Katz 1993_The Metaphysics of Meaning.pdf
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Précis of "The Metaphysics of Meaning"Author(s): Jerrold J. KatzSource: Philosophical Issues, Vol. 4, Naturalism and Normativity (1993), pp. 128-134Published by: Ridgeview Publishing CompanyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1522833Accessed: 25-01-2016 09:11 UTC
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U~~1
~~~~1
PHILOSOPHICAL
ISSUES,
4
Naturalismand
Normativity,
1993
Precis of The Metaphysics of
Meaning*
Jerrold J.
Katz
Naturalism
says
that
everything
which exists is a
spatio-temporal
object
belonging
to the vast causal
realm we
call nature . For
the
naturalist,
faith in
the
progress
of
science is faith
that
natural
science
can,
in
principle,
explain
everything.
Naturalism dominates
philoso-
phy today in much the way linguistic philosophy dominated it earlier
in the
century.
Titles
containing
naturalized ,
naturalizing ,
and
naturalistic
appear
today
with
much the same
frequency
that
titles
containing language , grammar ,
and
meaning
appeared
during
the
heyday
of
linguistic philosophy.
Naturalism's
hegemony
rests on
arguments
that are
widely
seen as
compelling.
The first
aim
of The
Metaphysics
of
Meaning
(hence-
forth
MM )
is to
show
that
those
arguments
in fact have
no
force.
The book's second aim is to formulate a direct argument against
naturalism.
This
double
challenge
is
on behalf of realism
(Platon-
ism),
the
position
that
there
are
non-natural,
abstract
objects
(i.e.,
objects
having
no
spatio-temporal
location or
causal
relations).
All
of the natural realm is
real,
but
the natural
realm is not all of
reality.
*Cambridge,
Massachusetts: The
MIT
Press,
1990.
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11.
PRECIS
OF THE
METAPHYSICS
OF MEANING
One of the
philosophical
arguments
on which the
hegemony
of
nat-
uralism
rests is
Wittgenstein's;
the
other
is
Quine's.
The
arguments
are
different, reflecting
differences
in
what
each
philosopher
took
bad
-i.e.,
non-naturalist-
philosophy
to be and
also
differences
in
what each took
good
-i.e.,
naturalist-
philosophy
to
be.
Wittgen-
stein's
position
is a critical form
of naturalism.
It sees
bad
philos-
ophy
-which includes
the
mainstream
of
traditional
philosophy-
as nonsense
arising
from
misuses
of
language
which
put
us
in
the
grip
of
a
metaphysical
picture
of
reality.
Good
philosophy,
on his
position,
is a certain
practice
of
assembling
reminders which
put
the
linguistically
errant
philosopher
back
on
the
right
track.
In
con-
trast,
Quine's
position
is a scientistic form of naturalism. Traditional
philosophy
is a
mixture
of
good
and
bad
explanation.
The bad is
pseudo-science
or anachronistic
science like
an
explanation
invok-
ing
Homer's
gods;
the
good
is
self-reflective natural
science,
meta-
natural-science.
Wittgenstein
and
Quine
are the two
most influential
philosophers
in
twentieth
century
Anglo-American philosophy;
their
arguments
for naturalism are
generally
considered
major
contributions
to
phi-
losophy, an assessment I share. But, as the history of
philosophy
makes
clear,
the
stature of
philosophers
and
the
importance
of
their
contribution are
compatible
with
a
failure
to
establish their
principal
philosophical
claims.
Wittgenstein
and
Quine,
in
my
view,
belong
to a
venerable tradition
going
back at least to
Plato.
Both of their
arguments
for
naturalism have
to undermine
all
sub-
stantive intensionalist
theories of
meaning.1
If one
survives,
it
can
provide
the
grounds
for
anti-naturalism. Given
a
non-naturalist
interpretation of such a theory, anti-naturalists can argue contra
Wittgenstein
that
philosophical
statements are
meaningful
expres-
sions
of
metaphysical
truths
about
reality
and can
defend an
ex-
planatory
and
constructive
philosophy
against
his
descriptive
and
therapeutic
one.
Anti-naturalists can
argue
contra
Quine
that
there
are
properties, relations,
and
propositions,
that
there is an
ana-
lytic/synthetic
distinction,
and
that
there are
necessary
a
priori
1Intensionalist
theories hold that
expressions
of
natural
language
have
sense
as well as
reference,
that
senses
are
entities
of some
sort,
and that
they
are the
objects
of
study
in
a
theory
of
meaning
for
natural
language.
Quine's
naturalism
is
compatible
with
psychologized
meanings
that
could
be
reduced
to
biology,
but
Quine
sees his
argument
for
naturalism
as
showing
that even
such a basis
for
intensional semantics
is
mistaken,
since
the
argument,
if
good,
would
show
that
there is
no
objective
notion of
meaning
to
serve
as
a
candidate for
neuro-
psychological
reduction.
129
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130
JERROLD
. KATZ
truths over
and above
the
contingent
a
posteriori
truths of
natu-
ral
science.
MM
claims
that the reach of
Wittgenstein's
and
Quine's arguments
exceeds
their
grasp.
Neither
could eliminate
all intensionalist
theo-
ries
because,
instead
of
being
framed on
the basis of a
conception
of
the entire
range
of such
theories,
each
argument
was tailored to
refute
the
particular
versions of
intensionalism
with which its author
was
most familiar.
Wittgenstein's
criticisms
were
principally
directed at
the
Fregean
position
and his own Tractatus
position.
Quine's
were
directed
at the semantics
of
Frege
and
Carnap.
Both anti-inten-
sionalist
arguments
were thus
designed
to undercut the versions
of
semantics within the
Fregean
tradition.
Fregean
semantics
defines sense
as
the
determiner
of
reference and
explicates
concepts
of the
theory
of
sense
(like
proposition,
syn-
onymy,
and
analyticity)
on the
basis
of
concepts
in
the
theory
of
reference.
Fregean
semantics has so
dominated
intensionalist think-
ing
that intensionalists
and
extensionalists
alike have
automatically
equated
intensionalism
with
Fregean
intensionalism.
Since
Fregean
semantics
was
correctly
criticized
by
Wittgenstein,
Quine,
and
their
followers, if there were no intensionalism outside the Fregean tra-
dition,
there would be no
tenable intensionalism.
But MM
argues
there is
a version of
intensionalism outside
that tradition and
thus
an
intensionalism
not
refuted
by
Wittgenstein's
and
Quine's
arguments.
Hence,
in
overlooking
such an
intensionalism,
intensionalists
and ex-
tensionalists
have
overestimated
the force
of
philosophical
arguments
for naturalism.
The roots
of
non-Fregean
intensionalism
go
at least as far
back as
the inchoate theory of meaning found in Descartes, Locke, and Kant.
But
that
theory
could not be
recognized
as an alternative to
Fregean
intensionalism until it was
developed
far
more than
it had been
at
the hands
of such
traditional
philosophers.
What was
required
was
a
framework
which
made
possible
a
purely
linguistic
explication
of
its notion
of
sense,
in
contrast to
Frege's logical
explication
of
sense.
An
appropriate
framework
was created in the
generative
revolution
in
linguistics.
The
principal
idea of
generative grammar
was that
a
grammar, a theory of the grammatical structure of the sentences of
a
natural
language,
can
be a
formal deductive
system
like
logical
and
mathematical
systems.
Sentencehood
corresponds
to theoremhood:
the
theorems of
an
optimal
grammar
of a
language
L
are all
and
only
the sentences
of
L
and the
derivations
represent
the
grammatical
structure of sentences.
Further,
the
grammatical
notions,
like 'well-
formed
sentence',
'declarative
sentence',
'subject-of',
etc.,
can
be
taken
as metatheoretic
concepts,
defined
on the basis of
sentence
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11.
PRECIS
OF THE METAPHYSICS
F MEANING
derivations,
with
a
metatheory
construed as
a
theory
of
language
in
general.2
Given
the
generative framework,
it was
possible
to model
a
concep-
tion of
semantics
on its
conception
of
syntax
and
phonology.
Syntax
was conceived
of as that
aspect
of the
grammatical
structure of sen-
tences
which is
responsible
for
sentences
having
syntactic properties
and relations
like
being
well-formed,
declarative
or
interrogative,
having
coordinate
or
subordinate
structure,
etc. The
analogous
con-
ception
of
sense is embodied
in
the definition
of sense
(D).
(D)
The sense
of an
expression
is
that
aspect
of
its structure which
is responsible for its sense properties and relations, e.g., having
a sense
(meaningfulness),
sameness of sense
(synonymy),
mul-
tiplicity
of sense
(ambiguity),
repetition
of sense
(redundancy),
and
opposition
of sense
(antonymy).
Given
(D),
the sense structure of
sentences
could be
described on
the basis
of
formal semantic
representations,
in
analogy
to
formal
syntactic
representations:
ambiguity,
meaningfulness, synonymy,
antonymy,
and other notions
in
the
theory
of
meaning
could be
defined metatheoretically in terms of semantic derivations.
It
is
not
immediately
apparent
how
philosophically
radical a
step
it is
to
adopt
(D)
as the
definition
of
sense.
In
defining
the
concept
of
sense as
it
does and not
in
terms
of the
concept
of
reference,
(D)
fundamentally
changes
our entire
conception
of
sense semantics. In
contrast to
Frege's
semantics,
there is now a
sharp
distinction
be-
tween sense and
reference,
and sense
structure
forms an
autonomous
domain within
grammatical
structure. One
consequence
is
that
the
question of the relation between sense and reference now falls outside
the
theory
of sense. The
issue of
what to
say
about the controver-
sial
Fregean
principle
that
sense
determines reference
-whether it
should be
retained,
modified,
or
dropped entirely-
belongs
to
the
theory
of reference.
Another
consequence
is that
there
is no
longer
pressure
to
explicate
notions in
the
theory
of sense like
proposition,
synonymy,
and
analyticity
within
the
theory
of
reference.
Instead
of
explicating
them in
terms of
Frege's
plant
in
the
seed notion
of
logical containment, they
can now
be
explicated
in
terms of
the
beams in
the house
notion of
containment
that
Frege,
with his
logicist
program
in
mind,
criticized as
too unfruitful .
2Chomsky's
(Knowledge
of
Language,
Praeger
Publishers,
New
York,
1986)
recent
explicit
psychological
gloss
on
the notion of
language
does
not
materially
effect this
account,
though
it
raises
questions
about the
coherence of his
overall
position.
See Katz and
Postal,
Realism vs.
Conceptualism
in
Linguistics ,
Linguistics
and
Philosophy, 1991,
pp.
531-552.
131
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132
JERROLD.
KATZ
MM
(pp.
66-130)
embodies
this
conception
of
sense semantics
in
an
approach
it calls
the
proto-theory .
The
proto-theory
enables
us to frame a new intensionalism which
offers
intensionalists a
way
out
of
Wittgenstein's
and
Quine's
arguments
against
Fregean
inten-
sionalism.
With this
intensionalism
in
hand,
MM
sets out to
see
whether
Wittgenstein's
and
Quine's
arguments
are broad
enough
to
refute intensionalist
theories
generally.
Chapters
2,
3,
and 4
use the
new intensionalism
to test
Wittgenstein's arguments
in
the first two
hundred
and
twenty
odd sections of the
Philosophical
Investigations
(henceforth
PI ).
I
conclude that
none
of those
arguments
refute
the
new
intensionalism.
Many
of
Wittgenstein's
most influental ar-
guments
(e.g.,
the
arguments against
subliming
the
language)
do not
apply
to the
new intensionalism.
Those
that do
apply
are too
tailored
to
Fregean
and Tractarian intensionalism to be effective
against
the
new
intensionalism.
Even
Wittgenstein's
and
Kripke's
celebrated ar-
guments
about
rule
following
fail in
this
case.
(I
will
say
something
about
how the new
intensionalism
escapes
those
arguments
in
my
replies
to
Boghossian
and
Zemach.)
Chapter
5
uses the new
intensionalism
to
test
Quine's
anti-inten-
sionalist arguments. Again, the results are negative. One of the two
principal
arguments
in
Quine's
Two
Dogmas
of
Empiricism
(1953,
pp.
20-46)
is
directed at the
Carnap's
meaning
postulate
approach.
That
argument
does
not
apply
to the new
intensionalism,
since it
does
not involve a
logical
explication
of
analyticity
like
Carnap's.
The other
principal
argument,
that a
linguistic
explication
of
syn-
onymy
is
viciously
circular,
does
apply,
but rests
on
the
unwarranted
assumption
that the
acceptability
of
a
linguistic
concept depends
on
the existence of a substitution procedure which operationally defines
it in
terms
of
concepts
outside its
family.
Quine
easily
establishes
the conditional
(C)
by
showing
that
any
attempt
to
provide
such
procedures
for
synonymy
is
circular.
(C)
If
substitution
procedures
are
the
proper
basis for
explaining
concepts
in
linguistics,
then
the
concepts
in
the
theory
of
mean-
ing
cannot be
made
objective
sense
of.
However, he has no grounds for detaching the consequent. Quine
(1953,
p.
56)
supposed
that
Bloomfieldian
linguistics
vouchsafed sub-
stitution
procedures
as the
proper
form of definition for
linguistic
concepts,
but such
assurance
lost all
value
once the
generative
rev-
olution liberalized the
explanation
of
linguistic
concepts.
There
is
nothing
circular
about
defining
the members
of a
family
of
linguistic
concepts
with
respect
to one
another in the
metatheory
of
genera-
tive
grammars.
Such
meta-theoretic
definitions,
typical
of
logistic
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11.
PRECIS
OF THE METAPHYSICS
OF MEANING
systems
in other
sciences,
reveal the interconnections
among
the
con-
cepts.
Without
grounds
for
detaching
the
consequent
of
(C),
Quine
has no
argument against
the
theory
of
meaning.
Chapter
5
argues
that,
without such an
argument,
Quine
cannot
show that translation
is
indeterminate.
Quine's
case
for
indetermi-
nacy
rests
on the claim that there
are
no
linguistically
neutral
mean-
ings,
which,
in
turn,
is
unsupported
without
an
argument
against
a
linguistic
explication
of
synonymy.
This
point
will be discussed
fur-
ther
in
my
reply
to
Roger
Gibson.
Chapter
6
argues
that the
principal
anti-intensionalist
arguments
over
the
last
three
decades,
especially
those
of
Davidson, Lewis,
and
Putnam,
depend
on
Quine's
arguments against
intensionalism,
so
that there
is a domino
effect,
in
which the fall of
Quine's
arguments
topples
them as
well.
Chapter
7 sets out MM's
direct criticism of
philosophical
argu-
ments for naturalism.
It
tries to
show
that
such
arguments
commit
a
fallacy
in
the
spirit
of
Moore's naturalistic
fallacy.
It
has been
noted that Moore's
open
question
argument wrongly
treats
natural-
istic
definitions
(e.g.,
the
good
is what is
pleasurable)
as
linguistic
claims rather than claims about reality. To avoid that problem, MM
proposes
a
new notion
of
'naturalistic
fallacy' by
substituting
theo-
retical
definitions for lexical
definitions and
relocating
the source
of
the
fallacy
from the
naturalists' use of words to the naturalists'
use
of
explanatory conceptions
for
theoretical
purposes.
As
a
result,
the
new
fallacy
involves,
not a
violation
of
lexicographical
constraints
on
dictionaries,
but
a
violation of
methodological
constraints on
theories
(explanatory
power,
simplicity,
etc.).
A philosophical argument for a naturalistic account of a discipline
purports
to
show that the
best theories in the
discipline
are
theories
of
natural
objects.3
This
conclusion
is not based on an a
posteriori
knowledge
of what
the best
theories
in
the
discipline
actually
are,
but on a
priori
reasons for
thinking
that the best must
be
theories of
natural
objects.
Thus,
such a
philosophical
argument
for
naturalism
commits
a naturalistic
fallacy
in
the
new
sense
if
there
can be
cases
in
which the
best
scientific
theory
of
the
discipline
conflicts with
the
optimal theories of the relevant natural objects.
3In
MM
(pp. 236-239),
I called the
position
involving
such an
argument philo-
sophical
naturalism . I
contrasted it
with what I called
scientific
naturalism ,
which is a
specific
claim
within one or
another
discipline
stemming
from
a com-
mitment
on the
part
of
theories in
the
discipline
to
objects
which
the theories
themselves
characterize as
natural
objects.
I
argued
that there is
no
way
to
bootstrap
from
scientific
naturalism
to
philosophical
naturalism,
since
theories
in
mathematics
and
logic
do not
characterize their
objects
as
natural
objects.
133
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134 JERROLD
J.
KATZ
One
such
case
might
go
as follows.
Say
that
it is
empirically
estab-
lished
that the
linguistic
rules in
our
heads take
the form of a finite
list of sentential
structures so
large
that
it
contains
every producible
sentence. Since
linguistic
naturalists
suppose
that the best
grammar
is
a
theory
about
the
speaker's
mental/neurological
states,
they
will
have to
adopt
a finite
grammar
and
predict
that there
is a
largest
En-
glish
sentence,
namely,
the one
represented by
the
longest
sentence
on
the list. But since
the
grammatical
evidence
in
the
hypothetical
circumstances
is ex
hypothesi
the same as
it is
in
actual
grammar
construction
where
linguists
project
an
infinity
of sentences
(based
on the recursiveness
of
conjunction,
modification,
embedding,
etc.),
the best
grammar
will be
infinite,
too. Since
it
projects
an
infinity
of
sentences,
the best
theory
of the
language
predicts
that there is
no
largest
sentence
and is
inconsistent
with the
optimal
theory
of
the
linguistic
reality
inside
our heads.
Chapter
8 looks at some of the
consequences
of a
successful
critique
of
naturalism.
One is
that
philosophy
is back
where
it was
before the
linguistic
turn raised false
hopes
for
linguistic
solutions
to
philosoph-
ical
problems.
The
linguistic
turn was
to a
large
extent a natural-
istic turn, motivated by dissatisfaction with philosophical progress
compared
to
progress
in
the natural
sciences.
Twentieth
century
naturalists saw
the
weakness of Kant's reform
of
metaphysics,
of
Husserlian
phenomenology,
and of other
metaphysical
philosophy
practiced
along
traditional
a
priori
lines to be
the semantic under-
pinnings
of their notion of
synthetic
a
priori
knowledge. Wittgen-
stein and
Quine
both
sought
to
exploit
that
weakness to
eliminate
other dualisms of the
philosophical
and the
natural.
If
MM's cri-
tique of naturalism is successful, the most recent challenges to the
autonomy
of
philosophy
have
been met.
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