Table Of ContentHow to Understand Language
Also by Bernhard Weiss and published by Acumen
Michael Dummett
How to Understand Language
A Philosophical Inquiry
Bernhard Weiss
Acumen
© Bernhard Weiss, 2010
Th is book is copyright under the Berne Convention.
No reproduction without permission.
All rights reserved.
First published in 2010 by Acumen
Acumen Publishing Limited
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isbn: 978-1-84465-196-2 (hardcover)
isbn: 978-1-84465-197-9 (paperback)
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library.
Typeset in Minion Pro.
Printed and bound in the UK by MPG Books Group.
Contents
Preface ix
1. Th e puzzles of language 1
1.1 Th e uses of language 2
1.2 Words and meanings 9
1.3 Compositionality 10
1.4 Th e normativity of meaning 12
2. Th e starting- point for analysis 13
2.1 Knowledge 13
2.2 Linguistic meaning 14
2.3 Frege’s distinction between sense and reference 16
2.4 Russell’s theory of descriptions 21
2.5 Kripke’s attack on descriptivism about names 25
2.6 Analysis and singular terms 31
3. Analysing sente nce- meaning 33
3.1 Specifying sentence-m eaning 33
3.2 Natural and non- natural meaning 34
3.3 Speaker-m eaning 34
3.4 Sentence-m eaning 37
3.5 Problems for Grice’s account 40
4. Analysing synonymy 57
4.1 Th e analytic–synthetic distinction 58
4.2 Holism 62
v
contents
5. Radical translation 65
5.1 Th e indeterminacy of translation (the argument from below) 66
5.2 Methodological considerations 66
5.3 Th e indeterminacy of translation 69
5.4 Quine’s conclusions on meaning 72
5.5 Evans’s response 72
6. Th e structure of a theory of meaning 81
6.1 What is a theory of meaning? 81
6.2 Systematicity 82
6.3 Th e distinction between sense and force 84
6.4 Th e centrality of assertion 85
6.5 Use- conditions versus truth- conditions 88
6.6 Use- conditional theories of understanding 92
7. Radical interpretation 95
7.1 Constraints on an adequate theory of truth 95
7.2 Th e Principle of Charity 101
7.3 An application: saying that 112
7.4 Compositionality and extensionality 114
7.5 Davidson and Foster 115
7.6 Dummett on Davidson 118
8. Linguistic norms, communication and radical interpretation 125
8.1 Davidson on communication 126
8.2 A non- normative conception of meaning? 131
8.3 Norms and mistakes 138
8.4 A generalization of the argument? 140
9. Linguistic normativity 143
9.1 Norms and prescriptions 143
9.2 Correctn ess- conditions, practical reasoning and norms 147
9.3 Non- literal uses of language 151
9.4 Are the norms substantial? 152
10. Radical or robust? 155
10.1 Th e mysteriousness of language 155
10.2 Doing away with radical interpretation 158
10.3 Indeterminacy of reference 160
10.4 Arguments for robust publicity 168
10.5 Rejecting indeterminacy of reference 171
vi
contents
11. Language and community 173
11.1 Natural language is essentially communal: semantic
externalism 173
11.2 Communication requires publicity of meaning 177
12. Rules and privacy: the problem 181
12.1 Th e problem of rule- following 181
12.2 Kripke’s sceptical solution 189
12.3 Problems for the sceptical solution 191
13. Rules and privacy: the solution? 201
13.1 Can there be a private language? 201
13.2 Platonism about rules 202
13.3 Consensualism 204
13.4 Finding a way forward 204
13.5 Back to the theory of meaning 218
13.6 Privacy and fi rst-p ersonal authority 221
14. Truth- conditions versus use- conditions 231
14.1 Dummett’s attack on truth- conditional theories 231
14.2 Brandom on inferentialism versus representationalism 235
14.3 Use- conditional accounts of meaning 237
14.4 Th e problematic pairs 244
14.5 Th e analytic–synthetic distinction 248
Notes 251
Bibliography 261
Index 267
vii
Preface
Th e course of true argument does not always run smooth. Obviously I hope the
argument presented here is close to “true” and I have done my level best in the
text to keep it smooth. But I can do more: the next few pages give an overview
of the argument and place each chapter in its development. Th is should help
to set readers up for what is coming and may help them negotiate their way
through some of the transitions.
I begin, in the opening chapter, by drawing out some of the reasons that lan-
guage is philosophically puzzling. Th e chapter should not be read as cataloguing
a set of questions to which we require a philosophical answer. One might well
wish that the discipline were as clear- cut as that. Rather, there are a number of
apparently puzzling facets of language and one might take diff erent approaches
to them. What one philosopher sees as a genuine source of puzzlement another
will dismiss as some sort of confusion; where one takes a feature to stand in need
of explanation another will take that same feature as fundamentally explanatory;
where one proposes a certain form of explanation another will off er an alterna-
tive. So, in the face of these mysteries about language, we seek an approach. My
fi rst task thus becomes that of fi nding a productive approach to the philosophical
understanding of language. Th is largely occupies the business of Chapters 2–6.
Let me anticipate the upshot of that long discussion: at Chapter 6 we arrive at a
claim that is motivated, although not compelled by, the previous four chapters,
namely, that we should pursue the philosophy of language by considering the
form that a theory of meaning for a language would take. Th at approach was
introduced to us by Donald Davidson and receives strong support in the writings
of Michael Dummett, and is, I suppose, the current orthodoxy in the fi eld. I arrive
at that Davidsonian position by fi rst considering the approach of analysis.
Can we analyse linguistic meaning (or a cognate notion) so as to yield philo-
sophical insight? I argue that there is a real diffi culty in seeing how such an ana-
lysis should begin. Just what should we be analysing and how can we postulate
ix
