Table Of ContentLINGUISTIC REPRESENTATION
PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES SERIES
IN PHILOSOPHY
Editors:
WILFRID SELLARS, University of Pittsburgh
KEITH LEHRER, University of Arizona
Board of Consulting Editors:
JONATHAN BENNETT, University of British Columbia
ALAN GIBBARD, University of Pittsburgh
ROBERT STALNAKER, Cornell University
ROBER T G. TURNBULL, Ohio State University
VOLUME I
JAY F. ROSENBERG
University of North Carolina
LINGUISTIC
REPRESENTATION
D. REIDEL PUBLISHING COMPANY
DORDRECHT-HOLLAND / BOSTON-U.S.A.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Rosenberg, Jay F
Linguistic representation.
(Philosophical studies series in philosophy; v. I)
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. Languages - Philosophy. I. Title.
PI06.R59 401 74-26886
ISBN-13: 978-90-277-0946-2 e-ISBN-13: 978-94-010-2301-6
DOl: 10. 1007/978-94-010-2301-6
First printing: December 1974
Published by D. Reidel Publishing Company,
P.O. Box 17, Dordrecht, Holland
Sold and distributed in the U.S.A., Canada, and Mexico
by D. Reidel Publishing Company, Inc.
306 Dartmouth Street, Boston,
Mass. 02116, U.S.A.
All Rights Reserved
Copyright © 1974 by D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland
Softcoverreprint of the hardcover 1st Edition 1974
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm,
or any other means, without written permission from the publisher
DEDICATION
I'd dedicate it to my wife, but we're divorced.
I'd dedicate it to my daughter, but she can't
read it yet.
So this one is for Wilfrid Sellars, to show
him what, if one isn't careful, can come of
talking philosophy to someone who listens.
MOTTO
"Again, those are called Nominalists who show diligence and zeal in understanding all
the properties of terms on which the truth or falsity of a sentence depends, and with
out which the perfect judgment of the truth or falsity of propositions cannot be made.
These properties are: supposition, appellation, ampliation, restriction, exponible
distribution. They especially understand obligations and the nature of the insoluble,
the true foundation of dialectical arguments and of their failure. Being instructed in
these things, they easily understand concerning any given argumentation whether it is
good or bad. "
Letter from the Nominalist masters
of the University of Paris
to King Louis XI, 1473
CONTENTS
Preface XI
I: Representation and Language 1
II: A Mentalistic Theory 9
III: Rules 30
IV: Translation and Theories 49
V: Explanation and Truth 72
VI: The Protosemantics of Basic Claims 98
VII: The Protosemantics of Complex Claims 125
VIII: Representation and Man 136
Appendix I. Notes 148
Appendix II. Bibliography 152
Index of Names 156
Index of Subjects 157
PREFACE
This book is nominally about linguistic representation. But, since it is we
who do the representing, it is also about us. And, since it is the universe
which we represent, it is also about the universe. In the end, then, this book
is about everything, which, since it is a philosophy book, is as it should be.
I recognize that it is nowadays unfashionable to write books about every
thing. Philosophers of language, it will be said, ought to stick to writing
about language; philosophers of science, to writing about science; epis
temologists, to writing about knowing; and so on. The real world, however,
perversely refuses to carve itself up so neatly, and, although I recognize that
the real w,orld is nowadays also unfashionable, in the end I judged that one
might get closer to the truth of various matters by going along with it. So I
have done so.
lt was Wilfrid Sellars who initially convinced me of the virtues of this way
of proceeding. At this point one normally says something like "The debt
that this book owes him is immense". I would say it too, were it not to
understate the case, From Wilfrid, I learned to think about things. If the
upshot of my thinking tends, as it obviously does, to show a general con
silience with the upshot of his, it is primarily because he is so very good at
it - and he had a head start.
While paying debts, I feel constrained to mention a few other names. The
reader who knows my work will recognize this book as the culmination of
several years' studies in which the young Wittgenstein figures prominently.
So this book has Tractarian roots. But it is not a book about the Tractatus
(except insofar as it is about everything), and I shall not develop even my
essentially Tractarian theses by talking about the Tractatus. To do so is
dialectical suicide. I'd like to say that I was clever enough to figure that out
for myself, but I wasn't, My friend Paul Churchland pointed it out to me
one cold night in Winnipeg, and thereby established his lifetime right to be
listened to.
A debt of equal magnitude is owed my chairman W.D. Falk ('David', to
his friends) for being so adept at juggling the departmental chaos as to
arrange for me a semester without classroom responsibilities. As this
benighted institution has never seen fit to institute a program of sabbaticals,
XII PREFACE
David's was a less minor contribution than it might initially seem to the
more fortunate among you.
There is a melange of colleagues and graduate students to whom lowe a
more diffuse debt. This book is probably less obscure than it could easily
have been. If it is, it is mostly because these colleagues and students
perversely refused to understand what I meant until I said it. This is,
perhaps, not a good tactic to pursue in casual conversation, but in philo
sophy it turns out to be a cardinal virtue, and I am lucky to count my
friends among the virtuous.
While this book has Tractarian roots, it is not Tractarian root and branch.
Partly, this is because the Tractatus is a book wholly without an epistemolo
gy, and it doesn't work without one. Mostly, however, this is because I have
changed my mind about the picture theory. It is, perhaps, rare for a philo
sopher to change his mind, but it is unfortunately even rarer for one to
admit it. And this is understandable. Nevertheless, I feel constrained to do
so. Some of you may think you know where I stand on certain matters. And
you have every reason to think so. But you'd better read the book. I some
times don't stand there any more.
My colleague, Paul Ziff, once wrote a book called Semantic Analysis in
the Preface to which he enjoined the reader, were he to come across some
thing to all appearances obviously false, stupid, or nonsensical, seriously to
entertain the hypothesis that Ziff meant exactly what he said. Even the
cleverest and best-intentioned persons occasionally say-things which are
obviously false, stupid, or nonsensical. His injunction, of course, did no
good, for a variety of commentators proceeded to remark in great detail on
what he "must have meant". It applies, however, to this book as well, and,
since I am somewhat enamored of the innocent Quixotic gesture, I thought
that I'd mention it.
And here is the point at which one thanks the loyal and diligent typist.
Well, I typed it myself, and I am everlastingly grateful to me for it.
University of North Carolina at
JA Y. F. ROSENBERG
Chapel Hill
April, 1973
CHAPTER I
REPRESENTATION AND LANGUAGE
The essential and characteristic human activity is representation - that is,
the production and manipulation of representations. Except for the new
born and the severely brain-damaged, all humans, of whatever time and
culture, engage in it, and, insofar as we can now say with any confidence
(the verdict on dolphins and the data on Martians not yet having come in),
only humans do.
'Representation' I mean to construe broadly. Phenomenologically, it is
either iconic or symbolic; logically, I hope to argue, it is all of a piece.
Except as it can illuminate the linguistic mode, I shall have little to say
about iconic representation. Its traditional home is in the plastic, visual,
arts. A representation is iconic if, as we say, it resembles that which it
represents. But these are difficult and opaque notions, and so we should not
take too much to be clarified by formulas of that sort. Iconic representation
ranges from the Lascaux cave-paintings to Warhol's soup cans. It includes
portraiture, still-life, and commemorative sculpture, and, so it not be
thought essentially visual, it includes as well the whistling of the last move
ment of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony for a friend to remind him of how it
goes.
Symbolic representation is, paradigmatically, linguistic representation.
The class, of course, is broader, including systems of hieroglyphics, codes,
ciphers, musical notation, maps, graphs, and charts, but it is language, I shall
argue, which is logically primary and it is language which will be my prin
cipal concern. With language we can say how the world is; and we can say
how the world isn't - and both of these in absentia from that in the world
of which we speak. I want to understand how this is possible.
A system of representation allows of two different sorts of activity:
representation of things and representation of states of affairs. In language
this becomes the time-honored distinction between naming and saying.
Linguistic representation of things is naming or reference or denotation. I
shall need a special term to mark this job in language, and 'designation'
seems currently to carry as little initial theoretical load as any. So I shall call
the linguistic representation of things 'designation' and the bits of language
which are its vehicles will be 'designators'.
