JOURNAL OF SEMANTICS
Voluine 2 1983
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JOURNAL OF SEMANTICS
Voluine 2 1983
Reprinted with the permission of the original publisher by
Periodicals Service Company Germantown, NY 2005
Printed on acid·free paper. This reprint was reproduced from the best original edition copy available. NOTE TO THE REPRINT EDITION: In some cases full page advertisements which do not add to the scholarly value of this volume have been omitted. As a result, some reprinted volumes may have irregular pagination.
JOURNAL OF
.
SEMANTICS VOL. II-
1�1
1983
JOURNAL OF SEMANTICS AN I�TERNATIONALJOURNAL FOR THE INTE�DISCIPLINARY STUDY OF THE SEMANTICS OF NATURAL LANGUAGE
Pieter A.M. Scurcn (Nijmegen University)
MANAGING EDITOR:
Peter Bosch (Nijmegen University)
EDITORIAL BOARD:
Leo G.M. Noordman (Nijmegen University)
Rob A. van der Sandt (Nijmegen University)
REVIEW EDITOR
CONSULTING EDITORS:
·
J. Allwood (Univ. GOteborg).
J. Lyons (Sussc:x Univ.),
M. Arbib (U Mass. Amherst).
W. Marslen-Wilson
Th. T Ballmrr (Ruhr Univ. Bcxhum). R. Bartsc:h (Amsterdam lJnh·.), J. van Benthem (Groningrn Unh·.).
J. McCawley (Univ. Chicago),
Ci. Faucu nnie r (Uriiv. de Vinc:rnncs) .
R. Rommetvcil (Oslo Univ.),
lUI. Clark (Stanford Univ.),
(Max Planck lnsl. Nijmegen).
B. Richards (Edinburgh Univ.), H. Rieser (Univ. Bielefeld),
H. Sc:h ncllc (Ruhr Univ. Boc:hum),
P. Gochet (Univ. de: l.iette).
F. tfrny (Grvningen Univ.).
J. Searle: (Univ. Cal. Berkeley),
J. lliritikka (Florida Stale llniv.),
R. Stalnaker (Cornell Univ.).
G. Hoppcnbrouwrrs (Nijmcgrn Univ.),
A. von Stechow (Univ. Konstanz),
Ph. Johnson-Laird (Sussc:x Univ.).
Ch. T ravis (Tilburg Univ.),
St. ll;ard (Sus.�cx llniv.).
A. K:1shcr (Tel Aviv Unh·.).
.
E. Kc:cnan (UCLA I, S. Kuno (Harvard Univ.). W. Lc:vch (MaA Planc:k lnsl. Nijmrgen).
ADDRESS:
G. Sundholm (Nijmegen Univ.).
B. Van Fraassc:n (Prin�-eton Univ.). Z. Vendler (UCSD),
Y. Wilks (Essex Univ.), D. Wilson (UCL).
Journal of Semantics, Nijmegen Institute of Semantics, P.O.
Box 1454, NL-6501 BL
Nijmegen, Holland
Published by the N.I.S. Foundation, Nijmegen Institute of Semantics. P.O.
NL-6.501
BL
ISSN 0167 �
Box 1454,
Nijmegen, Holland
t-y the N.I.S. Foundation
•
5133 Printed in the Netherlands
Review
article
Pieter A.M. Seuren J.D. McCawley, Thirty Million Theories of Grammar
page 325
Book reviews
Roland R. Hausser c5c Claudia Gerstner Benoit de Cornulier, Meaning Detachment
350
D.E. Over Brian Loar, Mind and Meaning
347
Han Reichgelt Th. W. Simon &: R.J. Scholes (eds.) Language, Mind. and Brain
Pieter A.M. Seuren John Dinsmore, The Inheritance of Presupposition Herman Wekker Chr.J. Pountain, Structures and Transformations. The Romance Verb.
352 356
343
Ton Weyters Gillian Brown &: George Yule, Discourse Analysis
354
Publications received
359
JOURNAL OF SEMANTICS CONTENTS VOLUME U (1983)
Articles
page
Thomas Ballmer Semantic structures of texts and discourses
221
Janet MueJler Bing Contrastive stress, contrastive intonation, and contrastive meaning
141
Dwight Bolinger Where does intonation belong?
10 1
Arda Denkel The meaning of an utterance
29
JGrgen Esser Tone units in functional. sentence perspective
121
Car los Gussenhoven A three-dimensional scaling of nine English tones
183
Roland R. Hausser On vagueness
273
Daniel Hirst Interpreting intonation: a modular approach
17 1
D. Robert Ladd Even, focus, and normal stress
157
Willem J.M. Levelt & Anne Cutler Prosodic marking in speech repair
205
D.E. Over Constructivity and relational belief
11-1
Ragnar Rommetveit In search of a truly interdisciplinary semantics. A sermon on hopes of salvation from hereditary sins A.J. Sanford, s. Garrod, A. Lucas,_ R. Henderson Pronouns without explicit antecedents?
303
Peter SgaJl On the notion of the meaning of the sentence
319
Nigel Shadbolt Processing reference L . A . Zadeh A fuzzy-set-theoretic approach to the compositionality of meaningful propositions, dispositions, and canonical forms
63
253
PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED Trechsel, Frank R., A Categorial Fragment of Quiche. (Texas Linguistic Forum 20). Dept. of linguistics, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, 1982. Utrecht Working Papers in Linguistics
11 (1982).
Van der Auwera, Johan, What do We Talk about when �e Talk? Specu lative Grammar
and the Semantics
and
Pragmatics
of Focus.
(Pragmatics &. Beyond II: 3). J. Benjamins, Amsterdam, 1981. Pp. vi+ l 21. f 38,- I$ 14,00 (paper).
J. Verschueren, Jef, On Speech Act Verbs. (Pragmatics &. Beyond �). f 38,- I $ 14,00 Benjamins, A msterdam, 1980. Pp. vii+83. (paper). Weissenborn, Jurgen &. Klein, Wolfgang (eds.), Here
and Linguistic Studies on Dei:ris and Demonstration.
There.
Cross
(Pragmatics &. Beyond III: 2-3). J. Benjamins, Amsterdam, 1983. Pp. 296. f 88,- I $ 32,00 (paper).
Woodfield, Andrew (ed.), Thought and Object. Essays on Intentionality. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1982. Pp. xi+316. £ 17.50. ·
·362
JS, vol. 2, no. 314
IN SEARCH OF A TRULY INTERDISCIPLINARY SEMANTICS. A SERMON ON HOPES OF SAL VA TION FROM HEREDITARY SINS.
Ragnar Rommetveit
Abstract
1.
Introduction
Because language, thought and verbal communication are such notorious ly composite and complex phenomena, even the most broad-minded and ambitious scholar is forced to focus in her or his empirical research upon only one issue, or a very restricted set of issues, at a time. Equally significant problems . must, at least temporarily, be set aside, i.e., deliberately disregarded or conceived of as if they were already resolved. What is considered 'noise' or is deliberately 'bracketed' JOU RNAL OF SEMANTICS, vol. 2, no. 1, pp. 1-28
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Current expansions of linguistic research into pragmatic issues appear to be of a multi- rather than interdisciplinary nature, and novel mini theories represent a mixture of different and partially competing auxiliary presuppositions about social-interactional features of language superimposed upon a shared heritage of Cartesian assumptions about its non-social essence. Hypothetical constructs from prestigious models of language as an idealized, static, and semantically closed system are introduced in various disguises as intervening variables into explan atory accounts of actual human discourse. Some hope of salvation from this hereditary sin emerges from an exegesis of Wittgenstein 's aspect-theory, William James 's notion of our "trading on one another's truths", and a cryptic remark on natural language and reality by Wemer Heisenberg. A constructive alternative to current multi-disciplinary semantics may thus hopefully be developed on the basis of empirically founded constructivist theories of language .and thought in conjunction with a systematic analysis of basic social-interactional features of ordinary language. The synthesis, I argue, yields a truly inte"rdisciplinary and dynamic extension of semantics, and is finally illuminated by case analysis within the field of word semantics. Linguistically mediated meaning, within such an explicitly constructivist and social-interaction.:. ist paradigm, is conceptualized in terms of o rderly contextual specifi cation of meaning potentials of linguistic expressions under the con straints of the temporarily shared social reality of conversation partners and their intuitive mastery of dialogue .roles.
RAGNAR ROM METVEIT in one study, however, may become the focal theme in another. The emergence of novel and hybrid subdisciplines within a very broadly defined field of linguistics may hence be conceived of as an expansion of systematic research into previously bracketed problem areas, i.e., as a rational and necessary division of academic labour in pursuit of mutually complementary 'truths' of an essentially cumulative nature.
Why should we not rejoice, then? Are we not actually engaged in the joint venture of expanding an admittedly somewhat impoverished, yet wisely idealized and basically correct, initial grasp of the essence of human language into a full understanding of its live manifestations and subtle embeddedness in ordinary social life? My own recent attempts at surveying the expanded frontiers of socio-, psycho- and lingua-linguistic research, I must confess, have fostered despair and bewilderment rather than optimism and faith. The expansion of the frontier into presumedly "pragmatic" issues is, upon closer examination,. of a multi- rather than inter-disCiplinary nature, with novel mini-theories representing a mixture of different and partially competing auxiliary presuppositions about social-interactional features of language superimposed upon a shared heritage of Cartesian assump tions about its non-social essence. Speech act theory, discourse analysis 2
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An eclectic may accordingly welcome the current. proliferation of pragmatically oriented linguistic subdisciplines with optimism and faith. Systematic sociolinguistic enquiries into variation, one may argue, will capture precisely those aspects of language which were deliberately set aside in general models of linguistic competence under stipulated conditions of a perfectly homogeneous speech community. Text grammar theory, moreover, may hopefully expand the scope of our insight into syntactic order by transcending the units of transforma tional-generative sentence grammar while honouring its basic concepts and inherent theoretical-methodological presuppositions. Insight into linguistic performance accumulated during two decades of psychollnguis tic research on production and comprehension of utterances in vacuo, it seems, may be systematically expanded by novel speech act theories endorsing old assumptions about invariance of what is 'literally said '. The programmatically disregarded issue of the embeddedness of speech in goal-oriented interaction is now apparently pursued in systematic search for a comprehensive taxonomy of "illocutionary forces", and novel insight is presumedly generated by adding unequivocal identifica tion of such 'forces' of utterances to previously established insights into their invariant 'literal contents'. The chains of inference from what is 'literally $aid ' to what is actu
INTERDISCIPLINARY SEMANTICS and other current approaches a1mmg at an explication of the dynamics of linguistic communication, I shall argue, are hence seriously hampered by a shared heritage of static semantic notions and stipulations. As Coffman (1976: 277) puts it:
"[ ] the dialogic approach inherits many of the sins and limitations of the grammarians, the sins which, after all, it was meant to correct. I refer to the sin of noncontextuality, to the assumption that bits of conversation can be analyzed in their own right in some independence of what was occurring at the time and place." ..•
2. On sources of bewilderment and hereditary sins
Academic enquiries into language and verbal communication range all the way from hermeneutic analysis of poetry to neuro-linguistic research on aphasia. An eclectic aiming at theoretical integration across such an extremely heterogeneous field is therefore actually faced with a whole spectrum of possible pre-theoretical notions and global philosophical outlooks. Options with respect to modes of under standing and self-imposed constraints upon knowledge, however, are, in polemics about major paradigms, ofte� polarized in terms of one basic and pervading dichotomy. Chomsky argues, for instance, that (1980: 73) "[ ] one ought to treat the question of the nature of lan guage without prejudice and exactly as one would treat the question of some physical organ of the body." Proponents of the humanities' tradition of hermeneutics ( Ape!, l968; Wellek, l966), on the other ' hand, claim that human language is constituted in such a way that it is intelligible only from the inside of a taken-for-granted "lnter pretationsgemeinschaft". Even knowledge of 'hardware' features of its sound system is indeed ultimately contingent upon participant obser vation within the speech community. .•.
The fact remains that (Putnam, 1978: 63) "[ ] we are partially opaque to ourselves, in the sense of not havin g the ability to understand one another as we understand hydrogen atoms [ �'. This, Putnam argues, is a constitutive fact about linguistics as a social - and therefore also "moral" - science. Such constraints upon human self-insight are also emphasized by proponents of a global and biologically founded 'open systems-' approach to human communication. Thus, Bateson (1973: 255) maintains: "The living man is bound within a net of epistemological and ontological premises which - regardless of ultimate truth or falsity become partially self-validating for him." •..
•..
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There is hardly any hope of salvation unless we seriously ponder and repent our sins. Let us therefore, as a prelude to the more constructive part of the sermon, briefly explore some potential major sources of theoretical confusion and reflect upon the nature of our theoretical sins.
RAGNAR ROMMETVEIT The linguist is thus, according to the fundamental hermeneutic presupposition, actually imprisoned in meaning, yet, if s he or he subscribes to Chomsky's definition of science, obliged to reject it as a legitimate object of scientific enquiry. And the seductive oversimplification of complex ontological and epistemological issues inherent in such a polar ization of possible modes of understanding is bound to give rise to ambivalence toward the nature and significance of semantics within linguistics as a whole: semantic enquiries may be conceived of either as some form of intuitively based artistic activity or as a purely formal trade, entirely devoid of empirical content, depending upon which horn of the dilemma you happen to choose.
The stipulation of invariant 'literal' meanings of words, for instance, appears perfectly plausible and perhaps even necessary as a hypothetical construct in any orderly decomposition of lexemes into sense-compo nents. But ·lexemes are, given such an objective and explicit 'bracketing' of language use, themselves intelligible only as components of 'system sentences', i.e., of abstract entities within the linguist's model of the language as a super-individual system. As Lyons ( 1 977: 632) main tains:
"[ ] the notion of the system-sentence [ ] is a theoretical construct whose principal function in the linguist's model of the language system is to define the concept of grammaticality." •••
•••
Recent pragmatically oriented expansions of linguistics, however, are by definition aimed at insight into utterances rather than system sentences, i.e., at knowledge of language as embedded in social inter action between mortal men. The self-imposed constraints upon such knowledge, moreover, entails a commitment to the basically hermeneut ic method of participant observation (see Rommetveit, 1979a: 50): we cannot make scientific sense of actual discourse at all unless we approach the participants 'intersubjectively ' , i.e., as basically rational and cooperative agents, in principle on· a par with ourselves as far 4
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The formalist 's resolution of the dilemma implies a programmatic disassociation of theoretical semantics from empirical research on actual language use, and such a position may also be defended from a basis of plausible pre-theoretical notions. A scientific and precise explication of something inherently ambiguous and opaque seems, first of all, to be an utterly futile if not internally contradictory endeav our. But does not the presumed ambiguity and opacity of meaning pertain to use, whereas 'language as such ' by necessity has to be assessed as a super-individual, abstract and therefore in some sense basically 'formal ' entity? Is it not true, therefore, that linguistic meaning can be scientifically explored only as a property of a -super-individual, static, and deliberately idealized system ?
INTERDISCIPLINARY SEMANTICS as rationality and mastery of linguistically mediated meaning is con cerned; What is meant by what is said is neither fixed nor perfectly determinable in the way it is in Chomsky's idealized and perfectly homogeneous speech community (see Chomsky, 1965: 3; and Love, 1981 : 280-2&3). Everyday linguistic communication takes place in a pluralistic, only fragmentarily known and only partially shared social world, and under conditions of negotiability and 'division of linguistic labor ' (Putnam , 1978: 98). The real-life social world seems indeed to be fraught with ideological conflicts, competing and partially opaque ontologies, and uneven distribution of power, world knowledge, and expertise.
.••
The radical theoretical implications of such a commitment, however, have hardly been seriously considered in current pragmatically oriented extensions of linguistic theory. Semantic issues are not being re conceptualized in accordance with novel aims and self-imposed method ological constraints, but as a rule evaded by illegitimate borrowing of concepts and assumptions from firmly established, prestigious, but irrelevant idealizations. Hypothetical constructs from Platonic models of language as an abstract system are in faCt, even though often reluc tantly and in disguise, accepted as intervening variables in theoreti<;al ac counts of real-life verbal interaction (see Ginsberg, 1954; and Rommet veit, 1955). Such evasive manoeuvres seem indeed to pervade most of current 'pragmatic' thought like a shared, hereditary theoretical sin. Some notion of 'literal' meaning, for instance, seems to be adopted as a prerequisite both in speech act theory, discourse analysis, and some variants of text grammar. Searle's version of speech act theory is thus based upon his "principle of expressibility", a principle which in turn has the consequence that (Searle, 1974: 21) "[ ... ] nonliteralness, ambiguity, and incompleteness [ ] are not theoretically essential to linguistic communication". And the contrast between literal meaning and speaker 's utterance meaning is essential in all recent variants of speech act theory, even though neither Austin nor Grice nor Searle ..•
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This implies, of course, that, in research on actual language use, we deprive ourselves of the privilege to seek theoretical refuge in the hypothetical constructs of the seductively monistic and idealized semiotic universe of 'system sentences' . To the extent that we can identify any unitary and collective system at all, it has to be a system that (Halliday, 1978: 114) "[ ] embodies the ambiguity, antagonism, imperfection, inequality and change that characterize the social system and social structure". In other words: Since our super-ordinate aim is to explore real life communication under the self-imposed method ological constraints of the participant observer, we are committed to engage in a systematic, scientific and maximally precise explication of the inherent ambiguity, flexibility and systematic negotiability of linguistically mediated meaning.
RAGNAR ROMMETVEIT conceive of such meaning as 'context-free' (see Searle, Kiefer and Bierwisch, 1980, p. IX). Metaphorical expressions and so-called indirect speech acts are nevertheless in principle explained in terms of (inter subjectively plausible) implicatures and chains of inferences from some invariant literal base.
Reddy's conclusion concerning the impact of the conduit metaphor on scientific thought, however, is that it has led us t(> accept a type of theoretical models of communication which (1979: 307) "[ ] objecti fies meaning in a misleading and dehumanizing way". And a similar distrust in stipulated invariant semantic entities and simple information transmission models is also voiced by linguists challenging traditionally accepted boundaries between semantics and pragmatics (see Lyons , 1977: 603; Uhlenbeck, 1978; and Allwood, 1981). The whole issue of invariant lexical meaning and orderly decomposition of lexemes into discrete sense components is at present indeed one of the most funda mental and controversial issues within theoretical semantics (Lyons, 1977: 54-Jf). •••
Our hereditary sin, it seems, is to transplant static semantic notions from models of natural language as an idealized system into the minds of live individuals engaged in social interaction. This allows us to pursue our academic trade with some formal rigour while evading very complex though urgent issues of human intersubjectivity in a pluralistic social world. But what kind of revisions of semantic theory are required if we abandon traditional boundaries between disciplines and venture to engage in truly interdisciplinary empirical research? Is it possible that novel and theoretically significant social-interactional features of linguistically mediated meaning may become visible to us once we manage to free ourselves from the distortive outlook on verbal communication captured in the conduit metaphor? What kind 6
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What is left undefined yet assumed to remain invariant by speech act theorists, one may ponder, may therefore possibly be that which was comprehended in psycholinguistic experiments on utterances in vacuo twenty years ago. The fact that subjects in such experiments were able to recall 'meanings' of sets of entirely unrelated stimulus-sentences after having listened to them for no purpose other than that of compre hension and reproduction may indeed post factum be interpreted as evidence of, e.g., prototypic or conventionalized contextual specification of meaning. Psycholinguists who were engaged in such "message-to Virgin-Mary-experimentation" (Blakar and Rommetveit, 1979) may hence convert to speech act theory while preserving sQllle faith in the theoretical continuity of their · otherwise somewhat shifty trade. And they may do so without abandoning the very powerful and pervading pre-theoretical notion of language as some sort of a conduit transferring feelings and thoughts from one person to another (Reddy, 1979). If something is transferred fully intact by purely linguistic means, what could that possibly be other than literal meaning?
INTERDISCIPLINARY SEMANTICS of re-conceptualization of semantics is required in order to capture the truly social, collective and super-individual aspects of language in dynamic-interactional rather than static Cartesian concepts? 3.
Three texts of consolation and spiritual guidance
My advice to colleagues who share my bewilderment is not to try to drown their despair in busy collection of data, but to ponder over some cryptic statements about reality, language and communication. The text dealing with reality stems from a philosopher of language, the one about communication from a psychologist fascinated by the varieties of human experience, and the remark about language from an eminent phys icist. And here they are: ·
"You accept my verification of one thing, I yours of another. We trade on each others' truths"· ( William- James, 1962:. 197). "We know that any understanding must be based finally ·upon the natural language because it is only there that we can be certain to touch reality[ ]" ( Werner Heisenberg, 1965: 211). ...
4.
Exegesis of the texts
a. On aspects, world-making, and possible private worlds. Wittgenstein's legacy to philosophical and empirical enquiries into ordinary language consists to a considerable extent in profound ques tions and suggestive metaphors. Language is ! 'habit and institution", "a game", "a form of life", etc., i.e., something only partially explicable yet certainly far more composite and dynamic than a conduit. What he brings to our attention by the poetic expression "the dawning of an aspect" is a central theme in N elson Goodman 's bod< Ways of Worldmaking (1978) as well as in nearly all constructivist theories of language and thou�ht. There is, he claims, a basic and orderly relativity inherent in our making sense of the world. States of affairs are never assessed as such, as a "Ding an sich", but by active categorization and in terms of potential aspects. Which aspect(s) will acquire saliency and be at tended to, moreover, is determined in an orderly fashion by the tempo rarily available range of actual or tacitly taken-for-granted referential alternatives. One and the same state of affairs is accordingly trans formed into different private worlds and possible social realities when it is assimilated into different cognitive schemes and talked about from different socially shared perspectives. JS, vol. 2, no. 1
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"What I see in the dawning of an aspect is not a property of the object, but an internal relation between it and other objects". (Ludwig Wittgenstein, 1968: 212).
R AGNAR ROMMETVEIT The essentials of Wittgenstein's aspect theory can be illustrated by simple variations of visual forms such as those adopted by Olson ( 1 970) and Deutsch ( 1 976) in psychoJinguistic experiments on verbal labelling and comprehension of referring expressions (see Fig. 1). The object S is thus unequivocally referred to as the WHITE one, the BIG one or the TRIANGLE depending upon whether it is encountered in referential domain II, III, or IV. And it is spontaneously named the ORA WING if encountered next to a wooden brick of the same colour and form . Choice of referring expression is hence clearly contingent upon the range of other objects from which the referent must be set apart. And there is no reason to believe that such referential domains are of Jess significance when they are tacitly taken for granted, for in stance when some state of affairs is being talked about from different positions and assimilated into different cognitive schemes (Eckblad, 198 1).
"The linguistic uses of 'possible world' are phenomena in which one talks about alternatives to the real world as it is now, as in talk ing about the real , world at different points in time or about the conditions for the fulfilment of a wish or a conjecture".
II
Ill
IV
:
DD
Fig. 8
I.
y----�
L.------- -- ..... , ,
L----, ,...-------- J �
The same object S encountered in different referential domains. JS, voJ. 2, no. 1
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McCawley (1974: 26 1 ) maintains:
INTERDISCIPLINARY SEMANTICS What Wittgenstein argues in his aspect theory, however, is that literal meanings of words and expressions cannot be derived by refer ence to any unequivocal and fully determined present-tense reality. "The real world as it is· now" remains as enigmatic as the past, future, or conjectured world until we make sense of it and describe it in ordinary language. Any given object, event or state of affairs S can be made sense of in terms of a non-finite set of simple, composite, Ai Even the apparently most simple and higher-order aspects A1 but not-yet-verbally-described event is thus in principle indeterminate with respect to meaning. But, as Goodman (1979: 20) remarks: "[ ] our passion for one world is satisfied, at different times and· for different purposes, in many different ways". •••
••••
.
..•
The potential 'good-Scarsdale-citizenship' aspect may be spontaneous ly and unequivocally attended to by a passer-by immersed in imagery and thoughts about conditions and style of life in Scarsdale as compared to, e.g., Saturday morning life in the slum district. An entirely different aspect is 'dawning ' in a prying neighbour of Mr. Smith, however, who has reason to believe that Mrs. Smith is left alone in the kitchen in despair because her husband always tries ·to avoid her company. The incidental passer-by may point at Mr. Smith, saying: "That 's what we should do, all of us". The pryer, on the other hand, may point at Mr. Smith and say: "That's what no married man should do". The two dif ferent perspectives on the same state of affairs thus roughly resemble perspectives X and Y in Fig. 1, domain V. And the referent of "That" is in neither case captured by an otherwise plausible 'trivial-minimum meaning' expression such as, e.g., "mowing the lawn". The "That" of the passer-by refers to some aspect shared by activities such as "mow ing the lawn, weeding, pruning the roses, etc., whereas the "That" point ed at by the prying neighbour may be generated as an 'internal relation' between any one of a set of solitary acti.vities on the part of Mr. Smith on the one hand and the (to the pryer: very salient) alternative of being together with his wife on the other. Suppose, moreover, that Mrs. Smith in her solitary misery receives a telephone call from a friend of hers. The friend asks: "Is your husband still in bed?" Mrs. Smith may in that case answer: "No, he is already outside, working in the garden." Consider, next, the following condition: Mr. Smith is actually a fireman and is often on duty on Saturdays. the case and is wondering whether A friend of his knows that this is Mr. Smith on this particular day will be free to go fishing with him . He therefore calls and asks Mr. Smith: "Is your husband working today?" JS, vol. 2, no. 1
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What, for instance, is Mr. Smith doing behind his lawn-mower in his Scarsdale garden early one Saturday morning (see Menzel, 1978, and Rommetveit, 1980)? Is he engaged in beautifying his garden, keep ing up property values in Scarsdale, improving his health, fighting obesity, leading a good life ? Or is he perhaps avoiding his wife, angering a neighbour, etc., and leading a bad life ?
RAGNAR ROMMETVEIT "No", says Mrs. Smith, "he is outside mowing the lawn." Neither her own friend nor her husband 's friend is in such a case likely to accuse Mrs. Smith of lying or contradicting herself. Nor will they insinuate that she has engaged in indirect or metaphorical speech. On the contrary: They will each of them be firmly convinced of having been told the truth, and in ordinary, 'literal ' language. What is meant by the word "working" has thus in each case been contextually specified in a perfectly appropriate way, yet on one occasion as being true and another case as being false about Mr. Smith's lawn-mowing ac tivity. It is true of that aspect of the activity which acquires salience when it is 'internally related' to being in bed and false within the set of alternatives: mowing the lawn I being at work at the fire station.
"Pluralism is inescapable, and nothing to lament. Reality is one, but if accounts of it are identical, this only reveals cultural poverty. Excessive belief in 'science' favours acceptance of poverty as a sign of truth." b. On our trading on one another's truths and generation of temporarily shared social realities. But, given the non-finite repertory of possible perspectives on any talked-about state of affairs, how can we in human discourse establish convergence of attention or intention on the same aspect(s)? How is it possible by means of language to attain states of intersubjectivity in encounters between different 'private worlds' ? These, I think, were the kind o f problems William James was wres tling with when he wrote his essay "Pragmatism 's conception of truth". And the very brief excerpt from it suggests indeed also a possible answer in terms of a constructive alternative to the misleading conduit metaphor. The currency in our trading on one another's truths par excel10
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It is a task for believers in invariant literal meanings to figure out what remains invariant in the word "working'' across such different, yet perfectly appropriate contextual specifications. A constructivist drawing upon psychological scheme theory, Wittgenstein 's aspect theory, and philosophical explications of 'explanatory relativity' (Putnam, 1978: 43), however, is under no such obligation at all: Mrs. Smith has indeed responded on each occasion in perfect agreement with · the in tended and taken-for-granted 'space of relevant alternatives ' of the interrogator. A linguist who feels genuinely bewildered by her achieve ment is therefore well advised to start questioning her or his own monistic assumptions about the real world of human discourse rather than lamenting the multitude of possible - and plausible - human per spectives. As my friend and inspiring teacher of philosophy, Arne Naess ( 1 982: 1 49) has put it:
INTERDISCIPLINARY SEMANTICS lence is of course ordinary language, and a very important feature of the trade is reciprocal role taking (Mead, 1934). The seminal notions of James and Mead have actually, until recently, not been pursued in terms of more specific, observable social-interactional, features of verbal communication. But · their basic ideas serve at present, to gether with Vygotsky's central notions about the development of lang uage and thought, as major sources of inspiration in attempts at sys tematic accounts of the ways in which basic social-interactional fea tures of verbal communication develop out of pre-linguistic interaction between the infant and 'the significant other ' . Emerging features such as behavioral turn-taking and dyadic coordination of attention on the same object, for instance, reflect increasing coordination of the separate activities of mother and child into a single social activity and may hence be interpreted as early precursors of mastery of dialogue roles (Lock, 1978; Bruner, 198 1). Downloaded from jos.oxfordjournals.org by guest on January 1, 2011
Lyons (l9n,. p. 184) maintains: "The fundamental problem for the linguist, as far as reference is concerned, is to elucidate and to describe the way in which we use language· to draw attention to what we are talking about." Attention, however, is perhaps an even more central theme within psychology, · and in particular for Vygotsky, Leontiev and Luria (see Wertsch, " 1981). Vygotsky believed, as Elizabeth Bates confirms in observational studies, that (Bates, 1976: 57) "[ ] the proto-declarative [ ] is a preverbal effort to direct the adult's attention to some event or object in the world." His theory of internal speech, moreover, is essentially an account of how word meaning develops out of acts of reference in guided, but cooperative, interaction with adult caretakers. And (Vygotsky, 198 1 : 227): "[ ] indication, which leads to abstraction, is the psychological model of the first formation of word meaning." Linguistic monitoring of intention and symbolic behaviour control are complementary features of "a cultural development of attention", i.e., of "[ ] evolution and change in the means for carrying out atten tional processes, the mastery of these processes, and their subordination to human control" (Vygotsky, 1980: 69; Rommetveit, 1982). .•.
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What occurs when verbal language is acquired is thus that the scope of attention is being extended to aspects of states of affairs far beyond the field of immediate sensory perception. Perceptual or primary atten tion is transformed by symbolic-linguistic means into intention (Brentano, 1874). More and more - and increasingly abstract potential aspects of re current objects and events are brought into the focus of attention/inten tion as such recurrent objects and events are encountered across a variety of goal-oriented activities and against the background of variant referential alternatives. And, as Goodman (1978: 6) argues: "World making as we know it always starts from worlds already at hand; the making is a remaking." Novel aspects of familiar states of affairs JS, vol. 2 , no. 1
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RAGNAR ROMMETVEIT are bound to 'dawn' when such familiar states of affairs are attended to within domains representing new combinations of referential alter natives. Higher-order, more abstract, aspects are thus generated by me taphorical extension of experiential-behavioural categorizations when a word such as, e.g., "heavy", initially meaningful only within the referential domain of material objects, is used to establish joint attention on entities such as work, duty etc. in expressions like "heavy work", "heavy duty", etc. A pervading feature of infant-adult interaction is, of course, the over-all pattern of dependency. The adult partner - not the child is the one who is supposed to know what talked-about states of affairs are as well as what words 'mean'. This implies, in the terminology of William James, a sustained asymmetry: The child is trading on adult truths, but not vice versa. However, as Newson maintains ( 1978: 36): •••
And joint attention on the same object is initially contingent upon the adult 's sensitivity with respect to the child's temporary engagement and focus of attention. The mother, for instance, will on the basis of the child's gaze and grasping movements 'know' what the child is aiming at here and now and monitor her move accordingly. There is thus from the very beginning of communicative interaction a naive, reciprocal, com mitment to a temporarily shared social world and a defi nite inbuilt circularity. This is, I believe, also a significant though often largely ignored social-interactional feature of adult conversation: the speaker monitors what he is saying in accordance with what he assumes to be the listener's outlook and background information whereas the latter makes sense of what he is hearing by adopting the speaker's p�rspective. But what is actually meant, then? What is being jointly attended to at any particular stage of a given dialogue? The peculiar circularity inherent in acts of speech implies by no means, of course, that both participants assume equal or joint responsi bility for what is being referred to or meant by what is said. Under standing and misunderstanding in ordinary discourse among equals. is, by definition, a directional affair, and vicious circularity is prohibited by vir tue of our intuitive mastery of dialogue roles. A state of intersubjectiv ity is attained at a given stage of dyadic interaction if, and only if, of the talked-about state of affairs S is some particular aspect AJ brought into focus by one participant and, as a consequence, jointly attended to by .both of them. States of intersubjectivity are, when so defined, contingent upon the dyadic constellation of speakers' privilege and listeners' commit ment: The speaker has the privilege to determine what is being referred 12
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"It is [ ] only because mothers impute meaning to 'behaviours ' elicited from the infants that these eventually do come to constitute meaningful actions as far as the child is concerned."
INTERDISCIPLINARY SEMANTICS to or meant, whereas the listener is committed to make sense of what is said by adopting the perspective of the speaker. Contextual specification of meaning - and hence: criteria concerning verification is in principle determined by the 'seller', i.e., by the participant respon sible for referring to or 'meaning ' something. This basic principle of our trade on one another's truths, it seems, can be traced back to the emerging mastery of turn-taking in pre linguistic dyadic coordination of attention: The listener has, in a way, to follow the speaker 's 'line of regard', in order to attend to the talked about state of affairs within the temporarily appropriate and inter subjectively valid domain of referential alternatives. And such truly dy adic social-interactional features of discourse cannot be captured by simple conduit paradigms of information transmission. Nor can they be accounted for· in terms of e.g.: "[ ] a speaker's assumptions as to what is in his addressee's consciousness at the time of speech" (Chafe, 1974: · 1 1 1), or "[ ] the mental models of the current conversa tion that the. speaker and the listener maintain" (Johnson-Laird, 1980: 1 06)- The temporary commitment to a shared social world can only be accounted .for_ in terms of. the. inbuilt circularity of full-fledged acts of speech and the· complementarity of speaker's privilege and listener's obligation. As ,Deutsch· and Pechmann conclude from careful experi mental investigations of the development . of referring expressions ( 1 98 1 : 165): "One must regard the dyad of participants as the elemen tary and basic unit of analysis". •••
I have elsewhere (Rommetveit, 1980c) indicated how perfectly or partially shared social realities are generated in encounters between different 'private worlds', when for .instance the incidental passer-by tells his wife what he "saw" on his Saturday morning walk or when he and Mr. Smith's prying neighbour engage in conversation about one and the same state of affairs as viewed from entirely different positions. The passer-by may in both cases start talking about Mr. Smith's mowing of the lawn within a frame of alternatives such as, e.g., the filth in the slum district, people sobering up after last night's booze, keeping Scarsdale nice and clean, etc., and the potential good citizenship aspect may thus in each case be brought temporarily . into focus of joint attention. The Scarsdale establishment's outlook on gardening and the good life is indeed also part of the prying neigh bour's repertory of available perspectives, and his restricted 'field of vision' is hence very likely temporarily expanded so as to include a hitherto entirely disregarded aspect as a possibility. What has been taken for granted by the passer-by, however, is most likely rejected immediately afterwards as a false presupposition by the pryer. A tempo rary state of intersubjectivity is thus attained in both cases, but is transformed into a state of perfectly shared social reality only in the conversation between the passer-by and his wife. Dyadic states of intersubjectivity are thus by definition directional JS, vol. 2, no. 1
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RAGNAR ROMMETVEIT and asymmetric in the sense that one person understands something whereas the other is understood. Some aspect Ai of a given state of a perfectly affairs S constitutes, at a given stage of dyadic interaction, shared social reality, however, if and only if both participants take it for granted at that stage that S is Ai and each of them assumes the other to hold that belief. And this, very likely, is what happens with the 'good-citizenship' aspect of Mr. Smith's mowing of the lawn in the conversation· between the passer-by and his wife. The latter is, prior to their conversation, in a state of ' agnostic innocence' with respect to what is going on in Mr. Smith's garden. The husband 's presupposition, accordingly, in the absence of competing referential alternatives, becomes his wife's socially contingent belief and hence a perfectly shared social reaJity.
As Dowty (1979: 385)· mainta·ins: "[ ... ] many speakers' successful use of a word is parasitic on the knowledge of other 'experts' in the speech. com munity who do have the appropriate knowledge." Unequal distribution of knowledge, power and prestige thus very often makes for unilateral dyadic communication control in the sense that me person's ' knowledge and perspective are endorsed by both conversation partn ers as a basis for making sense of what is said. Such asymmetry is also char acteristic of scientific discourse· when notions from some prestigious academic field are being assimilated into a .neighbouring, Jess prestigious but equaJJy ambitious, field of enquiry. Psycholinguists talking and writing about "deep sentence structure" have indeed for decades, though with decreasing faith, held presumedly expert linguists responsible for what is ultimately meant by that expression. ' LiteraJJy literal ' meanings of words and expressions, moreover, exist within our· highly literate societies in the form of standards of cor rectness provided by continually updated public encyclopaedias and dictionaries. The layman 's uncertainty with respect to what is meant can hence often apparently be resolved by recourse to professional or scientifrc expertise, i.e. by confidence in an institutionalized 'collective wisdom'. Popper 's 'world of objective knowledge' is thus in some very significant sense a social reality (Popper, 1971). It provides culturally shared standards of correctness which, by means of institutionalized hierarchies of knowledge and prestige, penetrate into everyday discourse 14-
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Our trade on one another's truths is symmetric only under the ideal condition of perfect interchangeability of dialogue roles. The intuitively mastered capacity to switch role is a basic social-interactional feature of adult communicative competence, but real-life conversations are nece:?sarily very often constrained by unequal distribution of knowledge, power and prestige. It is thus by no means unwise for a one year old girl to watch her mother's face and subsequent response in order to explore what is meant by her own utterance. Nor is it entirely absurd for me to engage in similar behaviour when trying to explain to an expert car mechanic what seems to be wrong with my. car.
INTERDISCIPLIN ARY SEMANTICS in the form of systematic asymmetries in our trading on one another's truths. c. On meaning potentials of words in a pluralistic and emotively loaded social world.
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But the rich· varieties: of human experience, our options with respect ·to modes ·of.· understanding, : and .. the actual compartmentalization of human knowledge and skills are also reflected in our shared cultural heritage of 'objective knowledge'. The most striking 'objective' feature of that heritage is indeed its plura l istie character. And, as Goodman (1978: 4) remarks: "Many different world-versions are of independent interest and importance, without any requirement or presumption of reducibility to a single base". Heisenberg' s · statement that natural language is the ultimate base of any understanding is a warning to monistically inclined semanticists, ' and in particular to those seeking ontological peace of mind by en dorsing any one particular such world version as the reality. Scientific ally defined terms may indeed appear attractive as potential Archi median points in semantic analysis of ordinary language. We may for instance disambiguate a word such as "human" by defining it in terms of zoological taxonomy and even conceive of the resulting invariant ' ' ' ' mappmg an d II" 11tera.II meanmg as a I semant1c mar1...erI m systematic of a whole set of related words. This may indeed seem plausible "[...] after three hundred years of science and criticism of religion [ ]'• (Habermas, 1970: 137). But it will not prevent people engaged in con versations or preaching from exploiting entirely different meaning potentials of the word such as those revealed in the contrasts "human"/ "divine", "human"/"saintly", etc. Nor will our recourse to zoological taxonomy guarantee referential consensus if, on some other planet, we should happen to encounter living beings transcending the referential domain of familiar earthly variants (see Rommetveit, 1979b: 1 53). '
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Dependency on such standards of correctness is at a maximum within semantic domains in which the vernacular is being infiltrated by novel scientific, technological and professional terms. The latter transcend lay knowledge embedded in natural language in the sense that they serve to resolve ambiguities and polysemies inherent in the vernacular. Different subsenses of everyday words are constantly being developed within internally consistent scientific, technological and professional terminologies which - while rooted in everyday, natural language branch off into separate and specialized 'expert languages' with their anchorage in particular forms of institutionalized scientific, technol ogical or professional practice. Highly specialized dictionaries are accordingly· also· contained·· ·within Popper' s. world 3, i.e., in "[ ] the world of lo_gical contents of books, libraries, computer memories, and suchlike [ }• (Popper, 197 1: 74).
RAGNAR ROMMETVEIT And truly novel aspects of "human" such as those 'dawning' in Man- Com puter-comparisons can hardly be captured by the zoologically disambig uated term at all. What Heisenberg maintains is that full determinacy of sense can only be achieved within closed conceptual systems, and that the in determinacy and openness of natural language are essential in order to 'touch ' a multifaceted and only partially known reality. A fully determined, zoologically defined, term "human" is thus perfectly ade quate within a narrowly defined domain of scientific discourse, yet blatantly inadequate as a base for human self-understanding across different 'world-versions'. The word "human" in ordinary English, on the other hand, entails zoological classification as only one - though admittedly very important - component within its rich and only partially as Baker and Hacker ( 1 980: 376) determined meaning potential. And "[ ] determinacy of sense is the impossibility of vagueness remark [ ]'•. This possibility of vagueness is the price we pay for semantic openness and creativity. We cannot a ttain c losure in our scientific account of natural language semantics without prejudging a pluralistic and only partially known reality. -
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Indeterminacy does not imply chaos, however, and orderly negotia bility and contextual specification of meaning is indeed contingent upon sor:ne semantic invariance and faith in a shared experiential world. Systematic variance with respect to what is meant by what is said, for instance, may be investigated in the form of different contextually appropriate specifications of general drafts of contracts concerning categorization and attribution across variant dyadic states of shared social reality. Meaning potentials of words and expressions, it seems, reflect at a very abstract level some minimal commonality with respect to experientiaUy founded perceptives on and categorization of our pluralistic world, and they may also serve to bring into focus of joint attention only vaguely apprehended, yet unequivocally emotively loaded, states of affairs. Our pluralistic social world is also endowed with va lue. The 'dawning' of aspects of it when, e.g., a word such as "democracy" is understood against the background of "dictatorship" within certain types of interactional settings, for instance, is by no means devoid of human affect. On the contrary: Content words like "democracy", "intelligent", "crime", etc. appear in ordinary, everyday discourse indeed very often to bring into joint focus of attention only vaguely apprehended, yet fairly unequivocally emotively loaded, aspects of our partially shared social world. Such dispositional properties of content words suffered a strange fate within American psychological and linguistic semantics twenty years ago. They were made the very focus of systematic search for autonomous word meaning in Osgood 's psychological enquiries into ' the affective meaning system' (Osgood, 1962), but deliberately excluded in semantic analysis inspired by Chomsky's initial version of syntactic 16
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INTERDISCIPLINARY SEMANTICS theory under stipulated conditions of the idealized speaker-listener in a perfectly homogeneous speech community. Ordinary language was thus investigated at the level of word semantics by neo-behaviour ist psychologists as 'pure affect' and - simultaneously - within Cartesian linguistics as 'pure reason '.
Such a partitioning of ordinary language into pure reason and pure affect is symptomatic of the multi- rat�er than interdisciplinary nature of semantic studies developing out of neo-behaviourist theories of verbal communication on the one hand and structural linguistics on the ·other. Both traditions stipulated invariance of (respectively emotive and cognitive} word meaning across contexts. The Cartesian rationalists would claim, for instance, that the sentence "My spinster aunt is an infant" should require a longer chain of processing than, e.g., "My spinster aunt is a waitress": The initial, literal 'reading' of "infant" would in the former sentence have to be cognized and rejected in order for some secondary, parasitic 'reading' to be assigned to the word. And the 'psychological reality' of such hypothesized steps of semantic inference was indeed, at the peak of Chomsky-inspired psycholinguistics, investigated in exploratory reaction time experiments. Those studies appeared to yield no support whatsoever for the ration alist hypotheses. They were hence hardly carried beyond the pilot stage, and were never published. This is regrettable. An unequivocal disconfirmation might otherwise have prevented empirically minded psycholinguists from being seduced by essentially the same kind of stipulation of 'indirect' semantic inference from some invariant literal base within fashionable variants of speech act theory. But what is the alternative to such models at the level of word se mantics ? How can we account for systematic variance in what is meant by the word "infant" across different contexts, for instance, without falling back upon the conduit metaphor of verbal communica tion and stipulation of invariant literal meaning? Our cryptic excerpts from works of Wittgenstein, James and Heisen berg suggest that one hope of salvation from such hereditary sins JS, vol. 2, no.
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Consider, for example, the word "infant" in the utterance "My spin ster aunt is an infant" (Katz and Fodor, 1963: 200}. Neo-behaviourists would approach such an utterance in terms of social influence processes and hypothesize that the listener, when comprehending what is meant by it, will move the aunt towards some other (more 'weak', 'passive', and 'bad'} location within his 'affective meaning . space'. Cartesian linguists, on the other hand, would argue that the speaker in such a case is engaged in a contradiction because the age range of spinsters and that of infants (by virtue of what invariably is meant by the words "spinster" and "infant"} do not overlap at all. The sentence is according ly semantically anomalous, they would claim.
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Let us now, inspired by Wittgenstein's, James's, and Heisenberg ' s words of wisdom, return t o the word "infant" and consider its meaning potential and what may be made known by it in particular interactional settings. Consider, first, an oral examination in which a student is supposed to reveal what she/he has learned during an introductory course in developmental psychology. The examiner may on such an occasion initiate the discourse by a request such as: (i)
Now, let us hear what you have learned about infants.
Imagine, next; a nomination meeting. The participants are engaged in a discussion about possible candidates for some political office, one of whom happens to be the unmarried aunt of one of them. The latter, being definitely against her candidacy, may then say: (ii)
My spinster aunt is an infant.
Consider, finally, another somewhat heated debate. The sustained topic of discourse is on this occasion a novel school programme, and the two persons discussing it seem to disagree sharply with respect to its potential merits. One of them has just pointed out its many weaknesses and imperfections, and the other responds in defence of the reform: (iii) But remember, it's still an infant! The operative world knowledge required in order to understand what is meant by the word on these three different occasions, let us assume, 18
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resides in the prospect of a consistently constructivistic and pluralistic approach to linguistically mediated meaning. Meaning potentials of content words may thus be systematically explored in terms of 'opera tive world knowledge ', as active categorization and making sense of talked-about states of affairs under conditions of reciprocal commit ments to a temporarily shared experiential reality. Contextual specifica tion of what is meant on any particular occasion, moreover, may hope fully in part be accounted for in terms of our orderly trade on one another's truths in accordance with intuitively mastered dialogue roles. One and the same content word, we shall expect, will thus bring into focus of joint attention different aspects of our multifaceted social world depending upon what at the moment of utterance is taken for granted by both conversation partners as their perfectly shared social reality. Its meaning potential may indeed be defined in terms of the (non finite) set of potential aspects of states of affairs it can serve to bring 'into joint focus of attention. Content words enter the child's com municative transactions at a stage when turntaking and other con tractual aspects of ' secondary intersubjectivity' are already mastered, and contextual specification of what is meant by them is indeed from the very beginning attained by dyadic control of jointly adopted emotive referential perspectives (Wertsch, 1 979).
IN TERDISCIPLINARY SEMANTICS is culturally shared lay latowledge of infancy. Its meaning potential en tails accordingly, as dispositional properties, categorization of { A) early stage of life, {B) immaturity, {C) dependency, and {D) capacity for further growth and development. And different aspects of the talked about state of affairs will be brought into joint focus of attention in each of the three settings, we shall expect, depending upon the dyadic state of social reality and pre-established range of referential alternatives the moment the word "infant" is said and understood. ·
The examiner's use of the word when introducing a sustained topic in the oral examination setting, it may be claimed, falls within its "proper" or "primary" referential use, and the student may very likely
NOMINATION MEETING
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� '0 ORAL EXAMINATION
SCHOOL REFORM DEBATE
~
R
Meaning potential and what is made known:
Referential alternatives (R) and aspects of S brought into focus:
A: Early stages of life B: Immature C. Dependent 0: In process of growth
Early/late stage of life: Size, small/big Immature/mature: Shape, ellipsis/circle Dependent/independent: Colour, hatched/white.
Fig. 2. An exploration of the meaning potential of "infant" in terms of
what is made known by the word and which aspects are into joint focus of attention in three different contexts.
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What is taken for granted by the participants in the nomination meeting, on the other hand, is that ( 1 ) candidates are to be talked about as politicians and ( 2) the 'spinster aunt ' is an adult person, eligible for political office as far as age is concerned. What in other contexts may be made known about, e.g., stage of life and process of growth by the word "infant" is thus totally irrelevant to the purpose of the discourse. Components (A) and (D) of its meaning potential are "over-ruled" (Rom metveit, 1 974: Ill) by reciprocally and firmly held presuppositions, and the jointly-attended-to attributes of proposed candidates, let us assume, are characteristics such as political experience and capacity to make judgements of one's own versus , compliance and dependency. What is brought into the focus of joint attention by "infant' when said about the speaker's aunt is thus her political (B) immaturity and (C) de pendency upon other people (middle left cell of Fig. 2). And these emo tively negatively loaded aspects 'dawn' spontaneously out of the perfect ly shared social reality and taken-for-granted range of referential alternatives at the moment the word is uttered, not via complex chains of inference such as those hypothesized by sophisticated speech act theories. The two persons arguing for and against the speech act school pro gramme, finally, are concerned with its weaknesses and merits relative to those of familiar rigidly institutionalized educational practices. They have already agreed, let us assume, that both novel and estab lished educational systems are dependent upon financial support, talented teachers, etc. in order to succeed, and even the person arguing warmly 20
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start out telling about, e.g., the duration of human infancy. She or he is in that case probably painfully aware of the existence of standards of correctness in the introductory textbook. A reasonable examiner wiH not fail the student, though, solely on the ground that she or he does not remember the exact textbook definition of infancy in terms of weeks of chronological age. The student may in fact do fairly well by keeping in mind general lexical explanations of "infant" such as "a very young child, baby" ( Webster New World Dictionary of the American Language, 1964). This is merely what ordinary adult English speaking people know, yet sufficient for the student in order to under stand (with an acceptable margin of error) which age category is being referred to and what the examiner 's question is about. The early stage of life aspect (area A in the upper left ceU of Fig. 2), one may argue, may hence perhaps be conceived of as a hard core of 'literal ' (or: primary referential) meaning. But other aspects of infancy such as (B) immaturity, (C) dependency and (D) 'in process of growth ' are clearly entailed within the proposed topic as weU, and these will indeed also in turn be carefully attended to by the student, who understands the examiner's request and has learned what she or he is supposed to know about infants. The student has indeed been invited to pursue the entire meaning potential of the everyday English word infant in terms of a particular scientifically elaborated expansion of lay knowledge.
INTERDISCIPLINARY SEMANTICS for the reform project has to admit that it is in its present form far from p·erfect. The word "infant" in the utterance "But remember, it 's still an infant!", however, reminds the opponent of this particular programme's (A) early stage of (institutional) life, {B) immaturity, and (D) ongoing pro cess of growth (bottom left cell in Fig. 2). It serves hence in this particular setting as a word of praise, bringing into joint focus of attention aspects of the controversial educational programme which set it favourably apart from all other relevant alternatives by virtue of its possibility of further development toward perfection. What is meant by "infant" when said about the spinster aunt or the new school programme, respectively accordingly appears at first glance contradictory. What remains invariant, we may ask, in a word wh�ch in one case is used derogatively and in another case as a word of praise?
What happens at the nomination meeting and in the school reform debate, I shall argue, is that somewhat different abstract and emotively loaded aspects of infancy entailed within the word's meaning potential are spontaneously brought into focus of joint attention in discourse about ''non-infants". The difference with respect to emotive contagion in the two settings, moreover, is systematic, linguistically mediated, and founded in widely shared attitudes towards infancy in our otherwise JS, vol. 2, no. 1
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My tentative answer to this question is as follows: The identity of "infant" qua word and systematic categorization, reflects culturally shared knowledge of, and attitudes towards, infancy, embedded in the mastery of that particular word by the ordinary speaker of English. Yet it hardly reflects anything in terms of the identity of what is ' literally' meant or referred to. The capacity to identify the sound sequence "infant" in English as 'the same word' across different con texts is a metalinguistic ability and no prerequisite for the mastery of the world knowledge embedded in the word. The latter may remain entirely unreflective, whereas the level of meta-linguistic reflection varies and is contingent upon, in particular, the exposure to written language (see Linell 1982). Volosinov (1973: 103) maintains: "Only the current of verbal intercourse endows a word with the light of meaning." And the 'primary referential meaning' (A) early stage of life, which is depicted as a topological core of the meaning potential of "infant" in the upper left cell of Fig. 2, it turns out, is not ' illuminated' at all when "the current of verbal intercourse endows the word with the light of meaning" at the nomination meeting (middle left cell of Fig. 2). The latin origin of the word, moreover, the adjective "in fans" ("not speaking"), is hardly any more immediately logically bound to early stage of life than, e.g. , the English adjectives "immature" or "dependent", and reference to a particular age category is thus apparently historically a relatively recently developed component of its meaning potential. On what grounds, then, are we justified in conceiving of component (A) as an invariant 'literal' core?
RAGNAR ROMMETVEIT pluralistic social world. Ordinary people do indeed love (their own) infants, yet feel repelled when encountering adults remaining infantile after completion of growth. The immaturity aspect of infancy is accord ingly emotively ambiguous: it acquires saliency as an undesirable proper ty when attributed to adult politicians in conjunction with dependency, yet is spontaneously attended to as a desirable possibility of change toward perfection when attributed to an imperfect reform project within a referential frame of petrified educational practises. "Infant" can thus be replaced by a clearly derogative adjective "infantile" only in the spinster-aunt setting.
·
The reason for this is simple, though largely ignored in orthodox linguistic and psycholinguistic semantic analyses: Expansion of the shared soc;::ial reality in actual human discourse is not attained by transmission of invariant propositional contents of 'full lexical items' (Chomsky, 1 972: 1 01) via some magical conduit, but proceeds in an orderly fashion out of already established states of perfectly shared social reality and jointly attended-to referential alternatives at the moment of speech. Distinctions such as Given vs New information are hence by no means narrowly defined syntactic notions, as Clark (1977: 412) maintains, but crucial semiotic distinctions in a systematic analysis of already presupposed and irrelevant versus contextually realized components of meaning potentials of single words and expressions. The left hand cells of Fig. 2 may thus in view of our preceding analysis be read as depicting only those meaning potentials of "infant" which are . actually realized in the three different settings. What is made known about the spinster aunt is according to such an analysis her political immaturity and dependency. What is asserted about the contro versial school programme is early stage of institutional life, immaturity, and process of growth (potentially: toward perfection). Such topological maps are useful when we want to visualize how only particular subsets of a word's meaning potential are realized in particular interactional settings. I have already suggested, however, that immaturity attributed to entities without any prospect of further growth differs from that of entities undergoing growth and development. 22
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The word "infant" in "My spinster aunt is an infant!" and "But remem ber, it's still an infant!" constitutes in both cases the intonation centre of the utterance and hence its 'focus' as opposed to 'presupposition '; it is 'New' rather than 'Given ' information (Chomsky, 1972: 1 00; Clark, 1977: " 412). What is made known by the word, moreover, is simply what is asserted by it, provided that it is understood within the shared frame of alternatives proposed by the speaker and the latter's credibil ity remains unquestioned. Predication, however, is a semiotic rather than a narrowly defined linguistic affair (Weinreich, 1 963: 1 8). And what is predicated by means of the word "infant" of the candidate for political office and the novel educational programme are indeed very different things.
INTERDISCIPLIN ARY SEMANTICS in It is therefore misleading, it seems, to portray (B) immature and (D) procesS of growth as autonomous and disjoint potentials. Any topological representation of meaning potentials in terms of a finite set of discrete components, we have to admit, entails some arbitrariness due to the residual indeterminacy of sense and the analyst's predicament as a participant observer of operative lay knowledge. It is thus a chal lenging, though ultimately impossible, task to try to capture all major potentials of the word 'infant" in one single topological map such as the one in the upper left cell of Fig. 2.
. The component "in process of growth'' is represented indirectly, as variation with respect to size, and is hence not attended to within the referential domain of the nomination meeting. Potential development to wards perfection is portrayed in terms of the possibility of change of shape and/or colour during expansion of size and acquires therefore sa liency only within the referential domains of the oral examination and the school reform debate (arrows from small, hatched ellipsis to big white circle and big, hatched circle, respectively). The perceptual analogues in Fig. 2 serve thus as a necessary supplement and corrective to topological models of contextual specification of word meaning. They indicate how different abstract aspects of infancy are spontaneously brought into the joint focus of attention J:)y the word "infant' under different conditions of pre-established shared social reality and jointly attended-to referential alternatives. 5.
Epilogue
The preceding semantic analysis was inspired by the central texts of this sermon and has been carried out in the hope of paving the way toward a constructive alternative to current multi-disciplinary semantics. The latter, I have argued, is pervaded by misguided conduit metaphors of human communication and the hereditary sin of trans planting hypothetical constructs from models of language qua idealized system as intervening variables into theoretical accounts of discourse among mortal men. The somewhat detailed explication of what may be meant and understood by the word " infant" in different contexts JS, vol. 2, no. 1
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The actual 'dawning' of novel aspects of a shared social reality during discourse can hardly be visualized by such maps, but some dynamic features of orderly contextual specification of word meaning may possibly be illuminated by recourse to perceptual analogues. The right hand cells of Fig. 2 may thus be read as a schematic represen tation of .the jointly attended-to referential domains in the settings of the oral examination, the nomination meeting, and the school reform debate respectively. The aspects portrayed in terms of perceptual analogues are early versus late stage of life· (size: small ver513s big), . im mature versus mature (shape: 'imperfect' ellipsis versus 'perfect' circle), and dependent versus independent (colour: hatched versus whi:te).
RAGNAR ROMMETVEIT illustrates, in comparison, a dynamic and constructivistic approach the to linguistically mediated meaning. It is dynamic in the sense that word's meaning potential is explored in terms of a set of dispositional properties, i.e., as a potential for bringing into joint focus of attention particular aspects of a pluralistic social world, including only vaguely apprehended yet unequivocally emotively loaded aspects. And the ap proach is constructivistic because world knowledge embedded in our mas tery of ordinary language is conceived of as operative knowledge, i.e. in terms of our capacity to categorize and attribute meaning to talked-about states of affairs.
Asymmetries in dyadic control of what is meant and negotiable ambiguities of meaning in everyday discourse mirror unequal distribution of knowledge and different conditions of life within society at large. Consider, for instance, a word such as "work", or "labour", in the mouth of an unskilled · worker and the ears of a white-collar intellectual in a conversation between them about political issues. What is meant by "labour" may in that particular case be strongly flavoured by real life experiences of toil, unemployment, and strikes. What is understood by the worker's conversation partner, however, is necessarily constrained by the fact that the latter - even though politically sophisticated and thoroughly reflective about intricate relationships between labour, production, and capital - has no life experiences from the world of manual labour whatsoever. The vagueness of the word "labour" in everyday English implies that it entails within its meaning potential both the unskilled worker 's and the 'egghead's' private political worlds as possible and legitimate domains for contextual specification. Its residual indeterminacy of sense is in this situation in fact a prerequisite for mutual understanding because it allows for 'the same' only partially determined state of affairs to be jointly attended to in a conversation across the boundaries of different private worlds. Both partners agree, for instance, that by "labour" they mean something distinctively different from (and possibly: 24
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This does not imply that we disregard the very important function of identifying reference of content words in ordinary discourse: words like "work" and "infant" and expressions such as "mowing the lawn" are of course often used to refer to relatively well defined classes of aCtivities, beings, and events. Mastery of identifying reference is indeed essential in verbal communication, yet entails as. ·such hardly more than culturally appropriate labelling of objects, events and states of affairs. Referential consensus serves thus at times as the essential min imum of shared semantic competence in communication across divisions of linguistic labour, as when for instance an expert car mechanic suc ceeds in getting the object he wants by uttering the word "carburettor" in a request addressed to a mechanically nearly totally ignorant shop attendant. The latter 's contribution to the transaction requires, as a minimum, hardly more than a capacity to read labels and print tags.
IN TERDISCIPLINARY SEMANTICS 'opposite to') "leisure". Some intersubjectivity is accordingly attained immediately, even though at a rather shallow 'level of intension' (Naess, 1953).
•
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Institute of Psychology, University of Oslo, Boks 1094, Blindern, Oslo 3, Norw·ay
Note This paper has appeared in an earlier version in Cal Svensson (ed.): Om Kommunikation, l (SIC, 3 = Studies in Communication, Vol. 3), University of Linkoping, Sweden, pp. 1-36.
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The inherent vagueness of the word in conjunction with commitments and privileges involved in the interchangeability of intuitively mastered dialogue roles, however, makes it also possible for them to transcend their pre-established private worlds: the two of them will take turns as speaker and listener, and the 'egghead' is committed to try to adopt the perspectives of the worker when making sense of )Vhat the latter says about labour and vice versa. If each of them sincerely at tempts to adopt the attitude of his conversation partner and neither insists on having his own initial contextual specification endorsed as the 'basic' , 'most down-to-earth' or 'literal' meaning (Goffman, 197 6: 303), they may indeed both expand their repertories of possible perspectives on the talked-about state of affairs In the words of our central texts: They can be certain to touch reality, and novel aspects of a pluralistic, partially shared, and only fragmentarily known reality may under optimal conditions dawn in them out of their trade on one another's truths.
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THE MEANING OF AN UTTERANCE
Arda Denkel
Abstract
Suggesting that utterance meaning is the most central . concept of meaning would not be an overstatement. It is this concept which consti tutes the principal target of elucidation: even where analysis does not start from it, it leads to it. Under the guidance of Grice, the communication theorist's strategy has been to offer an analysis of the speaker's meaning, then in terms of this, to account for the mean ing of an utterance, and then to extend the · analysis to cover conven tional and structured utterances {i.e., sentences}, finally deriving an explanation of what it is for the units composing these structures (i.e., words} to mean. I shall here attempt to give a sketch of the second step, assuming the correctness and plausibility of an analysis which constitutes the first step. 1
In determining the meaning of an utterance we must avoid two extreme interpretations, both of which, although in opposite ways, render mean ing arbitrary. The first of these interpretations manifests itself in the attempt to account for the meaning of an utterance strictly in terms of the speaker's intentions. The other interpretation, though rarely advocated, is a possible alternative to the first: the meaning JOU RNAL OF SEMANTICS, vol. 2, no. 1, pp. 29-39
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The first target of the paper is to demonstrate that the Gricean explan ation of the concept of an utterance 's occasion meaning by proposing an equivalence between · what a .speaker means by X on an occasion and what X means on the same occasion cannot be correct. An outline account of utterance meaning that carefully avoids explaining this concept purely in terms of the. speaker's intentions or purely in terms of the hearer's understanding is then developed. It is concluded that what determines the meaning · of an utterance (as well as that which a speaker can mean by the same utterance) is above all an objective connection of natural or conventional character between an aspect of the utterance and the state, attitude or fact about which something is meant by the speaker using the utterance.
ARDA DENKEL of an utterance issued on an occasion wiU be presented as, and equated with, whatever the audience understands by it. PotentiaUy, both inter pretations lead to the undesirable consequence of fuJly relativizing the meaning of an utterance. If an utterance-type had no fixed mean ing(s), then it would be unclear how it could function in communication, and since it would thus diverge from our common understanding of meaning, it would not explain this concept. Of course, it is not to be denied that there is a sense in which, given certain limitations, the same item may be issued as utterance and be understood as posses sing different meanings on the different occasions it is used. However, the limits of this need clarification, in that it should not be possible for anything to mean anything.
It is possible to defend the equivalence suggested by Grice by de claring that in the above types of cases, just as we can, according to the analysis, state that the speaker meant something (by something seemingly unrelated, or by overriding the literal meaning of the utter ance), his utterance, too, did mean what was intended by him, and if there is an inclination to say the contrary, this is because we think the audience, under such circumstances, could not possibly grasp the speaker's meaning. But so much the worse for the audience: we can, and should, represent it either as having failed to understand both the speaker and the utterance or as having misunderstood them. 5 The adoption of this defense would render Grice's position indistinguishable from the first of the two extreme interpretations we noted above. On such a view anything could be meant by anything, and anythin could thus mean anything: � Humpty Dumpty conception of meaning.
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That the ac tual Gricean conception of or committed to this extreme position is there is a certain restriction, implicit in made explicit by others. 7 This restriction 30
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Grice's analysis of meaning, which asserts the equivalence of the meaning of an utterance produced on an occasion with what the speaker meant, by that utterance on the same occasion, 2 has been accused, by some, of leading to the undesirable arbitrariness noted above. Ziff, for instance, has given examples where, clearly, the utterance used on the occasion cannot be said to possess meaning in any possible sense of the word, but yet the speaker fulfils the requirements, set by Grice, for having meant something by it. 3 Therefore, if these ex amples are correct, it has been shown that according to Grice's theory an utterance which is devoid of meaning or relevance is to be (falsely) said to mean something. Besides, Searle introduced a paraUel case4 which aims to show that if an utterance possesses a meaning convention aUy, then even if a speaker had aJl the necessary intentions which, according to Grice 's account, would entitle him to a certain meaning, this utterance could not be said to mean something unrelated to the meaning it is said to possess conventionaUy.
THE MEANING OF AN UTTERANCE which by using a particular utterance a speaker can be said to mean. Thus, preserving the equivalence (on an occasion) between the speaker's meaning and the utterance meaning, Grice's theory implies that it is not true that, given this utterance; anything could be meant by it.
Given this restriction, the Ziff and Searle counter-examples are Clearly, given the utterance and the particular easily eliminated. 1 0 circumstances set by these authors, the speakers could not believe q, or could not believe it rationally, and therefore could not intend to in duce the desired effect by these utterances. However, I believe it can be shown that eliminating these counter-examples will not fully rescue the Gricean conception of utterance-meaning. Now, how does the restriction allow the blocking of the cases in question? The fact that, in these cases, the utterance cannot gain an anomalous occasion mean ing (and thus either bears no meaning or bears the unintended meaning it conventionally possesses) is accounted for in terms of showing that, here, the speaker could not mean the thing in' question by the utterance. So whatever restriction can be said successfully to protect against reduction to an absurd Humpty Dumpty theory, is in fact the speaker's meaning. Nevertheless, it is clear from the restriction itself that it cannot equally protect the meaning of an utterance against -other similar counter-examples. The reason is that it is possible and common place to believe something false, and that the speaker can be no ex ception to this. We may therefore think of cases in which the speaker believes that q� and is, from his point of view, justified in doing so, but yet unbeknownst to him q happens to be false. If our suspicion is justified, some cases of this sort, which are easy to devise, should involve a speaker uttering X who could be said to mean r by it, but where the X uttered is either meaningless, or means something dif ferent from r. The following examples of speaker's meaning are recast with the proviso that the speaker's belief q is false:
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Grice 's scheme, This restriction comes in the following way. On a speaker can · be said to mean r by X, 8 only if, among other things, by using X, the speaker intends to induce the belief r in the audience. 9 But such an intention presupposes the belief (t) that using X on the relevant occasion will be somehow effective in inducing r in the au dience. Unless a speaker possesses such a belief he cannot intend the above. Now, how is t grounded? Believing t in turn presupposes that the speaker believes (q) that the audience possesses a belief (p) connecting the utterance used (X) with the effect intended to be induced by it (i.e., the belief r)� Moreover, for the speaker to intend to induce r in the audience, and not just want . it (maybe irrationally), his belief q must be possessed rationally. The possession of q irrationally will not justify the claim that . the speaker has this intention. Therefore, unless the speaker believes . q, and does so rationally, he cannot intend to induce r by X.
ARDA DENKEL A. A rich landowner has heard rumours that there may be gold on his land which is out in the province. He hires a geologist to inspect the area and asks him to bring a sample if he discovers a mine. In the field, the geologist observes that there is no trace of gold but that instead the land is rich in pyrites which is valueless but looks like gold to the unfamiliar eye. The geologist has heard that the land owner already owns several gold mines, and thinks that he should know the difference between pyrites . and gold. In fact, however, these mines are all coal mines and the landowner has never even seen gold ore. The geologist comes back to town, and leaves a chunk of pyrites on the landowner's desk, meaning by this that his land is valueless.
C. A customer at a bookstore has now been reading a spy thriller for some time. In the novel, the principal character often uses the sentence 'I could use it for heating ' as a code word for 'This is a success'. At some stage, someone approaches politely, and asks him whether he likes the book. Our customer, having seen the author's photo on the back flap, concludes on the basis of the resemblance between this person and the picture, that this must be the author. To show his appreciation, he uses the spy's words: 'I could use it for heating '. In fact, the person he is talking to is not the author but the shopkeeper. We have here three cases in which the speakers can be said to mean what they intend by the utterances they use. The utterance types with respect to their particular tokens used in A, B, and C, are, in that same order, non-conventional, non-linguistic conventional and linguistic. The speakers can properly , be said to mean what they intend, since they all possess the belief q, enabling them to intend this. Furthermore, from their point of view there is nothing 'unjustified' in their believing q: anyone in their position would normally believe it. However, in A, B, and C, the hearers will understand the utterances produced differently from the way intended by the relevant speakers: in A, under the circumstances and contrary to the geologist's expecta tions, his leaving the chunk of pyrites will be understood to the effect that there is gold in the landowner's field, since the chunk does look like gold and the geologist was asked to bring a sample if he discovers a mine. In B, und�r the specified circumstances people will not under stand the sign made as ' All is going perfectly well'. Rather, they will think the contrary. In C, the reader 's statement will not be taken as expressing appreciation: it will be understood 'literally '. N ow, in none of these cases can the audience be represented as having mis understood the utterance. It won't do to say that in A, B, and C the 32
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B. A foreign head of state who has come on an official visit wishes to salute the welcoming crowds and to do this with the 'thumbs up' sign he was newly taught especially for the occasion. The sign, in any form, does not exist in his own culture. Unfortunately, though, the foreign head of state has mistakenly learned the sign upside down.
THE MEANING OF AN UTTERANCE hearers concerned understood the relevant utterances differently from what · the relevant speakers meant by these, and that therefore they misunderstood both the speakers and the utterances. Maybe they can be said to have misunderstood the speakers, but they did not misunder stand the utterances. First of all, in these cases no mistake or failure can be attributed to the audience's reasoning or background informa tion, and furthermore, if there is a mistake involved, it is to be seen in the speaker 's being under the_ impression that the relevant belief p exists. Secondly, not only is it that the relevant utterances have been understood as they were intended by the relevant speakers, given the circumstances they were not understandable that way. Nobody, in these cases, in the shoes of the audience (including the speaker himself) could understand the utterance in the way intended by the speaker, since what is missing is a belief connecting (an aspect of) the utterance with the belief intended to be induced.
The question arises here of what determines an utterance's occasion meaning. Given a speaker ;s occasion meaning ( r}, and given the fact that the equivalence between speaker 's meaning and utterance meaning does not hold on every occasion, we may conclude that determining the conditions ensuring the equivalence will amount to determining the conditions on the fulfilment of which the utterance will mean r, i.e., will amount to determining the occasion meaning of the utterance. We may therefore ask whether an utterance's occasion meaning is determined by the truth of q, i.e., by the audience's possessing a belief p connecting this utterance with the belief r intended to be induced JS, vol. 2, no. 1
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We have before us a case- in which a speaker issues the utterance X meaning 2: by it, while on the same occasion the audience A under stands r by X. Moreover - it . is clear , that A . does not misunderstand X. The question is as to what X meant · on this. occasion. My argument is as follows: if someone· understands . X · a5 · r and his understanding is not mistaken · (i.e., · is · correct), then X · there meant r; at least as one of its . meanings. ; If� under these c�rcumstances we insist that X meant z, or that it _. had z as one o()ts meanings, _ then, first, it would follow that this meaning is not only . not known, but also unknow able. But what communicative function can one assign to the concept of 'unknowable meaning'? Secondly, it would also follow that X meant z is asserted solely on the basis of the fact that S intended (etc.) z by X, in turn yielding the thesis that the meaning of an utterance is determined freely by the intentions of the producer of this utterance. The latter is tantamount to the rejection of the restriction and entails the Humpty Dumpty theory of meaning. I conclude that on this occasion X meant r. It follows that in certain cases such as A, B, and C where the speaker 's belief q is false, we obtain a genuine counter-example to the equivalence , proposed by Grice, between the speaker's meaning and the utterance's meaning on the same occasion. Therefore, the concept of an utterance's occasion meaning cannot be explained solely . in terms of the speaker 's meaning. 1 1
ARDA DENKEL by the speaker. Is an utterance's occasion meaning determined by the audience's possessing the equipment necessary for enabling him to connect this utterance with the thought intended to be communicated by the speaker? If this were the case, there would be little room left for any audience 's failure to understand or even to misunderstand an utterance. Any theory implying this view would make the concept of utterance meaning too much dependent on the understanding of the audience, com mitting itself to something dose to the second ex treme interpretation of meaning.
It may further be shown that the truth of q is not sufficient for the equivalence to hold, for we may get situations in which q is true and yet the equiv�lence does not hold. There will be cases of 'deviant' com munication where the speaker believes q on the basis of a mis information, while q neverthe.less happens to be true, since the audience happens to believe p on the basis of a similar misinformation (or a delusion, etc.). Suppose S, who does not speak French, was misled into believing that 'Zut alors' means 'Pass the butter'. Suppose further 34
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I wiU try to show that in fact the truth of the speaker 's belief q is not a condition for the equivalence of the speaker 's meaning and the utterance's meaning on the same occasion. It is just that in the examples considered, the falsity of q and the non-equivalence co occurred, since both were determined by a more fundamental condition. Before exploring this fundamental condition, let us see that the truth of q is not necessary for the holding of the equivalence: it is not the case that the equivalence holds only if the belief q is true. To see this it is enough to rearrange the above situations A, B, and C in such a way that the speaker ' s belief q wH! be false, not because the speaker is misinformed, but because the audience fails to possess p, while his possessing it would be 'normal'. For example, reconsider A with the change that the landowner does indeed own other gold mines, but unbeknownst to the peole around him is stiH unable to distinguish real gold from pyrites. Can we, under these circumstances, say that the leaving of the chunk does not mean that the land is valueless? It seems not, because here we can't use our argument of the last section since the landowner failed to understand somthing he normaUy should understand. Similarly, given B, suppose the head of state made the ' thumbs up' sign the right way round but some people in the crowd, although brought up in this culture, do not know the sign: are we to say that for them the sign does not mean anything? No. The correct explanation is that they fail to understand the · meaning of the sign. Suppose that in C the man asking the question was, in fact, the author, but having written, in the meantime, several other thriHers with many different spy tricks, had forgotten all about the details of the code he had invented for the book. Are we to say that on this occasion the utterance does not mean that the author 's work was very well written? Again, I think, there will be a justified inclination to say that the utterance does mean that.
THE MEANING OF AN UTTERANCE that in France, as soon as the occasion arose, S asked for the butter this way and got the response he expected: his interlocutor' who was not a French speaker, by sheer coincidence shared the same illusion {or he was a perverse Frenchman with the delusion that this expression is used in asking butter).
How is the t�uth of s . determined? What are the sorts of circum stance · that render a speaker's expectations and beliefs that the au dience he is : in contact with possesses a · belief p reasonable ? If, as has been explained above, s determines the meaning · of X (a� utterance), on the occasion of X's use, then a:·satisfactory answer to this question will give us an approximation · to what may be called an account of the occasion meaning of an utterance. ·
·
Towards such an approximation, we may suggest the following. For it to be reasonable at all to think that someone else possesses a belief p connecting X and r, there must first be an objective connection between the fact, event, etc. that constitutes X and the fact, event, etc., which makes r true. It is such a connection that enables the possession of p, and unless such a connection exists and is (in principle) empirically available, it is not reasonable ,to expect the possession of p by someone else, since without such an objective connection there will be no empirical rationalization of how p can be possessed by more than one person, and thus no satisfactory explanation of how one person can reasonably expect that someone else, too, possesses p. By 'objective connection' we may understand the publicly observable co-occurrence of any two facts, events, etc., in such a way that the thought of one can be associated with the thought of the other 1 2 Here, the notion of being publicly observable is to be taken only 'in principle', so that forming a belief of type p should not necessarily require the relevant person 's direct exposure to the objective connec tion which causes p, for a person may pick up such a belief in a culture where other individuals have formed p by direct observation, and have preserved it in this culture. An objective connection may take the form of a natural connection which is made of two facts, events or objects related to each other causally, factually or historically: smoke and fire, the Colosseum and Rome, Cleopatra and Egypt are thus ..
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If it is not the truth or the falsity of the speaker 's belief q that determines the meaning of the utterance, then what is it? The answer, very roughly, is in terms of the grounds on which the belief q is formed. The speaker believes q on the basis of believing {s) that under the circumstances it is reasonable to expect that the audience possesses the belief p. As uttered by the speaker X means r if and only if s is true, regardless of whether q is true. In fact, on simple reflection it will become clear that all the cases above, where we accept that the utterance . meant the relevant r, were cases where the relevant s was . true, and that the cases where the utterance failed to mean the relevant r were cases where the relevant s was false.
A R D A DEN KEL naturally connected. However, an objective connection does not have to be natural. It may, for instance, belong to fiction. Hamlet and the skull will be viewed as so connected as long as the connection established in fiction is made publicly available. Very importantly, a conventional connection is objective in this sense, and in such a case the choice of the items connected may be arbitrary from the point of view of natural connection. However, given two conventionally connected items, the thought of one will lead to the thought of the other purely on the basis of this convention. A traffic sign and the taking of a turn, a linguistic utterance and a particular situation or state, a gesture and a particular response are thus conventionally connected.
To express this idea with greater precision let us introduce the notion of 'context of experience'. This is largely self-explanatory since we give that name to any context or medium that can be specified via a covering concept and within which a rational agent can have experiences having some consistency. Cultures will be among such media; physical/geographical environments, fields of occupation, hobbies, etc., will all thus qualify as contexts of experience. So defined, a context of experience will include all 'available' facts and events within its boundaries. By 'available ' , we will understand not only 'tech36
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While an objective connection between what constitutes X and what makes r true is necessary for its being reasonable that someone else possesses p, it cannot be sufficient, for we may easily conceive of a situation, where, although there exists a relevant objective connec tion, the audience in question will be unlikely to have come across it. And thus, if it is not reasonable to think that the other person (the audience) is familiar with this objective connection, then it is not reasonable to expect that he possesses the relevant p. If, for , in stance, we let X stand for litmus turning red and r be that the relevant medium is acid, a person A who happens to be a butcher totally unin terested in chemistry will not be reasonably expected to possess the relevant belief p. What then characterizes the circumstances which involve a particular objective connection as circumstances in which it is reasonable to expect that the audience possesses the corresponding p? It seems it is the condition that the audience, as a normal and rational being, should be sufficiently exposed to the objective connec tion. Of course, the condition cannot be that the audience should have noticed the connection and have formed p: we have already seen that the actual possession of p is neither necessary nor sufficient for the Gricean equivalence to hold. AU that is needed for a reasonable expec tation that the audience possesses p is that he should have enjoyed the opportunity to notice the connection, regardless of whether he actually noticed it. We may therefore suggest that what makes the expectation that a person A possesses p reasonable is first that there is an objective connection of the relevant kind, and second, that A has been exposed to it.
TH E MEANING OF AN UTTERANCE nically observable' , but moreover, being of such obvious character that any intelligent being operating in the context would be unlikely to miss it. We may now submit the following formulation:
Given this outline, two possible objections have to be answered: first, it may be said that this outline will make the occasion meaning of an utterance · dependent on the audience present on the occasion. This would not be quite correct, since what, in this analysis, meaning is made dependent on is not the audience, but the circumstances sur rounding the audience. This much dependence is implied by the truth of s, and I think is needed for blocking certain cases which may poten tially lead to the Humpty Dumpty theory . Suppose someone had synthe sized an alloy which on being rubbed a few times emits bright light. Supposing that the discovery was not made public, we should be able to disallow that the inventor 's showing the (unrubbed) piece of metal would thereby mean something connected with light. Our requirement thus renders occasion meaning conditional on the possibility of communi cation. However, it does not imply a dependence on the understanding or even on the beliefs of the audience. Owing to coincidences it is possible for a rational agent who spent part of his life in a particular context of experience to have failed to form the relevant belief p on a certain connection contained in that context. It is equally possible that, even if formed, the belief p may not be called up on the occasion of utterance. These, though, are not cases that will block the occasion meaning of the utterance, provided that the third thesis holds. The 'rearranged' examples at the beginning of this section support this point. A second difficulty may be said to arise in cases where there is more than one person in the audience. Suppose the speaker utters x in the presence of two hearers and means r by it. Now s is true of only one of these hearers. The questio� is whether X meant r JS, vol. 2, no. 1
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m1 IL a .. person A is familiar with the contexts of experience E, where a sub-context e of E contains an objective connection between the fact, event, etc., constituting X and the fact, event, etc., which makes r true, then it is reasonable to expect of A that he possesses the relevant belief p which connects X (or an aspect of it) and r (or p from which r follows logically). m brings out the belief s. If X, as uttered by the speaker, means r if and only if s is true of the audience, then X means r on the same occasion if and only if m is true. It then seems that we have justification in proposing the following as an eluci dation of the notion of utterance meaning, without, of course, claiming Given an occasion of it to be anything more than a rough outline: X's utterance by a speaker, X means r if and only if there is an au dience A who is familiar with contexts of experience E, and a sub context e of E contains an objective connection between what consti tutes X (or an aspect ' of . it) and what makes r true (or what makes p true from which r follows logically).
ARDA DEN KEL
The non-Gricean conclusion that foJJows from the outline suggested is that a speaker who is said to mean something by the utterance he uses does not thereby give meaning to the utterance; rather he is able to mean by exploiting the already existing connections objectively linking what he uses as utterance with facts the obtaining of which wiU render what he means true.
Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Grice ( 1 957); ( 1 969); ( 1 9 7 1 ). Grice ( 1 957: 46); ( 1 969: 1 50). Ziff ( 1 9 7 1 : 63). Searle ( 1 969: 44). Patton & Stample ( 1 969: ! Off.). MacKay ( 1 968); Dodgson ( 1 936: 2 1 3-2 1 4). Schiffer ( 1 972: 20); DonneJJan (1 968: 2 1 2). r stands for a thought (or: proposition). I shaH be using "belief r" for the propositional attitude of believing that r is true. X, on the other hand, is any fact, event, object or sentence which is (or can be) used as utterance. 38
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on this occasion, and if so, whether the hearer who did not understand X failed to understand it. Take, for example, the rearranged version of B above, and suppose there were compatriots of the foreign head of state in the audience. The sign used does not exist in their culture and they have never come across it. Are we to say that because the rest of the crowd understood it, these foreigners failed to understand it? I think the only consistent way in which we can answer this, would be by asserting that the sign did not mean in their culture context. Ac cordingly, the outline proposed will have to be understood as applying to the occasion meaning of an utterance with reference to an experience context. This should be viewed as a desirable consequence, since what it implies involves the fact that individuals with common or similar backgrounds communic�t e more easily, efficiently, and in a richer way.But more importantly, it also implies that the communication of a particular thought r via a certain utterance X is possible only if both the speaker and the audience are familiar with the context of experience containing the relevant objective connection. So, given that the notion of context of experience can involve cultures, this last implication can be expressed in terms. of the familiar fact that · two people can communicate a thought r in the ordinary linguistic way by using a sentence X which means r only if both speak the language to which X belongs. In the case of natural languages the objective connection enabling a linguistic utterance to mean r is of conventional character and holds between the sentence X and what makes r true. A fuJJ description of this conventional connection wiJJ yield a descrip tion of the relevant langyage.
THE MEANING OF AN U TTERANCE
·
References Denkel, A., 1 980: On failure to refer. Mind 89. Dodgson, C.L., 1 936: Through the looking-glass. In The Complete Works of Lewis Carroll. New York. Donnellan, K.S., 1 968: Putting Humpty Dumpty together again. The Phi losophical Review 77. Grice, H.P., 1 957: Meaning. The Philosophical Review 66. Grice, H.P., 1 969: Utterer 's meaning and intentions. The Philosophical Review 78. Grice, H.P., 1 97 1 : Utterer's meaning, sentence meaning, and word meaning. In J. Searle (ed.), The Philosophy of Language. Oxford University Press. MacKay, A., 1 968: Mr. Donnellan and Humpty Dumpty on referring. The Philosophical Review 77. Patton, I., &: Stample, D., 1969: The rudiments of meaning: On Ziff on Grice. Foundations of Language 5. Schiffer, S., 1 972: Meaning. Oxford University Press. Searle, J., 1969: Speech Acts. Cambridge University Press. Ziff, P., 1 97 1 : On H.P. Grice's account of meaning. In D. Steinberg and L. Jakobovits (eds.), Semantics. An Interdisciplinary Reader in Philosophy, Linguistics and Psychology. Cambridge University Press.
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9 In the later versions of Grice's acccount (see Grice 1 97 1 : 59) further precision is introduced and accordingly, the belief intended to be induced by the speaker is not merely that r, but the belief that the speaker believes that r· (or in the imperative case, that the audience should intend to do r). Thus the speaker, instead of being viewed as intending to induce r, is seen as intending to induce a second order . belief that r. But since the inducing of a second order belief that r cannot be quite independent of the inducement of the thought r, I have based my reasoning on the earlier and simpler version. W ith adequate adjustment what is said with reference to the simpler version can be made to apply to the more complex version. 10 This move would be at least one of the ways of dealing with Searle's case (see Grice 1969: 1 60- 163) . 1 1 See also Denkel ( 1 980). 12 A speaker's utterance consists in the display, simulation or other exploitation of such connections. The speaker exploits such a connec tion so as to get the audience, who has formed the relevant belief p on th� same basis, to 'infer ' (in a sense of this expression) the de sired implication.
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40
CONSTRUCTIVITY AND RELATIONAL BELIEF
D.E. Over
Abstract
·
I Quine ( 1 966) introduces the following ambiguous sentence as a well known example: ( 1)
Ralph believes that someone is a spy.
He disambiguates ( 1 ) as: (2)
Ralph believes that there are spies;
and (3)
There is someone whom Ralph believes to be a spy.
Most people intuitively grasp that there can be some significant differJOURNAL OF SEMANTICS, vol. 2, no. 1, pp. 4 1 -62
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Relational or de re belief is normally contrasted with propositional or de dicto belief. A completely different distinction has been thought to be that between constructive and non-constructive reasoning. But if we say that a constructive belief is one justified to some extent by . constructive reasoning, then we can see that constructive and rela tional belief are connected. Constructive belief arises from some kind of direct contact (or at least possible contact) with an object, and so does relational belief. In more detail, these two concepts are joined by . the pragmatic notion of effective reference: . a - person can . only have. a constructive belief or a relational belief about an object if he can effectively refer to it. A speaker . is said to use a singular term with effective reference if and only if he has the ability to decide effectively which object it refers to. Effective reference is· a vague concept which comes in degrees, but these are also properties of con structive and relational belief. Effective reference is the basis of the most general theory or relational belief, and should itself be foun ded on an intensional semantics for the concept of ability. Quine puts forward an unacceptable analysis of ability, and any acceptable one would imply that his scepticism about relational belief is unjustified.
D.E. OVER ence between (2) and ( 3). Quine tries to bring out the difference by saying that (2) is true but (3) is false if Ralph is like most people. Kaplan ( 1 968) remarks that a statement like (3) 'would interest the F.B.I. ' and 'should presage an arrest', while (2) would not and should not. But Kaplan 's expansion of Quine's comment does not distinguish (2) and ( 3) in a hard and fast way; it rather makes the difference seem one of degree, varying from context to context. 1 The F.B.I. might take a great deal of interest in the truth of (3) in some cases, but very little in others, even if it is assumed that Ralph always has a good reason for what he believes. The truth of (3), even granted the truth of Ralph 's belief as well, may make an arrest more or less likely, depending on the context. Quine ( 1 9 8 1 ) acknowledges that the distinction between (2) and (3) is 'empty apart from context ' and adds:
Let us look at a specific example in which all the relevant points are particularly clear. Suppose that Ralph is summoned to view a police identity parade, and that the belief stated in ( 1 ) simply refers to the finite domain consisting of the men in this identity parade. Ralph, in other words, believes that one of these men is a spy. There are three men in question, and Ralph and the police agree to use 'a', ' b ' and 'c' as their names. These names are introduced by ostension in such a way that there is no chance of confusion or uncertainty. It is now possible to replace ( 1 ) with: (4)
Ralph believes that (a
is a spy or
b
is a spy or
c
is a spy).
There is no longer a scope ambiguity in {4), but its significance, particularly for the police, is still unclear. Ralph may have a belief which is analogous to that expressed in { 2); he may have some general reason for thinking that one of the men in the identity parade is a spy, but be unable to recognize him or pick him out. Alternatively, Ralph may have a belief like that referred to in {3); he may be able to say, for example 'b is a spy'. The police will be much more inter ested in the latter possibility than in the former. Our example may suggest to some that the interpretation of { 1 ) when a finite, surveyable domain i s presupposed, i s always concerned with only two possibilities. But consider a much larger finite domain, the Pentagon, and the variety of beliefs there could be about a spy in that establishment. The average person probably believes that some foreign power must have succeeded in placing at least one spy some where in the Pentagon. His belief is of no interest to the police, and it would be pointless to set up a huge identity parade for him to walk down. At the other extreme would be a man who could walk straight into the building and point to a spy. In between would be people who 42
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In �ontext it can still be important. In one case we can be of service by pointing out the suspect; in another, by naming him; in others, by giving his address or specifying his ostensible employment. 2
CONSTRUCTIVITY AND RELATIONAL BELIEF knew the name, the address, or the position of a spy, or who had seen at a distance, but been unable to recognize, a member of the Pentagon in suspicious circumstances. The distinction between (2) and (3) is commonly marked by more than one pair of terms. Quine sometimes says that (2) expresses a notional belief and (3) a relational belief. Sometimes he follows most other philosophers in saying that (2) expresses a de dicto and (3) a de re belief. We shall prefer here to call (2) a propositional belief and, follow ing Quine, (3) a relational belief. But whatever terms are used, we must explain how relational belief can come in degrees and vary from context to context. II
.:
(5)
.. > ' l
Some number i s a sum of two cubes i n two different ways. ...
' -
. : ::· .
. : A mathematician; such as G.H. Hardy,. could justify, in strict terms prove, (5) in two ways. He might be able to · assume the negation of (5), for example, derive a contradiction from it, and then infer (5) itself by classical reductio ad absurdum. He would not necessarily in this case be able to refer to a specific number, such as 1 729, which was a sum of two cubes in two different ways; and it would be said that he had proved (5) non-constructively. The alternative would be for Hardy to prove that 1 729, or some other specific number, had the relevant property, and then to infer (5) by existential introduction. In this second case, he would be said to have a constructive proof •
•
A belief justified by constructive means could be called a constructive belief; and a non-constructive belief would then be one justified only in a non-constructive way. When Hardy has a constructive belief in (5), there is some number, say, 1 729, which he believes to be a sum of two cubes in two different ways; but when he has a non-constructive belief (5), he simply believes that there are numbers with this property. A constructive belief in a mathematical statement comes together with a relational belief about the numbers referred to by the terms in that statement; and a non-constructive belief in the statement is only a propositional belief about it. 3 Constructivity has its original home in mathematics, in which it can be a precise concept, but it can also be extended beyond mathe matics. We can informally explain what constitutes a constructive proof of a compound mathematical statement by referring to possible JS, vol. 2, no. 1
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Existential statements, like the one Ralph is said to believe in ( 1), can be justified in two ways: constructively or non-constructively. The distinction between these two kinds of justification is at its clearest in mathematics, and we should begin by considering an example like:
D.E. OVER constructive proofs of its component statements. More generally, there is an analogous explanation of what constitutes a constructive justification of a compound statement outside of mathematics. 4 The relevant cases here are those for disjunctive and existential statements. A disjunction has been constructively justified if and only if at least one of its disjuncts has been constructively justified. An existential statement has been constructively justified if and only if an instantiation of it with a suitable singular term has been constructively justified; thus a state ment of the form 3 x A(x) has the property if and only if A(t) has the property for some suitable name or definite description t. Admit tedly, this explanation does not tell us what it is to have a construc tive justification of an atomic sentence, a problem that can be serious in mathematics, let alone in natural language. This is a problem that can only be briefly discussed below.
With these points in hand, Jet us return to the example of Ralph and the identity parade. The existential quantifier in ( 1 ) is to take the identity' parade as its domain, and suppose that we go on to imagine that Ralph, when challenged, asserts as his belief, 'b is a spy ', which he is unable to justify constructively: he has at some time observed b and found what he thought was a good reason for concluding that b is a spy. There could be no better grounds for holding that Ralph has a relational belief about b. Of course, this is a special, but I would argue, important case: the identity parade is a finite domain, and so open to Ralph's view that he can walk up to it and point out b . It is stiU clear that a general point can be made about constructive belief and relational belief. Constructive belief is not inferred only from abstract, universal principles, but arises from some kind of direct 44
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A ·suggestive way to re-state the explanation is in terms of the actions a person can perform as described by Hintikka's game theoreti cal semantics. 5 Sometimes a person will state a belief of the form A v 6 and, when challenged, be unable to pick a disjunct in which he believes; he believes that one of A or B is true but does not believe that A is true nor that B is true. A classical logician believes that Aristotle was bald or not bald; but he may be unwilling and unable to enter a controversy by stating one of the disjuncts as a specific belief. A person like this has a non-constructive belief in the disjunc tion. Similarly, a person may express a belief of the form 3 x A(x), and when challenged, be unable to refer, using a suitable term , to an object which satisfies A(x). Many of us may believe that some ancient philosopher was bald (for it must have been a common proper ty), but be unable to say which one (we may have our doubts about the traditional representation of Socrates or the traditional story about Aristotle). Our belief could only be called non-constructive. Hintikka would say that we had the ability 'to seek and try to find ' a bald ancient philosopher' but our belief is non-constructive because we cannot choose a suitable term , say 'Aristotle ' , and assert as our belief, 'Aristotle is a bald ancient philosopher'.
CONSTRUCTIVITY AND RELATION AL BELIEF contact with the objects it refers to. And relational belief is also based on a kind of direct contact with its objects. Since the contact can be more or less direct in each case, constructive belief and rela tional belief cannot be· absolute concepts, but must come in degrees of 'closeness ' or strength. ill
•.
Effective reference can be clarified by turning to . the more familiar notion of a decidable utterance, a notion which Michael Dummett has shown is of basic importance in natural language. (It has long been recognized, of course, that the concept. of a decidable sentence or formula is a central one in mathematics.) In Dummett's words, a speaker 's utterance of a sentence is decidable if he '[ ] has some ef fective procedure which will, in a finite time, put him into a position in which he can recognize whether or not the condition for the truth of the sentence is satisfied.' 6 Now clearly, an utterance will be decid able only if the speaker has some effective, finite procedure which will single out for him the referents of the terms in the utterance, for only then will he be able to tell whether the utterance is true. If the speaker is in such a position, then his use of the terms in the ut terance will have effective reference, and we can speak of his ability to pick out the referents effectively. Dummett does not use the phrase 'effective reference' , but he deals with the concept when he discusses what he does call an effective language, which is suitable for use by a constructivist. In this kind of strict language, a person who uses a term correctly will have an effective method of deciding whether •••
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Deeper points about the connection between constructive and rela"' tional belief can be made by considering the use of the word 'suitable' in the explanation of when an existential statement is constructively justified. Return to ( 1 ) again and the case in which the domain is taken to be the Pentagon. Adapt a point from Kaplan ( 1968) and sup pose that Ralph, believing on general grounds that there are spies in the Pentagon, also thinks it reasonable that one of these spies is shorter than any other Challenged about his belief stated in ( 1), he uses the term, 'the shortest spy •·, to replace the existential quanti fier. Now by doing this, Ralph does not demonstrate that he has a relational belief, for 'the shortest spy' is not a suitable term in this case. It would be suitable- , if . Ralph could go into the Pentagon and point out its referent, but ·.- in . our example . he cannot do this. Ralph 's term is not suitable because he . cannot effectively pick' out · its · . referent. He may 'seek and try to . find' . the referent, but he has never found it in the past, .. nor does he have a ·definite means of locating it in a finite time in the future; Constructive and relational belief are linked by the concept of effective reference. We have a constructive be lief only if we can effectively refer, and we have a relational belief only if we can effectively refer.
D.E. OVER any object is the referent of the term. 7 A person who speaks the language, in other words, wiH use its terms with effective reference. It is important to note that decidabi!ity and effective reference are highly contectual notions for a language containing indexicals, demonstratives, and references to time. Consider: (6)
The number of pens on my desk on 2 1 June 1 982 was even.
(7)
The number of pens on my desk on 21 June 1 982
Decidability and effective reference are also contextual concepts in the sense that their unqualified application is clear in some contexts but not others. The · clearest and strongest kind of case would be one like the following. We see a man in suspicious circumstances and say, ' That man is a spy.' Our use of the demonstrative, 'That man ', together with any gestures we may employ, has effective reference as a result of separating the man from his surroundings. We may then justify constructively our belief that someone is a spy. We may decide to introduce a name for him, say, ' Cicero'. Later at a police identity parade we may be able to state, 'That man is Cicero.' This use of ' Cicero' would also definitely have effective reference. Our capacity to recognize the man we caB ' Cicero ' would be our effective means of picking him out from the domain represented by the identity parade. It is equaHy possible to refer effectively to an object that we have not yet seen or singled out in any other way. Let us return for a mo ment to our mathematical example (5). A constructive proof of (5) would specify a particular number which was a sum of two cubes in two different ways. Another kind of proof, just as conclusive but not as fundamental from the constructive point of view, would be one which only supplied an effective method of specifying a particular number with that property; this kind of proof has been called a demon stration. 8 We would produce a demonstration of (5) not by showing that 1 729 had the relevant property, but by displaying an effective procedure which would, if we cared to foHow it, lead us to some num ber with the property. Now clearly there can be something like a demonstration in ordinary affairs , though this term wiH be infected by the vagueness in the concept of an effective procedure outside . mathematics. Imagine that there has been a murder, and that the 46
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My utterance of (6) is decidable, and my use of (7) has effective reference, at least on 2 1 June 1 982. I have counted the number of pens on my desk on this date, and so found the referent of (7) and the truth value of (6). But someone else may be unable to count the number of pens on his desk on the given date, or be unable to remem ber what the number was when he comes to utter (6) or use (7). His utterance of (6) would not be decidable, and his use of (7) would not have effective reference.
CONSTRUCTIVITY AND RELATIONAL BELIEF police know that some suspect in their cells must have shot the victim. The police did not see the murderer commit the crime, but suppose that they have a method which will reliably lead them to him, e.g., their forensic scientist · is able to test the suspects to see which one has fired a gun recently. Since the police have this method, they can use 'The murderer' or 'The man who fired the shot' with effective reference in some sense {if not the strongest).
Between the extremes there would be many cases in which it was unclear whether a term were used to refer effectively. Suppose that Ralph picks up the name ' Cicero' from someone who uses it to refer to a spy. Ralph might also . acquire some information about Cicero, but it might be uncertain whether he knew enough to be able to decide who in a group of people was Cicero. There is no precise way of deter mining in general whether a certain amount of information constitutes an effective method for picking out an object. A limiting case would be one in which Ralph 's only information was that Cicero was a spy. Even then, Ralph might have an effective method of singling out Cicero by tracing the history of the use of ' Cicero', the causal history of the name, back to its referent. But there would be many circumstances in which it would be very difficult to tell whether Ralph could do this. There is no definite way of deciding in general whether the causal history of a name can be used as an effective method for finding its referent. Effective reference is an unproblematic concept when the terms in- use refer to objects in a bounded, surveyable, finite domain complete ly open to view, such as the identity parade. When a person uses a term to refer to one of a number of objects all directly in front of him at one time, his use can be tested for effective reference by seeing if he can point to the object referred to by the term. Sometimes a problem would arise when it was difficult for us to discover whether JS, vol. 2, no. 1
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Common uses of demonstratives and indexicals are prime examples of terms which can have effective reference. If Ralph can reply, for instance, 'I am a spy ' , when he is challenged about the belief stated in ( 1), then he is certainly referring effectively. Ralph, in our example concerning the identity parade, has the alternative of using one of the artificial names, 'a', 'b', and 'c', to refer, as these have been introduced by ostension in such a way that he can point out what they refer to. He would also be able to use an ordinary name with effective reference, if the police told him the real names of the men in the identity . parade. And he could use certain descriptions to refer effectively, .such " as �The second from the left' or 'The shortest one.' At · the other . extreme : . would be terms which Ralph undoubtedly could not use with effective reference. He could not so use 'The shortest spy' , unless he were quite an . expert on espionage, nor ' Cicero' if this name were simply introduced by the police as a shorthand label for the spy they were trying to catch.
D.E. OVER the term really referred to the object pointed out. For example, Ralph might arbitrarily choose a man who, he said, was the referent of 'The shortest spy '; but we would naturally hope to uncover this arbitrariness, in one way, by asking Ralph why he thought that this man was the referent of that term. All hope of a decisive test is lost, however, when we ask whether there is effective reference to objects which cannot be immediately observed, either because they are distant in space or time.
Sometimes, of course, a person's information can 'be of service' to one group but not another. When this happens, the first group will be more inclined to judge that the person has a relational belief in their context than the second group will be in theirs. As an example, consider the plot of John Le Carre 's book, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Early on in this book, its hero, Smiley, learns that there is a K.G.B. agent in the British secret service. He knows that the K.G.B. calls this agent 'Gerald ' , and that Gerald must be one of the four top men in the service. It is not until the end of the book, after much investiga tion, that Smiley can say which of the four men is the spy Gerald. For most of the book Smiley surely would not categorically claim that had effective reference, and M.I.5 would hardly his use of 'Gerald' find this name helpful and conclude without qualification that Smiley had a relational belief. But the K.G.B. might take a different view. Suppose they hear that Smiley is looking for one of their spies; naturally they would be interested to hear which one. Smiley could help them out by letting on that he was after Gerald, and they might well con clude on that basis that one of their agents was believed by Smiley to be a_ spy. Examples like this one reveal that we should distinguish different degrees of strength in effective reference and relational belief. Until late in the book, Smiley cannot refer to Gerald effectively in the strongest sense, nor does he have the strongest kind of relational belief, as he cannot walk into the secret service and point to Gerald. But the K.G.B. could reasonably hold that Smiley can effectively refer to Gerald in a weaker sense, and have a weaker relational belief about 4-8
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It is no accident that the standard examples of relational belief are said to 'presage an arrest' or be 'of interest to the F.B.I. ' . There are examples in which someone has an effective method in the strongest sense for singling out an object. When a crime is in question, like being a spy, these are cases in which the believer can 'be of service ' to the F.B.I. As Quine points out in the quotation above, the believer can be of help in different ways in different contexts; sometimes he helps with a description, perhaps of an address or occupation, and sometimes he does much simply with a name. What holds these possi bilities together is that they are different ways of achieving effective reference in the strongest way. The F.B.I. can use, in different con texts, the · information present in an address or an occupation, or the causal history of a name, as an effective method for deciding who is to be arrested.
CONSTRUCTIVITY AND RELATIONAL BEL IEF him; after all Smiley does have a kind of method, embodied in his long investigation, which leads him to Gerald in the end. The pos1t1on of the K.G.B. on this matter would not really contradict that of M.I.5.
IV
There are a number o f theories o f relational belief, ranging from 'vivid name' theories, which hold that a belief is relational if and only if it is based on a term carrying a lot of information, to causal theories, which hold that a belief is relational if and only if it is based on a term causally tied to its object. We have seen good reason to support Quine's view that relational belief is a contextual notion, and that a number of different kinds of term can be the basis of it. Neither 'vivid name' theories nor causal theories take Quine's observations fully into account, and it is possible to see how they fail to do so by keeping the connection between constructivity and relational belief in mind. Kaplan ( 1 968) was the first to propose a 'vivid name' theory of relational belief. He stipulates that a term represents an object to a per son if and only if the term refers to the object, the term is a name of the object for the person, and the term is sufficiently vivid. He ex pi ains that a term is- a name of an object for a person if the person 's use of the term is at the end of a causal sequence stretching back to the first use of that term to refer to the object. So the causal history of a term determines for Kaplan whether it is a name of an object for a person. The vividness of a name is given by the amount of information the person using the name has about its referent. Kaplan says: The notion of a vivid name is intended to go to the purely internal JS, vol. 2, no. 1
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There cannot be just one, fixed interpretation of what constitutes an effective method for finding the referent of a term in natural language. Some effective methods give rise to greater abilities to pick out objects than other methods do. Along with this point it should be noted that effective reference is a pragmatic concept. It is defined in terms of a speaker 's ability to decide which object is the semantic referent of a term. It is thus a kind of speaker's reference and not to be confused with semantic reference, as these notions are defined by Kripke ( 1 977). The only way to tell whether a speaker is using a term with effective reference in an utterance is to study him and his surroundings at the time of the utterance. Only then is it possible to make a judge ment about what kind of an effective method (if any) a speaker has at his command, and how good an ability it gives him to decide which object is the semantic referent of the term he uses. Following this judgement, one can justify (if at all) a stronger or weaker statement about a relational belief.
D.E. OVER aspects of individuation. Consider typical cases in which we would be likely to say that Ralph knows x or is acquainted with x. Then look only at the conglomeration of images, names, and partial des criptions which Ralph employs to bring x before his mind. Such a conglomeration, when suitably arranged and regimented, is what I call a vivid name. As with pictures, there are degrees of vividness and the whole notion is to some degree relative to special interests.9
Ralph says, 'Someone is a spy',_ and when challenged with the ques tion ' Who ? ' , replies, ' The shortest spy is a spy. ' Using the concept of constructivity as above, we would want to know whether Ralph's use of 'The shortest spy' had effective reference; Kaplan would want to ask whether 'The shortest spy' represented a spy to Ralph, whether it was a sufficiently vivid name of a spy for Ralph. It may look as though these questions come to practically the same thing, particularly in some examples. It might seem, for example, that Ralph could single out a man in an identity parade if he had a vivid name for him and vice versa. But Kaplan does not explicitly connect someone 's possession of a vivid name with any actions he should be able to perform , and in deed Kaplan speaks of the vividness of a name as a 'purely internal ' , mentalistic concept. A point against Kaplan, then, is that h e does not make explicit the connection between .vividness and action in cen tral cases of relational belief. At least in examples like that of the identity parade, appropriate action is a test of vividness. Kaplan does say: Some people have also suggested that (a vivid name) must provide Ralph with the means of locating its purported object. But parents and police are frequently unable to locate persons well known to them. 1 0 Kaplan 's point is perfectly correct, of course, as far as it goes. But ordinary parents have had many occasions to single out their children effectively before they go missing and could recognize them again if they returned. Parents who do not have an effective way of identify ing their children, when given the opportunity to do so, do not have 50
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Kaplan uses his concept of representation to define validity for a kind of inference which Quine ( 1 966) called exportation. Assuming that Ralph believes A(t), for some term t, under what conditions may we infer, by 'exportation ' , that there is an x=t such that Ralph believes A(x)? Kaplan 's reply would be that this inference is valid if t repre sents an object to Ralph. Thus if t refers to an object, t is a name of the object for Ralph, and t has. the right amount of vivdness for Ralph · in some presupposed context, then Ralph has a relational belief in that context. The references j to a context here follow from the fact that for Kaplan it only makes sense to say a term is sufficiently vivid in a context.
CONSTRUCTIVITY AN D RELATIONAL BELIEF
Kaplan draws attention to the fact that his concept of vividness is very flexible, varying from context to context. In some contexts a weak notion of vividness is appropriate, while in others a stronger notion is insisted on. But it could well be doubted whether vividness is flexible enough, at least as Kaplan seems to present it. It is possible for us to acquire a name like ' Adrian' with little, if any, information about its bearer. We may be able to find the person who passed us the name, and perhaps we could easily trace his use of the name back to Adrian himself. Our ability to follow the causal history of ' Adrian' in this manner would in some contexts give us a case for claiming that we had a strong relational belief about Adrian. A possible action we could perform in following a sequence . of causes and effects would be more important at times than the lack of vividness in ' Adrian' or the images and descriptions we associate with · ' Adrian '. Kaplan could argue that we do have some vivid information about Adrian, namely that we would locate him if we followed the causal history of his name. This would, however, place an emphasis on the ability to perform a possible action which is not found in Kaplan ( 1 969). ·
Some philosophers attempt to make relational belief a cut and dry matter by putting all the emphasis on the causal history of names. Thus Devitt ( 1 98 1 ) would hold that Adrian's parents always have relation al beliefs about him, since their present use of his name is connected ultimately with him at his baptism by means of a 'designating chain ', i.e. a causal sequence of uses of the name. But we have seen that it is not intuitively correct in all contexts to hold categor-ically that Adrian's parents have relational beliefs about him. To reinforce this JS, vol. 2, no. 1
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the strongest kind of relational belief about them . A man may correctly believe that he must have a child somewhere, as a result of his numer ous love affairs, but on that basis alone, we would not say that there must be someone,· somewhere, whom this man believes to be his child. For an immediate kind of case, consider some parents of a runaway son. Suppose that the son has been missing for many years, and is now sought by the police for some crime. The police are certain that he must be one of a number of men they have in their cells, and they ask the parents along to point out their son. But the parents are unable to do that, as their son ran away so many years ago and has changed so much in the interval. They say, 'Someone in the cells is our son, but we don't know who he is. ' They even say, ' Adrian, our son, is in the cells, but we don 't know who he is.' Their statements are natu ral, given the background, and it would be wrong to conclude that there is someone in the cells whom they believe in the strongest sense to be their son. It will be said that ' Adrian ' is not a sufficiently vivid name for the parents to be said to have the strongest relational belief in this example. But the point is that the name is not sufficiently vivid for the parents because they are unable to use it in this context , a long with gestures, demonstratives, or descriptions, to single out their son.
D.E. OVER point, consider again the use of 'Gerald' as a code name for a spy. We may learn by some tortuous means that 'Gerald' is the code name given by some foreign power to a spy in our Ministry of Defence. We may spend years looking for Gerald and fail to find him. There is a causal sequence leading from our use of 'Gerald ' , through the foreign power, to the spy, but we could not justifiably claim to have the strongest relational belief about him.
Lewis argues that the objects of the propositional attitudes should not in fact be propositions, in the sense of sets of possible worlds, but should be properties, which are identified with sets of possible objects which have the relevant properties. He goes on to argue that every proposition corresponds to some property in this sense, but not every property corresponds to some proposition, and concludes that the properties lead to a more general theory of the attitude than the propositions do. A relational belief in these terms is the ascription of a property to an object 'under some suitable description '. What is such a description? Lewis also points out that this is a vague and contextual matter, but sketches a general answer introducing the con cept of a relation of acquaintance. He says that he has a relation of ac quaintance with someone if '[ ] there is an extensive causal dependence of my states upon his; and this causal dependence is of a sort apt for the reliable transmission of information.' 1 1 The general position is that a person has a relational belief about an object if he ascribes a property to it under a suitable description, which is one expressing a relation of acquaintance between the person and the object. •••
Lewis allows that someone may have a relational belief about an object even if he only has an ordinary proper name for it. For example, Lewis holds that someone could use ' The man I have heard of under the name of "Hume'" as a suitable description for the basis of a rela tional belief. Since such a description could be used by a person who had acquired the name 'Hume', but knew next to nothing about its 52
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We should keep in mind a basic principle about the strongest kind of relational belief. Anyone with this degree of relational belief should be able to pick out the object of the belief if given the opportunity to do so, and someone with this ability would, on intuitive grounds, have a stronger relational belief than anyone without it. Someone who could point to Gerald in the Ministry of Defence would have a stronger relational belief about him than someone who could not do that, even if they both used the term 'Gerald ' , which was causally connected with the spy in just one way. The causal criterion, as used in a straightforward way by Devitt and some others, does not form part of a the()ry of degrees of relational belief, and so does not cover the full range of cases with the variety of qualifications needed. But it is possible to have a kind of causal theory which recognizes the contextual nature of relational belief and does suggest a theory of degrees. Lewis ( 1 979) proposes such a theory.
CONSTRUCTIVITY AND RELATIONAL BELIEF referent, Lewis' s position should be classified as a causal theory rather than a 'vivid name' one. Still it is quite a broad theory, though neces sarily it does not make relational belief anything like a precise concept. Lewis could, for instance, deal with the above example of our use of 'Gerald' by explaining that we have a rather weak relational belief about Gerald because we have a rather 'distant' relation of acquaint ance with him, and one that is not completely reliable for the trans mission of information.
It also seems impossible for Lewis's theory on its own to explain fully some of the judgements we make about relational beliefs in particular contexts. Presenting one of his paradigm examples, Lewis points out that he can have relational beliefs about a spy he is about to catch because the spy '[ ] has left so many legible traces.' 1 J What makes this such a good example is that Lewis is about to single out the spy effectively in the strongest sense, and hence he clearly has the strongest degree of relational belief about the spy. But now contrast the two further cases. Let us suppose first that a murderer has left many causal 'traces' behind but not of the sort that would enable us to catch him; perhaps he is like Jack the Ripper, who mur dered several women and left no shortage of unhelpful clues, but was never caught. For the alternative, suppose that a second murderer has left very few causal 'traces' but that these do give us the ability to catch him; perhaps we are in the position of the forensic scientist, referred to in an example above, and can use ' The one with powder stains on his hands ' to pick out this murderer from an accessible group of people. Now we clearly have a stronger relational belief in the latter case than in the former, if indeed it is at all correct to claim •..
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Even Lewis, however, does not cover all the possibilities. One point is that a person can have a relational belief based on a possible relation of acquaintance. Suppose that I look in my diary and see that I face a large number of committee meetings over the next month. I may believe, on general grounds, that one of these will be interesting, as not all committee meetings have proved to be boring in the past. In this case, I cannot say now, or just as I go into the meetings, which one I think will be interesting: I cannot effectively refer at these times to one I expect to be interesting. This then is an example of a non-constructive- and propositional belief. But in another kind of case I would be able to refer effectively to a particular meeting I expected to be interesting for some special reason, say, by using descriptions like 'The one next Monday' or 'The one I am just about to go into'. Effective reference of this type would be the basis of a relational belief which I would have about the meeting before it had a chance to cause any reaction in me. Perhaps even worse for a purely causal theory is the possibility that I might not in the event get to the meet: ing, and thus might never have any causal relation to it. For I could still effectively refer to it, in virtue at least of an unexercized ability to say which meeting it was, and have a relational belief about it. 1 2
D.E. OVER that we have a relational belief in the former. Yet it does not seem possible to explain this fact purely in terms of the causal ' traces' involved; it must at least be made explicit that we have an ability in the latter case which we do not have in the former. The strongest degree of relational belief should involve, as I have already argued, the ability to pick out the object in a strong sense, and weaker degrees of rela tional belief should be similarly correlated with weaker or more limited abilities.
v
By noting the connection between constructive and relational belief, we do not by any means solve all the problems of the relational propo sitional attitudes. But we do achieve some degree of unity in semantics, by seeing that concepts which have been treated separately are related through effective reference, a concept which itself deserves more attention. And we gain some insights into both constructivity and relational belief by reflecting on their underlying unity. As demonstrated above, the strong central cases of relational belief are tied together by a strong notion of effective reference, and no one kind cf term, whether ' vivid' or carrying only its causal history, is necessary for effective reference in this sense. There are also weaker cases of relational belief, founded on weaker understandings of effec tive reference and parallelled by weaker concepts of constructivity. Effective reference is the underlying concept here, but is itself based on the ability to decide which object in a presupposed set is the refer ent of a term. This kind of ability, like more familiar abilities, comes in what can only be called degrees of strength. We can be more or less able to decide who is the best Malagasy speaker in a given lang uage class (which may contain just one outstanding student or consist of students at roughly the same level), just as we can be more or less able ourselves to speak Malagasy or to ride a bicycle. The levels in the ability to decide which object is referred to in a context give r ise to the degrees of effective reference and ultimately to the degrees 54
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It is the recognition of the significance of the concept of ability which is the most important missing element in Lewis's theory as well as those of Devitt and Kaplan. A person with a relational belief has a certain kind of ability (to a greater or lesser degree) which can be significant in some contexts. (It can be more or less interesting or 'of service '.) It is certainly true that someone may have a relevant ability because he understands a term carrying a lot of information, or he may have a relevant ability becaus� he is in the right kind of causal contact with an object. But these good points can be incorpo rated into the more general theory of effective reference, which in addition would naturaJly supplement an intensional semantics for the content of belief, as we shall see below. 1 4
CONSTRU CTIVITY AND RELATIONAL BELIEF of constructivity and relational belief. 1 5 But if there is no ability of this type, only a purely propositional and non-constructive belief is possible. Quine ( 1 977) continues to be sceptical about 'quantified propositional attitudes', though not nearly as sceptical as he is about 'quantified modal logic ' , since he will accept the former '[ ] as idioms relativised to the context or situation at hand'. 1 6 As I have tried to show in this paper, Quine rightly stresses the vague and contextual aspects of relational belief, but his unjustified inference from this point seems to be that no precise semantics for the concept is possible. A theory of the vague and contextual need not itself be unclear, as we know from recent work in the formal semantics and pragmatics of natural language. And consider the fundamental concept of ability. Take the question, ' Is anyone here able to speak Malagasy?' The answer could well be vague and context dependent. What is required in the context of the question? Would one have to do some elementary translating in an airport waiting room? Or exercise one's intuitions in the service of a linguist investigating Malagasy grammar? It can be clear in context whether or not someone has an ability, and if he does, how good an ability it is. A special case - of this is that it can be clear in context whether someone has a relational belief, and if he does, how strong it is. There can be a precise semantics of relational belief if there can be one of ability. •..
(8)
This vase is breakable,
should be taken to have the same truth condition as, (9)
This vase is similar in structure to something which does break.
His theory can be applied to the abilities we are interested in by taking, ( 1 0)
Ralph is able to pick out the murderer,
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In fact, Quine is somewhat susplClOUs of dispositional concepts, including ability, for being semantically connected with subjective conditionals (to say that an object has a disposition, or an ability, is to say what would happen to it, or what it would do, if certain condi tions were satisfied). 1 7 He must, of course, have a theory of these concepts, for one thing his entire theory of language is built on the notion of a linguistic disposition or ability. But he wishes to ignore dispositional operators, such as 'have the disposition to' , 'have the ability to ', or simply '-ble' as applied in a • term like 'breakable'. He sees these as too closely - related to the subjunctive conditionals and perhaps to the modal operator 'possibly '. Consequently he proposes that a statement like,
D.E. OVER as equivalent to, ( 1 1)
Ralph is simi.lar to someone who does pick out the murderer.
Part of the basic syntax and semantics of operators like 'is able to ' can be captured by putting them into the same category as 'try to' and 'wish to' of Montague ( 1 973). (The operator '-ble' obviously cannot be so easily treated, even at this level, in virtue of the special syntactic problems it presents). Two basic semantic points could be made immediately. The first is the obvious requirement that the set of people able to perform an action (at a given time) include the set of people who do perform it (at that time). This could be stated by a meaning rule in the sense of Montague ( 1 973). The second point 56
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At first sight this theory is quite reasonable. After aU, why do we think that the vase is breakable if not because it is similar (basically, Quine would say, in molecular structure) to some other vase or related object which has already broken? And why do we suppose that Ralph is able to pick out some well known historical person, say, Aristotle, whom he has never actually met? Our grounds might just seem to be that Ralph is sufficiently and relevantly similar in his knowledge about Aristotle (basically in his tissue structure, Quine would say in a materialistic spirit) to some ancient Greeks who actually did pick out Aristotle. The concept of similarity used here can only be called vague and context dependent, but it has to be to account for the fact that the vase, for example, would be judged to be more or less break able in some context but not in others. :The proposal also seems to allow for the fact that dispositions and abilities come in degrees of strength: the .relevant notion of similarity can be made more or less strong. However, in general a statement like (9) at best entails, and may not be entailed by, a statement like (8), as can be seen by consid ering ( 1 0) and ( 1 1). There can be no doubt that ( 1 0) may be true when ( 1 1) is false: Ralph may not be sufficiently similar (in tissue structure or any other way) to someone who has already picked out the murderer, particularly if no one has done this. (Even the murderer may be so mad that he does not think of himself as the murderer.) Again, Ralph may not turn out to be sufficiently similar to anyone who has ever picked out Aristotle. He may only know that Aristotle was a famous man and simply have the ability, through some unique means, to find out much more about him (an ability which, if exercised, would give Ralph further abilities, perhaps never exercised). To avoid problems like these, Quine must come to terms with the dispositional operators and their modal element. These operators allow us to generate complex predicates referring to dispositions which, may never be displayed, though certainly they would be displayed under certain conditions. If a statement iike ( 1 0) is true, then Ralph (or at least someone similar to him) would . display the ability under some conditions. In other termi nology, there are possible worlds in which Ralph (or at least someone similar to him) does display the ability. 1 8
CONSTRU CTIVITY AND RELATIONAL BELIEF is more awkward to formulate. Abilities are generally extensional, e.g., if Ralph is able to punch his best friend, and his best friend is the murderer, then Ralph is able to punch the murderer. Another meaning rule would have to ensure that these abilities had this proper ty. But some abilities are intensional because of the nature of the term the operator is applied to. From Ralph is able to become the Prime Minister, and Mrs. Thatcher is the Prime Minister, we may not infer Ralph is able to become Mrs. Thatcher. The term 'pick out' (as well as 'point out', 'single out' and 'identify') has the same effect. Ralph may be able to pick out his best friend without being able to pick out the murderer, though his best friend is the murderer. There can be an extensional interpretation of a sentence like ( 1 0), in which 'the murderer ' has wide scope, but this would be of no real interest. In that sense Ralph can, if he is at all normal� pick out any man who is put in front of him. What we are interested in, for the analysis of relational belief, is whether Ralph is able to pick out a man correct ly under the description 'the murderer '. Our interest is in the inten sional reading of ( 1 0), and no meaning rule should exclude this. ·
The study of effective reference must . c;:over a very wide span of abilities. There are the clear and straightforward abilities to recognize an object in a group physically present (as in an identity parade) or to apply a simple procedure to such a group (as in picking out the shortest person in the line). There are abilities to find out where one has acquired a proper name and to discover more about its bearer, and there are more or less strong .abilities based on more or less infor mation about objects distant in space or tlme. All these abilities are associated with different ranges of subjunctive conditions, and these conditionals by themselves represent a notoriously difficult problem for intensional logic. But this problem and the whole intensional ap proach to relational belief can only be ignored by those who have a satisfactory alternatiye analysis of ability. Quine 's final doubts about relational belief do not, then, justifiably follow from the important points he makes about it. But it is interJS, vol. 2, no. 1
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As indicated, these steps towards the analysis of the dispositional operators go naturally with an intensional semantics like that described by Montague. Lewis's account of the content of belief is also designed to . provide a kind of intensional semantics for this aspect of natural language, as can be seen even more clearly in Cresswell and Von Stechow (forthcoming). They develop, modify, and extend Lewis' s proposals, but do not pursue an analysis of his concept of a suitable description, leaving that for other work. Now the argument of this paper is that suitable descriptions should be taken to be singular terms (of all types) used with effective reference, a concept defined by means of a speaker 's abilities. A full account of the concept of ability, pace Quine, must deal with possibilities and subjunctive conditionals, and thus must equally form part of intensional semantics.
D.E. OVER esting to contrast his scepticism wi�h its opposite as stated by Dummett. Quine is fairly happy about purely propositional beliefs, which he claims can be '[ ] taken as dyadic relations between people or other animals and closed sentences. 1 9 He has also never expressed severe doubts about the distinction between constructive and non-constructive reason ing or about the related one between decidable and undecidable state ments. Quine ( 1 98 l a) has described how we make sense of undecidable statements by 'analogy and extrapolation' . I can display my under standing of a statement like (6) by effectively deciding its truth value (at least on 2 1 June 1 982) after effectively finding the referent of ( 7). My understanding of less decidable statements, justified (if at all) on less constructive grounds, moves out from such cases to ex amples like Quine's own, 'There was an odd number of blades of grass in Harvard Yard at the dawn of Commencement Day, 1 903.' I have no ability to decide the truth value of this sentence, and I certainly cannot use 'The number of blades of grass in Harvard Yard at the dawn of Commencement Day, 1 903' with even a weak degree of effec tive reference. But as Quine says, I can understand this sentence and this descriptio!) by analogy with, and by extrapolation from, expressions that are in turn ultimately connected in my understanding with the likes of (6) and (7). Sii)Ce Quine presumably thinks that there can be a reasonable. account of this development of understanding, he cannot reject as utterly empty the basic concepts, used to describe it, of constructivity, effectivity, and decidability (and their admittedly vague degrees). It can even be argued, as McGinn ( 1 980) has in effect shown, that Quine needs these concepts to support his theory of the indeter minacy of translation. z o The meaning of a decidable statement like (6) could be identified with the standard effective procedure I possess for counting the pencils on my desk. As there is, of course, no effective procedure similarly associated with undecidable statements, Quine can try to argue that their meanings are not completely fixed, and that this leaves room for some indeterminacy of translation. But if Quine can generally distinguish decidable from undecidable statements for the purpose of this argument, then he must be able to te11 the difference between effective and non-effective reference. And if he can do that, then he can explain the difference between relational and propositional belief. .•.
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Quine accepts the realist pos1t10n that undecidable statements have enough meaning to make them either true or false, and only concludes that their meanings are not fully determinate. But as McGinn ( 1 980) points out, Dummett presents the possibility of moving in the opposite direction and questioning realism on the basis of the observation that the meanings of undecidable statements cannot be fixed by effective procedures. � 1 Putting the case of the constructivist and 'anti-realist', Dummett would ask whether we can reaJly grasp the supposed classical meaning of sentences containing ' The shortest spy ' if we are unable to decide whom this description refers to or what the truth values of these sentences are. He argues that meaning, understanding, and
CONSTRUCTIVITY AND RELATIONAL BELIEF ability are closely related concepts, and doubts whether we can be said to understand the meaning of a statement when we are unable to display mastery of a procedure for deciding its truth value. He does not conclude with Quine that such a statement may have an indeterminate meaning, but rather questions whether it can be at aU ascribed a classical content which would make it either true or false. In this way Dummett presents an 'anti-realist' or constructivist alternative to Quine's realism, and this should have consequences for Dummett 's view of the relational/propositional belief distinction. He should not be happy with a pure propositional belief unassociated with any relational belief, and should doubt whether it has any proper content. He should demand to know how the believer could ever learn, or manifest his grasp of, the supposed content of a non-constructive propositional belief. His arguments, if accepted, would limit justified belief to constructive and relational belief. 2 2 ·
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The constructivist position Dummett sketches i s as extreme, and as unsatisfying, in the opposite direction as Quine's position. The clas sical semanticist must accept that constructive reasoning, where pos sible, is to be preferred to non-constructive reasoning, and that con structive and relational belief is based on more information than non constructive propositional belief. {That is why the former can sometimes be 'of service' when the latter cannot be.) He can further agree that linguistic understanding must begin with and somehow be always grounded in constructive belief and effective reference. Everyone must begin to learn his first language by effectively referring to objects he can observe and by forming constructive beliefs about them. Everyone's understanding of language would at any stage collapse without this foundation. · Given the connection between constructive and relational belief through effective reference, these points can be supported by the · arguments of Burge { 1 977) and Grandy { 1 9&1), who show that rela tional belief is basic to language learning and linguistic understanding. But it is impossible to draw a hard and fast line between constructive and non-constructive reasoning and belief: · by indefinite degrees the constructive becomes the non-constructive, and our linguistic abilities change over this range but never completely disappear. We still . have the ability 'to seek and try to find' the truth values of undecidable sentences; we may not waste any time actually exercising this ability, but we possess it because of our understanding of the semantic struc ture of the sentences. And it would. anyway be impossible to stick in nat ural language to some strong constructivist position; it would be too easy to slide by 'analogy and extrapolation' into less constructive and less relational beliefs. 2 3
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Notes The contextual nature of relational belief has also been argued for by Quine ( 1 977), Saarinen ( 1 982), and others. Kaplan ( 1 968) implies that relational beliefs come in degrees of 'vividness', but he does little to develop this idea. A person could be said to have a more or less 'high ' or 'strong' degree of relational belief if he is more or less closely related in some sense to its object, but not U the belief is more or less firm in his mind. Firmness of belief in that sense is irrelevant in this paper. 2 Quine ( 1 977: 1 0), and Quine (198 l b: 1 2 1). 3 In a constructive belief one holds, on some more or less strong constructive grounds, that a certain proposition is justified. It thus should be called a propositional belief, but a constructive existential belief is associated with a relational belief. This is only in part a belief: it also consists of a 'suitable' relation between the subject · and his object. . 4 Dummett ( 1 97 7), Ch. 1 , explains how compound statements are to be constructively justified in terms of the constructive justifica tion of their components. There can be no attempt to analyse construc tivity completely in this paper. But it is taken here to be a very wide (and vague) concept which comes in degrees of 'strengt h ' . It is not assumed, of course, that a constructive belief is true, but only that it is justified to some extent on constructive grounds. Specifically, a con structive belief is one founded on effective reference, a concept ex plained below in the text. See Over ( 1 983) for further points about effective reference. 5 Most of the important papers on game theoretical semantics are collected in Saarinen ( 1 979). For an extended discussion of this topic and intuitionism, see Tennant ( 1 979). 6 Dummett ( 1 976: 8 1). Note that decidability in this quote is defined by the concept of an effective procedure. 7 Dummett ( 1 97 3: 2 29-230), introduces the notion of an effective language. There is not space in this paper to examine a completely general concept of an effective method. In particular there is no dis cussion of effective methods for picking out abstract objects or myth ical and fictioRal objects. 8 On the distinction between a proof and a demonstration, see Dummett ( 1 977: 39 1 -392). 9 Kaplan ( 1 968: 201). 1 0 Kaplan ( 1 968: 201). 1 1 Lewis ( 1 979: 542). 1 2 I owe this kind of example to Lewis himself .He said that he had once been asked whether he could have a relational belief about a lunch he was to have some hours later. 1 3 Lewis ( 1 979: 54 1). 14 A Lewis style theory of the content of belief is compatible with a theory which explains 'suitable descriptions' by means of effective reference. But it is clear that the latter concept is concerned with 1
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References Burge, Tyler, 1 977: Belief De Re. Journal of Philosophy 74: 338-362. Cresswell, Maxwell J., and Von Stechow, Arnim (forthcoming): De Re Belief Generalized. Linguis.tics and Philosophy� Devitt, Michael, 198 1 : Designation. Columbia University Press, New York. Dummett, Michael, 1973: Frege. Duckworth, London. Gareth Dummett, Michael, 1 97 6: What is a Theory of Meaning? (II), in Evans and John McDowell, Truth and Meaning, Clarendon Press, Oxford. Dummett, Michael, 1977: Elements of Intuitionism. Oxford University Press, Oxford. Dummett, Michael, 1978: Truth, and Other Enigmas. Duckworth, London. Grandy, Richard E., 1 9 8 1 : Forms of Belief. Synthese 46: 271 -284 JS, vol. 2, no. 1
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the abilities of the speakers who use the descriptions. Our uses of 'Jack the Ripper' and 'Queen Victoria' are both causally connected with their referents, but we have abilities in the latter case we do not have in the former. We can point out representations of Queen Victoria, for example, and our information about her could have been used to pick her out at the time she lived. Possible causal contact can only be part of what it is to decide which object one is referr.ing to. .. 1 5 Notice that, although abilities come in degrees, it would be misleading to call ability an ambiguous concept. The same point could be made about effective reference, relational belief and constructive belief. 16 Quine ( 1 977: 10), and Quine ( 1 98 lb: 1 22). 17 For Quine's theory of dispositions, see Quine ( 1 960: 222-226). Over ( 1 976) is a detailed criticism of the theory and some of Quine' s later comments o n dispositions. 1 8 This statement is meant to be compatible with a wide range of theories about possible worlds and identity. My point is relevant to any reasonable analysis of ability. 19 Quine ( 1 977: 10), and Quine ( 1 98 l b : 1 2 2). 20 See McGinn ( 1 98CJ: 32-33), and Quine ( 1 960) and ( 1970) for the indeterminacy of translation. 2 1 See Dummett ( 1976), and many of the papers in ( 1 978). Over ( 1 982) briefly examines part of Dummett's position and the argument that relational knowledge is basic in linguistic understanding. 22 The true constructivist would reject the wide,. 'classical' notion of constructivity used in this paper. He might not even allow a general term like 'spy' in his language with its current meaning, which does not involve a strict decision procedure for its extension. He would find only very strong constructive and relational beliefs intelligible. 23 I particularly want to thank Kit Fine, Hans Kamp, Ewan Klein, and David Lewis for helpful discussion.
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Kaplan, David, 1 968: Quantifying In.. Synthese 1 9: 1 78-2 1 4 . Kripke, Saul, 1 977: Speaker 's Reference and Semantic Reference. Midwest Studies in Philosophy Vol. 2: 255-276. Lewis, David, 1 979: Attitudes De Dicto and De Se. The Philosophical Re vie w LXXX VIII: 5 1 3-543. McGinn, Colin, 1980: Truth and Use, in Mark Platts, Reference, Truth and Reality. Routledge &: Kegan Paul, London. Montague, Ric;hard, 1 973: The Proper Treatment of Quantification in Ordinary English, reprinted in RichmC>nd H. Thomason (ed.), Formal Philosophy. Yale University Press, New Haven. Over, D. E., 1 976: Quine's Dispositions. Philosophical Studies 30: 333-339. Over, D. E., 1 982: Predictive and Constructive Knowledge. Ana lysis Vol. 42, No. 3: 1 40- 1 46. Over, D.E., 1 983: Effective and Non-Effective Reference, forthcoming in Analysis. Quine, w.v.o., 1 966: Quantifiers and Propositional Attitudes. The Ways of Paradox. Random House, New. York, pp. 1 83-1 84. Original ly published in the Journal of Philosophy 53. Quine, W.V.O,, 1 960: Word and Object. M.I.T. Press, Cambridge, Mass. Quine, W. V .0., 1 970: On the Reasons for Indeterminacy of Translation. Journal of Philosophy 67: 1 78-1 83. Quine, w . v.o., 1 977: Int"ensions Revisited. Midwest Studies in Philosophy Vol. 2: 5- 1 1 . Reprinted in Quine ( 1 98 1 b). Quine, W.V.O., 1 98 1 a: What Price Bivalence? Journal of Philosophy 78. Reprinted in Quine ( 1 9 8 l b). CamQuine, w . v.o., 1 98 1 b: Theories and Things. The Belknap Press, bridge, Mass. Saarinen, Esa, 1 979: Game-Theoretical Semantics. D. Reidel, Dordrecht. Saarinen, Esa, 1 982: Hintikka on Quantifying In and Trans-World Identity. in R. Bogdan (ed.), Jaakko Hintikka: A Profile. D. Reidel, Dordrecht. Tennant, Neil, 1 979: Language Games and Intuitionism. Synthese 42: 2973 1 4.
