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The Causal-Historical Theory The Causal-Historical Theory

The Causal-Historical Theory - PowerPoint Presentation

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The Causal-Historical Theory - PPT Presentation

PHIL 2610 Philosophy of Language 1 st Term 2016 Classical Descriptivism Representation Words thoughts have meanings They are about things Why do words for example represent the things that they do instead of other things or nothing at all ID: 535683

twin feynman descriptivism earth feynman twin earth descriptivism historical classical kripke causal true theory description water

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Slide1

The Causal-Historical Theory

PHIL 2610

Philosophy of Language

1

st

Term 2016Slide2

Classical DescriptivismSlide3

Representation

Words/ thoughts have meanings.

They are

about

things. Why do words, for example, represent the things that they do, instead of other things or nothing at all?Slide4

Classical Descriptivism

For every name N, there is a description D that we associate with N such that:

If x satisfies

D

, then N refers to x.

If N refers to x, then x satisfies the description.Slide5

Classical Descriptivism

We may say, following Russell: the name “Moses” can be defined by means of various descriptions.

For example, as “the man who led the Israelites through the wilderness”, “the man who lived at that time and place and was then called ‘Moses’”, “the man who as a child was taken out of the Nile by Pharaoh's daughter” and so on. Slide6

Classical Descriptivism

Moses:

Lead the Israelites out of Egypt

Parted Red Sea

Given 10 commandments by GodSlide7

Classical Descriptivism

This guy

Lead the Israelites out of Egypt

Parted Red Sea

Given 10 commandments by GodSlide8

Classical Descriptivism

Moses

refersSlide9

Classical Descriptivism

This guy

Lead the Israelites out of Egypt

Parted Red Sea

Given 10 commandments by GodSlide10

Classical Descriptivism

Moses

refersSlide11

Kripke against DescriptivismSlide12

Saul Kripke

, 1940-

Published first completeness proof for modal logic at 18.

Highly influential in philosophy of language and mind.

Developed the causal-historical theory of meaningSlide13

Saul Kripke

, 1940-

Kripke’s

account is developed in his

Naming

and Necessity

.

The

background is that he’s arguing against views on which the meanings of names

are

descriptions or definitions.Slide14

Against Descriptivism

Kripke argues that for any name N, there is no description D that we associate with N such that:

If x satisfies the description, N refers to x.

If N refers to x, then x must satisfy the description.Slide15

Ignorance & Error

He argues against each claim as follows:

Against #1: Arguments from ignorance. Sometimes lots of things satisfy the descriptions we associate with N, but only one is N.

Against #2: Arguments from Error. Sometimes nothing satisfies the descriptions we associate with N (or some non-x does), but N still = x. Slide16

Ignorance: Feynman

What people know:

He’s a physicist

He’s famous

He’s dead

He worked on quantum mechanicsSlide17

Ignorance: Feynman

But Bohr:

He’s a physicist

He’s famous

He’s dead

He worked on quantum mechanicsSlide18

Ignorance: Feynman

it’s not true that ‘Feynman’ means Bohr and it’s not true that it means nothing. How is that possible for the descriptivist? Slide19

Error: Einstein

Who

is Albert Einstein? What people believe:

Einstein discovered the speed of light.Slide20

Error: EinsteinSlide21

Causation & RepresentationSlide22

The Mirror UniverseSlide23

Secondary QualitiesSlide24

Possibility of Massive ErrorSlide25

Coordination across Theories

A related upshot is that two people with radically different theories can nevertheless be talking about the same thing, and hence be meaningfully disagreeing with one another.Slide26

The Causal-Historical A

ccountSlide27

Kripke’s Picture

“Someone, let’s say, a baby, is born; his parents call him by a certain name. They talk about him to their friends, other people meet him.

Through various sorts of talk the name is spread from link to link as if by a chain…”Slide28

Kripke’s Picture

“A speaker who is on the far end of this chain, who has heard about, say Richard Feynman, in the market place or elsewhere, may be referring to Richard Feynman even though he can’t remember from whom he first heard of Feynman or from whom he ever heard of Feynman.”Slide29

Kripke’s Picture

“A rough statement of a theory might be the following: An initial ‘baptism’ takes place. Here the object may be named by

ostension

, or the reference of the name may be fixed by a description…”Slide30

Kripke’s Picture

“When the name is ‘passed from link to link’, the receiver of the name must, I think, intend when he learns it to use it with the same reference as the man from whom he heard it.”Slide31

The Causal-Historical Theory

Let’s call that baby ‘Feynman’

Feynman

Feynman

Feynman

FeynmanSlide32

The Causal-Historical Theory

Let’s call that baby ‘Feynman’

Feynman

Feynman

Feynman

Feynman

Historical Chain of TransmissionSlide33

The Causal-Historical Theory

Denotation

Feynman

Feynman

Feynman

FeynmanSlide34

No Connotations

The causal-historical theory, unlike the other theories, does not use mental facts (idea, experience,

criterion

)

to determine a referent.

Denotations are determined by

non-mental

facts.*

*Plus one intention for each link in the chain.Slide35

Natural Kind TermsSlide36

Natural Kinds

Kripke

and another philosopher Hilary Putnam wanted to generalize what was true of names to “natural kind terms” (a phrase introduced by

Quine

). Slide37
Slide38

The Causal-Historical Theory

Let’s call that thing a “tiger.”

TIGER

TIGER

TIGER

TIGERSlide39

Ignorance: Water

In Hilary Putnam’s classic “The Meaning of ‘Meaning’” he argues that “meaning just

ain’t

in the head.”

In particular, he presents his famous Twin Earth thought experiment, which is intended to show that what the word ‘water’ is true of is not determined by what we know or believe about water.Slide40

Twin Earth

Twin Earth is a planet on the other side of the galaxy. In most ways, it is just like Earth, down to the smallest detail.

You have a twin on Twin Earth who’s just like you, I have a twin who’s just like me, they’re sitting in a twin classroom, and my twin is giving a lecture just like this one to your twin.

And so on and so forth.Slide41

Earth

Twin EarthSlide42

Twin Earth

There is however

one

difference between Earth and Twin Earth. On Earth, all the watery stuff is H

2

O. On Twin Earth, the watery stuff is composed of a complicated chemical compound we can abbreviate XYZ.

H

2

O and XYZ look and behave exactly the same. They taste the same, they boil at the same temperatures at the same distance above sea level, their conductance is the same, etc.Slide43

Twin Earth

Consider two twins, Arnold on Earth and Twin Arnold on Twin Earth.

Neither knows any chemistry. What they know/ believe about the stuff they call ‘water’ is the same. Q: Would it be true for Arnold to call the stuff on Twin Earth ‘water’?Slide44

Twin Earth

The intuition is supposed to be that, no, Arnold’s word ‘water’ is true of all an only H

2

O, whereas Twin Arnold’s word ‘water’ is true of all and only XYZSlide45

The Moral

The conclusion Kripke and Putnam draw from such cases is that we fix the referent of ‘water’ by a description like “the stuff

around here

in lakes and rivers and streams that falls from the sky and quenches thirst.”

But this description only fixes the referent. If you replaced all the H

2

O on Earth with XYZ, there wouldn’t be any more water here.Slide46

The Moral

Kripke and Putnam’s idea is that we can latch on to a thing by its contingent (not essential) features, give it a name, and subsequently talk about it.

It’s true nature is something we discover, not something we start with.Slide47

The Paradox of InquirySlide48

Meno’s Paradox (Slightly Revised)

PREMISE 1: If you have a criterion for using a word, then you obviously don’t need to discover it (you already have it).Slide49

Meno’s Paradox (Slightly Revised)

PREMISE 2: If you don’t have a criterion for using a word (and nobody else does), then you cannot discover it.

JUSTIFICATION: Suppose nobody else knows that the ball going through the hoop counts as a basket. How could they discover this? Slide50

Meno’s Paradox (Slightly Revised)

CONCLUSION: Philosophical inquiry is unnecessary. Either we already know, a criterion for what ‘knowledge’ applies to or we don’t. Either way, inquiry is either unnecessary or impossible.Slide51

Meno’s Paradox (Slightly Revised)

SOCRATES’ / PLATO’S SOLUTION: We always already know the criteria, but this is knowledge from a previous life that we might not now remember. Philosophy is remembering what we already know.Slide52

Kripke vs. the Paradox

You don’t need a criterion for talking about (for example) tigers.

Tigers are an objective, mind-independent class that don’t need to be grouped together by us.

We can identify them by their contingent features and discover their

essences subsequently.