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Semantics, Metasemantics, Aboutness
Semantics,
Metasemantics,
Aboutness

Ori Simchen

1
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 2/1/2017, SPi

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Dedicated to the memory of Yehuda Elkana
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 2/1/2017, SPi

Contents

Preface ix
Acknowledgments xvii

1. Metasemantics and Semantic Ascent 1

1.1 Introductory Remarks 1
1.2 Lewisian Reference Magnetism 7
1.3 “Just More Metasemantic Theory” 11
1.4 Metasemantic Explanation I 17
1.5 Metasemantic Explanation II 20
1.6 Reference Magnetism Again 22
1.7 Metasemantics and Reduction 27
Appendix I: Lewisian Metasemantics 30
2. The Case of Singular Reference 33
2.1 Introductory Remarks 33
2.2 Interpretationism and Singular Reference 36
2.3 Scrambled-Truth-in-a-Model 40
2.4 Interpretationist Replies I 42
2.5 Interpretationist Replies II 45
2.6 Productivism Redux 51
2.7 Concluding Remarks 53
Appendix II: Scrambled Truth 56
Appendix III: Reference to Numbers 59
3. Aboutness and Semantic Value 64
3.1 Introductory Remarks 64
3.2 Native Judgments of Aboutness 69
3.3 Two Takes on Denotations 74
3.4 A Better Option 79
3.5 Metasemantics and Intuitive Aboutness 82
3.6 Taking Stock 89
4. Case Study I: Productivism and Self-Reference 92
4.1 Introductory Remarks 92
4.2 Conferred-Self-Denotation: the Gödel Sentence 95
viii CONTENTS

4.3 “Never mind” 99

4.4 Produced-Self-Reference: RTR 103
4.5 Produced-Self-Satisfaction: DTR 110
4.6 Concluding Remarks 114
5. Case Study II: Metasemantics and Interpretation 115
5.1 Introductory Remarks 115
5.2 Textualism and Metasemantic Interpretationism I 116
5.3 Textualism and Metasemantic Interpretationism II 119
5.4 Dworkin vs. Scalia I 122
5.5 Dworkin vs. Scalia II 125
5.6 Dworkinian Interpretation 128
5.7 Textualism and Metasemantic Productivism 132
6. Conclusion: Semantic Determinacy 136
6.1 Semantic Indeterminacy 136
6.2 An Attempted Semantic Rebuttal 137
6.3 From the Semantics of Types to the Metaphysics of Tokens 139
6.4 The Shift to Metasemantics 141
6.5 Productivism to the Rescue 146

References 151
Index 157
Preface

A salient feature of much of the work done these days in the areas of
philosophy that are most relevant to the topics broached in this book
is unprecedented technical sophistication in a number of key junc-
tures, coupled with a certain loss of vision when it comes to larger
themes. Some think this is just fine, it is what it is for a subject to
mature, and that as long as we succeed in ridding ourselves of large
obfuscating themes we will continue to be making genuine progress
in philosophy. I don’t share this view. It seems to me that all too often
we reach an impressive level of attentiveness to detail that makes it
exceedingly difficult to bring the uninitiated into our problem space.
This is a fairly reliable indicator of losing touch with what got us to
where we are in the first place. And in philosophy losing touch with
our intellectual etiology threatens to make our work myopic and
irrelevant.
Naturally, it will seem less so the more one is embedded in a
community of like-minded researchers. If an overriding concern is
to converse with one’s fellow researchers, then inability to commu-
nicate the results of one’s efforts to those on the outside won’t seem
particularly important. But if successful work in philosophy is to be
measured prominently (though not exclusively) by the beauty and
interest of the thoughts contained therein and their capacity to shed
new light on “big questions,” then one should take care not to become
too insular. One of the issues I have been struggling with in my own
work—constantly, and to varying degrees of success—is how to
achieve a healthy balance between the micro and the macro, between
pedantry when it comes to technical minutiae and a broader outlook
when it comes to the larger philosophical dividends to be gained from
painstaking work on the details. To be sure, efforts to achieve this
balance will not be universally appreciated; certainly not by those
with a taste for the desert landscapes of pedantry, nor equally by those
x PREFACE

with a taste for landscapes lacking in any detailed features whatso-

ever. But without such balance philosophical work is bound to seem
either uninspired or ungrounded. Neither option is attractive. The
struggle to avoid both, while often frustrating, is certainly worth the
trouble. This book represents my latest efforts on this front.
The book is best viewed as emerging from an intellectual climate
where forms of semantic indeterminacy—scenarios in which what we
mean is up for grabs because underdetermined by the truth or falsity
of what we say—pose serious intellectual threats. The threat of
semantic indeterminacy has been with us for decades. It was intro-
duced into contemporary philosophical culture by Quine and has
played a pivotal role in his thinking from the late 1950s onward. To
recall one of Quine’s later examples, whether in using the name
“Tabitha” we are talking about a particular cat or the whole cosmos
minus the cat—the cat’s “cosmic complement”—is left wide open by
the truth or falsity of what we say, given the availability of compen-
satory adjustments in the significance of other expressions in the
surrounding discourse that leave truth-conditions for whole sen-
tences unchanged. Thus, we are told, “cat” can be interpreted to
apply to all and only cosmic complements of cats rather than to all
and only cats, and so on for the rest of the language. And because the
cosmic complement of Tabitha is a cosmic complement of a cat if and
only if Tabitha is a cat, “Tabitha is a cat” can remain true if and only if
Tabitha is a cat even under the deviant interpretation. In Quine’s
hands this underdetermination of what we mean by the truth-
conditions of what we say shows that there is no fact of the matter
as to whether “Tabitha” refers to the cat or to the cat’s cosmic
complement. Many regard this as the most startling consequence of
Quine’s entire œuvre. I certainly do.
The worry that what we talk about is underdetermined or indeter-
minate can be very gripping even for someone who has never heard of
Quine. I recall encountering chapter 11 of Leviticus in grade school, a
chapter devoted to dietary laws. (I attended a secular school but
Hebrew Bible classes were part of the Israeli public school curriculum
even in secular schools.) Many of the animals listed in that chapter
 PREFACE xi

bore names familiar to Modern Hebrew speakers. But when the

bat (“ATALEF”) came up in the fowl category, I began to worry
about continuity of meaning over time, which became a more general
worry once I considered whether the Modern Hebrew word for
fowl (“OPH”) occurring in that same chapter really means fowl.
I remember thinking that for all we are being taught perhaps each
of the sentences in the Bible is really about something completely
different from what we think it’s about and we’ll never know. It
did not help things to be taught later in high school that Modern
Hebrew terms for crocodile (“TANIN”), whale (“LIVIATAN”), and
boa constrictor (“NACHASH BARI’ACH”), are all biblical terms
for mythological beasts (see e.g. Isaiah 27). But it was not until
university that I began to worry not so much about our capacity to
know what our words mean, but about whether there is a fact of
the matter here at all.
As an undergraduate studying math and philosophy I became
increasingly moved by this problem. It hit me hard while taking a
logic course that introduced students to the basics of model theory
covering the first 200 pages or so of Chang and Keisler’s classic Model
Theory with Gitik at Tel Aviv University, followed by sitting in on
Hrushovski’s more advanced model theory seminar at the Hebrew
University. Around that time I was also reading Putnam’s “Models
and Reality” and the first two chapters of Putnam’s Reason, Truth and
History, which I felt jointly solidified and concretized the specter of
skepticism about semantic facts in a way that simply could not be
ignored. I thought there was no more urgent problem in philosophy.
By the time I arrived at Harvard as a graduate student the students
congregating around Putnam were generally moved by his emerging
remedial Kantianism. This was around the time McDowell’s Mind
and World was also being discussed a lot in the classes and corridors
of Emerson Hall. I remained decidedly unmoved by the Kantian
antidote to the problem that was bothering me, mainly because
I was viewing the Harvard/Pittsburgh Kantianism through metaphys-
ical eyes as a set of strange doctrines about what the mind can achieve
as a matter of efficient causation. The emerging view seemed absolutely
xii PREFACE

incredible to me, that is to say: not credible. I did not grasp at the time
that the more interesting interpretation of the ideas that were being
attributed to Kant was under the auspices of a radical methodological
revolution that treated epistemology, rather than metaphysics, as first
philosophy. This is something I remain unmoved by. And yet I do not
find it bordering on the incoherent in the way that the views I was
attributing to the Kantians seemed to me then.
At Harvard in the mid-1990s conventional wisdom had it that a
certain “God’s Eye View” (Putnam) or “sideways on view” (McDowell)
of language and thought engendered threats of semantic indeter-
minacy. The idea was, very roughly, that if we assume semantic
relations to be relations that relate portions of our language or
mentality to something beyond the reach of our concepts, then it is
only to be expected that what we talk about should be rendered
indeterminate. If, on the other hand, we discard the assumption
and construe semantic facts “internally” (Putnam) or as “already
conceptually organized” (McDowell), then semantic determinacy
would be regained. I profess not to be able to reconstruct such ideas
with sufficient clarity even for the purpose of critical engagement.
I felt incapable of evaluating them, and it was likely due to this
felt lack that I began to develop an alternative account, one that
emphasizes the modal standing of instances of aboutness and that
culminated in my 2012 book Necessary Intentionality.
Necessary Intentionality argues for a constellation of views in the
metaphysics of modality and essence that could in principle deliver
the result that semantic indeterminacy, despite initial appearances to
the contrary, is not after all really possible. I argue that tokens are
products of certain intentions on the side of their producers, among
them intentions to employ certain morphemes. A full-fledged token is
not just a noise or an inscription with accidental semantic features. It
is by its nature the outcome of distinctive cognitive processes that
load the item with its particular semantic contribution. So semantic
indeterminacy, on this approach, is not a metaphysical possibility,
whatever merit it might enjoy as an epistemic possibility. It is just
not possible for a referential token of “Tabitha” not to refer to the
 PREFACE xiii

individual it refers to, regardless of what we can be credited with

knowing about its significance. The burden on the account is to paint
a requisite modal metaphysical backdrop to ground such ambitious
claims, and then to motivate the requisite essentialist claims. (The
strategy is described in fuller detail in Ch. 6.)
Stepping back from these efforts, however, we might want to
consider afresh the initial position and ask what it was that made
semantic indeterminacy seem even remotely plausible in the first
place. How might Quine react to the kind of picture emerging from
Necessary Intentionality and its bearing on the issue at hand? In
pondering this we should set aside a very short route to the undoubt-
edly correct answer “dismissively.” Let us set aside Quine’s general
hostility to metaphysical modality and essence, itself an expression of
Quine’s deep commitment to a worldview that celebrates the great
scientific advances of late modernity and their upheaval of the pre-
modern. Time and again we read Quine denouncing what he calls
“Aristotelian essentialism” as a defunct throwback to a pre-modern
era. And despite the general interest in this relatively recent episode in
the history of philosophy, let us set it aside and focus on cognitive
matters, more specifically on matters pertaining to the determination
of semantic significance, or metasemantics. For herein lies a funda-
mental difference between the kind of view offered in Necessary
Intentionality and Quinean doctrine. It is here, in metasemantics,
that Quine’s ideas seem to retain a very powerful influence, an
influence far greater these days than that of Quine’s programmatic
animadversion against modal metaphysics.
The strand in metasemantics that is the most direct descendent of
Quinean ideas is interpretationism, the approach championed by two
of Quine’s most celebrated students, Davidson and Lewis. If meta-
semantics asks how it is that expressions become endowed with their
semantic significance—a question about the determinants of seman-
tic endowment—interpretationism answers that this is a matter of
expressions being assigned semantic values that maximize certain
parameters from the side of interpretation, such as overall rationality
of speakers’ verbal behavior in their worldly surroundings. What
xiv PREFACE

determines that expressions have their significance on this approach is

their regardability under various conditions, a matter pertaining to
their interpretive reception by an interpreter (idealized). It should not
be all that surprising that within such a mindset it turns out that there
can be ties in suitability among multiple mutually incompatible global
assignments of semantic values to expressions. Semantic indetermin-
acy easily follows—nothing selects one among these multiple equally
suitable assignments. There is thus no fact of the matter as to what our
words mean.
But what if semantic endowment is viewed as emerging directly
from conditions surrounding the production or employment of the
items semantically endowed—as in the example above of a referential
token of “Tabitha”—as opposed to conditions surrounding their
interpretive reception? It would be conditions of production or
employment of expressions that determine directly their semantic
significance, say a speaker’s intention to employ an expression for a
particular individual (or in a more reductionist vein certain causal
relations borne to portions of the speaker’s environment). That the
expression is about the particular individual would be determined by
the fact that the speaker had the relevant intention vis-à-vis the
individual, which would be determined, in turn and among other
things, by a real relationship borne to the individual in question (or
again in a more reductionist vein by the relevant causal factors). Such
a metasemantic orientation, which I call productivism, is a natural
approach to metasemantics, both in the sense of being intuitively
compelling but also in its emphasis on natural processes that engen-
der semantic endowment. If semantically significant items become
endowed with their semantic significance by conditions surrounding
the items’ production or employment as illustrated above, then
semantic indeterminacy no longer poses a serious threat. Indeed,
such indeterminacy is no more a real option than mass-indeterminacy
for an atom or genetic-indeterminacy for an infant. We can finally put
to rest the specter of semantic indeterminacy. And we can do this
while keeping the modal metaphysical froth to a minimum.
 PREFACE xv

The pages that follow present an extended case for productivism as

a general metasemantic orientation and its philosophical utility. Prior
exposure to semantic indeterminacy arguments is not presupposed.
The general topic of semantic indeterminacy helps situate the book’s
main theoretical efforts within a broader philosophical landscape.
However, the discussion of metasemantic methodology, specifically
the deep schism between interpretationism and productivism, is
meant to stand on its own and be accessible to a broader philosoph-
ical audience. One of my aims is to show that our most familiar and
established efforts in semantics demand a productivist metasemantic
framework to accompany them rather than an interpretationist
framework. If I am right, a productivist metasemantic foundation
for truth-conditional semantics has a better chance of delivering a
cohesive theoretical capture of endowment with semantic significance
than the interpretationist competition. But more important to my
mind is the promise of relief from the particularly pernicious philo-
sophical worry of semantic indeterminacy. Given the scope of this
larger aim and its high level of generality, I have not ventured to offer
and defend a particular productivist metasemantic theory. Rather,
I have chosen to consider productivism as a general methodological
orientation, highlighting its principal advantages over its arch-nemesis
interpretationism, and then illustrating how such an orientation can
shed new light on a couple of problem areas in the philosophy
of language broadly construed. Those who wish to see a particular
productivist metasemantic theory articulated in these pages are likely
to come away disappointed. Such readers are invited to consider
how the various constraints on a successful metasemantic theory
I articulate throughout the book apply to their favorite metasemantic
story, however comprehensive that story may otherwise be. The ideal
readership I have in mind consists of those who at some point have
been dogged by the threat of semantic indeterminacy and have felt
the pull of this particular form of philosophical anxiety for them-
selves. Hopefully to such readers this book can offer something
genuinely useful.
Acknowledgments

Portions of this material were presented as talks at various institu-

tions over the past three years. For reactions and advice I am indebted
to audiences at Yale University, UC Santa Cruz, University of Bologna,
Bar Ilan University, Lund University, Tel Aviv University, Princeton
University, University of Alberta, University of Helsinki, University
of Victoria, and Stockholm University. I am especially indebted to
Mahrad Almotahari, Roberta Ballarin, Paul Bartha, Yuval Dolev, Eli
Dresner, Delia Graff Fara, Eli Friedlander, Emmanuel Genot, Liz
Harman, Robbie Hirsch, Justine Jacot, Tom Kelly, Kathrin Koslicki,
Eric Margolis, Genoveva Martí, James Martin, Chris Mole, Daniel
Nolan, Howard Nye, Erik Olsson, Alan Richardson, Gideon Rosen,
Chris Stephens, Abe Stone, Zoltán Szabó, Tuomas Tahko, Max Weiss,
and Åsa Wikforss. Two anonymous readers for Oxford University
Press made some excellent suggestions for which I am very grateful.
OUP’s Peter Momtchiloff has been outstanding in every way—I don’t
know how he does it. And as always, my gratitude to Shelly Rosenblum,
Lila Simchen, and Milo Simchen is immeasurable.
Some parts of this book draw on work published elsewhere.
I thank the Journal of Philosophy for permission to use material
from Simchen 2013, Cambridge University Press for permission to
use material from Simchen 2015a, and Noûs for permission to use
material from Simchen 2015b. I gratefully acknowledge financial
support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council
of Canada.
Since the publication of my first book Necessary Intentionality
I have lost Yehuda Elkana, a dear friend and early mentor at Tel
Aviv University, who most recently served as President and Rector of
the Central European University in Budapest. We had not been in
touch much since my undergraduate days at Tel Aviv, but in hind-
sight he set an example for me of how to stay true to one’s own
xviii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

charted path of creative output that was far more formative than I had
realized at the time. And while this book concerns topics that are
rather remote from his principal intellectual concerns, I hope that at
least some of the spirit of his inimitable and uncompromising intel-
lectual stance has found its way to its pages. I dedicate this book to his
memory.
 1
Metasemantics and Semantic
Ascent

1.1 Introductory Remarks

Metasemantics is concerned with how the semantically significant
becomes endowed with its semantic significance. If semantics is of the
usual truth-conditional sort, then a principal issue for metasemantics
is how subsentential expressions become endowed with their distinct-
ive contributions to the truth-conditions of whole sentences in
which they partake. Metasemantics as it is ordinarily understood is
the metaphysics of semantic endowment, where the latter is cast in
truth-conditional terms.
There are alternative ways of conceiving of the metasemantic
project, however. One choice point concerns different approaches
to semantic significance—whether to think of semantic significance
in terms of expressions’ contribution to truth-conditions (the “static”
conception), or in terms of expressions’ contribution to context
change potential (the “dynamic” conception), or in some other way.
A second choice point is harder to characterize but has to do with
whether to think of semantic endowment as emerging from conditions
surrounding the production or employment of the items semantically
endowed (e.g. causal relations borne to portions of speakers’ envir-
onment), or to think of it in terms of conditions surrounding the
interpretive consumption or reception of such items (e.g. facilitation
of good explanations of speakers’ verbal behavior). The first general
approach—call it productivism—is taken by the likes of Donnellan,
 METASEMANTICS AND SEMANTIC ASCENT

Kaplan, Kripke, and early Putnam, among many others. The second
approach, interpretationism, is the one usually associated with
Davidson and Lewis. In this book I take for granted that the first
contrast between the static and dynamic conceptions of semantic sig-
nificance is settled in favor of the static conception in order to explore
the second contrast, the one between metasemantic productivism and
interpretationism. In this chapter I begin by fixing ideas on the scope of
metasemantics and the two broad metasemantic orientations.
The following is the organizing theoretical quest for metaseman-
tics, before any partisan disputes set in:

(MQ) What determines that expressions have their semantic

significance?
To make MQ a question admitting of a narrower range of answers, we
might want to rule out some cases. It might be argued, for example,
that semantically complex expressions have their semantic signifi-
cance solely by dint of the semantic significance of their parts and
how they compose, and that such generation of endowment with
significance is purely semantic.1 Or from another direction, for cer-
tain context-sensitive expressions (“pure indexicals”) it is widely
assumed that their tokens gain their distinctive contributions to
truth-conditions in context via purely semantic mechanisms. Be
that as it may, it is relatively uncontroversial that semantics is silent
on MQ for many other lexically simple expressions. For such cases at
least, MQ asks after a distinctly non-semantic answer—a metaseman-
tic answer (at a rather high level of abstraction). This will be our focus
throughout.
From a productivist standpoint, MQ primarily targets the condi-
tions of producing or employing an item of significance. The basic

1
The issue is not straightforward, however. While truth-conditional semantics
considers the semantic value of “all whales” (customarily represented as [[all whales]])
to be determined by the semantic value of “all” ([[all]]) and the semantic value of
“whales” ([[whales]]) via functional application, functional application has an obvious
modeling role here. I return to matters pertaining to the scope of semantic explan-
ation in 1.6, and in more detail in Ch. 3.
 METASEMANTICS AND SEMANTIC ASCENT 

idea here is that whatever the conditions of consumption of the

expressive product may be, there are facts surrounding the item’s
production or employment that have to be in place for the product to
have the significance it has. In general, the sort of production we are
concerned with in metasemantics is production of items of signifi-
cance qua significant. In a different terminology, we are concerned
with production of symbols rather than that of signs.2 What distin-
guishes productivism as a metasemantic orientation is that the item’s
production qua significant depends directly on conditions surround-
ing the item’s production or manipulation by the speaker or writer
qua insignificant.3 What makes it the case that a spoken referential
token of a noun, say, has the significance it has, is determined directly
by the circumstances under which the token was phonetically pro-
duced.4 Some productivist approaches appeal to referential intentions
of speakers to explain how a referring token employed on a particular
occasion comes to refer to what it refers to, as in Donnellan’s (1966)
treatment of referentially used descriptions or Kaplan’s (1989) treat-
ment of demonstrative pronouns. Other productivist approaches
appeal to the causal history of the item of significance vis-à-vis the
thing to which it refers without particular emphasis on referential
intentions, as in Fodor 1987 or Devitt 1981. So for certain versions of
the approach what determines the semantic contribution of a token to
truth-conditions on a given occasion of use is the referential intention
with which it is employed or something similar,5 whereas for other
versions what determines it is the more basic causal dependence of

2
Cf. Wittgenstein 1961: §3.32: “The sign (‘Zeichen’) is what can be perceived of a
symbol.” Extending “perceive” to cover introspection, the distinction can be extended
to cover mental items as well.
3
I note that such qua talk need not commit to a coincidence view pertaining to
sign and symbol or to qua-objects as in Fine 2008. For a discussion of my preferred
way of construing qua modification, which I believe can be traced back to Aristotle,
see Simchen 2012: 1.6.
4
Much rests on how to unpack “directly” in this context, an issue to be discussed
in 1.3.
5
This does not preclude—and most often includes—the requirement that the agent
be appropriately causally linked to the individual the referential intention specifies. For
further discussion of such details regarding names, see Simchen 2012: ch. 3.
 METASEMANTICS AND SEMANTIC ASCENT

the representation—be it a token of a linguistic type or a particular

mental representation—on the item(s) represented.
So much for metasemantic productivism by way of introduction.
From an interpretationist standpoint, on the other hand, MQ targets
conditions of interpretive consumption. To be endowed with signifi-
cance, on such a view, is to be interpreted or be interpretable as such.6
On the latter way of looking at things the achievement of such
endowment, if it can be put this way, is on the consumption side
rather than the production side of the linguistic economy. Most of
this chapter and the next will be taken up by a critical examination of
metasemantic interpretationism.
To appreciate the metasemantic contrast before us more fully, it is
useful to consider an analogy in the case of a humdrum artifact, a
particular hammer, and its function or purpose (telos), to drive in
nails. We have the metateleological question of how it is that this
particular item came to have this particular purpose. A metateleological
productivist would answer that having such a purpose is determined
by the item’s conditions of production or employment, conditions
that plausibly include certain intentions of its creators or employers.
A metateleological interpretationist, on the other hand, would view
endowment with such a purpose as determined in the first instance
by how the item is or would be regarded. As against the metateleo-
logical productivist, the interpretationist might point out that a
particular hammer under consideration was mass-produced and not
the product of any individual intention vis-à-vis that very item. As
against the interpretationist, the productivist might adduce a funda-
mental distinction between items created for the purpose of driving
in nails and items whose features make them only accidentally suited

6
Interpretationists will typically not insist on actual interpretation generating
significance, resorting instead to a dispositional account. But even this shift in focus
from actual interpretation to interpretability does not detract from the general point
that endowment with significance on such a view emerges from conditions of
consumption of linguistic expressions rather than their conditions of production.
For some relevant discussion in the context of interpreting the attitudes, see e.g. Byrne
1998.
 METASEMANTICS AND SEMANTIC ASCENT 

for such a task—found shards of rock, say—arguing that the interpre-

tationist smooths over such important differences.
Once we see our explananda as a species of natural phenomena, it
is hard not to view them under the auspices of some version or other
of productivism. Things in the world are generally the way they are
due, inter alia, to how in the world they came to be. In our case, things
of semantic significance are generally the way they are due, inter alia,
to how they emerge from prior worldly conditions. It seems perni-
ciously revisionary to suppose that the various ways the relevant
phenomena are regarded confers the relevant characteristics unto
them regardless of how they were in fact produced even if the
item’s conditions of production are included as factors in how it
should be interpreted by a prospective interpreter.7
An important clarification should be entered here before moving
on. Semantic facts with respect to tokens, or teleological facts with
respect to artifacts, may indeed be essentially relational vis-à-vis
consumers, themselves denizens of the natural order. It may indeed
be the case that in order for there to be a hammer in the world there
has to be a characteristic purpose for such a thing; and for this to
come about there has to be an audience for such a thing so that it is
strictly speaking impossible to create the item and sustain its purpose
without regarding it in a certain way. Arguably, when a Paleolithic
hominid created a hammer, the hammer had to be regarded as a tool
with its characteristic purpose, at least by its creator. And yet such an
item would not come into existence without certain conditions of
production in place, plausibly intentions on the side of its creator,
including perhaps the intention that the item be regarded in certain
ways.8 It may be the case that in order for a given token to gain its

7
I return to this point at greater length in 1.3.
8
Of course hammers today are typically mass-produced, as are printed tokens of
words. But it may be no less true of such items that they are products of intentions. In
this vein we should be thinking of mass-production not only as production of a
mass—a mass of hammers or printed tokens as the case may be—but also as
production by a mass—a mass of producers, a team.
 METASEMANTICS AND SEMANTIC ASCENT

distinctive contribution to truth-conditions the item’s producer

would need to take a cooperative audience into account. And yet
from a productivist standpoint the item semantically endowed would
not become thus endowed without certain conditions of production
in place, plausibly intentions on the side of its producer, including
perhaps the intention that the item be regarded in certain ways. By
contrast, for the interpretationist the item’s regardability under vari-
ous constraints determines its semantic endowment directly. On the
productivist alternative, on the other hand, the item’s regardability
might enter into determining semantic endowment indirectly, via
conditions of production that include relevant intentions on the
side of the producer.9 Or it might be the case that the item’s regard-
ability is an ingredient alongside the relevant intentions on the side
of its producer in determining the item’s semantic endowment. The
crucial point for the productivist is that conditions surrounding
the item’s production or employment do not play their semantic-
endowment-determining role only via how the item would be regarded
by a prospective interpreter, as insisted upon by the interpretationist.
Rather, those conditions play their determining role directly.

9
Here is a recent endorsement of such an idea—but not for the purpose of
promoting any particular metasemantics understood as a metaphysics of semantic
endowment—in Heck 2014: 343): “Successful communication requires the speaker
and her audience to converge on a referent. But the speaker does not utter the
demonstrative and then consult the contextual cues to figure out how to interpret
her own words. Rather, in planning her speech, she has already decided what object to
assign as value of the contextual parameter that fixes the referent of the demonstrative,
that is, which object she intends her audience to interpret her as speaking about.” And
here is a recent endorsement of the idea that intended potential uptake by a coopera-
tive audience is a parameter within an intention-based productivist metasemantics in
King 2014. “I suggest we say that the value of a use of a demonstrative in a context is
that object o that meets the following two conditions: 1) the speaker intends o to be
the value; and 2) a competent, attentive, reasonable hearer would take o to be the
object that the speaker intends to be the value. We can abbreviate this by saying that
an object o is the value of an occurrence of a demonstrative in context just in case the
speaker intends o to be the value and the speaker successfully reveals her intention”
(225). [Here a footnote is added: “Note that a speaker can successfully reveal her
intention even though her hearer failed to figure out what she intended. The hearer
could be inattentive, incompetent, etc.”—OS.]
 METASEMANTICS AND SEMANTIC ASCENT 

1.2 Lewisian Reference Magnetism

The contrast between metasemantic productivism and interpreta-
tionism is reasonably intuitively clear even if difficult to make precise.
It is a main burden of this book to argue for the contrast’s importance
and utility in approaching metasemantic matters. Recently, however,
this contrast has come under threat. It has been claimed that any
metasemantic account, including productivist theories, can be recast
without loss under the auspices of a broadly Lewisian interpretation-
ist approach.10 This, in effect, would drain the metasemantic contrast
between productivism and interpretationism of interest and would
leave the Lewisian approach without genuine rivals. I will use Sider’s
(2011) discussion as a foil for further elaboration of the scope (and
limits) of metasemantics. For the rest of the chapter I will make an
extended case against the appropriation of productivist metaseman-
tic theories under the auspices of Lewisian interpretationism, a move
I call “just more metasemantic theory” to echo a similar move made
by (later) Putnam against replies to his model-theoretic argument—
the notorious “just more theory” response.11 Toward the end of the
chapter I will also turn to consider a more general problem endemic
to the variety of Lewisian interpretationism being endorsed, that has
not received its due attention in the literature. This will be followed
by an extended diagnostic conjecture as to the source of the
approach’s appeal. Then, in Chapter 2, I will turn to argue against
interpretationism more generally for its inability to secure determinate
singular reference. But my main aim in this chapter is more limited: to
show why the “just more metasemantic theory” maneuver fails and
how productivist theories remain genuine metasemantic alternatives
to interpretationism.

10
See, in particular, Sider 2011. Sider claims to be following Williams (2007) on
this, but my discussion will focus exclusively on the version found in Sider 2011.
11
See Putnam 1977 for the original “just more theory” response, and Devitt 1983
and Lewis 1984 for critical reactions. Sider (2011: 26–7) discusses and rejects the “just
more theory” maneuver as it applies to Lewis’s own metasemantic proposal.
 METASEMANTICS AND SEMANTIC ASCENT

To set things up, let us consider a paradigmatic interpretationist

answer to MQ leading up to the Lewisian version to be discussed in
more detail shortly. Davidson’s interpretationist answer is roughly
as follows. What determines that expressions have their semantic
significance is their interpretability so as to engender a good explan-
ation of speakers’ rationality in thought and talk given their worldly
surroundings. Speakers hold various sentences true in various
circumstances (via the attitude of “holding-true”). An idealized inter-
preter formulates empirical conjectures as to the truth-conditions of
their sentences under various assumptions about speakers’ rationality
and cognitive predilections. Their words come to mean what they do
by an assignment of semantic values to them within a Tarskian truth
definition for their language that entails the T-sentences expressing
the conjectured truth-conditions.
Lewis (1983, 1984) adds an important wrinkle to interpretationism:
what determines that expressions have their semantic significance is
their interpretability given the use-facts, but in such a way as also to
optimize the naturalness of semantic values assigned to the predicates
given the general truth of the surrounding theory and the way the
world is. Semantic values for predicates are more natural the better
they accord with objective joints in nature. This is often referred to as
“reference magnetism” and will remain my focus throughout this
chapter and the next. The reasoning behind Lewis’s interpretationist
answer to MQ will not occupy center stage. My primary concern is
not with how best to understand Lewis’s considered metasemantic
views on their own terms, but, rather, with a certain increasingly
popular metasemantic doctrine that takes its inspiration from Lewis’s
later metasemantic ideas.12

12
I am thus passing over much that distinguishes Lewisian from Davidsonian
interpretationism. In particular, Lewis’s semantics is not truth-theoretic but model-
theoretic, but more importantly for my purposes, certain things he says suggest that
the constraint of worldly naturalness comes in for him at the level of interpreting the
attitudes. I also note that while for Davidson semantic endowment depends on
patterns of holding-true as evidenced by speakers’ verbal behavior, the variety of
Lewisian interpretationism to be discussed adds dependence on the truth of total
theory. This will become important later. Whether or not it ultimately accords with
 METASEMANTICS AND SEMANTIC ASCENT 

The thesis of reference magnetism was initially proposed as an

antidote to Putnam’s model-theoretic argument, an argument pur-
porting to show that under certain minimal assumptions about realist
truth, the distinction enshrined by realists of all stripes between
epistemic ideality and metaphysical truth cannot be sustained. Put-
nam’s argument turns on the (almost) inevitable availability of an
overall interpretation of our language into the world that renders an
epistemically ideal theory true of the world. The argument exploits a
basic point about model-theoretic interpretation.
Assume with the realist that the world is a totality of mind-
independent things. (For present purposes we need not enter the fray
of trying to precisify the dark notion of mind-independence.) Let T be
our epistemically ideal theory in a first-order extensional language.
T would be at least consistent, so it would have a model. Under certain
minimal assumptions about T and the size of the world, T would have a
model m of exactly the same size as the world. By exploiting the
existence of a bijection from the domain of m into the world itself we
can define a model mw of T that has the world itself as its domain. So the
epistemically ideal T turns out to be true of the world after all—there is
no way for it not to be true of the world under minimal assumptions.
The distinction between epistemic ideality and realist truth collapses.
Here is how Lewis (1984: 227) responds to this argument in terms
of eligibility of interpretation: “When we limit ourselves to the eligible
interpretations, the ones that respect the objective joints in nature,
there is no longer any guarantee that (almost) any world can satisfy
(almost) any theory.” Let us flesh this out a bit. The interpretation
Putnam’s argument appeals to in forcing the pronouncements of
epistemic ideality to come out true of the world may very well assign,
if we happen to be epistemically unlucky, highly gerrymandered
semantic values to our predicates that do not respect objective joints
in nature. Recall that mw was defined in terms of a bijection from the

Lewis’s official position is not something I aim to resolve; nor will I discuss the bearing
of this particular detail on Lewis’s reductive ambitions. I defer further discussion of
Lewis’s considered metasemantic views to Appendix I.
 METASEMANTICS AND SEMANTIC ASCENT

domain of m into the domain of mw. The bijection itself was arbitrary;
all it did was ensure that the structure imposed by T on m is replicated
in mw regardless of independent features of the individuals in the
domain of mw. But the domain of mw is just the totality of worldly
things. From the Lewisian standpoint the misstep in Putnam’s argu-
ment is the failure to distinguish arbitrary interpretations of T from
intended ones, ones that respect the structure that already inheres in
the world itself. It is only the latter that are relevant for the assessment
of the realist point that T might be false of the world. T would be false
of the world if it so happens that it has no model isomorphic to the
way the world really is.13
This is undoubtedly a formally adequate response to Putnam’s
argument.14 It relies on a certain idea that those with Kantian leanings
may find spooky and unilluminating—the idea that the world has its
own inherent structure independently of our conceptual involvement
in it.15 The pros and cons of this idea lie beyond our present concern.
Now, Sider (2011) amplifies and extends Lewisian reference mag-
netism beyond the predicate. What determines that expressions have
their semantic significance for him is their interpretability à la Lewis
but in such a way as to maximize not only naturalness of semantic
values assigned to predicates but also naturalness in the assignments
to quantifiers, connectives, and operators. What Sider emphasizes is
that interpretation does not end with assigning semantic values to
expressions that render total theory true while respecting objective

13
We may steer away from controversy surrounding the implied suggestion that the
way the world really is is a model by paraphrasing as follows: T would be false if it happens
not to have a model isomorphic to a model representing the way the world really is.
14
Lewis (1983, 1984) credits Merrill (1980) with the general idea. Once again, I set
aside important questions regarding Lewis’s metasemantic orientation that matter a
great deal to Lewis scholarship. For recent discussions, see Weatherson 2012 and
Schwartz 2014. See Appendix I for further exegetical remarks about Lewis’s meta-
semantic views.
15
Thus we read in Putnam 1990: 38: “What Lewis’s story claims is that the class of
cats cries out for a label, while the class of cats* does not cry out to be named. Rather
than solving the problem of reference, what the idea of a constraint built into nature
and of ‘elite classes’ does is to confuse the materialist picture by throwing in some-
thing ‘spooky’.”
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plateau-surface of the planet, with cultivated vegetation in the
bottom-lands.
The rims of these canyons are fortified with very high and very wide
stone walls, a military defensive work, with watch-towers, designed
as a protection for the white people who inhabit the canyons from
attack by their ancient enemy, the ape-men, who swarm over the
tropical regions in countless numbers.
These fortifications somewhat resemble the Great Wall of China, and
create a distinct boundary line. Following the course of the canyons,
and extending over the surface for many thousands of miles, like a
network, it is easy to understand how they were mistaken for the
lines of canals, or waterways, as viewed from the earth through our
great telescopes. Apparently these canyons were formed by volcanic
disturbances in the early ages of the planet, which shivered and rent
its surface into these stupendous fissures in the rock.
As a refuge from the bitterly cold nights peculiar to Mars, and the
constant cyclonic sand-storms, the canyons make an ideal place of
abode. The wind, it seems, blows eternally on Mars, kicking up a
fearful dust from the reddish deserts, and making the planet a
veritable dustbowl.
I must give Schiaparelli credit, however, for his discovery of the
canals, in 1877, for these canyons do really serve as water routes.
Running through them are great aqueducts which tap the arctic and
antarctic regions, into which the Martians pump water from the
melting snow and ice caps. As there are no seas on the planet, and
very little rainfall, this water is stored in huge reservoirs, and used
largely for irrigating the bottom-land of the canyons, thus rendering
them extremely fertile.
Around these reservoirs the white inhabitants cluster, not in cities,
but in vast cliff-dwelling communities, the sides of the canyons being
honey-combed with homes. The wind-power of the planet is
converted into electrical energy in immense funneled power-houses,
just as we harness water-power on the earth. The current generated
by this method is used to turn the wheels of industry, propel the
passenger and freight trains which rumble through the tunnels in the
cliffs, connecting the various communities, operate the elevators and
escalators uniting the tiers of cliff homes with the fortifications at the
rim and the bottom-lands, as well as supplying light and heat for all
of the inhabitants.
I have always been puzzled as to how the Martians looked and
dressed. The picture interpretation of their daily life revealed tall,
stalwart men, with leathery complexions, owing to the lack of
moisture in the atmosphere, and graceful, really beautiful women,
with classic features, enveloped in veils from head to toe as a
protection against the climate. Men, women and children, all garbed
and living as the ancient Grecians, with the difference that to their
colorful spectacle of life is added the enjoyment of the benefits of
scientific inventions.
I marveled at their magnificent temples, set in great plazas, in the
bottom-land of the canyons, over thermal springs. Temples largely of
glass construction, with airspace between the double walls, which
are lined with a transparent substance, resembling cellophane,
evidently to keep out the stinging cold of the nights. Grouped about
each temple were universities, libraries, museums and coliseums,
also of glass, and modeled after the highest forms of what we, on
earth, call modernistic art, but which is now regarded on Mars as a
relic of ancient art.
As I gazed at the swift moving scenes, I was deeply impressed by
the similarity between Mars and Thibet, in Asia, in point of rarity of
air, climatic severity, and the superiority and authority of priests.
Since the Martians worship fire and water, and venerate as twin
goddesses their two tiny moons, which revolve so closely to their
planet, I could see how this excessive number of priests was really
necessary for the propagation of the State religion. Furthermore, the
entire intellectual and cultural life of Mars is vested in the priesthood,
and naturally all education and refinement center in the temple
areas, just as the industrial and agricultural activities seem to
converge at the great reservoirs.
All products, watered by irrigation, are grown under glass; and stored
summer sunlight, a process as yet unknown to science on the earth,
is used to melt the nightly deposits of frost which accumulate the
year round. Horses, cattle and sheep were shown peacefully grazing
in glass-enclosed corrals, which are electrically heated at night.
I observed particularly how all the homes in the sides of the canyons
had glass fronts, which made the towering steep rocks look like the
façade of a modern New York skyscraper. The power of the sun is
not so great on Mars as on the earth, consequently the practical
utilization of glass for living purposes is quite necessary for the
conservation of the sun's light and heat. The materials of which glass
is made abound on Mars, the great plateaus having a natural bed of
glassy volcanic rock.
If I were here sedulously to outline all of the startling revelations
concerning Mars I saw in this picture, it would take many pages;
much easier it will be to outline just a few more of the more important
disclosures. Unfortunately, there are a few taboos as far as the moral
law of our earthly civilization is concerned.
For instance, a specialized offspring is being produced on Mars to
save the white race from extinction. Respiratory diseases and their
frightening toll of lives, caused by the climatic extremes and the
particles of sand in the air, have long been a national calamity. For
the begetting and production of the young, the healthiest and most
beautiful women of the planet give themselves up to the State as a
patriotic duty. Their mates are carefully selected for their mental and
physical fitness.
These eugenic babies are born in special establishments attached to
the temples, and reared at the expense of the State. The unmarried
mothers were shown as they took part in the ceremonials of the
temples; some appeared as dancers, while others attended the
sacred fire and water shrines, also engaging in the weaving of fine
tapestries and in rich embroidery work.
As this strange phase of Martian life was unrolled to our view, I
suddenly remembered Jane, with a sinking feeling in the pit of my
stomach, but the room was too dark to observe what effect this
scene was having upon her. I must say that at no time did it seem
vulgar and lewd; everything was conducted in perfect good taste and
propriety.
I was surprised to find that the Martians are ruled by a dictator, a
form of government of which I very much disapprove. A very
despotic dictator, who has the supreme power to frame the laws and
order punishment. And instead of labor unions, they have labor units
—units of agriculture, engineering, science, and so on, each with a
leader responsible to the dictator.
There's this to say about the Martians. Despite all the handicaps
imposed by nature, they manage to enjoy themselves. Fête days in
the temple areas are very frequent. In the coliseums they hold
thrilling chariot races and gladiatorial combats between trained ape-
men from the jungles, who use short swords.
I was rather horrified to learn that slavery is common among them,
which will account for the almost constant warfare between them and
the ape-men. The herculean task of building their fortifications, which
covered many centuries, was made possible by the employment of
the ape-men as slaves. The process of evolution seems to have
slowed up in the Martian tropics, leaving black, hairy creatures, in
form and in intelligence intermediate between the highest ape and
man. These ape-men worship the enormous wolf of the deserts, a
war-like beast, in peculiar rites of sacrifice and the blood-covenant,
which is an outspring of totemism, a stage in all human
development.
In retaliation for the slave raids of the whites in the jungles, these
ape-men move against them in vast armies, and with surprising
agility, over the dead regions of the planet. When they leave their
natural location, they live upon the fruits and berries which grow in
the many oases scattered over the deserts, where thermal springs
are found.
I could well imagine the frightful and devastating effect of these ape-
men armies once they were victorious over the whites. The picture
showed them attacking the fortifications, and being driven off with
showers of bombs filled with deadly gases. When they succeed in
plundering the temples, they carry off the cloistered white women as
captives to their jungle lairs.
Besides the ape-men and the hazards of climate, the white
population is also harassed continually by the foraging beasts,
reptiles, birds and insects from the waste regions and the jungles,
who destroy the plantations and devour the horses and cattle. To
meet the perils of the marauders, the whites maintain a standing-
army, scientifically-equipped. Quartered in the canyon fortifications,
the army uses a system of wireless-signaling from the watch-towers,
to warn the people when in danger of attack.
Getting a first view of these monsters of the Martian deserts and
tropical zone, a chill ran down my spine. Many of them were what we
term prehistoric monsters—the tapir, tree sloth, and dinosaur. I
gasped in horror at the sight of the insects from the jungles—beetles
having the bulk of baby elephants, and ants big and strong enough
to carry a man on their backs. And what at first I believed to be an
airplane, turned out to be an enormous, monstrous bat.
As the film moved swiftly onwards to its completion, the breathless
interest of the assembled scientists and explorers was concentrated
on the last episode, which proved to contain the most amazing
revelation of all.
The rays from the motion picture projector now seemed to flash upon
the silver screen like messages of hope. Hope for our white brethren,
on a faraway star, beset on all sides by danger, and threatened with
extinction. With increasing excitement, I watched, through a happy
haze of light, the great transformation that was now taking place in
that bright point of light that studs our darkling sky—the planet Mars.

XXI
There, fast unreeling before our eyes, were undeniable evidences of
the changed conditions that our radio broadcasts had wrought on
Mars. I had no misgivings now about our short wave programs
reaching that planet. We saw the Martians listening in to our daily
broadcasts, and becoming not only quite in sympathy with our
American ideas but benefitting therefrom.
Intercepting musical and talking programs from New York, London,
Paris, Rome, Bombay, Tokyo and Melbourne, and out of the strange
babble of voices and senseless prattle, soon, presto! evolves a
translation of the English language. Think of it!
But how, out of all this jumble of unintelligible words, which meant
nothing to them at all, did they succeed in translating the English
language? We shall see!
When the group of American scientists sent a message to Mars, in
the International Morse code, by directing a powerful beam of light
on the planet from the summit of the Jungfrau, in Switzerland, the
beam was brought into the range of the telescope of a young priest-
astronomer in one of the Martian temples. Having already made
superficial translations of the English language, as it registered on
the temple radio receiving set, this youthful Martian incarnation of an
earthly Marconi, succeeded in deciphering the code as registered by
this beam of light. The result was a rather crude transcription into the
English language, but sufficiently intelligible to exchange radio
communications, in code, with the earth.
Our short wave programs and code messages, it seems, have long
been registering on Mars, but their source was unknown until this
beam of light from the Jungfrau was picked up and decoded. The
belief, long persisting among the priest-scientists, that there were
human beings on the earth, known to them as the Blue Sphere, as
intelligent as themselves, it was perfectly natural that they should
begin at once to try and contact, by wireless, the planet from which
they had caught the beam of light.
For some reason or other, not made clear, they had failed. Perhaps
their signaling was mistaken for static on our radios, and was
unrecognizable among the weird chattering and apparitions, which
scientists claim are caused by the auroras and echoes of radio
signals sent from the earth. Certainly no one had the sense, or
intelligence, to pick them out of the static, and decode them, until
Henry and Olinski began their experiments.
It amazed me to learn that the radio had been developed by the
priest-scientists on Mars long before it became generally used on the
earth. But it had never been popularized. Its use there had been
confined solely to the temples in religious ceremonies, to awe the
superstitious masses, as the voice of their unseen gods, and in
linking up the various governmental and military outposts. The idea
of making it an instrument of popular education and entertainment
first came from the earth's music broadcasts, with the result that life
on Mars has become almost completely revolutionized.
It was my theory, then, that this clever, young Martian priest-
astronomer, who had first decoded the beam of light signals into
English, was the originator of the rocket-to-earth idea, and the author
and transmitter of the radio message, which had thrilled the world,
on the night of the public demonstration in Radio Center. There was
every likelihood, too, that he had composed and penned the
cuneiform message contained in the scroll, which had been so
skillfully translated to the screen for our entertainment and
edification.
My amazement grew beyond bounds as the last episode of the
travelogue progressed, and I realized how completely Americanized
the Martians were becoming through the medium of our radio
broadcasts. The short waves from the American stations seemed to
register stronger on Mars than those of any other broadcasting
stations in the world. And there was the stark truth, galvanized into
life on the screen.
Martians flocking in thousands to the temple areas, to listen in, by
means of loud speakers, to our educational broadcasts and national
programs, as interpreted by their priests. Our school curriculum,
talks on farming, science, finance and politics being discussed at
symposiums. Applications of American rules of health and hygiene
already in force, and largely decreasing the death rate.
Symphony orchestra concerts and grand opera broadcasts relayed
from the temples to loud speakers in all public squares of the various
communities. The younger generation learning to dance, with
partners, to jazz music. Martian youngsters hearing bedtime stories
for the first time in their lives—and learning of such important, earthly
make-believe characters as Mother Goose and Mickey Mouse.
Baseball rapidly displacing chariot racing and gladiatorial combats as
a popular amusement.
Furthermore, the masses were beginning to enjoy luxuries hitherto
unattainable; the Martian markets being flooded with soaps, tooth-
paste, perfumes, hair dressings, cold cream, face powder and
cigarettes, all patterned and manufactured after the American
products, advertised so extensively in all short wave broadcasts
reaching that planet. Martian women were being amazingly
transformed into pinkly powdered persons, smartly rouged and
lipsticked, slender lined, and giving out a fascinating scent.
The most astounding revelation was contained in the fact that the
whole political, social and economic order of the planet was being
threatened by the new ideas caught from the American short wave
broadcasts. Armed with this new knowledge, the political order of the
planet, a form of despotism, was facing disruption, the people
actually demanding a democratic form of government, patterned
after the American plan.
Even the State religion, the idolatrous worship of fire and water, and
the twin moon goddesses, was being undermined. Flashing across
the sidereal abyss that yawns between the earth and Mars, had
come the first message of Christ. Christian cults were springing up in
all parts of the planet despite the drastic action on the part of the
State, to forestall the accomplishment of the people's designs, and
the overthrow of their ancient religion. Hundreds of pagan priests
had become converts to Christianity; they were deserting the
temples, and sallying forth to preach a new gospel of salvation.
The slavery of the ape-men was being attacked by the Christians as
inhuman. Thousands of slaves owned by the whites had actually
been freed. Christian missionaries were penetrating the jungles. A
truce had been declared in the warfare that had long been raging
between the white race and the ape-men. Mediation was already in
progress. A movement for peace and good will among men, and
charity for all, was sweeping the planet. Better days were coming to
Mars....
The picture was over all too soon; enthusiasm ran high and oratory
flowed freely. It marked the close of a great day in the life of Henry.
The toastmaster moved his fellow-diners to thunderous applause
when he declared: "This event will go down in scientific history as
one of the greatest achievements of man." Subsequent speakers
showered flowery encomiums on Henry, whose courage and capital
had made the occasion possible. Even the sceptics conceded that it
all seemed feasible.
The startling disclosures, together with the pictorial creation and
grandeur of their interpretation, had held me spellbound. I was
impressed as never before in my life; convinced now, in fact, that the
information contained in the scroll of life on Mars, extraordinary and
incredible as it seemed, was genuine. "Henry's a great man," I
thought. My faith was pinned on him now; I didn't care what any one
else thought. Transplanted for more than an hour, into a region of
wide spaces, as I watched the film unroll, and grasping ultimately the
idea that order and efficiency, among human beings like ourselves,
could reign on another planet as well as our own, it took me several
minutes to come out of my trance, after the close of the picture.
When I did, finally, just as the lights were turned on, I no longer saw
a populous planet, with its strange and romantic people being
dominated by American ideas, but Pat and McGinity hurriedly
disengaging hands. I pretended to take no notice of them. Yet I
smiled to myself. While the procession and pageantry of life, in a
faraway world, had been weaving their patterns on the screen in
astonishing illumination, these two had been holding hands under
the table. New worlds might be created, and others grow dim and
crumble, I thought, but love would go on just like that—holding hands
under the table.
Maybe I was wrong. Perhaps McGinity was just patting Pat's hand to
soothe her. She hadn't been well lately; her face had grown pale and
anxious from the strain and excitement under which we were living.
McGinity turned to me. "Well, what d'you make of it?" he asked.
"Wonderful!" I replied.
"Oh, I wouldn't have missed seeing this, not for worlds!" Pat chimed
in. "I feel as though I'd been up in the clouds, among the stars. It was
so thrilling, so overpowering, I don't really feel let down yet. How do
you feel?" she added, looking at McGinity.
"Me?" McGinity answered. "Oh, I feel as if I'd fallen down a couple of
flights of stairs."
"I've seen great revelations in my time," I remarked, "but this is the
most triumphant—" I stopped. The reporter's rather cryptic remark
was puzzling me. I glanced at him quizzically. He did not look right,
somehow; too much gravity and anxiousness in his pose and
countenance, considering this crowning moment in his life.
"Something displeased you?" I inquired. "You look worried."
His reply, though vague, immediately aroused my curiosity. "I'd like to
see you, alone—tonight—after we return to the castle," he said, in a
low voice. "I want to talk over something with you."
That ended our conversation. He excused himself, and hurried away
to telephone to the Recorder. Newspapers, not only in New York but
throughout the country, and the rest of the world as well, were
prepared to devote columns to the momentous event; far more
important, to my mind, than the radio message from Mars, and the
landing of the Martian rocket, with its strange passenger, for here
were actual revelations direct from the planet, proving conclusively
that it was inhabited by human beings, who were subject to the same
laws, the same temptations and passions which affect ordinary
humanity.
It was amusing to see the small regiment of reporters present,
rushing off to their different papers to write their stories, as soon as
the picture had faded from the screen. McGinity, being more
advantageously placed, was ahead of the rest of them in that he had
filed his story for the Daily Recorder earlier in the evening. After he
had telephoned to his office, and given word for its release, and told
what had happened at the banquet table, excerpts from the
speeches, etceteras, he was free to accompany us to Sands Cliff.
He had something to tell me. What? It might be nothing, and it might
be a good deal. The time of surmising came to its end. Within a few
minutes after our arrival at the castle, we were closeted together in
his apartment. Middle of the night though it was, I felt excited and
bouyant, and filled with a sense of adventure. Lighting a cigar, I
settled down in an easy chair, and waited.
The reporter walked up and down the room with his hands plunged
deep in his trousers' pockets, and his head bent downwards. He
appeared to be tracing the designs in the rug beneath his restless
feet. Suddenly, he pulled himself out of his concentrated mental
effort, stopped dead, and turned to me.
"Mr. Royce," he said, "do you believe all this stuff that's been
happening?"
"Yes," I replied, promptly. "That is, in a way. Why, what do you
think?"
For a moment he stood gazing at me in silence, intently. Then he
asked: "I wonder if you think what I think?"
"Well," I answered, "if you want to know, I think that if all this that's
been happening was contrived and worked out by a human mind,
then a human mind can discover what it's all about."
He stared thoughtfully at me a moment before he spoke. "It wouldn't
surprise me a bit if you've hit on something," he said at last.
"Yes?" I said. "I'm afraid I don't see it yet. I'm just telling you what I
think."
"Exactly," said McGinity. "Now, you think something, and I think
something. Very good. If we're both convinced on one point, why not
join hands, and follow a new line, which may lead us out of all this
mystery to something in the way of solution?"
"That," I replied, instantly, "is just the very thing we shall do!"
"Of course, you must know, as well as I do, that it's all highly
improbable, utterly impossible," the reporter observed.
"I suppose it is," I answered, "yet the Science Editor of the Times
declared only last Sunday that radio signaling to Mars was
'technically possible.'"
"Granted," agreed McGinity; "but that's another question. What
concerns us now is what has already occurred—to prove that it isn't
true, without injuring your brother's standing as a scientist."
"I've never known a man so positive as Henry is on this Martian radio
signaling and rocket business," I said. "He believes it's all true, and I
see no reason whatever to think that it isn't. While there's
considerable scepticism in the outside world, no one has yet come
forward with a clue—not a single clue—to prove that Henry and
Olinski are all wrong, or are being duped."
"Would it surprise you very much if I produced—a clue?" McGinity
asked.
"It certainly would," I replied.
The reporter then did a most surprising thing, which gave a startling
and dramatic turn to our conversation.
"I've been convinced all along," he said, as he walked over to a
secretary, in which he unlocked and opened a drawer, "that there
was a human agency—a master mind—at the bottom of all this. In
what way, I didn't know—couldn't guess. But, now, I'm sure of it."
From an inner receptacle of the drawer, he produced the scroll,
which was found in the rocket, the contents of which Olinski had so
skillfully decoded, and he had put into scenario form. He laid it on the
table before me.
"Take a look at that," he said.
Carefully unrolling the scroll, I inspected it closely through a reading
glass. The tiny cuneiform writing was no more intelligible to me than
the hieroglyphics on Cleopatra's Needle in Central Park. It was
inscribed on what I judged to be papyrus, the writing-paper of the
ancient Egyptians. No doubt the papyrus-plant also grew on Mars.
As I looked it over carefully, I detected a curious, subtle scent, like
some rare perfume. The roller, I took to be ebony.
I smiled dryly, and made a move to hand it back to the reporter. "I'm
afraid I can't make anything out of it," I said; "at least, nothing
suspicious, or in the way of a clue."
He waved it off. "You're not finished with it yet," he said. "Try holding
it up against the light. Study it again—carefully."
I did as he directed, unrolling the scroll a little at a time, and looking
through it, against the bright light of the reading lamp. Suddenly, I
stopped—startled; my eyes seemed to pop.
McGinity's voice broke in on the silence.
"You see it?" he asked.
"Yes," I answered, my voice trembling. "I see it."
"Very well," he said. "Now, we know where we are."

XXII
There was not much to see when I unrolled the scroll, and inspected
it against the lamplight, as McGinity had directed, but what there was
assured me that the reporter was right when he said that he had
made a find. Now, we knew something.
For a moment, the discovery completely overwhelmed me; I felt a
little giddy. It affected me personally, more closely than anything I
had ever had to deal with, mainly because of Henry. A sort of vision
rose before my eyes. I saw the whole thing about Mars exposed, and
my brother crushed in ignominy.
What the reporter had found was in line with what had been running
in both our minds, the conviction that a superior intellect was at the
bottom of all this Martian mystery, and its various resultants. It
revealed a carefully conceived, highly ingenious conspiracy; a cruel
and cold-blooded fraud, done in such a fashion as to leave no clue,
which would make the tracing of the adroit and utterly unscrupulous
perpetrator concerned, very difficult, if not impossible.
But here was a clue, thanks to McGinity's power of observation and
reportorial inquisitiveness, even if it was only the ghost of one, that
might put us on to the track of the perpetrator. A water-mark, a small
translucent design, appeared in the body of the parchment paper,
which proved that the scroll had not been made on Mars, but on
earth. There it was, as plain as day: "Royal Bond—Made in U. S. A."
McGinity's reportorial and detective instincts combined—all
newspaper reporters seem to have been born with a detective
complex—quickly sent him again to the secretary, this time to look
for a Manhattan telephone book; and while he was thumbing hastily
through its pages, I took another squint at the water-mark, in the
parchment scroll. I could hardly believe my eyes.
"What we want to find out now," the reporter said, "is the name of the
manufacturer of that particular brand of parchment paper. Hello!—
here it is. 'Royal Parchment Paper Company, 158 Beekman Street.'"
"Indeed?" I said, as calmly as I could.
"Now, one of us must take the scroll, and call on this firm, the first
thing in the morning," he suggested. "They may be able to throw
some light on the matter."
"I'll go," I quickly volunteered.
"Good," said McGinity. "Our job now is to find and bring to light the
actual perpetrator of this fraud. This water-mark in the parchment
may put us on his trail. That's about the situation, isn't it?"
"As far as I'm concerned," I replied, "that is the situation. But I'm
afraid we're facing a many-sided problem. You must remember that
we are dealing with events so stupendous that they can hardly be
conceived by the human mind."
"But we're in possession of one thread now that may guide us
through the maze," said McGinity, settling down finally in a chair
opposite me. "I admit that what we have to deal with is most
extraordinary—almost inexplicable—" he went on; "but here's this
much to remember—your own idea, by the way—if this mystery was
contrived and worked out by a human mind, then a human mind can
discover what it is."
"Quite right," I agreed. "And if the person who made the scroll is the
same one who sent those Martian radio messages, and dropped the
rocket—"
"Dropped?" McGinity exclaimed, interrupting me. "Of course, that
rocket was dropped on the water-front. Dropped! That idea had
never occurred to me before. It wouldn't surprise me, Mr. Royce, if
you've hit on another clue."
"Yes?" I said, a little bewildered. "Anyway," I began again, "if it is the
same person, then I'm sure we can trace him."
"I'll tell you what I think, Mr. Royce," McGinity said; "we shall have to
go back—and go back a long way, and find all we can about—
Olinski."
"Olinski?" I exclaimed. "Surely, you don't suspect him?"
"He's a radio wizard, isn't he?" the reporter said. "He may have sent
those alleged messages from Mars himself. He may have directed
them to the moon, round ten o'clock, each night, during the
experiments, and they were echoed, or bounced, back to earth. I
understand he's quite an inventor besides. Now, he may have
invented that rocket—everything—"
"You're forgetting, McGinity," I interrupted. "He couldn't possibly have
invented Mr. Zzyx."
"That's so—I'd forgotten Mr. Zzyx," the reporter admitted. "All the
same, just to be on the safe side, I think we'd better trace Olinski's
career."
"We must remember this," I suggested, "that whoever is at the
bottom of this fraud—if it is a fraud—had a definite purpose in putting
it over. In criminology, that is called motive. Once you have the
motive, the rest comes easier."
"I agree on that, Mr. Royce," said McGinity. "But the thought has just
come to me that the perpetrator of this hoax—and I'm convinced
now it is a hoax—has got nearly three months' start. Let's suppose,
as you suggested, that he's a man who had some definite purpose in
putting it over, the man we want to find. Very well, he pulls his two
big tricks late in August, the Martian radio message in code, and the
rocket from outer space, both occurring on the same night; and from
that time, he passes into the unknown. No more messages from
Mars. Everything cleaned up in one night."
"On that supposition," I said, "we shall, of course, have to eliminate
Olinski, for which I shall be very glad."
"But suppose Olinski is the man we want," McGinity said,
vehemently. "What about his having an accomplice? Olinski could be
doing something else. And here's something that seems to have
struck nobody. How could Olinski decode, so easily and expertly,
those radio signals, and the cuneiform writing on the scroll? Besides,
he's held on to this scroll like grim death, and never once allowed it
to pass out of his hands until tonight, when I wheedled him into
lending it to me, to be photographed for a Sunday article I'm writing
for the Recorder."
"If you're convinced of Olinski's complicity in this, I'm not," I said, a
little heatedly. "I've every confidence in him, and I've got to be
shown. So, before we start in pursuit of knowledge of Olinski, you'd
better let me follow up this clue of the water-mark, which may lead
us to something in the way of success."
McGinity, after some hesitation, agreed to this, and after remaining
silent for a few minutes, he said: "You have, of course, no idea who
this perpetrator might be?"
"No idea whatever," I promptly replied.
The thing to do, we decided after some further discussion, was to
keep everything to ourselves, while we combed out things that might
give us a further clue. Above all, neither Henry, nor Olinski, were to
know anything whatever about our mistrust.
Meantime, McGinity was to acquaint the editorial executives of his
paper with our suspicions, and to ease up on his sensational stories
about Mars. On this subject, I felt pretty much at a loss at to what to
suggest, but McGinity seemed to know his business. Before we
parted for the night, he convinced me that slowing up on a
newspaper story, removing it from the front page, reducing it to a few
paragraphs, and finally dropping it altogether, was a much easier
thing to do than most folk imagine. Besides, he said, the public
forgets so easily and quickly.
It was in my mind to make a good start in the morning. I felt sure that
the Royal Parchment Paper Company could tell me something that
might be of great importance in guiding us to the solution of one of
the most devilishly contrived plots I've ever known of.
All that the reporter and I had discussed was passing through my
mind, after I had said good-night to him, and was heading down the
hall to my own apartment. It was long after midnight. The castle was
in darkness, and as quiet as a tomb. But just as I was about to enter
my door, Pat came running down the hall, after me. Nearly
breathless, she panted out her message. Would I go back to her
room, at once? We hurried back, to find Jane there, all in a tremble,
and her face showing ashen.
"It's that dreadful thing again," Jane exclaimed. She gave a little
shudder, and turned away to get her smelling salts.
"What's up?" I asked. "Everything about the castle seems perfectly
normal."
"But they're not," Pat said, miserably. "If you hadn't slept so soundly
last night, you might have heard Mr. Zzyx, as I did, sneaking along
the hall. Auntie wouldn't believe it when I told her. She said it was
impossible for him to get out of his locked room without Niki knowing
it."
"Now, dear Pat," I said reassuringly; "haven't you been having
another nightmare? I'm positive that Mr. Zzyx was locked in his
room, and asleep, at this hour last night, as he is now, tonight—tired
out, like all of us, after a very exacting night at the banquet."
"But I'm certain he's not in his room, now," said Pat. "In fact, I've
proved he's out, and wandering about."
"Proved?" I asked, amazed, as Jane moved to my side.
"Yes, proved, dear Livingston," Jane whispered. "She tied a silk
thread across the hall, between her door and mine, after we came
home from the banquet."
"Oh, I see!" I remarked, lightly.
"Nothing to be amused about," said Pat, with a wan, twisted smile. "I
did it to prove to Aunt Jane that Mr. Zzyx was snooping about. She
stayed in here with me, and we waited to see if anything happened."
"And nothing happened for half an hour," Jane supplemented, taking
a good sniff of her sal volatile.
"When, suddenly, we heard something moving outside, in the hall,"
Pat resumed. "After a few minutes, and we didn't hear anything
more, I switched off the lights in here, opened the door a few inches,
and looked out. The hall was dark. I could hear the muffled sound of
your voice, and Bob's, in his room. That gave me courage, so I stole
outside to investigate. I found the thread had been broken."
"That's queer," I observed. "Still, it might have been broken by the
butler. Schweizer suffers terribly from insomnia, and has a habit of
roaming about the place at night, at unearthly hours. I really don't
understand."
"But I do," Jane said, in a low, guttural voice; "and it's your business,
Livingston, to rid this place of that terrible creature at once. If you
don't, and I should see him roving about, in the dark, I know I'll die of
heart failure, instantly." She placed strong emphasis on the last
word, and took another strong whiff of her smelling salts.
At that Pat turned to me, the tears welling in her eyes. "Oh, Uncle
Livingston!" she said, earnestly and pleadingly; "isn't there any
chance at all of ending this terrible mystery business about Mr. Zzyx
and Mars? Uncle Henry must be losing his mind, or he wouldn't be
associated with anything so unearthly and—spooky!"
"While we are still utterly in the dark, my dear," I said, consolingly, "I
have a feeling that it's only a question of time when the whole matter
will be cleared up." I wished then I could have taken her into my
confidence, and told her what McGinity had discovered, about the
scroll, but I knew it would be unwise to make any announcement at
that stage of the proceedings, when we had only the wildest
suspicions to go on. "And, now," I concluded, "I think we'll get to
business at once."
"What are you going to do?" Pat asked, eagerly.
"I'm going to rouse McGinity," I replied, "and if your suspicions are
correct, we'll find Mr. Zzyx, and put him back where he belongs."
"Lock him up!" Jane exclaimed. "And, for heaven's sake, keep him
locked up!"
"Now, you two compose yourselves, and go to bed," I admonished
gently but firmly. "You're both quite safe now."
I left the room, and went to my own apartment, where I got my
flashlight. A few minutes later, I knocked at McGinity's door.
Fortunately, he had not gone to bed. He was still pacing the floor and
smoking furiously. The first thing he did, after I had poured out Pat's
story to him, was to slip a small revolver in his hip pocket.
"There's no time to lose," I murmured, as we crept out into the hall.
"Follow me—and not a sound."
I led the way to the State Apartment. Our difficulty was to effect an
entrance into Mr. Zzyx's bedroom without awakening Niki, who slept
in the adjoining room. As I stood racking my brains how to get into
the creature's room, McGinity, on impulse, tried the door knob. To my
amazement, the door opened. We walked into the room. As I trained
my flashlight on the bed, he chuckled low, and said: "There's the
bed, and, as you see, Pat's right. There's nobody in it."
The bedclothes were in disorder, showing that the bed had been
recently occupied. Immediately, we turned our attention to the lock
on the door, and found that it was not in working condition. A long
brass bolt, on the inside, fitted into a deep groove in the jamb, and
that was all there was to fasten the door. This would account for Mr.
Zzyx's freedom of egress and ingress, and I smiled to myself at our
utter stupidity in not having the lock examined. I wondered why Niki
had not informed us about it, long before this. In many things, he
was just plain dumb.
After creeping quietly upstairs, we explored the two upper floors,
including Henry's observatory. We searched in many queer places,
and looked into all the cavernous and gloomy chambers. And then
we stumbled on something.
A room at the end of the corridor, on the third floor, used mostly for
storage of furniture, bore traces of recent occupancy. A chair had
been drawn up to a small table, on which there was a half-burned
candle, a picture magazine of quite recent date, and an ash tray
containing charred cigarette ends.
As I was examining the room and its contents in the light of my
electric torch, a quick exclamation from McGinity directed my
attention to a French window, which gave on to an iron-railed, stone
balcony.
"There he is!" whispered the reporter; "out on the balcony."
I quickly turned off the flashlight. All I could discern was a black
something standing on the balcony, silhouetted against a bright,
starlit sky. The next moment, the shadow started to move towards
the window. It was perhaps a little foolish of me, but I dashed
forward, threw the window open wide, and turned a flood of light
upon—Schweizer.
The butler, I immediately recalled, was occupying a bedroom a few
doors down the hall from the one we were exploring. After he had
explained that he often read and smoked in this room, and walked
out on the balcony for fresh air, when he was troubled with insomnia,
I dismissed him, without telling him what we were searching for. But
he must have guessed it, for I heard him running down the hall to his
bedroom.
He had no sooner gone when I was struck by a sudden idea. "It's
possible," I suggested, "that Mr. Zzyx, in his after-midnight
excursions, visits the butler's pantry, and makes a raid on our