David Kaplan Source: Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volumes, Vol. 64

28 Pages·2008·2.47 MB·English

Words
Author(s): David Kaplan
Source: Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volumes, Vol. 64 (1990), pp.
93-119
Published by: Wiley on behalf of The Aristotelian Society
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WORDS
David Kaplan
Preface. In the Summer of 1984 I was playing with some
techniques for indicating scope, hoping to find a new way into
the vexing problem of substitution on directly referential
expressions in belief contexts. After chasing Woozles for a week
or so I realized that insofar as the problem of substitution in
belief contexts was concerned, I had ended up right where I had
begun, but under a clutter of technology. At that time I wrote in
large letters on a lined yellow pad, "A NEW IDEA IS
NEEDED".
It was syntactical technology that I had been thinking about,
and it occurred to me that perhaps syntax, in some vague sense,
was a key to the puzzles that I had been unable to solve. I
ventured that thought, as it applies to single words, in
'Afterthoughts':
Lately, I have been thinking that it may be a mistake to
follow Frege in trying to account for differencesi n cognitive
values strictly in terms of semanticv alues. Can distinctions
in cognitive value be made in terms of the message without
taking account of the medium? Or does the medium play a
central role? On my view, the message-the content-of a
proper name isj ust the referent.B ut the mediumis the name
itself. There are linguisticd ifferences between "Hesperus"
and "Phosphorus" even if there are no semantidc ifferences.
Note also that the syntactic properties of "Hesperus" and
"Phosphorus", for example their distinctness as words,a re
surerc omponentso f cognition than any purporteds emantic
values, whether objectual or descriptional.-
Could it be that the elusive cognitive difference between
believing that Hesperus is Hesperus and believing that Hesperus
is Phosperus rests on nothing more than syntax?
In speaking of syntactical,o r syntactical-lexicaol,r what, in
@ David Kaplan 1990
'Pages 598-599 in 'Afterthoughts' in Almog, Perry, and Wettstein (editors), Themes
FromK aplan( Oxford University Press 1989).
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94 I-DAVID KAPLAN
DemonstrativeIs ,c alled presemanticadl'i2f ferences, I am searching
for a term to capture the elements of form that are independent
of semantics.3 The awkward, syntactical-lexicfaolr m, may best
convey my meaning.4
The question of whether two sentences have the same
syntactical-lexical form may seem utterly trivial, but it isn't. It is
part of the purpose of this essay to interest you in that question.
For example, Saul Kripke's intriguing puzzle5a bout Peter-the
man who first heard Paderewski'sn ame used in connection with
his musical accomplishments and later heard the name used in
connection with Paderewski's political accomplishments and
then concluded that these were two different 'Paderewski's-
seems to me to involve this sort of syntactical-lexicfaolr m issue.
My speculations led me to conclude that I had to go back to
basics and rethink not just the semantics ofnames, but their very
syntax, the metaphysics of words: How should words be
individuated? What is the nature of a word?
These musings eventuated in my Gilbert Ryle lectures,
Word and Belief delivered at beautiful Trent University in
Peterborough, Canada, and at various other institutions. The
content of the present paper is drawn from the middle lecture.
The whole Worda ndBeliefprojecti s quite speculative. This is the
part in which I have the most confidence.
In the first lecture ("A Puzzle About Direct Reference"), I
take up the problem posed to direct reference theory by
substitution on names within the context of a propositional
attitude report. The problem is that according to direct
reference theory two names that name the same thing have the
same semantic value, and therefore, substituting one for
another, even within a belief-context, should not affect the
semantic value of the sentence. After arguing for years,
'Page 559 in Demonstrativeosp . cit.
3L inguists seem to think that "John admiresJ ohn" and "John admiresJ ane" have the
same syntacticalforman d differ only in what they call "lexicalization" (though they claim
that "John admires himself" differs from both syntactically). Logicians seem to think
that "John walks" and "Jane runs" have the same logicalf orm (except perhaps when
each is conjoined with "John does not walk").
'When I use the word "syntax" or "syntactical" (sometimes in scare quotes) or
"logical syntax" it is usually this syntactical-lexicfaolr m notion that I have in mind.
'In his 'A Puzzle About Belief' in A. Margalit (editor), Meaninga nd Use (D. Reidel
1979)
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WORDS 95
unconvincingly, that semantic value (properly understood) is
not affected by substitution, I hit upon a brilliant, new, and
completely successful, strategy: argue, instead, that semantic
value is affected by substitution. But I also argue that, contrary
to my own long-standing misapprehension, this result is not
contrary to direct reference theory.
The detailed argument involves an attack on a version of
Frege's principle of compositionality, focussing again on the
syntacticadl ifferences,i .e. differencesa s syntacticaolb jectsb, etween
sentences of the form "a = a" and sentences of the form "a =
b".6
This raises the issue: What determines an utterance to have the
form "a =a" as opposed to the form "a = b"?A nd this issue takes
us directly to matters of word individuation.
I am convinced that we can achieve a highly salutary clearing
of the air about the nature of language, and especially about
some critical differencesb etween naturall anguagesa nd logicians'
idealizations, if we study the ontology and individuation of
words.
The present paper is organised into three main parts. In the
first part, What is a Worda,I contrast two theories of the
individuation (one might say, metaphysicso)f words: the con-
ventional token/type theory, which I call the orthographic
conception, and an alternative theory, which I call the common
currencyc onception. I will try slowly to entice you into
abandoning the traditional favorite in favor of the new
conception.7
The second part focuses on names, distinguishes such words
from their genera, and combats certain wrong construals of my
views. I also claim to show in this part that there can be cases of
distinct words which are both homophones and homographs-I
call them phonographs, they sound the same and they are
61 have come to thinkt hat two sentencesw hoses yntax--perhaphs ereI shoulds ay,
whose logicals yntax-differsa s much as "a= a" differsf rom" a= b" shouldn ever be
regardeda s having the same semanticv alue (expressingt he same proposition),
regardlesos f the semanticv alueso f the individuall exical items" a" and "b".
'
In the philosophicatlr adition,t he main idea of the commonc urrencyc onception
mayb e thoughtt o be impliciti n thew orko fKripkeD, onnellana, ndp erhapsm yselfa nd
others,b ut in workt hatw asd onef ors emanticapl urposesn, ot fors yntacticapl urposes.
In my view, thesep articularid easo f recentt heorieso f referenceh ave simplyn ot been
sufficientleyx ploitedI. hopet hatt hosew how isht o encouragea viewo f theo bjectivityo f
languagew ill welcomea usefula lly in my analysiso f words.
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96 I-DAVID KAPLAN
spelled the same-distinct words that are phonographs and
whose semantic values are also exactly the same. The semantics
is the same, the spelling is the same, the pronunciation is the
same, but they are two different words! I will try to show that
this odd result is perfectly natural on a correctth eory of word
individuation.
I
WHAT IS A WORD?
1.1 Expressionsa nd their OccurrenceTs.h e question of how to
individuate linguistic expressions is a delicate one. Here is a
famous sentence from the section 'Use Versus Mention' in
Quine's MathematicaLl ogic-one of our sacred texts. Quine is
talking about expressions and how we refer to them.
To mention Boston we use "Boston" or a synonym, and to
mention "Boston" we use ""Boston" " or a synonym.
"'"Boston"" contains six letters and just one pair of
quotation marks; "Boston" contains six letters and no
quotation marks; and Boston contains some 900,000
people.
I would have thought that a logician like Quine, who is used
to distinguishing variables from their occurrences, would have
immediately seen that "Boston" contains six letters is false. I
only count five letters in the name "Boston": a "B", an "o", an
"s", a "t" and an "n". There are, of course, two occurrences of
the letter "o".
When I utter "Help!", no one thinks that my utterance is the
word "help". That would give the language too many words.
When I utter "Help! Help!", I haven't uttered two words, I've
uttered one word twice. Two utterances, one word. Similarly,
when I write "Quiet", my inscription isn't identical with the
word, rather it is an inscription of the word. A single word can,
and typically will, have many utterances and inscriptions.
Uttering and inscribing, or writing, are actions whereby we
produce certain concrete, as opposed to abstract, physical
objects: utterances (sounds), and inscriptions.T hese objects, the
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WORDS 97
utterances and inscriptions, are the physical media by which we
transmit words from one to another.8
1.2 InterpersonaTlr ansmissionE. very word that we know is either
one we invented or one that was transmitted to us in one of these
ways, by way of an inscription or an utterance. (I haven't
resolved how to think about the interpersonal transmission of
words through electronic media and through the use of Morse
code and so on. Let's not worry about that.) The central claim
here is this, that in interpersonal linguistic communication,
interpersonal-I'm very focused here on the distinction between
intrapersonal links, and interpersonal links-in interpersonal
linguistic communication, words must take on a physical
embodiment.
1.3 The OrthographCico nceptionN. ow, what are these words that
we transmit by means of their utterances and inscriptions?W ell,
the prevailing view, especially among those trained in the
traditions of logic (as I am), is that words are the typeso f which
utterances and inscriptionsa re tokensT. his, I now think, is quite
wrong. And misleading, even as a model.
It seems to me in many ways that this is a sort of updated
8I 1u sedt o thinkt hat inscriptionss,o metimecs alledt okenbsy logiciansw, erep hysical
objectsp, ossiblyd iscontinuouso,f the kinds:p ileso f ink,n eont ubes,p ieceso fmetal,a nd
so on. Here is an exampleo f such a discontinuoups hysicalo bject.
NO
Then I realizedt hat therei s anotherw ay in whichw e can forma n inscriptiono f that
word.Y ou do it like this.
NO
Now here again I make use of anotherd iscontinuoups hysicalo bject( discontinuous
becauseo f the piecer emainingfr omt hem iddleo f the" 0") in ordert o producea second
inscriptiono f the word" NO", but noticet hat the inscriptionis not the discontinuous
physicalo bjectw hichc onstitutesth e stencil,i t's the space.
I firstr ealizedt hisw henI thoughta bouti nscribingw ordsi n stone,a ndI realizedt hat
youa rec reatinga physicalo bjectw heny oui nscribea wordi n stone,b utt he tokeno f the
wordi s not the greatb ig heavyp hysicalo bject,t he physicaol bjectw hichi s the tokeno f
the wordi s the light-weighstp ace.T hism ustb e the notiono f spacei n thes ensei n which
architectsa nd sculptorsc reates pace by enclosingt hem with largerp hysicalo bjects.
Note that the enclosured oesn'th avet o be squaref or the spacet o be squareY. ou can
havea squares pacei nsidea sphereA. nd noticea lsot hatt hisi st hek indo f spacet hatc an
be moved around,f rom place to place. The space is intimatelyc onnectedw ith its
enclosureb ut noti denticawl ithi t. Youc ouldk nockt hec orneros fft hee nclosurew ithout
affectingt he space.
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98 I-DAVID KAPLAN
version of the Platonic notion of abstract forms. The eternal,
unchanging Platonic forms (shapes, perhaps) are the types, and
their physical embodiments, which reflectt hese abstract forms,
are the tokens. I think that the token/type model is the wrong
model for the occurrence/word distinction (i.e. the utterance/
word distinction or the inscription/word distinction). The
token/type model best fits what I call the orthographcioc nception
of a word, the typesetter's conception.
According to this conception, expressions of the language
consist of strings of atoms called 'letters', certain strings form
words. The letters are abstract entities whose tokens, for the
typesetter, are individual pieces of type. (It's strange that on this
conception, type is a token, but that does seem to be the result.)
You surely know this conception very well. We were all taught
it when we studied the syntax of formal languages (not to
mention when we took print shop in high school). It belongs
to the formal subject, formal syntax. And its study is the study of
an algebra.
1.4 The CommonC urrencCy onceptionT.h e TokenlT ypeM odelv ersus
the Stage/ContinuanMt odel. I propose a quite different model
according to which utterances and inscriptions are stages of
words, which are the continuantms ade up of these interpersonal
stages along with some more mysterious intrapersonals tages. I
want us to give up the token/type model in favor of a
stage/continuant model. This is not, I think, simply another
way of doing the metaphysics of types under the old token/type
conception, but a quite different conception of the fundamental
elements of language. I think of my conception of a word as a
naturalisticco nception. Because the interpersonalt ransmissiono f
words is so central to my conception, I adopt a phrase of
Kripke's, and I call my notion the CommoCn urrenccyo nception of
a word.
Here's just one way in whch my conception differs from the
token/type conception. On my conception, there is a single
word "color" spelled one way in Canada: "c", "o", "1", "o",
"u", "r" and another way in the United States, "c", "o", "1",
"0", "r". Similarly, there is a single word which is pronounced
shedge-yulien Canada, and skedge-oo-uiln the United States. (I
believe that the English have also adopted the Canadian
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WORDS 99
pronunciation.) We are, of course, familiar with dialectal
variation in pronunciation, but I call to your attention that
there is also dialectal variation in spelling. This dialectal
variation in spelling of the word "color" for example does not,
repeat not, make for different words.
1.5 Dialecta nd Idiolecti n Sayinga nd Writing.I should point out
that there are also idiolectal variations in pronunciation, as for
example in the case of a speech defect. Some of us also have
idiolectal variations in spelling. Society treats these two kinds of
deviations-in speaking and in writing-in extremely different
ways. We are very liberal nowadays about variations in
pronunciation, at least in the United States. In England,
although there are many and more disparated ialectal variations
in speech, there seems more acceptance of the idea that there is a
correct way to pronounce things. In the United States, even the
national networks have anchormen whose pronunciation is
quite different. Dan Rather of CBS speaks with a noticeable
Texas, or Southwestern, accent-a regional dialect. Tom
Brokow of NBC says mi-we-unw here I would say million-an
uncommon, but not otherwise unheard of, idiolect. And Peter
Jennings of ABC says aboutf or "about"-a Canadian dialect, I
believe. These variants are tolerated.
We do not tolerate, however, idiolectal variations in spelling.
Now it's been suggestedt o me that the variationsi n pronunciation
we tolerate is regional, or group, variance-i.e. dialectal
variance-and if there were a regional or group variance in
spelling, that would be tolerated also. I don't believe that for a
single minute. We tolerate Brokow's idiolect and all sorts of
other strange and unique speech styles. I'm quite confident that
children from the South, as they start learning to read and write,
have a strong tendency to spell the two words "you all" "y",
'"a"'", 1",' "1 (that'ss imply making a natural transcription).B ut
that this charming spelling dialect is quickly suppressed by the
forces of spelling bigotry and intolerance.
It must be obvious to you that I'm a person who has
suffered-and who continues to suffer-serious discrimination
regarding my idiolectal spelling. And I wish to point out that in,
say, the seventeenth century, people were much more liberal
about such things than we are today.
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100 I-DAVIDK APLAN
1.6 How wordsc hange:P latonicS hadowsv ersusE volvingN ature. I
make these points to dispel the lurking thought that a word has
some fixed and perfect Platonic form, represented say by the
way it is spelled, which is then embodied in the imperfect,
variable, and changing ways in which people pronounce it.9
Historically of course the matter was quite the opposite. Speech
is prior and writing is a transcription of speech. So there is no
metaphysically fixed form in either speech or spelling, no matter
what social programs are mounted for standardization. There
are spelling variations, there are pronunciation variations, there
are all kinds of variations that take place over time.
On the other hand, on my conception, there are two
phonographic words "base" (meaning 'low' and bottom)n, ot, as
the orthographic conception would have it, a single word with
two meanings. (And, as we will see, I do not simply define worda s
an orthographic word combined with a meaning.)
1.7 Creationisatn dDevelopmentLailn guisticsI. will want, eventually
(but not in the present paper), to connect these speculations with
the questions of whether the Babylonians believed that Hesperus
is Phosphorus and whether Peter believes that Paderewski is not
Paderewski. So let us consider the name "Hesperus". I have a
story about how the word "Hesperus" came to us. The story is
surely incorrect (after all, the Babylonians didn't speak Greek),
but it gives the flavor of my views. I imagine that at some point
some Babylonian looked up in the sky one evening and said (in
Babylonian) "Oh, there's a beauty. Let's call it-", and then he
introduced the name. What he did was to create a word. He
created a word as a name, a tag, for this beautiful heavenly
body. He then passed that word on to other people through
inscriptions and utterances. Those people passed it on to others
and so on (I'm going to talk more about this passage). As it went
through different communities, the way this word was pro-
'I9r1e cently read a book about Darwin in which it was said that an enormous amount of
evidence for evolutionary ideas was already available when Darwin was working. One of
the things that stopped people from putting it all together was this Platonic idea of the
fixed, eternal, and unchanging form setting the limits of variation for the shadowy
objects of the sensible world. They were carried away from the thought that there could
be natural kinds which went through the dramatic transmutations claimed by
evolutionary theory. As I said earlier, I think of my conception as being naturalistic, as
owing more to the theory of evolution than to algebra.
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WORDS 101
nounced and written changed in very dramatic ways, through
whatever processes account for dialectal variation.
The presupposition of these processes of change are the
principles of continuity in accordance with which a changing
word retains its identity. As wep ass through various communities
at various stages in our lives, we also change dramatically. (I
think I am probably more different now from the way I was
when I was, say, eight yours old, than the word "Hesperus" is
now from the way it was when it was, say, five minutes old.) But
we still have the notion that we are a single entity. And so it is for
the word. Changes in pronunciation and spelling need not
suggest the notion of replacemenotf one word by another, which
then takes up the task in the manner of a relay race. Rather, we
can use the notion of a single entity undergoing change.
1.8 IntrapersonCalo ntinuityN. ow, I've talked about the processb y
which the word was transmitted interpersonallyW. hat about the
process by which the word is transmitted intrapersonally?T his is
the most difficult stage to understand, at least for me to
understand, because it is so deeply implicated in cognitive
psychology. Suppose a particular word is transmitted from you
to me. Now at some point I make a transmissiont o someone else.
Question: Am I transmitting that very word?
Some word was transmitted to me by way of utterance or
inscription. I transmit some word by way of utterance or
inscription. We can phrase the question in this way: Take the
utterance or inscriptionr eceived and the utterance or inscription
transmitted. What makes it that the transmissioni s an utterance
or inscription of the same word as that received? We can thus
turn the question into a question about the relationship between
input and output utterances or inscriptions.
I don't mind if you want to continue to call utterances and
inscriptions "tokens", although I'd prefer "utterance" or
"inscription", so long as we do not get caught up in the
metaphysics of the token/type model. Because it is beyond
doubt that the utterance or inscription transmitted couldb e an
utterance or inscription of the same word as that received,
although the in phonographology, the difference in
diff(cid:127)rence
sound or shape or spelling, can be just about as great as you
would like it to be.
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