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Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations
The Graduate School
2003
Conceptual Role Semantics, Instability,
and Individualism: Towards a Neo-Fregean
Theory of Content
Adam Sipos
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THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY
COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES
CONCEPTUAL ROLE SEMANTICS, INSTABILITY, AND INDIVIDUALISM:
TOWARDS A NEO-FREGEAN THEORY OF CONTENT
By
ADAM SIPOS
A Dissertation submitted to the
Department of Philosophy
in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
Degree Awarded:
Summer Semester, 2003
The members of the Committee approve the
dissertation of Adam Sipos defended on 1 July 2003.
______________________________
Piers Rawling
Professor Directing Dissertation
______________________________
Philip Bowers
Outside Committee Member
______________________________
Russell Dancy
Committee Member
The Office of Graduate Studies has verified and approved the above named committee members.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Abstract
................................................................................................................................
1. INTRODUCTION: FREGE’S SINN
vi
...............................................................................
1
Knowledge, Truth, and Meaning ..............................................................................
Fregean Sinn: The Classical Conception ..................................................................
Sinning against Bedeutung ...........................................................................
Semantic Value ............................................................................................
Sense ..........................................................................................................
Making “Sense” of the Puzzles ..................................................................
Meaning, Mind, and Reality ...................................................................................
Meaning and Reality: Objectivity ..............................................................
Meaning and Mind: the Problem of Content .............................................
Individualism and the Mental ....................................................................
Conceptual Role Semantics .......................................................................
Conceptual Role and Fregean Sinn ............................................................
1
5
6
8
12
16
18
18
22
25
29
37
2. SEMANTIC HOLISM AND THE ARGUMENT FROM ANATOMICITY
................
47
Semantic Holism ....................................................................................................
Properties: Atomic, Anatomic, and Holistic ..............................................
Two Varieties of Semantic Holism ............................................................
Translational Holism ..................................................................................
Semantic and Translational Holism ...........................................................
Grades of Anatomicity: Strong and Weak .................................................
From Anatomism to Holism ...................................................................................
The Argument from Anatomicity ..............................................................
Why Anatomicity? .................................................................................................
Why Not A/S? ........................................................................................................
Quine’s Challenge ......................................................................................
Confinement and Failure ............................................................................
The Mirror and Canonical Notations .........................................................
Canonical Notations: Extensional or Intensional? .....................................
Intensionality and Projection .....................................................................
How Damaging is Quine’s Attack? ...........................................................
47
47
50
51
51
52
53
53
58
64
65
69
70
73
73
76
iii
Quine’s Argument from Verificationism ...................................................
The Argument from Verificationism and Analyticity ...............................
3. INSTABILITY AND THE CRACK
.............................................................................
79
88
90
Two Challenges for Holistic CRS .......................................................................... 90
The Problem of Instability ...................................................................................... 91
Robust Content Identity ............................................................................. 91
Intertranslatability ...................................................................................... 91
Communication and Disagreement ................................................................. 91
Change of Mind
........................................................................................ 93
Language Acquisition ................................................................................ 94
Psychological Explanation ......................................................................... 95
CRS, Holism, and Instability ..................................................................... 97
The Crack ............................................................................................................... 97
Why Compositionality? ............................................................................. 97
The Master Argument .............................................................................. 101
Are Compositionality and Holism Really Incompatible? ........................ 103
Why is Rejecting CRS the Most Plausible Option? ................................. 111
4. STABILIZING HOLISTIC CRS: NARROW CONTENT, CONTENT SIMILARITY,
SUPERVENIENCE, AND MULTIPLE MEANINGS ................................................
112
Managing Instability .............................................................................................
Two-Factor Theories ................................................................................
Content Similarity ....................................................................................
Reduction and Supervenience ..................................................................
Multiplying Meanings ..............................................................................
112
112
116
127
131
5. A NEO-FREGEAN OPTION
......................................................................................
138
CRS, Instability, and Anti-Individualism .............................................................
Anti-Individualistic CRS: A Sketch .....................................................................
Objects and Properties .............................................................................
Sense and Semantic Value .......................................................................
Grasping Contents ....................................................................................
Content and Explanation ..........................................................................
E-Appropriate Inference and A/S ............................................................
What about Frege? ................................................................................................
Anti-Individualism and Frege’s Anti-Psychologism ...............................
Begriffsschrifts and the Third Realm .......................................................
Sense and Mode of Presentation ..............................................................
Frege and the Paradox of Analysis ..........................................................
138
141
141
142
146
150
152
154
154
156
158
160
BIBLIOGRAPHY
.............................................................................................................
iv
163
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
............................................................................................
v
174
ABSTRACT
In the past few decades, semantic holism, primarily in the guise of conceptual role
semantics, has been an influential doctrine in both the philosophy of language and the
philosophy of mind. In a recent challenge to such doctrines, Jerry Fodor and Ernest Lepore have
inspired a spirited debate over the viability of any theory of meaning or cognition that entails
semantic holism. Two general problems emerge from the debate: (i) a problem concerning the
stability of content (mental or linguistic), and (ii) a problem concerning the internal consistency
of typical holistic doctrines. The former problem raises serious worries about the ability of such
accounts to accommodate the phenomena of communication, disagreement, change of opinion,
translation, and intentional explanation, while the latter problem questions the compatibility of
three doctrines typically held by holists: that meaning is compositional, that meaning is
conceptual role, and that Quine successfully showed that there can be no useful
analytic/synthetic distinction.
In this dissertation, I aim to show that these problems are not native to semantic holism,
but, rather, are the result of an assumption almost ubiquitous in these discussions: semantic
individualism. To this end, I consider and reject a number of attempts to handle these worries on
behalf of the individualistic holist. A holistic account of content which is free from this
assumption is the only way to way avoid the problems of instability and inconsistency while
remaining a holist. In the end, I suggest that one result of giving up this assumption would be
the renewed possibility of a viable conceptual role semantics, and perhaps even a useful
analytic/synthetic distinction. In any case, the result would be a move in the direction of a neoFregean conception of content.
vi
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION: FREGE’S SINN
Knowledge, Truth, and Meaning
It has always been one of the main tasks of the Western philosophical enterprise to
substantiate (or repudiate) a certain picture of ourselves as possessing real knowledge, or at the
very least, a picture according to which there is genuine knowledge to be had, perhaps of a
universal, absolute, or even necessary nature. Ideally, we would like to have stable, objective,
and interesting knowledge about ourselves, the world, and the relationship between them. Such
knowledge would consist in truths which are not somehow relative to our particular beliefs,
cultures, or historical situations. Call this the happy picture; its denial the depressing one.
Many of us would prefer to be happy. Depression, however, comes at us from many
directions. Keeping in mind the platitude that one can only know what is true, there are at least
two general paths into the abyss.
On the one hand, there are available many philosophical arguments which aim to show
that we do not know what we think we do, but not that what we think we know is false. For all
we know, most of our beliefs are true, but these beliefs nonetheless do not amount to knowledge.
The idea is that reflection on both the concept of knowledge and on our nature will reveal that we
can never attain the strict standards required for genuine knowledge—on reflection, we learn that
genuine knowledge requires certain conditions, say x, y, and z, to hold, but we also learn on
reflection that given the kinds of creatures that we are, these conditions can never hold jointly.
This is the strategy of the Descartes of the first Meditation, where he argues that genuine
knowledge requires indubitability only to go on to show that we can never be certain about any
of our beliefs about the external world, since we can never be certain that what we are
experiencing is not just some extremely vivid dream.1 Many philosophers after Descartes, being
1
Descartes (1641), pp. 3-50.
1
persuaded by the first Meditation, though unpersuaded by what follows it, have taken this as a
demonstration that we cannot in principle know anything about a world that transcends our own
minds, whether or not there is one.
On the other hand, one might embrace skepticism, and thus deny that we have certain
kinds of knowledge, not because we cannot live up to the relevant epistemic standards, but
because even if we could, there would simply be nothing to know. According to this kind of
skeptic, we naively take ourselves to know, or have the capacity of knowing, some range of
facts, but, once again, reflection shows that there simply is no such range of facts. Consider our
ethical beliefs. Common sense informs us that we know, among other things, that murder is
wrong, that beneficence is a good thing, and that torturing infants for fun is morally
unacceptable. We think that we know these things, and that, in knowing them, we are holding
true beliefs. True beliefs, however, are made true by facts. So, if it could be shown that there
are no moral facts, then it would also follow (one might think) that we can have no moral
knowledge—remember the platitude. This is the strategy adopted by the moral anti-realist J. L.
Mackie and, unlike the previous epistemological strategy, this one is basically metaphysical in
nature. After all, is not the very idea of intrinsically action-guiding facts “queer” and
“unnatural”. According to Mackey, there simply can be no such beasts, and to think otherwise
would be to offend against that proper sense of reality which is the guiding light of sound
reasoning.2
So, we have two general kinds of challenge to the happy picture: one epistemological, the
other metaphysical. One focuses on the nature of knowledge and our faculties, while the other
focuses on the nature of truth. Intuitively, both knowledge and truth bear an intimate relation to
concepts. On the one hand, if I know that cats bite, I must believe that cats bite. And I can do
this latter only if I possess the relevant concepts, viz., the concepts cat and biting. Knowledge,
then, requires the possession of at least some concepts, and the conditions for both possessing
them and being justifified in holding beliefs involving them will depend on the nature, as well as
on the content, of the concepts to be possessed. On the other hand, I know that cats bite only if it
is true that cats bite, and this will be the case just in case anything (or most anything) to which
the concept is a cat applies is also something to which the concept is a biter applies. Once again,
2
J. L. Mackie (1977). In particular, see chapter 1, “The Subjectivity of Values”.
2
what it is for something to be true (the nature of truth or of being true) will depend in large part
on the nature of the relevant concepts. If, as some have argued, the nature of some class of
concepts are such that they cannot outstrip the behavioral and psychological resources of the
individuals that possess them, then there is a plausible case to be made that, when it comes to
claims involving those concepts, truth cannot outstrip those resources either—that is, truth itself
would be bound to our very nature, and this might just make man, as Protagoras once put it, “the
measure of all things”. One might think, then, that insight into the nature of both knowledge and
truth can be gained by investigating the nature of concepts.
It has been the trend in recent philosophy, indeed it is often touted as one of its greatest
insights, to reformulate questions regarding the nature of concepts as questions regarding the
nature of the meanings of certain expressions. So, instead of asking about the nature of the
concept cat, or even about the essential nature of cats, we might do better to ask about the
meaning of the word ‘cat’ if your language is English, or of ‘chat’, if French, etc.3 Words, after
all, are more concrete than are concepts, and so, one would think, problems concerning them and
their meaning should prove to be more tractable. Accordingly, philosophy in the twentieth
century has been obsessed with the notion of linguistic meaning. Aside from a pure interest in it
as its own object of study, one of the great hopes has been that a better understanding of
linguistic meaning might shed deeply penetrating light on the problems of knowledge and truth
and might thereby reveal something vital about the ultimate status of the two kinds of challenge
adumbrated above. The study of meaning became, and for many still is, the final battleground
where the traditional metaphysical and epistemological battles would be waged.
In recent decades, a certain conception of meaning, a holistic one, has become
increasingly popular in the philosophy of language. The meaning of an expression has been
thought by many to be system relative, and not merely in the weak sense in which ‘hat’ might
mean one thing in English but something entirely different in German (as it does), but in some
much stronger sense. The idea, very roughly, is that ‘hat’ could mean what it does in English
only if it is part of a system either exactly like English in relevant respects or at least very nearly
so. We shall have occasion to sharpen this somewhat in chapter 3, but for now, this
characterization will do.
3
The move to this holistic conception of meaning was the result of a number of challenges
to a conception of meaning that arrived on the philosophical scene in the late nineteenth century.
While attempting to articulate the logical foundations of arithmetic and analysis, Gottlob Frege
(a German mathematician, logician, and philosopher) provided the framework for a theory of
meaning that has remained highly influential. Reacting to arguments given by W.V. Quine and
Ludwig Wittgenstein in the middle of the twentieth century, many in the philosophical
community, as well as those in cognitive science and linguistics, have felt forced to make some
modifications in that framework, while others have abandoned it entirely. In many cases, the net
result has been a substantial move in the direction of semantic holism.
Despite the relative popularity of holistic positions, their weaknesses, though perhaps
recognized all along, have not received serious attention until fairly recently. Much of the
renewed discussion has been forced by Jerry Fodor’s and Ernest Lepore’s recent discussion of
semantic holism.4 Aside from casting doubt on what may be the standard arguments for
semantic holism, their extended critical discussion has served to highlight some of the most
worrisome consequences of the doctrine, consequences which may seriously threaten our
happiness. Ultimately, their discussion has provoked a number of last minute attempts to save
holistic theories of meaning from these depressing consequences.
In this dissertation, I shall attempt to show that none of these attempts to save holism are
successful. Rather, the way to save it is to reject an assumption that was made, albeit tacitly, in
some of the early attacks on the original Fregean conception, and which is assumed by nearly
every form of semantic holism now on offer. If this suggestion is taken seriously, then the result
may be a semantics that is more thoroughly Fregean in character but avoids many, if not all, of
the early attacks and many, if not all, of the problems currently associated with holism.
To this end, I will proceed as follows. In the remainder of this chapter I will do two
things. First, I will sketch and motivate that conception of meaning which was the target of
Quine’s and Wittgenstein’s attacks, i.e., Frege’s (what I take to be the classical conception of
meaning). Second, I will briefly outline some connections between meaning and mind, and
consider a current account of content that many believe to be an articulation of Frege’s notion of
3
Thanks to fairly recent work by Saul Kripke and by Hilary Putnam, asking about the essence of natural kinds such
as cats, gold, and water has recently become respectable again. See Kripke (1980), especially pp. 116-29 and 13444, and Putnam (1973). For a greatly expanded version of the latter, see Putnam (1975).
4
sense: conceptual role semantics. In chapter 2, I will consider some reasons for thinking that
conceptual role semantics entails semantic holism . Then, in chapter 3, we will see why holism
is thought to be deeply problematic. We will do so by examining two recent challenges to
holistic CRS: the Problem of Instability and what I will call the Crack. In chapter 4, I will
survey and reject some of the main attempts to save holistic CRS from these challenges. Finally,
in chapter 5, I will gesture towards a solution that someone sympathetic both to the conceptual
role framework and to Frege’s original conception could endorse.
Fregean Sinn: The Classical Conception5
Pre-Fregean semantics, when it was not ideational, was direct-reference semantics, that
is, the meaning of a term was thought to be just whatever it is that the term is used to talk
about—words being mere tags. For example, the meaning of a name such as ‘Plato’ would just
be the philosopher himself, while the meaning of a general term like ‘beard’ would just be all of
those things that are beards, or the set of beards, or perhaps the property of being a beard. On
such an account, an expression would be meaningful just in case it did in fact stand for
something and someone could be said to know the meaning of a term just in case she knows
what the term stands for.
Such accounts, however, quickly run up against a number of well-known problems. To
begin with, there is a problem accommodating the intuition that certain sentences, e.g.,
‘Phlogiston is combustible’, are meaningful despite the presence of non-referring terms, in this
case, ‘phlogiston’ (the Problem of Non-Referring Terms). If the meaning of an expression is the
thing it refers to, how could such sentences be meaningful? Well maybe such sentences carry
some meaning (though not a complete one) and because of this it is a truth-value, rather than a
meaning, that they lack. Well perhaps, but there are other sentences that intuitively are not only
meaningful but are true (or false). For example, we would like to say that the sentence
4
Fodor and Lepore (1992).
5
For those who do fundamental work in the philosophy of language and are familiar with its development in the
analytic tradition, that Frege was the first true philosopher of language and that he set the stage for most of the
subsequent debate both have the ring of orthodoxy. It therefore comes as a bit of a surprise that some recent
scholars have denied that Frege even had a theory of meaning. This is the stance taken by Weiner (1990), (1997a),
and (1997b). It is, then, still somewhat of an open debate whether or not Frege did have what we would now call a
theory of meaning. Of course, if Frege did not have such a theory, then one would like to know what role the
sense/reference distinction is meant to play in his overall thought. These questions cannot possibly be resolved here.
For now, I will suppose that he does have a theory of meaning; unfortunately, final answers to these questions will
not be possible in the context of the present study.
5
‘Phlogiston does not exist’ is not only meaningful but is actually true. Again, how could such a
sentence be true if meaning is reference (the Problem of Negative Existentials)? A third problem
was raised by Frege. He observes that there are certain sentence pairs, e.g., ‘Karol Wojtyla is
Pope John Paul II’ and ‘Pope John Paul II is Pope John Paul II’, that intuitively can each bear a
different cognitive significance for a single speaker (who understands both sentences).6 The
trouble is that cognitive significance seems to be a function of meaning.7 But if meaning is
reference, then the above two sentences could never diverge in cognitive significance for any
competent speaker (Frege’s Puzzle about Cognitive Significance). Finally, there is the Problem
of Opacity. Roughly speaking, this problem concerns the substitution of coreferential
(coextensive) terms in certain contexts, e.g., contexts of propositional attitude. Once again, the
difficulty seems to arise when we assume that the meaning of a term in such contexts must be its
referent. Given a number of highly plausible semantic principles as background, this assumption
forces us to regard sentences such as ‘Lois Lane believes that Clark Kent is Clark Kent’ and
‘Lois Lane believes that Clark Kent is Superman’ as having, as a matter of necessity, the same
truth-value. The trouble is that, as a matter of intuitive judgment, they do not.
It is one of the chief virtues of Frege’s theory of meaning that by rejecting the assumption
that meaning is reference, it provides very intuitive and elegant solutions to each of these
difficulties. Since Frege’s theory has provided the general framework for most subsequent
semantic discussion as well as for the issues to be addressed here, I shall now take some time to
outline that theory.
Sinning Against Bedeutung Frege formally introduces his theory as a solution to his
puzzle concerning cognitive significance. Once again, that problem concerns the perceived
difference of content between sentences such as ‘Karol Wojtyla is Pope John Paul II’ and ‘Pope
John Paul II is Pope John Paul II’. Insofar as the latter is a priori and trivial while the former is
a posteriori and substantive (i.e., expresses what might be a significant extension of one’s
knowledge), these two sentences will have (or at least might have) different cognitive
significance for a speaker who fully understands both of them. If cognitive significance is a
function of linguistic meaning, then this would suggest that these sentences have different
6
‘Karol Wojtyla’ and ‘Pope John Paul II’ both in fact refer to Pope John Paul II.
7
Though it is an elusive notion, cognitive significance is roughly the role an expression has in the cognition of a
speaker. It includes, but is not limited to, effects on behavior and conditions of verification.
6
meanings. This raises a problem for the direct-reference theorist, since she would have to view
these sentences as bearing the same meaning. According to Frege, however, the trouble results
from the assumption that the meaning of a singular term is exhausted by its reference.
Furthermore, this assumption is also at play in the problems concerning negative existentials,
non-referring terms, and attitude ascriptions. So, to loosen the grips of these puzzles, one might
simply reject this assumption—holding instead that the meaning of a singular term is not
exhausted by the thing to which it refers. This is precisely Frege’s strategy. Let us now turn to
his solution.
Some care is needed here. The notion of reference that is usually appealed to in
developing the puzzles is non-technical and relativized to singular terms. So it would be easy to
think that Frege’s sense/reference distinction is one that also applies only to singular terms, and
that reference, for him, is more or less the same as designation when this is understood as that
relation that holds between a name and its bearer. This, however, would be a mistake. First,
although when first introducing the theory he focuses almost exclusively on singular terms,
Frege is elsewhere very clear that the distinction is meant to apply to every class of meaningful
expression—every kind of meaningful linguistic unit has both a sense and a referent.8 Second,
the temptation to understand reference as designation stems from a failure to appreciate these
previous points fully. It may be true that reference, for singular terms, is best understood on the
intuitive model of the name/bearer relation, but it would be hasty to assume that this same model
should be applied across the board. One should keep in mind that Frege’s actual terms are the
German ‘Sinn’ and ‘Bedeutung’ and that his employment of them is highly technical. As such,
we must look to his explicit comments and his actual use of these terms rather than their
conventional German meanings. For this reason, I will use ‘sense’ in place of the German ‘Sinn’
and ‘semantic value’ in place of ‘Bedeutung’. My choice of ‘semantic value’ is intended to ease
the temptation to conflate Bedeutung with designation. Since I am not intending these as
translations, in the strict sense, i.e., since my use of them is not in itself intended to illuminate
Frege’s understanding of ‘Sinn’ and ‘Bedeutung’ or to equate their meanings with the meanings
8
The three classic papers in which Frege’s mature theory of meaning and semantics are first unveiled are Frege
(1891), (1892a), and (1892b). Frege (1892a), of course, is where the sense/reference distinction is first drawn, and it
is here that Frege considers the puzzles. Frege (1891) and (1892b) are almost exclusively concerned with the
domain of reference (or with what I below call semantic value). Frege explicitly states that the sense/reference
distinction applies to all classes of meaningful expressions in the posthumously published Frege (1892-5).
7
of already understood terms, I will need to say a bit about how these surrogate expressions are to
be understood.
Semantic Value Intuitively, the semantic value of an expression is what we use that
expression to talk about. The referent, or bearer, of a term is what semantic value is when
semantic value is restricted to singular terms.9 But not all terms are singular, and since we need
an understanding of semantic value that applies to all terms, singular or otherwise, we will need
to cast about for a general notion of semantic value—one from which we can derive, as a
consequence, rather than as a matter of definition, that the semantic value of a singular term is its
referent.
The needed (general) account is recoverable from Frege’s writings, not so much from his
explicit comments, but from the use he goes on to make of the term ‘bedeutung’. Indeed, by the
end of the present section, and after we have considered a number of positive theses regarding
the notion of semantic value, it should be fairly obvious that this definition of semantic value
does capture what Frege had in mind. On his behalf, then, I will say that
SV
The semantic value of any expression is that feature of it that helps to determine
whether sentences in which it occurs are true or false.
So, the notion of semantic value is essentially connected to the notion of truth, in particular, of a
true (or a false) sentence. Now, according to Frege, there are, logically speaking, only three
categories of expression that need to be considered when determining what kinds of things will
serve as semantic values: singular terms, predicate expressions (of any adicity), and (declarative)
sentences.10
What is the semantic value of a sentence? Given SV, this will depend on the logical
behavior of sentences in more complicated sentences. If we consider the typical sorts of ways in
which complex sentences can be generated from simpler ones, what naturally comes to mind are
the truth-functional connectives, e.g., ‘and’, ‘or’, ‘not’, ‘if-then’, etc. Suppose that S is a
9
Since what follows is relatively uncontroversial, I will not make much effort to locate it in Frege’s texts.
10
Actually, given Frege’s doctrine that (declarative) sentences are proper names, there are really only two such
categories. For our purposes, we may ignore this detail for now. Also, unless otherwise indicated, I shall, in what
follows, drop the qualification ‘declarative’ and just say ‘sentence’.
8
sentence built up from two simple sentences, P and Q, by means of one of these connectives, say
‘and’. Now in determining the truth-value of S, all that we need to know about P and Q are their
truth-values. Given the meaning of ‘and’, S’s truth-value is fixed once the truth-values of P and
Q are, or, perhaps better, given that P and Q have the truth-values that they do, the meaning of
‘and’ guarantees that S has the truth-value that it has. This suggests the following:
SV1
The semantic value of a sentence is its truth-value.11
Given the definition of semantic value and SV1, it follows that the semantic value of a sentence
is determined by the semantic values of its parts. More generally, we have
SV2
The semantic value of a complex expression is a function of the semantic values of its
parts along with its structure.
This is a compositionality principle, but Frege is very clear that the kind of composition involved
here is not mereological, but, for lack of a better term, logical—the value of the complex
expression is uniquely determined by the semantic values of its parts but it is not the sum of
them.12 Now, as was mentioned above, the only semantically significant parts that a sentence,
according to Frege, could have are singular terms, predicates, and further sentences. So, in the
case where the sentence in question is atomic, i.e., contains no sentences as semantically
significant subparts, the semantic value of the sentence will be a function of the semantic values
of some set of singular terms and predicates.
11
There is in fact much more to be said about Frege’s reasons for this identification. The argument presented here
requires that we already understand the connectives as truth-conditional. But why should this be so? One reason is
that intuitions about the behavior of such connectives in inference strongly suggest that they are to be understood
truth-functionally. Frege attempts to elicit such intuitions in the early sections of the Begriffsschrift. Another reason
for the original identification (i.e., SV1) is that it results globally in a much simpler logical system; see, for example,
Frege (1893), p. 7. A third reason is that we care about the semantic values of sub-sentential expressions to the
extent that we care about knowing the truth-value of a sentence. Words in literary contexts often have no semantic
value, but in such contexts we are not bothered by this since it is only the sense of the sentence that matters to us.
When we must also know the truth-value of a sentence, it then becomes crucial that we know what the semantic
values of its sub-sentential expressions are. Given this, Frege takes it as a reasonable to infer that truth-values are
the semantic values of sentences. Some have claimed to find an even stronger argument in Frege—one that is
deductive and virtually a priori in character. Alonzo Church and Donald Davidson have both claimed to have found
the so-called Slingshot Argument, or at least to have found its inspiration, in a passage in Frege (1892a).
12
Frege (1892a), pp. 164-5.
9
For now, let us focus on the simplest kind of case possible. Let A be the atomic sentence
‘Socrates was bald’. The semantic value of A is a truth-value, and in this case, it is true.
Furthermore, its parts, viz., ‘Socrates’ and ‘bald’, must have semantic values which together
uniquely determine A’s semantic value as true.13 Now, in the case of singular terms, the
semantic value will be the bearer of the name, i.e., that thing to which the name refers or that
thing we attempt to talk about when we use the name in normal contexts. When I utter A
assertively, I use the term ‘Socrates’ to talk about Socrates, and when I do so I aim to say
something true. According to Frege, if we came to discover that there was no such person as
Socrates, and hence that the name ‘Socrates’ has no bearer, the sentence A itself would lack a
semantic value, i.e.,
SV3
A part of a complex expression C lacks a semantic value just in case C also
lacks a semantic value.
SV3 follows as a corollary from SV2 and suggests that Socrates is indeed the semantic value of
‘Socrates’. More generally, we now have:
SV4
The semantic value of a proper name is the object that it refers to (or stands
for).
So, the semantic value of a sentence is its truth-value, and the semantic value of a
singular term its referent; since Frege treats entire sentences as complex singular terms, both are
kinds of object for Frege. But what is the semantic value of a predicate expression? Could it
also be some kind of object? Suppose that it is and that ‘bald’ therefore really functions as a
kind of singular term. Then we could rewrite A as ‘Socrates baldness’. This, however, is not
only ungrammatical, but it is hard to see how merely drawing a list of things could possibly yield
a truth value as a further semantic value. For this and similar reasons, Frege concludes that the
semantic value of a predicate expression cannot be an object at all—it must be a completely
13
Given Frege’s doctrine that sentences are names (mentioned in note 12), he would say that the semantic value of
A is the true, where ‘the true’ is a singular term which refers to an object.
10
different sort of thing.14 Frege’s suggestion is this:
SV5
The semantic value of a predicate is a function.
The most fruitful way to conceive of the semantic value of a predicate, according to Frege, is as a
function mapping objects (or n-tuples of objects in the case of relational expressions) to truthvalues.15 Accordingly, the semantic value of ‘is bald’ would be a function that maps an object
like Socrates onto the value true, one like Bill Clinton onto the value false, and so on for every
other object. The semantic value of a two-place relational expression such as ‘. . . loves—’
would be a function mapping pairs of objects to truth-values, and that for a three-place relational
expression such as ‘. . . gave- - -to—’ a function mapping ordered triples to truth-values.16 Frege
extends this functional treatment to encompass what are now the standard operators of classical
logic, viz., the sentential connectives and the quantifiers (words such ‘all’, ‘some’, etc.) While
the semantic value of a predicate is a first-level function from objects to truth-values, the
semantic value of a sentential connective is a first-level function from truth-values to truthvalues and the semantic value of a quantifier is a second-level function from first-level functions
to truth-values. So, the domain of semantic values is occupied solely by objects and functions.
Since senses, as we will see below, can also sometimes be semantic values, they must also be
either objects or functions. Thus, for Frege everything that is, is an object or a function.
Finally, Frege accepts a generalized version of the Principle of Substitutivity (PS).17
Frege generalizes the principle to cover all complex expressions; accordingly, we have:
14
See, for example, Frege (1891), (1892b), and (1892-5).
15
Frege explicitly rejects the identification of functions with sets of certain kinds, since it would force us to view
functions as kinds of objects.
16
It is by viewing predicate expressions as special kinds of functions that Frege is led to treat sentences as special
kinds of complex singular terms, since he also, and very plausibly, views complex, non-sentential singular terms as
constructed from functional expressions and singular terms. For example, ‘the son of Mary’ is a complex singular
term built up from the simpler expressions ‘the son of . . .’, which is a functional expression, and ‘Mary’, another
singular term. Applying the semantic value of that functional expression to the semantic value of that singular term
yields the value Jesus Christ as the semantic value of the complex singular term. It is on this model that Frege
proposes that we are to understand the semantic functioning of sentences, and one of the chief reasons in its favor is
the elegance and simplicity that it affords the overall theory.
11
SV6
Substitution of a constituent of a complex expression (sentence) by another
expression which has the same semantic value will leave the semantic value of the
complex expression (the truth value of the sentence) unchanged.
Again, this may be seen as a corollary that springs from SV2 and the very notion of a function.
In the end, it is partly Frege’s endorsement of this principle that forces him to introduce the
notion of sense.
Sense I shall again proceed by first giving a very rough definition of the notion of sense.
Then I will refine that definition somewhat by developing a number of constitutive theses
regarding sense.
Intuitively, sense is what one grasps when one understands the meaning of some piece of
language and it is also what gives us a cognitive fix on the things we are aiming to talk about.
Sense, then, is essentially connected to the notion of semantic value as well as to the notion of a
language-user. With this in mind, we can begin with the following, working definition:
S
The sense of an expression E is that aspect of E that determines its semantic value.
Following Frege, an expression will be said to express its sense, but designate its
semantic value (generally speaking, however, designation cannot be understood on the
name/bearer model). Now, since every logically significant expression has (or is capable of
having) a semantic value, each must have (be capable of having) a sense as well. The idea is that
for an object to be the semantic value of a name, or for a function to be the semantic value of
some predicate, or for a truth-value to be the semantic value for some sentence, there must be
some other feature of that name, predicate, or sentence that secures this connection. This feature
also has a decidedly epistemic dimension, insofar as it is also typically taken to be something to
which speakers can have more or less direct cognitive access, whereas speakers can have only
indirect cognitive access to semantic values (or at least to those which are not themselves senses
or mental items of some sort), since it is only through the grasping of some appropriate sense that
someone can gain cognitive access, i.e., can think or speak about, a semantic value at all.
17
Roughly, this is the principle that two expressions that refer to the same thing, or apply to all and only the same
things, can always be substituted for one another without disturbing the truth-value of the original sentential context.
12
Another way to bring out this epistemic character of sense is through the following thesis:
S1
The sense of an expression is what someone who is competent to use the
expression, or who knows its meaning, understands or grasps.
To grasp the sense of an expression is to bear some appropriate relationship to it. It is by bearing
such a relationship to an expression’s sense that a speaker can be said to be competent in the use
of the expression, but the same cannot be said of semantic value in general. This stands out most
clearly in the case of terms that have a sense but no semantic value. A speaker can fully well
understand the expressions ‘the cat under the table’ or ‘Santa Claus’ even when there is no such
animal or no such bearer of gifts. In such cases, the speaker can still be said to have grasped the
sense of the expression and to have fully understood it. Clearly, the semantic values are
irrelevant here, since there are no such values. In any case, what needs special emphasis is that
for Frege, sense is essentially connected to understanding, as well as to the notion semantic
value.
Given that ‘sense’ is intended by Frege to function as a count noun, as are ‘dog’,
‘number’, and ‘neutrino’, it is important that we be able to individuate senses. Indeed, it is
fundamental to Frege’s view that for any such range of entities that we wish to think or speak
about, there must be a principle, whether or not we can articulate it, that determines when two
such entities are the same or different.18 In particular, in theoretical matters, it is important that
whenever possible, such principles be made fully explicit. In many cases, the failure to produce
such a principle can be taken as evidence that there is no such range of objects. This is, of
course, the point of Quine’s famous slogan “No entity without identity,” a slogan inspired,
according to Quine, by Frege himself. In any case, the principle that Frege ultimately settles on
seems to be this:
S2
S1 and S2 express the same sense just in case any competent speaker who grasps
the senses of S1 and S2 would judge that S1 and S2 have the same semantic
18
For example, see Frege (1894), §§ 62-9, and Frege (1893), § 10, where Frege attempts to supply such principles to
the concepts cardinal number and course-of-values, respectively.
13
value.19
Once again, S2 bears witness to the highly epistemological nature of Frege’s notion of sense,
since its identity conditions are sensitive to the judgments of competent speakers—those who
have grasped the sense of the relevant expression. So, granted that a speaker does in fact
sufficiently understand each of two expressions, which happen to express the same sense, it
should be transparent to that speaker that they do so. Supposing that two expressions are so
related, then the fact that some particular speaker is either unsure that they have the same
semantic value or does not believe that they do is evidence that he does not fully understand one
of those terms or uses it to express some different sense than the one conventionally assigned to
it.
This epistemological character might give one the impression that for Frege sense is more
or less subjective. Such an impression would be entirely mistaken. Frege is insistent that the
notion of sense is also meant to explain the possibility of genuine communication. What we
communicate, when we do, are thoughts. Now since the thought that we communicate by means
of a sentence must be a feature of its meaning, it must be identified with either its sense or its
semantic value. Could it be the latter? We often communicate thoughts by means of sentences
that have parts lacking semantic value. For example, a parent communicates a definite thought
to a child when he utters the sentence ‘Santa Claus will come only if you go to bed on time’.
Given the fact that ‘Santa Claus’ lacks a semantic value, it follows from SV3 that this sentence
also lacks a semantic value—it is neither true nor false. But if the thought expressed by a
sentence is to be identified with its semantic value, then the parent could not have communicated
anything to the child after all. So, assuming that thoughts must be either senses or semantic
values, what we communicate when we sincerely and assertively utter sentences of our language
must be the senses of those sentences, i.e.,
19
This is a generalization of a principle that Frege, in Frege (1892a), pp. 162-3, tacitly appeals to in the course of an
argument for the claim that the sense expressed by a declarative sentence is the thought associated with it and its
semantic value (its truth-value). He says, “If we now replace one word of the sentence by another having the same
[semantic value], but a different sense, this can have no effect upon the [semantic value] of the sentence. Yet we
can see that in such a case the thought changes; since, e.g., the thought in the sentence ‘The morning star is a body
illuminated by the Sun’ differs from that in the sentence ‘The evening star is a body illuminated by the Sun’.
Anybody who did not know that the evening star is the same as the morning star might hold the one to be true, the
other false. The thought, accordingly, cannot be what is meant [is intended as the semantic value] by the sentence,
but must rather be considered as its sense,” (my emphasis).
14
S3
The thought expressed by a sentence is its sense.20
But if senses are private mental items, like mental images, or sensations, then it is unclear how
such communication could ever be effected. Mental items, after all, are private property—if you
and I each entertain some mental image, then those particular images are, no matter how similar,
necessarily numerically distinct. Whatever thoughts are, they must be something that in some
sense is public property. If I am able to communicate some thought to you, then what is
communicated cannot be identified with anything whose identity conditions in any way depend
on its being my thought. So, we have:
S4
Thoughts are not psychological in nature: the sense of a sentence is not to be
identified with ideas, mental images, or any other private psychological items.
But what of the senses of a sentence’s parts? Frege articulates a compositionality principle for
sense corresponding to the one for semantic value:
S5
The sense of a complex expression is determined by its structure and the senses of
its constituents.
Unlike SV2, however, the sense of the complex expression really is the sum of the senses of its
parts. Since it is hard to see how something non-psychological in nature could be constituted by
psychological parts, it would seem to follow from S4 and S5 that all senses must be nonpsychological in character.
Finally, Frege takes sense to have a decidedly normative dimension, i.e., the sense of an
expression is, in some sense, action-guiding. The sense in which sense guides action is this:
once the sense of an expression is determined speakers are thereby constrained in what they can
and cannot go on to do with that expression. Once ‘pencil’, for example, acquires a definite
sense, it is thereby laid down which future applications of the term will be true and which false.
20
In what follows, I will use ‘thought’, ‘sense expressed by a (declarative) sentence’, and ‘proposition’
interchangeably.
15
The reason why this is so is because the association of a sense with a predicate will thereby
determine which function (in this case the function is also a property) is that predicate’s semantic
value. Since a property is a function that delivers for every object either the true or the false as
value, the association of a sense with ‘pencil’ will constrain all future uses of the term. If one’s
aim is to speak truly, when speaking literally, then certain applications will be, in this respect,
good and others bad. Generally speaking, then, we have:
S6
The sense of an expression is normative: it constitutes a normative constraint that
determines which uses of that expression are correct and which are incorrect.
Sometimes it is thought that this normative dimension requires viewing the sense of a term as
containing within it “directions” for all future uses of that term.21 Whether or not this is so, once
an expression has been endowed with a determinate sense, it is thought to be objectively
determined which uses of that term are correct, and which incorrect.
Frege’s senses, then, play a crucial role in explaining linguistic understanding, are what
mediate language/world relations, are subject to a kind of compositionality, are objective in
character, and are normative in a certain respect. How do they help to deal with the puzzles
mentioned earlier?
Making “Sense” of the Puzzles Rather than illustrate how Frege’s distinction helps him
to solve each of the four puzzles, I will only comment on what are usually taken to be the most
interesting, and pressing, of the bunch: Frege’s Puzzle about Cognitive Significance and the
Problem of Opacity.
With Frege’s Puzzle, the problem is a result of holding the following principles: (1) that
meaning is semantic value (reference), (2) that cognitive significance is a function of meaning,
and (3) that sentences like ‘Muhammad Ali is Muhammad Ali’ and ‘Mohammed Ali is Cassius
Clay’ can have a different cognitive significance for a single speaker who happens to understand
both of them. According to Frege, however, coming to know that ‘Muhammad Ali is
Muhammad Ali’ is true would not extend one’s knowledge in any substantive way, though
coming to know that ‘Muhammad Ali is Cassius Clay’ is true would. One might be genuinely
21
Famously, Wittgenstein’s rule-following considerations are, among other things, an attack on this conception of
the normativity of sense. I shall return to this issue in chapter 5.
16
surprised at coming to learn the latter and doing so might very well have significant effects on
one’s overall behavior. Furthermore, the kinds of justification that we would have to offer in
order to justify a belief in the truth of these sentences would also diverge. One could be justified
solely by an appeal to the Principle of Self-Identity, whereas the other would require some
appeal to the empirical facts. So, Frege is not willing to give up (3). Neither is he willing to give
up (2). The solution is to reject (1), and this is precisely the effect of introducing the
sense/semantic-value distinction. Content, for Frege, splits into sense and semantic value. That
aspect of an expression’s content that does determine its cognitive significance is not its semantic
value, but its sense, and since two sentences can be indistinguishable at the level of semantic
value and yet diverge in sense, Frege can explain the above divergence of cognitive significance:
the above sentences, though the same vis-à-vis truth-value, express different senses, and the
reason they do is that the names ‘Muhammad Ali’ and ‘Cassius Clay’ express different senses.
Frege’s solution to the Problem of Opacity is both subtle and ingenious. It will be
recalled that the sentences ‘Lois Lane believes that Clark Kent is Clark Kent’ and ‘Lois Lane
believes that Clark Kent is Superman’ could diverge in semantic value even when ‘Clark Kent’
and ‘Superman’ do not. This is in direct conflict with SV6, and nothing in what we have seen so
far will help remove the difficulty. Frege here advances the new claim that the semantic values
of expressions shift in certain contexts, in particular, in those contexts that follow verbs of
propositional attitude in propositional attitude reports. The idea is that in such contexts, the
semantic value of an expression is what would in normal contexts be its sense. If we call the
sense of an expression in normal contexts its customary sense and the semantic value of an
expression in contexts following verbs of propositional attitude its indirect semantic value, then
we have:
S7
The indirect semantic value of an expression is its customary sense.
This thesis is given some plausibility if we are inclined to view propositional attitude reports as
stating various relations between cognizers and propositions, e.g., relations such as believing,
hoping, desiring, and so on. If so, then the sentence following the ‘that’ in such reports (a thatclause) must have a proposition as its semantic value. So, at least that sentence would seem to
have its customary sense as its semantic value in such contexts. But then the natural way to
17
explain this would be to accept S7 outright.
We are now in a position to see why SV6 is not in fact violated in such contexts.
Although ‘Clark Kent’ and ‘Superman’ have the same semantic value, they do not have the same
customary sense, and so their indirect semantic values will not be the same. For this reason, SV6
does not, in fact, license the substitution of these expressions for one another in contexts of
propositional attitude ascription.
This concludes my exposition of Frege’s distinction between sense and semantic-value. I
would now like to undertake a more general discussion of Frege’s conception of sense by
relating it to issues in the philosophy of mind, in particular, to issues in the philosophy of mental
representation.
Meaning, Mind, and Reality
Meaning and Reality: Objectivity There is a definite connection between the theory of
meaning and metaphysics. The connection is brought out very nicely by a distinction, drawn by
Crispin Wright, between three kinds of objectivity: the objectivity of truth, the objectivity of
meaning, and the objectivity of judgment.22
First, the objectivity of truth amounts to the claim that our sentences are made true by a
world that is independent of us, what we believe about it, and the kind of evidence that we have
for the things we believe about it. It is to believe that it is (at least in principle) possible for
certain sentences to have truth-values, and for us to understand in what their being true or false
would consist, even though determining those truth-values is something that transcends our
capacities. For example, to believe in the objectivity of truth would be to allow as a possibility
that the sentence ‘Everything in the universe doubled in size five minutes ago’ is determinately
true or false, is a sentence someone might fully well understand, and yet is also a sentence for
which we can never have any direct evidence regarding its truth-value. Its being true, or
otherwise, is in no way constrained by the availability, or otherwise, of evidence for or against its
truth.
Next, we saw above that for Frege sense is objective and it is normative. It is something
that sets constraints on what we can and cannot go on to do with an expression or a sentence,
something that determines which subsequent uses are correct and which incorrect. Once the
sense of a sentence has been fixed, it is thereby rendered determinate which judgments regarding
22
Wright (1987), pp. 5-8.
18
the truth-value of that sentence are required by that sense and which are not. In Wright’s words,
“the meaning of a statement is a real constraint, to which we are bound, as it were, by contract,
and to which verdicts about its truth-value may objectively conform, or fail to conform, quite
independently of our considered opinion on the matter.”23 Call this the objectivity of meaning.
A third kind of objectivity, the objectivity of judgment, concerns the relationship between
our judgments and their supposed subject matter. Here, the kind of objectivity in question
directly concerns what has come to be known as the Truth-Maker Principle (hereafter, TM), i.e.,
the principle that for every true sentence, there is something else that renders it true. Wright puts
the matter as follows: “the kind of objectivity which statements have when they are apt to record
or misrecord features of the real world—features which would be appreciable by any creature
possessed of appropriate cognitive powers, whatever its emotional capacities or affective
dispositions.”24 TM requires that our judgments, when true, be made true by something—call
that thing a fact. The objectivity of judgment, properly speaking, concerns the nature of this
truth-making fact. At one end of the spectrum, it is something whose nature is completely
independent of the cognizer—to remove the cognizer (or all cognizers, and assuming that the
judgment is not explicitly about such cognizers) from the world would still leave that fact
completely intact—while at the other end of the spectrum, remove or change the cognizer and
you (potentially) remove or change the fact.
Questions regarding this dimension of objectivity can be fruitfully prosecuted at the local,
rather than the global, level. Indeed, it raises interesting questions about many regions of our
discourse. Sentences about the necessary and the possible, about moral matters, about meaning,
about the future, about the distant past, about highly theoretical (perhaps even unobservable)
entities, about mathematical entities, and about the external world all prove to be interesting
subject matters for reflection regarding the objectivity of judgment. If we call a class of
sentences which can genuinely be assessed for truth or falsity truth-apt, then which of the above
classes of sentence are truth-apt, and of those which are, what is the nature of the corresponding
truth-makers?
It is an extremely interesting and philosophically important question what, if any, logical
relationships obtain between these three kinds of objectivity. For example, does the objectivity
23
Ibid., p. 6.
19
of meaning entail either of the other two kinds of objectivity? Is it entailed by either of them?
Or is it completely independent of them? Does the objectivity of truth entail the objectivity of
judgment, or vice versa? For my purposes, I would only like to consider the relationship
between the objectivity of truth and the objectivity of meaning, on the one hand, and the
objectivity of judgment and the objectivity of meaning on the other. In particular, I would like to
consider whether or not either of the other two kinds of objectivity entails the objectivity of
meaning. The reason is that if so, then any challenge to the notion of sense will also have deep
ramifications elsewhere.
Consider the objectivity of truth and meaning first. The objectivity of truth guarantees
that the truth of (at least some of) our judgments is independent of the kinds of evidence that we
are in principle capable of acquiring in favor of or against its truth. It allows that a sentence S
might be determinately true or false even though we can never determine which. Now how
should this be possible? In most cases (if not all), the truth of a sentence is a function of two
factors: (i) the way our words mean, and (ii) the way the world is. Now one way of
understanding the objectivity of truth is as saying that some our sentences may have truthmakers
to which we can have no epistemic access. There may be a fact of the matter that makes either
the sentence ‘I am a brain in a vat’ or its negation true even though this fact is forever beyond my
reach. But what would make it the case that this particular fact is the truthmaker of this
particular sentence rather than, say, the fact that Biloxi is in Mississippi? Obviously, it is the
meaning of the sentence in question that sorts these things out—the meaning, as it were, reaches
out to regions that are wholly beyond our epistemic grasp. It already determines which sentences
we should assert and which we should not, provided, that is, we are concerned only with
asserting what is true. For this reason, the objectivity of meaning is entailed by the objectivity of
truth.
Does the objectivity of judgment, on the other hand, also entail the objectivity of
meaning? If meaning is not objective, can we infer anything about the nature of the facts that
would make our statements true or false? Could they nonetheless be fully objective—their
existence and nature not in any way depending upon the existence or nature of the cognizer, or
would we have to view them as more subjective or even, as a kind of limiting case, non-existent?
By most lights, the truth-value of a sentence S will be a function of both the meaning of S and
24
Ibid., p. 6.
20
the world. Another way to put this is that S will be true just in case the type of truth-maker fixed
by the meaning of S and required by TM obtains in the actual world.25
Remember that the objectivity of meaning consisted of two claims: (1) that the meaning
of a statement is a real constraint, to which we are bound, as it were, by contract (the
Contractualist Assumption), and (2) that the meaning of a truth-apt sentence is something to
which verdicts about its truth-value may objectively conform, or fail to conform, quite
independently of our considered opinion on the matter (the Conformity Assumption). Are these
assumptions logically independent of one another, are they equivalent, or does one entail the
other? To begin with, the Conformity Assumption actually entails the Contractualist
Assumption, since if the meaning of a sentence is something to which our judgments may
conform or fail to conform, then clearly meaning is to serve as a constraint on at least some of
our activities, viz., on what speech acts we are to perform with that sentence in various
circumstances. The reverse entailment, however, clearly fails. Thus, since we only want to
know whether or not the objectivity of judgment entails the objectivity of meaning, we need only
consider whether or not the former entails the Contractualist Assumption.
Accordingly, suppose that the Contractualist Assumption is false, i.e., that the meaning of
some non-token-reflexive, truth-apt sentence S does not in fact carry with it any genuine
constraint on what we are to go on to do with it, in particular, on what we go on to do it with
respect to assertion or denial. Suppose further that John asserts S at about the same time that
Paul denies it.26 Since the meaning of S places no constraints on what John and Paul do with S,
the assertion of it by John and the denial by Paul must either be equally correct—if it still even
makes sense to speak of these acts as correct—or neither correct nor incorrect. But now since S
is truth-apt, if either John’s assertion or Paul’s denial counts as true or false, then both must
count as true or false, respectively. But then the truth-makers would have to have been
correlated with the utterances of their respective sentence tokens at the moment of those
utterances, since otherwise there would have been prior constraints on what could be done by
John and Paul with those sentences—something which could only have been provided by the
meaning of S. We are now, however, flirting with the absurd, since it is completely mysterious
25
This sounds strikingly similar to the account of truth offered by J. L. Austin. According to him, “a statement is
said to be true when the historic state of affairs to which it is correlated by the demonstrative conventions is of a
type which the sentence used in making it is correlated by the descriptive conventions”; Austin (1950), 121-22.
21
how such a contemporaneous correlation could be affected. On the other hand, if it no longer
makes any sense to speak of their respective speech acts as being correct or incorrect, then we
can no longer speak of them as being true or false (or, alternatively, as saying something which
is true or false). This means, however, that they cannot be correlated with truth-makers at all,
since otherwise they would be either true or false. That Paul’s and John’s judgments are
correlated with no truth-makers at all, however, was the limiting case for the failure of the
objectivity of judgment.
So, if the above argument is correct, the objectivity of judgment does in fact entail the
objectivity of meaning. Such a result would have tremendous philosophical importance, since
any attack on the objectivity or legitimacy of the concept of meaning (sense) would
automatically count as a challenge to the belief that our judgments can record objective features
of the world, and this latter challenge might be cause for concern for at least some of those who
recommend that we abandon all talk of meaning.
Meaning and Mind: the Problem of Content A core problem in the philosophy of
mind concerns the nature of propositional attitudes, i.e., representational states of a cognizer such
as believing, wishing, hoping, etc. What supposedly makes all of these attitudes propositional is
that they are all content-bearing, i.e., to attribute such a state to someone is ipso facto to relate
that person to, for lack of a better word, a content, and that content is both the kind of thing that
might be expressed by a sentence (i.e., is propositional) and intentional (has aboutness
essentially). On the one hand, for example, to say that Jane believes that she will win the lottery
and that she hopes that she will win the lottery are to say two different things about her—they
relate Jane in different ways to the same content. On the other hand, to say that Jane believes
that she will win the lottery and that Jane believes that Duke will win the championship are ways
of relating Jane in the same way to two different things. But what is it for Jane to have a contentbearing representational state at all? What is it for her to bear some attitude to a content, and
what is the nature of that content?
Before we consider how this question might be answered, it will be useful to generalize
the notion of a sentence to include whatever representational states a cognizer might have such
that (a) that state has a content, and (b) the cognizer can have an attitude of some sort (e.g., of
wishing, of hoping, of believing, of doubting, etc.) to that content. Let us call such
26
I.e., that John utters S with assertoric force and Paul asserts its negation with assertoric force.
22
representational states mental sentences—it is important to keep in mind, however, that in doing
so we have not thereby prejudged anything about their nature.27 In particular, I wish to leave it
as open whether or not a speaker of English, say, thinks by means of English mental sentences
and whether or not there is some one language of thought or many. Assuming that to believe
(hope/doubt/etc.) that snow is white requires bearing a certain relationship to a certain brain
state, I take myself to have committed myself to nothing further by calling the relevant
representation a sentence. Such sentences may or not be part of a unique mentalese, they may or
may not be compositional, they may or may not be isomorphic (in a strong sense) to what they
represent, etc. All that I will be assuming is that for a cognizer to bear an attitude to a content
requires that there be some vehicle which bears that content for that cognizer and that such
vehicles actually be part of the physical make-up of the cognizers who entertain them. To what
extent mental sentences are like their counterparts in the more familiar public languages, call
these latter sentences linguistic sentences, is being left open. It should be noted that in making
this move, I am assuming mental representationalism. This assumption is essential for the
following discussion, though, in the end, I remain agnostic about its ultimate status.
There are a number of very striking similarities between mental content and linguistic
content (meaning). It is a commonplace to hold that linguistic sentences are semantically
structured, their contents depending in systematic ways on the contents of their parts. Taking
content to include both the notions of sense and semantic value, this is the net effect of the
compositionality principles SV2 and S5 discussed above. Now mental sentences are like
linguistic ones at least to the extent that they have content. It would seem, then, that if it makes
sense to carve up the content of linguistic sentences into sense and reference, then it would also
make sense to do so with respect to mental ones. Mental sentences can be true or false and we
can refer to things in thought. As in the case of linguistic sentences, the sense of mental words
and sentences might be understood as being constituted by the way in which the referents and
truth-values of our mental sentences are given to us. Furthermore, sense and semantic value, in
the case of mental sentences, would have to be just as compositional as they are for linguistic
sentences. To this extent, thought and language must mirror one another. Any reason for
27
When necessary, I shall follow common practice and use single quotes to refer to linguistic expressions and
vertical strokes to refer to the corresponding expressions of mentalese, e.g., |cat| is that mentalese expression which
corresponds, or is most similar in content, to the English expression ‘cat’.
23
thinking that a linguistic sentence is semantically complex would also be easily transformable
into a reason for thinking that mental sentences must be complex. Thus, just as we can speak of
linguistic sentences as being composed of logically or grammatically significant parts (words for
short), we can also so speak of mental sentences.28
All of this strongly suggests that there is some systematic connection between the two
kinds of content.29 Indeed, it would be extremely surprising if linguistic meaning and mental
content were completely independent phenomena. This raises a very deep question in
philosophy: must our understanding of the mental go through the linguistic, or must we start with
the mental and then deal with the linguistic? Or perhaps the mental and the linguistic will need
to be explained simultaneously.
Many philosophers during the twentieth century assumed (some argued) that the true
direction of explanation is from the linguistic to the mental. It is one of the virtues of Frege’s
solution to the Problem of Substitutivity that it dovetails nicely with the common-sense
understanding of our mental lives. What this might suggest is that a theory of sentence meaning
will shed light on the propositional attitudes, since, at least on Frege’s account, that to which we
bear the relation of believing, wishing, etc. will be identical to the sense expressed by some
corresponding sentence. The proposition expressed by the sentence ‘Duke will win the
championship’ is what it is that I believe when I believe that Duke will win the championship,
i.e., when I token a mental sentence with that specific content. So, one might think that by
shedding light on the problem of sentence content, in particular, on sense, one would thereby
also shed light on the problem of mental content—to say what it is for a linguistic sentence to
28
Furthermore, the type/token distinction can, and should, be drawn with respect to mental words and sentences, as
it is with linguistic ones. Tokens, of either the mental or linguistic, are datable, locatable entities with their own
histories and causal powers. Types, on the other hand, have none of these features. They are not causally
efficacious, they do not have histories, and they cannot be located in space or time. Types are, of course, tokened in
space and time, but they are not themselves to be found there. Several speakers can token linguistic expressions of
the same type, just as, one would think, several different thinkers can token mental sentences of the same type.
29
There are, of course, some important disanalogies between mental representation and linguistic meaning. To
begin with, many words in our public languages are assigned a sense, and thus a semantic value, as a matter of
convention. With mental expressions, on the other hand, it is hard to see how convention could play any such role.
There is also the fact that linguistic expressions are relatively familiar kinds of objects. We all know what they
“look” like and most people have relatively little trouble re-identifying them. With respect to mental expressions, on
the other hand, nobody really knows what they are like or how to identify them. Crucially, it is doubtful that we can
identify them independently of their content, as we can with linguistic expressions. Finally, mental representation
seems to have a more direct role to play in understanding intentional explanations of behavior, while linguistic
content seems to have a more direct role in understanding communication.
24
have content will provide one with the resources to explain mental content.
Incidentally, even if the direction of illumination should not proceed from language to
mind, but in the reverse direction, or even if neither language nor mind is explanatorily prior to
the other—both needing to be explained simultaneously, if the above connection between mental
and linguistic content is correct, then results concerning either would have deep significance for
the other. For example, arguments to the conclusion that there really can be no such thing as
linguistic content (mental content) would immediately transform themselves into arguments
against the possibility of mental content (linguistic content), and vice versa.30 This alone would
be an extremely important result.
Individualism and the Mental Before moving on to discuss one particularly influential
theory of mental content, I would like to mention what was, relatively recently, an almost
ubiquitous feature of theories of mental representation: semantic individualism. Very generally
speaking, we might characterize the doctrine as follows:
(IND) The property of a mental representation (of a cognizer A) bearing a certain content
supervenes over properties intrinsic to A.31
30
Both Donald Davidson and Paul Boghossian argue that linguistic and mental content are mutually interdependent
in this way. Davidson says, “interpreting an agent’s intentions, his beliefs and his words are parts of a single
project, no part of which can be assumed to be complete before the rest is. If this is right, we cannot make the full
panoply of intentions and beliefs the evidential base for a theory of radical interpretation”, Davidson (1973), p. 127,
and elsewhere he adds, “A speaker who holds a sentence to be true on an occasion does so in part because of what
he means, or would mean, by an utterance of that sentence, and in part because of what he believes. If all we have
to go on is the fact of honest utterance, we cannot infer the belief without knowing the meaning, and have no chance
of inferring the meaning without the belief”, Davidson (1974), p. 142. Likewise, Boghossian says, “There would
appear to be no plausible way to promote a language-specific meaning skepticism. On the Gricean picture, one
cannot threaten linguistic meaning without threatening thought content, since it is from thought that linguistic
meaning is held to derive; and on the [Dummettian] picture, one cannot threaten linguistic meaning without thereby
threatening thought content, since it is from linguistic meaning that thought content is held to derive. Either way,
[mental] content and [linguistic] meaning must stand or fall together”, Boghossian (1989), p. 510. Elsewhere, he
says that the “real difficulty with the suggestion that one may sustain differential attitudes toward mental and
linguistic content stems from the fact that the best arguments for the claim that nothing mental possesses content
would count as equally good arguments for the claim that nothing linguistic does [and vice versa]. For these
arguments have nothing much to do with the items being mental [or linguistic] and everything to do with their being
contentful: they are considerations of a wholly general character, against the existence of items individuated by
content”, Boghossian (1990), p. 171.
31
A property P supervenes over properties N1, . . . , Nn just in case any change vis-à-vis some thing’s having P
necessitates some change in that thing’s having N1, . . . , Nn.
25
For example, when Judy has the thought that today is Sunday she tokens some mental sentence,
viz., |Today is Sunday|, and that sentence bears the content that today is Sunday. An account of
mental representation that is individualistic will hold that that fact—the fact of that mental
representation having the content that it does—supervenes over properties that, as it were, stop at
Judy’s skin, e.g., properties concerning her neurophysiology or her brain chemistry. The
supervening fact does not supervene over any relational properties of Judy, and in particular,
ones that relate her to her external environment. On such a view, meaning is “in the head”.32
One reason for supposing that mental content must be individualistic in this way is that
reference to mind-world relations seems to be explanatorily superfluous when it comes to
explaining behavior. When we try to explain why Judy walked into her closet, we might just
point out that she wants to look nice whenever she goes to church and that she believes that she
will be attending church today, that her Sunday dress is in the closet, and that by putting on that
dress, she will look nice. In saying this, we will be saying that she has tokened the mental
sentences |I will be attending church today|, |My Sunday dress is in the closet|, |By putting on
that dress, I will look nice|, and |I will look nice whenever I go to church |, and that she believes
that the first three are true and desires that the third be made true. Must we also assume that the
expressions that make up these sentences are related to the world in any particular way? Will it
strengthen the explanation, for example, to suppose that |Sunday dress| is actually linked to
Sunday dresses in some appropriate (perhaps causal) way? Well, what difference could such a
connection have for Judy’s behavior? Does the connection cause the behavior, or is it Judy’s
belief that there is such a connection (if she even has such a belief) that matters for her behavior.
There are strong intuitions out there (motivated by Putnam’s Twin-Earth considerations, which
will be discussed below) that had she been in a completely different but sufficiently similar
32
A classic argument against individualism can be found in Burge (1979). There, Burge offers his well-known
tharthritis thought-experiment. We are asked to imagine someone, Jones say, who, while having a large number of
correct beliefs about arthritis, incorrectly believes that he has arthritis in his thigh (as we all know, however, arthritis
actually only affects the joints). When his doctor informs him that the pain in his knee is arthritis but that the pain in
his thigh is not—because arthritis only occurs in the joints—he accepts the doctor’s assertion and gives up this
particular belief. The intuition is that Jones’ false belief was genuinely about arthritis. Now imagine the
counterfactual situation in which Jones has the exact same physical history from the moment of his birth until the
encounter with his doctor but in which ‘arthritis’ is used by doctors to refer arthritis as well as to a variety of other
rheumatoid ailments outside of the joints, including the thigh. In this counterfactual situation, what Jones expresses
to the doctor is true. What this seems to show is that the content of some person’s thought, in this case Jones’
mental sentence |I have arthritis in my thigh|, might be different in different possible worlds even though all
properties intrinsic to that person are the same—all that has changed are features that person’s external environment.
26
environment, she would have tried to do the same thing provided that her total psychology was
the same. Such external relationships are often thought to be explanatorily superfluous, not
because it is held that nothing external could play any causal role in producing her actions, but
because no particular such relationship between a mental expression and extra-mental things and
properties seems to be necessary or sufficient to produce the behavior to be explained (the TwinEarth considerations are supposed to show that they are not necessary, while the fact that belief
matters for behavior shows that they are not sufficient).
Another worry might be that including such external relationships in the causes of
behavior threatens the very picture that the theory of mental representation is supposed to
preserve. The idea is that the only way to see ourselves as agents while at the same time seeing
our behavior as caused is to see our behavior as caused in the right way. The demands of agency
pressure us into seeing the relevant causal mechanisms as being completely internal, otherwise
something external to us would be partly responsible for our actions. Since agency also requires
action from a reason, the causal mechanisms must involve mental representations, but since
those causal mechanisms must also be completely internal, no appeal to representation/externalworld relationships can be made. Such relationships are simply not sufficiently local to ground a
genuine notion of agency. What are sufficiently local are the happenings in a person’s head, i.e.,
the properties of her mind/brain that are intrinsic to her.
So, there are some compelling reasons to see at least mental content as individualistic.
Given the resurgence, beginning in the mid-1950’s, of psychologistic theories of linguistic
meaning, many have also been inclined to see linguistic meaning as individualistic as well.
Broadly speaking, psychologistic theories seek to explain meaning itself by reference to the
psychological (or physical, in the case of the non-eliminative physicalist) states of individual
speakers/thinkers. They begin with the psychological states of individual language users and
attempt to reconstruct a notion of public linguistic meaning on this basis. The route to such a
destination typically goes through the intermediate step of defining, for the individual language
user A, the notion of an expression’s meaning such and such for A (speaker’s meaning). The
definition of this notion will be given more or less directly in terms of the psychological states of
A alone, where some account is then offered of the non-derived content of mental
representations—the content of a mental state being non-derived if its content is not inherited
from some other type of representation. Armed with the resulting notion of speaker’s meaning,
27
the strategy then is to define (timeless and public) linguistic meaning in terms of it. Anchored as
it is on the various psychological states of individual language users, the final account of public
meaning would clearly be psychologistic in nature. Even when linguistic meaning is explained
in this way, however, it may nonetheless turn out to be non-individualistic, if the underlying
notion of mental content is, but linguistic meaning would be individualistic, if mental content is.
It might be thought that if IND is true and linguistic content does derive from mental
content, then speakers must know what they mean by their use of their own terms. After all, if
what I mean by an utterance reduces to (or supervenes on) my psychological states, then what I
mean must be open to me on reflection, since what desires, beliefs, etc. I have will be open to me
on reflection. So, it is natural to think that if one buys into the transparency of the mental
(Cartesian introspectionism), then a semantic individualist must also be a semantic
introspectionist. In other words, IND might be thought to entail
INT
What is meant by someone’s, A’s, competent use of some expression is fully open
to introspection by A.
This, however, would be a mistake. Even if one accepts both the transparency of the mental and
IND, one need not also accept INT. First, if speaker’s meaning supervenes on one’s mental
states, but does not reduce to them, then the entailment will fail, since it is in general false that
what supervenes on something else will have all of the properties of that something else—the
Indiscernibility of Identicals simply fails when the relation in question is supervenience, rather
than the stronger one of identity. But even when reduction is at issue, the entailment fails. On a
weak reading, the thesis of the transparency of the mental says only that when an individual has
some belief, desire, etc., that individual can, upon reflection, know that she has that belief,
desire, etc. It is fully compatible, however, to hold that an individual can know that she bears a
certain cognitive relation to a particular representation whenever she does bear such a relation,
even though the content of that representation is not fully transparent to her. To generate the
desired entailment, what also needs to be assumed is that mental content is also transparent, that
is, one needs to supplement IND, and the transparency of the mental, with a mental version of
semantic introspectionism. Of course, such a thesis might be part of a strong reading of the
transparency of the mental, and if so, then, provided that what a speaker means reduces to one’s
28
mental states, IND does entail INT. In any case, an individualist need (and probably should) be
neither a reductionist nor an introspectionist.33
The relevance of individualism to the Problem of Instability, and the Crack will figure
prominently in chapter 5.
Conceptual Role Semantics Most of the rest of this dissertation will be concerned with
a view that finds its immediate home in the theory of mental representation, but which is often
extended to do work in the theory of linguistic meaning as well. Those who do so extend the
view do so on the basis of the conviction that mental content is more fundamental than linguistic
content and that an adequate account of the latter must be built on the foundations of an account
of the former. As it is sometimes expressed, linguistic content is inherited content, being
inherited from mental content, which, of all kinds of content, is the only kind that is autonomous,
not having been inherited from anything else. I myself find this assumption dubious, but in what
follows I will allow it. Though I cannot argue this point here, I suspect that linguistic content
must be taken as fundamental or as at least on a par with mental content. In any case, since I do
believe that there will unavoidably be some deep connection between the two types of content, I
take it that the results established later concerning conceptual role semantics (CRS) will have
important consequences for the theory of linguistic meaning.
CRS takes much of its inspiration from the work of Quine and the later Wittgenstein. It
attempts to retain their insight that a meaningful part of a representational system (in their case, a
public language) must derive its meaning from its relationships to other parts of that system. As
they might put it, a sentence of English, say, has the particular content it does by virtue of its
relationship to the meanings of all (or many) of the other expressions of English or by virtue of
the role it plays in our social practices, which include our use of other expressions of English.
By seeing mental content as determined by conceptual role, which in turn is determined by
relationships between inner mental states, CRS theorists are able to preserve this insight while
also remaining realist about the mental. The idea here is that the content of some piece of mental
or linguistic syntax is individuated by the position it occupies in some system of representation.
This is an instance of a general, more or less holistic, strategy of analysis whereby some
33
I take it that even though one could, strictly speaking, hold INT without also accepting IND, any such position
would be wildly implausible. Such a position would have to attribute to speakers nearly godlike powers of direct
intuition into external affairs.
29
problematic class of entities (or properties) P are given individuation-conditions by identifying
them with nodes in a structure, where these nodes are defined by identifying (i) some relevant
class of relatively unproblematic entities U, (ii) a set of properties P1, P2, . . . Pn and relations R1,
R2, . . ., Rn defined over that the members of U, and (iii) specifying individuation-conditions for
the members of P in terms of (i) and (ii) (in what follows, I will refer to this as the QW
pattern/schema). Alternatively, one might identify certain properties (such as that of expressing
the proposition that the cat is on the mat) of the members of U in the same structural way. As is
well-known, Quine defines the stimulus meaning of an expression for a speaker in terms of all of
the sensory stimulations that prompt assent by that speaker to a sentence and all of those which
prompt dissent from it. Here, sensory stimulations and sentences are the members of U, while
assenting to and dissenting from are the relations R1, R2, . . ., Rn in terms of which the relevant
structures (sets, for Quine) are defined. Quine, then, instantiates the above schema, but he is a
behaviorist, because he does not allow inner mental states (mental representations) into U.
Given his aversion to the mental and his willingness to allow at least stimulus-meaning to our
linguistic expressions, it is clear that Quine sees linguistic content as being fundamental, albeit
trivially.34
CRS theorists, on the other hand, typically adopt a mentalistic stance on the above
priority question. Unlike Quine, they are not squeamish about allowing inner mental states
(mental sentences) into U. CRS theorists then typically go on to explain the meaningfulness of a
linguistic token by seeing it as correlated (in some way to be specified/discovered later) with
34
Quine’s version of verificationism is closely tied to his linguistic behaviorism. For him, the meaning of a
sentence is its method of verification. Method of verification for a speaker, however, can be understood in terms of
the class of all inferences that that speaker would take as confirming that sentence in the light of various sensory
stimulations. Furthermore, for Quine, such inferences are to be understood as dispositions to assent to or dissent
from the sentence under certain sensory stimulations. So, for Quine, the meaning of a sentence, or what is left once
all of our ordinary notions regarding meaning have been purged of their metaphysical demons, are dispositions that
yield a certain behavioral output given various sensory inputs. But this kind of account removes all talk of mental
states. Indeed, this is one of the hallmarks of behaviorism—it disparages mental states, insofar as they are internal
states distinct from dispositions to behave under various sensory stimulations, as metaphysical fictions. Many,
however, have seen this as a central defect of extreme behaviorism. CRS is a kind of functionalism, which builds on
behaviorism without giving in to its anti-mentalism. Functionalism is attractive because while preserving the
intuitively plausible connection between our mental states and our behavior, it does not simply reduce them to it.
For the behaviorist, there simply are no mental states that are hidden from public view—no mysterious, inner
happenings for which the only kind of direct access is first-person access (a functionalist, of course, need not be
committed to this conception of mental states as private and cognitively transparent to their bearers). The
functionalist, on the other hand, allows that mental states are essentially connected to our behavior but also allows
that they are really there over and above our dispositions to overt behavior. A mental state is individuated by certain
of our dispositions, but only partially—they are also individuated, in part, by their relations to other mental states.
30
tokens of mentalese, which latter derive their content from their role in the conceptual
(cognitive) functioning of the individual who tokened the original expression. Finally, meaning
for linguistic expression-types is analyzed in terms of the tokenings of those sentences by
individual speakers. This approach, then, ultimately takes linguistic meaning as being
metaphysically dependent on mental content—the meaning of a public sentence being in the end
determined by the conceptual role of the relevant mental representation.35 Thus, in what follows,
I shall take CRS to be a thesis about both mental and linguistic content.
Clearly, the key notion for the CRS theorist is that of conceptual role. But how should
this notion be understood, and what are the primary bearers of conceptual roles? Taking the
second question first, CRS theorists generally identify mental sentences as the ultimate bearers of
conceptual roles. The conceptual roles of non-sentential (mental) expressions, by contrast, are
viewed as abstractions from, or theoretical constructions upon, the conceptual roles of (mental)
sentences, and, as already mentioned, the conceptual role of a linguistic sentence is derived from
the conceptual role of some corresponding mental sentence. But for the addition of items of
mentalese into U, the CRS theorist’s understanding of conceptual role is actually quite similar to
Quine’s understanding of stimulus-meaning. Sensory inputs, motor outputs, and mental
sentences are taken to be the relevant members of U. For some suitably chosen class of
relations, it is the sum total of such relations that a particular mental sentence bears to every
other mental sentence, sensory input, and motor output that determines the content of that
sentence. Probably since these relations always have at least one sentence as a relatum and since
the relationships are meant to be cognitive in nature, the structuring relations in question are
assumed to be inferential (CRS theorists often use ‘inferential role’ and ‘conceptual role’
interchangeably). Whether or not all of the inferential relations that we intuitively recognize
should be included and exactly how the notion of inference is itself to be understood are further
questions upon which CRS theorists themselves sometimes disagree. Generally speaking,
35
The view described here matches, in broad outline, that of Harman (1968), (1974), (1975a), (1975b), (1982), and
(1993). He characterizes CRS as being committed to two claims: “(1) the meanings of linguistic expressions are
determined by the contents of the concepts and thoughts they can be used to express, and (2) the contents of
concepts and thoughts are determined by their functional role in a person’s psychology,” Harman (1982), p. 242.
Other notable advocates for the view include Field (1977) and (1978), Loar (1981) and (1982), McGinn (1982),
Block (1986), and Lycan (1988). In truth, however, not every CRS theorist sees the connection as being this
straightforward. Block, for one, allows that an account of mental representation may not be adequate to ground an
account of linguistic content. For expository purposes, I shall assume that the version of CRS described here is
genuinely representative.
31
however, it is often supposed that the relevant conception of inference should be as liberal as
possible (including even mere psychological associations) and that, in the end, the notion of
inference should be given a causal analysis.
With this much background, we can now sharpen our understanding of conceptual role
somewhat. Taking the notion of inference for granted and construing inferences as kinds of
ordered pairs, we can define an inference to a mental sentence S by an individual A as an ordered
pair of which a tokening of S (in the psychology of A) is the second element and of which the
first element is either a tokening of some other mental sentence (in A’s psychology) or some
sensory input such that the latter causes S. An inference from a mental sentence S can likewise
be defined as an ordered pair of which the first element is a tokening of S and the second element
is either a tokening of another mental sentence or some sensory output such that S causes the
latter. Of course, a speaker might be disposed to make certain inferences from or to S even
though he has never tokened (or will never token) S. This will be the case when the speaker is in
an internal state such that tokening S (or some mental sentence of sensory input) would be
causally sufficient for tokening the relevant mental sentence or sensory output (S).
As was mentioned above, there is a serious issue concerning which inferences to and
from S should seen as meaning-constitutive for S. We might say that those inferences to and
from S which are meaning-constitutive for S are just the analytic inferences for S. Whether there
is some non-circular, yet informative way of specifying these inferences is a fundamental
question in semantics and one to which we shall return in what follows. I shall assume, for now
at least, that there is some non-circular way of specifying which inferences are analytic and
which are not, i.e., one that does not make an appeal to the inference’s being meaningconstitutive. The inferential role of a mental sentence S (for a specific cognizer A) may then be
defined as the set of ordered pairs O, such that O is either an analytic inference from S or an
analytic inference to S, and A is disposed to accept O. Of course, unless one is willing to accept
that every inference to or from S that A is disposed to accept is analytic and thus part of S’s
inferential role, some significant analytic/synthetic distinction will have to be recognized, even if
no criterion is actually specified.
With the notion of a sentence’s inferential role now available, we may define conceptual
role for both sentences and non-sentential expressions. Though there is a genuine issue
concerning whether a sentence’s conceptual role should be identified with its inferential role, I
32
will suppose in what follows that it should. I make this assumption only for ease of exposition;
none of the conclusions drawn in what follows depend on making it. Given this conception of
conceptual role for sentences, it is now possible to define the conceptual role of a non-sentential
expression E as the set of conceptual roles (sets of ordered pairs representing inferential
dispositions) of all sentences of which E is a constituent.
What reasons might one have for accepting some version of CRS? Block (1986)
launches what seems to me the most compelling defense of the doctrine. He does so by
enumerating a wide range of explanatory desiderata that, collectively, CRS apparently best
satisfies. According to him, an acceptable theory of content should:
D1
explain the relation between content and semantic-value/truth,
D2
explain what makes contentful expressions contentful,
D3
explain the relativity of content to representational system,
D4
explain compositionality,
D5
fit in with an account of the relation between content and the mind/brain,
D6
illuminate the relation between autonomous and inherited content,
D7
explain the connection between knowing, learning, and using an expression, and the
expression’s content, and
D8
explain why different aspects of content are relevant in different ways to the
determination of reference and to psychological explanation.36
36
Loc. cit., pp. 82-4.
33
Though I cannot discuss how CRS might handle each of these demands, I will comment briefly
on a couple of them.
In particular, I would like to point out that an issue which seems to have been one of the
main sources of embarrassment for the classical truth-conditional accounts of meaning is nicely
handled by CRS, viz., D7. Standard truth-conditional accounts have had a considerable amount
of difficulty explaining in what a speaker’s grasp of the meaning of a linguistic expression
consists—that is, of explaining the relationship between meaning and understanding.
For the truth-conditionalist, the sense/content of a sentence is to be identified with that
sentence’s truth-condition. Davidson, for example, holds that the truth-condition of a sentence
like ‘Snow is white’ is given by the corresponding “T-sentence”, in this case, by a sentence like
‘‘Snow is white’ is true in English if and only if snow is white’. Thus, knowing the meaning of
the former requires knowing that the T-sentence is true. But how is such knowledge to be
understood? Dummett has complained that this picture leads to a vicious regress if the
knowledge in question is thought to be explicit knowledge, rather than tacit knowledge.37 In
such a case, explicit knowledge of the meaning of ‘Snow is white’ amounts to explicit
knowledge of the truth of its T-sentence. But what about this latter bit of explicit knowledge?
Shouldn’t it also amount to explicit knowledge of its T-sentence, which amounts to explicit
knowledge of its T-sentence, and so on?
A Davidsonian, however, need not see such knowledge as being explicit. For him,
knowing that the T-sentence is true need only be tacit knowledge on the part of the speaker and
this requires only knowing how the T-sentence is derived from the finitely axiomatized theory of
truth for the relevant object language. This requirement seems completely natural, since
knowing the meaning of ‘Snow is white’ requires that one know how its meaning is
systematically dependent on both its structure and the meanings of its parts, and it precisely this
which is modeled by the derivation of the T-sentence from the right axiomatic base. Knowledge
of the T-sentence, then, is manifested by the ability to derive the right theorem in a theory of
truth (this is, of course, a highly idealized picture of most speakers’ actual linguistic knowledge).
This ability, however, requires two things: (i) knowledge of the relevant axioms, and (ii) enough
logical sophistication to allow one to move from these axioms to the relevant T-sentence. Must
37
See, for example, Dummett (1975) and (1976).
34
either of these be explicit knowledge? If a Davidsonian theory of meaning does indeed model
what competent speakers know in knowing their language, then it is seems that neither the
knowledge of the axiomatic base nor of how to construct derivations from the relevant axioms to
a particular T-sentence can be explicit, since most ordinary speakers clearly do not have explicit
knowledge of either of things. Such knowledge, then, must be manifested in some other way,
perhaps in the observable behavior of competent speakers. If so, then the theory of truth, can be
taken as modeling what speakers tacitly know in knowing their language but not how they know
it.
It is at precisely this point where the trouble sets in for the truth-conditional theorist.
How is such tacit knowledge of axioms and derivations actually manifested by a competent
speaker? Answering this question without conceding too much to the verificationist (anti-realist)
has proved exceedingly difficult for the truth-conditionalist.38 Interestingly, when it comes to
semantically simple expressions, Frege can only offer the metaphor of a hand grasping some
physical object, a metaphor which raises more questions than it answers.39 The CRS theorist, on
the other hand, can more informatively say that grasping (knowing/understanding) the meaning
of some expression is a matter of tokening the conceptual-role type that constitutes the meaning
of that expression. If sense can be made of the idea of something being a token of some type,
then CRS has a ready and straightforward answer to demand D7.
It would be a mistake, however, to take this as speaking directly against truth-conditional
theories, since it is still in the cards that a CRS might be offered as an account of truth-conditions
or of how they are determined or of how they are grasped, so that CRS might be viewed as
complementing classical Tarski-Davidson semantics. What is not still in the cards, however, is
the assumption, sometimes made by truth-conditionalists, that knowing the meaning of a
linguistic sentence is always a matter of having explicit knowledge of its truth-conditions—
knowledge the content of which is expressed by that sentence’s T-sentence—and that having
such explicit knowledge requires grasping the proposition expressed by that T-sentence either
directly or indirectly through an explicit knowledge of the relevant axioms and inferential
38
These issues are explored in Davies (1986), Dummett (1975) and (1976), Evans (1981), and Wright (1986).
39
Frege , (1893), pp. 23-4. To Frege’s credit, however, he is acutely aware of the limits of the metaphor and does
attempt to say a little more about the relation, cf., for example, Frege (1918-19a), pp. 368-72; in the end, however,
he seems to view the matter as one properly left for psychology. I will return to this issue in chapter 5.
35
procedures. So, a truth-conditionalist might accept CRS provided that she does not take all
linguistic knowledge to lie in the possession of further (explicit) linguistic knowledge (the
viciousness of the regress, I take it, is apparent). In any case, most CRS theorists would not
make this mistake, since they are committed to the priority of the mental over the linguistic.
Rather, they would see such explicit knowledge as lying in the tokening of a mental sentence
with the same content as the relevant linguistic T-sentence. On such a view, CRS would stand as
a valuable addition to the classical accounts in that it would provide a compelling story about
how various abstracta, such as meanings, truth-conditions, etc., might be grasped by a mind
which is in the end both finite and physical in nature. That CRS might also enjoy this particular
virtue is precisely the point of desideratum D5. To claim this particular victory, however, it is
imperative that a fully worked out CRS have something to say about how the abstract contents
grasped by the mind determine semantic-values/truth-values, that is, it must satisfy D1 as well as
how the relevant internal structures determine those abstract contents.
Furthermore, D2 is satisfied by CRS insofar as what makes a meaningful expression
meaningful (for a particular speaker) is that it plays the appropriate kind of general causal role in
that person’s psychology.40 It is doubtful that every causal role will do, however, so it will be a
substantive question just what kinds of causal roles to count as appropriate for the status of
conceptual role. For example, |Cats are moody creatures| and |’Twas brillig, and the slithy
toves/Did gyre and gimble in the wabe| both seem to have their own distinct causal roles, in my
psychology at least. The trouble is that while the first has a content, and thus must, according to
CRS, have a conceptual role, the second seems to have neither. It is possible, however, that
determining which types of causal role are appropriate and which are not may turn out to be a
substantive empirical question.
CRS, then, seems well-suited for meeting at least some of Block’s demands. Though I
will not elaborate on them here, the view does seem tailor-made to accommodate, D3, D5, D6,
and D8. The real trouble for CRS, however, concerns D1 and D4. As mentioned above, CRS
will have to say something regarding D1—CRS must allow that there is some important
connection between conceptual role and semantic value and it must give some idea of the nature
of the connection and how it is forged. Furthermore, since most theorists view compositionality
40
Block (1986), p. 114.
36
as “non-negotiable” (as Fodor likes to put it) for public as well as mental languages, a viable
CRS will have to accommodate this apparently indisputable feature of thought and talk.
Whether CRS can satisfy these demands raises difficult issues. Though I will say a little about
the relationship between conceptual role and semantic value in what immediately follows, the
bulk of my discussion of D1 and D4 will be postponed until chapters 3 and 4. For the rest of this
chapter, I would like to discuss the relationship between Frege’s views and CRS.
Conceptual Role and Fregean Sinn There is a tendency of viewing conceptual role as a
refinement of Frege’s conception of sense. Fodor and Lepore, for example, have recently seen
Frege as the fountainhead of what they call “New World Semantics” of which they regard CRS
as the latest incarnation; they contrast this with the “Old World Semantics” of Locke, Mill, and
themselves (among many others), according to which word-world relations are of a more-or-less
direct and causal/teleological nature.41 Whether or not, and if so, how much, Frege’s
conceptions and CRS should be seen as of a kin requires, of course, a much closer study of
Frege’s actual writings. We shall have occasion to return to this issue in chapter 5. For now,
however, I would like to raise some considerations which suggest at least a superficial similarity
in outlook.
Most superficially, perhaps, is the fact that Frege as well as the CRS theorists view
sentences as the primary units of meaning. That sentence-meaning is to be viewed as the central
notion in semantics is an explicit part of the CRS program. After all, it is, in the first instance,
mental sentences which have inferential, and thus conceptual, roles. Frege, of course, sees the
emphasis on sentences in semantics as so important that he cites it as one of three fundamental,
methodological principles guiding his work.42
More importantly, CRS theorists, like Frege, feel the need in semantics for a kind of
content distinct from, but complementary to, that of semantic value. What’s more, both require
that this additional notion be more fine-grained than that of semantic value, since both see this
notion as being needed to explain behavior as well as understanding, needs that cannot be served
by purely referential semantics. Frege took this to be the moral of his puzzle regarding cognitive
41
F&L (1991), pp. 142-6.
42
Frege (1884), x. Frege scholars have hotly debated both the proper interpretation of Frege’s so-called context
principle as well as its role in Frege’s thought after the introduction of the sense/semantic-value distinction in the
early 1890’s. I shall have nothing to say about these issues here, though I will return to them briefly in chapter 5.
37
significance as well as the related problem concerning substitutivity in contexts of propositional
attitude. In a similar vein, CRS theorists are impressed by the fact that is possible that two
sentences such as the following,
(1) I am about to get hit by a truck, and
(2) Adam Sipos is about to get hit by a truck,
even when fully understood and accepted as true by Adam Sipos, may nonetheless have different
effects on his behavior. Crucially, if the speaker is not in fact aware that he is Adam Sipos,
knowledge of which does not seem to be presupposed by an understanding of (2), then ceteris
paribus an acceptance of (1) will very likely have Adam Sipos’s moving as an effect (provided
that he is not suicidal), while an acceptance of (2) might have only some passing, but
unmotivating, sympathy as its effect. Along a similar vein, failure to move paired with a
sufficiently strong desire to stay alive and avoid injuries will ceteris paribus suggest a failure to
understand (1), though not necessarily (2), fully. It will have this latter effect only if the speaker
has a certain additional belief, viz., that he is Adam Sipos. The upshot is that since these
sentences, in the imagined context, pick out all of the same things in the world and are satisfied
by all and only the same states of affairs, there must be some differences in content that explain
these different effects. Since behavior and understanding are usually thought to be, among other
things, cognitive in nature, these differences must reflect some difference in the cognitive
contents of these sentences. The newly recognized contents will be more fine-grained than truthconditions, since in this case at least, the truth-conditions of (1) and (2) are the same even though
the relevant cognitive contents diverge. Furthermore, for Frege, as well as the CRS theorists,
understanding (1) and (2), i.e., knowledge of meaning, is explained as the obtaining of some
suitable relation between the cognizer in question and the cognitive content possessed by the
relevant sentence; for Frege, the relation was that of grasping (S1 from above), while for the
CRS theorist, it is a matter of the instantiation (tokening) of the right structural type in the
psychology of the speaker. Once again, CRS improves on the original Fregean conception by
substituting an illuminating and theoretically satisfying picture for what was only an obscure
38
metaphor. Of course, one might view this as a refinement rather than a genuine alternative while
seeing in CRS a modern-day Fregeanism.
More importantly still, an essential feature of CRS, viz., that the contents of the attitudes
are individuated by their relative positions in the right causal/inferential structures, has, for some
at least, appeared to be a salient aspect of Frege’s conception of sense. This is so in at least two
different respects. First, Frege’s view is arguably an instance of the QW-schema. In Frege’s
early writings, for example, when he first embarks on his logicist project, we find him urging
that a necessary part of the general project of laying out the conceptual/cognitive content of our
arithmetical talk, in particular, and of any branch of science, in general, is the construction of a
begriffsschrift in which the relevant vocabulary can be situated. It is a begriffsschrift, or a
conceptual notation, because it is intended to display clearly the conceptual contents of the
situated vocabulary. What motivates this methodological move, as Frege sees it, is the idea that
any two sentences which can figure in all of the same inferences will have the same cognitive
content.43 The kind of content he is interested in circumscribing, if it is to be cognitive in nature,
need only be sufficient to underwrite all of those inferences in which the language in question
might figure. Properties of an expression that do not have any bearing of the inferential behavior
of an expression are not, properly speaking, part of that expression’s conceptual/cognitive
content.44 This is just to say, however, that one cannot display the conceptual content of an
expression without also displaying certain of its inferential connections to other expressions.
Frege’s views on content, then, seem to exhibit the QW pattern described above, a feature
essential to CRS. The second respect concerns the role of sense, and conceptual role, in oldfashioned belief-desire (intentional) explanation. Frege explicitly identifies the semantic values
of the embedded sentences in attitude reports (the phrase following the ‘that’ in sentences such
as ‘Bart believes that Snowball ate his goldfish’) with the ordinary senses of those sentences.
This is his well-known solution to the Problem of Opacity, and what it means is that Frege’s
43
Frege (1897), p. 12.
44
To be sure, Frege had not yet distinguished between sense and semantic value, but even when he would go on to
do so, one finds basically the same motivation for the begriffsschrift. In any case, Frege himself saw his
sense/semantic-value distinction as merely separating out different aspects of what he had always unconsciously
grouped together under the label ‘content’ (see, for example, Frege (1892b), p. 187). Given this, it would not be
implausible to suggest that when he was discussing an expression’s inferential properties as forming a part of that
expression’s content it was that part of that expression’s content that he would later call its sense.
39
senses are directly relevant to psychological explanation, since the objects of the attitudes,
according to Frege’s view, are just senses of a certain kind. CRS theories, of course, are
designed specifically with psychological explanation in mind.
So, it is at least arguable that Frege’s conception of sense has some features essential to
conceptual role. Conversely, there is a property essential to Fregean Sinn that is arguably also a
feature of conceptual role, or at least is a feature that most CRS theorist would like to be able to
ascribe to it. Frege, recall, defines sense as that part of the content of an expression that
determines the semantic value of that expression (S from above). If CRS is to be taken seriously
as an articulation of Fregean Sinn, then there must be some connection between an expression’s
conceptual role and its semantic value—specifically, the latter must somehow be determined by
the former.
The trouble with this idea is that any straightforward connection between conceptual role
and semantic value seems to have been severed by Putnam’s Twin-Earth considerations.45
Putnam asks us to imagine two speech communities (in the same or different possible worlds),
Earth and Twin-Earth, say, such that for any member of either community there is a member of
the other community who is molecule-for-molecule type-identical to the first and whose
phenomenal experience exactly mimics that of the first. Furthermore, both communities speak
syntactically identical languages, English and Twin-English, say, even though one expressiontype, e.g., ‘water’, refers to H2O when tokened by English speakers but refers to some other
substance, XYZ, when tokened by Twin-English speakers. We are also to imagine that XYZ
happens to be perceptually identical to H2O and plays the same general role in the lives of TwinEarthians as H2O plays in the lives of Earthians. In fact, we are to suppose that the above
difference of microstructure is the only difference between Earth and Twin Earth. But given this
difference, an English tokening of a sentence like ‘This is water’ by Laura will have different
truth-conditions than the corresponding Twin-English tokening by Twin-Laura, since the former
is about H2O while the latter is about XYZ. By hypothesis, however, the physical constitution of
Laura’s brain is type-identical to that of Twin-Laura’s brain and they are in all of the same
phenomenal states. What this thought-experiment is supposed to show is that meaning simply
does not supervene on conceptual-role, since conceptual role is supposed to supervene on an
45
Cf. Putnam (1973) and (1975).
40
individual’s physical constitution (independently of context) and the same physical-constitutiontype in different contexts will be correlated with different truth-conditions. So, if we are to hold
on to the Fregean assumption that meaning determines semantic value and thus truth-conditions,
we must reject the CRS theorist’s identification of meaning with something that is “in the head”,
viz., conceptual role.
The moral is that either there must be some extra-psychological component to meaning, if
meaning is to have the connection to truth and reference that most theorists take it to have or
meaning (conceptual role) does not have that connection after all. I take it that a theory of
meaning (content), at the very least, must make intelligible the possibility of word-world
connections, and it is beginning to seem as if this is a task for which pure versions of CRS are
inherently unfit.
A number of CRS theorists have responded to this worry by observing two different
components to content: one broad, the other narrow.46 Broad content is that aspect of a
sentence’s content that is, or is relevant to the determination of, its truth-condition. Narrow
content, on the other hand, is the strictly organismic contribution to an expression’s content and
is that aspect of its content that is relevant to explaining behavior. It is the organismic
contribution in that it reduces to, or supervenes on, properties of the speaker/thinker that are
completely internal to him, or, as it is frequently expressed, that “stop at his skin.” It is this
component of an expression’s content that is claimed to be most fruitfully understood in terms of
the conceptual role story. Conceptual role is ideally suited for explaining behavior, and thus is
the natural candidate for narrow content.
What explains why Adam moved is the narrow, not the broad, content that (1) has for
him. (2), presumably, has the same broad content as (1), even though tokening a mental
representation with roughly the same content would not necessarily help to explain why he
moved. The interaction of the mental sentence having this narrow content with other mental
sentences having other narrow contents as well as desires with their own narrow contents
explains why Adam moved when he did. All of this taken along with certain assumptions about
the locality of causation has convinced many theorists that a sentence’s truth-condition is
46
Since there are a number of different two-factor accounts, this characterization is necessarily a simplification.
Examples of two-factor accounts have been offered by Field (1977) and (1978), Loar (1981) and (1982), McGinn
(1982), Block (1986), and Lycan (1988).
41
causally irrelevant to explaining behavior. Truth-conditions are, after all, external to thinkers,
whereas beliefs and desires, the things that common-sense psychology takes to cause our actions,
are internal to them. Though broad content is taken to be irrelevant to explaining behavior, it is
seen as needed for an account of communication. It is part of the two-factor approach that these
different theoretical tasks are to be accomplished by different components of an expression’s
content, rather than the same component, and it seems to be an article of faith of two-factor CRS
theorists that such factors can be sufficiently teased apart from one another to serve these
divergent theoretical needs. Two-factor CRS theorists might be claiming this dual explanatory
victory, however, at the expense of preserving any tidy connection between conceptual role and
truth-conditions. I will return to this issue in chapter 4.
Though two-factor theorists no longer recognize a direct connection between the two
factors, many have nonetheless conceded that there must be some sort of connection, though
perhaps of a less direct nature. Why does it seem that the two factors have come unstuck? First,
as Frege’s insights make clear, there cannot be a function from broad contents (truth-conditions)
to narrow contents; after all, (1) and (2) would presumably have the same broad contents but
different narrow ones. The Twin-Earth considerations, of course, show that there cannot be a
function going in the opposite direction. The two factors cannot be completely independent,
however, otherwise there would seem to be nothing to keep the conceptual role appropriate to
|Adam Sipos is about to get hit by a truck| and its truth-condition, viz., that Adam Sipos is about
to get hit by a truck, together. After all, if there is nothing that connects the two, then what stops
the above mental sentence from having the truth-condition that Adam Sipos is about to get hit by
a truck and a narrow content appropriate to something like |India is primarily a Hindu nation|.
One way to remedy this problem would be to see in narrow contents, not pure
determinants of broad contents, but instead functions from contexts to broad contents. It is
because my use of ‘water’ and Twin-Adam’s use of ‘water’ occur in different contexts that those
uses diverge in broad content, despite the identity of narrow content. The same narrow content,
then, determines different broad contents in different contexts. This seems to solve our
problem.47
47
Another solution along these lines is offered by Fodor (1987), chapter 2. Stalnaker (1989) raises difficulties for
this proposal. Loar (1981) and (1982), and Block (1986), especially pp. 108-9 and 132-5, also offer similar
solutions.
42
The main difficulty with this suggestion is that the designation of my use of ‘water’ is not
selectively sensitive to the background context in this way. If I were spontaneously relocated to
Twin-Earth, my utterance of ‘There is some water’ would not then have the same truth-condition
as it would if it were uttered by Twin-me. Nor would its truth-condition change if Twin-me were
spontaneously to find himself uttering that sentence here on Earth. In either case, the conceptual
role is the same, and the context is the same, but the truth-conditions are still different.48
Viewing narrow contents as functions from contexts to broad contents, then, is a dead
end. The main trouble with that suggestion was that you could find yourself in some strange
Twin-Earthian context, such that in that context, the locals’ use of ‘water’ (or tokening of |water|)
refers to XYZ, while yours still refers to H2O. By hypothesis, you and Twin-you associate the
same narrow content with ‘water’. Since the context was the same, narrow content cannot be a
function from context to broad content. Harman (1982), however, offers a simple remedy.
Perhaps it is the strangeness of the context that has caused things to go wrong. In other words,
perhaps narrow content is best understood, not as a function from contexts to broad contents, but
as a function from normal contexts to broad contents. Twin-Earth is not the normal context in
which you think and speak; perhaps after visiting for awhile this will change, but at least
initially, it is abnormal. Likewise, were Twin-you to come to Earth, his use of ‘water’ would
still initially refer to XYZ, since that is what it refers to in his normal context of thinking and
speaking. Eventually, Earth might become his normal context, in which case H2O would
become what his use of ‘water’ picks out.
This suggestion seems to get things right, but there are a couple of problems. First (and
this is a problem for the previous proposal as well), to say that narrow content is a function from
normal context (or just context, as the case may be) to broad content is to give only a partial
answer to Block’s D1. Explaining the relation between content and semantic value, or between,
narrow content and broad content, requires more than merely giving the structural answer that
there is a many-one (or one-one) relation that relates narrow contents and normal contexts to
broad contents. It is as if one stated that 5 is related by ƒ to 17. So far, all we know is that ƒ
relates 5 and 17, but we know almost nothing about the nature of ƒ. If we are then told that ƒ
yields 17 when 5 is taken as its argument, then all we learn is that ƒ is a kind of function. If we
want to learn something useful about ƒ, however, then we must be told the manner in which ƒ
48
Here I am assuming that a sentence’s broad content just is its truth-condition.
43
does this. It would be useful, for example, to know that the value of ƒ for a given argument is
obtained simply by adding 12 to that argument, or perhaps by multiplying it by 4 and then
subtracting 3, or even by subtracting that argument from 22, and so on. By describing how ƒ
yields its values, one will be saying something useful about the nature of ƒ.
Saying that ƒ is a
function is only a preliminary to this further task, albeit a necessary one, in that it determines
what kind of answer is needed. Similarly, saying that narrow content is a function from normal
context to broad content is not the final answer to D1—it is a preparation for one. It determines
the form that a more complete answer must take, and such an answer must go on to say how
sense determines semantic value, or how narrow content plus normal context determines broad
content. With this in mind, Harman’s suggestion counts as a structural answer to Putnam since it
tells us what form a final answer to Block’s D1 must take.
A second problem for Harman’s idea is that if it is to be of any use, that is, if it is to
permit an answer to this how-question, then it should be possible to say which contexts are
normal and which are not. But how is this to be done? One cannot say, on pain of circularity,
that normal contexts for the use of ‘water’, for example, are those contexts in which it has its
normal semantic value. Knowing what the normal semantic value for someone’s use of ‘water’
(or tokening of |water|) is presupposes some knowledge of which contexts are normal and which
are not. Likewise, one cannot say, now on pain of triviality, that a normal context for TwinAdam’s use of water is one in which his use of ‘water’ picks out XYZ. In this latter case, narrow
content actually does no work in determining broad content, since that is already done by the
context’s being normal. Additionally, normal contexts cannot be identified with possible worlds,
since Putnam’s thought experiments are usually explicitly formulated within a single world—
Twin Earth and Earth are supposed to occupy different regions of the same possible world. In
any case, there must be some way of distinguishing normal from abnormal contexts for the use
of some term (or for the tokening of some piece of mentalese) that does not depend on
information regarding the normal use of that term or eliminate the connection between narrow
and broad content.
Whether CRS can handle these problems and thus provide a satisfactory treatment of
Block’s D1 is a question to which I will return in what follows (in chapters 4 and 5). For now, it
is sufficient to point out that the ability of CRS to do so is frustrated somewhat by Putnamian
Twin-Earth considerations, which push the CRS theorist in the two-factor direction, and that one
44
result is that whatever connection is recognized by the CRS theorist will have to be somewhat
indirect. Later, in chapter 4, we shall reconsider the two-factor suggestion as a possible response
to two recent challenges to CRS (viz., the Problem of Instability and the Crack).
Though I have been entertaining a number of ways in which CRS might be seen as an
articulation of Frege’s notion of Sinn, it is important to keep in view some obvious differences.
First, Frege, unlike CRS, is primarily concerned with the semantics of public languages.
Treating linguistic content as derivative, CRS takes mental representation to be fundamental.
Whether Frege could accept this further aspect of CRS is a question to which we shall return in
chapter 5. An answer to it, however, depends crucially on whether there is a way to ground an
account of linguistic content on an account of mental representation that does not run afoul of
Frege’s anti-psychologism (partially encapsulated by S4 from above). A further way in which
the accounts may differ, and one which is relevant to resolving this question, is that, though both
accounts locate inferential relations as at least partially constitutive of an expression’s content,
CRS, unlike Frege’s account, incorporates a causal account of inference. Whether this move can
be understood as a refinement of Frege’s conception, and if so, as one that could in principle
have been adopted by Frege, or must be seen as a fairly deep difference of outlook will be
considered later in chapter 5. For example, if Frege’s account must take inference as a core
notion unsusceptible to further analysis, whereas CRS grounds inference on causal relations, then
this difference alone may be enough to put CRS on the naturalistic side of the fence, leaving
Frege on the other side. Later, however, I will argue that when we keep Frege’s general
metaphysic in mind, it is possible to give, on Frege’s behalf, a kind of causal account of the
inferential structures he viewed as content-constituting. Furthermore, such an account would
allow Frege to adopt the CRS expedient of grounding linguistic content on an account of mental
representation while staying true to the core of his anti-psychologism. It would do so, however,
at the cost of adopting a radically different conception of mental representation and, ultimately,
of the mind.
Here, then, is what we have: despite the above-noted (possible) differences, (a) both CRS
and Frege accord a central semantic role to sentences, (b) Fregean Sinn, like CRS, instantiates
the QW schema, (c) both theories take inferential relations as at least partially constitutive of the
conceptual/cognitive content of an expression, (d) conceptual role, like Fregean Sinn, is usually
thought to play a role in determining semantic-value, and (e) both conceptual role and Fregean
45
Sinn are meant to play a fundamental role in explaining behavior as well as understanding.
Given all of this, it seems plausible to view CRS as a sophisticated articulation of Frege’s
original idea. In the following three chapters, I will assume that this is correct in broad outline.
Later, in chapter 5, I will reconsider it in light of the results of chapters 2-4.
46
CHAPTER 2
SEMANTIC HOLISIM
AND
THE ARGUMENT FROM ANATOMICITY
Semantic Holism
For some time now, semantic holism, in one guise or another, has been an extremely
influential doctrine.49 Crudely put, it is the view that the meaning of an expression (sentential or
otherwise) of a language L (public or mental) is dependent, in some important sense, on the
meanings of every other expression in L—to change the meaning of any of them would ipso
facto be to change the meaning of all of them. This could, of course, stand some tightening.
In what follows, I have adopted F&L’s characterization.50 I have done so for two
reasons. First, while their account might not seem fully adequate (many have doubted that it is),
it does seem to capture the weakest condition that any theory must satisfy if it is to be properly
described as holistic. That is, any theory that really is holistic will have the feature they have
used to define holism (whether or not that feature really does go to the heart of holism). Since a
philosophically acceptable definition of holism, while nice to have, is not needed for my
purposes, it will do no harm to use the F&L characterization as a convenient proxy. Second, one
of my primary reasons for discussing semantic holism is to consider an argument F&L have
directed against CRS. Since the argument is theirs, it is only fair to stick with their notions.
Properties: Atomic, Anatomic, and Holistic Some properties are such that for some
one thing to have them, other things must have them as well. A simple example is the property
49
1953, which saw the appearance of both Quine’s “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” and Wittgenstein’s Philosophical
Investigations, was probably the single most important year for the doctrine. The philosophical world has been
recovering ever since.
50
The primary source here is F&L (1992).
47
of being a sibling. Clearly, I cannot be a sibling unless there is at least one other thing that is
also one. Equally clearly, there are properties that do not have this feature. For example, I can
be a brother even though there is no other thing that is also a brother—after all, I might have just
one sibling, who is also a female, and I might happen to be the only male left alive who is also a
sibling. Let us say that a property is anatomic just in case it has the first of the above features,
viz., just in case it would be impossible for just one thing to have it.51 When it is so possible, the
property in question will be called atomic.52 Being a brother, then, is atomic, while being a
sibling is anatomic.53
Some properties, however, are not only anatomic—they are really anatomic. In other
words, not only do they require that at least two things have the property if anything does, but
they require that everything (or at least lots of things), in the relevant class or system over which
the property is defined, has the property, if anything does.54 Consider the property of exerting
gravitational pull on x. Our current physics tells us that if any one physical thing has this
property, then everything capable of having it will as well—even those objects which are most
distantly related in space-time to x. Also, take the property of being ≤-comparable to x. This
51
‘molecular’ and ‘localistic’ are also frequently used in the literature. In what follows, I will use them (and their
cognates) interchangeably.
52
‘punctate’ is also frequently used in the literature. In what follows, I will use ‘atomic’ and ‘punctate’
interchangeably.
53
Socrates, in Plato’s Lysis, considers whether or not being a friend is anatomic when he asks the title character,
“Well, what about this: Isn’t it possible for someone who loves somebody not to be loved by him in return . . . Then
which is the friend of the other? Is the lover the friend of the loved, whether he is loved in return or not, or is even
hated? Or is the loved the friend of the lover? Or in a case like this, when the two do not both love each other, is
neither the friend of the other?”, Cooper (1997), p. 696 (my emphasis).
54
As Perry (1994) observes, there is some untidiness in this characterization. The problem lies in the parentheses (at
F&L (1992), p. 2, they actually admit as much). By hedging in this way, F&L are in effect requiring only that lots
of things have a property if anything does for that property to be holistic (Ibid., p. 206): call this lotsism. In their
introduction, however, they also say that if something has a holistic property, then endlessly many things do (Ibid.,
p. 2): call this position endlessism. At another point, they suggest that for any one thing to have a holistic property
practically all of the things in the relevant class must have it (Ibid., p. 9): call this position practically allism.
Finally, it might be required that for a property to be holistic, everything (of the relevant class of things) must have it
if anything does: call this position extreme holism. I think it is fairly clear that these are different doctrines of
differing strengths. Although F&L might think that they can safely vacillate between these various formulations of
holism, Perry rightly points out that they cannot. The trouble is that neither lotsism nor endlessism saddles holism
with the Problem of Instability (to be discussed in the next chapter). Since F&L do think that holism has an
instability problem and since part of their overall argument requires that it does, lotsism and endlessism are not in
the cards. This leaves practically allism and extreme holism. To simplify the following discussion, I shall identify
semantic holism with extreme holism. Nothing, beyond ease of exposition, is gained by doing so.
48
property is such that if any one natural number has it, then all of them do. Call such properties
that hold of everything (of a domain) if they hold of anything (of that domain) holistic. Exerting
gravitational pull on something and being ≤-comparable, then, are not just anatomic, but they
are holistic as well.
Many deep and interesting problems in philosophy can be understood as concerning
whether or not some property or another is or is not holistic. It was once fashionable to hold, for
example, that knowledge is holistic—one simply could not know any one proposition without
knowing all of them (the true ones at least).55 Another holistic doctrine concerns causal holism.
Here, the idea is that if anything is causally relevant to some event then everything is. Physical
reality, on this picture, forms a highly interconnected causal hole—one can single out particular
causal relationships only relative to various of one’s subjective interests, and to single them out
absolutely is to do so at one’s own peril.
In any event, many holistic theses strike us as exciting (whether or not they also strike us
as plausible), and this is certainly because we perceive that if sustainable, such theses will likely
yield substantial philosophical payoffs. The same, of course, can be said for semantic holism,
i.e., the thesis that various (generic) semantic properties are holistic in nature. Examples of such
properties might include being meaningful (having a sense), have a particular sense, having a
reference, is-a-translation-of-a-Russian-sentence, being-a-belief-of-Jones, etc. Given the
systematic interrelations between these properties, one might very well suspect that if any of
them are holistic then all of them are, i.e., that the property of being holistic is itself holistic over
(generic) semantic properties, but I will not explore this here.
As mentioned above, holism about any particular semantic notion is just one extreme of a
continuum of possible positions. The other extreme, for any particular such notion, will be
semantic atomism. For any particular semantic property F, F is atomic just in case for any
expression E of language L, E’s having F does not entail that any other expression of L has F. In
other words, E could have F even though no other expression in the language has F. An example
of such a property might be is an expression which refers to John Lennon. There could certainly
55
Weaker forms of this brand of holism, e.g., Quinean, verificational holism (to be considered below), have recently
received much attention in the philosophical world. On this view, the smallest units of empirical confirmation
(which is held to be the only kind of confirmation that there is) will be entire theories rather than individual
sentences—the latter simply do not admit of verification or falsification when taken in isolation. Justificational
coherentism, i.e., the thesis that a belief is justified just in case it is a member of a coherent set of beliefs, is another
49
be a language L that contains the proper name ‘John Lennon’ (assuming proper names to be parts
of languages), which in L refers to (or can be used to refer to) John Lennon, even though L does
not contain the resources to refer to John Lennon in any other way, i.e., by means of any other
expression—either simple or complex.
Of course, for any semantic property, there will be positions that lie between atomism
and holism. A semantic property F is anatomic just in case any expression E of some language
L has F only if other expressions of L have F. As defined, semantic holism is the most extreme
form of semantic anatomism. The reason for allowing this overlap is that below, we shall
consider an argument for holism that goes through anatomism, so we do not want the two
positions to be mutually incompatible. As for the conceptual space between atomism and
holism, we might say that a property is properly anatomic just in case it is anatomic but not
holistic.
Two Varieties of Semantic Holism Given Frege’s distinction between sense and
semantic value, there will be two general varieties of semantic holism—those which properly
concern sense and those which concern semantic value. Accordingly, sense holism will be the
thesis that no expression of a language can have the sense that it has unless every other
expression of the language also has the sense that it actually has. Semantic-value holism
(reference holism), by contrast, will be understood as the view that no expression could have the
semantic value it has unless every other expression has the semantic value it actually has.56 In
most of what follows, I shall be speaking exclusively of sense holism. So, unless I indicate
otherwise, I shall use semantic holism interchangeably with sense holism.
form of epistemic holism which has enjoyed some recent popularity. Cf. BonJour (1985), Lehrer (1974), and
Rescher (1973) and (1977) for some recent versions of the theory.
56
This is perhaps not the best way to state the thesis. Surely the connection between a specific expression and its
semantic value, whether or not sense is required to determine that semantic value, is purely arbitrary—any other
expression could have been selected in its place. So, we can imagine a state of affairs in which there is a language L
which is syntactically identical to English and in which the class of semantic values of expressions of the former is
identical to that of the latter. The only difference between these two languages would be in the specific correlations
between expressions and semantic values. The reference holist would not want to rule out the possibility that some
expression E of English might have the same semantic value in L that it has in English, even though some or all of
the remaining expressions of English have different semantic values in L than they have in English. She can allow
this possibility just so long as all of the semantic values of expressions of English are also semantic values of
expressions of L. This suggests the following reformulation of reference holism: E has the reference it actually has
in L1 just in case it is part of some language L2 such that everything that is a semantic value of some expression of
L1 is also a semantic value of some expression of L2 and nothing else is a semantic value of an expression of L2. A
similar modification would also be required in the statement of sense holism. In what follows, however, I shall stick
with the original formulations except, of course, when some harm would result in doing so.
50
Translational Holism A second distinction regarding semantic holism cuts right across
the above distinction between sense and reference holism. Both of these latter forms of holism
regard the expressions of a single language. They tell us that expressions of a language have
some property, that of bearing a certain sense, on the one hand, and that of bearing a certain
semantic value, on the other, just in case every other expression of the language also has that
property.
Another form of semantic holism, on the other hand, concerns translating from one
language to another. Suppose that we wish to translate some sentence S of language L1 into
some other language L2. Now, is the property of being translatable into L2 an atomic, anatomic,
or holistic property? A translational holist insists that it is holistic. In other words, to be holistic
about translation is to hold the view that a sentence of L1 is translatable into L2 just in case every
sentence of the former is also translatable into the latter, i.e., just in case for every other sentence
of L1 there is some sentence of L2 such that the latter correctly translates the former.
Conversely, if there is a single expression that resists such translation, then strictly speaking no
expressions of L2 can be correct translations of expressions of L1. Translation is an all or nothing
affair.
Semantic and Translational Holism Do either of these doctrines entail the other? On
the one hand, if semantic holism entails translational holism, then should the former turn out to
be true, then if any expression of some language fails to have a correct translation in another
language, then no expression of the former will have one into the latter. The implausibility of
this consequence, if it is in fact implausible, would then count directly against semantic holism.
On the other hand, if the reverse entailment holds, then not only will any objection to semantic
holism be an objection to translational holism, but Quine’s argument for the indeterminacy of
translation will count as yet another argument for the former holistic doctrine. I shall begin with
the question whether sense holism entails translational holism.
Suppose, then, that translation is not holistic. Then there might be two languages L1 and
L2 such that, for some expressions E1 and E2 from L1, one of those expressions is translatable
into L2 while the other is not. Suppose further that E2 and the sentences containing it are the
only expressions from L1 which cannot be translated into L2 (nothing essential turns on this
assumption—it is needed only to keep things relatively simple) and that all of the expressions of
L2 can be translated into L1. Imagine now that we replace all of the expressions (words and
51
sentences) of L2 by their translations in L1. The result should be a language L3 with exactly the
expressive resources of L2, but which, in point of syntax, looks exactly like L1 with E2 (and all
sentences containing it) removed. But given the supposition regarding the translatability of all
expressions (save those containing E2) of L1 into L2 and vice versa, should we not really say that
L3 just is a trimmed down version of L1—after all, it looks and acts like it. But if this is right,
then there is an expression of L1 that can have the sense that it actually has even though some
other part of L1 has changed, viz., E1. So, semantic holism does in fact entail translational
holism.
That translational holism also entails semantic holism is perhaps a bit easier to see.
Suppose that sense is not holistic, and let E1 be some expression of L1 such that its sense is in no
way affected by the removal from L1 of some other expression E2, and suppose further that L1
contains no other resources for saying precisely what could be said by means of E2 (this
assumption is actually permitted if we are assuming that sense is not holistic). Finally, let L2 be
the language that results by removing E2 from L1. Clearly, E1 from L1 translates E1 from L2,
even though E2 may or may not have a translation in L2. Hence, translation is not holistic.
Translational holism, then, stands or falls with semantic holism. This equivalence will be
useful in what follows, since it will allow us more flexibility in how we discuss semantic holism.
Grades of Anatomicity: Strong and Weak Before I move on, it will be useful to draw
a distinction within the molecularist thesis itself. There is an ambiguity in the claim that the
meaning of every sentence depends in some systematic way on the meanings of some of the
other sentences of the language, and this is important because if holism is to be argued to follow
from the molecularity thesis, of which there are really two, then the strength of such an argument
may very well depend on which thesis is intended as the molecularity thesis.57
On the one hand, anatomicity might be understood as follows:
WA
A semantic property F is weakly anatomic just in case for any language L and for
any expression E of L, E has F only if some other expressions E1, E2, . . ., En of L
also have F.
Weak anatomism allows that the things (E1, E2, . . . En) upon which the presence of the anatomic
57
F&L (1992), pp. 27-30.
52
property F depends may vary from one expression to another (or from one speaker to another).
For example, being a sibling is clearly weakly anatomic—it is a property that both Michael
Jackson and I share even though the classes of objects upon which the presence of this property
in each of us depends is not the same.
On the other hand, being the same height as Bart, Lisa, or Maggie is such that for any
two things to have it, there is some common class of things that must have it, viz., and trivially,
the class consisting of Bart, Lisa, and Maggie. So, we have the following, additional reading of
the molecularity thesis:
SA
A semantic property F is strongly anatomic just in case for any language L there
are expressions E1, E2, . . ., En of L such that for any other expression E of L to
have F, E1, E2, . . . En must also have F.
We now have the materials needed to frame the Argument from Anatomicity. Let us, then, turn
to it.
From Anatomism to Holism
The Argument from Anatomicity F&L attempt to show that if we give in to semantic
anatomism, then we must also be prepared to accept holism with it.58 Since they go on to argue
that there are no good reasons to accept semantic holism and plenty of reasons to avoid accepting
it, it is natural to take them as, in the end, gesturing towards semantic atomism, even though their
official aim is to refute holism and not to establish atomism. They do this indirectly by
examining what they take to be the argument for semantic holism: the Argument from
Anatomicity.59 In this section, I would like to present this argument. Ultimately, the main point
of doing so will be to see how the argument can be leveraged against semantic anatomism (in
particular, against CRS).
F&L frame the argument in terms of beliefs rather than (public) sentence contents. Since
I have been assuming representationalism, I shall frame the argument in terms of sentence
contents, leaving ‘sentence’ as ambiguous between mental and linguistic sentences.60 Likewise,
58
F&L (1992), pp. 22-32.
59
F&L do not accept the argument as sound, though, as will become clear below, they must accept that it is valid.
53
I shall use ‘language’ as systematically ambiguous between public language and system of
mental representation.
Now, consider the thesis that meaning such and such (for sentences) is a holistic
property—no sentence of a language L can mean what it does unless every other sentence of L
means what it does. Intuitively, what explains this fact would be that having this property is a
matter of occupying a place in a suitable network, or structure, of sentences, beliefs, etc. and that
the content born by any single element of such a structure is itself individuated by some
privileged class of non-semantic relations that it bears to all of the other elements of the
structure. Let me say that the property that a (declarative) sentence has in meaning what it does
is the property of its having a certain propositional content, whatever this amounts to in the end.
Furthermore, if it can be successfully argued that having a certain propositional content
is holistic, then there will be very good reasons for thinking that a wide class of semantic
properties of sub-sentential expressions will be holistic, since it seems to be the received view in
the philosophy of language (as well as in the philosophy of mental representation) that many (if
not all) of the semantic properties of sub-sentential expressions are metaphysically dependent on
the semantic properties of the sentences in which they figure. If some semantic property of the
word ‘cat’ (or |cat|) is partially determined by its syntactic function in the language, then, since
this function is dependent upon its behavior in sentences, it will follow that whether or not ‘cat’
has that semantic property is dependent upon how it behaves (logically) in sentences. So, if the
original holistic thesis goes through, then it seems that we will be saddled with a number of
them.
What reasons, then, are there for accepting the claim that having a certain propositional
content is holistic? The argument begins by asserting a more modest position on the continuum:
(1)
Having a certain propositional content is an anatomic property, i.e., a sentence S
60
In chapter 1, I suggested that there is an intimate connection between thought and talk and that arguments
establishing conclusions about one are typically easily transformable into arguments establishing the same (mutatis
mutandis) conclusions about the other. Even while remaining neutral on the conceptual priority issue, I think that an
even stronger conclusion can be sustained. In particular, if the very relevance of our thought to our talk and our talk
to our thought is to be intelligible, we must view them as at least in principle capable of carrying the same content.
It might be objected that a robust notion like content identity is not needed to forge such a connection, since the
weaker notion of content similarity will be sufficient. Below, in chapter 4, however, we will consider an argument
to the effect that content similarity itself presupposes content identity, so that, should this argument prove cogent,
any concession to the effect that at least content similarity is explanatorily necessary will also be a concession that
robust content identity should be possible.
54
of a language L means what it does only if there are other sentences of L that
mean what they do.
What keeps an anatomic view from being fully holistic, however, is the further claim that there
are some (in fact a significant number) of sentences whose meaningfulness in no way bears on
the meaningfulness of S. But if so, then there must be some principled way of partitioning the
sentences of the language into those upon which the meaningfulness of S is necessarily
dependent and those upon which it is not. In other words, there must be some principled way of
drawing an analytic/synthetic distinction (A/S). It is widely thought, however, that certain
arguments due to Quine have directly undercut the possibility of drawing such a distinction in
any principled way.61 Thus, we have as a second premise:
(2)
For any particular sentence, there is no principled distinction between those
sentences that are essentially connected to its content and those that are not.
Now if there is no such principled distinction to be had, then, in principle, there is no way, for
any finite mind at least, to affect the desired partition, when doing so would require partitioning
an infinite number of sentences. For even if the dependency-class for every single sentence was
manageably finite, so that human minds could grasp all of their contents, without a principle in
hand, there is no way to identify those manageably finite groups of sentences save by going
through all of the infinitely many sentences and tagging each one of them either “in” or “out”.
But if, given (1), there are some facts of the matter regarding necessary meaning-connections
between S and some of the sentences of L, then it would seem to follow that every sentence is
partially constitutive of the meaning of S. So,
(3) Having a certain propositional content is a holistic property.
This, then, concludes the argument. If (3) holds up, then no sentence S of L can mean what it
does unless every other sentence of L means what it in fact does. To change the meaning of any
61
Below we shall review two such arguments.
55
of them would ipso facto be to change the meaning of all of them. In chapter 3, we shall move
on to consider some of the consequences of (3) itself; before that, however, I want to pause for a
moment to consider the cogency of this particular argument for it.
To begin with, does (3) actually follow from molecularity and the rejection of A/S, i.e.,
from (1) and (2)? Clearly, this will depend on how we are understanding ‘anatomic’ in (1). We
saw above that there are at least two different ways of being an anatomist. Will both of them
support the Argument from Anatomism?
Consider the following possibility. Suppose that there are indefinitely many different
disjoint sets of sentences of L such that understanding the meanings of the sentences in any
single one of those sets is sufficient but not necessary for understanding the meaning of some
sentence S (where S is in none of the sets), and understanding the meanings of all of the
sentences of one set or another from that set of sets is necessary for understanding S.
Furthermore, let us suppose that the union set of the individually-sufficient-but-not-necessary
sets (call it ‘U’) is so large that no non-divine mind could possibly entertain every member of it.
Then under these assumptions, (1) and (2) might come out as true and (3) and as false.62 (3)
would be false should it turn out that there are any sentences of L not in any of the relevant sets,
while (1) would be true since the union of the sets is non-empty and (2) would be true since, the
sets being disjoint, the meaning of S does not in fact depend on any single sentence at all. This
would seem to show that the Argument from Anatomicity will not be able to get off the ground if
anatomicity is understood in terms of WA.
On the other hand, SA, for all that we have said, may still be able to ground an argument
for semantic holism. After all, on that view, the class of sentences upon which the meaning of a
sentence depends will not shift from speaker to speaker, so there is no possibility of there being
such sufficient-but-not-necessary though jointly-necessary sets of meaning-grounding sentences.
It was this possibility that made consistent the acceptance of a properly molecular theory paired
with a rejection of A/S. The latter is made possible by the circumstance that there is no
principled way of specifying U—it being simply too large (perhaps it is even infinite) and
heterogeneous to admit of anything but an enumerative specification, while the former is
rendered possible by the fact that U need not consist of every sentence of the language, since,
while they will contain many sentences of L other than S, there is no reason to think every
62
This example is from F&L (1992), pp. 27-8.
56
sentence of L will occur in at least one of those sufficient-but-not-necessary and jointlynecessary sets.
Our conclusion, then, is that the Argument from Anatomicity is valid only if we assume a
strong reading anatomicity, i.e., SA. The argument, however, may still turn out to be invalid.
Some have seen in it a kind of sorites or slippery slope—an argument form that is notorious for
leading from truths to falsehoods. Oddly enough, F&L seem to be of this opinion.63 This is odd,
because F&L need to see the Argument from Anatomicity as being valid (but unsound).
Ultimately, they want to use the Argument from Anatomicity to defeat CRS, in particular, and
semantic anatomism, in general. If semantic anatomism and the denial of A/S do indeed entail
semantic holism, then either semantic anatomism or the denial of A/S would have to be
abandoned should semantic holism turn out to be obviously untenable. F&L take Quine to have
convincingly refuted A/S and they assume that most cognitive scientists and philosophers (CRS
theorists in particular) will agree with them in this.64 What this means is that the broader
significance of the Argument from Anatomicity for F&L is that it underwrites the following
thesis:
AA
If content is anatomic (constituted by conceptual role), then content is holistic.
AA combined with some convincing reason to reject semantic holism would then count as a
compelling argument against semantic anatomism generally (and CRS in particular). With
holism and anatomism thus disposed of, we would then be left with semantic atomism, their
preferred view (eliminativism would still be an option, but who wants to believe that?).
63
F&L (1992), pp. 25 and 27.
64
They say, “Since we are inclined to think that Quine is right about the a/s distinction, we are inclined to think that
the moral of the discussion in this chapter is that conceptual role semantics is untenable . . . quite a lot of the
philosophy of language and philosophy of mind since the 1940s has taken it for granted that some version of CRT
must be true. And, combining conceptual role semantics with the denial of the a/s distinction is perhaps the received
position in cognitive science . . . If, as we suspect, Quine is right about the a/s distinction, then the moral of our
discussion is that CRT [CRS] is false. It may be, however, that our inclination to think that Quine is right about the
a/s distinction is ill-advised. In that case, the moral of the discussion is just that there is no sound inference from
CRT to holism. For our purposes in this book, we would settle for either,” F&L (1992), pp. 185-6. They go on to
state that the option, in the theory of meaning/content, of resuscitating “the a/s distinction and [identifying] the
meaning of a symbol with the analytic relations it enters into” is “viewed with pretty general skepticism, at least in
the philosophical community,” F&L (1992), pp. 187-8.
57
This indirect defense of atomism will go through, however, only if the Argument from
Anatomicity is valid, which it cannot be, if it is a form of slippery slope. F&L, then, really
cannot afford to dismiss the argument as a kind of slope. Fortunately for F&L, there may be
good reason to think them mistaken in thinking of the argument as a slope in the first place.
Perry (1994) points out that slopes generally include both some iterative procedure (put another
grain on the pile) and a principle governing that procedure (adding a single grain will not make a
heap out of something that is not already a heap).65 The trouble with seeing the Argument from
Anatomicity as a kind of slope is that it has neither of these features—mainly since it does not
have the first. The bad news, then, is that the argument is not really a form of sorites. The good
news, however, is that this is just what F&L need anyway.
In what follows, I will suppose that the Argument from Anatomicity is in fact valid. This
means that I am also assuming a strong reading of anatomicity. So much, then, for validity; how
about the argument’s premises?
Why Anatomicity?
Since anatomicity for linguistic sentences requires a slightly different defense than
anatomicity for mental sentences—the latter being in fact more difficult since, as was mentioned
in chapter 1, we really do not even know what mental sentences look like—I will, again for the
sake of exposition, relativize this discussion to linguistic sentences. This defense will depend
largely on the role of linguistic content in communication. I suppose that a fairly similar defense
could be mounted in the case of mental sentences. In that case, however, the role of mental
content in explaining both behavior and mental processes, as opposed to communication, would
have to be central.
So, how might anatomicity be established in the case of linguistic sentences? First, what
reasons might be given for accepting the weaker claim that the meaning of a sentence depends
upon the meanings of at least some other sentences? This claim does not itself rule out SA, but
should one wish to hold anything stronger than WA, additional support would still be needed.
For the weak claim, one might argue as follows. First, whatever meaning is, it is correlative to
knowledge—specifically, the kind of knowledge that a speaker is said to possess insofar as the
speaker knows the meaning of the sentence. So, if, for any particular sentence S, knowing the
meaning of some sentences other than S is required for knowing the meaning of S, then we will
65
Loc. cit., pp. 130-1.
58
have good reasons for supposing that the meaning of S depends on the meanings of other
sentences.
Now a speaker, the argument goes on, cannot know the meaning of S and yet not know
the meaning of any other sentence. The reason for this is that we would not say that a person
understands the meaning of a sentence unless we could also say that that person understands the
way in which the meaning of the sentence depends in a systematic way on the meanings of its
parts, or at least on the way in which the meaning of some corresponding sentence, of which the
former is an elliptical variant, itself depends in a systematic way on the meanings of its parts.
Suppose that I am told, in English, by a reliable, native French speaker that ‘Il pleut’ means that
it is raining, but I do not know anything else about the French language. Suppose further that I
fully well know the meaning of ‘It is raining’—whatever that requires. In this case, it seems
perfectly reasonable to say that I know that ‘Il pleut’ means the same as ‘It is raining’. Now, are
these two pieces of knowledge together sufficient for my knowing the meaning of ‘Il pleut’?
What we would like to know is whether it follows from all of this that I also know that ‘Il pleut’
means that it is raining. That is, of course, what I was told, but do I know it, rather than just that
the synonymy holds? If so, then I can know the meaning of just one sentence of a language after
all, and from this, it would follow that the property of having a particular propositional content
is atomic.66
One reason for thinking that I do not possess the requisite knowledge, even though I
know both that ‘It is raining’ means that it is raining and that ‘It is raining’ and ‘Il pleut’ have the
same meaning, is that I do not have the right kind of practical abilities vis-à-vis ‘Il pleut’ to be
said to know its meaning. Surely, to know its meaning will, in part at least, be to have certain
abilities—one must know what to do with the sentence in various kinds of circumstances. For
any meaningful sentence S, there will be a range of abilities such that having those abilities is
required for knowing S’s meaning. Among those abilities will be the ability to produce the
sentence in the right kinds of circumstances and to anticipate certain worldly happenings
consequent upon the truth of the sentence (supposing that S is declarative). The first of these
66
It cannot be objected that I could only know the meaning of the French sentence in this way because I already
knew the meaning of the English sentence and that, for this reason, sentence meaning is anatomic. The reason that it
cannot is that the sentence upon which my knowledge depends is from another language and, by hypothesis, has the
same meaning as the French original, but the anatomic thesis that we are considering concerns the relationship
between a sentence and other sentences from the same language (though this would help to establish the interesting
claim that to grasp any content I must grasp other contents).
59
abilities corresponds to the grasping of what have been called the language-entry rules for that
sentence—they are abilities that concern the proper use of an expression in response to certain
non-linguistic stimuli. The second, on the other hand, corresponds to the grasping of the socalled language-exit rules—these are abilities that concern the appropriate way to behave as a
response to the use of the expression in question.67 Now, if I did not have any of these kinds of
abilities, then it is implausible to maintain that I know the meaning of ‘Il pleut’. Indeed, it would
seem that once I have been told that the English and French sentences are synonymous, then my
failure subsequently to grasp these rules for the French sentence would heavily suggest that I did
not know the meaning of the English sentence itself. In any case, the anatomist goes on, these
are not the only two abilities that are required for linguistic competence. What more is required
is an ability which manifests an understanding of what might be called the language-transition
rules for the use of the expression. This ability amounts to an understanding of what can be done
with an expression given what has previously been done with other expressions and of what can
be done with other expressions given what has already been done with it. One important
example would be the ability that one possesses insofar as one can correctly employ that
expression in certain patterns of inference which are paradigmatic for that expression. If I
repeatedly refuse to infer the truth of the sentence ‘Someone is happy’ from ‘Tom is happy’, then
it could only be because I have failed to appreciate fully the meaning of one or both of them.
So, the argument goes, knowledge of meaning requires at least three kinds of ability.
This would mean that possession of only the first two of the above abilities for the French
sentence (perhaps by way of possession of them for the English sentence), knowledge of
synonymy, and knowledge of the meaning of the English sentence will not be sufficient for
knowledge of the meaning of the French sentence. I will fail to possess such knowledge if I do
not know anything about the inferential relations between our original French sentence and other
sentences of French, even when all of the other conditions are satisfied. What I have failed to
grasp about the meaning of that sentence when I have failed to grasp its place (or role) in some
larger inferential network is the way in which its semantic structure is systematically related to
the structures of other sentences in the language, and what this means is that I have failed to
grasp how the semantic properties of that sentence are systematically determined by the semantic
67
Such rules play an important role in Wittgenstein (1953), Sellars (1963) and (1974), Dummett (1991b), especially
chapter 13, and Brandom (1993) and (1994).
60
properties of its components. My failure to know the meaning of ‘Il pleut’ despite my knowing
that it is synonymous with ‘It is raining’ and knowing the meaning of the latter lies in my failure
to appreciate how its meaning is determined by the meanings of its parts and its syntax. Indeed, I
may know these other things even when I do not know what its meaning determining parts are.
To become convinced of this, one need only dream up examples from languages with a less
familiar syntax, such as Chinese, Kwakiutl, or Sanskrit.
To recapitulate, the propositional content of a sentence depends on the contents of at least
some other sentences, since meaning is correlative to understanding, which latter requires the
understanding of at least some other sentences of the language. The reason for this latter claim
was that the understanding requires, among other things, the ability to employ the sentence in
certain characteristic patterns of inference, and this ability itself amounts to an understanding of
how certain semantic properties of that sentence depend in systematic ways on certain semantic
properties of its parts. In other words, not only must a person know that the meaning of the
sentence is compositionally determined, but she must also understand how it is so.68
One thing that should be noted is that the conclusion of this argument is consistent with
both SA and WA. Furthermore, it is neutral also with respect to questions regarding the relative
conceptual or explanatory priority between the notion of an idiolect (or of mentalese) and that of
a public language. Now, assuming that the argument is cogent, what further considerations
might move one to adopt SA?
So, a certain amount of anatomicity seems to be guaranteed by compositionality, but that
argument also made a tacit appeal to a version of the context principle, one formulation of which
is that one cannot know the meaning of a non-sentential expression independently of knowing
how that expression can be combined with others to form meaningful sentences. There is a
considerable tension between these two principles, for taken together, they seem to entail that the
dependency between word and sentence meaning is symmetric, and this seems problematic for a
number of reasons. We shall return to this issue later in chapter 3. For now, however, I would
like to suggest another closely related reason for holding some version of anatomicity. Later, we
shall see that one reason for insisting on the principle of compositionality is that it provides an
elegant explanation for some other apparently universal features of natural languages, viz.,
68
This point should be familiar from Davidson; for example, see Davidson (1984b), p. 25.
61
productivity, isomorphism, and systematicity.69 This third feature (that any language that can
express certain propositions can also express other systematically related ones, e.g., one that can
express the proposition that George distrusts Saddam can also express the proposition that
Saddam distrusts George) seems to guarantee some amount of strong anatomicity.
Perhaps the most common arguments for this stronger position, however, are arguments
of a transcendental character, i.e., arguments to the effect that there are certain sentences such
that the very possibility of experience, rationality, or even cognition itself, requires that the
meanings of those sentences be understood, so that trivially, one will understand any other
sentence of the language only if one understands all of these sentences.70 Thus, one might say
that a being cannot count as rational, for example, unless it knows (believes) that everything is
self-identical, that every statement is either true or false, and that a statement and its negation
cannot both be true, and believing these things, in particular, grasping these propositions,
requires either understanding sentences in some public language that express these propositions
or tokening mentalistic sentences which have these propositions as their content. For example, a
speaker of English, according to the former kind of account, would have to know the meaning of
the sentences ‘2=2’, ‘Either 2 is prime or it is not’, and ‘It is not the case that both 2 is prime and
2 is not prime’, or stylistic variants thereof, in order to know the meaning of the sentence ‘2 is
prime’. Frege, himself, arguably held a position of this sort. For him, thought and rationality
themselves require that we have grasped certain logical laws.71 And he explicitly claims that
69
Ironically, that natural languages are systematic has been forcefully urged by Fodor and Lepore, who are eager to
establish semantic atomism, not anatomism. How they should have missed this I do not know.
70
The position needs to be stated a bit more delicately. Clearly, there is no single set of sentences such that no
creature can count as having experiences, or as being rational, or as possessing cognition unless it understands those
sentences, since there is no single sentence that every human being understands. There are, after all, different
languages. Instead, the claim will have to be that there are certain contents that any such beings must grasp, and that
for any particular language, a speaker will understand a sentence of it only if that speaker has grasped the contents of
the sentences of that class. In point of syntax, the classes will vary across languages; in point of semantics, they will
not.
71
See, for example, Frege (1893), p. 14, where he says, “. . . what if beings were even found whose laws of thought
flatly contradicted ours and therefore frequently led to contrary results even in practice . . . I should say: we have
here a hitherto unknown type of madness,” Frege (1884), p. 36, where he says, “It is in this way that I understand
objective to mean what is independent of our sensation, intuition and imagination, and of all construction of mental
pictures out of memories of earlier sensations, but not what is independent of the reason,—for what are things
independent of the reason? To answer that would be as much as to judge without judging, or to wash the fur without
wetting it,” and, finally, Frege (1884), pp. 20-1, where he says, “For purposes of conceptual thought we can always
assume the contrary of some one or other of the geometrical axioms, without involving ourselves in any selfcontradictions when we proceed to our deductions, despite the conflict between our assumptions and intuitions. The
62
humans, at least, cannot touch the third realm directly, i.e., grasp thoughts directly, but must do
so through some suitable intermediaries—sentences.72
Kant held a similar kind of view, although for him it was the very possibility of
experience itself which required that we have grasped certain propositions, and, crucially, ones
which he thought were a priori synthetic.73 For Kant, however, the relevant representations were
mentalistic rather than linguistic.
It might also be argued that the very possibility of genuine communication (or of the
normativity of content, in the case of Wittgenstein, or of interpreting the words of others, in the
case of Davidson) seems to require at least the acceptance of SA. Genuine communication
seems to require that we endow our sentences with the same content, or at the very least,
contents so similar that whatever differences there are are, from a practical point of view,
negligible.74 For now, however, it is enough to point out that the demands of interpersonal
communication seem to suggest the following regarding the abilities, and in particular the
fact that this is possible shows that the axioms of geometry are independent of one another and of the primitive laws
of logic, and consequently are synthetic. Can the same be said of the fundamental propositions of the science of
number? Here, we have only to try denying any of them, and complete confusion ensues. Even to think at all seems
no longer possible,” (my emphasis).
72
See, for example, Frege (1918-19a), p. 354, where he says, “The thought, in itself imperceptible by the senses,
gets clothed in the perceptible garb of a sentence, and thereby we are enabled to grasp it.” But here he has in mind
grasping the thought of another through communication, and doing this requires that the thought be “clothed in
some perceptible garb”. The crucial kind of case concerns the grasping of some new thought—a thought that has
not been grasped before. Must this be mediated by a sentence? Frege’s explanation of this phenomenon of
productivity (to be further discussed in chapter 6) is that it is through the compositionality of language that we are
able to grasp new thoughts—a person can grasp a new thought by understanding a sentence that expresses it, where
the understanding of this latter results from a prior understanding of its structure and the meanings of its proper
parts. This idea is conveyed powerfully at Frege (1923-26), p. 390, where he says, “It is astonishing what language
can do. With a few syllables it can express an incalculable number of thoughts, so that even if a thought has been
grasped by an inhabitant of the Earth for the very first time, a form of words can be found in which it will be
understood by someone else to whom it is entirely new. This would not be possible, if we could not distinguish
parts in the thought corresponding to the parts of a sentence, so that the structure of the sentence can serve as a
picture of the structure of the thought. . . . If, then, we look upon thoughts as composed of simple parts, and take
these, in turn, to correspond to the simple parts of sentences, we can understand how a few parts of sentences can go
to make up a great multitude of sentences, to which, in turn, there corresponds a great multitude of thoughts.”
Combine this explanation of productivity with a certain reading of Frege’s context principle, viz., that one can
understand the meaning of an expression only by understanding the contribution it makes to the truth-conditions of
certain sentences in which it is a constituent and the result is SA.
73
Frege agreed with Kant about the status of geometrical truths and that they must be grasped in order for us to have
experience; see, for example, Frege (1884), §§12-14. Towards the end of his career, however, he came to agree with
Kant regarding the status arithmetical truths as well; see Frege (1924/25a) and (1924/5b).
74
Below, in chapter 4, we shall consider an argument for the claim that content similarity will not do—only fullblooded content identity will turn the trick.
63
language-transition abilities, discussed above. If we are to use an instrument to meet the needs
of interpersonal communication, then, since such communication necessarily involves other
people who are using the very same instrument, our separate uses of that instrument must,
somehow, be calibrated. What this means is that there must, in principle at least, be tests the
application of which will provide reasonably strong evidence that our uses are so calibrated, and
such tests, if they are to satisfy each of us, must be of a public nature. I must have at my disposal
the same means as you have for determining whether or not we mean the same thing by our
words. If the test is private, then I have no way of knowing whether or not I have applied it
correctly.75 Indeed, it seems that once I have been inducted, through my early linguistic training,
into some linguistic community through the acquisition of an essentially public instrument I will
thereby also have been equipped with the ability to conduct the relevant kinds of test. Since this
training occurs in public circumstances, those tests must be public as well. A manifestation of
our ability to apply correctly the language-transition rules might form the basis of one such test.
Now, if the test is to be genuinely applicable, then the relevant inferential structure in which the
sentence is located must be the same for each of us, otherwise it is hard to see how either of us
could become convinced that the other means the same thing by the use of the same sentence.
Since what the language transition abilities manifest is an understanding of the inferential
connections between S and other sentences of the language and ipso facto an understanding of
the meaning of those other sentences, it will follow that the sentences that form the inferential
structure upon which the meaning of S partially depends will be (substantially) the same across
all speakers of the language. So, where public languages are concerned, sentence meaning must
be molecular in the strong sense of SA.
Why Not A/S?
We have just considered some reasons for accepting two versions of the first premise of
the Argument from Anatomicity. Now let’s turn to the second premise, viz., the claim that, for
any sentence S of any language L, there is no principled way of partitioning the sentences of L
into those sentences upon which the meaning of S is essentially dependent and those upon which
it is not. In other words, we need to ask whether or not there are any good reasons for denying
75
This is not to say that a private language (in the much contested sense) is impossible. All that this argument
requires is that where public languages—languages designed to suit the needs of communication—are concerned,
the tests in question must also be public. The possibility of necessarily private languages with corresponding,
necessarily private, tests is still left open. The point, however, is a basically Wittgensteinian one.
64
the possibility of a principled analytic/synthetic distinction, i.e., for rejecting A/S. If not, then
should holism turn out to be implausible after all, then it would still be open to one to accept
some version of proper anatomicity.76
Quine’s Challenge The most promising place to look for a challenge to A/S is Quine’s
“Two Dogmas of Empiricism”, and specifically to its first four sections.77 One might say that
Quine here showed that there is no analytic/synthetic distinction, but there are at least two
distinct ways in which such a claim could be understood.
First, Quine’s challenge may be taken as being intended to show that, widespread
philosophical conviction to the contrary notwithstanding, there is in fact no such distinction;
when philosophers take themselves to be identifying some distinction between two sentences by
identifying one as analytic and the other as synthetic they are not in fact fastening on any actual
difference between the two sentences—the supposed distinction is merely a deep-seated illusion;
it is just that the philosophical profession suffers from a kind of mass delusion. This reading is a
form of non-factualism about the analytic/synthetic distinction.
Second, Quine might be thought of as making a somewhat weaker point. It is not so
much that the belief in the existence of the distinction is illusory as that the belief that both of the
concepts of analyticity and syntheticity are actually instantiated is; on this reading, Quine would
be arguing that even though there may be conceptual room for the distinction, either nothing
counts as analytic, or nothing counts as synthetic, or both. Such a claim would be analogous to
the perfectly sensible, and true, assertion that while the distinction between the self-identical and
the non-self-identical is perfectly coherent, nothing in fact counts as the latter, or nothing counts
as the former, or both. This reading counts as a kind of error-theory regarding the distinction.78
76
One might opt for either a weak or strong version of the thesis. According to F&L (1992), p. 29, the trouble with
weak anatomism is that it does not seem to be very interesting—it is strong anatomism that people usually have in
mind and which is behind the interesting and prima facie plausible intuition that two people could not share just one
belief. You and I might share the belief that Paris is north of Cannes, but surely if we do, we will share other beliefs
as well, such as the beliefs that Paris and Cannes are cities (or at least that they are regions located somewhere on
the planet Earth), that only geographical regions can be north of something, that something can only be north of a
geographical region, and that two things cannot both be north of one another. The idea is that if we cannot attribute
all of these beliefs (or some suitable number of them) to a person, then it seems that we cannot with all propriety
attribute to that same person a belief with the content that Paris is north of Cannes. So, in the end, it would be much
more interesting if some strong version could be sustained.
77
Quine (1953), pp. 20-46.
78
I borrow these labels from Boghossian (1997), pp. 340-1.
65
There is, however, a stronger and a weaker version of the error-theory. On the stronger reading,
one or both of the concepts is necessarily uninstantiated. On the weaker reading, though one of
the concepts is actually uninstantiated, it might not have been.
Which reading should we attribute to Quine? Before answering this question, it will be
useful to point out that the former reading actually implies the latter but not vice versa. The
reason is that if there is in fact no such distinction, then, regarding the latter formulation, the
third disjunct of the second conjunct will be rendered true, but the reverse implication fails since
that third disjunct might be true, even though, while there might have been such a distinction,
there in fact is not.
Now which reading is required for the purposes of the Argument from Anatomicity?
That argument, recall, moves from (i) the claim that for any sentence S of some language L, the
meaning of S is essentially connected to the meanings of other sentences of L and (ii) the
rejection of A/S to (iii) the proposition that the meaning of every sentence of L is essentially
connected to the meaning of every other sentence of L. Now is the stronger reading required to
get this conclusion or will the weaker one suffice? The answer to this question would seem to
depend upon the intended force of the conclusion. Suppose that that conclusion is to be read in
the strongest possible way, viz., as the claim that necessarily the meaning of every sentence of L
. . . . (Well, perhaps not the strongest possible reading—one can distinguish between various
strengths of necessity, but would the claim to logical necessity (i.e., analyticity), rather than to
mere metaphysical necessity, be circular in this context? Let us just say that the necessity at
issue is metaphysical in nature.) Clearly, if this is the desired conclusion, then the weaker
reading of the second premise will be unavailable, since it might be true that for every actual
sentence S of every actual language L, the meaning of S is connected with the meaning of every
other actual sentence of L even though there might very well have been a sentence of some
language for which this was not the case. If, on the other hand, the conclusion is to be read as a
contingent, rather than necessary, truth, perhaps as a kind of high-level empirical generalization,
then the weaker reading is all that is required (though the stronger one, of course, would also do
the job).
So, how should we read Quine? Interestingly, given other commitments of Quine’s, he
could not use his rejection of A/S to ground the stronger reading of the Argument from
Anatomicity’s conclusion; in particular, Quine is very skeptical of modal notions, so he would
66
probably be unwilling to countenance such a metaphysically loaded version of semantic holism.
In any case, and more importantly, Quine’s very argument against A/S would, it seems, also
undercut the possibility of a distinction between the necessary and the contingent (this will
become clearer below), so that there would be an inherent instability in any attempt to ground a
metaphysically necessary semantic thesis on the basis of Quine’s argument. If that is correct,
then, regardless of how Quine understands his own rejection of A/S, we would only need to read
him as intending the weaker version, since that is the weakest premise needed for the strongest
conclusion to which we would, in that case, be entitled on the basis of Quine’s argument.
Nonetheless, in what follows, I shall take the exegetical liberty of attributing to Quine the
stronger of the two conclusions discussed above, even though, in the end, he might have
preferred the weaker one. The reason is that semantic holism has philosophical interest only to
the extent that it says something important about the nature of all languages, and the stronger
conclusion would be needed to do this. Given this stronger conclusion, we must read Quine as
attempting to establish either non-factualism or a strong error-theory. Of course, arguments for
semantic holism other than the Argument from Anatomicity, as well as other arguments for the
rejection of A/S paired with the Argument from Anatomicity, may very well also license the
stronger conclusion.
Finally, we turn to Quine’s argument. Stripped down to its bare bones, his argument is
this: no clear/principled distinction between analytic sentences/statements and synthetic ones has
ever been successfully made out; therefore, there is no analytic/synthetic distinction. The bulk of
the first four sections of “Two Dogmas” is an attempt to establish the premise of this concise
argument. Before discussing Quine’s argument for that premise, however, I would like to say a
word about the logical strength of the argument.
Clearly, the argument, as it stands, is not valid. To show that a distinction has not been
made out, clearly or otherwise, is not in general also to show that there is no such distinction.
Indeed, making out a distinction is typically the making out of an already existing distinction,
and when it is not, we do not say that we are making it out but, rather, that we are introducing
one. The history of philosophy consists, to a large extent, of variously successful attempts to
make out distinctions that were already in place—distinctions that were conceived to be so
important to our everyday practices and picture of the world that the possibility of improving
67
those practices and that picture demanded a better articulation of those concepts (the making out
of the distinctions).
If one wants a better reason for thinking that those distinctions were already in place prior
to the philosophical activity, rather than being brought about by it, one need only reflect on our
antecedent use of the terms that purport to mark the distinction in question. When the members
of a speech-community are in broad agreement over those things to which either member of a
pair of contrasting terms should be applied, those from which such application should be
withheld, and over those things to which its application is indeterminate, and, crucially, when
such agreement holds for novel cases as well as for the more familiar cases, then there is very
good reason to suppose that the use of those terms by that community is grounded on a real
distinction and that the content of that distinction counts as, at the very least, a kind of implicit
knowledge on the part of those speakers. Making that knowledge more or less explicit, where
this is possible, is just what it is to make out the distinction in question. For example, one might
plausibly think that there was already a distinction between knowledge and mere belief before
Plato offered his analysis of the former in terms of justified, true belief, an analysis which
certainly shed light on the distinction (even if his account is not, in the end, entirely satisfactory).
So, strictly speaking, the argument is not valid. Perhaps, however, there are
considerations peculiar to the particular kind of contrast in question that, while not licensing the
inference generally, will license it in this one specific case. Put another way, maybe the
argument is enthymematic—the suppressed premises concerning properties peculiar to the use of
these particular terms.
Another suggestion might be that the argument is not intended to be deductively valid at
all; rather, Quine is offering us an explanation for some range of phenomena, and thus only
intends to provide less than conclusive support for his conclusion. There is the fact that analysis
has repeatedly failed to shed any light at all on a certain entrenched “distinction”, and one which
has its home in fairly deep philosophical discussions, where issues are very obscure and
confusion reigns, rather than in everyday use. The best explanation of the fact that we are no
closer to understanding the purported distinction despite our best efforts is that the distinction is
just that: purported. Most distinctions, it might be argued, yield, at least partially, to sustained
analysis. The fact that this one has not indicates that it is not.
68
Before we evaluate either of these suggestions as to the force of Quine’s argument,
perhaps it would be best if we first considered Quine’s argument for its premise. That argument
might very well shed some light on the relative merits of each of these suggestions.
In defending that premise, Quine considers and rejects what he considers to be the most
promising analyses of analyticity available—analyses in terms of notions such as selfcontradiction, meaning (as an object, not a property), synonymy, definition, interchangeability
salva veritate, and semantical rule. Quine’s attacks take on a familiar shape. First, an analysis
of analyticity that exploits some favored expression E is offered. Quine then counters that E
either is itself no better understood than analyticity or itself requires for its own explication either
the notion of analyticity or some other notion which again is no better understood than
analyticity. The trouble, as Quine sees things, is that understanding is never really improved.
We are now in a position to see not only why Quine thinks that each of the various
attempts at elucidating the analytic/synthetic distinction have failed but also that he thinks that
they all have failed for essentially the same reason. Ultimately, each of the analyses is given in
terms of, or presupposes an understanding of, other intensional idioms. Indeed, Quine seems to
be suggesting that there is a family of intensional idioms, viz., analyticity, meaning, selfcontradiction, synonymy, definition, and interchangeability, salva veritate, and that once you are
in the circle, there is no way of breaking out of it (Confinement). Furthermore, failure to break
out of this circle is intolerable (Failure), since genuine understanding can be achieved only by
doing so. So, analyticity (along with, as it now seems, at least some of the other members of the
family circle) is itself intolerable.
To return to the above question regarding logical form which was left unanswered, we
now have an answer. Quine’s argument is not intended as an inference to the best explanation.
Rather, it is to be viewed as an enthymeme. The immediately preceding discussion has served to
highlight the missing steps. The premise in the original argument is not intended to establish the
denial of A/S directly; rather, it is intended to establish Confinement (inductively), which when
combined with Failure leads to the desired conclusion.
Confinement and Failure Why does Quine accept Confinement and Failure? Let’s
begin with Confinement. Quine’s reason for accepting it is just that, as the previous discussion
69
has shown, all of the best attempts to do so have failed.79 All of them have had to rely on other
intensional idioms which ultimately require an antecedent understanding of analyticity. The
burden of proof, he seems to be assuming, lies squarely on the shoulders of those who think that
the circle can be broken. Until it is shown otherwise, we are justified in thinking that it cannot.
The Mirror and Canonical Notations Let us leave Confinement and contemplate
Failure. Why does Quine accept it? His reasons are fairly deep, stemming from his
fundamentally naturalistic world view. According to Quine, physicalism is true, and for this
reason, he feels that intensional languages should be eschewed in favor of fully extensional ones.
But why does Quine think that physicalism demands extensional rather than intensional
languages? Unfortunately, this question is far too large to handle adequately in this context. For
this reason, I will only provide a very rough outline of Quine’s answer to it.80
Quine falls within a metaphysical tradition going back at least as far as Plato and which
includes, among others, Aristotle, Descartes, Leibniz, Hume, Kant, Frege, Russell, and Carnap.
His deepest philosophical interests are primarily ontological—in his own words, he is interested
in “a limning of the most general traits of reality,”81 and he is fairly clear about how this is to be
done. The metaphysical tradition has always been interested in discovering this ultimate
structure, and until the twentieth century, it was commonly assumed that this could most
fruitfully be done by first investigating the structure of thought. By discovering the most general
79
One might think that the following line of reasoning would help here: “All analyses will either be given in fully
extensional terms or will exploit some intensional idioms. If an analysis of an intensional notion (analyticity) is
given solely in extensional terms, then that analysis must be incorrect, since the very thing which makes the
analysandum peculiar has been lost on analysis. A constraint on any acceptable analysis would seem to be that any
second-order properties that hold of the analysandum also hold of the analysans. For example, suppose that we
wish to provide an analysis of the relational property of identity. One thing that we know about identity, antecedent
to any proposed analysis, is that identity is reflexive, symmetric, and transitive. These are second-order properties
of the relation itself. It will be a criterion of adequacy on any candidate analysis of identity that that analysis
preserves these properties. The same is the case with intensional notions. Intensionality, so the argument goes, is a
second-order feature of properties. Since the property of analyticity is an intensional one, it follows that a constraint
on any acceptable analysis of analyticity will be that it preserves intensionality. But now it is obvious that no fully
extensional analysis of analyticity could be adequate, since full extensionality is incompatible with intensionality.”
This argument fails, and for at least a couple of reasons. First, intensionality is not a second-order property of
properties, such as analyticity, but a first-order one of representations. Second, and as far as I can see, there is no a
priori reason to think that what is peculiar about intensional notions will be lost when they are analyzed
extensionally. One need only be reminded of Davidson’s paratactic analysis of belief contexts, or of analyses of
belief contexts which exploit the notion of conversational implication to explain away opacity. Indeed, Quine
himself would not wish to rule out the possibility of giving such analyses.
80
A useful, and relatively non-technical discussion of these issues may be found in Hookway (1988), chapters 4-7.
81
Quine (1960), p. 161.
70
features of thought, we would then know the most general features of reality. The bridging
principle here is that our thought of the world must, at least in very broad respects, mirror that
world (the Mirror Thesis). What marks twentieth century analytic philosophy as a new phase in
the history of philosophy is not the rejection of the Mirror Thesis, indeed many analytic
philosophers including Quine continue to accept it, but, rather, the conviction that, in point of
order of explanation, language is prior to thought (the Priority Thesis). If we want to do our
metaphysical work by discovering the structure of thought and then applying the Mirror Thesis,
we must begin with a study of language. Only by discovering the broad structural features of
language will we be able to discover the broad structural features of thought and then, finally, of
the world.
Quine accepts both the Mirror Thesis and the Priority Thesis. Indeed, he hails “the shift
of attention from ideas to words” as the “first milestone of empiricism,”82 and the Mirror Thesis
is implicit in his very attempt to “limn” the structure of reality by focusing on language. He
differs from many other philosophers, however, in his firm insistence on two things: (i) the truth
of physicalism, and (ii) the indispensability of the use of a canonical notation in prosecuting the
grand metaphysical project. It is the interaction of these two commitments that leads Quine to
the rejection of intensional languages in favor of extensional ones. Let us see how this works.
One way to characterize physicalism is as the thesis that whatever there is—facts, things,
properties, etc.—is physical in nature, and being physical in nature is just a matter of finding a
place in a completed physical theory. Whatever such a theory says that there is is all that there
is, and all such things are ipso facto physical. I do not wish to consider Quine’s defense of this
commitment here. For our purposes we need only consider its role in Quine’s argument against
analyticity, and to do that it is sufficient that we consider how it leads Quine to prefer extensional
canonical notations.83
What is a canonical notation and why does Quine insist on having one? A canonical
notation is an extension of the idea of a logical theory, or, perhaps better, it is the logical theory
that would be needed for the formalization of our best (whether or not completed) science. It
consists of a specification of a basic logical vocabulary, of syntactic categories for all non-logical
82
Quine (1981c), p. 67.
83
A discussion of Quine’s defense of physicalism can be found in Hookway (1988), pp. 70-4.
71
vocabulary by which the core notation might be supplemented, of permissible ways of
combining both the logical and non-logical vocabulary to produce formulas, and of rules for
deriving some formulas from others. Since Quine thinks that our best science will turn out to be
nothing other than physics, the shape of our canonical notation will be determined by the needs
of physical theory. By explicitly adding notations to the canonical notation to do the job of our
pre-canonized physicalistic, non-logical notations, we gradually transform the former into a
formalized physics. What does such systematizing achieve? Here is a nice statement by Quine
on the role and value of a canonical notation:
. . . the simplification and clarification of logical theory to which a canonical notation contributes is not only
algorithmic; it is also conceptual. Each reduction that we make in the variety of constituent constructions needed in
building the sentences of science is a simplification in the structure of the inclusive conceptual scheme of science.
Each elimination of obscure constructions or notions that we manage to achieve, by paraphrase into more lucid
elements, is a clarification of the conceptual scheme of science. The same motives impel scientists to seek ever
simpler and clearer theories adequate to the subject matter of their special sciences are motives for simplification
84
and clarification of the broader framework shared by all the sciences.
So, a canonical notation allows for the possibility of discovering the most economical way of
formulating our best theories of the world. If we accept simplicity as having not only practical
importance in our choice of theories but also some value in sorting out true theories from false
ones, then the Mirror Thesis now allows us to draw important metaphysical conclusions from
considerations regarding our supplemented canonical notation. For example, the particular
syntactic categories utilized by the theory will be taken as direct evidence for the existence of
corresponding, fundamental ontological categories. It is well known that Frege endorsed a
logical theory that took the syntactic categories of singular term and predicate as fundamental
and that on this basis he claimed that objects and properties (Fregean concepts) are ontologically
fundamental.85 Quine, on the contrary, recommends a theory that makes no use of singular
terms. If both theories can accommodate our best physics, then Quine’s idea is that
considerations of overall simplicity recommend the theory without singular terms over the other.
84
Quine (1960), p. 161.
85
For Frege’s most sustained treatment of these views, see Frege (1892b).
72
The Mirror Thesis would then tell us that, contrary to (extremely) popular opinion, object is not a
fundamental metaphysical category.
Canonical Notations: Extensional or Intensional? Let us return, now, to our original
question: Why does Quine prefer extensional languages to intensional ones? To begin with, this
preference of Quine’s is a direct result of his response to the problem of substitutivity that was
considered in chapter 1. Recall that that problem was a problem because it calls into question a
very plausible principle, PS, regarding the substitution of co-referential singular terms, in
particular, and co-extensive ones, more generally, in intensional contexts. The simplest semantic
theories that we have for our logical languages, however, depend upon that principle.
We saw that Frege responded to the problem not by giving up the principle, but by
proposing that terms in problematic, intensional contexts do not have the semantic values that
they have when they are used in extensional contexts. Rather, in intensional contexts, the
semantic value of an expression is what would normally be its sense. Frege’s solution is indeed
elegant and allows us to preserve the generalized version of PS, but it requires that we admit
senses into our ontology. Elegance, then, comes at the cost of ontological economy. Others
would take the problem as showing that PS really is false; but this greatly reduces overall
simplicity. If the fully general version of the principle is rejected, then our semantic theory must
become immensely complicated in order to handle inferences involving intensional contexts.
Indeed, there are still no generally accepted theories regarding the logical forms of the various
kinds of intensional context, despite decades of intense efforts.
Quine urges, on the other hand, that instead of rejecting the principle, we eliminate the
offending contexts. Unless a particular kind of context yields to extensional analysis, that
context should be eliminated from our regimented scientific discourse. Otherwise, the presence
of that context can only bring extreme over-complication, and thus metaphysical confusion. In
the absence of any acceptable extensional analyses, such elimination would be extraordinarily
far-reaching, since our ordinary talk is filled with intensional idioms. Indeed, Quine’s
suggestion, if taken seriously, would threaten our modal talk, counterfactuals included, virtually
all, if not all, of our mentalistic discourse, our evaluative language, and our ordinary talk of
meaning, just to name some conspicuous examples.
Intensionality and Projection There is another, independent, reason that Quine has for
being suspicious of the metaphysical legitimacy of intensional idioms. Frege provided us with a
73
simple and very general way of talking about properties—one that depends essentially on syntax.
The basic idea is that properties (concepts for Frege) are the semantic values of certain kinds of
expression, viz., of predicate expressions. So, one way of identifying a property is by identifying
some corresponding predicate expression of which it is the semantic value, and this holds good
for relations as well as for properties, the former actually being subsumed under the latter. How,
then, are predicate expressions to be identified? Frege’s answer, which is one of the first
applications of the celebrated Context Principle, which identifies sentence meaning as (in some
sense) properly basic, is that we identify such expressions through a process of “abstraction”
beginning with individual sentences.86 For example, consider the sentence ‘George distrusts
Saddam’. By removing the singular term ‘George’ we are left with the one-place predicate ‘. . .
distrusts Saddam’ The semantic value of this expression is the property of being a Saddam
distruster. If we also remove the singular term ‘Saddam’, then instead of the previous one-place
open sentence, we are now left with the two-place predicate ‘. . . distrusts—’. The semantic
value of this latter expression is the binary relation of distrusting. Now, these particular contexts
are extensional, and given a classical semantics, the sentences that would result from them by
filling in the empty places with singular terms are true or false depending on whether or not the
referent of the filling expressions have the property, or are related by the relation, that is the
semantic value of the filled ones. The choice of expression does not in the end matter, the only
thing that does is its semantic value. For Quine, this is as it should be, since it reflects the
scientific impulse towards objectivity—once the meanings of our sentences are fixed, what
makes them true or false is the world and nothing else. In particular, their truth or falsity does
not also depend on the way we think about or perceive that world. If extensionality holds for our
language, then knowledge that a sentence is true along with knowledge of its truth-conditions
would yield genuine and objective knowledge of that world.
The introduction of an intensional vocabulary would, according to Quine, frustrate this
cognitive ideal of objectivity. Suppose, for example that we allow our ordinary talk of beliefs.
Consider the following two sentences:
86
Given Frege’s strict anti-psychologism in logic and semantics, he would certainly object to this way of putting it.
Instead, he would say that predicate expressions are to be defined as the result of eliminating one or more
occurrences of a singular term in a sentential context. Since Quine would not object to the above formulation, I will
stick with it.
74
(1)
Alfred believes that Pope John Paul II is the current pope, and
(2)
Alfred believes Karol Wojtyla is the current pope.
It would not be implausible to suppose that (1) is true and (2) is false for some individual named
‘Alfred’. The trouble is that (1) and (2) share the same structure, and all corresponding
expression pairs in the two sentences have the same semantic value. But SV2, a principle which
was considered in chapter 1 and which is fundamental to classical semantics, tells us that the
semantic value of a complex expression is completely determined by that expression’s structure
along with the semantic values of its parts.
The moral that Quine seems to draw from this is that the semantic evaluation of sentences
such as (1) and (2) requires more than an appeal to structure and semantic value. Crucially,
which words we choose to effect reference will also have effects on such semantic evaluations.
Another way to make the same point is by considering the one-place predicates that result from
(1) and (2) by removing ‘Pope John Paul II’ and ‘Karol Wojtyla’ respectively. Quine complains
that whether or not these predicates apply to one and the same individual Pope John Paul II
depends upon our choice of name. But then can we really think of the context ‘Alfred believes
that . . . is the current Pope’ has a property as its semantic value, or that it even has a semantic
value? And if not, then can we even think of it as a logically significant piece of syntax, let
alone as a predicate?
If we nonetheless continue to take such contexts seriously and accord them a serious role
in our science, then we have opened the door to a significant amount of subjectivity. The idea is
that if the semantic evaluation of a sentence depends on more than just structure and semantic
value, in particular if it depends upon how we must think about some particular semantic value
or on how we manage to refer to it, then the truth-conditions of that sentence will have been
mixed with factors that depend more or less on us, our choices, and interests. In other, more
vivid, words, we will have projected something onto the world that does not in fact belong there.
Just as Hume viewed the necessary connection between a cause and its effect as not actually in
the mind-independent world but as projected onto the world by some mind, Quine is in effect
saying the same thing about intensional contexts—the failure of PS counting as direct evidence
75
for the occurrence of such projection.87 So, if our talk of analyticity and meaning is unavoidably
intensional, then, once again, it turns out to be metaphysically misleading at best.
How Damaging is Quine’s Attack? So, has Quine succeeded in his attack on A/S? The
viability of eliminating such a distinction depends, of course, upon two things: (i) our confidence
that no adequate extensional analyses will be forthcoming, and (ii) whether or not we can get by
in our theorizing about the world without it. To assess the strength of Quine’s case against the
analytic/synthetic distinction properly we will need to consider each of these.
Unless an explicit argument is provided that only an intensional analysis of analyticity
could actually count as an analysis of analyticity, I see no reason for supposing that we will not
eventually discover an acceptable extensional account. Quine, however, makes no attempt to
provide such an argument. It is one thing to argue that the concepts in a circle of concepts are
mutually interdefinable or, put another way, that once one member of such a circle of concetps is
defined all of them will be defined, but it is an entirely different thing to say that there is no way
of breaking out of that circle. Indeed, the former claim allows the possibility of a single “alien”
concept grounding definitions for all of the members of the family. Quine may have shown us
that there is a circle, but he has not established that it is impregnable and it is still an open
question whether this would be intolerable should it actually turn out to be impregnable.
Furthermore, given the history of the development of the sciences, it would be hasty to conclude
that because a certain problem has resisted the best efforts of the brightest minds the problem
cannot be solved. No remotely adequate answer to the problem of multiple generality was given
until Frege’s introduction of quantification theory in the late nineteenth century. Many of Zeno’s
paradoxes baffled mathematicians and philosophers alike until the development of the calculus in
the seventeenth. That a problem has resisted solution should be taken as evidence that the
problem is both genuine and genuinely difficult before it is taken as evidence that the problem is
insoluble or that the concepts in which it is framed are suspect.
In any case, when the problem concerns concepts that are central to our way of viewing
the world and when we have no reasonable substitute to do the work of those concepts, then we
have all the more reason to hold out in hope of a solution. We must ask ourselves, then, whether
we can get by without the analytic/synthetic distinction. What else would we have to give up
87
See Hume (1739-40), Part III, and Hume (1777), Section VII.
76
and can we live without that? Do we have theoretical needs that can be satisfied only by
preserving that distinction? Are there facts that can be explained only by invoking it?
To begin with, we should recall that our talk of properly anatomic meaning, when such
talk is sharply separated from our talk of reference, sinks or swims with the analytic/synthetic
distinction: many theorists have accepted that if A/S fails then we are stuck with holism (since
they have also accepted some form of anatomicity). Now, if semantic holism is true, then there
is a plausible case to be made that talk of holistic meaning is useless, and ipso facto has no place
in a scientific semantics (we shall consider this argument in chapter 3). Thus, holism would in
the end lead us to a kind of eliminativism about content. Quine himself can be taken as having
drawn this conclusion. So, if Quine’s attack can be sustained, then scientific discourse will only
have a place for talk of semantic values, and thus reality will only have a place for semantic
values. Talk of sense will have been shown to be nonsense.
Things only get worse from here, however. As was mentioned in chapter 1, there is
clearly an intimate connection between linguistic and mental content. The connection is so close
that any argument that would demonstrate the impossibility of one would also be immediately
transformable into one that showed the impossibility of the other (chapter 1). The elimination of
sense would thus mean the elimination of all (propositional) content in general. If there can be
no such thing as meaning, then there can be nothing which is content-bearing. For example, if
sentences cannot bear contents, then there cannot be mental states which bear contents either.
There just cannot be propositional content, period. This would require that, at least when more
theoretical interests prevail, we give up many of our ways of speaking. We could no longer
speak of ourselves as sayers, believers, and knowers, or as things with hopes, desires, and fears.
Such banned ways of speaking, however, would require that we form a radically different
conception of ourselves. In our ordinary affairs, of course, where the impulse to metaphysical
landscaping is seldom present, we could retain the old idioms. But as philosophers, we would
have to be wary of taking them too seriously. On the other hand, given the prominent role they
play in our practices and in our views of the world, we should also be wary of giving them up too
easily.
The consequences of taking Quine’s rejection of A/S seriously may not end with the
elimination of talk of meaning and mind. I have argued (chapter 1) that the objectivity of
77
judgment entails the objectivity of meaning, so that if the latter fails, then so must the former.88
What we need to consider is whether or not Quine’s rejection of meaning is also a rejection of
the objectivity of meaning. More precisely, does Quine’s denial that there are individuated
meanings entail the falsity of both the Contractualist and Conformity Assumptions? Given the
entailment of the Contractualist Assumption by the Conformity Assumption (chapter 1),
however, we need only consider whether the former entails that meanings are individuated. If it
does, then it appears that Quine’s arguments, if successful, will have the further consequence that
our judgments, scientific ones included, do not (cannot?) cleanly record features of an objective,
mind-independent world. This consequence would clearly be at odds with Quine’s deepest
reason for seeking to eliminate scientific talk of meaning, viz., his ambition for metaphysical
insight into the structure of reality. Indeed, it would show that that goal is unachievable.
Let us suppose, then, that the meaning of an expression is not individuated. Not only are
we unable to individuate them, but God himself would be unable to individuate them—there
being no things to individuate. Now if meaning does place real constraints on our behavior, then
it would be susceptible to individuation at least by God, since sets of such constraints would
themselves be individuable, and the meanings of two expressions are the same if and only if their
corresponding constraint sets are the same.89 So, if this argument is correct, then, on the
assumption that the meanings of our expressions are not individuated, it follows that there are no
sets of constraints that govern what we do with respect to those expressions. The Contractualist
Assumption, then, entails that meanings are individuable (even if not yet individuated by us).
The result of the above discussion, then, is that Quine’s arguments have the unintended
consequence that even our most regimented scientific discourse will unavoidably carry with it an
element of projection. So, if a criterion of adequacy of any scientific talk is that it be
metaphysically pure, then Quine may have unwittingly argued that none of our scientific talk is
adequate.
On Quine’s picture, then, our thought and talk can reach out to the world, but they do not
have content, at least when that content is conceived of as being both (properly) anatomically
88
Wright (1987), pp. 5-8.
89
If there should turn out to be such a thing as individuated meanings, then however the notion of meaning were
ultimately to be analyzed, it would have to allow for this biconditional. This is not to say that the biconditional itself
counts as an analysis of the concept of meaning. Rather, it places a constraint on such an analysis.
78
individuated and distinct from semantic value. Furthermore, Quine’s argument may actually
threaten the objective character of our best scientific talk as well. But is either of these
consequences plausible? Since my aim here is not to refute Quine’s position decisively, but,
rather, to show what would be its consequences as well as that the burden that he has taken on
has not been met, I shall decline answering this question. For our purposes in this chapter, it is
enough to have shown that we have a considerable interest in holding on to the challenged
distinction, enough of an interest that it would be hasty to give up on it on the basis of a few
failed attempts at clarification.
Quine’s Argument from Verificationism In the last two sections of “Two Dogmas”,
however, Quine launches a second argument that can be taken to undermine A/S, and, unlike the
previous one, many have taken this one as casting considerable doubt on A/S. The argument
directly establishes semantic holism. The denial of A/S is then established as a corollary.90 The
idea is that if meaning is holistic (and in the particular way in which Quine thinks it is), then
there are meaning-constitutive connections between any two sentences of one’s idiolect. What
this means is that every sentence and every inference between sentences has to be viewed as
analytic or all of them must be viewed as synthetic. The corollary to be drawn from this
argument, then, is an error-theoretic denial of A/S.91
90
Since this argument has semantic holism as its immediate conclusion from which the rejection of the
analytic/synthetic distinction may be drawn as a corollary, in the context of a discussion of the Argument from
Anatomicity, where one would be considering the best reasons for rejecting A/S in order to motivate semantic
holism, an appeal to this argument of Quine’s would be circular. Nonetheless, I will consider the argument, since
most writers on this topic seem to have missed this dialectical problem.
91
This brings out an odd tension in Quine’s position. Quine’s conclusion regarding the analytic/synthetic distinction
is generally interpreted in one of two ways. The first represents him as arguing for the non-factualist alternative
considered above. He would ipso facto be arguing that there are no analytic sentences. The second would represent
him as arguing for error-theoretic denial of A/S, regarding the class of analytic sentences as empty. In either case,
there would be no analytic sentences. But if Quine really is endorsing semantic holism, then it seems that he should
be forced into saying that every sentence of L has an analytic connection to every other sentence of L—that
analyticities abound. After all, it is typically taken as a defining characteristic of semantic holism that if the
meaning of any sentence of L shifts, or if the truth-value assigned by a speaker to any of the sentences of L shifts,
then the meaning of every sentence of the language (for that speaker) also shifts. But isn’t this just to say that, for
any two sentences of the language, there is a necessary connection between their content? How, then, can Quine
consistently deny the analytic/synthetic distinction, or, more weakly, that there are any analytic sentences, and yet
maintain semantic holism?
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The Argument from Verificationism rests on just two premises: the Quine/Duhem thesis
(hereafter, Q/D) paired with the strong Verification Principle.92 The former claim is a
generalization of Duhem’s thesis and states that no sentence is verified in isolation of the rest of
the sentences in one’s overall theory of the world—in short, verification is itself holistic. The
latter is the thesis that meaning is method of verification. So, if the only things that admit of
direct verification are entire theories and meaning is method of verification, then meaning can
only be properly ascribed to entire theories. Another way of putting this is that meaning-for-atheory is atomic, while meaning-for-an-individual-sentence, being metaphysically dependent on
the entire background theory, i.e., network of sentences, is holistic.93 I will consider each
premise in turn.
Let’s begin with verificationism. The strong verification principle, upon which Quine’s
argument depends, identifies the epistemic properties of an expression with its semantic ones.
Insofar as there is sense over and above semantic value proper, where the former is correlative to
understanding, the sense of a declarative sentence S must be located in those procedures
available to a competent speaker of the language such that the execution of them would
terminate in the speaker either being warranted in asserting S or in asserting ~S—in other words,
in the corresponding confirmation procedures for S. The meaning of a sub-sentential expression,
then, would be located in the contribution it makes to the determination of the confirmation
procedures of sentences in which it appears.
92
There are two closely related propositions that go by the name ‘verification principle’: (i) the proposition that the
meaning of a (declarative) sentence is its method of verification, and (ii) the proposition that a sentence is
meaningful if and only if it is verifiable. (i) certainly entails (ii), but it is not obvious that the reverse implication
holds as well. Since I am inclined to think that it does not, I regard the former as the stronger of the two.
93
Quine later retreats to a more moderate position. In Quine (1981c), he says, “When we look thus to a whole
theory or system of sentences as the vehicle of empirical meaning, how inclusive should we take this system to be?
Should it be the whole of science? or the whole of a science, a branch of science? This should be seen as a matter
of degree, and of diminishing returns. All sciences interlock to some extent; they share a common logic and
generally some common part of mathematics, even when nothing else. It is an uninteresting legalism, however, to
think of our scientific system of the world as involved en bloc in every prediction. More modest chunks suffice, and
so may be ascribed their independent empirical meaning, nearly enough, since some vagueness in meaning must be
allowed for in any event. . . . Thus the holism that the third move brings should be seen only as a moderate or
relative holism. What is important is that we cease to demand or expect of a scientific sentence that it have its own
separable empirical meaning” (p. 71). What Quine seems to be doing here is endorsing some form of proper
semantic molecularity, and such an endorsement would seem to open the door to some form of analytic/synthetic
distinction. In what follows, however, I shall ignore this later position of Quine’s and consider only the argument
from strong confirmational holism to full-blooded semantic holism.
80
So, should sense be understood epistemically as the verificationist is recommending?
Note that so far, the proposal is highly schematic. We have only been told something about the
general character of a theory of meaning (sense), viz., that it must proceed with properly
epistemic concepts as basic; of course, those epistemic concepts may themselves be explained in
terms of others, but then we are no longer, properly speaking, engaged with the theory of
meaning, but with epistemology unless, of course, such an analysis has an effect on the kinds of
confirmation relation that we are willing to recognize. In any case, there still remains much
room for variation regarding the nature of the relevant confirmation relations, and to give more
details of this kind will be to further articulate one’s theory of meaning. Indeed, the other
premise of Quine’s argument, viz., Q/D, is designed to fill in precisely this kind of detail.
In any case, I am somewhat pessimistic about the prospects of a verificationist theory of
meaning (at least in the traditional mold). The main reason is that the confirmation relations that
I associate with some sentence (or that some community associates with it) cannot constitute that
sentence’s meaning since I (we) often know the meaning of a sentence and yet remain ignorant
about how to verify it. Some of the most creative moments in the history of science have
involved the discovery of ways of testing hypotheses that had already been well understood but
for which there was previously no known confirmation procedure. This, alone, seems to cast
serious doubt on the more simplistic versions of the thesis, though there may well be more
sophisticated versions which are unaffected by it.94 Since an extended discussion of
verificationism requires far more space than I have to give, I will move on to Quine’s second
premise.
How plausible, then, is Q/D? Duhem’s original observation concerned the structure of
empirical verification—and only that kind of verification which is affected in the course of
properly scientific enquiry.95 His conclusion was that any particular claim could be verified only
against the background of a set of further assumptions. Empirical verification involves
generating empirically testable predictions from some theory and then checking those predictions
against actual observations. No theoretical claim worth considering, however, can generate
empirical predictions on its own. What is needed are further assumptions about one’s
94
E.g., Dummett’s.
95
Duhem (1906).
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experimental boundary-conditions (auxiliary assumptions), and perhaps further theoretical
claims. The point is, to a large extent, a purely logical one. Stripped to its bare bones, it can be
understood as saying little more than that no single statement S deductively entails (or
inductively supports) any single observation sentence O. Suppose that I wish to test some
theoretical generalization, e.g., the truth of the sentence ‘All college freshmen like cheap beer’.
Which observation sentences could be used to test this generalization? Well, suppose I know
that my friend Jason is a college freshman. Then certainly ‘Jason likes cheap beer’ and ‘Jason
does not like cheap beer’ might very well be two such sentences—the former could be used to
confirm, and the latter to disconfirm, the original. Should the relevant observations convince me
that the latter is true, I would have a good reason for giving up the generalization. Duhem’s
point, however, is that, despite superficial appearances to the contrary, I could not extract the
relevant observation sentence from the generalization alone; I need to appeal to some
background knowledge, viz., my knowledge that Jason is a college freshman. The generalization
itself does not entail the sentence about Jason; only taking that sentence along with the further
sentence ‘Jason is a college freshman’ can we generate the relevant prediction. This example, of
course, is perhaps much simpler in structure than even the simplest case of genuine scientific
verification. Typically, the number of further assumptions that will be required to generate the
relevant predictions will be much larger. When we have generated an empirical prediction in
this way and that prediction is not born out by the relevant, future observations, then we will take
this as disconfirmation of S only if none of the auxiliary assumptions to which we made an
appeal is less secure than S itself. In other words, we will take O as disconfirming S only if S is
the least certain of all of the sentences we needed to generate O, or if this formulation sounds too
subjectivist, if our canons of theory selection counsel us to abandon S before abandoning any
other part of our overall theory.
Quine takes Duhem’s observation a couple steps further, and in two different directions.
First, every single sentence, theoretical and mundane alike, is essentially in the same boat.96 All
of our beliefs about the world, “from the most casual matters of geography and history to the
profoundest laws of atomic physics or even of pure mathematics and logic”97, are verifiable only
96
Quine hedges on this point somewhat in allowing that some of the sentences at “the periphery” may be
exceptions, but never mind this.
97
Quine (1953), p. 42.
82
when taken in conjunction with other things that we believe—all of the sentences that are
empirically verifiable are so only when taken in conjunction with other sentences. This is the
first axis across which Quine generalizes Duhem’s thesis. The second concerns the number of
sentences that figure in the verification of any single sentence. Quine’s recommendation here is
radical. According to him, all of the sentences that constitute our theory of the world are
required to verify any single one of them.98 In other words, verification is radically holistic. But
why should Quine recommend this over the seemingly more sensible recommendation of
Duhem?
The answer to this question seems to lie in the nature of the standards to which we can
appeal in deciding how to respond theoretically to any particular observation. How do we decide
which particular belief to give up when a prediction does not comport with our observations? If
our decision is to be rational, then there must be some standards to which we could appeal. The
standards that most recommend themselves are those such as simplicity, conservativeness,
predictive power, systematicity, etc. That theoretical move which would render greater overall
simplicity in our theory, or would require less modification of our previous theory, or would
yield a more powerful instrument for predicting future experiences, or would better integrate a
greater number of more disparate sub-theories is the one which is rationally preferable. But
these standards are ones which apply only to entire theories; according to Quine, they properly
apply only to the most encompassing theories that we have—one’s theory of everything, i.e., that
theory which is comprised of everything a person believes.
Duhem’s observation seems to me to be fundamentally correct, but should we stop there
or go on to follow Quine down the path to a robust confirmation holism? It has recently been
urged by Elliott Sober, and others, that we should not.99 There are several reasons for resisting
Quine here.
First, confirmation, whatever its precise structure turns out to be, is in an important sense
symmetric. By this, it is not meant that for any thing (or set of things) that confirms another
thing the latter also confirms the former. Rather, what is meant is that if the presence of
98
As mentioned above (see note 80), Quine later waffles on this point somewhat, but again, never mind this.
99
Sober (2000).
83
something confirms another, then the absence of the former disconfirms the latter.100 For
example, the presence of high levels of radiation confirms the hypothesis that there was a nuclear
detonation only if the absence of such radiation would have disconfirmed that same hypothesis.
Another way of putting this is that something C increases the likelihood that some statement S is
true only if C’s absence decreases the likelihood that S is true, or, alternatively, only if C’s
absence increases the likelihood that the negation of S is true.
If this is correct, then Quine has a problem. One consequence that Quine draws from
confirmation holism is that the justification that mathematics and logic receive comes indirectly
through the direct confirmation of more obviously empirical theories such as physics, chemistry,
etc. Since confirmation is holistic, and mathematics and logic form a part of our overall theory
of the world, anything that counts as confirmation for physics, chemistry, etc., will also serve to
confirm mathematics and logic. This would be fine except for the fact that Quine does not also
take the disconfirmation of those more obviously empirical theories to impugn mathematics and
logic as well. If confirmation is symmetric, in the above described sense, and holistic, then why
does not the disconfirmation of phlogiston theory, of the geo-centric model of the universe, or
even of Newtonian mechanics also serve as disconfirmation of mathematics and logic?101 If
confirmational holism forces on us the idea that the confirmation of any single one of our beliefs
would ipso facto be confirmation of all of our beliefs, then symmetry would seem to entail that
disconfirmation of any single one of them would likewise disconfirm all of them.
Quine might reply that the reason we do not give up mathematics and logic in these cases
is that we tacitly apply “the maxim of minimum mutilation”, i.e., when adjusting one’s overall
theory in response to disconfirming observations, then ceteris paribus make only those changes
that result in the least overall damage to the theory. Since giving up mathematical or logical
beliefs would almost always result in greater mutilation than any other alternative, we in fact
never consider that as a real option. Interestingly, given Quine’s semantic holism, in its most
extreme form, any modification in the theory will, in a way, amount to giving up everything in
the theory, so no sentence in the resulting theory will mean what it did before the change. Given
100
More formally, P(S/C) > P(S) just in case P(S/~C) < P(S).
101
Sober (2000), pp. 264-5.
84
Quine’s semantic holism, then, mutilation is always global. So, given Quine’s acceptance of
strong verificationism, his maxim of minimum mutilation does not seem to help him very much.
The above objection, put simply, is that, given Quine’s own principles, disconfirmation
should be seen as being far more ubiquitous than Quine actually realizes. A second objection,
however, is that confirmation is, on Quine’s story, far easier to obtain than it should be. If
confirmation really is holistic, then to confirm anything that one believes ipso facto will be to
confirm everything that one believes. If I want to improve my warrant for believing in quantum
theory, I need only confirm, say, that my neighbor has bad breath, or that cats are moody, or that
it is raining out, and so on.
This consequence of Quine’s view is bad enough, but matters soon get much worse.
Suppose that I believe that the stock market will crash in July while Smith believes that it will
not. Furthermore, suppose that both Smith and I confirm that Jones is depressed. Then, given
confirmation holism, Jones’ being depressed confirms both that the stock market will crash in
July and that it will not. This is certainly an intolerable result.
Quine might reply here that, properly speaking, confirmation is a three-place relation,
whereas the objector has mistakenly taken it as two-place. Something confirms another thing
only relative to some particular cognizer. Once this fact about confirmation is recognized, the air
of absurdity vanishes. There is nothing particularly troubling about the thought that C will
confirm S for one person, whereas it will disconfirm it for another.
This rejoinder would be successful but for the fact that it makes completely useless the
notion of confirmation as it is needed in science or in any arena where disputes might need to be
resolved by objective, or barring that, intersubjective, means. Often in science, observations are
needed to settle disputes—to determine which of a number of incompatible theories should be
accepted. But if confirmation is really three-place, then observation could not serve this very
practical function.
A better Quinean response would be that confirmation is a three-place relation between a
sentence, an observation, and a theory. Often, it is true, different people will have different
theories, so it might still turn out that an observation might confirm S for one person but not for
another. When this happens it will be because they hold different background theories, not
because they are different people. In any case, provided that sense can be made of sameness of
background theory, the above problem regarding objectivity will not arise. In science, we can
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settle a dispute over the truth-value of some sentence by appealing to observation because
investigators typically share a background theory. It is because of this shared background of
belief that the scientific method can be used to adjudicate disputes.
The trouble with this response is that overestimates the amount of agreement that
investigators will really have. True, all investigators will have a background theory, but if
Quine’s extreme confirmational holism is true, then background theories will almost
undoubtedly, not to say necessarily, vary over speakers. It is highly unlikely that any two
speakers will have exactly the same belief set. Extreme confirmation holism, however, requires
literal identity of background theory (total belief set) if an appeal to observational evidence is to
carry any interpersonal weight.
Another consequence of Quine’s extreme confirmation holism is that any observation
that confirms one thing must confirm everything in one’s belief-set. Suppose that someone, e.g.,
Al, confirms the statement that there is water on Mars (call it ‘M’) in light of some sophisticated
observation involving differentially reflected light rays. Given confirmation holism M is
confirmed by the relevant observation only relative to Al’s total belief set T. Strictly speaking,
that observation confirms T taken together with M; thus the observation will confer additional
warrant on M as well as every member of T. Now in addition to certain core logical and
mathematical statements and other statements of a more-or-less theoretical nature, T will most
likely contain countless, mundane statements such as that Amsterdam is a dirty city, that today is
Monday, that the Yankees will win the world series this year, that Tom has a crush on Alice, etc.
It is hard to see how either the statement about Mars or the relevant observation could have any
relevance, particularly epistemic relevance, to any of these beliefs. Confirmation holism,
however, has the consequence that, apparent irrelevance notwithstanding, the observation
concerning differential patterns of light waves emanating from the Martian surface does in fact
increase one’s warrant for believing any of these things provided only that one already believes
them. The absurdity of this consequence is made more vivid when we realize that were Al to
lack one of these beliefs, say the belief that Tom has a crush on Alice (call it ‘A’), the fact that
the Martian observation confirms M (against the theoretical background of T minus A) would in
that case provide Al with no warrant for accepting A.102 One might be tempted to respond that it
102
Quine has also been criticized for taking the structure of confirmation to be hypothetico-deductive, rather than, as
the Bayesians would have it, probabilistic.
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is false that A is irrelevant to M, since A will be relevant, by virtue of semantic connections, to
those beliefs of Al’s that are relevant to M. The only reason to accept this, however, would seem
to be on the basis of semantic holism. Of course, in the present context, it would be circular to
attempt to counter this objection by an appeal to semantic holism—one cannot appeal to
semantic holism in order to motivate confirmation holism so that one can then go on to motivate
semantic holism.
A final criticism of Quine’s Argument from Verificationism concerns not so much the
truth of its premises as its validity. F&L argue that even if both of the above premises are true,
semantic holism would still not follow, since the argument would in such a case be invalid.103
They reason very roughly as follows. Both the premises and the conclusion of Quine’s argument
are formulated as claims about statements, but they identify a three-way ambiguity in the word
‘statement’.104 It could be understood to mean either uninterpreted sentence (type or token),
sentence-independent conditions of semantic evaluation (i.e., proposition), or sentence taken
together with its condition of semantic evaluation. They claim that when the use of ‘statement’
in Quine’s argument is consistently understood in terms of just one of these notions, then one or
more of its premises will be false, but when we read the premises in such a way that they are
individually plausible, then the argument turns out to be invalid, since ‘statement’ will have to be
understood differently at different places in the argument.
Their discussion is long and raises a number of considerations. The core of their
argument, however, comes in the form of a dilemma. On the one hand, if we understand
‘statement’ as ‘uninterpreted sentence’, then it makes no sense to speak of confirmation relations
between sentences, and Q/D becomes trivial and uninteresting. After all, what could it possibly
mean to say that ‘The cat is on the mat’ confirms ‘Something is on the mat’ independently of
how these sentences are interpreted? Confirmation, if it is anything, is a relation between
propositions. Furthermore, what interest could there be in saying that if push comes to shove,
one can hold onto any uninterpreted sentence simply by making compensatory adjustments
elsewhere in one’s theory (which is itself to be thought of as a set of uninterpreted sentences)?
On the other hand, if statements are semantically interpreted, then QD has as a consequence that
103
F&L (1992), pp. 44-54.
104
In the above discussion of Quine’s argument, there was considerable looseness in the use of the term
‘statement’—the looseness was intended.
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statements bear their confirmation relations contingently. The trouble here, however, is that it
follows from verificationism that statements have their confirmation relations essentially since,
on the proposal now under consideration, statements must have their conditions of semantic
evaluation essentially. F&L conclude that verificationism and Q/D are incompatible and that the
incompatibility can be avoided only by rendering the argument invalid. Furthermore, this
situation has gone unnoticed because no one has bothered to consider what Quine meant by
‘statement’ or to ask which reading of it would be needed to support his Argument from
Verificationism.
I will not rehearse further the particular details of F&L’s argument or consider responses
to it. For my purposes, it is enough to point out that there is some serious cause for concern over
the validity of Quine’s argument, not to mention the truth of Q/D.
The Argument from Verificationism and Analyticity Suppose, however, that we grant
the cogency of Quine’s argument. What consequences can it be taken to have for A/S?
A number of philosophers have pointed out recently that, at the most, this argument of
Quine’s has undermined the possibility of providing an epistemic criterion for analyticity.105 In
particular, they argue that Quine may have shown that the notions of unrevisability and
aprioricity may be unsuitable (since, given Q/D, both of these properties are uninstantiated, if
they are even coherent) for doing the job but that he has not undermined the possibility of
providing some non-epistemic criterion, or perhaps some other suitable, epistemic criterion.
Whether or not he has in fact undermined these possibilities depends on the answers to two
further questions. First, is Quine right about verificationism—does meaning reduce to (or
supervene over) confirmation relations? If so, then it would seem that we are constrained to
giving an epistemic criterion for the analytic/synthetic distinction. In that case, we should ask
whether or not Quine’s understanding of confirmation is correct. Setting aside confirmation
holism for the moment, we might ask whether confirmation, and thus meaning, should be
understood individualistically (in the sense of IND from chapter 1). Quine’s particular brand of
verificationism, however, presupposes individualism, and that it does should not be surprising
when it is recalled that Quine’s view is an early fore-runner to CRS. His view differs from CRS
in that it does not countenance internal, representational states. Instead, he identifies “conceptual
105
For example, Boghossian (1993), Devitt (1993), and Rey (1993a) and (1993b) have all made this observation.
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roles” with behavioral dispositions, and these latter are clearly individualistic. If individualism
fails, however, then perhaps there is some hope for finding either a non-epistemic or an
epistemic but non-individualistic criterion for A/S. We shall return to this issue later.
What we have so far is this: if Quine’s attacks on A/S are successful, then CRS entails
semantic holism. But why should this matter?
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CHAPTER 3
INSTABILITY AND THE CRACK
Two Challenges for Holistic CRS
In the previous chapter, we considered an argument for the claim that CRS must be
holistic. The idea was that CRS and the denial of A/S lead directly to semantic holism. Since,
according to the argument considered earlier, A/S was successfully refuted by Quine (and this is
something most CRS theorists accept anyway), all CRS theorists will be committed to holism,
whether or not they want to admit it.
This, however, raises a serious worry for the CRS theorist. It is widely believed that
holism has a number of consequences so troubling that it would be better just to abandon the
doctrine—for example, it is thought to place considerable stress on the possibility of robust,
interpersonal identity of content, which in turn raises worries about genuine communication,
change of opinion, and a host of other relatively mundane phenomena (the Problem of
Instability), but in light of AA, this would require that CRS be abandoned as well. The other
problem was raised by F&L and aims to show that whether or not CRS is construed holistically it
is untenable. In this case, the problem results from an inconsistency in three of the fundamental
semantic principles held by (nearly) all CRS theorists—they claim to have discovered a large
crack in the theoretical foundations of CRS (The Crack).106
106
There are, of course, other problems associated with semantic holism, problems which, for lack of space, cannot
be considered here.
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The Problem of Instability
Robust Content Identity A robust notion of content identity would allow individuals to
share beliefs without having to share all beliefs, or more generally, to grasp contents without
having to have all of the same beliefs and inferences. If meanings are conceptual roles or
dispositions to verbal behavior, however, and such roles and dispositions are holistically
individuated, then it would seem that there would be no room for a robust notion of content
identity. The following problems are consequences of this apparent feature of semantic holism,
and as such, fall under what I have previously referred to as the Problem of Instability.
Intertranslatability Earlier, I argued that semantic holism and translational holism are
equivalent doctrines. This means that any problems for the latter will also be problems for the
former, and vice versa. Translational holism, however, has as a consequence that if two
languages differ in their expressive resources at all then they do so completely. That is, if there
is any expression of one language that cannot be adequately translated into the other, then no
expressions (sentences) from either language can be legitimately translated into the other.
It is perhaps uncontroversial that many natural language pairs, German and English, say,
have terms that simply do not have accurate translations into the other. For example,
‘Schadenfreude’ might very well be an expression of German that resists exact translation into
English; likewise, I’ve been told that there just is no expression in English that can capture the
precise sense of the French word ‘ennui’. Whether or not the above examples are genuine
examples of translation failure, it seems to be true that such failure is possible. For example, it is
hard to imagine that ancient Greek had all of the conceptual resources of modern English, if we
suppose the latter to include the vocabulary of the natural sciences. For example, it seems
doubtful that Aristotle could have uttered a sentence that expresses the proposition that neutrinos
have no mass. Since this proposition can be expressed in English but not in ancient Greek it
cannot be translated from the one to the other. Translation holism would then entail that no
sentence from either language could be translated by a sentence of the other (despite the protests
of ancient scholars). No modern reader of the Republic will have grasped any of Plato’s
thoughts unless that reader is reading it in the original Greek (and if individualism is correct,
even this may not be enough).
Communication and Disagreement Not only does semantic holism threaten to
undermine translation from one language to another, but given two assumptions almost
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ubiquitous in semantic discussions of the past few decades, it also threatens to undermine the
very possibility of interpersonal communication. The assumptions I have in mind, very roughly
put, are that the intensional content of public-language expressions (expression types) is derived
intentional content—it being derived from the intentional content of one’s idiolect, of one’s
mentalese, or of both, and that these non-derived contents are individualistic (and perhaps even
introspectible).
On this view, the timeless meaning of publicly accessible expression types is to be
viewed as an abstraction from, or a theoretical construction upon, the meanings of expression
tokens (or types relativized to an individual). It is often further suggested that these latter are
then to be understood as deriving what meaning they have from suitably correlated mental
expressions. For example, ‘cat’ means what it does in English because that is what most English
speakers mean by it when they utter sentences containing it. ‘cat’, in the mouth of any English
speaker, the story might then go on, will have the meaning it does for that particular speaker
because it is correlated in some way (typically the connection is held to be a causal one) with
some mental expression that means cat. Finally, some story is given explaining what is for
mental expressions to mean what they do—the standard story being that that mental expression
plays the right kind of conceptual role in that person’s thinking, CRS, where this role is
individuated by means of the causal connections between it, other mental expressions, certain
sensory inputs, and certain motor outputs. Since it is usually held that the other expressions will
include the entire mentalistic vocabulary of the cognizer in question, i.e., since such theorists
usually endorse a mentalistic form of anatomicity while also rejecting the mentalistic version of
A/S (it being supposed that there are no prospects for isolating the causal relations between
expressions that individuate functional roles from those that do not), such meanings are
individuated holistically. What it is for some expression type E of public language L to have the
meaning it does, then, is that for most speakers of the language, tokens of that type are correlated
(in the right way) with mentalistic expressions that play the appropriate functional role in those
speaker’s psychologies. Meanings for (public) expression types are thus individuated holistically
at the level of mentalistic tokens.
Given the internalist assumption and the denial of the mentalistic version of A/S,
meanings now appear to be decidedly unstable fellows. The reason is that since functional roles
are individuated holistically by their position in a fabric of actually held beliefs, two mental
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expressions can play the same conceptual role only if they are (a) related to all of the same
mental expressions and (b) related to them in the same way. This means that differences of
conceptual resource, of belief, of levels of certainty, etc. will result in differences of conceptual
role and ipso facto to differences in meaning.
The upshot is that since for any two speakers there will almost certainly be some
difference in conceptual resources, belief, levels of certainty, etc., it is doubtful that any two
speakers can ever mean the same thing by anything they say. But if this is right, then there can
never be such a thing as genuine communication, if that notion requires interpersonal sameness
of meaning. If for me to communicate successfully to you I must utter some sentence which
means the same thing for me as it does for you, then the view under consideration would
certainly seem to have it as an extremely likely consequence that you and I never successfully
communicate.
The conclusion that there is never genuine communication is contingent since, though
highly unlikely, it is nonetheless possible that for any public language expression two individuals
should correlate with it the same functional role (indeed, if functional roles are holistically
individuated, then they could do so for any particular expression only if they did so for all of
them), in which case genuine communication would be possible after all. In such a case,
however, communication would be rather dull (at least for philosophers) since the two
individuals could never disagree about anything, and this, unlike the previous consequence,
would follow necessarily. Suppose that Bill and Ted disagree over the truth-value of the
sentence ‘Cold fusion is possible’. This disagreement would then correspond to a difference in
the conceptual role of the mentalistic items correlated with that sentence. But since these items
would have different conceptual roles, they would also have different meanings. So what might
seem to be a genuine dispute fails to count as one since the proposition Bill expresses by means
of that sentence is different from the one Ted expresses by means of it. If meaning is conceptual
role, holistically individuated, then genuine disagreement goes the way of the round square or the
male sister.
Change of Mind If one also makes the plausible assumption that conceptual roles can
change within a single individual, then the internalist holist is in for more trouble, for then not
only does interpersonal disagreement appear impossible but so does intrapersonal diachronic
disagreement, i.e., change of opinion. If a speaker accepts that the sentence ‘Semantic holism is
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implausible’ is true at one moment but later comes to think that this sentence is false then, again,
the functional role of the mentalistic expression corresponding to this sentence, and thus the
meaning of the sentence itself, will have changed for that speaker. But if the meaning of the
sentence has changed, then in what sense could the speaker be said to have changed his mind?
On the classical view of propositional attitudes, change of opinion is possible only if an
individual bears, at different times, contrary attitudes to the same proposition, not just to the
same sentence, however interpreted. Unless one holds the implausible view that the objects of
attitudes are uninterpreted sentences, semantic holism would seem to preclude the possibility of
change of opinion.
Language Acquisition If the above picture of internalist holism is correct, then such a
view would also have radical consequences for our understanding of how it is that we acquire
our linguistic skills.
We typically suppose that the linguistic neophyte first conquers some core portion of a
given language and then gradually and painstakingly increases her linguistic command by adding
to that stable core. The picture is one of adding tools to one’s tool kit. When a new tool is added
one increases the number of tasks that one can perform, though any task that could be performed
before the addition can also be performed after it. Of course, we are all in the position of the
neophyte to some degree—our command of the language is always improving. Unless we are
completely insulated from the outside world, we are always learning the meanings of new words
and refining our understanding of old ones. All of this, however, is commonplace.
Commonplace may be out of place, however, if semantic holism is correct. For on that
view, there is no stable core of meaning that survives changes in the overall functional
organization of one’s cognition. Adding a new piece of vocabulary or a new grammatical device
will necessarily change the functional role of every lexical item in one’s idiolect or every
expression of one’s mentalese if an expression’s conceptual role is indeed holistically
individuated by reference to its causal relations to every other lexical or mentalistic expression.
The additions that are relevant here are not merely abbreviations of already learned, but complex,
expressions or devices. What we are imagining here are additions to one’s conceptual resources
that genuinely add to what one can say or think, and thus they must be seen as extending the
expressive capacity of one’s idiolect or cognitive system. Internalist holism seems to be
committed to the idea that such “extensions” are not really extensions at all. Instead they are
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global revisions to one’s idiolect or mentalese. Adding new expressive resources to one’s
vocabulary will change the meanings of every expression already in that vocabulary. The idea is
that what happens when we acquire new linguistic skills is not adequately represented by the
previous tool metaphor. Better would be a model that emphasizes replacement rather than
continuity and extension. It is as if every time one buys a new kind of screw, one must also buy
an entirely new set of tools to use it.
Psychological Explanation Commonsense propositional psychology, as well as the
more scientifically minded cognitive sciences, may also be casualties of semantic holism. If no
sense can be made of robust content identity, then any mode of explanation which requires
framing laws that connect mental states with behaviors may be paralyzed. For example, a
standard way, maybe the standard way, of explaining someone’s behavior is by citing the beliefs
and desires that produced it. I explain little Johnny’s midnight visit to the refrigerator by citing
his desire for a snack and his belief that there is something to snack on in the refrigerator.107
Perhaps there might be a need to generalize here so that the behavior of others could be predicted
or explained; the result might be the claim that if someone desires a snack and believes there are
snacks available in the refrigerator, then she will raid the refrigerator.108 Now, such a
generalization will be useful only if others can have mental states with the contents that I should
have a snack and that there are snacks in the refrigerator, for it will only apply to individuals
with concepts in question. But if holism is true, then whether or not someone has the concepts
subsumed by the generalization will depend on all of the other beliefs that one possesses. The
generalization could not usefully be applied to any two individuals who differed in any of their
beliefs. Since it is virtually certain that no two people share all of the same beliefs, the likely
conclusion is that such generalizations could be applied to at most one person. But which one?
This will depend on how the concepts that make it up are fixed, and on an individualistic CRS,
this will be the framer (in thought or speech) of the generalization. So, such a generalization
107
A full explanation would likely require reference to more beliefs and desires than just these two, but, for the sake
of simplicity, I shall ignore this.
108
It is doubtful that this particular generalization would find much use in a rigorously developed science of
psychology. Other more plausible candidates might include generalizations such as if you see the moon as being on
the horizon, then you will see it as oversized, or if someone asks you what the first thing husbands make you think of,
you’ll think of wives, or if you believe, of two objects seen in the distance but which actually appear the same size,
that one is larger than the other, then you will believe that one is closer to you than the other, whether or not it
actually is.
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would apply only to the person who is considering it, if to anyone. This could hardly be useful
to anyone interested in serious cognitive science.
Recently, Michael Devitt has offered a far more general argument against the explanatory
usefulness of holistic properties, of which the previous line of reasoning is an instance. If
cogent, it would defeat holism across the board and not just in semantics. The main idea is that,
generally speaking, explanations are more useful to us the more general they are, or the more
capable they are of supporting generalizations. So, in a particular area of theorizing, we should
always seek to identify and ascribe properties that can underwrite generalizations. Holistic
properties, however, are very poorly constituted to meet this particular theoretical end. For
example, we ascribe contents because we want to explain behavior, and learn about the world,
but doing so requires, and is useful to us only if we have, suitable generalizations about those
contents. But if contents are likely to be unstable across different minds at the same time or for
the same mind at different times, then such generalizations will not be possible, and thus such
ascriptions will not be useful. So, there is really no point in ascribing holistic contents.109
Now, if this point is correct, then one might draw one of two, variously optimistic
conclusions. On the one hand, if one thinks that sense can be made of intentional notions, then
one might draw the still hopeful conclusion that only atomic or anatomic meanings should be
sought and ascribed. On the other hand, if one is convinced that the only things that could pass
for meanings must be holistic in nature, one might prefer to draw the less sanguine conclusion
that sciences such as semantics (if it requires intentional notions) and intentional psychology are
dead ends. Given the connections between the objectivity of truth, meaning, and judgment
sketched in chapter 1, such a conclusion might have disastrous consequences. Whether it does
would depend on whether the fact that there can be no science of a certain purported class of
phenomena is good grounds for denying the existence of that class. In other words, if lack of
scientific legitimacy is sufficient grounds for lacking ontological legitimacy, and the connections
drawn in chapter 1 are correct, then Devitt’s argument might be fashioned into a very strong
argument for the claim that semantic properties must be legitimate and either atomic or
anatomic. In any case, the connection between science and ontology is a fundamental
assumption of any philosopher with a naturalistic disposition, and to the extent that a naturalistic
109
Devitt (1996), pp. 101-127.
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semantics leads to semantic holism, such a position, if the above reflections are correct, may be
inherently unstable.
CRS, Holism, and Instability We are now in a position to frame the first of our
challenges to CRS. In the last chapter, we considered some reasons for thinking that CRS entails
semantic holism. In particular, we examined F&L’s argument that Quine’s attacks on A/S and
CRS jointly entail holism about content. If, as a large number of philosophers now do, we
assume A/S to have been refuted by Quine, then we are left with the idea that any content
recognized by CRS must be holistic. In this chapter, however, we have seen that holism
apparently leads to the Problem of Instability. If this is correct, then CRS is saddled with the
Problem of Instability. Not only would CRS be incapable of saving the appearances of
communication, disagreement, change of opinion, and language learning, but it will also be
incapable of playing a useful role in any serious psychological theory—something for which
CRS is widely thought to be inherently fit. If, as seems completely reasonable, you think that
Instability simply incurs too high a cost, then the only available conclusion would be to reject
holism and with it CRS.
The Crack
So, the above challenge to CRS depends on both CRS being holistic and holism being
unstable. F&L offer another challenge that apparently does not depend on this last assumption,
one which they regard as disturbing the very theoretical foundations of CRS. Ultimately, F&L
charge that compositionality, holism, and the denial of A/S form an inconsistent triad. This
constitutes a crisis for CRS, since, as they see things, the only viable versions of the theory are
committed to each of these doctrines. According to F&L, the problem is so serious that it leaves
a large crack in the foundations of much of contemporary semantics. For this reason, I have
been calling this second challenge of theirs the Crack.
I have already considered holism and the denial of A/S at some length (the upshot of
chapter 2 was that if F&L are right, then CRS entails holism; below we shall see that, according
to F&L, the only plausible versions of CRS are those which reject A/S). Before I turn directly to
the Crack, let me say a few things about compositionality.
Why Compositionality? Compositionality, recall, is the claim that the meaning of a
complex expression is a function jointly of its structure and of the meanings of its proper parts.
This is prime facie a plausible enough doctrine, though, on reflection, there seem to be numerous
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counterexamples. In particular, a strong case for the principle can be made when attention is
restricted to the literal use of language but quickly breaks down when it is extended to include
figurative language such as metaphor. Leaving the difficult case of figurative language to one
side, I would like to focus on language in its literal uses, since it is an account of such uses which
I take to constitute the core of any philosophical account of language. In any case, one can avoid
the problem of figurative language by stipulating that compositionality is a principle that pertains
only to literal content.
So then, what case can be made for the principle? In recent years, much has been made
of certain apparent features of natural languages. Philosophers of language have placed much
emphasis on the fact that languages are isomorphic to the propositions they express, productive,
and systematic. Much of the plausibility that the compositionality of meaning enjoys lies in its
ability to provide a simple, elegant, and uniform explanation of these, as well as other, features
of natural languages. Let me say a bit about the above three features.
Natural languages, or most of them anyway, are productive in the sense that anyone who
speaks one will have at his disposal the wherewithal to produce and understand a potential
infinity of sentences—at least if we abstract away from the obvious cognitive limitations of
human speakers—and to do so despite our finite nature. As Davidson once put it, an “infinite
[linguistic] aptitude can be encompassed by finite accomplishments.”110 This is a striking fact
which calls out for explanation. It merits emphasis that a speaker of a language is thereby
equipped to understand a potential infinity of new sentences, sentences that have never before
been encountered by that speaker (and thus could not have been learned directly), and which are
understood immediately once reflected upon, provided of course one understands the mode of
composition and the meanings of the new sentence’s lexical constituents. Again, explanation is
needed.
Systematicity, on the other hand, is the idea that for just about any given proposition, if a
language can express it then there will be a host of other systematically related propositions also
expressible by that language. For example, a language that can express the proposition that if
evil exists, then God does not will also be able to express, among others, the propositions that if
God exists, then evil does not, that if God does not exist, then evil does, that if God exists, then
110
Davidson (1965), p. 8.
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God exists, and that if evil exists, then evil exists. Likewise, any language that can express the
proposition that Cain smote Abel, can also express the propositions that Abel smote Cain, and
that Cain smote himself.
Interestingly, if this is indeed a general and uncontroversial feature of natural languages,
then there is at least one anatomicity thesis which holds uncontroversially. Should every
sentence turn out to be systematically connected to others in this way, then we would have the
following anatomicity thesis: a sentence expresses the proposition it does, say p, just in case
there are sentences in the language that express those propositions systematically related to p. It
might turn out to be an empirical matter how to understand the relation systematically related
propositions, but one a priori candidate would be that two propositions are systematically related
just in case one can be obtained from the other by rearranging propositional constituents of the
same (semantic) category in the latter. This suggestion would, of course, presuppose some prior
inventory of semantic categories. It would be a question of fundamental interest whether or not
there are propositions that are systematically related in other ways. For example, are the
propositions that Tom is a bachelor and that Tom is a male systematically related, and if so, in
virtue of what are they so related? Though these questions are about propositions and not
sentences, it seems clear that a positive answer to the first would commit one to the existence the
variety of analytic sentences that Quine had worked so hard to disparage, while an answer to the
second would be no easier than spelling out a principled analytic/synthetic distinction. Should
this second question prove to be more tractable than the corresponding problem for sentences,
however, then this would suggest a starting point for answering Quine’s worries.
On a polemical note, the insistence that “systematicity is a . . . perfectly universal feature
of natural languages”111 appears to be incompatible with the claim that semantic properties are
atomic, a claim to which Fodor and Lepore are also committed.112 The reason is that expresses
such and such a proposition is a perfectly legitimate semantic property, provided of course that
talk of propositions is perfectly legitimate, and, as we have just seen, to hold that languages are
all systematic is to hold that (for at least some of the sentences of any language) that property
will be anatomic.
It seems then that one cannot consistently affirm systematicity while also
111
Fodor and Lepore (1991), p. 147.
112
Ibid., p. 155, and Fodor and Lepore (1992), pp. 32-35.
99
denying semantic anatomism across the board. If languages are systematic, as I suspect they are,
then at least one important semantic property is anatomistic.
For those who are not squeamish about talk of propositions, isomorphism is that feature a
language has when, as Fodor and Lepore put it, “the structure of sentences is . . . isomorphic to
the structure of the propositions they express.”113 This characterization is of course somewhat
vague, but, at a minimum, it commits one to the idea that the lexical constituents of a sentence S
that expresses a proposition p will themselves express constituents of p, and further, when S is
neither token-reflexive nor elliptical, its lexical constituents will express all of the constituents of
p. The sentence ‘Dinosaurs are extinct’, for example, expresses the proposition that dinosaurs
are extinct and has ‘dinosaurs’, ‘are’, and ‘extinct’ as its lexical constituents. Furthermore, the
meanings of these three terms, whatever they turn out to be, are that proposition’s constituents.114
I accept that productivity, systematicity, and isomorphism are genuine features of at least
some natural languages, though Fodor and Lepore take them to be true of all of them. Since it is
largely an empirical issue just how widespread these characteristics are I will not insist on the
stronger claim, though, for the sake of the discussion, I will grant that Fodor and Lepore are
correct.
As Fodor has long insisted, one very compelling motivation for accepting
compositionality is that it provides a very natural and uniform explanation for productivity,
systematicity, and isomorphism—so much so that, when doing semantics, compositionality is
best considered as “non-negotiable”.115
Another motivation would be that it dovetails nicely with the classical conception of
language acquisition, since on that conception each addition to one’s conceptual repertoire—
whether a new piece of vocabulary or a new grammatical device—enlarges the stock of things
that one can say and think by adding to what one could already say and think, rather than by
113
Ibid., p. 147.
114
To say that isomorphism holds for some language is not incompatible with the claim that some sentences of the
language are not isomorphic to the propositions they express. For example, ellipsis is an extremely widespread
phenomenon which would seem to undermine the isomorphism claim. The tension here, however, is only apparent,
since all that is required is that for any proposition expressible in a language, there is some sentence of that language
with which it is isomorphic. Since as far as I am aware, for any elliptical sentence there is a sentence which is its
fully explicit expansion, this weaker requirement is generally satisfied.
115
Many, including Frege (1918-19) and Davidson (1965) and (1967), have seen in compositionality the key to
explaining at least productivity.
100
replacing it en bloc. The intuitive idea is that by adding a new piece of vocabulary, for example,
I exponentially increase what I can say, since I can now combine the new expression with a large
number of expressions already learned, and whose meanings are relatively stable, by means of
already mastered modes of composition.
The Master Argument So, there seems to be good reason to accept compositionality.
F&L, however, have argued that if we do accept it, as we should, then the Argument from
Anatomicity is unsound.116 This claim is a corollary of a master argument they launch against
CRS. They proceed by defending the claim that CRS, compositionality, and the denial of A/S
form an inconsistent triad. Their defense comes in two waves.
The first wave of the attack is to show that meaning is not global conceptual role. The
reasoning is very simple: meaning is compositional, but global conceptual role is not. Hence, the
two cannot be identified. The key premise here is the second. If it is false and meaning is
nonetheless compositional, then the global conceptual role (for a particular speaker/cognizer) of
‘brown cow’ should be a function of the global conceptual roles of ‘brown’ and ‘cow’ along with
the operation of predicate addition. The trouble is that it is hard to see how this could be so. For
example, I might be disposed to infer ‘dangerous’ from ‘brown cow’ even though I might also be
disposed to infer ‘not dangerous’ from both ‘brown’ and ‘cow’ when taken individually.117 After
all, I just might believe that an overwhelming number of brown things are not dangerous, that an
overwhelming number of cows are not dangerous, but that an overwhelming number of things
that are both brown and a cow are highly vicious. But if so, then it is very hard to see how my
global ‘brown cow’ conceptual role is a function of my global ‘brown’ and ‘cow’ conceptual
roles. So, assuming compositionality, meaning cannot be global conceptual role.
The second wave concerns the only other reasonable option for CRS, viz., that the
meaning of an expression for an individual is constituted by a non-arbitrary sub-class of those
inferences associated by that individual with that expression. That the sub-class is to be nonarbitrary is just another way of saying that the meaning of the expression is to be identified with
its role in analytic inferences. Fodor and Lepore point out two problems with this maneuver.
First, there is a kind of circularity involved in analyzing meaning as role in analytic inferences,
116
F&L (1991). Also, see F&L (1992), pp. 174-86.
117
The example comes from F&L (1991), pp. 147-9.
101
since analytic inferences would presumably be those inferences licensed solely by the meaning
of a term. One can discount this objection, however, since such a CRS theorist would most
likely attempt to provide some non-circular analysis of analyticity. Boghossian, for example, has
pointed out that identifying conceptual role with role in analytic inference is not necessarily
circular, since, as he puts it, ‘identifying conceptual role with analytic inference’ is ambiguous
between ‘identifying conceptual role with role in analytic inference, under that very description’
and ‘identifying conceptual role with role in inferences that possess the property P, where P is
necessarily equivalent to the property of being analytic’—the first reading, but not the second,
being circular.118 Here, being necessarily equivalent is just a matter of being, as a matter of
necessity, coextensional, and there is no reason to think this relationship presupposes analyticity
(witness the necessary coextensionality between ‘having three angles’ and ‘rectilinear figure
with three sides’). In any case, it is possible, and perhaps expected, that the type of CRS theorist
under consideration would have this kind of identification in mind, but even so, this leads
directly to the second, and more important, problem. Identifying conceptual role with role in
analytic inference (on either reading) requires accepting A/S, but Fodor and Lepore clearly view
this assumption as dubious at best.119 So, assuming the falsity of A/S, meaning cannot be role in
analytic inference.
Since global inferential role and role in analytic inferences are the only two real options
for CRS, the final step in the master argument is to conclude that CRS is false. That is, if
compositionality holds but A/S fails, then CRS is false. So, the three doctrines form an
inconsistent triad (given other plausible assumptions). Since most CRS theorists accept both
compositionality and the denial of A/S, and since both of the latter are more plausible than CRS,
the only reasonable conclusion to draw, as Fodor and Lepore see things, is to reject CRS. If their
reasoning is correct, then we now have some reason to reject the key premise of the Argument
from Anatomicity—semantic anatomicity and (thus) CRS are both false.
118
Boghossian (1993), pp. 29-31.
119
Fodor and Lepore have in mind a robust understanding of the distinction. They concede that a weakened version
of the principle, one that only recognizes as analytic relations between complex expressions and their lexical
constituents, e.g., an inference from ‘brown cow’ to ‘cow’, is relatively unproblematic. What they reject is
extending the notion to include relationships between lexical simples, e.g., inferences from ‘cow’ to ‘animal’ or
from ‘red’ to ‘color’.
102
They go on to argue that the above considerations, if correct, would be enough to show
that the Argument from Anatomicity is unsound.120 They reason as follows. Either A/S holds or
it does not. In the former case the second premise of the argument is false, since that premise
just denies A/S. In the latter case, the second premise would be true, but given the above
reasoning and assuming compositionality (we are already assuming the denial of A/S) it would
follow that the first premise of the argument is in this instance false. In either case (and
assuming excluded middle, there are no others), the argument has a false premise and thus is
unsound. This, of course, is just another way of saying that compositionality, CRS, and the
denial of A/S form an inconsistent triad and that compositionality is true. So, if one is a believer
in compositionality, one had better not endorse any version of the Argument from Anatomicity.
Are Compositionality and Holism Really Incompatible? One might still wonder
whether compositionality is incompatible with holism itself, rather than just with one argument
for it. If the meaning of every expression of some language is systematically dependent upon the
meaning of every other expression of it, could it nonetheless be the case that the meaning of a
complex expression is determined by its structure and the meanings of its lexical constituents?
Here is one reason to think it could not. If the meaning of an expression depends upon the
meaning of every other expression then it will ipso facto also depend upon the meaning of every
sentence of which it is a constituent. But then how could it be possible that the meanings of
those sentences are also determined by the meanings of their lexical constituents (all of whose
meanings are partially determined by it)? It would seem that we have here a case of mutual
determination, something which many philosophers might find hard to swallow.
The problem is not just a problem for holism but it is also a problem for some celebrated
(properly) anatomic theses as well. Most notably, this is also a problem for Frege who
simultaneously endorsed compositionality and the context principle, i.e., the thesis that we are
“never to ask for the meaning of a word in isolation, but only in the context of a proposition.”121
It is somewhat controversial what Frege meant by this and whether it was something to which he
subscribed after the Grundlagen. One standard reading, however, is that the meaning of a word
is dependent upon the meanings of all of the sentences of which it is a constituent. Perhaps what
120
Fodor and Lepore (1991), p. 153.
121
Frege (1884), x.
103
is meant here is that (as some, including Quine and Davidson, have claimed) its meaning is an
abstraction from the meanings of the sentences in which it occurs. Whether or not Frege himself
ever held such a view, and if so, when, it is undoubtedly the case that others have, and doing so
makes them vulnerable to the same worry about mutual determination that was described above.
In fact, the problem is nicely isolated in this case, and a solution for it here might very well count
as a solution for the holistic case as well.
But is the worry a genuine one? Clearly, whether it is will depend on what is meant by
phrases such as ‘depends on’, ‘is determined by’, etc. In particular, if there are plausible
readings of compositionality and semantic holism (or the context principle) which employ these
terms in different senses, then there need be no conflict at all between the principles, there being
no prima facie inconsistency in declaring, for example, that F’s depend only on G’s but that F’s
also depend on H’s which happen to be distinct from G’s, provided one means something
different by ‘depend’ in each case. Just this has been suggested by Dummett in the hopes of
rescuing Frege from inconsistency and by Peter Pagin with similar hopes vis-à-vis semantic
holists.122
In a nutshell, Dummett’s main idea is that the difference in the dependence involved in
each principle is a matter of scope.123 The compositionality principle (for sense) holds
universally for complex sentences. The meaning of every such sentence is indeed determined by
the meanings of its lexical parts, and this must be understood in such a way as to presuppose that
those parts have stable, separable meanings. The context principle, on the other hand, informs
us that it is folly to think of those meanings as being completely separable from all sentential
contexts. Since a word means what it does partly because of its behavior in complete sentences,
to understand the meaning of a word completely in isolation is, to borrow a phrase from a
different but related context, “to wash the fur without wetting it.”124 So, we cannot hope either to
understand or explain the meaning of a word independently of its occurrence in at least some
sentential contexts. This does not mean, however, that the meaning of a sub-sentential
expression is dependent on the meanings of all of the sentences in which it might occur, for then
122
Dummett (1973), (1981), and (1991a), and Pagin (1997).
123
Dummett (1991a), pp. 202-4.
124
Frege (1884), p. 36.
104
an important part of the explanatory value of compositionality would be rendered useless, viz., its
ability to explain how a speaker can grasp almost instantly the meaning of a sentence with which
he has had no prior acquaintance. Rather, what is required is that for any meaningful expression,
there is some special class of sentences containing that expression an understanding of which
constitutes a grasp of the sense of that expression—perhaps the classes of those sentences which
illustrate the most basic use of the expression in question. For example, to understand the count
noun ‘horse’ one must understand sentences such as ‘This is a horse’, ‘This horse is the same as
that horse’, and ‘This horse is not the same as that horse’, sentences an understanding of which
demonstrates a knowledge of how to identify and individuate horses—something which must be
known if one is to understand the role that ‘horse’ plays in the language. Once such an
understanding is achieved, one will then be able to understand the contribution that the meaning
of ‘horse’ makes to the meaning of other sentences in which it might occur. How one is to arrive
at an understanding of the sentences in the dependency-class without already understanding the
meaning of the expression in question, however, remains to be seen.
So, on Dummett’s proposal, compositionality would hold for every sentence, while the
context principle, properly understood, would only concern special sub-classes of them. In this
way, the above tension could be avoided, but precisely because this solution depends on a
difference in generality, it cannot be extended to solve the problem for semantic holism.
Pagin, on the other hand, explores two possible solutions. One solution regards the kind,
rather than the extent, of the determination/dependency involved in each principle to be different.
The other solution takes the two principles to involve the same kind of
determination/dependency but to be using it to relate different classes of things. On either
solution, however, Pagin takes semantic holism to be a metaphysical thesis about the nature and
constitution of meaning.125
125
A theory of meaning which determines, in this sense, the meanings of the expressions of some language L will,
generally speaking, do three things. First, it will specify the basic properties P1, . . . , Pn and relations R1, . . . , Rn
over which all facts about meanings will supervene. Second, it will specify a class C constituting the entire range of
all of these properties (intuitively, this will be the class of meaningful expressions of L). Finally, for every element
e of C, the theory will specify the relevant meaning determining facts but it must do so solely in terms of which of
the properties P1, . . . , Pn e has and relations R1, . . . , Rn e bears to other elements of C. A semantic holist views
meaning in much the same way that a structuralist about mathematics views numbers—just as numbers are
individuated solely by virtue of their positions in certain structures, the meaning of an expression, say e, will be
individuated in terms of the complex of relations it bears to every other element of C (and furthermore for every
other element of C it does bear some of these relations). When such a holist is also a naturalist, the properties P1, . . .
, Pn and relations R1, . . . , Rn will all be non-semantic in nature.
105
To begin with, if compositionality is understood as a thesis about the metaphysical
constitution of the meanings of complex expressions, then it might very well be incompatible
with the above understanding of semantic holism. The latter regards meaning as constituted by
vast networks of relations, while a metaphysical reading of compositionality would seem to
locate the identity conditions of sentence meanings internally rather than relationally. The
meaning of a complex expression is literally constituted by the meanings of its lexical
constituents, and since the meanings of these constituents are the only things that constitute its
meaning (along with its structure), those meanings must be atomic in nature rather than holistic,
or even properly anatomic (otherwise, since constitution is presumably transitive the complex
expression’s meaning would also be partially determined by, or dependent upon, the meaning of
any other expression to which one of its lexical constituents is anatomically related).
Instead of reading compositionality as involving a strong form of metaphysical
determination/dependence, we might instead read it as involving a weaker kind of
“mathematical” determination. On such a reading, compositionality requires only that, once
meanings have been determined, whether holistically, atomically, or whatever, there be some
abstract function from syntactic structure and meanings of constituent expressions to meanings
of complex expressions. On such a construal, compositionality would be completely neutral as
to the precise character of any such function.
One can see Block (1993) as adopting something like this strategy. There Block
concedes that holistic CRS entails that the semantic identity of any word in a language will carry
information about the properties of every word in that language. The resulting kind of
compositionality, which he regards as the limiting case of genuine compositionality, is what he
calls hyper-compositionality. Normally, the compositionality constraint is taken to require that
however the meanings of, e.g., the lexical constituents of ‘Rattling snakes are dangerous’, are to
be explained the meanings of ‘rattling’, ‘snakes’, and ‘dangerous’ must, when combined in the
right way determine the meaning of that sentence. Hyper-compositionality does in fact satisfy
this constraint, since the meaning of each of these expressions, taken individually, determines the
sentence’s meaning. Somewhat trivially, then, they do so when combined in the right way.
Anticipating the obvious rejoinder by F&L that compositionality is needed to explain
productivity and systematicity, something which is not done by hyper-compositionality, Block
106
distinguishes between semantic compositionality and psychosemantic compositionality.126
Semantic compositionality, the kind of compositionality that is relevant to a formal semantic
theory, requires only that there be some function from the semantic values of parts to the
semantic values of wholes. Psychosemantic compositionality, on the other hand, is the
requirement, of a theory, that it tell us how people represent the meanings of words and then use
them to form representations of the meanings of sentences. Pace F&L, it is psychosemantic, not
semantic, compositionality that is needed to explain systematicity and productivity, and a CRS
need not be expected to accomplish these tasks by itself. CRS allows for hypercompositionality, a genuine form of semantic compositionality, and this may be all that is
required of an unsupplemented CRS.
This response of Block’s depends on two key assumptions: first, it assumes that CRS is
meant only as a formal semantic theory, and second, it seems to assume that semantic and
psychosemantic compositionality need not be inter-related notions. Given that CRS is explicitly
designed to play a central role in some kind of rigorously developed psychology, the first
assumption seems dubious at best. The second assumption seems at least equally problematic.
Block’s two kinds of compositionality are intimately related in the sense that they must dovetail
in such a way as to be mutually constraining. Psychosemantic compositionality cannot be
completely independent of semantic compositionality, since the meanings that are represented
are the meanings ascribed by the formal semantic theory. Semantic compositionality, on the
other hand, cannot be given completely independently of psychosemantic compositionality, since
what meanings a formal theory can ascribe will have to be constrained by empirical facts about
what meanings speakers/thinkers can represent. This is, of course, just another incarnation of the
old point that meaning and grasp (understanding) must be mutually constraining. If this is right,
and if the notion of content recognized by some particular formal semantic theory is hypercompositional, then that account of content will be inadequate, provided that a hypercompositional conception of content is indeed inadequate to the needs of a psychosemantic
126
Pagin (1997), makes basically the same point in response to a purely formal treatment of compositionality. As he
puts it, “it is not obvious that the explanatory purposes that compositionality is to serve can be served by a mere
mathematical principle,” (p. 15). In particular, it is doubtful that we would still have a plausible explanation of
productivity, and it seems that to preserve this particular virtue of compositionality, we would have to give it a
stronger, metaphysical reading. In F&L (1993b), p. 677, a similar objection is made in response to similar
suggestions by Block and McLaughlin.
107
theory. If such notions of compositionality could be provided, however, such that they really do
inform one another in the desired way, then Block’s solution might pan out after all.
Another option would be to find a way of avoiding the conflict while reading both holism
and compositionality as metaphysical principles. According to Pagin, doing so may not be
inconsistent, since compositionality does not in fact say anything about how the meanings of the
simple parts themselves are determined.127 If compositionality commits us to seeing the
meanings of complex expressions as being dependent upon the meanings of their parts, then
semantic holism will be incompatible with it if it (semantic holism) includes sentences as well as
simple expressions under its purview. If the meaning of an expression depends on the meaning
of every other expression of the language, then, should both sentences and simple expressions be
included, by compositionality a sentence will constitutively depend for its meaning on its lexical
constituents while, by semantic holism, its lexical constituents will constitutively depend upon it
for their meanings.
Might the problem be avoided by viewing semantic holism as concerning only complex
expressions (in particular, sentences)? Again, it seems that this solution would do nothing to
solve the problem, since once again the meaning of a sentence would depend constitutively on its
structure and the meaning of its parts (by compositionality) and on the meaning of every other
sentence of the language (by holism). But then given the latter assumption and compositionality,
applied to every other sentence, it would seem that the meaning of the original sentence would
also depend constitutively on the meaning of every simple expression of the language, provided
that constitution is transitive. But then any explanatory advantage gained by compositionality
would have been lost, since it could only be read as saying that, among other things, the meaning
of a sentence is determined by the meanings of its lexical constituents and its structure—those
other things including the meaning of every other simple expression in the language. What, if
anything, is really left of compositionality? Furthermore, on this proposal, semantic holism
would seem to lose much of its interest, since if it were not taken as a doctrine applying to simple
expressions, then, for many philosophers of language (or mind), one of the main motivations for
accepting holism would have been lost, viz., that for many simple expressions, and in particular
127
Pagin (1997).
108
those that express our most fundamental concepts, semantic holism offers a plausible way of
understanding meaning determination.
Pagin’s way out of the thicket would be to endorse a metaphysical reading of
compositionality while also endorsing a metaphysical reading of semantic holism, but the latter
only as applied to simple expressions. If semantic holism is understood as a doctrine pertaining
only to simple expressions, then compositionality might nonetheless still hold, since there is no
apparent conflict, circularity, or inconsistency in the idea that while sentences depend for their
meaning on the meanings of their lexical parts, simple expressions depend for their meanings on
all of the other simple expressions of the language.
But does Pagin’s suggestion really perform as advertised? In particular, does this
proposal really restrict the dependencies in such a way that it insulates the compositional holist
from the above worries? First, Pagin concedes that on this construal the meanings of all
expressions of a language, simple and complex alike, will nonetheless be determined together.128
Let S and S′ be sentences of L. By compositionality, the meaning of S will be determined by its
composition and the meanings of its proper parts, while by the version of holism under
consideration, the meanings of those proper parts and the meanings of the proper parts of S′ are
interdependent, being determined together. But given compositionality and the composition of
S′, S′’s meaning is fully determined, since the meanings of its parts have been determined.
This fully general linguistic interdependence raises a pressing question for Pagin: In what
does the difference of dependence between simple expressions and that between complex and
simple expressions consist? One suggestion might be that keeping the meanings of the simple
expressions constant, we could change the meanings of the complex expressions by changing the
principles of semantic composition. Pagin rejects this suggestion, however, on the basis that it is
primarily in virtue of the interaction of simple expressions through the principles of semantic
composition that the meanings of simple expressions are interdependent at all. This is just a
manifestation of one version of the context principle, viz., one according to which simple
expressions mean what they do by virtue of the role the play in determining the meaning,
semantic value, or whatever, of complex expressions (in particular, of sentences). We cannot,
then, change that role without changing those meanings. The right answer, according to Pagin, is
128
Ibid., p. 16.
109
that what distinguishes the kind of dependence at issue is that “you can take away subsets of
sentences from the language while retaining the old semantics for the remaining fragment. The
idea is that what remains is semantically independent of what is taken away, while what is taken
away does not retain any meaning in isolation. Thus take any complex expression α of language
L. Form a new language L′ by removing from L every expression that has α as a constituent
part. Then any expression in L′ has the same meaning as it has in L. And if you add to L′ the set
of syntactic objects that were taken away, then the result is precisely L, since the principles of
composition of L′ will assign meanings, to those syntactic objects, which coincide with the
meanings they have in L. The result is that no simple expression semantically depends on any
complex expression and that every complex expression depends on its parts.”129
Pagin’s response, however, simply fails to resolve the difficulty. If L′ is indeed to be
thought of as a language (a set of meaningful syntactic objects governed by recursive rules of
semantic composition) which happens also to be a proper fragment of L, then either some simple
expression in L is not also in L′ or some mode of composition of L is not one of L′. In either
case, however, the meanings of the simple expressions of L and L′ must be different. Given
semantic holism (restricted to simple expressions), the removal of a simple expression would
change the meanings of all of the remaining simple expressions. Given Pagin’s concession as to
the way in which simple expressions must interact in order to be holistically interdependent, the
removal of a compositional rule would also have the same effect.
Pagin has thus failed to show how the dependence at the level of simple expressions is
symmetric while that between complex and simple expressions is asymmetric. Since both
dependency relations are to be viewed as concerning metaphysical constitution, it seems that the
holism involved cannot be restricted to primitive expressions alone, and thus Pagin’s preferred
solution fails.
I here draw the tentative conclusion that a metaphysical reading of semantic holism is
indeed incompatible with a metaphysical reading of compositionality, or at the very least, that we
have not yet been given any plausible interpretation of these principles that would make them
compatible. We do have Dummett’s solution, but since this only reconciles compositionality
with the context principle, we still have been given no way of avoiding the problem for holism.
129
Ibid., 17.
110
If holism and compositionality really are incompatible, then the problem is not so much the triad,
but this particular pair of doctrines. So, unless either (i) some suitable metaphysical
interpretations of compositionality can be fashioned or (ii) some inter-related notions of semantic
and psycho-semantic compositionality can be supplied, either holism or compositionality must
go.
Why Is Rejecting CRS the Most Plausible Option? F&L take it for granted that it is,
and their reason is fairly straightforward: because it entails semantic holism and semantic holism
is far less plausible than either compositionality or the denial of A/S. But now why do they think
semantic holism is the least plausible option? Block has convincingly argued, to my mind at
least, that their reason must be that doing so would require seeing sentences such as ‘Rattling
snakes are dangerous’ (|Rattling snakes are dangerous|) as analytic whenever they are accepted
as true (believed), and that the only real reason they could give for finding this problematic
would be that doing so would make it nearly impossible for us to make sense of communication,
disagreement, change of opinion, and psychological explanation.130 In other words, what lies at
the bottom of their quick dismissal of holism as a response to the Crack (the inconsistent triad) is
a failure of nerve in the face of Instability.
The Crack, then, actually depends on the Problem of Instability, since it seems that the
only rationale that F&L can give for rejecting semantic holism, rather than compositionality or
the denial of A/S, is that retaining it simply incurs too high a price and brings with it too few
benefits to outweigh the costs of either alternative. So, pace F&L, the Crack is really not
independent of the Problem of Instability. In response to the Crack, the CRS theorist can deny
that she is guilty of accepting an inconsistent triad either by showing that there really is no
inconsistency or by denying that she must accept the triad. If she adopts the latter tack, then,
assuming that CRS does in fact entail holism, she must still confront the Problem of Instability.
Supposing that F&L have indeed put their finger on a genuine inconsistency, a solution to the
Problem of Instability might also count as a solution to the Crack. How, then, might the CRS
theorist handle the Problem of Instability?
130
Block (1993), pp. 3-11.
111
CHAPTER 4
STABILIZING HOLISTIC CRS: NARROW CONTENT,
CONTENT SIMILARITY, SUPERVENIENCE,
AND MULTIPLE MEANINGS
Managing Instability
A number of responses have been offered on behalf of semantic holism which, if
successful, would either disarm the Problem of Instability completely or at least render it
harmless. I shall now consider what I take to be some of the more compelling (or at least more
interesting) suggestions. After arguing that none of them succeeds, I will, in the final chapter,
outline what I believe to be a more promising alternative.
Two-Factor Theories One common approach to dealing with these holistic worries is to
admit them while limiting their reach. This has been the approach of many CRS theorists who
have advocated a two-factor approach to meaning/content. On any non-eliminativist account, the
meaning of a sentence (mental or linguistic) is relevant to at least two different kinds of
explanation: one that concerns the sentence’s truth-conditions and referential relations to reality
and another that concerns behavior. The two-factor theorist is a CRS theorist who concedes that
Putnam’s Twin-Earth considerations show that these two jobs cannot be performed by some one
thing. As mentioned in chapter 1, the narrow aspect of a sentence’s content is that aspect which
is relevant to explaining human behavior. Such explanations will be psychologistic in the sense
that they will be framed in terms of categories such as belief and desire and they raise the
possibility of framing laws connecting various distributions of beliefs and desires with various
observable behaviors. Since the CRS theorist is a functionalist, her story will be tailor-made to
accommodate such belief-desire explanations of behavior. The broad aspect of a sentence’s
content, on the other hand, is to be located in that sentence’s truth-conditions, and, unlike the
narrow factor, is constituted by direct word-world links.
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The suggestion, then, for a CRS theorist of the two-factor stripe is that the effects of
semantic holism are sufficiently isolated, since holism applies only to narrow, but not to wide,
content.131 The idea is that since CRS properly applies to narrow content, and there is no hope of
reviving A/S, we must indeed accept that such content is holistic and learn to live with its
consequences. But we can live with such consequences, since wide content might still be as
atomic (or properly anatomic) as you wish. So, there is an aspect of meaning which can be
recognized as perfectly stable and as subject to the principle of compositionality, even though
semantic holism is true. Furthermore, while narrow content may be holistic and thus unsuitable
to ground an account of communication, or to explain how agreement, disagreement, or changeof-opinion are possible, broad content can accommodate these facts. What one attempts to
communicate to another by uttering some sentence is the truth-condition of that sentence. Such
communication will be successful provided that the utterer and the hearer associate with the
tokened sentence the same truth-condition, and since truth-conditions are not individualistic in
nature, but are grounded in word-world relations, doing so will be possible. The same will be the
case mutatis mutandis for agreement, disagreement, and change of opinion.
Though this suggestion might seem promising at first blush, it really does little to weaken
the sting of Instability. First, as we saw in chapter 1, there is an issue regarding the precise
relationship between narrow and wide content. If narrow content corresponds to Fregean Sinn,
with wide content corresponding to semantic value, then one would think that narrow content
determines wide content. But as the Twin-Earth considerations show, this cannot be the case.
Two speakers can be molecule for molecule type-identical, and thus associate exactly the same
narrow content with a sentence, even though the sentence has different truth-conditions for the
two speakers. Indeed, one of the primary reasons for moving to the two-factor view was to
accommodate this insight. As we saw in chapter 1, however, narrow content plus context and
narrow content plus normal context do not fare any better. Conversely, wide contents cannot
determine narrow contents and for familiar reasons. ‘Cicero is Cicero’ has the same truthcondition as ‘Tully is Cicero’, even though these two sentences will, for most speakers anyway,
have different cognitive significance. The two-factor theorist will explain this by insisting that
the two sentences have, for most speakers, different narrow contents. Indeed, the very fact that
131
E.g., Field (1977), and Block (1986). Lormand (1996) occasionally seems to adopt this strategy as well; see, for
example, p. 58.
113
conceptual role is appealed to in order to explain these phenomena is the primary reason why the
conceptual role factor of a sentence’s content is called its narrow content—such contents are
more finely sliced than truth-conditions, being individuated by properties that are “in the head”.
So, two-factor CRS theorists must see neither factor as being determined by the other and
thus as seeing the two as being only contingently connected. But then we are faced with F&L’s
question: “What keeps the two factors stuck together?”132 For example, what is to prevent ‘The
cat is on the mat’ from having the wide content (the truth-condition) that the cat is on the mat but
the narrow content that Aunt Peggy is coming to dinner? If both features are genuinely semantic,
then a two-factor CRS will be plausible only if it can explain why they cannot come apart, or at
least why they generally do not. That explaining this connection is urgent is conceded by Block,
one of the chief spokesmen for CRS. Indeed, it is the first of eight desiderata he officially
recognizes as applying to any viable semantic theory.133
That wide and narrow contents are not firmly stuck together raises another serious
difficulty for the account. It is supposed to be a virtue of two-factor CRS that (a) narrow
contents are well-adapted to the needs of a scientific, intentional psychology while (b) wide
contents are well-adapted the needs of truth-conditional semantics, communication, etc. But if
neither factor determines the other, then it seems that much of the explanatory value of (a) and
(b) will have been lost, since the two kinds of explanations are highly interdependent. After all,
communication, agreement, disagreement, and change of opinion can all affect one’s behavior.
For example, when Bart tells Lisa that Homer is sad, he has communicated to her. On the
present account, then, he has communicated to her the wide content that Homer is sad. But now
suppose that Lisa, desiring to improve the mood of her sad father, tells Homer that Marge is
making pork-chops for dinner. What explains this particular piece of behavior of hers are the
following facts about her: (a) she believes that Homer is sad, (b) she desire that Homer not be
sad, and (c) she believes that Homer will be happier if he can expect to eat pork-chops in the near
future. Now, the objects of the beliefs and desires mentioned in (a) though (c) must be narrow
contents, since they figure in a psychological explanation of Lisa’s behavior. We also want to
say, however, that Bart’s having communicated to her that Homer is sad should fit into the above
132
F&L (1992), p. 170.
133
Block (1986), p. 82.
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explanation as well. After all, if Bart had not told her, she would not have done what she did.
But if what Bart communicated to her is not identical to what she believed in believing that
Homer is sad (and they cannot be, since the former must be a wide content while the latter must
be a narrow one) and if wide and narrow contents do not determine one another, then it is very
hard to see how Bart’s act of communication could have any place in such an explanation.
Surely, whatever content Bart communicates to her must be the same content as that which
ultimately moves her or must determine the content which ultimately moves her. But if wide and
narrow contents can at best be only accidentally paired, then it seems that Bart’s act of
communication does not do much in helping to explain Lisa’s behavior.
Two further points deserve emphasis in this connection. First, if narrow contents are
themselves really contents, and thus are intentional (if they are not intentional, then it seems to
me somewhat inappropriate to call them contents), then they must be susceptible to truthevaluations, and thus must have their own truth-conditions. If so, then how is this truthcondition related to the sentence’s wide content. Is it the same, or different? If it is the same as
the former, then why were wide and narrow content divorced in the first place? But if it is not,
then how are these truth-conditions related, and which one determines the truth-value of the
sentence in question? Second, if narrow contents do indeed have truth-conditions, then, as the
Twin-Earth considerations apparently show, they cannot be individualistic either, i.e., such
contents cannot supervene over mental and physical properties which “stop at the skin”.
All of this suggests a certain dilemma for the two-factor CRS theorist. On the one hand,
that there is some connection between some proposed notion of content C for an expression E
and E’s semantic value is a necessary condition for viewing C as intentional. The narrow
content theorist, however, is forced into severing any connection between broad and narrow
contents and thus ipso facto is forced in to severing any connection between an expression’s
narrow content and its semantic value. But that C is intentional seems itself to be a necessary
condition for C’s even counting as a kind of content—if something is not intentional, it is not a
content. What the Twin-Earth considerations suggest, on the other hand, is that if something is
intentional, then it cannot be narrow. Since, everything is either intentional or not, nothing can
be both narrow and a content. Hence, narrow contents are impossible (we might call this the
Narrow Content Dilemma).
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The moral here might very well be taken to be the following: the organismic contribution
to content cannot be teased apart from the inorganismic components while leaving anything that
truly counts as content; whatever is sorted out as properly “beneath the skin” might be relevant to
something like neurophysiology and might very well figure in certain kinds of explanation, but it
will not be relevant to any science concerned with intentional explanations or with semantics,
generally speaking.
Whether or not solutions can be found for the above problems, it remains the most
serious defect of the current proposal that it does not actually insulate holism from the threat of
Instability. As was noted, the Instability problem is a direct result of the inability of holistic
conceptions of content to provide for a robust notion of content identity. This particular bullet is
not dodged by limiting holistic conclusions to narrow contents. Ironically, if psychological laws
presuppose a robust notion of content identity, then the CRS conception of narrow content
appears just as incapable of meeting its explanatory raison d’être. But if such laws do not
presuppose such a strong notion as robust content identity, but only some weaker notion, then
perhaps some version of two-factor CRS can be sustained after all.
This brings us to the next suggestion.
Content Similarity A number of different theorists have responded to the Problem of
Instability by rejecting the assumption that content identity is really needed to meet our
explanatory ends.134 The instability accompanying semantic holism does seem to rule out the
possibility of content identity, but no worries, since all that we really need is a workable notion
of content similarity. If we could suppose that while the meanings of two persons’ terms are,
while not the same, similar enough for practical purposes, then corresponding conceptions of
intertranslatability, communication, disagreement, change of mind, and language acquisition
could be fashioned accordingly. A further, perhaps more fundamental, reason for seeking a
replacement for the notion of content identity is that such a notion would be necessary to support
robust intentional generalizations, i.e., intentional generalizations across individuals. The worry
was that if holism rules out identity of content, then such generalizations might not be available,
in which case the possibility of rigorous intentional explanations would collapse. Might content
similarity save the day?
134
For example, Block (1986), Churchland (1991) and (1998), and Harman (1975b) and (1993) have all adopted
such a strategy.
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What would be needed, of course, is a clearer understanding of the relation similar
enough for practical purposes. For starters, this relation, unlike content identity, would not be
an equivalence relation, since, while reflexive and symmetric, it would not be transitive.
Furthermore, on any such account, what would make two expressions more (or less) similar in
meaning would be that they, for some appropriate set of properties and relations, have
sufficiently many (or few) or the same properties or enter into sufficiently many (or few) of the
same relations. It would be the task of a particular theory of meaning to identify the relevant
properties and relations and, if possible, to indicate, even if only vaguely, how many of the
shared properties and relations are required to underwrite intertranslatability, communication,
etc. For example, a CRS theorist such as Field might say that two sentences are more similar in
meaning for one speaker (or one sentence for two speaker’s) the more similar are one’s (or the
two speakers’) subjective assignments of relative probability,135 while Churchland says that two
expressions are similar in meaning when they express concepts that occupy similar positions in
the same state space.136 I shall not consider, here, how such accounts might handle the second
problem.
F&L have argued that accounts which dispense with a robust notion of content identity in
favor of one of content similarity fail on the grounds that such accounts will themselves
presuppose a robust notion of content identity.137 Their general idea seems to be this. A robust
notion of content identity would be one which allows some identity of content between
expressions as used by two people, or by one person across time, even though their total
conceptual resources, sets of beliefs, assignments of subjective probability functions, or
whatever, only partially (though perhaps mostly) overlap. According to most versions of
semantic holism, however, content identity between parts entails overall identity of content. The
problem is thought to be avoided by settling for mere similarity of content between parts. But
just what does such similarity amount to?
135
Field (1977). Field endorses a two-factor version of CRS in which the narrow factor is determined holistically by
subjective probability functions.
136
Churchland endorses a state-space semantics, according to which the semantic properties of an expression are
determined by the position it occupies in a state-space of arbitrary dimensions.
137
F&L (1992), pp. 17-21.
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There seem to be two general possibilities. Remember that semantic holists individuate
content bearing items holistically by specifying (i) a class of things to be related (representations,
whether lexical or mentalistic), and (ii) ways of relating them. What it is, then, for some thing to
bear the particular content it does consists in all of the relations (as specified in (ii)) it bears to all
of the other things specified in (i)—this is, of course, just what it was that made content identity
non-robust. Two expressions would be similar in content, then, just in case they occupy similar
positions in the same, or similar, structures.
Importantly, the items and relations specified by (i) and (ii) will either be intentional or
they will not. Naturalistically minded theorists will want to opt for the latter alternative,
selecting only naturalistically acceptable things, properties, and relations to constitute the
appropriate structures over which intentional contents supervene. F&L complain, however, that
even if identity of content does supervene over identity of physical constitution, it would not
follow that similarity of content would supervene over similarity of physical constitution. As
they put it, “No doubt there are indefinitely many ways in which the brains of molecular cousins
are similar; but there are also indefinitely many ways in which they aren’t, and we have no idea
how to decide which similarities and differences are the ones that determine whether their beliefs
are similar. Which is just to say that nobody has a better idea of how to explicate a notion of
physical similarity that is relevant to psychological taxonomy than of how to explicate a notion
of content similarity that is relevant to psychological taxonomy.”138 So far, the naturalistic
options fail to provide much insight, but it is a bit unclear, at least from these comments, exactly
why F&L see a problem of principle here rather than just a lack of effort.
Their discussion of a specific such attempt, viz., Churchland’s, might help to fill in some
of the gaps of their general argument.139 Recall that, on a holistic account of content, content
similarity presupposes either the notion of sameness of global structure or the notion of similarity
of global structure—similarity being defined as similar position in the same, or similar, structure
(as above). Put another way, one’s total language (representational system) can be seen as a
complicated network constituted by individual expressions as its nodes which are then connected
by semantically relevant relations (usually causal/inferential ones). Since nodes are defined by
138
F&L (1992), p. 20.
139
Ibid., pp. 189-205.
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their place in the network, identifying contents with nodes means that two networks can token
expressions with the same contents just in case the networks are type-identical. Content
similarity, on the other hand, requires only that two nodes occupy a similar place in type
identical networks or the same or similar place in similar networks.
Traditional empiricist ways of understanding such networks allow that certain of the
nodes will count as “fixed points”, which are non-holistically identified, being tied more or less
directly to observation. This observational vocabulary fixes the net empirical content of the
entire representational system, and the contents of those expressions which are not found on this
observational periphery are determined by all of the relations such expressions bear to the
observational vocabulary, whether directly or indirectly through their relations to other nonobservational terms (this is, of course, the standard Quinean picture). Such traditional accounts,
aside from “strik[ing] one as intolerably empiricistic”140, will, to the extent that they recognize
terms whose contents are determined independently of the contents of other expressions (i.e.,
something like an observational vocabulary), constitute a move away from semantic holism.
Churchland’s state-space semantics is an attempt to “free the network picture of semantics from
its empiricist assumptions.”141 Since the resulting picture is more thoroughly holistic, its very
legitimacy as a scientifically useful framework will depend on the possibility of providing a
workable metric for similarity of content.
Churchland’s basic idea, as summarized by F&L, is that
A “Quinean” network semantics . . . can be thought of as describing a space whose dimensions correspond to
observable properties and in which each expression of the object language is assigned a position in the space. . . .
Since the empiricism of the standard network proposal resides in the requirement that all the dimensions of the
semantic space in which the concepts are located must correspond to observable properties, all you have to do to get
rid of the empiricism is to abolish this requirement. What’s left are semantic state spaces of arbitrary dimensions,
each dimension corresponding to a parameter in terms of which the semantic theory taxonomizes object language
expressions in which similarity of content among the object language expressions is represented by propinquity
relations among regions of the space.142
140
Ibid., p. 191.
141
Ibid., p. 192.
142
Ibid., pp. 192-3.
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To begin with, F&L assume that Churchland is attempting a non-eliminativist account of
content determination.143 There are two cases to distinguish. On the one hand, one might take
such contents as being determined by non-semantic/non-intentional properties and relations. On
this model, the various dimensions of the state-space would be specified in terms of
psychophysical (or perhaps neurological) properties and relations. On the other hand, the
dimensions of Churchland’s state-spaces might be taken to be genuine semantic dimensions—
dimensions which individuate mental states by their contents.
To taxonomize mental states in terms of psychophysical (neurological) properties,
however, is to specify them according to their causes and not by their contents. The former kind
of model, then, will not provide an account of content determination, in the relevant sense.
Furthermore, if the dimensions of a state-space are given in terms of such properties and
relations, then intentional contents will have been individuated by reference to properties that are
non-essential to them. But then it is possible that two different state-spaces might be different
and yet have the same content or be the same and have different contents, in which case contents
would not supervene over those kinds of structures after all—we might dub this the content
inversion problem.144 F&L conclude from all of this that the first path is a dead-end.
Consider now the case where the dimensions of Churchland’s state-spaces are bonafide
semantic dimensions, being dimensions that individuate mental states by their contents and
contents by their semantic properties. In this case, those contents will have been individuated by
means of properties which are themselves semantic/intentional. But then similarity of content,
which presupposes sameness of structure determining properties and relations, will now
presuppose a robust notion of sameness of content. The reason is that since a robust notion of
similarity of content must be understood in terms of two expressions occupying similar positions
in the same state-space, and since two state-spaces will be of the same type only if they have all
143
They note that Churchland is often officially eliminativist, but at other times his comments seem to commit him
to “intentionality up to his neck” (pp. 188-9). Since to provide an account of content similarity would seem to
commit one to at least a bit of intentionality, they read his attempts to do so as non-eliminativist.
144
Ibid., pp. 195-7. F&L frame this side of the dilemma in terms of well-known problems concerning qualia
inversion and the qualitative content of sensations (which are de re, rather than de dicto, mental states). Churchland
offers his state-space semantics as a solution to these problems, as well as to problems concerning propositions and
concepts. Since F&L intend this discussion to be relevant to the possibility of state-space semantics, providing a
notion of content similarity for the latter kinds of de dicto contents, I have modified this side of the dilemma
accordingly.
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of the same semantic dimensions, similarity of content will presuppose the notion of same
semantic dimension. Given Churchland’s move away from empirical dimensions to arbitrary
dimensions, however, sameness of semantic dimension amounts to general sameness of content.
Here the holist might suggest that one does not actually need sameness of state-space,
just similarity of state-space. On this new proposal, what would make two state-spaces similar is
either that they have mostly the same structure-determining (and in this case semantic)
dimensions or that they have mostly similar structure-determining semantic dimensions. Clearly,
the former alternative will not work for the same reason that sameness of structure would not
work. The latter alternative also fails, however, since it puts us right back where we started—we
were looking for an explication of similarity of content. So, every viable suggestion (those
which actually individuate mental states by their contents (and contents by their semantic
properties) rather than by their causes) either presupposes a robust notion of content identity, and
thus fails if holism rules out such a notion, or presupposes a robust notion of content similarity,
and thus is circular.
The upshot, then, is that one cannot sidestep difficulties regarding Instability by adopting
a notion of similarity of content as conceptually prior to one of content identity, since the former
actually presupposes the latter and thus inherits all of its problems.145
I would like to consider briefly a reply to F&L which grants to them the soundness of
their argument while denying that it need be fatal to the friend of content similarity. Pessin
(1995) argues that while F&L’s argument may be sound, a holist need not panic, since a rough
and ready notion of concept similarity, i.e., one that is good enough for practical purposes, is still
available. To this end, he offers three, increasingly sharp suggestions.
His first idea is not so much a suggestion as an assurance. According to Pessin, it is
highly unlikely that speakers of the same language will attach significantly different concepts to
the same term, especially the more concrete the term and the more frequent its interpersonal use.
So, when the use of the expression at issue is relatively concrete, and frequent, and when that use
by and large serves, rather than frustrates, our interpersonal ends, we should feel satisfied that the
145
Since I find it very hard to see how any of Churchland’s responses to this attack actually address the fundamental
issues at stake, I shall not take the time here to consider them. The responses I have in mind are Churchland (1993)
and (1998). F&L (1993b) and (1999), respectively, are replies to Churchland’s responses.
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concepts individual speakers express by means of it are relatively similar.146 Since this really
does not address the issue at hand, viz., how we are to make sense of content similarity, I shall
not consider it further.
Perhaps his other two suggestions will prove more useful. His second idea is that we
might “ask two different agents (or different time-slices of the same agent) to list all the
properties they associate with some given concept. Then even if these lists don’t match
perfectly, as assumed, the degree of match can serve as a working measure of concept
similarity.”147 Clearly, Pessin is assuming some version of CRS. As with the previous
suggestion, however, this one is of no use. Here similarity of content presupposes either identity
of content or similarity of content for the items that make up two lists, and thus the suggestion
fails to escape F&L’s attack. In a footnote, Pessin recognizes this difficulty and lamely attempts
to counter it by reminding us that this suggestion provides “only a working measure . . . In theory
we should go on to measure similarity of those concepts [the items on the list], and so on
indefinitely. What stops the regress in practice, however, are the points made just above [his
first suggestion], since we get diminishing returns as our lists are extended.”148 So, this
suggestion just amounts to the previous one. The problem is that that suggestion is theoretically
useless, as Pessin concedes in the above quote—it really amounts to no more than a
philosophical “shrugging of the shoulders”.
How about his third idea? Here we are supposed to ground similarity of conceptual
content in similarity of extension across all possible worlds. Suppose the word in question is
‘apple’. We are to imagine our two speakers “visiting” every possible world and selecting every
object in each of those worlds to which her actual world concept of apple applies. We then
compare the piles for degree of overlap. Greater overlap means greater similarity, while less
overlap amounts to less similarity.
A naturalist might object to the use of possible worlds here, but let’s waive such
difficulties. A more telling objection is that even if this suggestion is plausible in this case, there
are a vast number of other cases to which it cannot obviously be extended. How, for example,
146
Pessin (1995), p. 275.
147
Ibid.
148
Ibid., note 12; his emphasis.
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can it be made to work for linguistic categories other than count nouns and attributive adjectives?
In particular, what will be the relevant extensions for articles (both definite and indefinite),
prepositions, adverbs, and apparent nouns such as ‘dint’, ‘sake’, and ‘behalf’. One might go the
way of Montague and attempt to assign highly abstract extensions to every such term, but the
more abstract such extensions become the less plausible it is that they can serve the needs of a
theory of content similarity since direct recognitional capacities would then arguably be less
relevant to the sorting and subsequent tallying. One would then need to assume a substantial
amount content identity in order to check for content similarity, and F&L would then get to say
“We told you so.” In any case, such a response depends on a highly complex, some might say
artificial, theory. Another, and more damning, difficulty is that the notion of extension across
possible worlds is not fine-grained enough to individuate (compare) meanings, even if only nonrobustly. Presumably, the expressions ‘figure with three straight lines’ and ‘rectilinear figure
with three angles’ are necessarily co-extensive even though most people with some knowledge
of geometry would judge them as having different (dissimilar) meanings.
A final worry for Pessin’s third proposal is that, while it may (arguably) work in the case
of concepts for which there is in fact a considerable degree of overlap in their extensions, it will
not provide a metric for similarity when the concepts are disjoint. For example, the content
‘house cat’ is intuitively more similar to that of ‘lion’ than it is to the content of the word
‘computer’. All three concepts are presumably disjoint as would be the “piles” that would result
from Pessin’s trans-world sorting. If an account of similarity of content is to earn its keep,
however, then it would seem that it must judge ‘house cat’ and ‘lion’ as having more similar
contents than ‘house cat’ and ‘computer’. On Pessin’s proposal, they would be equally
(dis)similar.149
The upshot, then, is that where Pessin’s approach does not amount to just so much
shrugging, it is insufficiently general.
I would like to end this section by considering some additional worries. In the most
recent installment to this debate, F&L have responded to Churchland by claiming that a theory of
meaning/content grounded on the notion of content similarity will be unable to satisfy a number
of very reasonable demands—demands which have traditionally been placed on theories of
149
F&L (1999), pp. 384-6, make the same point but in a slightly different context. See especially their note 7, p.
385.
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meaning.150 In particular, it has usually been supposed that a useful theory of meaning must
allow us to do at least some of the following: (i) provide satisfaction conditions for the
semantically evaluable expressions of the system of representation in question (be it a public
language or a system of mental representation) and do so in a way that certain sentences that we
all take to be true do in fact come out as true under the assigned satisfaction conditions, (ii)
respect the constraints of compositionality, i.e., it must make clear how the semantic value of a
complex expression is systematically dependent on both its structure and the semantic values of
its proper parts, (iii) provide a notion of meaning that makes the pre-theoretical intuition that
good translations preserve meaning come out true, and (iv) provide a notion of meaning that is
useful in our practices (either folk or scientific) of intentional explanation (and in particular,
belief/desire explanation).
F&L go on to argue that theories based on a notion of similarity of content will
(probably) be unable to satisfy any of these demands. Since all interesting cases of translation
require an appeal to compositionality, if an account cannot make any sense of the latter, then it
will be unable to make sense of the former.151 For that reason, we need only consider (i), (ii),
and (iv).
Let’s begin with (i). Consider the sentence ‘Nixon is dead’ (call it ‘N’). According to
F&L, (a) N is clearly true, (b) N (at time t) is true if and only if Nixon is dead (at t), and (c) no
semantic theory for English could be adequate unless it entails (b) and is consistent with (a). The
trouble for the content-similarity theorist is that a similarity-based theory which satisfies (b) is
very unlikely to satisfy (a). The reason is that while traditional semantic theories generate Tsentences for a subject-predicate sentence like N by correlating Nixon with ‘Nixon’ and the
property of being dead (or the extension of dead things) with ‘is dead’, content-similarity based
theories will assign to ‘is dead’ “a range of properties all of which are similar to being dead, and
. . . to ‘Nixon’ a range of individuals all of whom are similar to Nixon.”152 Given that similar
contents need not be coextensive (and usually are not), it follows that content-similarity based
theories will not in general satisfy (a)—they will assign to many sentences satisfaction
150
F&L (1999), pp. 382-90.
151
F&L make this point in §1.3, pp. 387-8.
152
Ibid., p. 384; their emphasis.
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conditions under which the sentences come out with what is intuitively the wrong truth-value.
After all, as they put it, “being comatose on one’s death bed is pretty similar to being dead; but it
is not the case that, if Nixon is comatose on his death bed at t, then Nixon is dead at t.”153
Now let’s briefly turn to (ii). F&L point out that compositionality requires context
independence in the following sense:
CI
If m is part of the meaning of ‘a’ and ‘a’ is a constituent of ‘b’, then m is part of
the meaning of ‘b’.
For example, part of what it is for expressions like ‘lost cat’ and ‘lost dog’ to be compositional is
that ‘lost’ means the same in the context ‘ . . . cat’ as it does in the context ‘ . . . dog’, and to say
this is just to say that if the meaning of ‘lost’ is part of the meaning of ‘lost’ and ‘lost’ is a
constituent of ‘lost cat’ and of ‘lost dog’, then the meaning of ‘lost’ is part of the meaning of
both ‘lost cat’ and ‘lost dog’ (by ‘part’ F&L are quick to point out that they mean a relation
which is reflexive). The trouble for a content-similarity based theory is that, when combined
with compositionality, it would entail
CI′
If m is similar to part of the meaning of ‘a’ and ‘a’ is a constituent of ‘b’, then m
is similar to part of the meaning of ‘b’.
CI′, F&L now suggest, is clearly false, and they give the following example: “. . . the meaning of
‘cat’”, they say, “is similar to part of the meaning of ‘The leopard is on the mat’ (cats and
leopards are both felines) and part of the meaning of ‘The leopard is on the mat’ is similar to part
of the meaning of ‘The explosion caused a lot of damage’ (leopards and explosions are both
dangerous). But the meaning of ‘cat’ is not similar to any part of the meaning of ‘The explosion
caused lots of damage’.”154
As Abbott (2000) has pointed out, however, the trouble with this counterexample is that it
is not a genuine counterexample to CI′ at all (I’ll let the reader verify this for himself), and it is
153
Ibid., pp. 384-5.
154
Ibid., p. 387.
125
hard to see how to modify it to make it genuine.155 Indeed, the more one attempts to do so, the
more one gets the impression, pace F&L, that CI′ is true. I take it, then, that F&L have failed to
make their case about content-similarity based theories being incapable of accommodating
compositionality (and with it translation), though, for all I know, they may nonetheless be
correct.
Finally, let’s consider (iv). F&L suppose that paradigm intentional explanations (at least
belief/desire explanations) make (perhaps tacit) appeal to the following principle:
BD
If an agent a desires that p and believes that not-p unless q (where a believes that
q is contingent on an action that he believes himself able to perform), then, ceteris
paribus, a tries to bring it about that q.156
F&L then claim that this principle “is sound only if the formulas that substitute for P are
identical or synonymous throughout.”157 The trouble is that it is entirely unclear what they mean
here and their following discussion does little to clear things up. Here are two possibilities.
First, perhaps what they mean is that when a particular sentence replaces p in each of its
two occurrences in BD and some other sentence replaces q in each of its three occurrences, those
two sentences must mean the same, not merely similar, things in each of their two and three
appearances, respectively. The trouble is that to say this would be completely irrelevant to the
discussion. It is not a possible consequence of content-similarity based theories that such a
constraint would not be met, since such theories are meant to solve the Instability Problem for
different speakers or the same speaker at different times, where the times are sufficiently distant
to allow for the possibility of a change in conceptual role, state-space structure, or whatever. A
tokening of BD, however, will only be made by one speaker (except for those cases where
someone finishes another’s sentence), and furthermore, on most holistic theories, the two
appearances of p’s replacement (and likewise for the three appearances of q’s) will be
insufficiently separated in time to affect a change of meaning.
155
Loc. cit., p. 455.
156
F&L (1999), p. 388.
157
Ibid.
126
Second, perhaps what they mean is that for any particular instantiation of BD for p and q
(which still generalizes over persons), that generalization will be useful only if the antecedent
could be satisfied exactly by a number of different people, rather than only approximately.
Perhaps, but that need not diminish the utility of BD, since one might still be able to employ the
principle to explain the behavior of individuals—and it seems that this is the most typical use of
the principle anyway. In any case, that different individuals rarely, if ever, have exactly the same
thoughts or mean exactly the same things by their words does nothing to challenge the truth of
BD.
I conclude, then, that Fodor and Lepore have failed to make out their case that contentsimilarity based accounts cannot satisfy demands (ii), (iii), and (iv), though I have granted that
their case for (i) goes through. In this latter case, if they are right about (c), then it appears that
(i) is all they need anyway. In any case, I have already sustained their general claim that such
theories must ultimately presuppose a notion of content identity and thus will inherit all of its
problems, and I have rejected a recent attempt by Pessin to mitigate the consequences that their
argument has for the content-similarity theorist. Appealing to content-similarity in order to save
semantic holism from the Problem of Instability is a dead end.
Reduction and Supervenience Another way to handle all of the original difficulties
with holism is by denying that it is actually incompatible with a robust notion of content identity.
Semantic holism was thought to threaten our basic assumptions about communication,
disagreement, change of opinion, language acquisition, and psychological explanation because it
was assumed that the relation between global conceptual roles and meanings is one-to-one.
Some theorists have argued, however, that if we give up this assumption and allow that the
relation is really many-one, then holism will thereby avoid all of the above problems. In other
words, we should see meaning as properly supervening over global conceptual role rather than as
being fully reducible to it.158 So, an expression might mean the same thing for two speakers (or
158
McLaughlin (1993), Pagin (1997), and Jackman (1999), for example, have all argued in favor of this suggestion.
Warfield (1993) uses this point to refute F&L’s argument against CRS (considered in the previous chapter). His
idea is that their argument will be recognized as unsound once it is realized that CRS is committed only to the
supervenience of meaning over conceptual role. Recall that their master argument was that since meaning is
compositional but global conceptual role is not, meaning cannot be conceptual role. But “New World Semanticists”,
as F&L like to call them, are not committed to the conclusion of this little argument. The proposition to which CRS
theorists are committed, i.e., that content supervenes on conceptual role, does not follow from the above premises,
since the Indiscernibility of Identicals does not work for supervenience—only for identity. A similar point was
made in chapter 1 in reference to the relationship between IND and INT.
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the same speaker at different times), even though meanings are determined by global conceptual
role and the two speakers attach different conceptual roles to that expression—semantic holism
does not necessarily rule out robust content identity. Semantic holism, according to Jackman,
“requires only that the content of any one of one’s beliefs [sentence tokens] depend upon or be a
function of one’s other beliefs [sentence tokens], and this claim need not commit one to the
instability thesis.”159
To motivate this suggestion, Jackman draws an analogy between semantics and
mathematics.160 The idea is that the final grade one receives in a course will typically be
determined by many different factors: by quiz scores, test scores, homework scores, etc. Such
dependence, however, is not incompatible with the obvious fact that two people could receive the
same final score even though they received different scores on some (even all) of their individual
assignments, quizzes, etc. In other words, most arithmetical functions are many-one, not one-toone. Obtaining 5 as a value from the addition function depends upon what pairs of numbers one
begins with: either {1, 4} or {2, 3} will do the job, but {1, 3} will not. Jackman’s suggestion,
then, is that one should view the relation between conceptual roles and meanings in a similar
way.
So, intentional contents supervene over, but do not reduce to, conceptual roles. Now,
reductive theories provide tidy, albeit trivial, explanations of the supervenience of semantic facts
over the subvenient ones; after all, if specific contents can be identified with specific conceptualroles then there is really no mystery about why it is that particular meanings supervene over the
particular conceptual roles that they do or about the precise way in which they are a function of
(are determined by) them.
Non-reductive, many-one theories, on the other hand, must be supplemented by such
accounts. On the one hand, facts about specific patterns of supervenience are unlikely to be
brute. Could it be a brute fact that content C could be instantiated by conceptual roles R1, R2, or
R3, but not by R4 or R5? In any case, corresponding explanations are available for the
mathematical analogue, being provided by, for example, the underlying set theory one adopts, or
at least by the particular set of axioms one takes to characterize arithmetical structures. Surely,
the fact that the natural number pairs {0, 5}, {1, 4}, and {2, 3} are the only such pairs (of natural
159
Jackman (1999), p. 363; his emphasis.
128
numbers) that yield 5 when addition is applied to them cannot be brute. The set theoretical
structure of the addition function and the natures of each of the individual natural numbers may
make it clear why 5 is the value of the addition function for some pairs but not for others. Why
shouldn’t such explanations be required in semantics as well? Well, they should, and the
question regarding which such explanation should be accepted I shall call the pattern of
supervenience question.
On the other hand, more must be said about the nature of the dependency relation
involved. We saw above, in our discussion of compositionality, that one might avoid the
apparent incompatibility between holism and compositionality by seeing the latter as merely a
function from structures and contents to propositional contents, while reserving the stronger,
metaphysical relation of constitutive determination for semantic holism. With respect to the
relationship between conceptual roles and meanings, we might now ask: what kind of
determination is involved? We are told that many different conceptual roles can determine the
same content, but do they do this in the weak way in which arithmetical functions determine
values for specific arguments or do they do this in some more robust way characteristic of
something that might be called metaphysical constitution? Call this the mode of determination
question.
I shall now argue that a holistic, CRS theorist cannot accept Jackman’s solution to the
instability problem while at the same time providing plausible answers to both of these questions.
Let’s begin with the mode of determination question. Can a CRS theorist really opt for the
weaker relation of mere functional determination? It seems unlikely that one would, since one of
the main motivations for accepting CRS is that doing so is thought to help in the project of
naturalizing intentionality. By identifying meanings with conceptual roles and then explaining
the latter in terms of causal relationships between items of a lexical or a mentalistic vocabulary,
sensory inputs, and motor outputs one can demystify (at least part of) the mental and the
semantic. This virtue of the CRS account (if it is one) would be lost if supervenience here
amounted to mere functional determination. But what motivation could there be for settling for
the weaker relation instead? It seems that the only reason for doing so would be to facilitate
identification of intentional contents. If such contents supervene over conceptual roles even
though they are not constituted by them, then establishing a functional relationship between them
160
Ibid., p. 363.
129
would be useful insofar as the function provides sufficient conditions for identifying specific
contents. That is, if one knows how the function correlates specific conceptual roles with
specific contents and one also has an independent way of identifying conceptual roles (perhaps
some purely physiological/chemical way) then one can, in principle at least, identify contents in
a naturalistic way. The contents themselves would still be non-naturalistic, but at least we
would know how to find them, and this would be extremely useful to the cognitive sciences. The
trouble with this approach is that it seems to be nearly (if not quite in principle) impossible to
execute. Now, it is trivial that there is a function from any class of things to any other class of
things (at least for a realist about these matters). Take any two classes you like, and there will be
some function which correlates (arbitrarily) elements of one of the classes with elements of the
other. But if the function is to be theoretically useful, the function will need to be non-arbitrary,
and we would need to figure out how it does, that is, we would need to know on what principle it
delivers the particular content it does when given a particular conceptual role as argument.
Determining some such function, however, I would imagine is a similar, but even more difficult,
task than that of identifying a workable analytic/synthetic distinction, something most CRS
theorists take to be hopeless. So, it seems that the better alternative is to view the relationship as
one of metaphysical constitution and to take the naturalization of content (rather than the
naturalization of the identification of content) as its primary payoff.
But now, how should the CRS theorist answer the pattern of supervenience question?
Why, that is, do R1, R2, and R3, say, individually constitute the intentional content C while R4
and R5 do not? Certainly, there must be differences which account for this. The differences
between R1, R2, and R3, on the one hand, are not enough to determine a different content, while
at least some of the differences between these and R4 and R5, on the other hand, are. Why do
some differences matter but not others, and in any case, which ones? The differences, of course,
must amount to some difference in either belief or causal/inferential role.
Of course, these answers to our two questions (i.e., metaphysical constitution and
difference of causal/inferential role) are not incompatible. On the contrary, they may even
complement each other. What is important to recognize is that the holistic CRS theorist cannot
give them. Her partial answer to the pattern of supervenience question is that some differences
between conceptual systems are relevant to determining meaning, while others are not, while her
answer to the mode of determination problem is that the determination at issue is constitutive
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rather than mere correlation. But to give both of these answers simultaneously is just to uphold
some (nontrivial) distinction between the analytic and the synthetic, and this she cannot do, since
one of the main reasons she is a holist in the first place is that she denies such a distinction.
Remember, she argues that some inferential relations are constitutive of meaning, but since there
is no way to distinguish those inferential relations which are constitutive of a sentence’s meaning
from those which are not, all inferential roles are constitutive.
Even if one does not incur an additional explanatory obligation by preferring proper
supervenience over reduction, the resulting form of CRS is not holistic, and so, either way,
Jackman’s solution does not really solve the instability problem for the holist. For if there is a
many-one function from conceptual roles to meanings/contents, then should two distinct
conceptual roles R1 and R2 yield the same meaning/content, then either the belief sets
corresponding to R1 and R2 must be different or the inferential relations between the
corresponding elements of those belief sets must be different. This is just to say that the
differences must amount either to a difference in at least one belief or in at least one inferential
relation. But this means that that particular content does not depend on either the acceptance or
the rejection of that particular belief (inferential relation), even though an acceptance of it might
very well form a part of the conceptual system that determines that content. What, then, is left of
holism?161
So much, then, for denying reduction. Let us turn to the final suggestion.
Multiplying Meanings In a recent paper, Eric Lormand offers a novel way to handle the
Problem of Instability.162 He begins by observing that instability is a problem for holism because
most people unquestioningly accept the following inference from (1) to (2):
(1)
If a representation in a system RS changes meaning, all representations in RS change
meaning.
(2)
If a representation in RS changes meaning, no representation in RS has the same
meaning it had before the change.163
161
F&L dismiss the instability solution on the grounds that it would preserve only a weak anatomism, which they
regard as too uninteresting to take seriously; see F&L (1992), pp. 28-30, and (1993b), p. 677.
162
Lormand (1996).
131
It is precisely this inference that generates the worries over communication, translation,
psychological explanation, etc. Strictly speaking, (2) is what generates the radical instability that
seems to damn holism, while (1) is what directly follows from semantic holism. But if it can be
shown that (2) does not follow from (1), then the main assault on holism will have been blocked.
Now, most people take for granted that a tokening of an expression (representation) has only one
meaning. If this is true, then (2) follows from (1), and thus holism falls. Lormand’s idea is that
expressions (strictly speaking, tokenings of them) actually have many meanings,164 and that this
is enough to block the inference from (1) to (2), since (1) and (2) would then have to be
rephrased as follows:
(1′)
If a representation in RS changes one or more of its meanings, then every
representation in RS changes at least one of its meanings.
(2′)
If a representation in RS changes one or more of its meanings, no representation in
RS has any of the same meanings it had before the change.
It would then be possible that some one meaning of an expression might change forcing a change
in at least one of the meanings of every other expression, even though other meanings of those
expressions might nonetheless remain unaffected. So, if this idea of (tokens of) expressions
having multiple meanings can be adequately worked out, then there will be no reason for the
semantic holist to be anxious about meanings being unstable.
How, then, does Lormand spell out this idea of multiple meanings? Again, it is important
to realize that Lormand is not just pointing out the uncontroversial fact that expression types can
be ambiguous, meaning one thing at one tokening while meaning something entirely different at
another. The idea is that the tokens themselves bear many distinct meanings all at once.165 We
163
Ibid., p. 57.
164
Versions of this view are also endorsed in Bilgrami (1992), and Devitt (1994), though neither uses it to defend
semantic holism.
165
Lormand uses square brackets to refer to mental representations, e.g., ‘[bird]’, whereas I have been using vertical
strokes.
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are asked to consider all of the causal/inferential links some particular speaker/thinker might
associate with some representation, e.g., |bird|. Each of those inferences (or every group of
them) which constitutes a “separable rough test for the acceptable use of that representation” is
to be thought of as a discrete unit.166 Lormand’s suggestion is that each of these units counts as a
different meaning, while the meaning of the representation might then be loosely identified with
the set of these meanings. Holism can be rendered compatible with stability if it is seen as
applying to the individual meanings rather than to the collection of them—the content of each
individual unit being constitutively dependent on at least one of the units associated with every
other representation in the system.
So, to consider an example, possible units for |bird| might include |feathered flying
animal|, |thing called ‘bird’ by mommy|, |thing that is similar enough to B1, B2, . . ., Bn| (where
B1, B2, . . ., Bn are things taken to be birds).167 One speaker might associate with |bird| all three
of these units, while another, who is blind, say, associates only the first two. According to
Lormand, even though there is some difference here, there is still enough stability to allow for
genuine communication, disagreement, etc., since our speakers share at least one common unit,
i.e., meaning.168 If one speaker believes that some birds taste good while the other believes that
no birds taste good, the two can genuinely disagree since they associate at least one of the same
meanings with |bird|.
Perhaps Lormand’s proposal strikes one as a little ad hoc—after all, what reason do we
have for accepting the multiple meaning account (hereafter, MM) other than that it squares
semantic holism with stability? Why multiply meanings when we could just as easily take
tokenings of expressions/representations as carrying one meaning which is constituted by all of
the units associated with it? What would be needed is some independent motivation for carving
up the meanings of an expression in the particular way that Lormand recommends. For example,
what explanatory purposes would such carving serve? Maybe it is enough to answer that there
166
Lormand (1996), p. 57.
167
The example is Lormand’s.
168
Lormand actually goes on to claim that this multiple meaning view not only saves the holist from embarrassment
but actually allows for more stability than purely referential theories, since (1) the multiple meaning view can
always add those referential relations to the list of meanings in which case there would be at least as much stability
as on a referential view, and (2) the multiple meaning view allows for the possibility of shared meanings not
recognized by referential theories.
133
are very compelling explanatory reasons for accepting a semantic theory like CRS, which entails
semantic holism. The theoretical utility of introducing multiple meanings would then be that it
eliminates certain undesirable consequences of an otherwise plausible and explanatorily rich
theory. When seen in this light, one might forgive MM for seeming a bit ad hoc.
More damaging, however, is the charge that MM does nothing to solve the stability
problem. Lormand’s task was to show how stability is perfectly compatible with even the most
extreme form of semantic holism; so, let us assume, for the moment, that the most extreme such
position is true, i.e., that the meaning of every expression of a language (system of
representation, more generally) depends constitutively on the meaning (content) of every other
expression in it. By introducing MM, Lormand then reinterprets this as requiring only that every
meaning of an expression must constitutively depend on some meaning of every other
expression. There are, however, a number of reasons why this fails actually to solve the initial
problem.
First, it is unclear that the resulting position is really a form of holism at all, let alone the
most extreme form. It is clear that Lormand conceives of the units corresponding to an
expression, and constituting its various meanings, as themselves content-bearing expressions
(representations). To return to the above example, |bird| might bear a number of different
meanings for a thinker depending on which units, e.g., |feathered flying animal|, |thing called
‘bird’ by mommy|, |thing that is similar enough to B1, B2, . . ., Bn|, etc., she associates with it.
But these units will confer meanings on |bird| only if they themselves bear contents. Thus, the
units must themselves be holistically connected to every other representation. The more isolated
one takes these units to be from one another, the more one has moved away from the most
extreme form of semantic holism.
Furthermore, since these units must be members of the system of representation in
question, the same concern over stability can be raised for them as was raised for the other
representations in the system. That is, if stability is to be achieved by reference to shared units,
then it will be required that the units that two different speaker/thinkers attach to a representation
have the same content. So, when will two units have the same content for two people (or for one
across time)? Well, since units are representational and since we are assuming extreme holism,
they will bear the same content just in case there is complete coincidence in the intentional
contents of the respective systems—once again, instability threatens. Lormand might respond
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here that MM will apply to the units as well, so that stability only requires that at least one of the
meanings (again to be understood in terms of units) the unit bears for each of the two individuals
is the same, but I trust that, at this point, it is obvious that this suggestion would be of no help,
since we could simply reiterate the same line of reasoning as before. The bottom line is that
every unit that is appealed to in securing stability is itself a part of the original representational
system and thus must be sensitive to variations in the meaning of any other single element of that
system. Where, then, is the stability Lormand promises?
To recapitulate a bit, if Lormand takes the units as being semantically isolated, then he
moves away from holism, while if doesn’t then he loses stability.169 One way in which Lormand
might attempt to escape from this dilemma is by adopting the two-factor gambit discussed above
and then limiting holism to the narrow factor. Margolis and Laurence, however, point out that,
by moving to a two-factor theory, Lormand can no longer claim to have made holism compatible
with stability, since stability would then be achieved by the wide, non-holistic component.170 In
any case, he would then have failed to show that the most extreme version of semantic holism
and stability are compatible.
In a footnote, Lormand somewhat desperately distinguishes between representations with
primitive meanings and those with non-primitive meanings:
. . . the meanings of all the representations in a system can be specified completely in terms of a relatively small set
of semantically atomic (or simple, primitive, basic) representations in the system. A representation can have a
primitive meaning—and so be a semantic atom while also having other nonprimitive meanings—and so satisfy
inferential role semantics and meaning holism. Units consisting entirely of atomic representations, then, can yield
meanings which are independent of other representations in the system.
171
This passage seems to run together two different ideas: (i) the idea of a compositional semantics
complete with semantic primitives, and (ii) a two-factor CRS, on which narrow content is
holistic. As the discussion from the previous chapter should make clear, these two suggestions
are likely to be incompatible. Since I have already considered the possibility of (ii) providing an
169
Similar complaints are raised in Margolis and Laurence (1998), pp. 259-60, as well as in Becker (1998), pp. 638-
9.
170
Margolis and Laurence (1998), p. 261-2.
171
Lormand (1996), p. 58.
135
adequate holistic solution to instability, I shall read Lormand as recommending (i). A primitive
meaning, then, is semantically basic, and apparently atomic, while non-primitive meanings are
holistically related to all of the other expressions/representations (primitive ones included). This,
of course, just constitutes a denial of holism, since it would then be false that the meaning of
every expression depends on the meaning of every other one.
Finally, even if Lormand’s suggestion does perform as advertised and provides for some
stability, it still faces some problems when communication, disagreement, agreement, and
change of opinion are of a less direct nature. Intuitively, one might think that these phenomena
enjoy a certain kind of transitivity. For example, by communicating directly to a sergeant that an
offensive will be launched tomorrow, a general can communicate indirectly with that sergeant’s
soldiers, provided the sergeant relays the message to his soldiers. On Lormand’s account,
however, that x can communicate that p to y by means of sentence S, and y can communicate
that q to z by means of S, does not guarantee that p and q are the same proposition, even though
there is nothing like straightforward ambiguity involved and y intends to use S in the same sense
as it was used by x.
Likewise with agreement, disagreement, and change of opinion—Bob may disagree with
Bill about the truth of a sentence S, Al may disagree with Bill about the truth of the same
sentence, and yet there may nonetheless be no agreement (or disagreement for that matter)
between Bob and Al, even though none of them is agnostic about the truth-value of S. Again,
Bob may agree with Bill, and Bill with Al, even though Bob and Al are neither agreeing nor
disagreeing. In each case, “transitivity” (the case of disagreement is not really one of
transitivity) fails when no units are shared by Bob and Bill which are also shared by Bill and Al.
As for change of opinion, we need only imagine the possibility that the sets S1, S2, and S3 of
units associated with an expression by someone at distinct times t1, t2, and t3 are such that S1 and
S2 share no units that are shared by S2 and S3. If this is possible, then it is also possible that
someone accepts the truth of some sentence S (mental or otherwise), and then rejects it only later
to accept it again, even though that person does not end up believing what she originally
believed. Furthermore, by the same line of reasoning, one might accept the truth of some
sentence at t1, accept it again t2, and then deny it later at t3, even though (i) that person does at t2
genuinely agree with her t1-self, (ii) she does at t3 genuinely disagree with her times t2-self, and
(iii) she does not at t3 genuinely disagree with her times t1–self. It seems, then, that even if MM
136
does allow for some stability, the chances of such stability decrease the less direct is the line of
communication, agreement, disagreement, or whatever.
So, MM either fails to reconcile stability with something that can genuinely be called
(extreme) semantic holism, or if it does (which is doubtful), it is only a very limited and tenuous
kind of stability. The bottom line: MM does nothing (or very little) to relieve worries about
instability.
Adopting a two-factor CRS, settling for a notion of content similarity, rejecting
instability, and recognizing expression tokens as having multiple meanings are the main
strategies for defending holism from the Problem of Instability. We have seen, however, that
none of them will turn the trick. In the following chapter, I would like to suggest an option that
may fare a little better.
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CHAPTER 5
A NEO-FREGEAN OPTION
CRS, Instability, and Anti-Individualism
I do think that CRS has many desirable explanatory features, so it would be nice if some
version of the view remained viable. This would require showing that some version of it is
immune to the Crack as well as the Problem of Instability. In the last chapter, however, I argued
that if the CRS theorist accepts that the triad of holism, no A/S, and compositionality really is
inconsistent and that CRS must be holistic, then, in even in case of the Crack, the CRS theorist
must confront the Problem of Instability. Otherwise, the CRS theorist has two options: (i) he
must either show that there really is no inconsistency or (ii) he must argue that CRS need not be
holistic. The former option would require articulations of both holism and compositionality such
that they are not in fact inconsistent and such that holism remains a thesis about the nature of
meaning while compositionality is still capable of playing the desired role in our future
theorizing. The latter option, on the other hand, would presumably require assuming that there is
some way to partition sentences (inferences) as required by A/S after all.172 In that case, the
CRS theorist would have to confront Quine.
172
It has been pointed out that both of F&L’s arguments depend on the following principle: if someone’s being
disposed to make the inference from S1 to S2 is constitutive of what S2 means for that person, then the inference
from S1 to S2 is analytic for that person (i.e., true/valid by virtue of the meanings of S1 to S2 alone). Block (1993)
and Boghossian (1993) and (1994) respond to F&L by, one way or another, challenging this principle. Block does
so on the grounds that conceptual role pertains to narrow, not wide, content, and since truth and validity do not
properly apply to narrow content, analyticity (truth/validity by virtue of meaning) does not either. Boghossian
rejects the principle on the grounds that to say that an inference, for example, is constitutive of the meaning of some
term for some person is only to say that it must be accepted as valid by that person if it is to mean what it does for
her. Analyticity of an inference, however, requires more than that it be accepted as valid: it must actually be valid
by virtue of its meaning. Since I have already rejected the coherence and utility of narrow content, I have nothing
much to say about Block’s objection. The solution that I will offer in what follows accommodates Boghossian’s
point without severing the connection between conceptual role and analyticity.
138
I would now like to argue that F&L’s main arguments against it are successful only when
CRS is construed a certain way, but that there is another, more plausible, alternative for the CRS
theorist—an alternative that respects Twin Earth intuitions without disrespecting Tharthritis ones
(mentioned in chapter 1).
Recall that F&L argued that compositionality, CRS, and the denial of A/S form an
inconsistent triad and that the only way out is to deny CRS while sustaining the other two. The
idea was that compositionality is incompatible with holistic CRS, and the reasoning behind this
claim was that since holistic inferential roles cannot be compositional, they cannot be meanings.
Non-holistic inferential roles, on the other hand, require an A/S distinction, and since Quine
showed us that there can be no such distinction, there can be no non-holistic CRS. But since
there can be no holistic CRS either (that is, if we, as we should, hold onto compositionality),
there can be no CRS, of any stripe.
Should we be convinced by this argument? Well this depends on answering two
questions. Are F&L correct about their claim that inferential roles cannot be both holistic and
compositional? And just how much did Quine show, if anything? We addressed the second of
these questions in chapter 2. There we concluded that Quine’s arguments are less than
conclusive, and that even if they were successful, they would only undermine certain
conceptions of analyticity and meaning. In particular, Quine at the most showed that the
analytic/synthetic distinction could not be given an epistemic criterion like aprioricity or
unrevisability, and thus meaning could not be reconstructed in non-holistic, epistemic terms.
Being a verificationist, Quine thought that epistemic terms were the only terms suitable for
reconstructing the notions of meaning, analyticity, and syntheticity. As was pointed out earlier,
however, the hidden and crucial premise in Quine’s thought here is individualism, i.e., the
doctrine that meaning/content supervenes over features intrinsic to individual speakers/thinkers
(IND from chapter 1). Individualism and physicalism are the two springs from which many of
Quine’s most characteristic doctrines flow. Crucially, Quine never showed that both a nonindividualistic understanding of the concept of meaning and a principled, but non-individualistic
analytic/synthetic distinction are impossible (chapter 5).
So, if we reject individualism, then the door is open to fashioning a notion of content that
might support some kind of analytic/synthetic distinction. I cannot here attempt to provide even
so much as a hint of how such an account might go. Nor can I here mount a positive defense of
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non-individualism.173 I merely wish to suggest which options are still open. A CRS theorist
might escape the Crack, then, by endorsing a non-individualistic and non-epistemic conception
of A/S, and she would, in the end, avoid the inconsistency by denying that CRS entails semantic
holism. This response, then, would also afford her a way out of the Problem of Instability, since
that will be a problem for her only if CRS entails unstable holism.
Interestingly, by rejecting individualism, the CRS theorist can avoid both Instability and
the Crack, even while denying A/S and viewing CRS as holistic. The reason is that by denying
individualism, there is no longer any reason to accept the premise of the Problem of Instability
that holism is unstable. In discussions of Instability, it is always tacitly assumed that mental
content is individualistic. If content is inferential role and inferential role is both individualistic
and holistic, then, of course, content will be highly unstable. But the instability lies in the
individualism, not in the holism. It is simply not the case that holism is the culprit here, for the
same problems could in principle result from any type of individualistic theory, whether atomic,
properly anatomic, or holistic. Any such account would be unstable if there were any likelihood
that the individualistic facts/properties relevant to content determination might vary from
individual to individual. So, CRS need not entail unstable holism, and if individualism is
rejected, a stable, holistic version of CRS may very well be available.
So, why has there been so much fuss in the literature over semantic holism? The reason,
I think, is that F&L, and others, have supposed that holism can serve as the basis of a knockdown argument against CRS. But this will be so only if it is also supposed that CRS must be
individualistic. I take it that the primary reason why conceptual roles are thought to be
individualistic is that the only coherent account of mental causation requires that that they be so.
Many have thought that only things that are completely internal to an agent could be immediate
causes of the behavior of that agent—at least the kinds of causes relevant to those explanations
sought by a rigorously developed cognitive psychology. The thought is that if we are really to
retain the idea that we are the authors of our behavior, and thus responsible for it, then the
immediate causes of our behavior must be states or events completely internal to us. It is felt
that if we give up individualism, then we must also give up this picture of mental causation,
since the primary causes of behavior—beliefs and desires—would be at least partially constituted
173
For the main arguments against individualism, see Putnam (1973) and (1975), and Burge (1979).
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by factors external to the agent, since their contents would be. We might not have to give up that
picture, however, if we were willing to alter our conception of agents—perhaps agents (and not
just wide contents) extend “beyond the skin”. In any case, whether that particular tack is adopted
or not, if we were to give up individualism, we would then be faced with the possibility of a nonindividualistic CRS, and we would not need to bother with two-factors, content similarity,
rejecting instability, or multiple meanings—at least, not in order to avoid a perniciously unstable
holism.
So, two of the premises of the Problem of Instability make a tacit appeal to individualism,
and the Crack works only for those versions of CRS that presuppose an individualistic
conception of content (narrow content, for two-factor theories). In this latter case, what F&L
have really established (if anything) is that holism, individualism, compositionality, and the
denial of A/S form an inconsistent quartet. It seems, then, that one need not give up any of their
original trio, since one can just reject individualism (Fodor himself does). But then one would
no longer have any good reason to deny A/S. So, rather than give up CRS, which has much to
recommend it, why not just let go of individualism? On such an account, conceptual role might
be identified with role in analytic inference, where the relevant notion of analyticity is nonindividualistic, but it need not be so. One might still opt for some kind of holistic, but nonindividualistic conception of inferential role. Happily, it seems there are a number of options
still open to the CRS theorist.
I would now like to sketch one such possibility—arguably, one that Frege himself could
have endorsed.
Anti-Individualistic CRS: A Sketch
Since my aim here is neither to offer nor to defend fully a fully worked out theory but to
point in what I think is a promising direction, I will only provide a rough sketch of the position I
have in mind. The limited defense I can offer is, in the first instance, that it provides the CRS
theorist with an answer to both the Problem of Stability and the Crack. By doing so, the position
inherits many of the virtues of classical CRS while avoiding some of its major weaknesses.
Below, after I have outlined the view, I will add to this defense, but only somewhat.
Objects and Properties To begin with, I shall assume a metaphysic of objects and
properties—everything there is one of the two. ‘Property’ is intended in the most inclusive
sense. In particular, I wish to include all relations and functions. I also want to allow that some
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properties might be properties of other properties and functions (rather than of objects) as well as
functions of properties and functions.
Nothing much hangs on this particular choice of metaphysic. The view I am about to
outline could be made to accommodate other choices. Nothing in it, as far as I am aware, rules
out a metaphysic which includes facts, or events, or situations, or possible worlds, for example.
My main reason for choosing a metaphysic of objects and properties is that it is the one Frege
endorsed and I am interested in showing that a position very close to Frege’s is still available.
Sense and Semantic Value Semantic values, intuitively, are what we talk about, and, by
definition, are what make our thought and talk true or false. Now, given our dualistic
metaphysic, semantic values must be either objects or properties. What about senses? It is
sometimes supposed that senses constitute a third metaphysical category, since Frege often talks
about them inhabiting a “third realm.”174 This, however, is a mistake. Frege’s third realm is to
be contrasted with the realms of the mental and physical—it is the world of the abstract. Just as
there can be mental objects and properties, and physical objects and properties, there can be
abstract objects and properties. Minds, beliefs, and desires are examples of mental objects, if
anything is. Tables, chairs, and trees are among the most familiar examples of physical objects,
though some sophisticated physicalistic ontologies recommend recognizing only the fundamental
particles of physics. Abstract objects are those objects that can be neither dated nor located, and
the most typical examples would include the numbers (if, indeed, they are not properties), sets,
and, arguably, properties themselves. What makes a property mental or physical is the nature of
the things to which it applies. The property of being deciduous applies only to trees, and thus is
a physical property, since trees are physical in nature. Conceivability applies only to thoughts,
and thus is mental, if thoughts are. So, whether the present account is to view senses as objects
or as properties, if it is to be Fregean, it must take them as abstract, rather than mental or
physical, in character.
As with individualistic CRS, the present account is an instance of the QW-schema.
Senses are to be identified with certain structures. Part of what leads to the individualistic
character of classical CRS is that the nodes of the relevant structures are taken to be mental
sentences, sensory inputs, and motor outputs—items that do stop at the skin—and the structuring
relations are inferential, where the relevant notion of inference is that of the inference actually
174
See, for example, Frege (1918-19a), p. 363.
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accepted by a speaker. This notion of actual inference, sometimes understood as a disposition to
infer, is then given a purely causal analysis. The nodes and the relevant causal relations between
them are all features internal to the body of the thinker/speaker in question, so the structures
defined in terms of them are also intrinsic properties of that thinker/speaker. Now, it is because
classical CRS attempts to identify content with structures structured by relations of actual
inference that it is committed to individualism, while it is the appeal to inferential relations that
makes it a form of CRS. Since what we are seeking is a non-individualistic CRS, we can get
what we want by replacing the grounding notion of actual inference with some other, nonindividualistic conception of inference. What I would like to suggest is that a viable, nonindividualistic CRS can be obtained by replacing the notion of inference actually accepted with
that of inference that ought to be accepted and then construing this latter notion nonindividualistically.175 Conceptual role, then, is to be understood as what one ought to do with an
expression, and not what one actually does with it.176 The choice of the relevant contentdetermining structures, then, will be guided by this constraint.
What kind of structure, then, will determine what one ought to do with an expression?
Here, I will baldly describe the kind of structure I have in mind. Then I will suggest how such
structures might have this action-guiding character. To simplify, consider a language L (mental
or linguistic) with only names, predicate expressions, and the usual logical operators, and
consider some arbitrary expression E from the non-logical vocabulary of L. The nodes of the
content-determining structure for E will consist of other semantic values of primitive expressions
of L, rather than other expressions of L. This means that at least some, perhaps all, of the objects
and properties that are the semantic values of the expressions of L are partially constitutive of
E’s content-determining structure. What are the structuring relations for these nodes? What we
need are relations that hold between other properties and relations, between objects and other
objects, and between objects and properties. If we are also interested in preserving A/S, then we
will need relations that hold, when they do, necessarily, not contingently. In any case, the kinds
of relation I have in mind are subsumption (the analog, for properties, of set-theoretic inclusion),
175
Rey (1992), (1993a), and (1993b) also recommends such an approach.
176
It seems doubtful that what one actually does with an expression can determine what one ought to do with it for
the basically Wittgensteinian reason that one’s actual use of a term can never be mistaken if it also determines what
would be a mistaken use (and thus is not already constrained). If meaning is to be normative, however, then it must
be possible for one’s actual use to be mistaken.
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necessary instantiation (for an object of a property or for property of another property), and other
nomological relations, e.g., causal and logical ones.
To get a notion of an expression E’s conceptual role from structures of this type, we will
need some notion of inference that corresponds to the structures described above. Since the
inferences that form E’s conceptual role must actually depend on E and its semantic value, I
shall restrict my attention to inferences that contain E and whose validity depends at least
partially on its semantic value. Accordingly, we have:
AI
For any expression E, an E-appropriate inference is an inference (to or from E) that is
rendered (nomically) valid directly by subsumption or nomological relationships between
the semantic value of E and other properties (or objects).
As before, I am taking inferences to be relationships between expressions (mental or linguistic),
or, more accurately, they are ordered pairs of sets of expressions. Nomic validity is just what
ordinary validity becomes when the notion of necessity implicit in the latter is replaced by the
weaker notion of nomic or physical necessity. The conceptual role for E, then, can be identified
with all of the E-appropriate inferences. Better, we can take E’s conceptual role as including the
set of E-appropriate inferences, leaving it open whether anything else should be included as well.
What we have, then, is a structure defined by the semantic value of E and all of the
objects and properties to which E’s semantic value is nomically and metaphysically related. The
inferences that are to be included in E’s conceptual role are those inferences that (i) correspond
to such relationships, and (ii) are nomically valid. For example, if E’s semantic value is the
property of being a dog, and if being a dog is subsumed by being an animal, then the inference
from ‘dog’ to ‘animal’ (or from |dog| to |animal|) will be nomically valid and hence part of E’s
conceptual role. To take another example, if E1’s semantic value is George W. Bush, and if
George W. Bush is necessarily a human, then the inference from E1 to ‘human’ (or from | E1| to
|human|) will be part of E1’s conceptual role. If, as Kripke contends, a human is metaphysically
related to his parents—your identity depending in part on your having the parents that you do—
then the inference from E1 to ‘son of George H. W. Bush’ will likewise be part of the conceptual
role of E1.
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So, why might such a structure determine what one ought to do with an expression?
Here, as elsewhere, I can only offer a vague answer, but I think that what I can say is suggestive
enough to be useful. Here I follow Frege and other truth-conditional theorists in taking the
notion of truth as the underlying cognitive norm. Though there are other relevant norms and
ends, the ultimate purpose of thought and talk is to acquire and pass on truths. As
representational systems, languages have value only to the extent that they represent truly—
should a system represent completely falsely or should it be incapable of representing truly, then
I think that most of us would judge it as being nearly (if not wholly) without value—perhaps
some aesthetic value might still be recognized. Truth, of course, is the point of inference, and
thus should play a fundamental normative role in any CRS, since inference does. Now, the
metaphysical and nomic relations that structure conceptual roles serve this end because they tell
us what inferences we have to accept if we want to end up with truths as a result of our
reasoning. It is both because we value truth and because these structures model truth-preserving
inferences that such structures can ground normativity.
I have described conceptual role as being only partially constituted by such structures.
The reason I have done so is that unless there is something that connects a particular expression
E with a particular node in such a structure then such structures will be impotent to ground any
kind of content for E. To put things somewhat graphically, the aspect of an expression’s content
that I have described so far is what we might regard as its horizontal dimension. What I am now
asking about is what would more properly be described as its vertical dimension—that
component of E’s content that makes the semantic value of E the semantic value of E. This
component is what mediates the most direct connections between minds/languages and reality. I
would also like to point out that if our account is to be Fregean in nature, then there must be
some such component of an expression’s content. That it must is guaranteed by S from chapter
1.
How this vertical component is to be understood is a matter which I must leave unsettled,
partly because I do not have the space and partly because I do not have a worked out answer. I
will, however, make two comments. First, I am supposing that this vertical component is not
determined by the horizontal component but complements it. In a way, the horizontal
component is determined by the vertical one, insofar as the vertical component determines the
expression’s semantic value. Once the expression is locked onto a particular semantic value, it is
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ipso facto locked onto the corresponding structure, since that semantic value is already connected
to that structure. Now there may indeed be a sense in which the structure (minus the semantic
value) does in fact determine the relevant semantic value. What I am denying is that it also
determines the vertical component itself. There might be any number of such “tethers” that
could connect an expression to some one semantic value. Second, there are a number of
candidates for this vertical component already in the literature. Notable examples would include
accounts that explain reference directly in terms causal or nomological relations between the use
of an expression and its semantic value,177 or in terms of sociological facts about the
expression,178 or in terms of some notion of the proper function of the expression in the
psychology or cognition or behavior of the user.179 It just may be possible to fashion a viable
account from one of these notions or from some combination of them.
Grasping Contents Which beliefs about the semantic value of E must someone have
and which inferences must someone accept to be said to know the meaning of E? Certainly only
true beliefs and valid inferences should count, and only beliefs that are necessary rather than
contingent. This means that any beliefs (inferences) that are required to know the meaning of an
expression, must be beliefs (inferences) made true (valid) by the relevant nomological structure.
So, how much of the content-determining structure associated with E must a speaker/thinker
believe in order to be said to grasp the content of E? The answer: none.
Since such structures partially constitute the contents of expressions, it would seem that a
failure to manifest any of the beliefs or inferences modeled by such structures would have the
unavoidable consequence that the content of the relevant expression had not really been grasped
at all. Such a strict criterion for grasping, however, would introduce a substantial amount of
instability back into thought and talk, something this account is supposedly designed to avoid.
For this reason, it is a mistake to insist on it. But then when can we say that someone has
grasped a certain content, and what, if anything, do the content-determining structures
considered above have to with such a grasp?
177
E.g., Fodor (1990), and Dretske (1981).
178
E.g., Putnam (1973) and (1975), and Burge (1979, and maybe the later Wittgenstein.
179
E.g., Millikan (1984).
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The problem, I will urge, lies in viewing grasp as an all or nothing affair. Its solution, I
will again urge, can be found in what I take to be a fairly obvious distinction, but one which most
theorists seem to have missed. What is missing is some distinction between a minimal and a
complete grasp of the content of an expression. Ultimately, the desired distinction must allow
for stability as well as intentional explanations of behavior. Above, I mentioned that there must
be some vertical component to content—some component that connects expressions to things.
My suggestion is that this component may itself be identified with what I will call minimal
grasp—the bare requirement for someone’s use of a term to be connected to a certain semantic
value. So, whatever kinds of facts or properties constitute the vertical component of an
expression’s content, the obtaining of that fact or property in the case of a specific expression
and a specific speaker/thinker will be necessary and sufficient for that speaker/thinker to have a
minimal grasp of that expression.
To be sure, this is merely schematic for a completed account of mental and linguistic
minimal grasp, but it does have the highly desirable feature that it allows that a speaker/thinker
can have grasped the content of some piece of vocabulary even though that speaker has no true
beliefs about that piece of vocabulary, and it does this without denying that that piece of
vocabulary has a content-determining conceptual role. It can do this because such conceptual
roles are not directly relevant to minimal grasp. What conceptual roles are relevant to, however,
is not minimal grasp but to improving one’s grasp of the content of the expression. As
mentioned above, one of the mistakes of classical CRS is that it operates with an all or nothing
conception of grasp, rather than with a graded one. By defining some corresponding notions of
partial (not necessarily minimal) and complete grasp, this defect can be remedied. Since a
content is completely constituted by the expression/world link (which constitutes minimal grasp)
and the nomological structure determined by that link, the notion of complete grasp is most
naturally characterized as follows:
CG
A has a complete grasp of the content of E just in case A has a minimal grasp of the
content of E and A accepts all E-appropriate inferences.
Accepting an E-appropriate inference from a set of sentences Σ to some sentence S (at least one
of which contains E) requires at a minimum a minimal grasp of S and a minimal grasp of every
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member of Σ. It also requires that there be some appropriate causal relationship between the
members of Σ and S, but just how this relationship is to be understood I will leave open. The
notion of complete grasp, then, is built on the notions of acceptance of an E-appropriate
inference and minimal grasp. By appealing to the latter notion, the account avoids simply
collapsing into the standard two-factor view according to which grasping a narrow content—a
conceptual role—is something that is individualistic. By appealing to the notion of an Eappropriate inference, on the other hand, the account pays respect to the intuition that knowing
what to do with an expression matters.
Complete grasp, is an idealized notion—a complete grasp of an expression is something
that a perfectly competent user of that expression has.180 It is extremely doubtful, however, that
many actual people ever manage to obtain such a grasp, but it is also extremely likely that people
often do achieve more than a mere minimal grasp of many expressions’ contents. What is
needed, then, is some intermediate notion: a notion of partial grasp. This can be readily
obtained from the two notions just introduced:
PG
A has a partial grasp of the content of E just in case A has a minimal, but not a complete,
grasp of the content of E.
So, A will have a partial grasp of E’s content just in case (i) there is some E-appropriate
inference A is disposed to accept, (ii) there is some E-appropriate inference A is not disposed to
accept, and (iii) A has a minimal grasp of E’s content (since (i) actually entails (iii), (iii) is
superfluous here). The more E-appropriate inferences A accepts the stronger A’s grasp of E’s
content (provided, of course, that A has a minimal grasp to begin with). Grasp, then, is to be
viewed as a graded notion ranging from the minimal to the complete. Perhaps a more refined
180
Whether such a complete grasp will require a complete grasp of every other expression of the language will
depend on one’s view regarding A/S. If one follows Quine and rejects A/S, then complete grasp may turn out to be
holistic, even though partial grasp is not. This suggests a resolution of the tension between compositionality and
holism (considered in chapter 3). If A/S is not sustained, then content might turn out to be holistic because its
horizontal component is, and this brand of holism would be of the metaphysical sort. A metaphysical reading of
compositionality, and one which could still explain productivity, systematicity, and isomorphism, would nonetheless
be compatible with this sort of holism if the compositionality is only read as concerning the vertical component of
content. This kind of semantic compositionality would also suit the needs of psychosemantic compositionality
despite the holistic aspect of content.
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account could distinguish between different degrees of grasp of a term based on some working
hypothesis about the details of the relevant structure.
One desirable consequence of this picture is a move towards linguistic and conceptual
fallibilism. When someone’s grasp of some content is only partial or minimal, then INT (chapter
1) will fail with respect to that person and the relevant expression. In having a minimal grasp of
E, a person A’s use of E will carry E’s full content, even when much of that content is unknown
to A. This has the further consequence that A can improve his understanding of E’s content by
discovering new conceptual relationships involving E’s semantic value, i.e., new E-appropriate
inferences. This is important because it provides an answer to the so-called Paradox of Analysis.
There the problem is to understand how one could achieve any substantive knowledge through
conceptual analysis, for if one is in a position to carry out such an analysis, and hence recognize
a correct one, one must already know the meaning of the term in question. In that case, however,
one would already know what is revealed by the analysis. So, such analyses can never really be
informative. If one gives up IND, however, then there will be no temptation to accept INT. But
if meaning is not open to introspection, since it does not supervene on things that are “in the
head”, there is no longer any reason to think that a correct conceptual analysis should be obvious
to anyone who has a basic competence with the concepts being analyzed. On the present
account, then, one can, in one good sense, know the meaning of a term and yet still benefit from
such analyses: anyone who has only a partial grasp of some content will stand to gain from such
analyses. Conceptual analysis will be uninformative only for those speakers/thinkers who
already have a complete grasp of the content in question.
Furthermore, such knowledge may well turn out to be a posteriori. This will depend, of
course, on how one can acquire knowledge of the nomological structure that grounds E’s
content. Since I have allowed non-logical and non-metaphysical, nomological relationships as
structuring, it seems that a substantial amount of such knowledge will indeed be a posteriori.
Whether knowledge of the remaining metaphysical and logical relationships must be a priori is a
matter better left to the epistemologists.
All of this suggests a revised version of S2, Frege’s principle of individuation for senses.
In chapter 1, we saw that, according to the standard view, Frege regards the senses of two
expressions as the same just in case any competent speaker would judge them to have the same
semantic value. Since, on the present account, one can grasp the content of a term and yet not
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know all of the consequences of doing so, i.e., not grasp completely the term’s conceptual role,
and since a minimal grasp of the contents of two co-extensive terms does not itself guarantee
knowledge that the terms are co-extensive (this is so because the vertical component is itself
anti-individualist in nature), individuation conditions cannot be framed in terms of the judgments
of actual speakers/thinkers. Since INT fails for speakers with only a partial grasp of the meaning
of an expression, those speakers may fail to recognize that two synonymous expressions are
indeed synonymous, even though those speakers are competent to use both terms. What all of
this suggests is the following, idealized principle of individuation:
S2′
S1 and S2 express the same sense just in case any competent speaker who completely
grasps the senses of S1 and S2 would judge that S1 and S2 have the same semantic
value.
The trouble with this is that, as noted above we have no reason to think that it would be
transparent to any speaker/thinker that the vertical components of two expressions’ contents were
the same or different. Even if A has a complete grasp of the content of two expressions, E1 and
E2, which happen to have the same (or different) content(s), there is no guarantee that A will
know, or even believe, that their contents have the same (or different) vertical component(s),
though A might very well know when they have the same horizontal component. It is possible
that, given the externalist, and most likely non-cognitive, character of this vertical component,
S2′ will fail, but it is also possible that such an ideal speaker would know, and hence judge, that
two expressions have the semantic value if she also knows that their contents have the same
horizontal components (as they must if the expressions are indeed coextensive). If such
knowledge would in fact guarantee the appropriate judgment, then S2′ might be acceptable after
all, whether or not sameness of vertical component is necessarily accessible to someone with a
complete grasp of the relevant contents.
In any case, I consider it a virtue of the present account that it is not committed to
semantic introspectionism and that it allows for an acceptable solution to the Paradox of
Analysis.
Content and Explanation One of the primary motivations for identifying content with
conceptual role has always been that it allows content to play a prominent role in explanations of
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behavior, and that it should play such a role is required if one wants to preserve our practice of
intentional explanation and everything that comes with it. This desideratum, as I have argued, is
what has led to the individualistic versions of CRS. I have also been arguing, however, that
individualism should be rejected.
But this raises a serious worry. The reason that so many theorists have assumed that
content must be individualistic is that they have supposed that it is only under such an
assumption that content could have any explanatory relevance at all. To say that nonindividualistic content has no explanatory relevance, however, is just to say that it really does not
play any role in explanations of behavior, in which case such an account would appear to
jeopardize our ordinary practices of intentional explanation (as well as hopes for scientifically
minded ones). The reason such content could play no such role is that it is not sufficiently local
to have a hand in mental causation. Individualistic content, on the other, if it is anything, is local
in the required sense. Can someone who is a realist about the attitudes and who accords content
a significant role in explanations of behavior really afford to accept a non-individualistic CRS?
What I would like to argue is that while it may be true that non-individualistic contents
do not have any direct explanatory relevance they do have indirect explanatory relevance. It is
true that the content-determining structures themselves, being external to the agent, cannot be
regarded as the immediate causes of his behavior. This does not mean, however, that they have
no relevance. What does have direct relevance to an agent’s behavior is the strength of his grasp
of the content in question. Someone who has a nearly complete grasp of an expression E’s
content will ceteris paribus most likely behave differently than someone who has only a minimal
grasp of the same content. It should come as no surprise that accepting more and more Eappropriate inferences will have some effect or another on someone’s behavior. What I am
suggesting, then, is that psychological explanation should proceed not merely in terms of beliefs
and desires, and not merely in term of beliefs, desires, and the strength of those beliefs and
desires (where strength is a matter of the degree of commitment to a belief or the relative
urgency of a desire), but in terms of beliefs, desires, their strength, and their clarity, where
clarity is to be understood in terms of the strength of one’s grasp of the propositional content of
the attitudes appealed to in the explanation. So, someone who has a partial grasp of the content
of |Minds are kinds of computing devices| and who also believes that minds are kinds of
computing devices will have a clearer belief than someone who has the same belief with only a
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minimal grasp but a less clear belief than someone who has that same belief with a complete
grasp.
So, it is the clarity of one’s beliefs and desires—the strength of one’s grasp of their
content—through which content has the most direct explanatory role in explanations of behavior.
In what sense, then, does content itself play an indirect role? Well, in this sense: one can have a
grasp of a content of some strength or another only if there is some such content and one has a
minimal grasp of it. Where there is no content, there is no minimal grasp, and where there is no
minimal grasp there is no partial grasp (of whatever degree) or complete grasp. So, any
explanation that makes an appeal to the strength of one’s grasp depends indirectly on some
content or another that can be, and has been, grasped.
E-Appropriate Inference and A/S Another nice feature of this account is that it allows
us to divorce analyticity from the idea that knowing the meaning of a term requires believing all
of its analyticities. Traditionally it was assumed that if a sentence S is analytic and some speaker
A does not accept S as true, then (assuming that A understands S’s syntax) there must be some
expression E in S such that A either fails to grasp the content of E or E has a different content
for A. This principle is crucial to Quine’s most penetrating attacks on A/S, and that he assumes
it is partly why he can only be taken as having refuted an epistemic conception of A/S, if he can
be taken as having refuted anything. The reason why Quine is committed to seeing analyticity as
bound up with this principle is that he takes meaning to be method of verification, where this
latter is understood in terms of inferential dispositions. Since for him, facts about such
dispositions are metaphysically constitutive of facts about what one means by one’s terms and
hence of what those terms mean, differences of accepted analyticities (which will amount to
differences of underlying dispositions) will guarantee some difference of content.
Though a defender of the above account need not accept any form of A/S, he could
accept a non-epistemic conception. It is open to such a CRS theorist to identify an expression
E’s analyticities with all, or some suitable subclass, of the E-appropriate inferences. On such a
conception of analyticity, a speaker need not accept any of the analytic E-appropriate inferences
in order to have grasped (though minimally) E’s content. So, two people could disagree about
what conceptual relations a certain content has without talking past one another. They could do
this provided they both have the right minimal grasp. The idea, then, is that anti-individualist
CRS can have A/S while at the same time accepting Quine’s point that there is no distinction
152
between those sentences (inferences) one must accept to know the meaning of some expression
and those one need not accept provided that it rejects the above principle. That principle forges a
tight connection between necessary assent and analyticity, a connection that is shattered on the
present view.
To summarize, classical CRS takes contents to be causal/inferential structures that reside
in the brain (plus the nervous system), or which supervene over such structures. These structures
somehow become tethered to external things, properties, and states of affairs. The version of
CRS here on offer locates these structures on the other end of the tether. Instead of the contents
themselves explaining behavior directly, it is one’s grasp of such contents that does so. As with
the contents of classical CRS, it takes inferential relations as supervening over certain kinds of
causal/nomological relationships: the former locates these subvening relationships “in the head”,
while the latter locates them in the external world but explains understanding (the grasping of a
content) partially in terms of those same “in the head” relationships.
We have seen that this account has a number of nice features. I have argued, for
example, that (i) it accommodates the normativity of content (something individualistic theories
have trouble doing), (ii) it is not committed to any form of semantic introspectionism or
infallibilism, (iii) it allows for an intuitive solution to the Paradox of Analysis, (iv) it disarms the
Problem of Instability by making content stable, (v) it stops up the Crack, and (vi) it allows for
the stability of content while at the same time allowing for such contents to play a genuine role in
explanations of behavior. The account clearly has much to recommend it, even if it is, as it
stands, somewhat sketchy.181
181
Though I cannot deal with them here, there are some difficulties that will have to be addressed. First, can an
anti-individualistic account solve the four puzzles that were taken to recommend a sense/semantic-value distinction
in the first place, viz., the Problem of Vacuous Singular Terms, the Problem of Negative Existentials, Frege’s
Puzzle, and the Problem of Opacity? One problem here is that the resulting kind of account, though it would no
longer individuate meanings too finely, might seem to fail to individuate them finely enough. After all, ‘rectilinear
figure with three sides’ and ‘rectilinear figure with three angles’ do seem to have different meanings even though
they are necessarily coextensive. In short, such externalist solutions seem to fail to provide an answer to Frege’s
puzzle about cognitive significance. The trick, then, would be to provide an externalist understanding of
confirmation that is fine-grained enough to differentiate between the meanings of necessarily coextensive terms, and
I know of no reason to dismiss such a possibility out of hand. Indeed, the combination of the horizontal, but antiindividualist conceptual roles with the vertical “tether” under the heading ‘content’ just might solve this problem.
Second, can a notion of minimal grasp be fashioned that avoids the Disjunction Problem? If the vertical component
of content is to be explained, for example, in terms of nomological relations between tokens of an expression and
things in the world, then it is incumbent on such accounts to specify which nomological relations matter. Otherwise,
if it turns out that a speaker’s tokenings of ‘cow’ are nomologically related both to cows and very overweight
horses, then it would seem that that person’s ‘cow’ tokens mean is either a cow or a very overweight horse, in which
case that speaker would not be mistaken in tokening ‘cow’ when demonstrating a particular, obese horse. Finally,
153
What About Frege?
My primary objective in this chapter has been to present a version of CRS that would fare
better against the worries developed in chapters 2 and 3 than the CRS solutions considered in
chapter 4. I have also hinted in places that the desired account would be Fregean in character. I
would now like to motivate this last claim. However, since this is not a work on Frege, I will
limit myself to a few brief remarks.
The main elements of the above account are (i) anti-individualism, (ii) the content
determining structures and the corresponding E-appropriate inferences, (iii) a provisional
division of content into horizontal and vertical components, and (iv) the corresponding, graded
conception of understanding. My strategy here will be to indicate to what extent any of these
components can be attributed to Frege.
Anti-Individualism and Frege’s Anti-Psychologism Given Frege’s anti-psychologism,
establishing that Frege is an anti-individualist should be relatively straightforward. To begin
with, if individualism really does entail that content cannot be normative or play the role in
communication that we typically accord it, then, as a matter of rationalistic reconstruction, we
can conclude that Frege would be required to reject individualism, since his central reason for
rejecting psychologism in semantics is that it fails to accommodate normativity and
communication. Furthermore, if individualism counts as a form of psychologism, then, Frege’s
attacks must be seen as applying to it, whether or not he ever considered the doctrine itself.
I have argued that individualism really does have trouble with normativity and
communication. So, I might very well stop here with the conclusion that Frege should have
rejected it. I also think that individualism is clearly a form of psychologism, so I could also
conclude that Frege’s arguments count against individualism as a sub-case, even though he may
never have reflected on that particular thesis. I believe, however, that we are entitled to the
stronger conclusion that Frege did actually consider, and reject, reductionist individualism and
perhaps even supervenience individualism as well.
At the end of a lengthy tirade against the incursion of psychology into logic and
mathematics, Frege says this,
can the account be extended to other kinds of expression than natural kind terms and singular terms? Can it, for
example, be extended to cover the logical constants, adverbs, attributive adjectives, and all of the other kinds of
expression we feel obliged to recognize?
154
If we want to emerge from the subjective at all, we must conceive of knowledge as an activity that does not create
what is known but grasps what is already there. The picture of grasping is very well suited to elucidate the matter.
If I grasp a pencil, many different events take place in my body: nerves are stimulated, changes occur in the tension
and pressure of muscles, tendons, and bones, the circulation of the blood is altered. But the totality of these events
neither is the pencil nor creates the pencil; the pencil exists independently of them. And it is essential for grasping
that something be there which is grasped; the internal changes alone are not the grasping. In the same way, that
which we grasp with the mind also exists independently of this activity, independently of the ideas and their
alterations that are a part of this grasping or accompany it; and it is neither identical with the totality of these events
nor created by it as a part of our own mental life.
182
“To emerge from the subjective” is Frege’s shorthand for the accommodation of communication,
truth, and normativity in one’s theorizing about logic, semantics, and mathematics. Leading up
to this passage, Frege had been arguing against ideational accounts of semantic value, i.e.,
accounts according to which what we talk and think about are ideas in the psychological sense.
Such accounts, he contends, slide inevitably into solipsism and thus should be resisted. In this
context, however, Frege has shifted his attention to sense, and this is made clear by the
appearance of the notion of grasping in the discussion. What we grasp are senses. As with
semantic value, what we grasp is already there to be grasped and not created by the grasping, and
neither is it identical to, or created by, anything else in our mental life.
Admittedly, what this passage most clearly supports is only a partial denial of
individualism, since what it seems to be ruling out is just that senses can be reduced to items
found in an individual’s mind (or brain). Individualism, however, makes the weaker claim that
contents (senses) supervene over such things. Identity is one kind of supervenience though it is
not the only kind. Moreover, supervenience is a notion that had not yet been introduced when
Frege was writing and thus we are unlikely to find a clear denial of sense/brain-state
supervenience in Frege’s writings. Be that as it may, I do think that such a denial is true to the
spirit of the above passage. Furthermore, the last sentence of the passage is somewhat
suggestive. Here Frege denies what seem to be two distinct possibilities: (i) that senses are
identical to ideas or events in (states of) the brain and (ii) that senses are created by them. If
Frege is not just repeating himself here, then there is the possibility that he is dimly aware of
182
Frege (1893), pp. 23-4.
155
something like supervenience. The previous clause may offer an even clearer case, since to say
that what is grasped “with the mind also exists independently of this activity, independently of
the ideas and their alterations that are a part of this grasping or accompany it” is to deny more
than mere identity. Supervenience is a kind of dependence between one kind of property and
another, so if Frege is here denying all dependence of semantic properties on mental ones (or
physiological ones), then it would appear that this passage does indeed count against
individualism (either reductionistic or supervenience).
It seems fairly clear, then, that Frege is an anti-individualist. So, from this perspective at
least, classical CRS is something Frege could not have accepted, and the move to the above antiindividualist CRS is one that he would find congenial.
Begriffsschrifts and the Third Realm A harder task will be showing that Frege
recognized something like the above anti-individualist content-determining structures and their
corresponding E-appropriate inferences. Here, my comments will be mostly suggestive. I will
argue that given certain aspects of Frege’s views, Frege is committed to recognizing something
very much like these structures and their corresponding inferences but that it would have been
open to him to recognize exactly such structures and inferences. To this end, what needs to be
shown is (i) that Frege is an anti-individualist about sense, (ii) that Frege’s conception of sense
does in fact instantiate the QW-schema, and (iii) that Frege views properties as abstract, rather
than as mental or physical, in nature. When seen in the proper light, this trio provides
compelling grounds for the above two claims.
Since we have already established (i), we only need to consider (ii) and (iii). The best
reason for seeing Frege’s conception of sense as instantiating the QW-schema lies in his views
on the nature and purpose of his Begriffsschrift. Frege’s very choice of language here is itself
revealing, since ‘Begriffsschrift’ is reasonably translated as either ‘concept notation’ or ‘concept
script’. The idea is that his Begriffsschrift is a necessary instrument for the purpose of clearly
revealing the content of expressions of certain kinds of discourse. Frege’s explicit goal, of
course, is to produce a notation in which the content of mathematical expressions can be clearly
revealed, and he wants to do this to support his master thesis that mathematical concepts and
truths are at bottom logical ones. How does he plan to display mathematical concepts in a
perspicuous manner? What aspects of an expression’s use and ordinary meaning should count as
156
cognitive content and thus determine how that expression’s content should be displayed? Frege
gives a hint early in the Begriffsschrift, when he tells us,
. . . all those features of language that result only from the interaction of speaker and listener—where the speaker,
for example, takes the listener’s expectations into account and seeks to put them on the right track even before a
sentence is finished—have no counterpart in my formula language, since here the only thing that is relevant in a
judgement is that which influences its possible consequences.183
At this point in Frege’s career, he had not yet distinguished between sense and semantic value,
though he indiscriminately included both under the generic head of ‘content’. Later, however,
when Frege had the sense/semantic-value distinction at his disposal, he would offer essentially
the same explanation for the utility of the Begriffsschrift.184 Keeping the sense/semantic-value
distinction in mind, Frege’s idea is that since sense is what determines semantic value and since
the semantic values of sentences are truth values, and since he accepts compositionality for both
sense and reference, the only aspects of a sub-sentential expression’s ordinary meaning that
should be included as part of its sense are those aspects that are relevant to determining the truth
values of the sentences in which that expression occurs. Inference, however, plays a crucial role
in such determinations, since it is only by considering what sentential structures need to be
recognized in order to explain why intuitively valid inferences are valid and intuitively invalid
ones invalid that one can even identify the primitive expressions required by compositionality.
The idea, then, is that the sense of an expression must be essentially connected to the role that
that expression plays in inferences from or to sentences containing it. The upshot, then, is that
sense, cognitive content, can only be clearly displayed in the context of a Begriffsschrift. By
completing such a concept notation (that is, by rigorously representing all of the possible
inferences involving the primitive vocabulary) one has effectively represented everything that
must be known (in one sense of that term) for one to have fully grasped the sense of its primitive
expressions.
183
Frege (1879), p. 12.
184
See, for example, Frege (1892b), p. 187, where he says, “When I wrote my Foundations of Arithmetic, I had not
yet made the distinction between sense and meaning; and so, under the expression ‘a content of possible judgement’,
I was combining what I now designate by the distinctive words ‘thought’ and ‘truth-value’. Consequently, I no
longer entirely approve of the explanation I then gave, as regards its wording; my view is, however, still essentially
the same.”
157
So, a proper understanding of Frege’s Begriffsschrift shows that his understanding of
sense does fit the general QW model: in the Begriffsschrift, which represents conceptual
contents, sentences are the nodes and the inferential relations between them are what yield the
relevant content determining structures. Given his anti-individualism, however, senses cannot be
conceptual roles, at least as they are understood by classical CRS. Rather, senses must be
external to the agent and as such must inhabit either the abstract realm or the physical realm (in
the latter case, they must be external to the physical bodies of agents as well). Now, it is a
cardinal tenet of Frege’s views on sense that they are to be found in the “third realm”—the realm
of the abstract. What this means is that if Frege also views all properties as abstract, then he is
free to take senses as at least partially constituted by properties and their relations to other
properties (which latter would also be abstract). This would establish half of what we wanted—
the other half being that acceptance of E-appropriate inference could play a role in his theory of
understanding (I shall return to this other half below when I discuss Frege’s views on linguistic
understanding, i.e., on grasping). Though I cannot argue this here, my sense is that Frege did
view properties as abstract in nature. Of course, even if Frege did not see properties in this light,
it would nonetheless have been open to him to hold that, while senses do not reduce to such
structures, they do supervene over them.
Sense and Mode of Presentation I have already established that, for Frege, antiindividualist QW-structures are at least partially constitutive of senses, that is, I have made a
case for recognizing the horizontal component of the above anti-individualist account in Fregean
senses. What remains is to see that for Frege such structures are not (or at least need not be)
completely constitutive. Here I will content myself with just a minimum of textual support.
What I want to point out is that Frege did not think that the sense of an expression E need
be completely constituted by some particular mode of presentation of E’s semantic value. In
“Sense and Meaning”, after arguing for the necessity of a notion of sense to complement that of
semantic value, he says the following,
It is natural, now, to think of there being connected with a sign (name, combination of words, written mark), besides
that which the sign designates, which may be called the meaning of the sign, also what I should like to call the sense
of the sign, wherein the mode of presentation is contained.185
185
Frege (1892a), p. 158; my emphasis.
158
As the emphasized phrase shows, Frege does not identify sense with mode of presentation, an
explicitly epistemological notion, outright. Rather, he allows that there might be more that needs
to be recognized.
But doesn’t this violate Frege’s own definition of sense (S from chapter 1) as the mode of
determination of an expression’s semantic value? The answer is that it does not, provided that
some care is taken in distinguishing between modes of determination and modes of presentation.
Here is one way of doing this. Mode of presentation is both a determinant of an expression E’s
semantic value and an epistemic relation that holds between a particular mind and that semantic
value. A determinant of a semantic value, on the other hand, need not, but may, be epistemic in
nature—indeed, it is open that there are such determinants that are inaccessible to the actual
speakers of a language and thus cannot count as modes of presentation for them (there are certain
functions that are so complicated that evaluating them for certain arguments might outstrip even
the most brilliant human’s psychological resources). Nonetheless, such a non-presenting mode
of determination would still count as part of E’s sense even though it does not help the users of E
establish any kind of cognitive contact with E’s semantic value.
With this distinction in mind, we can see how a sense might contain both accessible and
inaccessible modes of determination. One way of reading the above anti-individualist CRS is
that the vertical component of E’s content is to be regarded as a mode of presentation, since it is
what connects minds to things. The external, inference-determining structures, on the other
hand, could very well be modes of determination determined for an expression once that
expression’s vertical component is established. By tethering a mental or linguistic expression to
some part of the world that expression is thereby also tethered to the appropriate kind of
structure. If it is held that this structure (minus the original semantic value) determines that
semantic value, though perhaps in some inaccessible, purely metaphysical way, then one has
grounds for including such a structure in the sense of the original expression.
So, Frege includes modes of presentation in sense and leaves it open that there are other
sorts of determination. For the anti-individualistic CRS currently on offer, the vertical
component of content would count as a mode of presentation (and hence as a mode of
determination) while the horizontal component would typically count only as a mode of
determination, though under certain circumstances, it might also count as a mode of presentation.
159
In any case, both components are modes of determination and thus could be recognized by Frege
as constituting sense.
Frege and the Paradox of Analysis Frege’s official position was that spelling out the
details of what grasping a content amounts to is a matter for psychology and thus should be kept
out of semantics proper. I would like to point to a couple of passages that strongly suggest,
despite his official policy of avoiding psychology when doing semantics, logic, and mathematics,
that Frege thought that grasp, however it ultimately is to be understood, must be graded rather
than all or nothing.
The key passage comes in the context of a discussion of the logical value of definitions.
In an unpublished work written late in Frege’s career, Frege distinguishes between constructive
and analytic definitions. The former consists of an assignment of an old sense to a new term and
is basically what is now known as stipulative definition. Frege’s attitude to this kind of
definition is that it is logically dispensable but psychologically indispensable.186 The addition of
such a definition to a formal system does not enrich the expressive or deductive capacity of the
system. Rather, it facilitates our ability to construct derivations in the system. Analytic
definitions, on the other hand, aim to articulate the sense of some simple sign by identifying that
sense with the sense of some complex expression. Unlike constructive definitions, such analyses
may very well increase the deductive capacity of the system—more accurately, they improve
deductive possibilities by allowing us to replace one system with some other, closely related but
more powerful system.
At this point, Frege makes an interesting observation—one that seems almost to
anticipate the Paradox of Analysis. How, he asks, could it be possible that “it should be doubtful
whether a simple sign has the same sense as a complex expression if we know not only the sense
of the simple sign, but can recognize the sense of the complex one from the way it is put
together?”187 Frege’s point is that such analyses often count as important discoveries in science
and, as such, are not self-evident. Much earlier, in the Grundlagen, he says,
186
See Frege (1914), p. 209, where he says, “So if from a logical point of view [constructive] definitions are at
bottom quite inessential, they are nevertheless of great importance for thinking as this actually takes place in human
beings.”
187
Frege (1914), p. 211.
160
Often it is only after immense intellectual effort, which may have continued over centuries, that humanity at last
succeeds in achieving knowledge of a concept in its pure form, in stripping off the irrelevant accretions which veil it
from the eyes of the mind.188
But if we really have grasped both the sense of the simple expression and that of the complex
expression that is being offered as its analysis, then how could conceptual analysis be so difficult
and informative? Frege’s answer is that
. . . if we really do have a clear grasp of the sense of the simple sign, then it cannot be doubtful whether it agrees
with the sense of the complex expression. If this is open to question although we can clearly recognize the sense of
the complex expression from the way it is put together, then the reason must lie in the fact that we do not have a
clear grasp of the sense of the simple sign, but that its outlines are confused as if we saw it through a mist. The
effect of logical analysis . . . will then be precisely this—to articulate the sense clearly.189
Clearly, Frege sees the need, at certain moments at least, for distinguishing between complete
and partial grasp in some way. Interestingly, this passage also hints at the role of the
begriffsschrift in achieving a more complete grasp and at the structured nature of sense.
So, there are hints in Frege’s texts that at one time or another he recognized something
like each of the four components of the anti-individualist CRS on offer. Whether he actually did
so at any single time, and whether an acceptance of these components could, when seen in the
context of the rest of his commitments, form a single coherent view are different matters, matters
that I will not attempt to settle here. What I have shown is that the above anti-individualist CRS
is not far off from Frege’s actual views and that, if push had come to shove, it is something he
could have adopted.
What, then, has been accomplished? I have argued that all of the available individualist
proposals for solving the Problem of Instability fail. A better option, I have suggested, is to
reject individualism. This would open up the possibility of an anti-individualist CRS and one
which could be either holistic or properly anatomic, depending on whether A/S is accepted or
rejected. Furthermore, I have tried to sketch one such account and we have seen that it has a
188
Frege (1884), vii.
189
Ibid.
161
number of desirable features. Finally, I have tried to show that such an account would be more
thoroughly Fregean in character than is classical CRS. In the end, I suspect that we will be
happier with this sort of account than with an individualistic CRS.
162
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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
Adam Christian Sipos was born in Oakland, California on January 18, 1972. In 1990,
after graduating from the Lovett School, a college preparatory school in Atlanta, Georgia, Adam
received a scholarship to study music at the Florida State University (FSU) in Tallahassee,
Florida. Adam graduated with honors in August 1995 receiving the Bachelor of Arts degree in
both music and philosophy. In September of that same year, he began graduate study at FSU and
was awarded the Master of Arts degree in philosophy while en route to his doctorate in the same
subject. While a graduate student at FSU, Adam served as an Instructor, teaching introductory
and intermediate level courses on general philosophy, logic, and the philosophy of language. In
2001, he was awarded the Edward H. and Marie C. Kingsbury Award.
174