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\title {Words and Things \\ Lecture 09}

\maketitle

Lecture 09:

Words and Things

[email protected]

\def \ititle {Lecture 09}

\def \isubtitle {Words and Things}

\begin{center}

{\Large

\textbf{\ititle}: \isubtitle

}

\iemail %

\end{center}

\section{The Normativity of Meaning}

‘meaning is normative’

‘Whatever its pedigree, and however popular and suggestive it might seem, a slogan it remains.’

\citep[p.~221]{whiting:2016_what}

Whiting, 2016 p. 221

How to get past sloganeering?

First attempt

For any S, x: if ‘red’ means red, it is correct for S to apply ‘red’ to x if and only if x is red.

‘All parties, even the staunchest critics of Normativism, would agree that [this] is platitudinous’

Whiting, 2016 p. 222

I’ not sure I agree! Look: correctness conditions.

Second attempt:

For any S, x: if ‘red’ means red, S ought pro tanto not to (apply ‘red’ to x) if and only if x is not red.

Of course there can be overriding concerns, e.g. ethical concerns.

[This is Whiting’s view, which he claims to defend. What do you think?]

Third attempt:

For any S, x: if S intends by uttering ‘red’ to mean red, S ought not to (apply ‘red’ to x) if and only if x is not red.

‘instrumental normativity ... is not what the Normativist is after.’

Whiting, 2016 p. 222

I’m not sure why not, and I’m not sure how Whiting knows.

This is what I think is wrong with it.

“The intention to be taken to mean what one wants to be taken to mean is, it seems to me, so clearly the only aim that is common to all verbal behaviour that it is hard for me to see how anyone can deny it.”

This aim “assumes the notion of meaning”, but

“it provides a purpose which any speaker must have in speaking, and thus constitutes a norm against which speakers and others can measure the success of their verbal behavior.”

\citep[p.~11]{Davidson:1994ol}

Davidson 1994, p. 11

[my bit] Why suppose that any norms governing the use of words are essential features of every form of linguistic communication? One reason is this: where communication is difficult or fails altogether, there is a distinction between cases where the problem is due to the utterer’s choice of words and cases where the problem is due to the audience’s failure to understand. There is a distinction, that is, between the utterer who fails to make the meanings of her words clear to her audience (but is perhaps nevertheless understood because her audience can work out what she wants to get across) and the audience who fail to discern what an utterer’s words mean even though that meaning is plain enough. If someone were to tell us out of the blue that she is “taking my boor beetles to the battle bonk”, for example, the likely failure of understanding would probably be her fault, not ours. The existence of this distinction between two types of failure shows that there are correct and incorrect ways of using and understanding words, i.e. norms.

Third attempt:

For any S, x: if S intends by uttering ‘red’ to mean red, S ought not to (apply ‘red’ to x) if and only if x is not red.

‘instrumental normativity ... is not what the Normativist is after.’

Whiting, 2016 p. 222

How to respond to this in the light of Davidson?

instrumental normativity?

Analogy:

Intention 2: To save the zoo visitor from attack

Intention 1: by hitting the escaped gorilla with a tranquiliser dart.

Communication

Intention 1: To communicate that I don’t want coffee

Intention 2: by being understood as saying that my life is not entirely breakfastless.

Hard to believe this could be an intention. Psychology of meaning is barely studies.

‘meaning is normative’

‘Whatever its pedigree, and however popular and suggestive it might seem, a slogan it remains.’

\citep[p.~221]{whiting:2016_what}

Whiting, 2016 p. 221

In what sense, if any, is meaning normative?

So the challenge, which I’ll leave open, is how to make sense of the slogan.

Sense and Descriptions

\section{Sense and Descriptions}

Samantha is Samantha

Samantha is Charly

Samantha Caine

Suburban homemaker and the ideal mom to her 8 year old daughter Caitlin. She lives in a New England small town, teaches in a local school and makes the best Rice Krispie treats in town.

Charly Baltimore

a highly trained secret agent and cold-blooded killer involved in the government's most unscrupulous affairs.

It is perhaps tempting to think of senses as descriptions ... at least, this way you can see how sense fulfils the three functions given on the previous slide

The sense of my utterance of ‘Charly Baltimore’ is this description:
the highly trained secret agent suffering from amnesia in New England.

The sense of my utterance of ‘Samantha Caine’ is this description:
the New England teacher with an 8 year old daughter who makes the best Rice Krispie treats in town.

‘all that anyone has been able to think of is that different [i.e. senses] are a matter of different descriptions being associated with the signs.

Some other views have been tried ... But these ideas have not been found compelling’

Campbell, 2011 p. 340

I wish someone had told me this before. I have the sense that the answer was out there and I could not find it.

‘all that anyone has been able to think of is that different modes of presentation [i.e. senses] are a matter of different descriptions being associated with the signs. Some other views have been tried, such as those that say all uses of co-referential terms in a single discourse must be anaphorically linked. But these ideas have not been found compelling’ \citep[p.~340]{campbell:2011_visual}.

This isn’t an argument ... we can do better

Is this correct?

The sense of my utterance of ‘Charly Baltimore’ is this description:
the highly trained secret agent suffering from amnesia in New England.

The sense of my utterance of ‘Samantha Caine’ is this description:
the New England teacher with an 8 year old daughter who makes the best Rice Krispie treats in town.

Contrast that utterance of ‘Charly is Charly’ with the utterance ‘Charly is Samantha’

ftbe: These may differ in informativeness.

Terminology: call whatever aspect of meaning explains the difference ‘sense’.

If senses are descriptions, can they explain why one utterance is informative and the other not?

Jein: Ja--we can see that the descriptions are different; Nein--what does this have to do with informativeness?

To understand sense, we need to link it to knowledge of reference (as I explained last time) ...

The sense of an utterance of a word (or phrase)
is what you know when you
have knowledge of reference.

NB: sense isn’t knowledge of reference, but the think known.

How are these connected?

Contrast that utterance of ‘Charly is Charly’ with the utterance ‘Charly is Samantha’

ftbe: These may differ in informativeness.

Terminology: call whatever aspect of meaning explains the difference ‘sense’.

So if senses are descriptions and if sense are what you know when you have knowledge of reference, can we explain the difference in informativeness?

Yes, absolutely.

The sense of my utterance of ‘Charly Baltimore’ is this description:
the highly trained secret agent suffering from amnesia in New England.

The sense of my utterance of ‘Samantha Caine’ is this description:
the New England teacher with an 8 year old daughter who makes the best Rice Krispie treats in town.

If we connect sense with knowledge of reference in this way, then we have to ask whether descriptions can fulfil these functions ...

ftbe:

Communicators can know, sometimes,
whether they are understanding.
How?

Utterers make rational, voluntary use of some regularites
while merely conforming to others.
How is this possible?

∴ there is a mental state of the utterer in virtue of which her utterance refers to ‘Earth’.

Call this mental state ‘knowledge of reference’.

The sense of my utterance of ‘Charly Baltimore’ is this description:
the highly trained secret agent suffering from amnesia in New England.

The sense of my utterance of ‘Samantha Caine’ is this description:
the New England teacher with an 8 year old daughter who makes the best Rice Krispie treats in town.

The sense of my utterance of ‘Charly Baltimore’ is this description:
the highly trained secret agent suffering from amnesia in New England.

The sense of my utterance of ‘Samantha Caine’ is this description:
the New England teacher with an 8 year old daughter who makes the best Rice Krispie treats in town.

recall campbell’s picture ...

‘There is a common-sense picture of the relation between knowledge of reference and pattern of use.

... you use the word the way you do because you know what it stands for’

Campbell, 2002 p. 4

The definition: “‘Elmo’ refers to the oldest tree in this garden.” What does this statement do? “By defining what has to be the case for a proposition involving the name ‘Elmo’ to be true, this statement of reference defines the objective at which the introduction rule aims, and allows you to determine what we should take to be the implications of a statement using the name. In that sense, it justifies the use of those introduction and elimination rules above.” (25) Cf. #83 (p. 226) and especially #84 (p. 226)

The sense of my utterance of ‘Charly Baltimore’ is this description:
the highly trained secret agent suffering from amnesia in New England.

The sense of my utterance of ‘Samantha Caine’ is this description:
the New England teacher with an 8 year old daughter who makes the best Rice Krispie treats in town.

Are senses descriptions?

No because of the elephant (perceptual demonstratives ...)

Example (use 1): “A bear is about to attack me”

contrast: ‘A bear is about to attach Steve’

The sense of ‘I’ cannot be the sense of ‘Steve’.

Example (use 2): “A bear is about to attack me”

“When you and I entertain the sense of "A bear is about to attack me," we behave similarly. We both roll up in a ball and try to be as still as possible …

“When you and I both apprehend the thought that I am about to be attacked by a bear, we behave differently. I roll up in a ball, you run to get help.”

Perry, 1977 p. 494

Could the sense ‘I’ be a description?

Are senses descriptions?

I think senses are not descriptions and that we need to go back to what Rusell said about acquaintance ...

Syntax

\section{Syntax}

What features are characteristic of language?

structure and re-usable gestures

Introduce the broad project : a theory of truth conditions.

S’s 13:11 utterance of ‘Earth is being warmed by human activity’ is true exactly if Earth is being warmed by human activity.

S’s 13:11 utterance of ‘Mars is being warmed by human activity’ is true exactly if Mars is being warmed by human activity.

‘A semantic theory for a particular natural language will … articulate an assignment of meanings to sentences …

Let’s just say truth conditions

All sentences! Uncountably many!

It will also display just how the sentences come to have the meanings they do, given their construction out of more basic constituents: it will reveal semantic structure. …

The recurrent contribution that a constituent expression makes to the meanings of several sentences in which it occurs will be revealed in the use of … the principle assigning a semantic property to that expression … in the derivations of meaning assignments for all those sentences”

\citep[p.~130]{Davies:1986qv}

(Davies 1986: 130).

How is constructing a semantic theory possible?

obstacle: there are uncountably many sentences.

\emph{Compositionality} The meaning of a sentence (and of any complex expression) is fully determined by its structure and the meanings of its constituent words.

[Compositionality]
The meaning of a sentence (and of any complex expression) is fully determined by its structure and the meanings of its constituent words.

What structure? Syntactic structure!

Semantics requires syntax.

Contrast to be explained:

‘Music makes swans purple above’ is an English sentence.

‘Water swans in swim’ is not an English sentence.

What does a syntact theory reveal?

I’m not going to be offering you the theory, I’m showing you what the theory entails

How can we discover the syntactic structure of a sentence you utter?

May be different between speakers.

Consider a phrase like 'the red ball'.

What is the syntactic structure of this noun phrase?

In principle there are two possibilities.

the red ball

Lidz et al (2003)

How can we decide between these?

Is the syntactic structure of ‘the red ball’ (a) flat or (b) hierachical?

\begin{center}

\includegraphics[scale=0.25]{../www.slides/src/raw/img/lidz_2003_fig0.neg.png}

\end{center}

\begin{center} from \citealp{lidz:2003_what} \end{center}

\begin{enumerate}

\item ‘red ball’ is a constituent on (b) but not on (a)
\item anaphoric pronouns can only refer to constituents
\item In the sentence ‘I’ll play with this red ball and you can play with that one.’, the word ‘one’ is an anaphoric prononun that refers to ‘red ball’ (not just ball). \citep{lidz:2003_what,lidz:2004_reaffirming}.

\end{enumerate}

How can we discover the syntactic structure of a sentence you utter?

What I've just shown you is, in effect, how we can decide whihc way an adult human understands a phrase like 'the red ball'.

We can discover this by finding out how they understand a sentence like 'I’ll play with this red ball and you can play with that one.'.

Two Questions

What are the syntactic structures of those sentences?

What is the relation between these structures and those who utter them?

Our focus has been the first. The second question is where issues about ‘language faculty’ etc come up. This is somewhat analogous to our question about knowledge of reference. Except that few seriously doubt that the relation is psychological.

Recap:

How is constructing a semantic theory possible?

obstacle: there are uncountably many sentences.

[Compositionality]
The meaning of a sentence (and of any complex expression) is fully determined by its structure and the meanings of its constituent words.

So this was all about the structure (syntax) we need for a compositional theory of truth conditions ...

Summary

- The aim of semantics is to explain productivity and systematicity of language.

- We need semantics (not just syntax and pragmatics) in explaining how communication by language succeeds because languages are productive and systematic.

- Semantic theories attempt to explain systematicity and productivity by identifying compositional structure in languages.

- Success depends on discovering syntactic structures.

- Identifying compositional structure requires assigning semantic values to fragments of sentences; part of this is provided by the theory of reference.

conclusion

In conclusion, ...

Why?

Some of the things you utter

are true (or false)

in virtue of how things are with Ayesha.

If Ayehsa had washed herself, your utterance of ‘Ayesha smells’ would have been false. No other cat has this counterfactual power to change the truth of your utterance in this way.

Keyboard Shortcuts?

Lecture 09:

Words and Things

[email protected]

Sense and Descriptions

Syntax

Keyboard Shortcuts`?`