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
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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
). Slide37Slide38
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.