Frege on the psychological significance of definitions

Conclusion In contemporary work, the distinction between the proposition expressed by a sentence and its psychological significance is usually motivated by a familiar kind of counterfactual argument; and the discussion of these issues usually centers around the role of external factors in determining the meaning of our words. My primary goal in this paper has been to show that a similar, though not identical, distinction between two aspects of meaning can be developed entirely on the basis of considerations internal to language users — their cognitive limitations. To make this point, I have focused on symbols introduced through stipulative definitions. In a language containing such symbols, certain expressions and their definitional reductions will seem to differ in psychological significance for creatures with limited intellects, and so in any aspect of meaning that is supposed to correlate with psychological significance; but it seems also that there is some important aspect of meaning that they share.I have argued that a distinction in meaning like this — between sense and psychological significance — should be drawn even in the kind of languages of most concern to Frege, and that his failure to do so led to tensions in his thought. Of course, this observation only touches on the many issues involved in interpreting Frege's theory of definition more generally. I have not tried to describe here, for example, the ways in which the weak interpretation of fruitfulness might interact with the more robust interpretation mentioned earlier; I have only mentioned Frege's view on explicative definitions and the paradox of analysis, and failed even to mention either his treatment of contextual definition, or his peculiar objections to conditional definitions. I do want to emphasize, however, that the distinction drawn here is not simply a matter of Frege scholarship, but that it has some contemporary relevance as well. As we have seen, Frege's semantic goals often coincide with our own; and a number of contemporary writers are explicitly concerned, like Frege, to construct a semantic theory that is able to account for differences in meaning among logically equivalent expressions. Any such theorist should recognize a distinction like that drawn here between sense and psychological significance, and should avoid subjecting an account of one notion to constraints appropriate only for the other.     

The Slingshot Argument: An Improved Version

In the paper I exploit Frege's notions of sense and synonymity in order to amend the slingshot argument. The main emendation is to replace the assumption about logical equivalence by an assumption about synonymity. While the replaced assumption begs the question about the reference of sentences, the replacing assumption has much more theoretical support from Frege's general conception of sense and reference and the relation between them. In the paper I use a specific notion of synonymity which I believe is faithful to Frege's discussion of the subject. I notice that if a stronger (and to my mind implausible) notion of synonymity is used, my version of the argument fails. The failure is explained by showing that this stronger notion of synonymity enables the assignment of facts, and not truth values, as the references of sentences.     

On the "Gray's Elegy" Argument and its Bearing on Frege's Theory of Sense

In his recent book, The Metaphysicians of Meaning (2000), Gideon Makin argues that in the so-called "Gray's Elegy " argument (the GEA) in "On Denoting", Russell provides decisive arguments against not only his own theory of denoting concepts but also Frege's theory of sense. I argue that by failing to recognize fundamental differences between the two theories, Makin fails to recognize that the GEA has less force against Frege's theory than against Russell's own earlier theory. While I agree with many aspects of Makin's interpretation of the GEA, I differ with him regarding some significant details and present an interpretation according to which the GEA emerges as simpler, stronger, and more integrated.     

On the Conceptual Foundations of Anti-Realism

The central premise of Michael Dummett's global argument for anti-realism is the thesis that a speaker's grasp of the meaning of a declarative, indexical-free sentence must be manifested in her uses of that sentence. This enigmatic thesis has been the subject of a great deal of discussion, and something of a consensus has emerged about its content and justification. The received view is that the manifestation thesis expresses a behaviorist and reductive theory of meaning, essentially in agreement with Quine's view of language, and motivated by worries about the epistemology of communication. In the present paper I begin by arguing that this standard interpretation of the manifestation thesis is neither particularly faithful to Dummett's writings nor philosophically compelling. I then continue by reconstructing, from Dummett's texts, an account of the manifestation thesis, and of its justification, that differ sharply from the received view. On my reading, the thesis is motivated not epistemologically, but conceptually. I argue that connections among our conceptions of meaning, assertion, and justification lead to a conclusion about the metaphysics of meaning: we cannot form a clearly coherent conception of how two speakers can attach different meanings to a sentence without at the same time differing in what they count as justifying assertions made with that sentence. I conclude with some suggestions about how Dummett's argument for global anti-realism should be understood, given my account of the manifestation thesis. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Reply to Heck on Meaning and Truth-Conditions

Richard Heck has contested my argument that the equation of the meaning of a sentence with its truth-condition implies deflationism, on the ground that the argument does not go through if truth-conditions are understood, in Davidson's style, to be stated by T-sentences. My reply is that Davidsonian theories of meaning do not equate the meaning of a sentence with its truth-condition, and thus that Heck's point does not actually obstruct my argument.     

Truth,Meaning, and Circularity

It is often argued that the combination of deflationism about truth and the truth-conditional theory of meaning is impossible for reasons of circularity. I distinguish, and reject, two strains of circularity argument. Arguments of the first strain hold that the combination has a circular account of the order in which one comes to know the meaning of a sentence and comes to know its truth condition. I show that these arguments fail to identify any circularity. Arguments of the second strain hold that the combination has a circular explanation of the ideas or concepts of meaning and truth. I show that these arguments identify a genuine, but acceptable, circularity.     

Freges Erläuterung des Urteils

According to Frege the notion of judgement cannot be defined, but must be explicated by referring to natural language. Frege uses a subjective and an objective notion of judgement: on the one hand a judgement is an inner mental process, on the other hand judging is explained as advancing from the thought to the truth-value. The subjective notion of judgement logically depends on the objective conception of a judgement, but nevertheless remains indispensable. To clarify the objective notion of judgement, the relation of thought and truth must be explicated by using Frege's theory of sense and reference. Only an intersubjective and action-guiding knowledge of the way in which the truth-value of a sentence is determined can make it possible to advance from the thought and the understanding of a sentence to the acknowledgement of its truth. Since by this advance a sentence receives a cognitive value, Frege's theory of sense and reference makes a contribution not only to semantics but also to epistemology.     

Extensions As Representative Objects In Frege's Logic

Matthias Schirn has argued on a number of occasions against the interpretation of Frege's ``objects of a quite special kind' (i.e., the objects referred to by names like `the concept F') as extensions of concepts. According to Schirn, not only are these objects not extensions, but also the idea that `the concept F' refers to objects leads to some conclusions that are counter-intuitive and incompatible with Frege's thought. In this paper, I challenge Schirn's conclusion: I want to try and argue that the assumption that `the concept F' refers to the extension of F is entirely consistent with Frege's broader views on logic and language. I shall examine each of Schirn's main arguments and show that they do not support his claim.     

Understanding and Semantic Strucure: Reply to Timothy Williamson

In his essay '"Conceptual Truth"', Timothy Williamson (2006) argues that there are no truths or entailments that are constitutive of understanding the sentences involved. In this reply I provide several examples of entailment patterns that are intuitively constitutive of understanding in just the way that Williamson rejects, and I argue that Williamson's argument does nothing to show otherwise. Williamson bolsters his conclusion by appeal to a certain theory about the nature of understanding. I argue that his theory fails to consider the role that the structure of a sentence plays in determining its meaning. The cases I present suggest that this role imposes greater cognitive requirements on understanding than Williamson can acknowledge.     

Functional Concepts,Referentially Opaque Contexts,Causal Relations,and the Definition of Theoretical Terms

In his recent article, ``Self-Consciousness', George Bealer has set outa novel and interesting argument against functionalism in the philosophyof mind. I shall attempt to show, however, that Bealer's argument cannotbe sustained.In arguing for this conclusion, I shall be defending three main theses.The first is connected with the problem of defining theoreticalpredicates that occur in theories where the following two features arepresent: first, the theoretical predicate in question occurswithin both extensional and non-extensional contexts; secondly, thetheory in question asserts that the relevant theoretical states enterinto causal relations. What I shall argue is that a Ramsey-styleapproach to the definition of such theoretical terms requires twodistinct quantifiers: one which ranges over concepts, and theother which ranges over properties in the world.My second thesis is a corollary: since the theories on whichBealer is focusing have both of the features just mentioned, and sincethe method that he employs to define theoretical terms in his argumentagainst functionalism does not involve both quantifiers that range overproperties and quantifiers that range over concepts, that method isunsound.My final thesis is that when a sound method is used, Bealer's argumentagainst functionalism no longer goes through.The structure of my discussion is as follows. I begin by setting out twoarguments – the one, a condensed version of Bealer's argument, andthe other, an argument that parallels Bealer's argument very closely.The parallel argument leads to a conclusion, however, that, rather thanbeing merely somewhat surprising, seems very implausible indeed. Forwhat the second argument establishes, if sound, is that there can betheoretical terms that apply to objects by virtue of their first-orderphysical properties, but whose meaning cannot be defined via aRamsey-style approach.Having set out the two parallel arguments, I then go on to focus uponthe second, to determine what is wrong with it. My diagnosis will bethat the problem with the argument arises from the fact that it involvesdefining a theoretical term that occurs both inside and outside ofopaque contexts, for the method employed fails to take into account thefact that the types of entities that are involved in the relevanttruthmakers are different when a sentence occurs within an extensionalcontext from those involved when a sentence occurs within anon-extensional context.I then go on to discuss how one should define a theoretical term thatoccurs within such theories, and I argue that in such a case one needstwo quantifiers, ranging over different types of entities – on theone hand, over properties and relations, and the other, over concepts. Ithen show that, when such an approach is followed, the argument inquestion collapses.I then turn to Bealer's argument against functionalism, and I show,first, that precisely the same method of defining theoretical terms canbe applied there, and, secondly, that, when this is done, it turns outthat that argument is also unsound.Next, I consider two responses that Bealer might make to my argument,and I argue that those responses would not succeed.Finally, I conclude by asking exactly where the problem lies in the caseof Bealer's argument. My answer will be that it is not simply the factthat one is dealing with a theoretical term that occurs in bothextensional and non-extensional contexts. It is rather the combinationof that feature together with the fact that the theory in questionasserts that the relevant type of theoretical state enters into causalrelations. For the first of these features means that the Ramseysentence for the theory must involve quantification over concepts, whilethe presence of the second feature means that the Ramsey sentence mustinvolve quantification over properties in the world, and so no attemptto offer a Ramsey-style account of the meaning of the relevanttheoretical term can succeed unless one employs both quantification overconcepts and quantification over properties. Bealer, however, in hisargument against functionalism, uses a method of defining theoreticalterms that does not involve both types of quantification, and it isprecisely because of this that his argument does not in the end succeed.     

The Knowledge Argument, Abilities, And Metalinguistic Beliefs

In this paper I discuss a variant of the knowledge argument which is based upon Frank Jackson's Mary thought experiment. Using this argument, Jackson tries to support the thesis that a purely physical – or, put generally: an objectively scientific – perspective upon the world excludes the important domain of `phenomenal' facts, which are only accessible introspectively. Martine Nida-Rümelinhas formulated the epistemological challenge behind the case of Mary especially clearly. I take her formulation of the problem as a starting-point and present a solution which is based solely on the concepts of capability and of metalinguistic beliefs. References to epiphenomenal facts, phenomenal knowledge etc. will be avoided completely. I specify my proposal against the backdrop of Burge's critical reflections about metalinguistic reinterpretation of expressions of belief and the externalist thesis held by Burge, Putnam and others that meanings and mental states are dependent upon the environment. My solution is then compared with Lewis' and Nemirow's ability objection. Finally I argue that the much discussed ``knowing what it is like' has in its ordinary meaning nothing much to do with `phenomenal knowledge' or knowledge of `epiphenomenal' facts.     

RELATIVISM AND ANTI-REALISM

I characterise a relativist account of truth as one according to which the truth value of a sentence can vary without its meaning changing. Relativism is to be contrasted with absolutism, which states that the truth values of sentences cannot change, so long as their meanings remain constant. I argue that absolutism follows from the realist account of meaning and truth conditions. According to realism, the meaning of a sentence consists in objective truth conditions and sentences are true if and only if certain objective conditions obtain. Relativism is a consequence of anti-realism. Anti-realists believe that the meanings of sentences consist in recognisable conditions and that sentences are true if and only if certain recognisable conditions obtain. I contrast the sorts of relativism which results from partial, empiricism-based anti-realisms, and global anti-realism, which is linked to a coherence theory of knowledge. I offer a few remarks on how global anti-realists can restrict the scope of their relativism.     

Verb processing during sentence comprehension: Contextual impenetrability

This paper examines verb processing during sentence comprehension. We describe two experiments that assess the interaction between verb complexity and the structural information contained in a sentence. Verb complexity is defined in terms of a verb's possible argument structure arrangements—linguistic information arrayed against a verb's entry in the mental lexicon. Normal subjects had to perform a secondary task presented in the immediate vicinity of the verb while listening to a sentence for meaning. Reaction times to this secondary task show that all of a verb's possible argument structures are momentarily and exhaustively activated in the vicinity of the verb, even in sentences that are structurally biased toward one particular argument structure. We thus argue that verb processing in sentences involves a contextually impenetrable subcomponent of the language comprehension system.Program in Linguistics and Cognitive Science, Department of Psychology, Brandeis University.     

Perceptual representation as a mechanism of lexical ambiguity resolution: An investigation of span and processing time

In 2 experiments, the authors investigated the ability of high- and low-span comprehenders to construe subtle shades of meaning through perceptual representation. High- and low-span comprehenders responded to pictures that either matched or mismatched a target object's shape as implied by the preceding sentence context. At 750 ms after hearing the sentence describing the target object, both high- and low-span comprehenders had activated a contextually appropriate perceptual representation of the target object. However, only high-span comprehenders had perceptually represented the contextually appropriate meaning immediately upon hearing the sentence, whereas low-span comprehenders required more processing time before the perceptual representation was activated. The results are interpreted in a framework of co-occurring lexical representations and perceptual-motor representations.     

论语句的涵义与指称——对弗雷格的涵义-指称理论的一些修正(英文)

弗雷格把语句的涵义看作思想,把语句的指称看作真值。本文接受弗雷格关于语句的涵义-指称的意义结构,但把语句的涵义和指称分别改为语法意义和事态。语句的真或假是语句和它所指称的事态之间的一种关系,类似于名称同它的指称对象之间的实-空关系。弗雷格关于思想的客观性转换为语法意义的客观性,体现为语言共同体成员的主体间性。本文区分了指称对象和指称意向,把指称意向定义为涵义和语境的结合,相当于弗雷格所说的判断。本文还对语句的语法意义和认识论意义作了区分。     

FREGE'S CONCEPT PARADOX AND THE MIRRORING PRINCIPLE

Frege held that singular terms can refer only to objects, not to concepts. I argue that the counter-intuitive consequences of this claim ('the concept paradox') arise from Frege's mirroring principle that an incomplete expression can only express an incomplete sense and stand for an incomplete reference. This is not, as is sometimes thought, merely because predicates and singular terms cannot be intersubstituted salva veritate ( congruitate ). The concept paradox, properly understood, poses therefore a different, harder, challenge. An investigation of the foundations of the mirroring principle also sheds light on the role which language plays in Frege's epistemology of logic.     

Metaphysics and the Future-Like-Ours Argument Against Abortion

Don Marquis’s “future-like-ours” argument against the moral permissibility of abortion is widely considered the strongest anti-abortion argument in the philosophical literature. In this paper, I address the issue of whether the argument relies upon controversial metaphysical premises. It is widely thought that future-like-ours argument indeed relies upon controversial metaphysics, in that it must reject the psychological theory of personal identity. I argue that that thought is mistaken—the future-like-ours argument does not depend upon the rejection of such a theory. I suggest, however, that given a widely-accepted view about contraception and abstinence, the argument is committed to contentious metaphysics after all, as it relies upon a highly controversial assumption about mereology. This commitment is not only relevant for those who are inclined to endorse the argument but reject the mereological view in question, but in addition entails dialectical and epistemological liabilities for the argument, which on some views will be fatal to the argument’s overall success.     

Two contextualist fallacies

I examine the radical contextualists’ two main arguments for the semantic underdeterminacy thesis, according to which all, or almost all, English sentences lack context-independent truth conditions. I show that both arguments are fallacious. The first argument, which I call the fallacy of the many understandings, mistakenly infers that a sentence S is semantically incomplete from the fact that S can be used to mean different things in different contexts. The second argument, which I call the open texture fallacy, wrongly concludes that a sentence S lacks context-independent truth conditions from the fact that there are circumstances in which the truth value of S would be indeterminate. I do however defend the claim that a certain class of sentences not containing any indexicals do lack context-independent truth conditions, and put forward an argument to that effect. But this argument, as I show, does not generalize to all sentences, and thus fails to support the semantic underdeterminacy thesis.     

J. L. Austin and Literal Meaning

Alice Crary has recently developed a radical reading of J. L. Austin's philosophy of language. The central contention of Crary's reading is that Austin gives convincing reasons to reject the idea that sentences have context‐invariant literal meaning. While I am in sympathy with Crary about the continuing importance of Austin's work, and I think Crary's reading is deep and interesting, I do not think literal sentence meaning is one of Austin's targets, and the arguments that Crary attributes to Austin or finds Austinian in spirit do not provide convincing reasons to reject literal sentence meaning. In this paper, I challenge Crary's reading of Austin and defend the idea of literal sentence meaning.