Words and Things

The Question

Introduces the question around which this module is organised

Comparison: Maps

The question about utterances can be compared to a question about maps.

Sentences vs Utterances

Sentences are timeless and cannot (strictly speaking) be true or false outright; utterances are events in the lives of people and can be true or false.

The Question Simplified

Introduces a simpler, more limited but more tractable question: Take two utterances where the first utterance depends for it’s truth on how things are with Earth whereas the second depends for its truth on how things are with Mars. Why do the two utterances differ in this way?

Three Theories of Reference

A quick, superficial look at three approaches to identifying reference: pragmatist, causal-historical (Kripke’s idea) and descriptions (as caricatured).

Acquaintance (Russell’s Principle)

Acquaintance is a relation between a mind and a thing. According to Bertrand Russell, acquaintance is ‘essentially simpler than any knowledge of truths’ and the basis of reference.

Descriptions

If reference requires acquaintance, how is it that we can successfully communicate about things we are not acquainted with (like Julius Caesar)?

Rigid Designators

A rigid designator is an expression that refers to the same individual in every context of evaluation (see Kripke 1980: 48).

Knowledge by Description

‘We have descriptive knowledge of an object when we know that it is the object having some property or properties with which we are acquainted; that is to say, when we know that the property or properties in question belong to one object and no more, we are said to have knowledge of that one object by description, whether or not we are acquainted with the object’ (Russell, 1910 p. 220).

Sense and Reference (First Pass)

‘Frege’s idea was that to understand an expression, one must not merely think of the reference that it is the reference, but that one must, in so thinking, think of the reference in a particular way. The way in which one must think of the reference of an expression in order to understand it is that expression’s sense’ (Evans 1981 [1985]: 294).

Russell’s Argument on Acquaintance

‘I hold that acquaintance is wholly a relation, not demanding any such constituent of the mind as is supposed by advocates of ‘ideas’’ (Russell, 1920 p. 212).

The Standard Route

One standard line of argument against Russell’s idea that reference requires acquaintance with the referent starts from the observation that we can use proper names for things we are not acquainted with (such as Julius Caesar). This motivates Russell to suggest that proper names are usually really descriptions, against which a variety of objections and replies can then be made.

Knowledge of Reference (Part 1)

‘[Y]ou use the word the way you do because you know what it stands for’ (Campbell, 2002 p. 4).

Knowledge of Reference (Part 2)

‘[Y]ou use the word the way you do because you know what it stands for’ (Campbell, 2002 p. 4).

Acquaintance and Knowledge of Reference

So far we have separately discussed the idea that acquaintance may play a role in characterising reference, and the idea that there is knowledge of reference. How are these two ideas related?

Sense and Knowledge of Reference

How are Frege’s arguments about sense connected with our quest to understand why reference is postulated and what it is? Knowledge of reference provides the connection. The sense of an utterance of a word (or phrase) is what you know when you have knowledge of reference.

Descriptions and Determiners

“By a ‘description’ I mean any phrase of the form ‘a so-and-so’ or ‘the so-and-so’. ... a phrase of the form ‘the so-and-so’ (in the singular) I shall call a ‘definite’ description. Thus ‘the man with the iron mask’ is a definite description” (Russell 1910 [1963]: 205).

Referential vs Attributive uses

According to Donnellan, there are both referential and attributive uses of definite descriptions.

Pragmatic Aspects

A variety of phenomena indicate that what utterances communicate is not narrowly explained by sentence plus context.

Pragmatics vs Donnellan

Can Donnellan’s objection to Russell on descriptions be rejected on the grounds that his distinction between attributive and referential uses concerns the Proposition Meant (PM) whereas Russell’s theory of descriptions is about the Proposition Expressed (PE)?

The Meaning of a Sentence, the Proposition Expressed and the Proposition Meant

Neale (1990) proposes a distinction between the Meaning of a Sentence (MS), the Proposition Expressed (PE) and the Proposition Meant (PM). This proposal raises many questions including, What are meanings? And why suppose that sentences have meanings?

Sanford Questions

[The answers you give to these questions will be relevant later]

Linking Meaning and Reference: Compositionality

How are reference and meaning related?

Knowledge of Reference and Pragmatics

In what sense if any could knowlege of reference transform communication with words? Maybe reflection on pragmatic aspects of communication with words will point to a critical role for knowledge of reference.

Lexical Innovation

Suppose there are two people and a word and that when communicating by language the second person once uses the word with the same meaning the first person once used it with, and that the sameness of meaning is non-accidental. Is the existence of such a pair of people and a word necessary for there to be linguistic communication?

Sense and Descriptions

What are senses? Could they be decsriptions?

Trading on Identity

‘Sense is that, sameness of which makes trading on identity legitimate, difference in which means that trading on identity is not legitimate’ (Campbell, 1997 p. 59).

Sense and Acquaintance

If not all sense are decsriptions, can we understand senses as somehow linked with acquaintance?

The Picture

How do words and thoughts connect to the things we talk and think about?

Massive Reduplication

For all we know, there may be a distant region of our universe with duplicates of everything around here (see Strawson 1959, Ch 1 esp. pp. 20-22).

The Normativity of Meaning

What sense, if any, can be made of the phrase, ‘meaning is normative’?

Sense and Descriptions

What are senses? Could they be decsriptions?

Syntax

What is known about the structures of natural languages?

Trading on Identity

‘Sense is that, sameness of which makes trading on identity legitimate, difference in which means that trading on identity is not legitimate’ (Campbell, 1997 p. 59).

Sense and Acquaintance

If not all sense are decsriptions, can we understand senses as somehow linked with acquaintance?

The Picture

How do words and thoughts connect to the things we talk and think about?

Massive Reduplication

For all we know, there may be a distant region of our universe with duplicates of everything around here (see Strawson 1959, Ch 1 esp. pp. 20-22).