practice, especially since the principle is not non-
reflectively available to consciousness and will involve concepts
which, qua speaker, our subject need not possess? Moreover, the
principle will only play a role in arriving at beliefs about the
meaning of another’s utterance (of a sentence) and so would
seem to be just as restricted in role as supposed beliefs about
word meaning. Rather than providing any sort of solution to our
problems this seems to take us back to them.

III
Conclusion. I’ve argued that we need have no suspicion about the
idea that speakers have implicit knowledge of the meanings of
words and then have attempted to show that if we aim to con-
struct a compositional meaning theory which explains linguistic
creativity then we may well have use of such a notion. We might
do so because the rival accounts framed in terms of underlying
90 BERNHARD WEISS

causally operative states or dispositions fail to be explanatory

or fail to allow scope for a genuinely explanatory role for the
compositional meaning theory or do so at the cost of reintroduc-
ing the notion of implicit knowledge at the sub-sentential level.
The paper has thus adopted a primarily negative tone, only hint-
ing at the position I favour. I’ll close with a sketch of something
more positive.
The role of semantic theory is to describe speakers’ semantic
competence. A semantic theory will be compositional just when
speakers’ semantic capacities exhibit an articulation which war-
rants description in a theory of this sort. In this case we can claim
that speakers implicitly know the semantic theory. Our use of
language provides evidence that our capacities are semantically
articulated. What form does this evidence take? As Evans and
Davies suggest some of this evidence may come in the form of
empirical evidence of the patterns of gain, loss and revision of
competences. But other evidence will be pertinent. Certainly we
should admit a priori philosophical reflection on what constitutes
or warrants and defeats an ascription of understanding of a sen-
tence or range of sentences. And this process may well be aided
by one’s knowledge of formal semantics and logic and by the
construction of thought experiments. In addition, the need to
offer rationalistic explanations of certain uses of language will
provide evidence of certain capacities, for instance, as argued in
section one, of implicit beliefs about the meanings of words. So
the inference from performance to capacities may well follow
rational inductive and deductive routes but may involve inference
to the best rationalistic explanation. I take it that this is part of
what is involved in accepting Dummett’s insistence that what we
are after is an account which portrays speakers’ use of language
as a rational activity. This marks an important and substantial
difference between the way I see the project and Davies’s
conception.
Finally let me comment on the explanatory value of the project
I’ve briefly described. It is natural to think that we shall have to
explain what possession of an implicit belief in word meaning
will consist in and will have to unpack this in terms of a practical
capacity. Once we do so the threat will be that the account will
be no more explanatory than the dispositional account: the belief
cannot explain an ability to use and understand uses of a piece
 KNOWLEDGE OF MEANING 91

of language in novel settings if having the belief precisely consists

in having these abilities. There are two things to say in response
to this point. First, the possession of the belief should not be
identified with possession of a practical capacity. In some—no
doubt problematic—sense, the belief must be conceived of as a
genuine propositional attitude since only thus can it can play
a role in rationalistic explanation. There will then, indeed, be
substantial work to be done in showing that possession of a belief
with a certain content involves possession of a certain practical
capacity. A speaker’s ability to understand novel utterances will
therefore be partially explained by justifying an ascription to her
of beliefs about the semantics of her terms and demonstrating
that part of what it is to have those beliefs is to possess certain
practical capacities, capacities which jointly constitute a facility
with (certain) novel utterances. So the explanation is largely a
priori and constitutive. We explain linguistic creativity not by
laying bare a process or processes involved, rather we claim that
it consists in having certain sorts of beliefs.
The second point is this. Some of the beliefs with which we are
concerned will be basic semantic beliefs, while others will be
derived rationally from these. So some cases of linguistic creativ-
ity are to be explained in terms simply of practical capacities
associated with semantic beliefs, others in terms of rational pro-
cesses leading to derived semantic beliefs, combined with an
explanation of the practical capacities associated with these.
Department of Philosophy
Uniûersity of Cape Town
Rodebosch 7701
Cape Town
South Africa

REFERENCES

Campbell, J. (1982) ‘Knowledge and Understanding’, Philosophical Quarterly

32, 17–34.
Davies, M. (1981) ‘Meaning Structure and Understanding’, Synthese 48, 135–
61.
Davies, M. (1981a) Meaning, Quantification and Necessity, London, Routledge.
Davies, M. (1986) ‘Tacit Knowledge and the Structure of Thought and Lan-
guage’, in C. Travis (ed.), Meaning and Interpretation, 127–58, Oxford,
Blackwell.
92 BERNHARD WEISS

Davies, M. (1987) ‘Tacit Knowledge and Semantic Theory: Can a Five Per Cent
Difference Matter?’, Mind 96, 441–62.
Davies, M. (1989) ‘Tacit Knowledge and Subdoxastic States’, in A. George (ed.),
Reflections on Chomsky, 131–52, Oxford, Blackwell.
Dummett (1987) ‘Reply to McDowell’ in B. Taylor (ed.), Michael Dummett:
Contributions to Philosophy, Dordrecht, Nijhoff.
Dummett (1991) The Logical Basis of Metaphysics, London, Duckworth.
Evans, G. (1981) ‘Semantic Theory and Tacit Knowledge’, in S. Holtzmann and
C. Leich (eds.), Wittgenstein: To Follow a Rule, 118–37, London, Routledge.
Fricker, E. (1983) ‘Semantic Theory and Speakers’ Understanding’, Proceedings
of the Aristotelian Society LXXXIII, 49–66.
Miller, A. (1999) ‘Tacit Knowledge’, in B. Hale and C. Wright (eds.) A Com-
panion to the Philosophy of Language, 146–74, Oxford, Blackwell.
Wright, C. (1986) ‘Theories of Meaning and Speakers’ Knowledge’, Realism,
Meaning and Truth, 204–38, Oxford, Blackwell.