Philo of language

College of Education Graduate StudiesDasmarinas City 4115 Philippines

Descriptive and

Casual Theories of Referring

Focus: Proper names

Question:

How is it that words refer?

Answer:

Descriptive Theory of Referring (obsolete)

Causal/Historical Theory of Referring (new theory)

Descriptive Theory of Referring

• Expressions are simply disguised or abbreviated descriptions

• Linguistic terms refer to things by expressing descriptive features or characteristics of the things to which they refer


Example:• The name Aristotle refers to the Aristotle,

one who does not know to whom I am referring, cannot understand what a speaker is saying unless the speaker uses some description such as ‘the ancient Greek philosopher who was the pupil of the philosopher Plato and the teacher of Alexander the Great’.


• A general term (like lion, for instance) is said to abbreviate that set or cluster of characteristics commonly associate with lions.

• Reason: Properties, characteristics, or communal designations which objects have, or are thought of as having that objects can be referred to

Issues on Proper names

Frege’s viewpoint• Proper names have both a sense and

a referent• Unless we make such a distinction we

cannot resolve certain paradoxes and puzzles such as the one about George IV

• [He] Utilizes the notions of customary and indirect senses to avoid the puzzle


• Frege states that actual linking that description which does the work, must be connected to the intentions of the speaker – though in most cases the characteristic/s intended will correspond to a commonly occurring one.


• According to him, one is guilty of psychologistic reasoning – confusing propositions, universals, numbers, relations, and meanings with mental stages or processes – unless the mode of referring is commonly shared with other speakers of the language.


• Unless, we recognize the importance of this distinction and focus upon or define the intentions of speakers in terms of what is commonly understood, logic cannot be objectively founded.


• Frege exemplifies the distinction by considering the proper name ‘Bucephalus’. As he explains, a painter, an equestrian, and a zoologist will imagine or think of Bucephalus differently, though all understand the same sense.


• The sense of the expression is “the common property of many.” It is ‘the warhorse of Alexander the Great.’ Thus, the name ‘Bucephalus’ abbreviates ‘the warhorse of Alexander the Great.’


Russell’s viewpoint• [He] refuses to take seriously the idea that

proper names have sense

• Proper names do not have sense• Does not utilize the notions of customary

and indirect senses• [He] holds the thesis that what are ordinarily

considered to be proper names can be “eliminated” by suitable descriptions

Frege & Russel on the Same Ground

• They do not believe that specific proper name stood in an identity relation to a particular description, such that whenever that name appeared in a sentence, and one wished to explain or understand it, one would have be able to dredge up that description.

Defining General terms & Proper names

General Terms Proper names

•All general terms have meaning in the ordinary sense of word ‘meaning,’ and their meanings can generally be found in dictionaries.•E.g ‘cow’ and ‘cannon’ have meaning

•Have meaning in the ordinary sense of the word ‘meaning’•Meaningless symbols (John Stuart Mill)

Defining General terms & Proper names

General Terms Proper names

•General names cannot be defined ostensively. •One can consult dictionaries to determine what kinds of things are labeled

•Behave like labels•They identify certain persons, places, and things.•They can be defined ostensively (by pointing).•One cannot consult dictionaries to determine what kinds of things are labeled

On the discussion of Proper names

• The idea that proper names are meaningless is mistaken

• Further, etymological meaning is different from word meaning.

• Example:• ‘Lionel’ is etymological derived from the

French diminutive for ‘lion’ is a little if any importance to the question of whether or not proper names have meanings.

• Thus, there is no implication of meaning of the proper name when someone refers to ‘Lionel Atwill, the actor who played an inspector in all those thirties horror movie, was somehow of diminutive stature, worth, importance, etc.

• Some ordinary proper names have meaning other than etymological sense.

• They may have a descriptive relation to what they designate. It can be: literal, metaphorical or figurative.

Literal descriptive

Example:

• ‘Round Hill, Virginia’ (a round hill in Virginia)

• ‘Black Hills’ (hills are black

• Others are descriptive of events that do/did occur on/at the place they name

Example:

• ‘Accident, Maryland’

• ‘Council Bluffs, Iowa’

• Some examples are descriptive of posession or are honorific:

Example:• ‘Georgia’• ‘Maryland’• ‘Kennedy Airport’• ‘Prince Albert, Canada’• ‘Mark Twain High School’

• Henceforth, Odell (XX) refers to names that have meaning as descriptive designators

Example: ‘Robert Odell

• and nondescriptive designators

Example: ‘Sarigotha’

How important is differentiating proper names

and general names?• Answer:

• The meaning of some words can only be attributed to them when they appear in sentential contexts.

• Example:

• Are the kinds of dogs (p.122-3)

• The word caught (p.123)

• And the word bank (p.124)

• In those cases dictionaries can be misleading because they give impression that words have meaning in isolation

Frege vs. Mill

• Frege disagrees to Mill’s contention that names do not have sense nor proper names do not have sense.

• He maintains that all proper names (including full declarative sentences, which are for him names) have sense, even though some of them do not have reference.

Frege vs. Mill

• For Frege, we must focus on objective senses of an expression when explaining meaning.

• These objective senses are descriptions commonly attached to objects, as opposed to the varied and numerous sets of possible personal descriptions (e.g. is the sense: amber in Rimes’) that can or could be intended.

Frege vs. Mill

• He is not concerned with the fluctuation or ambiguities that result from variations in the personal and even communal uses of names.

• As long as the referent of an expression remains the same, fluctuations in sense can be tolerated.

• However, it is different for science and philosophical discourse, since they require ideal or formal language for specific description for each name.

Strawson’s view on Proper name

• “One cannot use a name to refer to someone or something unless one knows who or what it is one is referring to by that name.”

Conclusion: • “One must be prepared to substitute a

description for that name”• Such description refers to an identifying

description. The uniquely identifying description cannot be what the speaker would describe as ‘the one I have in mind.’


Example:• Consider the situation in which a reference is

made, by name, to Socrates… both speaker and hearer, in this situation, satisfy the conditions for successful term-introduction if each knows some distinguishing fact or facts, not necessarily the same one, about Socrates, facts which each is prepared to cited to indicate whom he now means, or understands, by ‘Socrates.’


Question:

• What is the relation between [these] facts and the name?

• What are the conditions of correctly describing them as ‘facts about Socrates,’ where one uses and not mention the name?


Answer:

• Strawson enlarges his notion of presupposition by speaking of a “presupposition-set,” – set of propositions that constitute a “complete description” of the referent.


Answer:

• A correct use of singularly referring expression like ‘Socrates’ depends upon its being used in such a way that a reasonable proportion of the descriptions contained in the presupposition set apply, and that they apply to one and only one individual.


• He introduces the concept of reference borrowing.

• It explains how one can succeed in referring to someone or something when one does not have an identifying description with which to describe that thing


Example:• If Joey learns that Aristotle was a

philosopher from Professor Besa, and this is all he knows about Aristotle, how could he meet the requirement of the descriptive theorist: that one who uses a proper name must be prepared to substitute an identifying description for the proper name of the object referred to?


• Would we not have to say of Joey did not know whom he was talking about?

• Not according to Strawson.

• Joey can use the description ‘the person professor Besa referred to as “Aristotle.”


• Strawson views that meaning or sense of a proper name is a uniquely identifying description, which is a member of a set of commonly recognized descriptions, true of the referent of that name.


• If I mean by the name ‘Aristole,’ ‘the philosopher who invented logic,’ and you mean by that name, ‘the philosopher who taught both Plato and Alexander the great,’ each of us would be using a uniquely identifying description, both of which are member of the presupposition set regarding the name ‘Aristotle.’

Concerns of the Philosophers

• Strawson is focused on providing an account of the way proper names are used in natural languages.

• Frege and Russel are focused upon the development of formal languages that do not suffer from the lack of specificity inherent in natural languages.


• Strawson’s views of natural language usage of proper names mirror to some extent Frege’s attempts to construct an ideal language.

• Frege, Russel and Strawson consider a statement that has as a subject a reference to a non-existent object, as neither true nor false.


• Frege, however, rejects the idea that natural languages contain descriptions that uniquely identify the referents of proper names.

• Russel would not agree with Strawson’s approach either. For him, there are no genuine proper names in natural languages, only descriptions masquerading as names.

Searle’s version of the descriptive theory

• He refines SDDTR (_Descriptions, Disguised Theory of Referring) by a procedure for determing membership in the presupposition set, which he refers to as the set of intentional content.


• According to him, what is understood as the meaning of proper name is that set of intentional contents, that is comprised of uniquely referring descriptions – a set determined by asking members of the community of language users what they would consider to be “certain essential and established facts” regarding the bearer of a given name.


• Searle claims that the answer provided by the community of speakers – the set of uniquely referring descriptive statements – could be used to establish the sense or meaning of a proper name.


• For instance, the “descriptive force” of the sentence ‘This is Aristotle’ is equivalent to asserting that a sufficient but unspecified number of these uniquely referring descriptive statements are true of Aristotle.


• Searle makes use of Strawson’s concept of an identifying description, to claim that whenever a speaker uses a proper name, he must be prepared to substitute an identifying description of the referent, or have credentials borrowed from someone who is prepared to do so.

Causal or HistoricalTheory of Referring

Causal/Historical Theory of Referring

• American philosophers Keith Donnelllan, Saul Kripke, and Hilary Putnam answers the question:

How words designate things?

• by claiming that a linguistic expression denotes what it denotes because of its particular causal history.

• According to them, an expression’s referent is fixed by an initial act of referring which links the expression to some object or group of objects

• An historical or causal chain is said to lead backwards in time to the initial acts of referring.

• If I say “Aristotle was an important Greek philosopher,” I a referring to someone who was at some specific time in the past given the name ‘Aristotle.’ I do so by virtue of being in the relevant causal or historical chain of referring.

Kripke’s views

• He explains his distinction between rigid and non-rigid designators (the foundational platform for the causal/historical theory of referring

Kripke’s views

Rigid designators• Is an expression which necessarily

designates a specific object in every possible world

Example:Benjamin Franklin & Richard Nixon

• (Benjamin Franklin is Benjamin Franklin before and after

• Richard Nixon is Richard Nixon is now and then)

Kripke’s views

Non-rigid designators

• most descriptions and do not designate the same object in all possible worlds

Example:

‘the inventor of bifocals’

Kripke’s views

• However, exception to the rule are descriptions that logically imply that their referents are what they are and that they could not be anything else in any possible world

Example:

• the description ‘the square root of 81’

Kripke’s views

• Further, Kripke criticizes descriptivism, by pointing that on SDDTR account, the speaker would have to know from whom he got his reference; otherwise, he could not offer an identifying description; however, for him there is no such requirement.

• Name is spread “from link to link as if by a chain.”

• Searle answers Kripke’s critique of descriptivism.

• He says speakers often have in much more significant descriptive content than they provide.

• Further “it is the speaker’s Intentional content that determines reference.

• It is not enough to look at just what a speaker says in response to a particular question, one has to look at his total Intentional content, as well as Background capacities associated with a name and at what he would say if informed that different parts of that content were satisfied by different objects.”

• Searle also added that even if the speaker could not remember from whom he got his reference, he could be viewed as making a secondary kind of reference.

• The description in question is determined by what best fits the Intentional content in the mind of the speaker.

Discussion on General terms

• Question:

• How would a causal theorist explain general terms?

• Hilary Putnam argues that the referents of natural kind terms, e.g. ‘human’ and ‘water’ are determined by the actual nature of the world.

• Natural kind terms refer to entities conceived of as having modal implications, which are implications regarding necessity and possibility.

• If some object x is a member of the natural kind human, then x is necessarily human. But being a member of the non-natural kind tall, is only a possibility.

• According to Putnam natural kind terms are rigid designators (like proper names).

• For example, what ‘water’ means is fixed by its referent.

• It meant H2O in 1750 even though we were unaware of it.

• However, Peter Hacker has argued against Putnam’s account of meaning, which he refers to as “scientific realism.”

• He believes that its claim that scientific discoveries can reveal the real meanings of natural language expressions would, “spell ruin” for Wittgenstein’s later philosophy.

• It challenges Wittegenstein’s view that the meaning of an expression is given by the rules governing its use.

• These rules are for Wittgenstein neither true nor false, and do not depend upon a correspondence with reality.

• They are not challenged by scientific discoveries, like the discovery that water is H20. Wittgenstein referred to this as the autonomy of language.

• In Putnam’s defense, he does not deny that society, via practices and rules, is an essential component in the determination of meaning.

• He believes that an adequate account of semantics must consider both the contributions of society and those of science.

Conclusion

• The descriptive theorists and the causal theorists are both right and both wrong.

• The mistake they both make is that looking for an account of referring that explains and justifies our use of proper names and general description which can be stated in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions.

Conclusion

• They are both right to explain a word or expression is sometimes simply being able to provide a descriptive paraphrase that removes the misunderstanding, while at other times it is simply to point to something which is the paradigm (in the case of proper names) or a paradigm (in the case of a natural kind term) of what needs to be explained.

Conclusion

• We should talk about enabling conditions and not necessary and sufficient conditions.

• By an enabling condition, it means anything that makes it possible for a speaker to mean something by an expression or to explain to another what an expression means.

Conclusion

• If a Weimaraner is present when one wishes to explain what the term ‘Weimaraner’ means, there is no need for any description.

• The presence of the Weimaraner enables one to accomplish his explanation.

Conclusion

• But if the word in question is ‘werewolf’, it is not possible for such a thing to be present, and so one must resort to description because no historical link could ever be established back to such a referent.

Conclusion

• One’s knowledge of what a werewolf is consists in nothing more that his knowledge that a werewolf is a human who, because he has bitten by another werewolf, is transformed into a wolf when the moon is full.

Conclusion

• The description ‘a werewolf is a human who, because he has bitten by another werewolf, is transformed into a wolf when the moon is full,’ is based as it is on ones knowledge of what a werewolf is, enables one to understand and explain what the term ‘werewolf’ means.

Conclusion

• The one thing that all linguistic symbols have in common is that their usefulness presupposes semantic practices – practices that correlate symbols with their referents

• What we need is an account of meaning that recognizes the importance of practices in the determination of meaning, and which recognizes that many of our linguistic practices are family resemblance in character.

Conclusion

• All empirical terms are governed by practices that are not and cannot be fixed. They are instead capable of significant change.

• ‘Bad’ has come to mean good!

Philo of language

Education

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