1.1Historical considerations.
The confluence of logic and language is a fact in the history of logic and philosophy.
1.1.1The practice of logic.
- In the context of practice there has in fact always existed, implicitly or explicitly, a difficulty in distinguishing between linguistic analysis and logical analysis.
- One can argue that in practice all three liberal arts of grammar, rhetoric, and logic were traditionally concerned with language. Each establishes standards of correctness and excellence to regulate the use of language as an instrument of thought and communication. How could it be otherwise since there is no access to the content of thought apart from the material signs used to communicate thought?
- Aristotle subsumed his analysis of language under his logic. Plato and the Sophists had already touched upon problems of language incidentally, but Aristotle was the first to deal with them systematically. The first five chapters of On Interpretation contain the first known system of linguistic categories. Where later logicians treat the formal aspect of thought, Aristotle makes his object the elements of discourse, or thought expressed in language. He moves easily between the terminology of logic, philosophy, and linguistics, occasioning complaints from contemporary thinkers that it is sometimes not clear whether he was talking about language or about something represented by language.
1.1.2The theory of logic.
- This confluence of language and logic is not just the result of practical necessity. The division between the first three and the remaining books of Aristotle’s Organon is sometimes characterized as a distinction between formal and material logic. This is not completely accurate. The first book, Categories, already discusses semantic categories. On Interpretation considers syntactic categories, and both formal properties of propositions as universality and particularity and material properties as necessity and contingency.
- But between the former and the latter the Organon does move from rules of consistency in reasoning to issues of truth, certainty, explanation, and language. The Posterior Analytics deals formally with such logical matter: aspects of the language of argument such as primacy and immediacy, essential universality, essential connection, casual claims, strict appropriateness, logical priority and posteriority, a priori demonstration and a posteriori demonstration, demonstration of fact and explanatory demonstration, etc.
- The subject underwent a significant development at the hands of the Stoics and Scholastics. The Grammaticae speculativae is less a study of a specific language but an analytic speculation on the underlying structure of “universal” grammar.
1.1.3The development of logic.
- Among the contemporary traditions in the philosophy of language, the Anglo-American tradition has been, historically speaking, driven by developments in modern logic.
- Frege and Russell wanted to prove the consistency of mathematics by deriving it from logic. To carry out that programme they had first to revamp logic itself. Frege made the essential contribution by designing the apparatus and vocabulary of the new logic. Russell marked the turning point of Anglo-American philosophy by applying the tools of the new logic to the discovery of the “true” but hidden form of natural language. The implicitly philosophical concerns that motivated Russell to analyze linguistic expressions became explicit in Wittgenstein. In the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, he developed his belief that the structure of reality mirrors the structure of language. In demarcating the line between what could and could not be said, Wittgenstein claimed not only to uncover the logical form of language but also to establish a priori the form of the world. Following this historical development, certain philosophical schools, especially logical empiricism, have asserted that logic and linguistic analysis are the same thing. Even if one does not share this extreme view it has often difficult to tell them apart.
1.1.4The application of logic.
- The confluence of logic and language continues contemporary life. Information Technology and computer science. Automated translation. Artificial intelligence.
1.2The question of meaning.
This involvement of philosophy with language has a clear focus: meaningfulness. And concern with meaningfulness has two facets: (1) the theoretical problem of saying what meaning consists in, and (2) the applied problem of uncovering and evaluating various layers of meaning of particular philosophically important words or claims.
1.2.1Rules for meaningfulness.
- Plato and Aristotle, Augustine and Aquinas, Berkeley and Hume, were concerned with ambiguity in speech. Hobbes, Bacon, and Locke made recommendations for the correction of the abuses of language and the treachery of words. Berkeley and Hume dealt with the multiple senses in which discourse of every sort can be interpreted, and with the methods by which men can approximate precision in the use of language.
- The urge to measure language by standards of excellence continues today. Historical and comparative studies of human languages have developed, as well as the scientific formulation of what is common to languages in origin, structure, and change. This provides important backing for the discipline popularly called semantics, which studies the properties of language as a medium of expression, especially its limitations.
1.2.2The meaning of meaningfulness.
- Other, more foundational, questions emerge. Which comes first, thought or language? Is to know something different from knowing what it is called? Do we think in language? What does that mean (the question becomes acute in the case of bilinguals)? Do men who speak different languages know things in the same way? What do we mean when we say that something is true? Utterly dissimilar words in different languages can have the same meaning; identical sounds or marks in different languages can mean quite different things: since the sounds or marks that constitute spoken and written words do not possess meaning naturally, where do such conventional signs get their meanings?
- This more theoretical interest in language has a long progeny. Though linguistics and the history of languages are of recent development, speculation about the origin of language and consideration of the natural and conventional aspects of language extend throughout the tradition. In addition there is the broader inquiry into the nature of signs and symbols. That words are conventional signs raises the question concerning meaning or significance. This is not limited to the problem of how words get their meaning. The general question calls for an examination of every type of signification and every sort of symbol, verbal and non-verbal, natural and artificial, human and divine.
1.2.3Philosophical inquiry.
- Ultimately we reach philosophical inquiry. According as men hold different conceptions of the relationship between language and thought (and in consequence assume different attitudes toward the imperfections or misuse of language), they inevitably take opposite sides on fundamental issues concerning the nature of things and of man and his mind.
- Whether the discipline of language is called semantics or the liberal arts, the standards by which one man criticizes the language of another depend upon what he holds to be true. The rules of meaningfulness depend upon the meaning of meaningfulness.
2CLASSICAL THEORIES OF MEANING
In the classical epoch a realist conception of language allowed tolerance for imperfections in its use. But we also find a systematization of standards that safeguard discourse from the aberrations of speech.
2.1.1Mastery of the arts of language.
- Though language does not systematically betray man’s demand for clarity and truth, still minds sometimes fail to meet through the interchange of words. Through the discipline of the liberal arts – grammar, rhetoric, logic – men can make language express as much truth as they can acquire, and communicate it as clearly as they can think it.
- But the liberal arts do not guarantee rectitude of intention. Men may use language to obscure, deceive, or falsify. If such use is misuse, then language is equally available for use or misuse. Only men competent in language can make linguistic errors intentionally.
2.1.2Realist foundations of language.
- Language is conventional rather than natural, as evinced by a plurality of tongues that embody diverse principles of symbolization. But there is a foundation in nature: words get meanings from ideas, thoughts, or feelings which men use them to express.
- Though the meaning of a word may come from the idea it signifies, the word thus made meaningful refers the mind to something other than its ideas, therefore serving as the name or designation of that thing. It. The tradition distinguishes between things in the order of nature and the concepts we form of them, and insists that words signify the real things they name as well as the ideas whose meanings they express.
2.2Plato and Aristotle: the organon.
Plato and Aristotle were both sensitive to language. They would preface their discussion of a subject by examining the relevant words in current use, enumerating and ordering their various senses. While not expecting to remove ambiguity entirely, they discriminate between occasions when precision is desirable – in which case they pursue or construct definitions to control ambiguity – and when the purpose of discourse is better served by permitting a whole range of meanings. They see no special difficulty with abstract as opposed to concrete words, or general names as distinguished from proper names that designate individuals, or words that refer to purely intelligible objects rather than objects of sense-experience.
2.2.1On the use and misuse of language.
- Aristotle’s Organon stands to logic as Euclid’s Elements stands to geometry. Aristotle seems to be the discoverer – certainly the first systematic expounder in western thought – of the skills of discourse involved in pursuit of truth. He does not use the word logic but organon means “instrument” or “method”, which suggests directions for producing a certain result. Aristotle is indebted to his predecessors for materials to criticize and develop:
- Plato, for the theory of classification and definition, the root notion of the syllogism and a conception of demonstration, the general outlines of an intellectual method Plato calls dialectic (in Aristotle’s usage, it designates only that part of his method concerned with probability rather than truth);
- the sophists, for the construction of arguments, the formulation of methods of disputation, and the discovery of fallacies.
- A logical doctrine they held deserves specific mention: the subject-predicate structure of sentences. This was fundamental for Aristotle, partly because it suggests a metaphysical division between the entity signified by the subject term and the entity signified by the predicate term. If there seems to be no way of thinking without subject-predicate sentences, that is due to a division in reality between substances and their properties.
- Plato recognizes the difference between sophist and philosopher as one of purpose, not skill. When he deplores sophistical argument, he also recognizes the artful deployment of language. The sophistical fallacies that Aristotle enumerates seldom are accidental errors but ways of using language against logic.
2.2.2On the foundations of language.
- Plato suggests in the Cratylus that human language does not originate as a gift from the gods, for otherwise signs would be perfectly and consistently adapted to things signified. The hypothesis of a natural language is not proposed as an ideal for a perfect man-made language. It functions rather as a norm for discovering the theoretical elements that can be used as a standard for the criticism of conventional languages.
- For Aristotle, words are conventional signs. Not all audible sounds that men make to express feelings or desires are words, but only spoken words that signify mental experience, or written words that signify spoken words. Written and spoken languages differ, but the mental experiences, which these directly signify, are the same for all, as also are those things of which our experiences are the images.
2.3Augustine: the reading of the word.
Augustine was a master of language, having had a thorough grounding in the liberal arts. On the reading of scripture, Augustine advocates an education in language that allows us to integrate belief in the truth of scripture with latitude of interpretation in determining what that truth is. The art of interpreting scripture impelled Augustine to elaborate a theory of signs.
2.3.1The reading of scripture.
- On Christian Doctrine is explicitly concerned with the art of reading, not reading in general however but the reading of the Bible. It attempts to lay down special rules of interpretation, thus “teaches reading, that is, shows others how to read for themselves.”
- For Augustine, “ a sign is a thing which, over and above the impression it makes on the senses, causes something else to come into mind as a consequence of itself.”
With respect to symbols, Augustine suggests a threefold division within which the distinction between natural and conventional signs falls:
- Some things are simply things, and not signs at all.
- Some are not only things, but “also signs of other things.”
- And some things, such as words, “are never employed except as signs,” though they are also things, “for what is not a thing is nothing at all.”
- “Natural signs are those which, apart from any intention or desire of using them as signs, do yet lead to the knowledge of something else, as, for example, smoke when it indicates fire. For it is not from any intention of making it a sign that it is so, but through attention to experience we come to know that fire is beneath, even when nothing but smoke can be seen.” Augustine seems to find natural signs in things related as cause and effect. Every natural thing or event thus tends to become the sign of something else, so that the whole of nature constitutes a vast symbolism or language by which God informs us of his plan.
- “Conventional signs, on the other hand, are those which living beings mutually exchange for the purpose of showing, as well as they can, the feelings of their minds, or their perceptions, or their thoughts.” Of conventional signs words hold the chief place because what gesture or non-verbal symbols express, words can also express, but not vice versa.
2.4Aquinas: the metaphysical content of language.
Aquinas was unfailingly realist in his response to the question of whether words signify conceptions of the mind or the things of which we have conceptions. In so doing he articulated a finely balanced theory that linked language, thought, and the world.
2.4.1Signification and the signified.
- Aquinas made the distinction, subsequently elaborated by scholastic commentators, between what is signified by a word (id quod significatur) and its manner of signifying (modus significandi). The latter refers to our manner of knowing the thing we designate.
- The word person is taken from our conceptions of created things. Therefore, in God is a person, it can signify only very imperfectly the divine reality. Nevertheless, when applied to God, person does not fail to signify the divine reality.
- What is the relation between the idea and the thing a word signifies? For Aquinas, “words are the signs of ideas, and ideas the similitude of things, … [hence] words function in the signification of things through the conceptions of the intellect.” Ideas are the immediate or proximate object that words signify, but through them words ultimately signify the real things that are themselves the objects of ideas. An idea is both the object signified by a word and the medium through which that word also signifies the thing. Ideas are central: “We can give a name to anything only insofar as we can understand it.”
- These observations highlight Aquinas’ conviction of the profoundly metaphysical character of human language. Human language makes reference to the being of knowledge and to the being of things. In Aquinas’ theory of meaning his ontology and his epistemology converge. Man gives names to things because he knows them, he knows them because they real, hence names reflect both the being of things and our manner of knowing them.
2.5Medieval theories of meaning.
Medieval theories of language are a development and systematization of earlier insights.
2.5.1The theory of modus significandi.
- The word-idea relation raises other problems that have peculiar interest in the scholastic tradition. A common resolution to these problems appeals to the distinction between the id quod significatur and the modus significandi..
2.5.1.1First and second impositions.
- In Concerning the Teacher, Augustine points out that some words signify words and other words signify things. In the sentence Man is a noun, noun signifies a word; man too signifies a word, namely itself. In Man is an animal, man signifies a living organism of a certain sort. The same word may signify both itself and some thing other than itself.
- These differences came to be formulated in the traditional distinction between the first and second imposition of words. A word is used in first imposition when it signifies things other than words, in second imposition when it signifies words (including itself) rather than things.
2.5.1.2First and second intentions.
- A parallel distinction is that between words used in the first and the second intention. We use a word in first intention when it signifies an extra-mental reality, as in man in Man is an animal. We use a word in the second intention when it signifies an idea rather than a thing, as in Man is a species, where man signifies the idea denominated as species.
- In some cases, an idea may not signify things at all, but only other ideas, such as the logical notions of “genus” and “species”. Words like genus and species, unlike the words man and stone, can therefore be used only in the second intention.
2.5.1.3Intrinsic and extrinsic denomination.
- Another traditional distinction in the modes of signification is that between intrinsic and extrinsic denomination. A word is said to be an intrinsic denomination when it is applied to signify a nature or properties and attributes. A name is an extrinsic denomination when it is applied only to signify some relation between a thing and something else.
- Example: Healthy signifies an inherent quality when it is applied to living organisms, and a causal relation to organic health when it is applied to sunshine. Pig signifies a certain kind of animal when applied to a pig, and only a resemblance to a pig when applied to men.
2.5.2The theory of suppositio.
- The medieval term for the mode of reference of a referring phrase such as a dog or every dog was suppositio (apparently in origin a legal term for “going proxy for”, which we can translate as “substitutive value”). Aquinas and Ockham say that a term supponit pro, has suppositio for, and that it stat pro, stands for, one or more objects.
- The first and second impositions, first and second intentions, and intrinsic and extrinsic denominations of expressions are classified as various types of suppositio (respectively, real and verbal, real and logical, real and metaphorical).
- The theory of suppositio does not resolve all issues concerning modes of reference, especially in sentences expressing generality. The theory limps with sentences like If Jemima can lick some dog in town, then Jemima can lick any dog in town. The medievals would sometimes simply relegate such sentences to “confused suppositio”.
3MODERN THEORIES OF MEANING
In modern thought we find more of the criticism that language causes men unwittingly to deceive themselves as often as it enables them intentionally to deceive one other.
3.1.1Systematic deficiencies of language.
- Men are tricked by the tendency of words to counterfeit a reality that does not exist. This, in the view of Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume, is particularly true of general or universal names – words that signify nothing that can be perceived or imagined.
- The ideal of a perfect and universal language arose in modern times from dissatisfaction with the inadequacy of ordinary language for the analytical refinement and precision needed by mathematics and science.
3.1.2Formally oriented approach to language.
- Formally oriented approaches in the philosophy of language go back to the speculative grammarians of the twelfth century who thought there was one grammar underlying all natural languages. They did not develop any formal methodology, believing that since the nature of things defines grammatical structure the endeavor belongs to ontology.
- In the formal approach, we can distinguish the idea of a grammar underlying natural languages, of an international auxiliary language, and of a unified artificial language of science that contains an ars combinatoria and a calculus ratiocinator.
3.2Descartes, Fourier, Lavoiser: lingua universalis.
Descartes held up mathematical methodology as the procedure to be followed in all inquiry. His notion of a universal method called for a universal language that is to be the perfect instrument for analysis and demonstration.
3.2.1Cartesian linguistics.
- Descartes, the inventor/discoverer of analytic geometry and the idea of a mathesis universalis, believed that underlying all speech is a lingua universalis. Unlike the earlier grammarians, it represented the form of human reason, not the nature of things.
- Neither did Descartes attempt to construct such a language. His reason was not deference to ontology, but to the prerequisite task of analyzing all mental content into its constituent simple ideas.
3.2.2Mathematical linguistics.
- The moderns developed Descartes’ supposition that mathematical symbolism is itself the perfect language. One feature of this ideal would be an exact correspondence between words and ideas that precludes any failure of communication. Another feature would be the reductions of the rules of thinking to the rules of syntax.
- Of Descartes’ analytical equations, Fourier remarked that “they extend to all general phenomena … [hence] a language more universal and more simple, more free from errors and obscurities … more worthy to express the invariable relations of natural.” Condillac said of algebra that it is “most simple, most exact, and … is at the same time a language and an analytical method.” Lavoisier likened mathematical symbolism to “… three impressions of the same seal [in which] the word … produce[s] the idea, and the idea … [is] a picture of the fact.” It would then be possible to claim that “the art of reasoning is nothing more than a language well arranged.”
3.3Liebniz: characteristica universalis.
Liebniz also held the thesis of a lingua universalis. He was programmatic in his approach, attempting to formulate fragments of a general framework for philosophical language he called characteristica universalis. This characteristica universalis was to serve three purposes: provide for an international auxiliary language, an ars combinatoria, and a calculus ratiocinator. The second and third purposes distinguish it from its precursors and give Liebniz’s programme its formal or logistic methodology, as well as the critical components necessary for a formally oriented approach to language. We have here an attempt to encompass the three relationships between language and reality, thought, and knowledge.
3.3.1International auxiliary language.
- An auxiliary language would enable international communication.
- With Latin on the decline and new trade routes opening up lands with different local languages, the possibility of such a language was widely discussed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Proposals and partial constructions emerged during the period, but none succeeded in being used by more than a handful of people.
- An ars combinatoria is an ideograph or symbolic system for logical analyses of all possible concepts of science.
- Such an ars combinatoria would contain a theory of both logical and definitional form. That is, it would specify all possible forms a meaningful expression might have in the language, and all possible operations for constructing new from already given concepts.
3.3.3Calculus ratiocinator and characteristica realis.
- A calculus ratiocinator is a complete system of deduction and valid argument forms. It would be an instrument yielding all consequences or implications of present knowledge.
- With a characteristica universalis, Liebniz thought that a unified encyclopedia of science could be developed. It would be a characteristica realis, i.e. a representational system that would guide insight and reasoning about the inner reality of things.
4CONTEMPORARY THEORIES OF MEANING
A distinctive feature of twentieth-century philosophy is the so-called linguistic turn. The phrase refers to a change from a relatively small concern with questions about language to a major one. Two streams can be recognized: the Anglo-American stream and the Continental stream.
4.1.1The analytic approach.
- Analytic thinkers seek to avoid category mistakes in the interests of clarity, evidence, verification, and coherence. Concern for language has a clear focus – meaningfulness – with two facets:
- the theoretical problem of saying what meaning consists in, and
- the applied problem of uncovering and evaluating various layers of meaning of philosophically important words or claims.
- Underlying both facets is the search for deep form. A sentence in some natural language appears with a “surface form” that may contrast with its real underlying structure. Part of the issue is the kind of methodology used to uncover these disguised structures.
- Early characterizations of deep form employed the vocabulary of modern logic. The methodology urged was a formally oriented approach to language, i.e. the construction of a logically ideal language as the basis for a theory of meaning. In addition, the notion of a “logical abacus” served as the motivation for various logistical schemes that accompanied the modern development of symbolic/mathematical logic, from Boole and Venn, to Peano, Couturat, Russell and Whitehead.
- Concern with formal language went hand in hand with a concern with natural language, and sometimes the one strain is dominant, sometimes the other. Ordinary language concerns are strongest when the expressive function of language is highlighted, when focus is on how human beings use signs to communicate belief, desire, intention, etc.
4.1.2The non-analytic approach.
- The linguistic turn in continental philosophy took on a different shape from that in the analytic tradition. Continentals appear more impelled by ontological scruples to keep thought open to “irreducibles” and “undecidables” – that is, to questions which surpass the limits of “pure reason”, questions of being, transcendence, and historicity.
4.2The Anglo-American tradition.
Linguistic analysis or conceptual analysis are labels, briefly popular in the early twentieth century, no longer in general use. The idea is this: philosophical questions arise at the end of science when particular inquiries about matters of fact have been exhausted, they are concerned with the interpretation of thought, with an analysis of either the words used to express the thought or the concepts that compose it. The fundamental philosophical question is therefore the question of meaning.
4.2.1Frege: source and paradigm.
- Frege essentially made two contributions to the philosophy of language.
- In his book Concept-Script, A Formula Language for Pure Thought, Modeled upon that of Arithmetic, Frege radically departed from classical or Aristotelian subject-predicate logic and proposed instead the notion of functor-argument structure of sentences.
- His paper On Sense and Reference proposed a two-tiered theory of meaning. That theory became the point of departure of subsequent theories in the analytic tradition.
4.2.1.1A functor-argument analysis of sentences.
- Frege used the newly developed function theory of mathematics to interpret a subject-predicate sentence of the form a is F, where a stands for a singular term (proper name or definite description), as the result of applying the predicate F, interpreted as a functor from objects to truth-values, to the argument a, i.e. F(a).
- A subject-predicate-object sentence of the form aRb, where a and b stand for singular terms and R for a transitive verb (such as, for example, the verb love) is interpreted as applying the relation R, a binary functor from objects to truth-values, to the arguments a and b (in thav order), i.e. R(a,b).
- Frege also applied this functor-argument analysis to categorical propositions of traditional syllogistic logic. This analysis that introduced a new insight into the structure of quantifier phrases of natural language, i.e. phrases beginning with all, every, some, there is (are). In this theory a quantifier phrase stands for a (variable-indexed) second-level functor within which first-level functors fall. Quantifier phrases therefore amount to functors from first-level functors (i.e. those that predicate phrases stand for) to truth-values.
- In this analysis there are two kinds of names: proper and common. Proper names directly denote individual objects. Common names directly denote properties or universals. All and only proper names are subjects. All and only common names are predicates.
4.2.1.2A two-tiered theory of meaning.
- A basic feature of Frege’s function theory is the idea that the meaning of a complex expression is a function of the meanings of the component expressions that make it up, or what is generally called the compositionality law of meaning. This law appears to be violated in natural language by contexts – which modern logicians characterize as “opaque” – involving modal expressions and verbs expressing propositional attitudes (e.g. those that ascribe knowledge, belief, or desire).
- This led Frege to distinguish between the sense and reference – or what others call the intension and extension – of expressions. For example, the senses of the morning star and the evening star differ but their reference is the same (namely, the planet Venus). Frege called the sense of a sentence a thought, by which he meant a proposition (as abstract object) and not a mental episode of thinking. The reference of a sentence he took to be a truth-value, i.e. either the true or the false. Thus because the morning star and the evening star have the same reference but different senses, the sentences The morning star is not the evening star and The morning star is not the morning star have the same truth-value (the false) as reference but express different thoughts as senses.
- Frege stipulated that in an opaque context, the reference of an expression is its sense. Hence in the sentence He believes that the morning star is not the evening star, the reference of the morning star is not the evening star is not the false, but the thought “The morning star is not the evening star”.
- The compositionality law then stipulates that the reference of a sentence is a function of the references of component expressions. As applied to senses, the law stipulates that the sense of a sentence is a function of the senses of those expressions. It follows therefore that the reference of a sentence in which an expression occurs in an opaque context is a function of the sense of that expression and not its ordinary reference.
4.2.2Russell and Carnap: form-based theories of meaning.
- Carnap applied Frege’s ideas and certain techniques of the mathematician David Hilbert to a general analysis of language. His study dealt only with the structural aspects of language, such as rules of formation that defined the well-formed expressions of the different logico-grammatical categories of the language, and rules of transformation that defined the conditions under which sentences follow validly from other sentences of the language. In his analysis, Carnap distinguished between the language whose logical structure we want to study, which he called an object-language, and the language in which we carry out that study, which he called the meta-language.
4.2.2.1Russell: a one-tiered theory of meaning.
- Russell’s original and highly influential essay of 1905, “On Denoting” marked a key point in the development of Anglo-American philosophy.
- One aspect of language – referring – received a lot of attention because language is thought of as attaching to the world through reference. Reference is a feature of proper names or subject expressions that denote individual objects existing in space and time as the basic constituents of the world. For Russell, these objects are virtually always sense data, i.e. sensations, in contrast with independent existents such as tables and chairs.
- Such considerations inspired Russell’s simple, perhaps the simplest and most resilient, semantic theory: the naming theory of meaning. According to this theory, the meaning of a word is the object it names. Russell’s theory is one-tiered: the meaning of a name is the object it directly denotes (reference), it is void of any descriptive content (sense).
- Hence descriptions are never subjects in the deep form of sentences in which they occur. In Russell’s well-known example the sentence The present King of France is bald appears to be of subject-predicate form with the present King of France filling the subject role. But in its true form we find only variables x and y, the logical functions for all x and there is an x such that and the predicates is presently King of France and is bald. Rendered in English, the logical form is: there is at least one thing that is presently King of France, and any thing vhat is presently King of France is identical to that thing, and that thing is bald.
- Eventually Russell came to believe that (1) ordinary proper names are disguised or abbreviated descriptions, and that therefore (2) the only genuine (logical) proper names occur as variables bound to universal or existential quantifiers.
4.2.2.2An extensional logic.
- Russell’s one-tiered theory of meaning made a purely extensional logic possible. A revolution in logic occurred when logicians determined that what matters for logic is not the Fregean sense but the reference.
- From the traditional (intensional) perspective, the inference from p to q is valid because the meaning of p entails that of q. On this view, the primary subject matter of logic would be the Fregean sense, i.e. what we understand when we understand a word or sentence.
- On an extensional account, logic would describe, not relations among ideas, but in its most abstract and systematic outline the relation between language and the world. An inference is valid just as long as the premises cannot have the reference true without the conclusion having the reference true. The validity of arguments is couched in terms of functions of the truth-values of the constituent expressions of its premises.
4.2.2.3The theory of logical types.
- Carnap’s notion of meta-language entails a hierarchy of expressions. This was already implicit in Frege’s treatment of logical quantifiers, which stipulates that higher-level functors can take as arguments only functors of lower-level, until expressions are reached for which no lower-level expressions exist because they function exclusively as arguments.
- It was this hierarchy that became the basis of the theory of logical types later developed by Russell to avoid a paradox that led to contradiction in Frege’s concept-script.
4.2.3Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle: truth-conditional theories of meaning.
- In time Carnap saw that a full explication of language involved a content-based approach. He extended the meta-language to include expressions that stand for semantical relations, i.e. referring relations that hold between expressions of an object-language and the entities they signify. The primary goal of such a meta-language is to define the semantic notions of truth and falsehood as applied to sentences of the object-language. The meaning of a sentence was then given in terms of truth-conditions, i.e. the conditions under which the sentence can be said to be true or false.
- All form-based theories of meaning are truth-conditional theories of meaning. Carnap and other members of the Vienna Circle adopted the linguistic doctrine of the a priori. According to this doctrine, a declarative sense can be known to be true (or false) if and only if the sentence is analytically true (or false), i.e. in virtue of sentence structure. This doctrine amounts to a linguistic theory of the a priori. According to the Vienna Circle, logic and mathematics are a priori because logical and mathematical truths are analytical.
- In addition to analytical truths there are sentences whose truth-value cannot be determined solely by linguistic structure because they contain signs that are meaningful only because they are coordinated with sense experience. The meanings of such sentences are still determined on the basis of its truth-conditions, but these conditions should now include, not only grammatical structure, but also experiential evidence.
4.2.3.1Vienna Circle: verification theory of meaning.
- A basic principle of empiricism is that what is true, but not analytically (i.e. a priori) true, is knowable only on the basis of experience. This led to a logical empiricist theory of meaning: a sentence is meaningful (i.e. it can be said to be true or false) if and only if either it is analytically true or false, or its truth or falsity is capable of being tested by experiential evidence. The theory came to be called the verifiability theory of meaning.
- Unfortunately verifiability proved too strong a criterion because it rules out many affirmative universal sentences that scientists would want to consider meaningful. An alternative was a falsifiability criterion, that is, a sentence is meaningful precisely when there is a method of determining when it is false. Affirmative universal sentences are meaningful on this criterion. (But another kind of sentence is not – universal negative sentences such as There are no unicorns.)
4.2.3.2Wittgenstein: logical atomism.
- A basic presupposition of Wittgensten’s enormously influential book the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus is that a logical form underlies the sentences of ordinary language. We can analyze every sentence into a collection of elementary sentences linked by the truth functions and, not, or, and if … then. Elementary sentences are those that cannot be analyzed further – they consist solely of names of simple objects. All meaningful sentences have the logical form just described. All would-be sentences lacking it are meaningless, even though we think it has sense.
- Wittgenstein presented a stark version of the naming theory of meaning: “a name means an object. The object is its meaning.” Names are the basic building blocks of sentences, but names alone do not express a thought. When concatenated or strung together, they form sentences. A fact of the world is an existing configuration of objects; sentences are therefore themselves facts. The possibility then follows for saying that a sentence is a picture of reality and that hieroglyphic script indicates the “essential nature of a proposition”. The Tractatus emphasized the thesis that the meaning of a sentence is its truth-conditions. Consequently what makes a sentence true is analogous to what makes a picture accurate. The meaningful elements of the sentence, that is, the names, must correlate with the objects in the fact it purports to describe. The configuration of names must be the same as the configuration of objects in the represented fact.
- The result was a metaphysical framework known as logical atomism. The elements of logical atomism are atomic states of affairs, each of which is logically independent of the rest, and the totality of which make up logical space. Different possible worlds, including the actual world, consist of all the atomic states of affairs that obtain in those worlds.
4.2.4Strawson, et al: communication-intention theories of meaning.
- In addition to declarative sentences there are also imperatives, interrogatives, exclamatories, etc. Instead of, or in addition to, truth-conditions, these sentences may have compliance- or fulfillment-conditions. The communication-intention theories of meaning insist that the meaning of a sentence is not in general its truth-conditions, even when relativized to contexts of use. The essence of meaning, on this view, is not the concept of truth but what a speaker intends by an audience-directed speech act.
4.2.4.1Strawson: use theory of meaning.
- Strawson adumbrated the use theory of meaning: “To give the meaning of an expression … is to give general directions for its use to refer to or mention particular objects; to give the meaning of a sentence is to give general directions for its use in making true or false assertions.” For Strawson, people using language are the foundation of meaning.
- Sentences can be grammatical or meaningful, but what is true or false is not the sentence but the statement or assertion that is made by using the sentence to represent the world. Used in 1625, the sentence The present king of France is wise could have been used to make a statement about Louis XIII; used in 1650 it could have been about Louis XIV. Used in the twentieth century, the sentence remains meaningful but it cannot result in any assertion. These are three different statements, resulting from utterances of one and the same sentence. Hence it is not words that assert, but people.
4.2.4.2Austin and Searle: theory of speech acts.
- Austin’s views attack the theses that there is a difference between talking and acting, and that all talk aims at describing the word. Characteristic of many instances of speech is simultaneity of saying and doing; the distinction between descriptive talk (e.g. stating, asserting, affirming) and performative talk (e.g. christening, bequeathing, betting, promising) is purely abstract. There are many actions that are typically achieved by performing a speech act.
- Searle presented a refinement of Austin’s ideas. Propositions, or the locutionary act, are part of the illocutionary act. The other part of the illocutionary act is its force. The proposition (say, that Mary will be at the meeting) acquires a different force accordingly as it is variously stated (I state that Mary will be at the meeting), questioned (I question whether Mary will be at the meeting), bet (I bet that Mary will be at the meeting), or promised (I promise that Mary will be at the meeting). Searle then develops the notion of propositional content conditions, which are different kinds of conditions that need to be fulfilled for different speech acts. Some of these conditions precede the speech act (“preparatory conditions”), others require some kind of rectitude of intention on the part of the speaker (“sincerity conditions”). Every speech has an essential condition that specifies what the point or purpose of the speech act is.
4.2.4.3Grice: communication theory of meaning.
- In his paper On Meaning, Grice explains that meaning above all concerns communication. His motivating insight is that for a person to mean something is for that person to engage in a complex kind of intentional behavior that is directed towards another person. There are basically two kinds of effect that a person can induce in an audience: to believe something (reflected in the indicative mood) and to do something (reflected in the imperative mood).
- In later developments, Grice shows how all conversation is governed by overarching principles. Since communication is a cooperative enterprise in which the speaker tries to get the audience to understand what he has in mind and the audience does its part to understand the speaker, certain maxims, or “conversational implicatures” standardly operate. For example, speakers are to say what they believe to be true and should have the appropriate evidence. They should say only what is necessary, and say it briefly, clearly, unambiguously, and in an orderly way, i.e. relevant to what has gone before. Although these conversational maxims are the norm, they can go unfulfilled in a variety of ways – people violate maxims, opt out of fulfilling a maxim, flout a maxim.
4.2.4.4Quine: linguistic holism.
- Most philosophers who have thought about language have focused on the utterer’s role in communication. Quine looks at language from the audience’s perspective.
- He asks how an audience comes to understand an utterly foreign language, how they would correlate sentences of their language with sentences of the speaker’s language. The view that emerges is linguistic holism: linguistic meaning resides in the entire language and not in any sub-unit.
4.2.4.5Late Wittgenstein: language-games.
- The major change marking Wittgenstein’s later philosophy is a movement from a mentalistic to a social view of meaning. Wittgenstein takes his cue from the obvious fact that language is something exchanged between people. Words pass back and forth, and change the way we interact. Wittgenstein holds that language is used when it is put into play, when it is uttered in the language-game.
- The notion of “language-game” is the central theme. A language-game is a custom, a socially constrained pattern of interaction. The word game emphasizes the fact that word usage is inextricably meshed with human interactions. Words are analogous to game markers of some sort, e.g. a chess knight or an ace of hearts. These objects, themselves inert, take on their usual significance when they are in play. Particular patterns of interaction provide an atmosphere in which objects live and function.
4.3The Continental tradition.
The linguistic turn in the Continental tradition pivots on Saussure’s notion of sign as principle according to which language, culture, and knowledge production would be understood.
4.3.1Saussure: structuralism.
- Structuralism – and especially French structuralism – cannot be understood apart from Ferdinand de Saussure’s semiology. As a linguist, de Saussure was ultimately concerned with language. Hence the earliest forms of structuralism were restricted to the formulations of a semiology based on language study.
- In his semiology, “the general science of signs”, de Saussure proposed a new understanding of the notion of “sign”. He argued that a sign is a binary pair consisting of the signifier, the word, that which does the signifying; and the signified, is the concept, that which is signified. A sign however is not yet a sign until it is distinguished from other signs in the same system, or language. A sign cannot be on its own – apart from all other elements of the language. Indeed, de Saussure defines a sign as determined by its difference from all other signs in the sign system.
- Another binary pair is the relation between syntagm and system (or paradigm). Syntagm approximates the notion of grammatical rules productive of meaningful sequences of signs, while paradigm that of syntactic category that governs which kinds of words inter-substitutable salva meaningfulness.
- A fourth binary opposition links diachrony and synchrony. A diachronic study of a word over time, chronologically, allowing for the consideration of a development over time, historically, as it were. A synchronic study, by contrast, is ultimately concerned with the set of relations among a whole complex of signs and elements that arise at the same time and in the same context.
4.3.2Gadamer: hermeneutics.
- Traditionally, hermeneutics was an ars interpretandi, the art of textual interpretation, as used in biblical exegesis and classical philology. In modern times, hermeneutics progressively refined itself as a general discipline dealing with the principles regulating all forms of interpretation. It was called into play in the presence of texts (or text analogues) whose meaning is not readily apparent and which accordingly require an active effort on the part of the interpreter in order to be made intelligible. In addition to this exegetical function, hermeneutics also viewed its task as that of drawing out the practical consequences of the interpreted meaning. This dual role of understanding/explanation (subtilitas intelligendi et explicandi) and application (subtilitas applicandi) is especially evident in the case of juridical hermeneutics. There the task is not only to ascertain the “intent” of the law but also to discern how best to apply it in the circumstances at hand.
- In the second edition of his magnum opus, Truth and Method, Gadamer set himself the goal that envisaged hermeneutics in a way thoroughly different from the way in which it traditionally had been envisaged. His goal was to elaborate a general philosophy of human understanding, in all of its various modes. His thought is often referred to as “philosophical hermeneutics”, which is not prescriptive (laying down “rules” for correct interpretation) but, in the phenomenological sense of the term, descriptive (seeking to ascertain what actually occurs whenever we seek to understand something).
4.3.3Derrida: deconstructionism.
- Derrida addressed the question of deconstruction in Of Grammatology (1967) in a chapter entitled “The Exorbitant. Question of Method”. The essential point is that deconstruction is always the deconstruction of a text. Derrida’s thinking is always about a text, and deconstruction is always engaged in a reading of a text, primarily philosophical texts.
- What takes place in deconstruction is double reading. This is a reading that intertwines at least two motifs or layers of reading: the first being “the dominant interpretation” of a text in the guise of a commentary, and second being an opening up to the blind spots or ellipses within the dominant interpretation. The first reading is the rigorous and scholarly reconstruction of the dominant interpretation of a text, its intended meaning, in the guise of a commentary. The second reading is the destabilization of the stability of the dominant interpretation. It traverses the text to a position of “otherness” or “exteriority” from where the text can be brought text into contradiction with itself, opening its intended meaning onto a contrary position that goes against what the text wants to say or mean.
- What takes place in deconstruction is a highly determinate form of double reading that pursues alterities within texts. In this way, deconstruction opens philosophy to a discourse on “the other”, an otherness that has been dissimulated or appropriated by the tradition.
5.1The study of language.
One of the constituents of human communication and human community is language. We find questions about language at one of the most complex crossroads of current inquiry, at which converge philosophy, psychology, socio-cultural anthropology, sociology, linguistics, logic, epistemology, and philosophical anthropology.
5.1.1Interdisciplinary questions regarding language.
- In studying language, various themes emerge at the convergence of various disciplines:
- The physiological basis of language.
- The psychological genesis of language. Associationism and innatism.
- The linguistic genesis of the human psyche. Reason and the self as the foundation of language, or vice versa.
- The relation between language and thought (language as the ground of thinking, or vice versa), and between the laws of language and the laws of reason (the laws of language as the foundation of the laws of reason, or vice versa).
- The nature of language: its elements, structure, and functions. Syntax, semantics, and pragmatics as radical foundations of language.
- The anthropological foundations of language. The relation between language and culture (language as the condition of culture, or vice versa), and between language and society (language as the basis of society, or vice versa).
5.1.2Formal logic, metalogic, methodology, semiotics.
- The term logic is ambiguous. Within the genus of “science of inference”, there still remains a triple division of the domain of logic: formal logic, methodology, and metalogic.
- Formal logic studies patterns of inference, the laws of logic.
- Methodology (from the Greek meta, “along”, odon, “way”, and logos, “word”; literally “a speaking of the (right) going-along-the-way”) applies the laws of logic to yield theoretical directions for correct thinking and manner of proceeding in any field.
- Metalogic studies logic itself, the nature of its laws and methods of their verification.
- The general outlook of logical empiricism at the beginning of the twentieth century gave a big push to the development of the semiotic methodology (the term, meaning “science of signs”, is due to Charles Morris). It continues to receive stimulus from other sciences, particularly physics, which now require more a precise analysis of language.
5.2Characteristics of language.
Acts of intellect and will are paralleled by the use of sensible signs. These sensible signs are organized into a language, i.e. oral and written symbols and rules for their use. The signs are expressive of internal acts (apprehensions, judgments, impressions, moods). They are significant because through them conceptions (ideas and propositions, as well as resolutions, commands, feelings, desires) are meant directly, and indirectly the things of which there are conceptions. They make thinking possible. They communicate internal acts to an external audience; through communication commonly possessed universes of symbols arise.
5.2.1Expression and language.
- Human language does not seem to be genetically programmed. There are no physical organs or brain areas responsible for language, as there are for sight and hearing. Language seems to take root in non-specialized areas of the cerebral cortex. We find in substitutive phenomena – other brain areas substituting for those that suffer damage – evidence that language cannot be explained solely in physiological terms.
- Psychologically, language seems to arise through a secondary system of signs, i.e. the assignment of abstract and conventional symbols to cognitive, evaluative, and motor activities and their corresponding objects. We can operate with these symbols even when the corresponding activities are suspended, thus saving physical and psychic energy.
- The psychological genesis of language is correlative to the “linguistic” genesis, existentially speaking, of the self. Consciousness of subjectivity develops chronologically in contraposition to objective representations: I become conscious of myself when I express to myself representations of objects that I constitute for myself. More than any (albeit inevitable) reference to my physical constitution, it is these objective meanings that allow me to develop an intellectual grasp of my own reality.
- It does not follow however that language constitutes subjectivity absolutely. The self is more than a property of the language that emerges with the use of personal pronouns. Objective expressions entail a prior active center that understands and, in understanding, creates objective meanings. This center is what is designated by the word I. The act of meaning is therefore intrinsically correlated to an act of understanding that is not just one more act of man but a way of being that is constitutive of his existence.
5.2.2Signification and language.
- The assignment of abstract symbols to reality is linked to the process of abstraction, which creates representations essentially different from the purely imaginative representations of animals, and a fortiori essentially different from the quasi-mechanical activity of lower organisms.
- What our abstract symbols signify may be contingent from the historical and social point of view. But not all signification becomes, on this account, unverifiable or relative. Understanding occurs when there is coincidence between reason and the first principles of being and thought, entailing a certain amount of real knowledge that allows discernment between the possible, the necessary, the contingent, the impossible, etc.
5.2.3Thought and language.
- In a way, thought is grounded in language and depends on it. Because language externalizes thought, it can facilitate or inhibit thinking. But we cannot assert absolutely and without qualification that language constitutes the basis of thought. Nor can we assert the identity of thought and language. A psychological proof can be found among the deaf mutes, who are certainly able to think (e.g. Helen Keller), and among normal people who at times cannot find the words to express what they are thinking.
- That language is grounded in thought and depends on it is the thesis more generally accepted to be true. We do not ignore the incidence into and conditioning of thought by language, implying a reciprocal interaction. Language grounds thought in the order of material causality; thought grounds language in the orders of formal and final causality.
5.2.4Communication and language.
- Representation and expression (verbal and non-verbal), together with the communicative and interpretative dimensions, give rise to culture, i.e. the collective universes of symbols through which we organize our spiritual activity. In its turn, culture configures human and social life by continually nourishing and renewing verbal and non-verbal activity.
- In other words, we possess the real in understanding at that moment in which we accede to the objective meanings operative in our society. We can therefore say that man lives in his language. This is all said without prejudice to our earlier assertions, that we must counterbalance such statements with their contraries.
5.3Origins and development of language.
The problem of the origin of human language is not an easy one for theologians. It is more difficult still for those who speculate about it in purely naturalistic terms.
5.3.1The origins of language.
- The problem of the origin of language is not only connected with the problem of the origin of human society, but also with the problem with the origin of man himself.
- Since human rationality differs in kind, not just degree, from animal intelligence there is a corresponding difference in kind between human language and the sounds of brutes.
5.3.2The development of language.
- Language plays an overwhelmingly important part in the acquisition of human knowledge, if only for the reason that this knowledge is socially conditioned, i.e. becomes known through what has been discovered by other men, and by means of language.
- Linguistic analysis, the interpretation of language, is a frequently used method in the acquisition of knowledge.
Signs signify the real things that they name as well as the ideas whose meanings they express. What is the relation between the idea and the thing a sign signifies? The idea is the proximate object as well as the medium of signification.
5.4.1The concept as a natural sign.
- Every sign is also a thing. But whereas words are first meaningless marks that get meaning when men use them to express thoughts or feelings, concepts and images are at once meaningful, however they arise in the mind. Other natural signs have a meaning that is distinct from, though a consequence of, its own specific nature. But concepts are natural signs in the sense that it is their very nature to signify.
- A concept is meaning, a reference to an object thought about. It does not get meaning; it does not even “have” meaning, in the way in which other natural signs have a meaning over and above their nature. A concept cannot be without being a sign.
5.4.2The concept as a formal sign.
- The act of memory requires a memory image that is like an impression of the thing being remembered. But the act of memory does not consist in beholding the memory image itself, because it would be beholding something present rather than the absent thing it stands for, in which case memory would not be memory. Rather, the memory image functions exclusively as a sign of the absent thing thus remembered.
- A concept behaves like a memory image. When the mind actually considers something it already knows habitually, it does not consider the “mental word” first and then the thing signified by the mental word. Rather, the “intention of the mind”, as it is sometimes called, is the object known as known.
5.5The dimensions of a sign.
The main idea of semiotics, which is also the basis of its subdivision, may be set out as follows. When a man says something to another, every word he uses has three distinct dimensions: the syntactic, the semantic, and the pragmatic dimensions. Each of these dimensions contributes to the total meaning of the sign.
5.5.1The semiotic concept of the word.
- The word is defined in classical thought as “an articulate sound that serves as a conventional sign of a concept, which in turn signifies a thing”. The “word” of semiotics is the material word, i.e. a set of waves in the air or a series of ink-marks on paper.
- When semiotics theorizes about the word, it refers to its graphic structure. (Some phenomenologists introduce the notion of “sound structure”.) This “graphic structure” is a general notion, something that actually occurs in individual words understood semiotically. It is not a thing, but a property of the semiotic sign.
5.5.2The semiotic unity of the word.
- The various dimensions of a sign are interconnected. The pragmatic relation presupposes the semantic and the syntactic, and the semantic presupposes the syntactic. The syntactic relation does not presuppose the semantic and pragmatic, and the semantic relation may be studied without reference to the pragmatic.
- We can think of the connections as a three-dimensional body. We can isolate either of the first two kinds of relationship (syntactic or semantic) or a single one (syntactic) only by abstraction, just as we abstract plane or line from a geometrical body.
A word belongs to a language, and hence bears certain relations to other words of the language. These relations are called syntactic. Syntax studies the logico-grammatical rules of formation and transformation of a language. It is a study of the ways that words and other elements of language can be strung together to form grammatical units.
A class of expressions of a language, each of which can be exchanged with any other of the same class in a meaningful sentence without depriving the sentence of meaning, is called a syntactic category. For example, proper names constitute a syntactic category of English. In any meaningful English sentence – e.g. Socrates sleeps – one proper name can be replaced by another, say, Plato, without depriving the sentence of meaning (perhaps true, perhaps false, but still meaningful). On the other hand, a verb, e.g. thinks, belongs to a different syntactic category; if we were to put thinks in the place of Socrates in our sentence, the result would be a nonsensical sentence: Thinks sleeps.
6.2.1Names, predicates, and sentences.
- In every developed language expressions exhibit one of just two syntactic functions. An expression that determines another is called its functor; the determined expression is called the argument. “Determine” is to be taken here in the widest possible sense.
- Two kinds of expression can only be arguments: these are individual (proper) names or (complete) sentences. One kind of expression functions only as a functor: predicates.
- We can further classify predicates in the following way:
- According to the syntactic category of their arguments: (a) name-determining predicates (e.g. verbs like sleeps, or relations like is larger than), (b) sentence-determining predicates (e.g. and, it is not the case that), (c) predicate-determining predicates (e.g. very as in very beautiful).
- According to the syntactic category of the molecular expression consisting of the predicate and its argument(s): (a) name-generating predicates (e.g. a good as in a good child), (b) sentence-generating predicates (e.g. and as in It rains and it snows, all as in All men are mortal), (c) predicate-generating predicates (e.g. loudly as in barks loudly).
- According to the number of arguments: monadic functors (e.g. is beautiful), dyadic (e.g. loves), triadic (gives), and in general n-adic functors.
6.2.2Atomic and molecular expressions.
- Atomic or simple expressions of a language are so constituted that no individual part of them, taken by itself, can be a meaningful expression in the language. Molecular or compound expressions of a language are so constituted that individual parts of the expression are already meaning expressions of the language.
- This division into atomic and molecular expressions is not entirely perfect in the case of natural languages. The word hand is clearly an atomic expression in English, and yet a part of hand, namely and, is also an atomic expression. Inconsistencies of this kind can be removed by semantic means, but it is easier and more practical to construct an artificial language in which they do not occur at all.
6.3Ontological categories.
The concept of syntactic category corresponds fairly closely to that of part of speech in ordinary grammar. It is interesting to note in this connection that the syntactical categories of ordinary language – in keeping with the universal function of language, which strives to be an image of reality – mirror the so-called ontological categories. Thus, for example, the syntactic category of proper names corresponds to the ontological category of substance, and that of the so-called one-place predicates that of qualities, etc. The correspondence is however not quite complete since between reality and language stands thought, which creates new categories (of ideal entities).
What someone says has a signification; it is intended to convey a reference to a reality other than that of the sign itself or any part of the sign-system (language) the sign belongs to. We have therefore to deal with the relation of the word to what it is intended to signify; this relation is called semantic. Semantics studies the different designation relations between well-formed expressions of a language and the entities designated by those expressions.
The term definition comes to mind when considering the signification of signs. Definition is applicable to almost any answer to the question “what is x?” where x stands for any expression whose meaning remains constant.
7.2.1Kinds of definition.
- The term definition itself is ambiguous.
- A distinction is drawn between real and nominal definition: real definition says what some thing is, nominal definition refers not to a thing but to a sign.
- Further, certain distinctions are made among nominal definitions themselves. They may be either syntactic or semantic. In the first case the definition is simply a rule which permits the replacement of one sign with another (usually shorter). A semantic definition, on the other hand, fixes the signification of the sign.
- The latter is again subdivided into two types – analytical or lexical, and synthetic or stipulative definitions. In an analytic definition a signification is explicitly attributed to a sign, whish is already appropriate to it in some way or other; the concept is therefore a pragmatic one, presupposing a signification of the sign which is held in common by a group of people. A stipulative definition, on the other hand, gives the sign a new, arbitrarily chosen meaning.
7.2.2The syntax of definition.
- The following should be observed.
- Any condition which holds for a syntactic definition also holds a fortiori for all other kinds of definition, but not the other way round.
- A syntactic definition becomes a semantic definition when the system to which it belongs acquires an interpretation.
- Therefore, a syntactic definition is not the same thing as the contribution of the syntax of a sign to the total meaning of the sign; it is rather more a potentially semantic definition that is (initially) given syntactically.
Words are spoken by a particular person in a particular context to a particular person. There is therefore a third kind of relation, that between the word and the persons who use it (speaker and interlocutor); these relations are called pragmatic. Pragmatics studies the relations between expressions of an language and the contexts in which these expressions are used, including the people who use the language in those contexts.
When we enunciate a meaningful sentence, we intend to do something through it: make an oath, affirm a statement, make a promise, narrate an event, express a wish, etc. These illocutive acts or speech acts give the sentence, besides its conceptual meaning, a special illocutive force.
- English and most other natural languages have performative verbs, such as state, promise, ask, order, apologize, vow, that stand for different illocutionary forces. A performative sentence is a declarative sentence in which a performative verb occurs in such a way that a literal utterance of that sentence constitutes the performance by the speaker of the illocutionary act that the performative verb stands for.
- When we enunciate a meaningful sentence, we intend to do something through it: make an oath, affirm a statement, make a promise, narrate an event, express a wish, etc. These performative verbs give the sentence, beside its conceptual meaning, a performative meaning that according to the context, makes the sentence a promise, a reply, an act of obedience, a warning, or even an ironic remark. The illocutive act is sometimes explicitly manifested in language; at other times it is gleaned from the tone of voice or from the context. These acts are manifestations of an internal act of the will of the speaker, who normally desires to communicate something to his interlocutor.
- We can distinguish between three different levels or aspects of speech acts: the locutionary, the illocutionary, and the perlocutionary.
- The locutionary act contains three component parts: linguistic entities can be thought of (a) as sounds (or typographical marks), (b) as words belonging to a language, and (c) as having reference to things in the world and a meaning or signification.
- The illocutionary act consists of the force of the utterance, whether it is a bet, promise, statement, conjecture, or something else.
- The perlocutionary acts relates to the effect that is induced in the audience. Persuading, infuriating, calming, or inspiring someone are perlocutionary acts. They can be intended or unintended, but what distinguishes perlocutionary from illocutionary acts is that while illocutionary acts always rely upon the existence of conventions, perlocutionary acts are natural or non-conventional.
9.1General patterns of meaning: univocity, equivocity, analogy.
- Univocation is verbal ambiguity arising from the indefiniteness or multiplicity of meaning in human discourse. We distinguish between univocal speech and equivocal speech.
- There are different types of equivocation: the same word used (1) literally and figuratively, as in metaphors derived from analogies or proportions and from other kinds of similitude, (2) with varying degrees of generality and specificity, requiring attention to the broad and narrow meanings of a word, (3) to signify an attribute and its cause or effect.
- Analogy studies the significance of names predicated of heterogeneous things. The analogical is intermediate between the univocal and the equivocal.
9.2Specialized patterns of meaning: theology and religion.
- The problem of the names of God is discussed in terms of the kind of likeness that can obtain between an infinite being and finite creatures. Aquinas takes the position that God and creatures are neither the same in any respect, nor are they in all respects so diverse as to be utterly incomparable. Though infinite and finite being are incommensurable, yet they can also have some sort of similitude – not an unqualified sameness, but the kind of similarity which can be described as an intrinsically diversified sameness.
- No names can be applied to God and creatures univocally. Nor are names applied to God and creatures in a purely equivocal sense, for it would follow then that “from creatures nothing at all could be known or demonstrated about God. Between these two extremes of the simply univocal and the purely equivocal, there is the middle ground of analogy.
- The distinction between literal and figurative or metaphorical speech is of prime importance in the theologian’s rules for interpreting the word of God. Augustine insists that the language of Holy Writ must be read in many senses. Aquinas distinguishes a basic literal sense from three modes of spiritual meaning.