Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation

- ,-/

c

v�t

-

3

··68

Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation

Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation

DONALD DAVIDSON

\\

CL ARE NDO N PRE S S · OX FORD

Oxford University Press, Walton Street, Oxford OX2 6DP Oxford New York ToronlO Delhi Bombay Caicul/a Madras Karachi Petaling Jaya Singapore Hong Kong Tokyo Nairobi Dar es Salaam Cape Town Melbourne Auckland and associated companies in Berlin lbadan Oxford i.\ a trade mark of Oxford University Press Published in the United States by Oxford University Press, New York

© in this collection Donald Davidson 1984 First published 1984 Sixth impression 1991 All right.l· reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in allY form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, p hotocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press This book is sold subject to the condi:ion that it shall/lOt, by wuy of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated

without the publisher's prior consent III any fOlm of binding or covel'

other than that in which it is published and without u similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser British Library Cataloguing

in Publication Data

Davidson, Donald Inquiries into truth and interpretation.

/. Languu8e-Philosophy

I. Title

401

PI06

ISBN 0-19-824617-X ISBN 0-19-875046-3 (Phk) Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Davidson, Donald, 1917Inquiries into truth and interpretation. Companion v. to: Essays on actions alld events. Includes bibliographical references and index. I. Languages-Philosophy-Addresses, essays, lectures. PI06.D27

I. Title. 1984

401

83-15136

ISBN 0-19-824617-X ISBN 0-19-875046-3 (Phk.)

Printed III Greut Bl'ltoil1 hy J. W. ArroW.lmill! LtJ, Bristol

TO W.

V.

QUINE

without whom not

Contents

Provenance of the Essays and Acknowledgements Introduction

ix XlII

Truth and Meaning Essay 1. Essay Essay Essay Essay

2. 3. 4. 5.

Theories of Meaning and Learnable Languages (1965) Truth and Meaning ( 1967) True to the Facts (1969) Semantics for Natural Languages (1970) In Defence of Convention T ( 1973)

A pplications Essay 6. Essay 7. Essay 8.

Quotation (1979) On Saying That (1968) Moods and Performances (1979)

3 17 37 55 65

77 79 93 109

Radical Interpretation

12 3

Essay Essay Essay Essay

125 141 155 171

9. 10. 11. 12.

Radical Interpretation (197 3) Belief and the Basis of Meaning (1974) Thought and Talk (1975) Reply to Foster (1976)

viii

Contents

Language and Reality Essay Essay Essay Essay

13. 14. 15. 16.

On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme (1974) The Method of Truth in Metaphysics (1977) Reality Without Reference (1977) The Inscrutability of Reference (1979)

181 183 199 215 227

Limits of the Literal

243

Essay 17. What Metaphors Mean (1978) Essay 18. Communication and Convention (1982)

245 265

Bibliographical References

281

Index

289

Provenance of the Essays and Acknowledgements

Essay I, 'Theories of Meaning and Learnable Languages', was read at the 1964 International Congress for Logic, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. It was subsequently published in the Proceedings of that congress in a volume edited by Yehoshua Bar-Hillel and published by North· Holland Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1965. It is reprinted here with the permission of the publishers. An earlier version of Essay 2, 'Truth and Meaning', was read at the Eastern Division meeting of the American Philosophical Association in December 1966. The main theme traces back to a paper delivered at the Pacific Division in 1962. The present essay owes much to John Wallace with whom I discussed these matters from 1962 onward. My research was supported by the National Science Foundation. The paper was first published in Synthese, 17 (1967), 304-23. Copyright © 1967 by D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht-Holland, and reprinted by permission of D. Reidel Publishing Company. Essay 3, 'True to the Facts', was first presented at a symposium on Truth in December 1969 at a meeting of the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association. The other symposiast was James F. Thomson. The paper first appeared in the Journal of Philosophy, 66 (1969), 748-64, and is printed here with the permission of the editors. ' Semantics for Natural Languages', Essay 4, was read at a symposium organized by the Olivetti Company in honour of its founder, and held in Milan in October 1968. The proceedings were published in Linguaggi nella Societa e nella Tecnica, Edizioni di Comunita, Milan, 1970.

x

Provenance of the Essays

Essay 5, 'In Defence of Convention T', was read at a conference on Alternative Semantics held at Temple University in December 1970, and was published in Truth, Syntax and Modality (the title Truth Valued, suggested by Dana Scott, was unfortunately rejected). The book was edited by Hugues Leblanc and published by North­ Holland Publishing Company, 197 3. It is reprinted here by permis­ sion of the publishers. The next Essay, number 6, 'Quotatiori', was published in a special issue of Theory and Decision on Language Theory edited by H. L Berghel ( Theory and Decision, 1 1 ( 1979), 27--40). Copyright © 1979 by D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht-Holland. Reprinted by permission of D. Reidel Publishing Company. 'On Saying That', which is Essay 7, was published in a double issue of Synthese devoted to the work of W. V. Quine (Synthese, 19 ( 19689), 1 30--46). It was subsequently published in Words and Objections, Essays on the Work of W. V. QUine, edited by D. Davidson and J. Hintikka, D. Reidel, 1969, pp. 158-74 (revised edition, 1975). Copyright © 1969 by D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht­ Holland. Reprinted by permission of D. Reidel Publishing Company. Quine's reply to this essay is on pages 333-5 of Words and Objections. Essay 8, 'Moods and Performances', was read at the second Jerusalem Philosophical Encounter, held in Israel in April 1976, and was commented on by W. V. Quine. It was published in Meaning and Use, edited by A. Margalit, D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht-Hol1and, 1979. 'Radical Interpretation', Essay 9, was read at a colloquium on Philosophical Problems of Language in Biel, Switzerland, in May 197 3, and in another version at a conference on Language and Meaning at Cumberland Lodge, Great Park, Windsor in November of that year. It was published in Dialectica, 27 ( 197 3), 3 1 3-28, and is reprinted here with the permission of the editor, H. Lauener. Essay 10 on ' Belief and the Basis of Meaning' was prepared for a conference on Language, Intentionality, and Translation Theory held at the University of Connecticut in March 197 3, and was published in a double issue of Synthese edited by J. G. Troyer and S. C. Wheeler III (Synthese, 27 ( 1974), 309-23). This issue also contains valuable comments by W. V. Quine ( 325-9) and David Lewis ( 3 3 144) and my replies ( 345-9). David Lewis's reply has the title 'Radical Interpretation'. Copyright © 1974 by D. Reidel Publishing

Provenance of the Essays

Xl

Company, Dordrecht-Holland. Reprinted by permission of D. Reidel Publishing Company. Essay 11, 'Thought and Talk', was a 1974 Wolfson College lecture, and was published in Mind and Language, edited by Samuel Guttenplan, © Oxford University Press, 1975. It is reprinted here with the permission of Oxford University Press on behalf of Wolfson College. In June 1974 John Foster read a paper, 'Meaning and Truth Theory', to the Oxford Philosophical Society, and Essay 12, 'Reply to Foster', is my reply to the parts of his paper that concerned my work. Foster's paper and my response were published in Truth and Meaning: Essays in Semantics, edited by Gareth Evans and John McDowell, © Oxford University Press, 1976. My paper is reprinted here with the permission of the Oxford University Press. Essay 13, 'On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme', was slow to reach its present form. The sixth and last of my John Locke lectures, titled 'Invariants of Translation', was an early draft, delivered in Trinity Term, 19 70, at Oxford. In January of the next year I gave two lectures on Alternative Conceptual Schemes at the University of London which contained much of what is in the present essay. The material was distilled down to almost final form for my presidential address to the Eastern Meeting of the American Philosophical Association in Atlanta, 28 December 197 3. After that, but before publication, I gave a closely related talk, 'The Third Dogma of Empiricism', to the Philosophical Society at Oxford. The discussion was opened by W. V. Quine, and his comments helped me write the final draft. Some later fall-out from that discussion will be found in Quine's 'On the Very Idea of a Third Dogma'. My paper was published in the Proceedings and A ddresses of the A merican Philosophical A ssociation, 47 (1974), and is reprinted here with the permission of the Association. Essay 14, 'The Method of Truth in Metaphysics', was first published in Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 2: Studies in the Philosophy of Language, edited by P. A. French, T. E. Uehling, Jr., and H. K. Wettstein, The University of Minnesota, Morris, 1977. To my great profit, Gilbert Harman and W. V. Quine commented on earlier versions. Essay 15, 'Reality Without Reference', was first given in different form at a Semantics and Linguistics Workshop at the University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario in April 1972. Criticisms and

xii

Provenance of the Essays

suggestions followed, and changed, the paper over the years. It was first published in Dialectica, 31 (1977),247-53,and is reprinted here with the permission of the editor. 'The Inscrutability of Reference', Essay 16, was written for a special issue of The Southwestern Journal of Philosophy devoted to the work of W. V. Quine, but I missed the deadline and the paper appeared in a later issue, The Southwestern Journal of Philosophy, 10 (1979), 7-19. It is reprinted here with permission of the Journal. Quine replied to my paper along with others in 'Replies to the Eleven Essays', Philosophical Topics, 11 (1981),242-3. Essay 17, ' What Metaphors Mean', was read at a conference on metaphor at the University of Chicago in February 1978. It was first published in Critical Inquiry, 5 (1978), 31-47; © 1978 by Donald Davidson. The extract from 'The Hippopotamus' on p. 256 is from Collected Poems 1909-1962 by T. S. Eliot, copyright 1936 by Faber and Faber and Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc.; copyright © 1963, 1964 by T. S. Eliot. It is reprinted by permission of the pub­ lishers. In a subsequent issue of the same journal, Nelson Goodman and Max Black responded to my piece. Neither found much to agree with in what I had written. (Nelson Goodman, 'Metaphor as Moon­ lighting', Critical Inquiry, 6 (1979), 125-30 and Max Black, 'How Metaphors Work: A Reply to Donald Davidson', Critical Inquiry,

6 (1979), 131-43.) The last essay, Essay 18, on 'Communication and Convention', was read at the first Campinas Encounter in the Philosophy of Language at the Universidade Estadual de Campinas in August 1981. It is scheduled to be published in the proceedings of the Encounter, Dialogue: an Interdisciplinary A pproach, edited by Marcelo Dascal, John Benjamins, Amsterdam.

Introduction

What is it for words to mean what they do? In the essays collected here I explore the idea that we would have an answer to this question if we knew how to construct a theory satisfying two demands: it would provide an interpretation of all utterances, actual and potential, of a speaker or group of speakers; and it would be verifiable without knowledge of the detailed propositional attitudes of the speaker. The first condition acknowledges the holistic nature of linguistic understanding. The second condition aims to prevent smuggling into the foundations of the theory concepts too closely allied to the concept of meaning. A theory that does not satisfy both conditions cannot be said to answer our opening question in a philosophically instructive way. The first five essays are mainly concerned with the question what sort of a theory would satisfy the first condition. Essay 1, 'Theories of Meaning and Learnable Languages', urges that a satisfactory theory must discover a finite basic vocabulary in the verbal phenomena to be interpreted if it is to prove useful to a creature with finite powers. If this is so, there is no escape from the need to treat the semantic features of the potential infinity of sentences as owed to the semantic features of the items in a finite vocabulary. It turns out that a number of familiar theories fail to meet this condition: Frege's analysis of oblique contexts, Church's logic of sense and denotation, Tarski's informal treatment of quotation are examples. Standard theories of adverbial modification might well be added to the list. Essay 2, 'Truth and Meaning', argues that a theory of truth along the lines of Tarski's truth definitions, but modified in various ways to ap ply to a natural language, would be enough for an interpreter

XlV

Introduction

to go on. Such theories have clear virtues. They make no use of . meanings as entities; no objects are introduced to correspond to predicates or sentences; and from a finite set of axioms it is possible to prove, for each sentence of the language to be interpreted, a theorem that states truth conditions for that sentence. Further, the proof of such a theorem amounts to an analysis of how the truth or falsity of the sentence depends on how it is composed from elements drawn from the basic vocabulary. If such theories really do satisfy the two conditions listed in the first paragraph, we can take the word 'theory' in 'theory of meaning' seriously. Many objections have been made to the claim that truth theories can do duty as theories of meaning. Some of the objections I have tried to meet or deflect in other essays in this book. But whether or not the claim can be made good, some of the arguments for it in 'Truth and Meaning' are faulty. The reader will find that I shifted ground more than once as I tried to improve or clarify this central thesis. One thing that only gradually dawned on me was that while Tarski intended to analyse the concept of truth by appealing (in Convention T) to the concept of meaning (in the guise of sameness of meaning, or translation), I have the reverse in mind. I considered truth to be the central primitive concept, and hoped, by detailing truth's structure, to get at meaning. These are remarks about theories of truth, of course, not remarks to be found in them. Something else that was slow coming to me was that since I was treating theories of truth as empirical theories, the axioms and theorems had to be viewed as laws. So a theorem like' "Schnee ist weiss" is true in the mouth of a German speaker if and only if snow is white' has to be taken not merely as true, but as capable of supporting counterfactual claims. Indeed, given that the evidence for this law, if it is one, depends ultimately on certain causal relations between speakers and the world, one can say that it is no accident that 'Schnee ist weiss' is true if and only if snow is white; it is the whiteness of snow that makes 'Schnee ist weiss' true. How much of a concession this is to intensionality depends, I suppose, on one's analysis of the concept of law. What seems clear is that whatever the concession comes to, it is one that must be made for any empirical science. These matters are discussed in Essay 12. Essay 3, 'True to the Facts', asks whether a theory of truth in Tarski's style should be called a correspondence theory. Such theories do not, like most correspondence theories, explain truth by

Introduction

xv

finding entities such as facts for true sentences to correspond to. And there are good reasons, which can be traced back to Frege, for rejecting facts as entities that could play this role. On the other hand, theories of tr uth of the kind considered here do require that a relation between entities and expressions be characterized ('satisfac­ tion'). It is not easy to see how a satisfactory route to truth can escape this step if the language the theory treats has the usual quantificational resources. 'Semantics for Natural Languages', Essay 4, urges that truth theories could provide a formal semantics for natural languages to match the sort of formal syntax linguists from Chomsky on have favoured. When this essay was written, the deep structures of syntax were thought to be the vehicles for semantic interpretation. Essay 4 suggested that the deep structure of a sentence should correspond to the logical form a theory of truth assigned to that sentence. Tarski's Convention T, which is defended in Essay 5, is an informal, but powerful, instrument for testing theories of truth against one's prior grasp of the concept. In the most direct application, the test merely calls on us to recognize the disquo­ tational feature of truth predicates; sentences like "'Snow is white" is true in English if and only if snow is white' are trivially true. Since the totality of such sentences uniquely determines the extension of a truth predicate for English. a theory that entails all such sentences must be extensionally correct. Critics have often made the error of thinking that since the theorems that show a theory to be correct are trivial, the theory or the concept of truth it characterizes, must also be trivial. A theory of truth would serve to interpret a speaker only if the theory were up to accounting for all the linguistic resources of the speaker. But is a theory that satisfies Convention T adequate to a natural language? Here there are two questions. One is what devices to make or consider available in the language of the theory; the other is how to apply these devices to the language of the speaker. My working assumption has been that nothing more than standard first-order quantification theory is available. Indeed, I was long convinced that many alternative approaches to semantics, employ­ ing, for example, modal logics, possible world semantics, or substitutional quantification, could not be accommodated in a theory that met the demands of Convention T. I now know this was hasty. Convention T does not settle as much as I thought, and more

XVI

Introduction

possibilities for interesting theorizing are open than I had realized. The well-known virtues of first-order quantification theory still provide plenty of motivation, however, to see how much we can do with it. In the next three essays, collected under the head of application, I attempt the semantic taming of three related but recalcitrant idioms: quotation, indirect discourse, and mood operators. Essay 6 points out that no current theory of quotation is entirely satisfactory, and it proposes an explicitly demonstrative approach which makes quotation a special case of the demonstrative reference of words to other words in the verbal neighbourhood. Essay 7, 'On Saying That', concentrates on one of the many kinds of sentence used to attribute attitudes; the paratactic solution suggested has obvious affinities with the treatment of quotation in Essay 6. In Essay 3 there are hints (which I think could be developed) on how the analysis could be extended to belief sentences. If the strategy were to be pursued, it might serve to give a semantics (though not a logic) for the modalities, for counterfactuals, and further sentences about 'propositional' attitudes. Essay 8, 'Moods and Performances', stresses the often neglected distinction between grammatical moods on the one hand and various sorts of illocutionary force on the other. Only the first is of concern to a theory of what words mean. Here a paratactic analysis of imperatives is suggested which is intended to accommodate our natural feeling that imperatives don't have a truth value while remaining within the resources of a theory of truth. In the companion volume to this one, Essays on A ctions and Events, I show how a theory of truth can be applied to a number of further problem cases: sentences about actions and other events, adverbial modification, and singular causal statements. The third section of the present book is addressed to the question whether a theory of truth for a speaker can be verified without assuming tuo much of what it sets out to describe. In 'Radical Interpretation', Essay 9, as in the rest of the essays, I follow Quine in supposing that even if we narrow attention to verbal behaviour that reveals when, and under what conditions, a speaker gives credence to a sentence, there is no direct way of sorting out the roles of belief and meaning in explaining that credence. Eliciting separate accounts of belief and meaning requires a theory that can bring to bear on the interpretation of each sentence and its

Introduction

XVII

accompanying attitudes the contribution of further data. Only by studying the pattern of assents to sentences can we decide what is meant and what believed. Depending on evidence which, without the aid of theory, makes no distinction between the contributions of belief and meaning to linguistic behaviour, requires a method for effecting the separation to a degree sufficient for communication. Devices to this end are described and defended in the present essays. But all of them, in one way Or another, rely on the Principle of Charity. The phrase and the basic idea come from Neil Wilson, ' Substances Without Substrata', Quine puts it this way: '. . , assertions start­ lingly false on the face of them are likely to tum on hidden differences of language' (Word and Object, p. 59), Quine applies the principle primarily to the interpretation of the logical constants. Because I find I cannot use Quine's notion of stimulus meaning as a basis for interpreting certain sentences, I apply the Principle of Charity across the board. So applied, it counsels us quite generally to prefer theories of interpretation that minimize disagreement. So I tended to put the matter in the early essays, wanting to stress the inevitability of the appeal to charity. But minimizing disagreement, or maximizing agreement, is a confused ideal. The aim of interpre­ tation is not agreement but understanding. My point has always been that understanding can be secured only by interpreting in a way that makes for the right sort of agreement. The 'right sort'. however, is no easier to specify than to say what constitutes a good reason for holding a particular belief. The subtle pressures on the Principle of Charity begin to emerge in Essays 10 and II. Yet here too there are only hints; in work now in progress I attempt to develop the subject in more detail. Essay 10, 'Belief and the Basis of Meaning', insists on the symmetry of belief and meaning in the exploration of verbal behaviour. In one important respect it goes further. It develops a striking parallel between Bayesian theories of decision and theories of meaning, and gives reasons why the two theories should be considered mutually dependent. The hints dropped here, which give promise of a unified theory of speech and action, have been taken up in my Carus Lectures, and will be published presently. The first two essays on radical interpretation stress the fact that understanding the words of a speaker requires knowing much about what he believes. Essay 11, 'Thought and Talk', attends to the

xviii

Introduction

reciprocal dependence, and concludes, rather speculatively, that only a creature with a language can properly be said to have a full­ fledged scheme of propositional attitudes. Essay 12, 'Reply to Foster', as remarked above, recognizes that if a theory of truth is to suffice for interpretation, it must be more than true: its axioms and theorems must be natural laws. If an interpreter knew such a theory, he could use it to understand a speaker; but only if he knew that the theory's pronouncements were nomic. The next four essays may be described as philosophical fall­ out from the approach to truth and interpretation recommended here. A theory of truth can be called a correspondence theory in the unassuming sense of Essay 3, but that sense does not encourage the thought that we understand what it would be like to compare sentences with what they are about, since the theory provides no entities with which to compare sentences. Along related lines, Essay 13, 'On the Very Idea of a. Conceptual Scheme', scouts the intelligibility of claims that different languages or conceptual schemes 'divide up' or 'cope with' reality in importantly different ways. Our general method of interpretation forestalls the possibility of discovering that others have radically different intellectual equipment. But more important, it is argued that if we reject the idea of an uninterpreted source of evidence no room is left for a dualism of scheme and content. Without such a dualism we cannot make sense of conceptual relativism. This does not mean that we must give up the idea of an objective world independent of our knowledge of it. The argument against conceptual relativism shows rather that language is not a screen or filter through which our knowledge of the world must pass. Giving up the dualism of scheme and content amounts to abandoning a theme central to empiricism in its main historical manifestations. But I do not think, as friends and critics have variously suggested, that my argument against empiricism makes me, Or ought to make me, a pragmatist, a transcendental idealist, or an 'internal' realist. All these positions are forms of relativism that I find as hard to understand as the empiricisms I attack. According to Essay 13, no sense can be made of the idea that the conceptual resources of different languages differ dramatically. The argument that makes for this conclusion makes equally for the conclusion that the general outlines of our view of the world are

Introduction

XIX

correct; we individually and communally may go plenty wrong, but only on condition that in most large respects we are right. It follows that when we study what our language-any language-requires in the way of overall ontology, we are not just making a tour of our own picture of things: what we take there to be is pretty much what there is. This is the theme of Essay 14, 'The Method of Truth in Metaphysics'. A theory of truth is tested by theorems that state the conditions under which sentences are true; these theorems say nothing about reference. Essay 15, 'Reality Without Reference', accordingly contends that how a theory of truth maps non-sentential expressions on to objects is a matter of indifference as long as the conditions of truth are not affected. The question what objects a particular sentence is about, like the questions what object a term refers to, or what objects a predicate is true of, has no answer. In Essay 15 I am with Quine in holding reference to be inscrutable. Essay 16, 'The Inscrutability of Reference', warns against taking inscrutability as a reason for trying somehow to relativize the reference and ontology of singular terms and predicates. For since nothing can reveal how a speaker's words have been mapped on to objects, there is nothing to relativize to; and interpretation being unaffected, there is no need to relativize. No discussion of theories of meaning can fail to take account of the limits of application of such theories. The scope must be broad enough to provide an insight into how language can serve OUr endless purposes, but restricted enough to be amenable to serious systematization. Essay 8 took a necessary step by distinguishing between grammatical mood, which the meanest theory must account for, and the force of utterances, which is beyond the reach of comparable regimentation. Essay 17, 'What Metaphors Mean', is mainly devoted to the thesis that we explain what words in metaphor do only by supposing they have the same meanings they do in non­ figurative contexts. We lose our ability to account for metaphor, as well as rule out all hope of responsible theory, if we posit metaphorical meanings. Essay 18, 'Communication and Convention', draws another boundary. It i3 always an open question how well the theory an interpreter brings to a linguistic encounter will cope. In practice an interpreter keeps the conversation going by adjusting his theory on the spot. The principles of such inventive accommodation are not

xx

Introduction

themselves reducible to theory, involving as they do nothing less than all our skills at theory construction. The essays have been retouched in minor ways to reduce repetition, to eliminate unnecessary or confused passages, Or to bring early more into line with later thoughts. These temperings have been limited to the trivial. Where my errors or lapses have earned attention I have let things stand, or marked the change with a footnote. Many more people have helped me than I can possibly thank here, but I do especially want to mention Paul Grice, Gilbert Harman, Saul Kripke, David Lewis, Richard Rorty, Sir Peter Strawson, and Bruce Vermazen. Sue Larson and Akeel Bilgrami did indispensable work on the footnotes, bibliography, and index. Much more than that, they gave me philosophical advice and moral support. Sue Larson has taught me much about philosophy of language; her influence is especially strong in Essays 8 and 18. In 1970 I gave the John Locke lectures at Oxford. The contents of those lectures turn up here (much modified) in Essays 2, 3, 6, 7, and 13. A further lecture on adverbial modification drew on material now printed in Essays 6- 1 1 of Essays on Actions and Events. An early influence on my thinking was Michael Dummett, who lectured on Frege and philosophy of language several times at Stanford University while I was there in the fifties. Our discussions took a public form in 1974 when we gave a joint seminar on truth while I was a visiting fellow at All Souls College. Over the years John Wallace and I talked endlessly about the issues raised in this book. He early appreciated the power of Tarski's work on truth, and much that I have written reflects his insight and sympathetic criticism. W. V. Quine was my teacher at a crucial stage in my life. He not only started me thinking about language, but he was the first to give me the idea that there is such a thing as being right, or at least wrong, in philosophy, and that it matters which. Without the inspiration of his writing, his patient tutelage, his friendly wit and his generous encouragement, this book would not be worse than it is. It would not be.

TRUTH AND MEANING

1

Theories of Meaning and Learnable Languages

Philosophers are fond of making claims concerning the properties a language must have if it is to be, even in principle, learnable. The point of these claims has generally been to bolster or to undermine some philosophical doctrine, epistemological, metaphysical, onto­ logical, or ethical. But if the arguments are good they must have implications for the empirical science of concept formation, if only by way of saying what the limits of the empirical are. Often it is asserted or implied that purely a priori considerations suffice to determine features of the mechanisms, or the stages, of language learning; such claims are suspect. I n the first part of this paper I examine a typical example of such a position, and try my hand at sorting out what may be acceptable from what is not. -In contrast to shaky hunches about how we learn language, I propose what seems to me clearly to be a necessary feature of a learnable language: it must be possible to give a constructive account of the meaning of the sentences in the language. Such an account I call a theory of meaning for the language, and I suggest that a theory of meaning that conflicts with this condition, whether put forward by philosopher, linguist, or psychologist, cannot be a theory of a natural language; and if it ignores this condition, it fails to deal with something central to the concept of a language. Nevertheless, as I try to show in the second part of this paper, a number of current theories of meaning do either conflict with or ignore this condition for being learnable.

I First we learn a few names and predicates that apply to medium­ sized lovable or edible physical objects in the foreground of sense

4

Truth and Meaning

and interest; the learning takes place through a conditioning process involving ostension. Next come complex predicates and singular terms for objects not necessarily yet observed, or forever out of sight due to size, date, attenuation, or inexistence. Then come theoretical terms, learned perhaps by way of 'meaning postulates' or by dint of being embedded in suitably scientific discourse. Somewhere early in the game the great jump is made from term to sentence, though just how may be obscure, the transition being blurred by the existence of one-word sentences: 'Mama ', 'Fire', 'Slab', 'Block' , ' Gavagai', and so on. Thus, in brief caricature, goes the building-block theory of language learning, echoing, chapter by dusty chapter, empiricist epistemology. The theory is now discredited in most details. For one thing, there is no obvious reason to think the order of learning is related to epistemological priority. For another, some of the claims seem contradicted by experience: for example, a child learns the general terms 'cat' , 'came\', 'mastodon', and 'unicorn' in what may be, to all telling, a uniform way (perhaps by paging through a picture book), though the child's relation to the extensions of these terms is altogether different. In some cases, the orde r of language learning is arguably the reverse of the epistemological order: sense-data may be the basis for our knowledge o f physical objects, but talk of sense­ data is learned, if learned at all, long after talk of physical objects is achieved. Finally, the underlying epistemology, with its assumption of associationist psychology and its simple reductionist theory of meaning is no longer appealing to most philosophers. In the light of all this it is astonishing that something very like the doctrine of language learning which began as a feeble outgrowth of early empiricism should now flourish while the parent plant wilts. What follows is a single example of dependence on this outmoded doctrine, but the example could easily be multiplied from current literature.

P. F. Strawson has attacked Quine's weB known view that 'the whole category of singular terms is theoretically superfluous'. 1 Strawson grants, at least for argument's sake, that within a language already containing singular terms, we can paraphrase 'all that we at I P. F. Strawson, 'Singular Terms, Ontology a nd Identity', Subsequent references give the page numbers in parentheses, The quotation from Quine is on page 211 of Methods o f Logic.

Theories of Meaning and Learnable Languages

5

pres ent say with the use of singular terms into forms of words which do not contain singular terms'

(434).

What Strawson denies is that

from this assumpt ion there follows the theoretical possibility that we could speak a language without singular te rms, '. . . in which we never had used them, in which the category of singular terms simply did not exist, but in which we were nevertheless able to say, in effect, all that we are at present able to say with the use of singular terms'

(433, 434).

Strawson then sets out to establish independently the

theoretical impossibility of such a language. In order to focus on the point at issue, let me explain that I have no interest in contesting two of Strawson's theses, namely, and roughly, the eliminability paraphrasability, and that

of singular terms does not follow from eliminability, as described, is impossible.

Both points are moot, so far as I am concerned, pending clarification of the notion of being able to say the same thing. Not to try conclusions, then, my concern is entirely with the main argument Strawson uses in the attempt to discredit Quine's elimin­ ability thesis. Two claims essential to this argument are these:

( l ) for any predicate to be understood, some predicates must be learned ostensively or by 'direct confrontation';

( 2) for such learning to take place, the ostensive learning situation must be 'articulated in the language' by a demonstrative element which picks out or identifies entities of the sort to which the predicate applies

(445, 44 6).

Quine has countered that

( l ) and ( 2) do not suffice to establish the

necessity for singular terms, because demonstratives may be con­

strued as general terms. 2 This may well be true; my interest however is in the implication of

(I) and (2) that substantive questions about

language learning can be settled on purely a priori grounds. 3

Summarizing his own argument, Strawson says: 'Some universal terms must be connected with our experience if any are to be understood. And these universal terms must be connected with particular bits or slices of our experience. Hence , if they are to be W. V, Quine, Word and Object, 185, Strawson quotes Quine, Mathematical Logic, 218, in support of (1), and Quine h imself might now be quoted i n support of something like bot h (I) and (2) in Word and Object a nd The Roots 0/ Ref'erence, But aside from the fact that Quine decli nes to draw Strawson's concl usion, t here remains the importa nt diffe rence t hat Quine at most thinks (I) a nd (2) are true , while Strawson wants to show they are necessary, I am concerned he re only with t he claim of necessity, t h ough I doubt t hat either (l) or (2) is a n important truth about l a nguage acquisition. 2

.1

6

Truth and Meaning

learnt of

as predicates of particulars, they must be demonstratively identified particulars. ' (446.

learnt as predicates Italics in original .)

Here it is perhaps obvious that the notion of learning appears vacuously in the conclusion; so let us turn briefly to

(1) and ( 2).

Surely it is an empirical question whether, as a result of certain experiences, a person turns out to have some ability he did not have before; yet

(l) and ( 2) claim it is a purely 'logical' matter that

everyone who has acquired a linguistic ability of a specified kind has travelled a prescribed route.

Strawson apparently equates the ostensive learning of a predicate with learning hy 'direct confron­ tation' . One can imagine two ways in which such a process is intended to be more special than learning the meaning of a predicate through hearing sentences which couple it with demonstrative

singular terms. One is, that ostensive learning may require an intention on the part of the teacher to bring an object to the attention of the learner. It seems however that no such intention is necessary, and in fact most language learning is probably due more to observation and imitation on the part of the learner than to any didactic purpose on the part of those observed and imitated. A second difference is that direct confrontation (and probably osten­ sion, at least as Strawson interprets it) requires the presence of an appropriate object, while the correct use of a demonstrative singular term does not. But it is not an a priori truth, nor probably even a truth, that a person could not learn his first language in a skillfully faked environment. To think otherwise would, as Strawson says in a later book , but perhaps in much the same connection, 'be to limit too much the power of human imagination'. 4 In defending

( 2) Strawson reveals what I think is the confusion

that underlies the argument I have been criticizing. On the face of it, there is no reason why the ostensive learning of predicates must be 'articulated in the language' in one way rather than another; no reason why the reference to particulars (assuming this necessary) must be by way of demonstratives. Nor does Strawson provide any reaSDn; instead he gives grounds for the claim that 'no symbolism can be interpreted as a language in which reference is made to particulars, unless it contains devices for making demonstrative . . . references to particulars, i.e. unless it contains singular terms for referring to particulars

. . . '.5

Later in the same paper Strawson

4 P. F, Straw son, Individuals, 200. 5 P . F. Strawson, 'Singular Terms, Ontology a nd Identity', 447.

Theories of Meaning and Learnable Languages

7

attacks ' . . , the uncritical assumption that a part only of the structure of ordinary language could exist and function in isolation from the whole of which it is a part, just as it functions when incorporated within that whole . . . To this extent, at least, language is organic'

(451, 452).

Here the thought emerges, clear of any

important connections with language learning, that Quine's elimin­ ability thesis is false because we would make a major conceptual change-alter the meanings of all retained sentences-if we cut them off from their present relations with sentences containing singular terms (or demonstratives, or proper names, etc.). I suggest that from arguments for the conceptual interdependence of various basic idioms, Strawson has illegitimately drawn conclusions concerning the mechanism and sequence of language acquisition. On the question of conceptual interdependence, Quine seems, up to a point at least, in agreement, writing that 'the general term and the demonstrative singular are, along with identity, interdependent devices that the child of our culture must master all in one mad scramble'. 6 It remains true, if such claims of interdependence are tenable, that we could not learn a language in which the predicates meant what predicates in our language do mean and in which there were no demonstrative singular terms. We could not learn such a language because, granting the assumption, there could not be such

a language. 7 The lesson for theories of language learning is wholly negative, but not perhaps without importance: in so far as we take the 'organic ' character of language seriously, we cannot accurately describe the first steps towards its conquest as learning part of the language; rather it is a matter of partly learning . 8

II It is not appropriate to expect i ogical considerations to dictate the route Or mechanism of language acquisition, but we are entitled to

consider in adv ance of empirical study what we shall count as

knowing a language, how we shall describe the skill or ability of a b

W. V.

Quine, Word and Object, 102. In Individuals Strawson agai n attacks w ha t he takes to be Quine's el i minabili ty the sis, but does not use the argument from l earning which I am criticizing. 8 Thi s theme is take n up again in Essay II. In Essay 8 of Ess ays on Action and Events I discu ss the question w hether objects are conceptually prior to eve n ts. 7

8

Truth and Meaning

person who has learned to speak a language. One natural condition to impose is that we must be able to define a predicate of expressions, based solely on their formal properties, that picks out the class of meaningful expressions (sentences), on the assumption that various psychological variables are held constant. This predi­ cate gives the grammar of the language. Another, and more interesting, condition is that we must be able to specify, in a way that depends effectively and solely on formal considerations, what every sentence means. With the right psychological trappings, our theory should equip us to say, for an arbitrary sentence, what a speaker of the language means by that sentence (or takes it to mean). Guided by an adequate theory, we see how the actions and dispositions of speakers induce on the sentences of the language a semantic structure .

Though no doubt relativized to times, places,

and

circumstances, the kind of structure required seems either identical with or closely related to the kind given by a definition of truth along the lines first expounded by Tarski, for such a definition provides an effective method for determining what every sentence means (i . e. gives the conditions under which it is true) . 9 I do not mean to argue here that it is necessary that we be able to extract a truth definition from an adequate theory (though something much like this is needed), but a theory meets the condition I have in mind if we can extract a truth definition; in particular, no stronger notion of meaning is called for. 1 0 These matters appear to be connected in the following informal way with the possibility of learning a language. When we can regard the meaning of each sentence as a function of a finite number of features of the sentence, we have an insight not only into what there is to be learned; we also understand how an infinite aptitude can be encompassed by finite accomplishments . For suppose that a lan­ guage lacks this feature; then no matter how many sentences a would-be speaker learns to produce and understand, there will remain others whose meanings are not given by the rules already mastered. It is natural to say such a language is

unlearnable.

This

argument depends, of course, on a number of empirical assump9 10

A. Tarski, The Co ncept of T ruth in Formalized Languages'. Many people, i nclud i n g Tarski, have thought it was impossible to give a truth defi n ition even fo r the i ndicative sentences of a natural lan guage. If this is so, we must find a nother way of showing how the meanings of sentences depend on t h e i r structu res . See Essays 2 , 4 , and 9.

Theories of Meaning and Learnable Languages

9

tions: for example, that we do not at some point suddenly acquire an ability to intuit the meanings of sentences on no rule at all; that each new item of vocabulary, or new grammatical rule, takes some finite time to be learned; that man is mortal. Let us call an expression a

semantical primitive provided the

rules

which give the meaning for the sentences in which it does not appear do not suffice to determine the meaning of the sentences in which it does appear. Then we may state the condition under discussion by saying: a learnable language has a finite number of semantical

primitives. Rough as this statement of the condition is, I think it is clear enough to support the claim that a number of recent theories of meaning are not, even in principle, applicable to natural languages, for the languages to which they apply are not learnable in the sense described. I turn now to examples.

First example. Quotation Marks.

We ought to be far more puzzled

than we are by quotation marks. We understand quotation marks very well, at least in this, that we always know the reference of a quotation. Since there are infinitely many quotations, our know­ ledge apparently enshrines a rule. The puzzle comes when we try to express this rule as a fragment of a theory of meaning. Informal stabs at what it is that we understand are easy to come by. Quine says, 'The name of a name or other expression is commonly formed by putting the named expression in single quotation marks . . , the whole, called a

quotation,

interior'; 1 1 Tarski says essentially the same thing.

12

denotes its

Such formulas

obviously do not provide even the kernel of a theory in the required sense, as both authors are at pains to point out. Quine remarks that quotations have a 'certain anomalous feature' that 'calls for special caution' ; Church calls the device 'misleading'. What is misleading is, perhaps, that we are tempted to regard each matched pair of quotation marks as a functional expression because when it is clamped around an expression the result denotes that expression.

But to carry this idea out , we must treat the expressions inside the quotation marks as singular terms or variables. Tarski shows that in fa vourable cases, paradoxes result; in unfavourable cases, the expression within has no meaning (159-62). We must therefore give up the idea that quotations are 'syntactically composite expressions, II

12

W. V. Quine. Mathematical Logic, §4. A. Ta rski, 'The Concept of T ruth in Fo rmalized Languages', 1 56.

10

Truth and Meaning

of which both the quotation marks and the expressions within them are parts'. The only alternative Tarski offers us is this: Quotation-mark names may be treated like single words of a language and thus like syntactically simple expressions. The single constituents of these names-the quotations marks and the expressions standing between them-fulfil the same function as the letters and complexes of successive letters in single words. Hence they can possess no independent meaning. Every quotation-mark name is then a constant individual name of a definite expression ... and in fact a name of the name nature as the proper name of a man (159).

In apparently the same vein, Quine writes that an expression in quotation marks 'occurs there merely as a fragment of a longer name which contains, besides this fragment, the two quotation marks', and he compares the occurrence of an expression inside quotation marks with the occurrence of 'cat' in 'cattle'I3 and of , can' in 'canary'. 1 4 The function of letters in words, like the function of 'cat' in 'cattle', is purely adventitious in this sense: we could substitute a novel piece of typography everywhere in the language for 'cattle' and nothing in the semantical structure of the language would be changed. Not only does 'cat' in 'cattle' not have a 'separate meaning'; the fact that the same letters occur together in the same order elsewhere is irrelevant to questions of meaning. If an analogous remark is true of quotations, then there is no justification in theory for the classification (it is only an accident that quotations share a common feature in their spelling), and there is no significance in the fact that a quotation names 'its interior'. Finally, every quotation is a semantical primitive, and, since there are infinitely many different quotations, a language containing quotations is unlearnable. This conclusion goes against our intuitions. There is no problem in framing a general rule for identifying quotations on the basis of form (any expression framed by quotation marks), and no problem in giving an informal rule for producing a wanted quotation (enclose the expression you want to mention in quotation marks). Since these rules imply that quotations have significant structure, it is hard to deny that there must be a semantical theory that exploits it. Nor is it entirely plain that either Tarski or Quine wants to deny the possibility. Tarski considers only two analyses of quotations, but he 13 W. V. 14 W. V.

Qui ne, From a Logical Point of View, 140. Qui ne, Word and Object, 144.

Theories oj Meaning and Learnable Languages

II

does not explicitly rule out others, nor does he openly endorse the alter native he does not reject. And indeed he seems to hint that

quotations do have significant structure when he says, 'It is clear that we can correlate a structural-descriptive name with every quotation-mark name, one which is free from quotation marks and posse sses the same extension (i.e. denotes the same expression) and

vice versa' ( 157). It is difficult to see how the correlation could be established if we replaced each quotation by some other arbitrary

symbol, as we could do if quotation-mark names were like the proper names of men.

Quine takes matters a bit further by asserting that although

quotations are 'logically unstructured'

( 190), and of course expres­

sions have non-referential occurrences inside quotation marks, still the latter feature is 'dispelled by an easy change in notation'

( 144)

which leaves us with the logically structured devices of spelling and concatenation. The formula for the 'easy change' can apparently be given by a definition

( 189, 190). If this suggestion can be carried out,

then the most recalcitrant aspect of quotation yields to theory, for the truth conditions for sentences containing quotations can be equated with the truth conditions for the sentences got from them by substituting for the quotations their definitional equivalents in the idiom of spelling. On such a theory, there is no longer an infinite number of semantical primitives, in spite of the fact that quotations cannot be shown to contain parts with independent semantical roles. If we accept a theory of this kind, we are forced to allow a species of structure that may not deserve to be called 'logical', but certainly is directly and indissolubly linked with the logical, a kind of structure missing in ordinary proper names.

15

Second Example. Scheffler On Indirect Discourse.

Israel Scheffler

has proposed what he calls an inscriptional approach to indirect discourse.16 Carnap at one time analysed sentences in indirect discourse as involving a relation (elaborated in terms of a notion of

intensional isomorphism) between a speaker and a sentence. 1 7 15

Pete r Geac h has i nsisted, in Mental Acts and elsewhere, that a quotation 'must take n as describing the expression i n terms of its parts' (Mental Acts, 83). But he do es no t explaitl ho w a quota tion can be assigned the structure of a description. Fo r a m ore extended discussion of quota tion, see Essay 6 . 1 6 I . Sche ffler, ' A n Inscripti onal Approach to Ind i rect Discou rse' a n d The Anatomy be

of" Inquiry. 17

R. Carnap, Meaning and Necessity.

Truth and Meaning

12

Church objected that Carnap's analysis carried an implicit reference to a language which was lacking in the sentences to be analysed, and added that he believed any correct analysis would interpret the that­ clause as referring to a proposition. I 8 Scheffler set out to show that a correct analysis could manage with less by demonstrating what could be done with an ontology of inscriptions (and utterances). Scheffler suggests we analyse 'Tonkin said that snow is white' as 'Tonkin spoke a that-snow-is-white utterance'. Since an utterance or inscription belongs eternally to the language of its ephemeral producer, Church 's reproach to Carnap has no force here. The essential part of the story, from the point of view of present concerns, is that the expression 'that-snow-is-white' is to be treated as a unitary predicate (of utterances or inscriptions). Scheffler calls the 'that' an operator which applies to a sentence to form a composite general term. 'Composite' cannot, in this use, mean 'logically complex' ; not, at least, until more theory is forthcoming. As in the case of quotations, the syntax is clear enough (as it is in indirect discourse generally , give or take some rewriting of verbs and pronouns on principles easier to master than to describe). But there is no hint as to how the meaning of these predicates depends on their structure . Failing a theory, we must view each new predicate as a semantical primiti ve. Given their syntax, though (put any sentence after 'that' and spice with hyphens), it is obvious there are infinitely many such predicates, so languages with no more structure than Scheffler allows are , on my account, unlearnable. Even the claim that 'that ' is a predicate-forming operator must be recognized as a purely syntac tical comment that has no echo in the theory of meaning. The possibility remain s ope n , it may be countered, that a theory will yet be produced to reveal more structure. True. But if Scheffler wants the benefit of this possibility, he must pay for it be renouncing the claim to have shown 'the

logical form and ontological character'

of sentences in indirect discourse ; 19 more theory may mean more ontology. If logical form tells us about ontology, then Quine's trick with quotat ions won 't work , for the logical form of a quotation is that of a sin gular term without parts, and its manifest ontology is just the expression it names. But the definit ion that takes advantage 18 19

A . Church, ' O n Ca rnap's Ana lysis of St a teme n t s of Asse rtion a nd Belie f '. I. Scheffler, The Anatomy of Inquiry, 10 I . His i talics.

Theories of Meaning and Learnable Languages

13

of its structure brings in more entities (those named in the spelling). 1 t is only an accident that in this application the method draws on no

entities not al ready named by some quotation. 2 0

Third Example. Quine on Belief Sentences.

W e can always trade

problems of ontology raised by putatively referential expressions and positions for problems of logical articulation. If an expression

offend by its supposed reference, there is no need to pluck it out. It is enough to declare the expression a meaningless part of a meaningful expression. This treatment will not quite kill before it cures ; after all singular terms and positions open to quantification have been

welded into their contexts, there will remain the logical structure created by treating sentences as unanalysable units and by the pure sentential connectives. But semantics without ontology is not very interesting, and a language like our own for which no better could be done would be a paradigm of unlearnability. Quine has not, of course, gone this far, but in an isolated moment he seems to come close. Near the close of a long, brilliant, and discouraging search for a satisfactory theory of belief sentences (and their relatives-sentences in indirect discourse, sentences about doubts, wonderings, fears, desi res, and so forth) he remarks that once we give up trying to quantify over things believed . . . there is no need to recognize 'believes' and similar verbs as relative terms at all ; no need to countenance their predicative use as in ' w believes x ' (as against ' w believes that p' ) ; no need, therefore, to see 'that p' as a term. H ence a final alternative that I find as appealing as any is simply to di spense with the o bjects of the propositional attitudes . . . This means vi ewing 'Tom believes [Cicero denounced Catiline], . . . as of the form ' Fa' with a Tom and complex 'F'. The verb ' believes' here ceases to be a term and becomes part of an operator 'believes that' . which, applied to a sentence, pro­ duces a composite absolute general term whereof the sentence is counted an immediate constituent. 2 1 =

.

_

In one respect, this goes a step beyond Scheffler, for even the main verb (' believes' in this case) is made inaccessible to logical analysis. Tal k of constituents and operators must of course be tak en as purely syntactical, without basis in semantical theory. If there is any ele ment beyond syntax common to belief sentences as a class, Q Uine's account does not say what it is. And, of course, a language 20 2 1

For fu rther work o n i ndirect discourse , see Essay 7. Quine. Word and Ob;ecl, 2 1 5, 2 1 6.

W. V.

14

Truth and Meaning

for which no more theory can be given is, by my reckoning, unlearnable. Quine does not, however, rule out hope of further theory, perhaps something like what he offers for quotations. But in the case of belief sentences it is not easy to imagine the theory that could yield the required structure without adding to the ontology.

Fourth Example. Church on the Logic of Sense and Denotation.

In

the last two examples, loss of a desirable minimum of articulation of meaning seemed to be the result of overzealous attention to problems of ontology . But it would be a mistake to infer that by being prodigal with intensional entities we can solve all problems. Frege asks us to suppose that certain verbs, like 'believes' (or

'believes that'), do double duty. 2 2 First, they create a context in which the words that follow come to refer to their usual sense or meaning. Second (assuming the verb is the main verb of the

sentence), they perform a normal kind of duty by mapping persons and propositions on to truth values. This is a dark doctrine, particularly with respect to the first point, and Frege seems to have thought so himself. His view was, perhaps, tha t this is the best we can do

for

natural languages,

but that. in a logically

more

transparent language , different words would be used to refer to sense and to denotation, thus relieving the burdened verbs of their first, and more obscure, duty. But now it is only a few steps to an infinite primi tive vocabulary. A fter the first appearances of verbs like 'believes' we introduce new expressions for senses. Next, we notice that there is no theory which interprets these new expressions as logically structured . A new vocabulary is again needed, along the same lines, each time we iterate 'believes' ; and there is no limit to the number of possible iterations. It should not be thought that there would be less trou ble with Frege's original suggestion. E ven supposing we made good sense of the idea that certain words create a context in which other words take on new meanings (an idea that only makes them sound like functors), there would remain the task of reducing to theory the determination of those meanings�an infinite number each for at least some words. The problem is not how the individual expressions that make up a sentence governed by 'believes ' , given the meanings they have in such a contex t, combine to denote a proposition ; the 22

See G. F re ge, ' On Sense a nd Re ference '.

Theories of Meaning and Learnable Languages

15

problem is rather to state the rule that gives each the meaning it does have.

To return to our speculations concerning the form Frege might

have given a language notationally superior to ordinary language, but like it in its capacity to deal with belief sentences and their kin :

the features I attributed above to this language are to be found in a

language proposed by Alonzo Church. 2 3 In Church's notation, the fact that the new expressions brought into play as we scale the semantic ladder are no t logically complex is superficially obscured by their being syntac tically composed from the expressions for the

next level below, plus change of subscript. Things are so devised that 'if, in a well-formed formula wi thout free variables, all the subscripts in all the type symbols appearing are increased by

I, the resulting ( 1 7). But this

well-formed formula denotes the sense of the first one'

rule cannot, of course, be exploited as part of a theory of meaning for the language ; expression and subscript cannot be viewed as having independent meanings. Relative to the expression on any gi ven level, the expressions for the level above are seman tical primiti ves , as Church clearly indicates

(8). I don't suggest any error

on Church's part ; he never hints tha t the case is other than I say. But

I do submit that Church's language of Sense and Denotation i�, even

in principle, unlearnable. 23

A. C hu rch, ' A Formula tion of t he Logic of Sense and De notatIOn ' .

2

Truth and Meaning

I t is conceded by most philosophers of language, and recently by some linguists, that a satisfactory theory of meaning must give an account of how the meanings of sentences depend upon the meanings of words. Unless such an account could be supplied for a particular language, it is argued, there would be no explaining the fact that we can learn the language : no explaining the fact that, on mastering a finite vocabulary and a finitely stated set of rules, we are prepared to produce and to understand any of a potential infinitude of sentences. I do not dispute these vague claims, in which I sen se more than a kernel of truth . 1 Instead I want to ask what it is for a theory to give an account of the kind adumbrated. One propo sal is to begin by assigning some entity as meaning to each word (or other significant syntactical feature) of the sen tence ; thus we might assign Theaetetus to 'Theaetetus' and the property of flying to 'flies' in the sentence 'Theaetetus flies'. The problem then arises how the meaning of the sentence is generated from these meanings. Viewing concatenation as a significant piece of syntax, we m ay assign to it the relation of participating in or instantiating ; however, it is obvious that we have here the start of an infinite regress. Frege sought to avoid the regress by sayi ng that the en tities corresponding to predicates ( for example) are 'unsatu rated' or 'incomplete' in contrast to the enti ties that correspond to names, but th is doctrine seems to label a difficulty rather than sol ve it . The point will emerge if we think for a moment of complex sin gular term s, to which Frege's theory applies along with sentences. Cons ider the expression 'the father of A nnette' ; how does the I See Essay I .

18

Truth and Meaning

meaning of t he whole depend on the meaning of the parts ? The answer would seem to be that the meaning of ' t he fat her of ' is such that when this exp ression is prefixed to a singular term t he resul t refers to the fathe r of the person to whom the singular term refers. What pa rt is played, in this account, by the unsaturated or incomplete entity for which 'the father of ' stand s ? All we can think to say is that this entity 'yields' or 'gives' the father of x as value when the argument is x, or perhaps that this entity maps people on to t heir fathers. It may not be clear whether the entity for w hich 'the father o f ' i s said to stand performs any genuine explanatory function as l ong as we stick to individual expressions ; so think instead of the infinite class of expressions formed by writing ' the father of ' zero or more times in fron t of 'A nnette'. I t is easy to suppl y a theory t hat tells, for an arbitra ry one of these singular terms, what it refers to : if the te rm is 'Annette' it refers to Annette, while if the term is complex, consisting of 'the father of ' prefixed to a singular term t, t hen it refers to the father of the person to whom t refers . I t is obvious that no entity corresponding to 'the father of ' IS, or needs to be, mentioned in stating this theory. It would be inappropriate to complain that this little t heory uses the words 'the father of ' in giving the reference of expressions containi ng t hose words. For the task was to give the meaning of all expressions in a ce rtain infinite set on the basi s of the meaning of t he parts ; it was not in the ba rgain also to give the mea nings of t he atomic parts. On t he other hand, it is now evident that a sa tisfactory theory of t he meanings of complex expressi ons may not requi re entities as meani ngs of all t he parts. I t be hoves us then to rephrase our demand on a satisfactory t heory of meaning so as not to suggest t hat individual words must have meanings at all , in any sense that transcends the fact t hat they have a systematic effect on the meanings of t he sentences in which t hey occu r. Actuall y, for the case at hand we can do better still in stating t he criterion of success : what we wanted, and what we got, is a theory that entail s every sentence of the form ' t refers to x ' where " t' is replaced by a structu ral descri ption 2 of a singular term , and 'x ' is replaced by t hat term itsel f. Further, our t heory accomplishes this without appeal to any semantical concepts beyond the basic ' refers to' . Final ly, t he theory 1 A 'structural description' of an expressi on describes the expression as a concatenation of elements drawn from a fi xed fi nite l i st ( for example of words or letters).

Truth and Meaning

19

clearly suggests an effective procedure for determining, fo r any sin gular term in its universe, what that term refe rs to . A theory with such evident merits deserves wider application . The device proposed by Frege to this end has a brilliant simplicity : cou n t predicates as a special case of functional expressions, a n d sentences as a special case of complex singular terms. Now, however, a difficulty looms if we want to continue in our present (implici t) course of identifying the meaning of a singular term with its reference. The difficulty follows upon making two reasonabl e assumptions : that logicall y equivalent singul ar terms have the same reference, and that a singular term does not change its reference if a contained singular term is replaced by another with the same reference . But now suppose that 'R' and 'S' abbreviate any two sentences alike in truth value. Then the fol lowing four sentences have the same reference : (I) (2) (3) (4)

R x(x x(x S

=

=

x R) x . S) .

= =

x(x x) x(x = x) =

Fo r ( I ) and (2) are logically equivalent, as are (3) and (4), while (3) differs from (2) only in containing the singular term ' x(x = x . S )' where (2) contains ' x(x = x . R)' and these refer to the same t hing if S and R a re alike in truth value. Hence any two sentences have the same reference if they have the same truth value. 3 And if the meaning of a sentence is what it refers to, al l sentences alike in truth value must be synonym ous-an intolerable result . Apparen tly we must abandon the present app roach a s leading t o a theory of meaning. This is t he natural point at which to turn fo r help to the distinction between meaning and reference . The trouble, we are told , is t hat questions of reference are, in gene ral, settled by extra-li nguistic facts, questions of meaning not, and the facts can conftate t he references of expressions t hat are not synonymous. If we want a t heo ry t hat gives t he meaning (as distinct from reference) of each sentence, we must start with t he meaning (as distinct from refe rence ) of t he parts. Up to here we have been fol lowing in Frege's footsteps ; thanks to J The argumen t derives from Frege . See A . Chu rch, introduction / 0 Ma thematical L ogi C', 24- 5 . It is perhaps worth mentioning that the argument d oes not depend on

any pa rticular iden tification of the entities to which sen tences are supposed to refer .

20

Truth and Meaning

hi m, the path is well known and even well worn . But now , I would like to suggest, we have reached an impasse : the switch from reference to meaning leads to no useful account of how the meanings of sentences depend upon the meanings of the words (o r other structural features) that compose them. Ask, for exa mple, for the m eani ng of 'Theaetetus flies' . A Fregean answer might go something like this : given the meaning of 'Theaetetus' as a rgument, the meaning of 'flies' yields the meaning of 'Theaetetus flies' as value. The vacuity of this answer is obvious . We wanted to know what the meaning of 'Theaetetus flies' is ; it is no progress to be told tha t it is the meaning of 'Theaetetus flies' . This much we knew before any theory was in sight. In the bogus account just given, talk of the structure of the sentence and of the meanings of words was idl e, fo r it played no role in producing the given description of the meaning of the sentence. The contra st here between a real and pretended account will be plainer still if we ask fo r a theory, analogous to the miniature theory of reference of singul ar term s just sketched , but different in dealing with meanings in place of references. What anal ogy demands is a theory that has as consequences all sentences of the form 's means m ' where 's' i s replaced b y a structural description of a sentence and Om' is replaced by a singul ar term that refers to the meaning of that sentence ; a theo ry, moreover, tha t provides an effective method for arriving at the meaning of an arbit ra ry sen tence structurall y descri bed. Clearly som e more articulate w a y of referring t o mea n­ ings than any we have seen is essential if these criteria a re to be met. 4 Meanings as entities, o r the related concept of synonymy, allow us to formulate the following rul e relating sentences and their pa rts : sentences are synonym ous whose corresponding parts are synony­ mous ('corresponding' here needs spelling out of cou rse). And meanings as entities may, in theories such a s Frege's, do duty, on occasion, as references, thus losing thei r status as entities distinct from references. Pa radoxically, the one thing mea nings do not seem to do is oil the wheels of a theo ry of meani ng-at least as long as we require of such a theo ry that it non-t rivially give the meaning of 4 J t may be though t that Ch urch, in 'A Formul ation of the Log ic of Se nse and Denotation ' , h as given a th eory of meaning that m akes esse n tial use of meanings as entities. But this is not the case : C h urch's l ogics of se nse and de notation are interpreted as being about meani ngs, but they do not mention ex pressions and so cannot of course be theories of meaning in the sense now under d i scussion .

Truth and Meaning

21

ever y senten ce in the l a nguage. My objection to meanings in the theory of mea ning is not that they are abstract or that their identity conditions are obscure, but that they have no demonstrated use. Thi s is the pl ace to scotch another hopeful thought . Suppose we have a satisfactory theory of syn tax for our language, consisting of an effective method of tel ling, for an arbitrary expression , whether or not it is independently meaningful (i.e. a sentence), and assume as u sual that this involves viewing each sentence as com posed, in aIlowab1e ways, out of elements drawn from a fixed finite stock of atomic syntactical elements (roughly, words). The hopeful thought is that syntax , so conceived , wiIl yield semantics when a dictionary giving the meaning of each syntactic atom is added . Hopes will be dashed, however, if semantics is to comprise a theory of meaning in our sense, for knowledge of the structural characteristics that make for meaningfulness in a sentence, plus knowledge of the meanings of the ultimate parts, does not add up to knowledge of what a sentence means. The point is easily ill ust rated by belief sentences. Their syntax is relativel y unproblematic . Yet, adding a dictionary does not touch the standard semantic problem, which is that we cannot account for even as much as the truth conditions of such sentences on the basis of what we know of the meanings of the words in them . The situation is not radically altered by refining the dictionary to indicate which meaning or meani ngs an ambiguous expression bears in each of its possible contexts ; the problem of belief sentences pe rsists after am biguities are resolved. The fact that recursive syntax with dictiona ry added is not necessa rily recursive semantics has been obscured in some recent w riting on linguistics by the int rusion of semantic criteria into the discussion of pu r po rtedly syntactic theo ries . The matte r would boil down to a ha r mless diffe rence ove r terminology if the semantic c riteria were clear ; but t hey a re not . W hile the re is agreement that it is the central task of semantics to give the semantic interpretation (the meaning) of every sentence in the language, nowhere in the linguistic l ite r ature will one find, so far as I know, a st raightforwar d account of how a theo r y performs this task, o r how to tell when it has be e n accomplished . The cont rast with syntax is st riking. The main job of a modest syntax is to characterize meaningfulness (or sentencehood). We may have as much confidence in the co rrectness of such a cha racte rization as we have in the rep resentativeness of our sa m ple and our abil ity t o say when particular expression s are

22

Truth and Meaning

meaningful (sentences). What clear and analogous task and tes t exist for semantics ? 5 We decided a while back not to assume that parts of sentences h ave meanings except in the ontologically neu tral sense of maki ng a systematic contribution to the meaning of the sen tences in which they occur. Si nce postu lating meanings has netted nothing, let us return to that insight . One direction in which it points is a certain hol istic view of meaning. If sen tences depend for the i r meaning o n their structu re, and w e understand the meaning of each item in the structu re only as an abstraction from the totality of sentences in w hich it features, then we can give the meaning of any sentence (or word) only by giving the meaning of every sentence (and word) in the language . Frege said that onl y in the con text of a sentence does a word have meaning ; in t he same vein he might have added that only in t he context of t he language does a sentence (a nd therefore a word) have meani ng. This degree of holism was already implicit in the suggestion tha t an adeq u a te t heory of meaning must entail all sentences of the form 's mean s m ' . But now, having found no more help in meanings of sente nces than in meani ngs of words, let us ask whether we can get rid of the trou blesome singular terms supposed to repl ace 'm ' and to refer to mea ni ngs. In a way, nothing could be ea sier : just write 's means t hat p', a nd imagine ' p ' replaced by a se nte nce . Sentences, as we have seen , cannot name meanings , and sente nces with 'that' prefixed are not names at all, unless we decide so. I t looks as though we are in trouble o n a nothe r count, however, for it is reasona ble to expect that i n wrestling with t he logic of the apparently non­ extensi o nal ' means that ' we will encou nter pJ'oblems as hard as, or perhaps identical with, the problem s our theory i s out to solve. The o nly way I know to deal with t his difficulty is simple, and radical. Anxiety that we are enmes hed in t he i ntensiona l springs from u sing t he words 'means that' as filling betwee n desc ription of 5 For a recent statement of the role of semantics in l i n gu i stics, see Noam C homsky, ' Topics in t he The ory of Generative G rammar' . I n this article, Chomsk y ( I ) emphasizes the ce ntral importance of semantics in li nguistic t heory , ( 2 ) a rgues for the su periori ty of transforma tional grammars over phrase-structure grammars largel y on the grounds that, a l t hough ph rase-structure grammars may be adequate to define se ntencehood for (at least) some natu ral languages, they are i nadequate as a foundation for seman tics, and ( 3 ) comments re peated l y on the 'rather primi t i ve state' of the concepts of semantics and remarks that the notion of semantic i n terpretation 'stil l resists any deep anal y si s ' .

Truth and Meaning

23

sentence and sentence, bu t i t may be that the success of ou r ve ntu re depends not on t he filling bu t on what it fills. The theory will have done its work if it provides, fo r every sente nce s in t he langu age u nder study, a matching sentence (to replace 'p ' ) that, i n some way yet to be made clear, 'gives the meaning' of s. One o bvious candidate for matching sentence is j u st s itself, if the object language is co ntai ned in the metala ngu age ; othe rwise a translatio n of s in t he metalanguage. A s a final bold step, let u s try treating the position occupied by 'p' extensionally : to implement this, sweep away t he obscu re 'means that ', provide the sentence that replace s 'p ' with a proper sentential connective, and supply t he description t hat replaces 's' with its own predica te . The plausi ble resu lt is ( T)

s is T if and only if p .

What we req uire of a t heory of meaning for a langu age L is t hat withou t appeal to any (fu rt her) semantical notio ns it place enough restrictions on t he predicate 'is T' to entail all sentences got from schema T when 's' is replaced by a structu ral description of a sente nce of L and 'p' by that sente nce . A ny two p redicates satisfying t his condition have t he same extension, 6 so if t he metalangu age is rich enough, nothing stands i n the way o f pu tting what I am calli ng a theory o f meaning i n t o the form of an explicit definition of a predicate 'is T' . But whether explicitly defined or recursively cha racte rized, it is clear that the sente nces to which the predicate 'is T' applies will be j u st t he true sentences of L, fo r t he condition we have placed o n satisfactory theories of meaning is i n essence Tarski's Convention T that tests the adequacy of a fo rmal semantical defi nition of truth. 7 The pat h to t hi s point has been tortuous, but the conclusion may be sta ted simply : a theory of mea ning fo r a langu age L shows 'how the mea ni ngs of sente nces depend upon the mea nings of words' if i t conta i ns a ( recu rsive) defi nition o f truth-in-L. A nd, so fa r at least, we ha ve no other idea how to turn the trick. It is worth emphasizing tha t the co ncept of tru t h played no ostensible role in stating ou r original pro blem . That pro blem , upon refi nement, led to t he view that an adeq uate theory of mea ning must characte rize a predicate meet i ng certa i n cond itions . It was in t he natu re of a discove ry t hat b A ssu ming, o f course , t ha t the extension of these pred icates is l i mited to the se nt ences of L . , A . T a rski , 'The Concept of Truth in Formal ized Languages .

24

Tru th and Meaning

such a predicate would apply exactly to the true sentences. I hope that what I am saying may be desc ribed in part as defending the phil osophical importance of Tarski's seman tical concept of truth. But my defence is onl y distantly related, if at al l , to the question whether the concept Tarski has shown how to define is the (or a) philosophicall y interesting conception of truth, or the question whether Tarski has cast any l ight on the ordinary use of such words as 'true' and 'truth' . It is a misfortune that dust fro m futile and confused battles ove r these questions has preven ted those with a theoretical interest in langu age-philosophers, l ogicians, psychol o­ gists, and linguists alike-from seeing in the seman tical concept of truth (under whatever name) the sophisticated and powerful foundation of a competent theory of meaning. There is no need to supp ress, of cou rse, the obvious connection between a definition of truth of the kind Tarski has shown how to construct, and the concept of meaning. I t is this : the definition works by .giving necessary and sufficient conditions for the truth of every sentence, and to give truth conditions is a way of giving the meaning of a sen tence. To know the seman tic concept of truth for a l anguage is to know what i t is for a sen tence-any sentence-to be true, and this amounts, in one good sense we can give to the ph rase, to unde rstanding the language. This at any rate is my excuse for a featu re of the presen t discussion that is apt to shock old hands ; m y freewheeling u se o f the word 'meaning', for w h a t I call a theory of meaning has after all tu rned out to make no use of meanings, whether of sen tences or of words. I ndeed , si nce a Tarski-type tru th definition supplies all we have asked so far of a theory of meaning, it is clea r that such a theory fal ls comfortabl y within what Quine term s the 'theory of refe rence' as distinguished from what he terms the 'theo ry of meaning' . So much to the good for what I call a theory of meani ng, and so m uch, perhaps, against my so calling it. 8 A theo ry o f meaning (in m y mildly perve rse sense) is an empi rical theory, and its am bition is to account for the workings of a natu ral language. Like any theory, it may be tested by comparing some of its consequences with the facts. In the present case this is easy, for the 8 But Quine may be quo ted i n support of my u sage : ' . . . i n point of meaning . a word may be said to be determined to whatever extent the truth or fal seh ood of its con texts is determined . ' (,Truth by Convention ', 82.) Since a truth definition d etermines the truth value o f e very sentence in the object l anguage (rel ative to a sen tence in the metalanguage), it determ ines the meaning of every word and sentence. This would seem to justify the title Theory of Meaning. .

.

Truth and Meaning

25

t he ory has been characterized as issuing in an infinite flood of se nte nces each giving the truth conditions of a sen tence ; we only need to ask, i n sample cases, whether what the theo ry ave rs to be the t r u th conditions for a sen tence really are. A typical test case might i nvolve deciding whether the sentence ' Snow is white' is true if and on ly if snow is white. Not all cases will be so simple (for reaso ns to be sketched), bu t i t is evident that this sort of test does not invi te counting noses. A sharp conception of what constitutes a theo ry in this domain furnishes an exciting context for raising deep ques tions abo u t when a theory of l a nguage is correct and how it is to be tried . But the difficul ties are theoretical , no t practical . I n applica tio n , the tr ouble is to get a theory that comes cl ose to worki ng ; anyone can tel l whether it is right. 9 One can see why this is so . The theory reveals nothing new about the conditions under which an individual sentence is true ; It does not make those conditions any clearer than the sentence itself does . The work of the theory is in relating the known truth conditions of each sentence to those aspects ('words') of the sentence that recur in other sentences, and can be assigned identical roles in other sentences. Empi rical powe r in such a t heory depends on success in recovering the structure of a ve ry complicated ability-the ability to speak and understand a language . We ca n tell easily enough when particular pronou ncements of the theory comport with our u nderstanding of the lan guage ; this is consistent with a feeble insight into the design of the machinery of ou r li ngu istic accomplishments. The remarks of the l ast pa ragraph apply directly only to the special case w here it is assumed that the langu age for w hich truth is being cha racterized is part of the language used and understood by the cha racterizer. Under these circumstances, the framer of a theory will as a matte r of cou rse avail himself when he can of the built-in convenience of a metalanguage with a sentence guaran teed equiva­ lent to each sen tence in the object language. S till, this fact ought not to con us into thinking a theory any more correct that entails . "Snow is white" is true if and only if snow is white' than one that en tails instead : (S)

' Snow is white' is true if and only if grass is green ,

Y To gi ve a single exampl e : it is clearly a cou n t in favour of a theory that it entai l s " ' Sn ow is white" is true i f and o n l y if snow is wh i te ' , B u t t o contrive a th eory that e n tails th i s (and works for all rela ted sentences) is not trivia l . I do not know a wholly sa tisfactory theory that succeed s with this very ca se (the problem of 'mass terms'),

26

Truth and Meaning

provided , of cou rse, we are as su re of the truth of (S) as we a re of that of its m o re celebrated predecesso r. Yet (S) may not encou rage the same con fide nce t hat a theory that entai l s it deserves to be ca lled a theory of meani ng .. The threa tened fail u re of ne rve may be counte racted as follows. The grote sq ueness of (S) is in i tsel f nothing against a t heory of which i t is a consequence, provided the theory give s the correct results for every se ntence (on t he basis of its struc ture , t here being no other way). It is not easy to see how (S) could be party to such an ente rprise, bu t if it were-i f, that is, (S) followed from a c haracteriza­ tion of the predicate 'is true' that led to the inva riable pairing of truths wi t h tru ths and falsehoods with fal se hoods-t he n t here would not, I think, be anythi ng essential to t he idea of meaning that rem a i ned to be captu red . 1 0 W hat appears t o t he right of the biconditional i n sente nces of the fo rm 's i s true i f and only i f p ' when such se nte nce s are consequences of a t heory o f truth plays its role in determ i n i n g the meaning of s not by pretend i ng synonymy but by ad d i ng one more brush-st roke to the picture which, take n a s a whole , tells what there is to know of the meani ng of s ; this stroke i s added by virtue o f the fact that the sentence that replace s 'p ' i s t rue if and only if s is. It may help t o reflect that (S) is accepta ble, if i t is, because we are i ndepende ntly sure of the truth of 'Snow is white' and 'Grass is green' ; but in cases whe re we a re unsure of the truth of a sente nce, we can have confidence i n a characteriza tion of the truth predicate only i f i t pairs that sente nce with one we have good rea son to beli eve equivalent. I t would be ill ad vised for someone who had any d o u bts about t he col our of snow or grass to accept a t heory that yielded ( S ) , even i f h i s d ou bts we re of equal degree , unless h e t hought t he colour of the one was tied to the colo u r o f the other. 1 ! Omniscience can 1 0 Cri tics have often failed to notice the essential proviso mentioned in t h i s paragraph . T h e poi n t is t h a t ( 5 ) coul d n o t bel ong to a n y reaso n a b l y simple theory that a l so gave the righ t truth conditions for 'That is snow' a nd This i s white ' . ( See the d i scussi on of ind exica l ex pressi ons below . ) [Footnote added i n 1 982.] 1 1 Thi s paragraph i s confused . W h a t it sh ould say i s that sente nces o f the theory a re empirical general izations about speakers, a nd so must not onl y be t r u e but also lawl ike. (S) presumably is not a law, since it d oes not support appropriate counter­ fa ctuals. I t's also important that the evidence for accep t i n g the (time and speaker relati vized ) truth cond i t ions for 'That i s snow' i s based on t he causal con nection between a speaker's assent t o the sentence and the d emonstrative presentation o f snow . For further d i sc ussi on see Essay 1 2 . [Footnote a d d e d i n 1 98 2 . ]

Truth and Meaning

27

obviously affo rd more bizzare theories o f meaning than ignorance ; but then, omniscie nce has less need of commu nication. I t must be possible, o f course, fo r the speaker of one language to construct a theory of meaning fo r the speaker of another, though in this case t he empirical test of the correct ness of the theory wi ll no longe r be trivial. A s be fo re , the aim o f theory will be a n infinite correlation o f sen te nces alike i n truth. But this time t he theory­ b uilder must not be assu med to have di rect insight i nto likely equivalences be tween his own tongue and the alien. W hat he must do i s find o u t, howeve r he can , what sen tences the alie n holds true i n his own to ngue (or be tter, to what degree he holds the m true). The li ngu ist then will attempt to construct a cha racte rization of tru th­ fo r-the-alien which yields, so far a s possible , a mapping of sentences held true ( o r false ) by the alien on t o sentences held true ( o r false ) by t he linguist. Supposing no pe rfect fit is found, t he residue of sentences hel d t rue t ranslated by sentences held fa lse (and vice versa) is the ma rgi n fo r e rror (foreign or d o mestic). Charity i n interpreting the words and t houghts of others i s unavoidable i n anothe r direction as well : j ust as we m u st maximize agreement, or risk n ot making sense of what the alien is t alking about, so we must maximize the self-consi stency we attri bute to him, on pain of not u nde rstanding him . No si ngle princi ple o f optimum charity emerges ; the constra ints t herefore dete rmine no single t heory. I n a theory of radical translati on ( a s Quine calls it) t here i s no completely disentangl i ng questions o f what t he alien means from questions o f what he believes. We do not know what s omeone means unless we know what he believes ; we do not know what someone be lieves unless we know what he means. I n radical i nte rpre tation we are a ble t o break into this ci rcle, if only incompletely, beca u se we can sometimes tell that a person acce des to a sen tence we do not understan d . 1 2 I n t he pa st fe w pages I have been asking how a theory of meaning that take s t he fo rm of a trut h definition can be empi rica lly tested , and have bl i t hely ignored t he pri or question whether there is any seri o us chance such a t he ory can be given for a natu ral langu age . W hat a re the prospects for a formal se mantical theory of a natu ral 12

Thi s sketch of how a theory o f meaning for a n a l ie n tongue can be tested ob vi ously owes it inspira tion to Quine's account of radical translation in Chapter I I 01" Word and Object, I n suggestin g t h a t a n a cceptable theory of radical translation take the form of a recursi ve characterization of truth, I go bey ond Quine. Toward the end of this paper, in the d i scussion of demonstratives, a n o t her strong po i n t of a g reem ent wil l turn up,

28

Truth and Meaning

language ? Very poor, accord i ng to Tarski ; and I believe most l ogicians, philosophers of language, and linguists agree . t 3 Let me do what I can to dispel t he pessimism. W hat I can in a general and programmatic way, of course, for here the proof of the puddi ng will certainl y be in the proof of the right theorem s. Tarski concl udes t he first section of his classic essay on the concept of truth in formalized la nguages with the following remarks, which he ital icizes : . . . The very possib ility of a consisten t use of the expression ' true sentence' which is in harmony with the laws of logic and the spirit of everyday language seems to b e very ques t iona b le , and consequen tly th e same doub t at taches to the poss ib ility of cons tructing a correct defin ition of this expression . ( 1 6 5)

Late in the same essay, he returns to the subject : . . . the conce pt of truth (as well as other sema ntical concepts) when a ppl ied to colloquial la nguage in conj unction with the norma l laws of l ogic leads inevitably to confusio n s and contradiction s . Whoever wishes, i n spite of al l d i fficul tie s, to p u rsue the sema n tics of colloquial l a n guage with the he l p of exact methods w i l l be d rive n first to undert ake the tha n k l ess ta sk of a reform of this la nguage . He will find it necessa ry to defi ne its structu re, to ove rcome the ambiguity of the term s which occu r in it, a nd fi n a l l y to sp l i t the la nguage i n t o a se ries of l a n guages of greater a nd grea ter exte n t , each of which stands i n the same re l a tion to the next in w hich a fo rmal ized la nguage sta nd s to its metalan guage . I t ma y , however be dou bted whether the la nguage of everyday l ife, a fte r be ing ' r ationa l ized ' i n this way, would sti l l prese rve its n a tural ness a n d whether it would not ra ther take on the characte ristic fea tu res of the form a l ized la nguages. (267)

Two themes emerge : that the universal cha racte r of na tural l a ngu ages leads t o cont radiction (the sema ntic paradoxes), and that natural languages are too confused and amorphous to permit the d irect appl ica tion of formal methods. The fi rst point deserves a serious answer, and I wish I had one. As i t is , I will say only why I think we are j u stified in carryi ng on w i tho ut having disinfected thi s particular source o f co ncept ual anxiety. The semantic paradoxes arise when the range of t he quantifiers in the object l a nguage is too genero u s i n certai n ways . But it is not reall y clear how u n fair to U rd u or to Wendish it would be to view the ra nge of their q u antifiers I J So fa r as I a m aware , there has been very l ittle disc ussion of w h ether a formal truth definit ion can be given for il na tural language . But in a more general vein , several people have u rged that t h e concepts of formal sema ntics be appl ied to natural language. See, for e xample, the contributions of Yehoshua Bar- H i l lel a n d Evert Beth to The Ph ilosophy of Rudolph Carnap, and Bar- H i l lel's ' Logical Syntax and Semantics .

Truth and Meaning

29

as insufficient to yield an explicit defini tion o f ' t rue-i n-U rdu' or ' true-in-Wendish' . Or, to put the matter in ano the r, if not more se rious way, there may in the nature of the case always be something we grasp in understanding the language of another (the concept of t ruth) that we cannot com municate to him . In any case, most of the pro blem s of general philosophical interes t arise within a fragment of the relevant natural language that may be conceived as containing very little se t theory. Of cou rse these comments do not meet t he cla im that natural l a nguages are universal . Bu t it seems to me that th i s claim, now that we know such uni ve rsality leads to paradox, is suspect. Tarski's second point is that we would have to reform a natural language out of all recogni tion before we could appl y formal sem antical methods. I f this is true, it is fa tal to my project, fo r the task of a theory of meaning as I conceive it is not to c ha nge, improve, or reform a la nguage, bu t to desc ri be and understand it . Le t us look at the positive side. Tarski has shown the way to giving a theory for i n terpreted formal languages of various k i nds ; pick one as much l i ke English as possible. Since this new language has been expl ained in Engl ish and contains much English we not only may, b u t I think must, view it as pa rt of English fo r those w ho u ndersta nd it. For this fragment of Engl i s h we have, ex hypothesi, a theory of the requi red sort. N o t o nl y that, but i n i nterpreting this adjunct of English i n old Engl ish we necessaril y gave hints connecting old and new . Wherever there a re sentences of old English with the same truth cond i tions as sentences in the adjunct we may ex tend the theory to cove r them . Much of what is called for is to mec ha nize a s far as possible what we now do by art when we put ordinary English into one or another canonical notation. The point is not that canonical nota tion is be tter tha n the rough origi nal idiom , but rat her t hat i f we know what idiom the canonical notation is canonical for, we have as good a theory fo r the idiom as fo r i ts kept com panion. Phi l osophe rs have long bee n at the ha rd work of applyi ng t heory to ordinary l a nguage by the device of m a tching sentences in the vernacular with sentences fo r which they have a theory. Frege's massive contri bution was to show how 'all', ' some' , 'every', 'each', ' none ' , a nd a ssocia ted pronouns, in some of their uses, could be tamed ; fo r the first time , it was possible to dream of a formal sema ntics for a si gnificant part of a natu ral la ngua ge . This dream came true in a sharp way w i th the work of Tars ki. It would be a

30

Truth and Meaning

s hame to miss the fact that as a result of these two ma gnificent achieveme nts, Frege's and Tarsk i ' s, we have gained a deep insight into the s tructu re of ou r mother tongues. Philosophers of a logical bent have te nded to ' s tart where the theory was and work out towards the complications of natu ral langu age. Contempo rary linguists, with an aim that cannot easil y be seen to be diffe rent, start wi th the ordinary and work toward a gene ral theory. If either party is succe ssful, t here m ust be a meeting. Recent work by C homsky a nd ot he rs is doing much to bring the complexities of natu ral language s within t he scope o f se rious theo ry. To give an exam ple : suppose success in givi ng t he truth conditions fo r some significant range of sentences in the active voice . Then with a fo rmal p rocedu re for transforming each such sen tence into a corresponding sentence i n t h e passive voice, the theo ry of tru th could b e extended i n a n o bvious way to thi s new set of sentences . 1 4 One pro blem touched o n in passing b y Tarski does not, a t least i n all its manifestations, have to be solved to get ahead with theory : t he existence in natu ral languages of 'am biguous te rms' . As l ong as am biguity does not affect gramma tical form, and can be translated, am biguity fo r am biguity, into the metalanguage, a truth defin ition will not tell us any lies. The chief trou ble, for systematic semantics, with t he phra se ' believes that' i n English lies not in its vagueness, ambiguity, or unsuitability fo r inco rpo ration in a serious science : let ou r metala nguage be English, and all these problems will be carried without loss or gain into the metalangu age. Bu t the ce ntral pro blem of the logical grammar of ' believes that ' will remain to haunt u s . The example is suited t o illustrating a nother, and rela ted , poi nt, fo r the d i scussion of belief sentences has been plagued by failu re to l 4 The rapprochement I p rospectivel y imagine between transformational grammar and a sound theory of mea n i ng has been much a d va n ced by a rece nt cha nge in the conception of transformational grammar described by C homsky i n the article re ferred to above (note 5 ) , Th e struct ures generated by the phrase-st ructure part of t h e gra mmar, i t h a s been rea l ized for some t i m e , a r e th o se suited to se mantic i n terpretatio n ; but this view is inconsistent with the idea, held by Chomsky until recently , that recursive o perations a re i n trod uced only by the transformation rules. Chomsky now believe s the ph rase-structure rules are recursi ve. Since lan guages to which formal semantic methods d irectly and natura l l y a pply a re ones for which <J (recursive) phrase-struc ture g rammar is appropriate, it is clear that Chomsky's present picture o f the rel ation between the struct ures generated by the phrase­ structure part of the grammar, and the sentences o f the l a nguage, is very much l i k e t he picture many l ogicians a nd phil osophers have had of the rel a tion between the richer fo rmal ized l a n guages and o rd i n a ry l a n guage . ( I n these rema rks I am inde bted to Bruce Vermaze n . )

Truth and Meaning

31

observe a fu ndamental distinction between tasks : uncove ring t he logical grammar or fo rm of sentences (which is in the p rovi nce of a theory of meaning as I co nst rue it), and the analysi s of indi vidual words or expressions (w hich are t reated as p rimitive by the t heory). Thus Carnap, i n the first edition of Meaning and Necessity, sugge sted we re nder 'John belie ves that the earth is round' a s 'John responds affirmative ly to "the earth is rou nd" as an English sentence' . He gave this up when M ates pointed out that John might respond affirmative l y to one sentence and not to anothe r no m atter how close i n meaning. 1 5 But the re is a confu sion here from t he sta rt. The semantic struct u re of a belief sentence, accordi ng t o this idea of Carnap's, is given by a three-place predicate with place s reserved fo r expressi ons referring to a person, a sentence, and a language. I t is a different sort of pro blem enti rely to attempt a n analysis of this predicate, pe rha ps along behaviou ristic lines. Not lea st among the merits of Tarski's conception of a theo ry of truth i s tha t the pu rity of method it demands of us follows from the fo rmulation of the pro blem itself, not from t he self-imposed restraint of some adventi­ tious philosophical puritanism . I thin k it i s ha rd to exagge rate t he advantages to philosophy of language of bea ring in mind t his distinction between questions of l ogical form or grammar, and the analysis of individual concepts. Another e xa mple m a y help adve rtise the point. I f we suppose q uestions of logical gram mar settled, sentences l i ke 'Ba rdot is go od' raise no special pro blem s fo r a truth definition. The deep differences be tween desc riptive and evaluative (emotive, ex­ pressive, etc . ) terms do not show he re. Even if we hold there is some important sense in which m oral or evaluative sentences do not have a truth val ue (fo r example, because they cannot be verified), we ought not to boggle at " ' Bardot is good " is true if and only if Ba rdo t is good ' ; in a theory of truth, this consequence shou l d fo llow with the rest, keeping track, a s m u st be done, of the semantic location of suc h sentences in t he language as a who le-of their rel ation to genera l izations, their role in such compound sentences as ' B a rdot i s g ood a n d Ba rdot is foolish' , a n d s o on. What is special to eva lua tive words is simply not touched : the mystery is transferred from the word ' good ' in the object language to its transl ation i n the metalanguage . I �

B . M a te s. ' Sy n o n y m i ty

32

Truth and Meaning

But 'good' as it featu res in 'Bardot is a good actress' is another matter. The p roblem is not that the tran slation of this sentence is not i n the metalanguage-let us suppose it is. The problem is to frame a truth definition such that ' " Bardot is a good actress" is true if and only if Bardot is a good actress'-and all other se ntences like it-are consequences. Obviousl y 'good actress' does not mean 'good and an actress' . We might think of taking 'is a good actress' as an unanal ysed predicate. This would obliterate all connection between 'is a good actress' and 'is a good mother', and it woul d give us no excuse to think of ' good ', in these u ses, as a word or semantic eleme nt. But worse, it would bar us from framing a truth defini tion at alI , for there is no end to the predicates we would have to treat as logical ly simple (and hence accommodate in sepa rate clauses in the definition of satisfaction) : 'is a good companion to dogs', 'is a good 28-years old conversationalist', and so fo rth . The problem is not peculiar to the case : it is the problem of attribu tive adjectives general ly. I t is consistent with the attitude taken he re to deem it usuaIly a st rategic error to unde rtake phil osophical analysis of words or expressions which is not preceded by or at any rate accompanied by the at tempt to get the logical grammar st raight. For how can we have any confidence in our analyses of wo rds like 'right', 'ought', 'can', and 'obliged ' , or t he phrases we use to tal k of actions, events, and causes, when we do not k now what (logical, semantical ) parts of speech we have to deal with ? I would say much the same a bout studies of the 'l ogic' of these and other words, a nd the sentences containing them . Whether the effort and i ngenuity that have gone into the study of deontic logics, mod a l logics, impera tive and erotetic logics have been largely futile or not can not be known u ntil we have acceptable semantic analyses of the sentences such systems purport to treat. Philosophers and logicians sometimes talk or work as if they were free to choose between, say, the t ruth-fu nc tional conditional a nd others, or free to int roduce non-truth-functional sentential ope rators like ' Let it be the case that ' or ' I t ought to be the case t ha t ' . But in fact the decision is crucial . When we depart from idioms we can accommodate i n a truth defini tion, we lapse into (or c reate) language for whic h we have no coherent semantical account-that is, no account at all of how such talk can be integrated into the lan guage as a whole. To return to our main theme : we have recognized that a theory of

Truth and Meaning

33

the kind proposed leaves the whole matter o f what individual words mean exactly where it was. Even when the metalanguage is different from the object language, the theory exe rts no pressure for improvement, clarification, or analysis of individual words, except w hen, by accident of vocabulary, straightforward t ran slation fails. Jus t as synonomy, as between expressions, goes generally untreated, so also synonomy of sen tences, and an�lyticity. Even such sentences as 'A vixen is a female fox ' bear no special tag u nless it is ou r pleasu re to provide it. A truth definition does not distinguish between analytic sentences and others, except for sentences t hat owe their t ruth to the presence alone of the constants that give the t heory its grip on structure : the theory en tail s not only that these sentences are true but that they will remain true under all significant rewritings of their non-logical parts. A notion of logical truth t hus given limi ted application, related notions of logical equivalence and entailment will tag along. It is hard to imagine how a theory of mea ning could fail to read a logic into its objec t language to this degree ; and to the exten t that it does, ou r intuitions of logical truth, equivalence, and entailment may be called upon in con structing and testing the theory. 1 turn now to one more, and ve ry large, fly in the ointmen t : t he fact that the same sen tence may at one t ime or i n one mouth be true and at another time or in another m outh be false. Both l ogicians and those critical of formal methods here seem largely (thou gh by no means universally) agreed that formal semantics and logic are incompetent to deal with the distu rbances caused by demonst ratives. L ogicians have often reacted by downgradi ng natural language and t rying to show how to get along without demonstratives ; their c ritics re act by downgrading logic and formal semantics. None of t h i s can make me happy : clearly demonstratives cannot be eliminated from a natural language without loss or radical change, so there is no choice but to accom modate theory to them. No logical e rrors resu l t if we simply treat dem onst ratives as constants ; 1 6 neither do any problems arise for giving a semantic t ru th defin ition. " ' I am wise" is true if a nd only if I am wise' , with its bla nd ignoring of the demonst rative element i n ' I ' comes off the as sem bly line along with ' "Socrates is wise" is true if a nd only if Soc rates is wise' with its bl and indifference to the demonst rative element i n 'is wi se' (the tense). I�

S e e W . V . Quine. Methods of Logic, 8 .

34

Truth and Meaning

W hat suffers in this treatment of demon stratives is not the definition of a truth predicate, but the plausibility of the claim tha t what has been defined is trut h. For this claim is acceptable only i f the speaker and circumstances of utte rance of each sentence mentioned in the definition is matched by the speaker and circum stances of utterance of the truth definition itself. I t could also be fairly pointed out that pa rt of understanding demon stratives is knowing the rules by which t hey adjust t heir reference to circumstance ; assimilating demonstrati ves to constant terms obliterates this featu re. These complaints can be met, 1 think, though only by a fairly fa r-reaching revision in t he t heory of truth. 1 shall barely suggest how this could be done, but bare suggestion is all t hat is needed : t he idea is technically tri vial, and in line with work being done on the logic of the tenses. 1 7 We could take truth to be a prope rty, not of sentences, but of utte rances, o r speech acts, o r ordered triples of sen tences, times, and persons ; but it is simplest just to view t ruth as a rel ation between a sen tence, a person , and a time. Under such treatment, ordinary logic as now read applies as usual, but only to sets of sentences rel ativ ized to the same speaker and time ; further l ogical relations between sentences spo ken at different times and by different speakers may be articul ated by new axioms. Such is not my concern . The t heory of meaning unde rgoes a systematic but not puzzling chan ge ; cor­ responding to each expression with a demonst rative element there must i n the theory be a ph rase t hat relates t he t ruth c onditions of sentences in which the expression occu rs to changing times and speakers. Thus the theory will entail sentences like the following : ' I am tired ' is true as (potentially) spoken by p at t i f and only i f p is ti red at t. 'That book was stolen' is true as (potentially) spoken by p at t if and only if the book demonst rated by p at t is stolen prior to t . 1 8 Plainly, this course does not show how to eliminate demonstrative s ; for example, there is no suggestion that 'the book demon­ strated by the speaker ' can be substituted ubiquitously for 'that book ' salva veritate. The fact that demonstratives are amenable t o I ; T h i s claim h a s t u rned o u t t o be nai"vely optimistic. For some se riou s work o n t h e subjec t. see S. Weinstei n , 'Truth a n d Demonst rati v es' . [ N o t e add ed i n 1 98 2 . ] 18 T here is m o re t h a n an i n t imation of th is approach to d e m o nst rat i ve s and t r u t h i n J . L. Austin, 'Tr u t h ' .

Truth and Meaning

35

fo rmal treatment ou ght greatly to im prove hopes fo r a serious se m an tics of natu ral language , fo r i t is l ike ly that many outstanding puzzles, such as the analysis of quotations or sentences a bout propositional attit udes, can be solved if we recognize a concealed de monstrati ve construction. Now t hat we have rel ativized truth t o times and speakers, i t is appr opriate to glance back at the problem of empirically testi ng a the o ry of meaning for an alien tongue. The essence of the method was, it will be remembe red, to correlate held-true sen tences with held-true sen tences by way of a truth definition, and within t he bounds of i ntell i gible error. N ow the pictu re must be e l a borated to allow for the fact that sentences are true , and held true, only rela tive to a speaker and a time . Se ntences with demonstrati ves o bviously yield a very se nsitive test of the co rrectness of a t heory of mea n i n g, and constitute t he most d i rect link between language and t he recu rrent macroscopic objects of hu m a n interest and a ttention. 1 9 I n this pa per I have assumed that the speakers o f a langu a ge can effectively dete rmine the meaning or meanings o f an arbitra ry expression (if it has a m e aning) , and that it is the ce nt ral task of a theory of meaning to show how this is possible. I have argued that a cha racterization of a truth predicate descri bes the required kind of structure , a nd provides a clear and testable crite rion o f an adequate semantics for a natu ral langu age . No doubt t here a re other reasona ble de mands that may be pu t on a theory of meaning. But a theory that d oes no more than define truth for a language comes fa r close r to constituting a complete t heory of meaning t han s u perfici al analysis m ight suggest ; so , a t least, I have urged . Since I think there i s no alternati ve, I have t aken an optimistic and programm atic view of the possibilities for a fo rma l cha racterization of a truth predicate fo r a natura l la nguage. But i t m ust be all owed that a staggering list of difficul ties and conundrums remains. To name a few : we do not know the logical form of cou n terfactual or subj U nctive se ntence s ; nor of sente nces a bout probabilities a nd about causal rela tions ; we have no good idea what the logical role o f adve rbs is , nor t he role of attributi ve adjecti ves ; we have n o t heory for mass te rms like 'fire' , ' wate r', and 'snow', nor for sentences a bout 1 4 T hese rema r k s d e r i ve from Q ui n e 's idea t h a t 'occ a sion se ntences' ( th o se wi t h a d e mo n s t rat i v e e l e me n t ) must p l a y a c e n t r a l role in cons t ructing a t ra n sl a t ion man ual .

36

Truth and Meaning

bel ief, perception, and intention, nor for verbs of action that imply pu rpose . A nd finally, there are all the sentences that seem not to have truth values at all : the imperatives, optatives, interrogatives, and a host more. A comprehensive theory of meaning for a natural language must cope successfully with each of these problems . 2 0 10

For attempted solutions to some of these p roblems see Essays 6- 1 0 of Essays

on

Actions and Events, and Essays 6-8 of this book. There is fu rther discussion in Essa ys 3 , 4, 9, and 10, and reference to some p rogress in section 1 of Essa y 9.

3

True to the Facts

A true statement is a statement that is true to the facts. This remark seems to em body the same sort of obvious and essential wisdom about truth as the fol lowing a bout motherhood : a mother is a person who is the mother of someone. The property of being a mother is expl ained by the relation between a woman and he r chil d ; similarly, the suggestion ru ns, the property of being true is to be explained by a relation between a statement and something else. Without prej udice to the question what the something else might be, or what word or ph rase best expresses the rel ation (of being true to, corresponding to, pictu ring), I shall take the licence of calling any view of this kind a correspondence theory of truth. Correspondence theories rest on what appears to be an inel uctable if simple idea, but they have not done well u nder examination. The chief difficulty is in finding a notion of fact that explains anything, that does not lapse, when spelled out, into the trivial or the empty. Recent discussion is thus mainly concerned with deciding whether some form of correspondence is true and trivial (' . . . the theory of tru th is a series of truisms' 1 ) or, in so far as it is not confused, simply empty (,The co rrespo ndence theory requires, not pu rification, but e1 i mination' 2 ). Those who have discussed the semantic concept of truth in connection with correspondence theories have typically ruled the sema ntic concept eithe r i rrelevant or trivial . I n this paper I defend a version of the correspondence theory. I t hi nk truth can be explai ned by appeal to a rel ation between la ngu age and the world, and that analysis of that relation yields i n sig ht into how, by uttering sentences, we sometimes manage to say I. 2

1. L. Aust i n and P . F . Strawson , sy mposium on Truth ' . The quoted rema rks are from Austin and St rawson respectively, and appea r on pages l i S and 1 29 .

38

Truth and Meaning

what i s true. The sem a n tic concept of trut h, as first system a tical l y expounded by Ta rski, 3 will pl a y a crucial role i n the defence. I t might be possible to prove that any theo ry or definition of truth meeting plausible stand a rds necessarily contains conceptual re­ sou rces adequate to define a sense of correspondence. M y project is less am bitious : I shall be satisfied if I can find a natu ral interpre­ tation of the rel a tion of co rrespondence that helps expl ain tru th. Clearly it is consistent with the success of this a ttempt that t he re be a fo rm ula fo r eliminating phrases like 'it is true that' a nd 'is true' from m a ny or all contexts : correspondence and redundancy theo ries do not necessa rily conflict. Nevertheless, we m a y find instruction concerning t he role of cor respondence by asking how well we can do in system atical ly repl acing sentences with truth-words or phrases by sentences without. The sentence ( 1 ) The statement that French is t he official language of M a uritius is true. is m a terial ly equivalent to ' French is the official l a n gu age of M a uritius' ; and the same might be said for any two sentences simil arly rel ated. This encou rages t he thought that t he words that bed t he em bedded sentence in ( I ) represent an identity truth functi on, t he same in power a s double negation, but lacking significant articulation. On t his suggestion, i t would be no more than a freak of gramm a r that ( 1 ) consists of a complex singul a r term and a predicate. The trouble with the dou ble-negation theory of truth is that it applies onl y to sentences that have em bedded sen tences, like ( 1 ) and ' I t is true that 2 + 2 5 '. The t heory cannot cope di rectly with =

(2) The Pythago rean t heorem is true. (3) Nothing A ristotle said is true.

We might retain t he dou ble-nega tion theory as appl ied to ( 1 ) while reserving (2) and (3) for sepa rate treatment. But it is ha rdl y pl au sible that t he words 'is true' have different meanings in these different cases, especially since there seem to be simple inferences connectin g sentences o f t he two sorts. Thus from ( 2 ) and 'The Pythagorean theorem is t he statement that the squ a re of the hypotenuse is equal 3

A . Tarski. T h e C oncept of Truth i n Formalized Language s ' .

True to the Facts

39

to t he sum of the squ a res on the other two sides' we can infer 'The sta tement tha t the sq uare on the hypotenuse is equal to t he sum of the sq u a res on t he other two sides is true'. I t is tem p ting to thin k that t he dou ble-negation t heory can somehow be extended to cover sentences l ike (2) and (3). The reasoning might go this way : t he double-negation theory tells us that fo r each statement there is a sentence that expresses it. But then (2) holds j u st in case there is a true sentence that expresses the Pythagorean theo rem , and (3) holds in case no t rue sentence expresses something A ristotle said. The seeming need, in this expl a nation, to use the word 'true' will be shown to be harmless by renderi ng (2) and (3) thu s : (2 ' ) (p) (the sta tement that p = the Pythagorean theorem --. p) (3 ' ) '" ( 3p ) (Aristotle said t hat p ' p )

We are now pursuing a line that diverges from t he sim ple dou ble­ negation t heory by accepting an ontology of statements, and by int roducing qua ntifica tion into positions that can be occupied by sentences. Not t hat the variables in (2') and (3') range over statements ; it is ra ther exp ressions of the sort flanking t he identity sign in ( 2') t ha t refer to statements. I n t he dou ble-negation theory, putative reference to statements and putative predication of truth were absorbed into a gramm atically complex , but logic ally simple, expression, a tru th-fu nctional sentential co nnective . By c o ntrast, the present theo ry allows us to view 'is true' as a genuine predicate. It p rovides a principle, namely (4) (p )(the statement that p i s t rue

�

p)

that leads to sentences free of the predicate 'is true' and logically equivalent to sen tences containing it. Here, truth is not explained away as something that can be predicated of st atements, but explained . Expl ained, that is, if we u nde rstand (2'), (3'), and (4). But do we ? The t rou ble i s i n t he variables. Since t he varia bles replace sentences both a s they feat u re after words like 'A ristotle said that ' and in tru th -fu n ctio nal contexts, t he range of t he vari a bles m u st be entities tha t sen tences m a y be const rued as naming in both such uses. But the re a re very strong reasons, as Frege pointed out, fo r supposing tha t if sentences, when standing alone or in truth-fu nctio nal

40

Truth and Meaning

contexts, name anything, then all true sen tences name the same thing. 4 This would force u s to conclude that the statement that p is identical with t he stateme nt t hat q whenever p and q are both true ; presu mably a n unacceptable result. In a brief, and often men tioned , passage F. P. Ramsey puts forward a theory similar to, or iden tical with, the one j u s t discu ssed . He observes t hat sentences like (2'), ( 3'), and (4) cannot be convi ncingly read in English without in troducing the words 'is true' at the end, but seems to see this as a quirk, or even defect, of the langu age (we add 'is true' because we forget 'p' already contains a 'varia ble' verb). Ramsey then says This may perhaps be made cleare r by supposing for a moment that only one form of proposition is in question, say the relational form aRb ; then 'He is always right' could be expressed by 'For all a, R, b, if he asserts aRb, then aRb', to which 'is true' would be an obviously superfluous a ddition. When al l forms of propositions are included the analysis is more complicated but not es sential ly different . 5

I think we must assume that Ramsey wants the variables 'a' and 'b' to ra nge over individuals of some sort, and 'R' over ( two-pl ace) relations. So his version of 'He is always right' would be more fully expressed by ' F or all a, R, b, if he asserts that a has R to b, then a has R to b Clearly , if 'all forms of proposition ' are incl uded , the analysis must be recu rsive in character, fo r the fo rms of proposi tions follow the (logical) form s of sente nces, and of these there are an infinite n u m ber. There is no reason to suppose, then , that Ramsey's analysis could be completed i n a way that did not essen tially parallel Tarski's method for defining tru th. Tarski's method, however, int roduces (as I shall argue) somet hing like the no tion of correspon­ de nce , a nd this is j u st what the theories we have bee n exploring we re supposed to avoid. Paradox may also be a problem for Ramsey's recu rsi ve project. Where a theory based on the principle of (4) can always informally plead that a term of t he fo rm 'the statement that p ' fails to name when a trou blesome sente nce replaces 'p ', a theory that run s systematically throu gh the sentences of a language will need to appeal to a more mechanical device to avoid co ntradiction. One wonders what convictio n Ramsey's claim that 'the re really is no sepa rate problem of truth' would carry after his analysis was ca rried to completion. ' .

4 5

G . Frege, ' O n Sen se a n d R efere nce ' . For t h e argume n t , s e e Essay 2. F. P. R a msey , ' Fa c t s a nd Propositions', 1 43 .

True to the Facts

41

I have said nothing abou t the purposes served in (non-philosophi­ cal) con versation by uttering sen tences con taining 't rue' and cog­ na tes. No doubt t he idea that remarks containing the word 't rue' t ypically are u sed to express agreemen t, to emphasize con viction or aut hority, to save repe tition, or to shift responsi bility, would gain su pport if it could be shown that tru th-words can always be elimi­ nated withou t cogni tive loss by applica tion of a sim ple formula. Nevertheless, I would hold that theories abou t the extra-linguistic aim s with which sen tences are issued a re logically independent of t he question what they mean ; and i t is t he latter with which I am co ncerned . We have fa iled to find a satisfactory theory to back t he t hesis t hat attri butions of t r u th to statements are redund ant ; but even if i t could be shown t h a t no such theory i s possi ble, t h i s would n o t suffice to establish t he correspondence theory . So let us con sid er more directly the prospects fo r an account of truth in terms of correspondence. I t is facts correspondence to which is said to make statements true . I t is natural, t hen, to turn to talk of facts for help . Not much can be learned from sentences like (5) The statement that Thika is in Kenya correspond s to t he facts. or such va riants as ' I t i s a fact that Thika is in Keny a ' , ' That Thika is in Kenya i s a fact', a nd 'Thi ka is i n Kenya, and that's a fact ' . Whether o r not w e accept the view that correspond ence t o facts explains truth, (5) and its ki n say no more than 'The statement that Thika is in Kenya is true ' (or ' I t is true that . . . ' or ' . . . , and that's the truth' , etc . ) . I f (5) is to take on i ndependent interest, i t will be beca u se we a re able to give an accou nt of facts and correspondence that does not ci rcle back immedi ately to truth. Such an account w ould ena ble u s to make sense of sen tences w i th thi s form : (6) The st a tement tha t p corresponds to the fact that q . The s tep to tru th would be simple : a statement is true i f there i s a fact to which i t correspond s. [(5) could be rew ritten 'The statemen t t hat Th ika is in Kenya co rresponds to a fact' . ] When does ( 6 ) hol d ? Certai nly when 'p' and 'q' are replaced b y the sa m e sen tence ; after that the difficulties se t in. The statement t hat N aples is fa rther north than Red Bluff corresponds to the fact t hat Na p les is fa rt her north than Red Bluff, but also, it would seem, to

42

Truth and Meaning

the fact that Red Bluff i s farther sout h than Naples (perhaps these are the same fact) . Also to the fact that Red Bluff is farther south t han the largest I talian city wi thin thirty miles of I schia. When we reflect that Naples i s the city that satisfies the following descriptio n : it is the largest city withi n t hirty miles of Ischi a, a nd such that London is in England, then we begin to suspect that if a statement corresponds t o one fact , it corresponds to all. ('Co rresponds to t he facIs' may be right in the end). I ndeed, employi ng pri nciples implicit in our examples, it is easy to confirm the suspicion. The principles are t hese : if a statement co rrespo nds to the fact descri bed by an expressio n o f the fo rm 'the fact that p', the n it corre sponds to the fact descri bed by 'the fact that q ' provided either ( I ) the sente nces that replace 'p' a nd 'q' are logically equi valent, or (2) 'p' diffe rs from 'q' only in that a singular term has bee n replaced by a coextensive singular term . The confirming argument is this. Let 's' abbreviate some true se ntence . Then sure l y t he statement that s corresponds to the fact that s. But we may substitute for the seco nd 's' the l ogical l y equivalent ' ( t h e x s u c h that x is identical wi th Di oge nes and s ) is identical with (the x such that x is ide ntical wi th Di oge nes)'. Applying the pri nciple that we may su bstitute coextensi ve singular terms, we can su bstitute 'I' for 's' in t he last quoted sente nce , provided ' I ' is true . Final l y, re versing the first step we concl ude that the state ment t hat s corresponds to t he fact t hat I, where 's' and ' ( ' are any true sentences. 6 Since a side from matters o f corre spo nde nce no way o f distinguish­ i ng facts has bee n proposed, and this test fai l s to uncove r a single diffe rence , we may read the resu lt of our a rgu ment as showing that there is exact l y one fact. Descriptions like 'the fact that there are stupas i n Nepal ' , if they descri be at all, descri be t he same thi ng : The Great Fact. No poi nt remains in distinguishin g among various name s of The G reat Fact when written after 'corresponds to' ; we may as we ll settle fo r the si ngle phra se 'correspon d s to T!1e Great Fact ' . This unalterable predicate ca rries wi th it a redu ndant whi ff of ontol ogy, but beyond this the re is apparently no telling it apart from 'is true ' . The a rgument that led t o this concl usion cou ld be t hwarted by refusing to accept the pri nciples on which it was based . And one can 6 See foo t n o t e 4 a bo v e . a n d fo o t n o t e 3 of Essay 2 . F o r fu r t h e r d i scu ssi o n of t h e argum e n t . a n d some s u r p ri s i n g a pp l ica t i o n s . see J . Wa l l ace , ' P ro posi t i o n a l A t t i t uctes and I d e n t i t y ' .

True to the Facts

43

certainl y i magi ne constructing facts i n ways that might re flect some of ou r feeling fo r t he problem without lead i ng to ontol ogical collapse . From the point o f view of the theory o f t ruth, however, all such constructions seem d oomed by the foll owing difficu l ty. Suppose , to leave t he frying-pan of extensionality fo r the fires of intensi on, we d i stingu i s h facts as fine l y as statements. Of course, not every statement has its fact ; only the true ones do. But then, un less we find another way to pick out facts, we cannot hope to explain truth by appeal to the m . 7 Talk a bou t facts red uces to pred icati o n o f truth in t he contexts we have considered ; this mi ght be called the redundancy theory o f facts. Predications of truth, o n the other hand , have not pro ved so easy to eliminate . If t here is no comfort for red u nd a ncy theories of truth i n this, neither i s t here encouragement fo r correspondence theories. I think t he re is a fa i r l y simple expla nation fo r o u r frustration : we have so far left langu age out of acco unt. Statements are true or false becau se of t he word s used in m a king t hem , and it is words that have i nteresting, detai led, conventional connections with the worl d . Any seriou s t heory o f truth must t he refore deal with these connectio ns, and it is here i f anywhere that the notion of corresponde nce can find some purchase . We have been restricting o u rse l ve s to ways of specifying statements that make no appa rent menti o n o f wo rds. Thu s 'Jones's statement that the cat is on the mat' i rre trieva b l y wa shes out re ference to t he particulars of Jones's l a nguage that might support a no n-tri v i a l account of truth, a nd the same may be thought to hold fo r t he 'the sta tement that p' i d i om ge nera l ly. Discussions of tru th ma y have avoided the l inguistic turn beca use it is obvi ou s t hat tru th cannot be pinned on sentences ; but i f this ha s been a motive , i t is a confused one . Sentences cannot be true o r fa lse becau se i f the y were we should have to sa y that 'Je su i s Titania' was tru e ( spoken o r s u ng by Titania), false (spoken by anyone else ) , and neithe r (uttered by some one with no F rench) . What this fami l iar argument shows is not t hat we must stop talking of sentences and truth in the same breath, but that we must breathe a li ttle deeper and ta lk a l so o f the time the sente nce is uttered. and its u t te rer. Truth ( i n a giv en na tu ra l l anguage) is n o t a property of sentences ; i t i s a re l a t i o n between sentences, speakers, and d a tes. To view it thus is not to t u rn awa y from la ngu age to speec hless ete rna l enti ties l i ke . ' A sim i l a r p o i n t is m a d e by P. F , S t rawson , " T ru t h : A R e con si d e r a t i on o f A u s t i n ' s V i e ws ' ,

44

Truth and Meaning

pr oposit ions, statements, and assertions, but to relate language with the occasions of t ruth in a way that invites t he constructi on of a theory. The last two paragraphs may suggest that if we a re to have a com petent t heory about truth we must aban don the view that statements a re the proper vehicles of truth. But this i s not so. I f I am right, theories of truth must characterize o r define a three-place pred icate 'T s,u , t ' . It will not matter to the theory whether we read this predicate 'sentence s is true (as English) for speaker u at time t' or 'the statement expressed by sentence s (as English) by speake r u at t i s true ' . Those who believe we must, for further reason s, ret a i n statements a s truth ve hicles will fi n d the second form u l a tion , with its complex si ngular term ('the statement . . . ') and one-place predicate ('is true ') m o re perspicuous, while those who (with me) think we can get along without statements may prefe r the more a ustere first form ulation. But either party may talk either way ; the difference comes out only when the talk is seen in t he light of a com prehensi ve theo ry . Whethe r that t heory requ ires an ontology of statements is not settled , I think, by the matters under discussi on. There a re e xcellent reasons for not predicating truth of sentences, but t hese reasons do not a ppl y to speech acts, utterances, or tokens. It has been argued , and convi ncingl y, that we do not generally, or pe rhaps ever, say of a speech act, utterance, or token, that it is true. 8 This ha rdly shows why we ought not to call these enti ties (if they eXist) true. N o confusion would result if we said that the pa rtic ular speaking of a sentence was true j u st in case it was u sed on that occasion to make a true sta tement ; and sim ilarl y fo r tokens and utterances. Accord i n g to Strawson, ' M y stateme n t ' may b e e i t he r w hat I s a y Or m y s a y i n g i t . M y s a y i n g s ome thing is certa i n l y a n epi sode . W hat I sa y is n o t . I t i s t he l a tter, n ot the for mer, we declare t o be t r ue . 9

I 'm n o t su re a statement i s eve r a speech act, but in any case we m a y accept t he concl usi o n t h a t speech acts are n o t sa id t o be true. But w hat follows ? Certa inly not that we ca nnot explai n what" it is to make a true statement in terms of the conventio nal rela tio ns between words and t hi n gs that hold when the words a re u sed by particu l a r agents on pa rticular occa si ons. For although ' my sta te� See R. Ca rt w righ t . ' Proposi t io n s ' . " P. F . Stra wso n . ' T r u t h ' . 1 29 - 30.

True to the Facts

45

ment' may not refer, at least w hen truth is in question, to a speec h act, still it may succeed in iden tifying its statement only by relating it to a speech act . (What makes it 'my' statement ?) If someone speaking Engl ish u tters the sentence 'The sun is over the yard-arm', under what conditions has he made the statement that the sun is over the yard-arm ? One range of answers might incl ude such provisions as that he intended to convey to his hearers the impression that he believed the sun was over the yard-arm , that he was aut horized by his status to issue information a bout the location of the sun, etc. Thinking along these lines, one might mai ntain that, i f the speaker had no thought of the l ocati on of the ' sun , and wan ted to announce that it was time for a drink, then he didn't make the statement that the sun is over the ya rd-arm . But there is also a sen se of making a statement in which we would say, even under condition s of the sort j ust mentioned, that the man had ('literall y') made the statement that the sun was over the ya rd-arm , and that what he said was (, lite ral ly') true provided the sun was ove r the yard-arm at the time he spoke, even though he had no reason to believe it, and didn't care if it were true. In such cases, we are inte rested not in what the perso n meant by uttering the sentence, but what the sentence, as uttered, meant. Both of these notions of meaning are relative to the circumstances of performance, but in the second case we abstract away from the extra-linguistic intentions of the speaker. Commu nication by language is commu nication by way of lite ral meaning ; so there must be the l iteral sense of making a statement if the re are others. The theory of truth deal s with the lite ral sense. (Of cou rse this point deserves to be discu ssed at much greater length. ) Cleaving t o t he literal , then, someone speaking Engl i sh will make a true statement by uttering t he sen tence ' I t's Tuesday' if and only if it is Tuesday in his vicinity at the time he speaks. The example invites genera lization : every instance of the fol lowing schema will be a truth about truth w hen 's ' is repl aced by a description of a sentence of ' ' English and p i s replaced by a sentence t hat gives t he conditions under which the descri bed sentence is true : (7) Sentence s is true (as English) for speaker u at time t if and only if p . I O 1 0 The e� pression t h a t replaces 'p' must contai n 'u' and ' f ' as rree vari a bl es unl ess th ere a re no ind e�ical elements in s.

46

Truth and Meaning

(An alternative schema apparently attributing t ruth to statements could be substituted .) Even if we rest rict the descriptions we su bstitute for 's' to some stylized voca bulary of syntax, we may assume that there is a true sentence of the form of (7 ) for each English sentence. The totality of such sentences uniquely determines the exten sion of the three-place predicate of (7) (the rel a tivi zed truth predicate). We seem here on the verge of a theory of truth ; yet nothing like correspondence is in sight. The reason may be, howeve r, that we a re only on the ve rge of a theory. Schema (7) tells us what a theory of truth should encompass, but it is not such a theory itself, and does not suggest how such a theory can be contrived . Schema (7) is meant to pl ay for English a role analogous to that played for an artificial langu age by a simil ar schem a in Tarski' s convention T. 1 1 The role i s that of providing a test of the adequacy of a theory of truth : an acceptable theory must entail a true sentence with the form of (7) no matter what sentence of English is described by the canonical expression that replaces 's' . Sc hema ( 7) lacks an elegant feature of its analogue in the work of Ta rski . Tarski, not concerned with languages with indexical ele­ ments, ca n u se this sim ple formula : 's is true (in L) if and only if p' where the se nte nce su bst i tuted for 'p' is the sentence descri bed by t he expression that replaces 's' if the metalanguage contains the object language ; otherwise it t ranslates that sentence in som e straight­ forward sense. This uncomplicated formul a cannot be o u rs ; for when there are indexical terms (dem onstratives, tenses), what goes for 'p' cannot i n general be what 's' names or a translation of it, as witness the example i n the first se nte nce of t he preceding paragraph. The elabo ration called for to state (7) in expl icit syn tactic te rms would be considerable , but there is no reason to think it i mpossible si nce what replaces 'p' m u st be systematically related to the sentence descri bed by the replacement of 's' by the rules that govern the u se of indexical terms i n English. I f the i ndicative sentences of English comprised just a finite number of elemen tary se ntences and tru th-fu nctional compou nds of t hem , it would be easy to gi ve a recu rsive characterizati on of truth by pr ovid i ng a sentence with the form of (7) for eac h elementary sentence, a nd giving a rule correspondi ng to each sente ntial con nective. This st rategy breaks down, however, as soon as we allow I I A Ta rsk i . 'The Concept o f Truth i n Form a l i zed Lan guages' , 1 8 7, 1 88 .

True to the Facts

47

predicates of a rbitrary complexity to be built up using varia bles and connectives, as in quantific ation or complex si ngu lar term s ; and it is just he re that the theory of tru th becomes in teresting. Let us co ncen trate on quantificational structu re at the expen se of singular term s , not on ly because the latter are arguably dispen sa ble while the fo rmer is not, but also because the point to be made will come through more simply. The problem presen ted by quantificational structure for a recu rsive theory of truth is, of cou rse, that although sentences of any finite length can be constructed from a small su pply of variables, connectives, predicate s, and quantifiers, none of the parts of a sen tence needs to be a sente nce in t u rn ; therefore the truth of a complex sentence cannot in general be accoun ted for in terms of the truth of its pa rts . Ta rski tau ght us to appreciate the problem and he gave a n ingenious solu tion . The solution depe nds o n first cha racte rizing a relation called sa tisfaction and then defining truth by mean s of it . The entities that are satisfied are sentences both open a n d cl osed ; the satisfiers are function s that map the variables of the object language on to t he entities ove r which they ra nge-almost eve rything, if the language is English. 1 2 A fu nction satisfies an unstructu red n-pl ace predica te with varia bles in its n places if the predicate is true of the enti ties (in orde r) that the fu ncti on a ssigns to those vari a bles. So i f ' x ' loves y is an open sentence of the simplest kind, a function f satisfies it j u st in case t he entity that f assign s to 'x' loves the entity that f ' assigns to 'y . The recu rsive characte rization of satisfaction must ru n through every primitive predicate in turn. I t copes with connectives in the obvious way : thus a conj u nc tion of two sentences s and t (open or cl osed ) is satisfied by Jprovided f satisfies s and ( sa tisfies t . The u niversa l quantification o f a n open sentence S with respect to a va riable v i s satisfied by J in case j; a nd every othe r fu nction like J except i n what it assigns to v, sati sfies s. (The previou s sente nce w orks with 'existenti a l ' replaci ng 'u nive rsal' and 'or some ' replaci ng 'a nd every' . ) W hether or not a particular fu nction sati sfies a sentence depends entirely on what entities i t assigns to t he free va ria bles of the Sentence . So if the sentence has no free variables--if i t is a cl osed , or genui ne, sen te nce-then it m ust be satisfied by every fu nction or by none. A nd , as is cle a r from the details of t he recu rsi on, those cl osed 1 2

Ta rsk i ' s sa t isfie rs a re i n fi n i t e sequences, not functions. The read e r in sea rch of

precision and d eepe r unde rsta n d i n g ca n n o t be too strongl y urged t o study The Concept of T r u t h i n Formal ized L a n g uage s ' .

48

Truth and Meaning

sentences w hich are satisfied by al l fu nctions are true ; those which are satisfied by none are false . (I assume throu ghout that satisfac­ tion, l ike truth, is rel ativized in t he style of (7). ) The semantic concept of truth as devel oped by Tarski deserves to be called a correspondence theory because of the part played by t he concept of satisfaction ; for clearly what has been done is that the property of being true has been explained, and non-triviaIly, in terms of a relation between language and somet hing else. The rel ation, satisfaction, is not , it must be allowed, exactly what intuition expected of correspondence ; and t he functions or seq uences t hat satisfy may not seem much like facts. In part t he contrast is due to a special fea ture of varia bles : just becau se they refer to no pa rticular individu al, satisfaction must consider arbitrary assignments of entities to variables (ou r fu nctions). If we t hought of proper names instead , satisfiers could be more nearly the ordinary o bjects of ou r tal k-namely, ordered n-tuples of such. Thus 'Dolores loves Dagmar' would be satisfied by Dolores and Dagmar (in that order), provided Dolores loved Dagmar. I suppose Dolores and Dagmar (in that order) is not a fact either-the fact t hat verifies 'Dolores loves Dagmar' should somehow incl ude the loving. This 'somehow' has always been the nemesis of t heories of truth based on facts. So the present point isn't that 's is satisfied by all fu nctions' means exactly what we thought 's co rresponds to t he facts' meant, only that t he two phrases have this in common : bot h intend to express a relation between language and the world, and both are equivalent t o 's is true' when s is a (closed) sentence . The comparison between correspondence t heories t hat exploit the concept of satisfaction a nd t hose which rest on correspondence to facts is at its best with sentences without free va ria bles . The pa rallel e ven extends, if we accept Frege's argument a bout the extensions of sen tences, to the concl usion that true sentences cannot be told apart in point of what t hey correspond to (the facts, The G reat Fact) or are sati sfied by ( a ll functions, seq uences). But Ta rski's st rategy can affo rd this sameness in t he finished product where t he stra tegy of facts cannot, because satisfaction of closed sentences is explained in terms of sa tisfaction of sentences bot h open and closed, whereas it is only closed sentences t hat traditionally have co rresponding facts. Since differe n t assignments of entities to variables satisfy different open sentences a nd since closed sentences a re constructed from open, tru t h is reached, in the semantic approac h, by different routes

True to the Facts

49

for different sentences . All true sentences end up in the same pl ace, but there are different stories a bout how they got there ; a semantic theory of truth tells the story for a particular sentence by running through the steps of the recu rsive account of satisfaction appro­ priate to the sentence . And the story constitutes a proof of a theorem in t he form of an instance of schema (7). The strategy of facts can provide no such instructive variety. Since all true sentences have the same relation to the facts, an expl anation of the truth of a sentence on the basis of its relations to other (closed) se ntences must, if it sticks to t he facts , begin w here it ends. Seen in ret rospect, the fail u re of correspondence theories of tru th based on the notion of fact traces back to a common sou rce : t he desire to incl u de in the entity to which a true sentence corresponds not only t he objects the sentence is 'about' (another idea full of trou ble) but also whatever it is t he sentence says a bout them . One well -exp lored consequence is that it becomes difficul t to descri be t he fact that verifies a sentence except by using t hat sentence itself. The other consequence is t hat the rel ation of correspondence (or 'pictu ring') seems to have direct application to only t he sim plest sentences (,Dolores loves Dagmar'). This prompts fact-theorists to try to explain the truth of all sentences in te rms of t he truth of t he simplest and hence in particul ar to interpret quantification as mere shorthand fo r conjunctions or alternations (perhaps infinite in lengt h) of t he simplest sentences. The irony is t hat, in so far as we can see quan tification in this light, there is no real need for anyt hing like correspondence . It is only when we are forced to take general ity as an essential addition to t he conceptual resou rces of predication and t he compou nding of sentences, and not reduci ble to t hem, that we appreciate t he uses of a sop histicated correspondence t heory. Theo ry of truth based on satisfaction is instructive partly because it i s le ss am bitious about what it packs into t he entities to which se ntences co rrespond : in such a t heory, t hese entities are no more than arbitrary pairings of the objects over which t he varia bles of the language range with those variables . Relative simplicity in the objects is offset by t he trouble it takes to expl ain the relation between t hem and sentences, for eve ry tru th-relevant feature of every sentence must be t aken into account in descri bi ng satisfaction. The pay-ofT is clear : in expl aining tru t h in terms of satisfaction, all the co nceptual resou rces of t he l angu age in relation to its ontology a re brought to bear.

50

Truth and Meaning

Talk of sente nces', or bet te r, stateme nts', being true to, or cor responding to, the facts is of cou rse as harmless as talk of truth. Even the su ggestio n in these phrase s that truth is owed to a re lation between language and the world can, I have argued, be j u stified. The st rategy of facts, against which I have just bee n inveighing, is something else : a ph ilosophical theory, and a bad one . I t would be a shame to discredit all corresponde nce theories, and in particular Tarski 's seman tical approach, th rough thinking the y m ust share the inade quacies of the usual attempts to explain truth on the basis of facts. The assu mption that all co rrespondence theories m u st use the strategy of facts is a t least understandable and, given the vaga ries of philosophical usage, cou ld be considered true by fiat. There is less excuse for the widespread misunderstanding of the role of form ulas like (7 ) in the semantical approach. The following example is no worse than many tha t could be quoted : . . . u n less there is more to t he 'cor respo nde nce ' i nsi sted on by cla ssica l co r responde nce t heories of t ru t h t h a n is capt u red by t he formulations of cu rrent sema n t ic t heory and unle ss t his more ca n be show n to be a n esse n tial propert y of truth (or, at least, of a significa n t variet y of t ru t hs), t he n t he ba t tle ove r correspo nde nce, i nstead of bei ng won by correspondence theorists, has show n i t se l f t o be a Scheins treit . For , as has ofte n been noted, the form u l a ' S now is w h i t e ' ( i n our la nguage ) is t rue

=

S now is w hite

is viewed w i t h t he greatest equanimity by pragmatist and co here ntist a l i k e . I f t h e 'corresponde nce ' of t he correspondence theorist a m o u n t s to not hi ng more than is i l l u s t rated by such equivalences , t he n , W hile pr agma ti s t a nd cohere n tist may hope to ma ke importa nt poi nts, . . . nothing fu rthe r would remain to be said a bo u t ' tr u t h a n d correspondence ' . 1 3

Whether or not there is more to the semantic approach to truth than Sellars is re ady to allow, it may be the case that no battle is won, or even joined , between correspondence the o ries and others. M y t rou ble with this passage hinges on its assu m ption tha t a sentence like ' ' ' Snow is white " is true if and only i f snow is white' (even when prope rly relativized and with a struct u ral desc ription in place of t he quotation) in itself pro vides a clue to what is u nique to the semantical approach. Of cou rse, as Sell ars sa ys, such sentences are neutral ground ; it is just for this reason t hat Tarski hope s eve ryone can agree that a n adequate t he o ry o r definition of t r u t h 13

W . Sel lars, 'Truth and "Correspond ence " ' , 2 9 .

True to the Facts

51

mu st entail all se ntences of this form . The re is no trace of the notion o f correspondence in these sentences, no rel a tional pred icate that expresse s a re lation be tween sentences and what the y are about. Where such a relation, satisfaction, does come into play is in the el abora tion of a non-tri vi al theory capable of mee ting the te st of entai ling all those neu tral snow-bound trivi alities. I would l i ke now and by way of concl usion to mention briefly two of the many kinds of o bstacle tha t must be ove rcome i f we are to have a comprehensive theory of truth for a natu ral langu age . Fi rst, it is ce rtainly reasonable to wonder to wha t extent it wi ll e ve r be possible to t reat a natu ral language as a formal system , and e ven more to question whether the resou rces of the sem antical method can begi n to encompass such common phenome na as adve rbial modification, attributi ve adjecti ve s, talk of proposi tional a tti tudes , of ca usali ty, of obligation, and all the rest. At present we do not even have a satisfactory semantics for singular te rm s, and on this matter many others hang. Still, a de gree of optimism is justified. U ntil Frege , serious semantics was largely l i m i ted to predication and the truth­ functional compounding of sentences. By abst racting quantifi­ cational structure from what had seemed a jungle of pronouns, quantifie rs , conne ctive s, and articles . Fre ge showed how an astonishingly powerful fragment of natural language could be semantically tamed. I ndeed, i t may still tu rn ou t that this fragment will prove , with inge n u i ty, to be the whole . Mean whi le, prom i sing work goes on i n many directions, enlarging the resource s of formal semantics, extendi ng the application of know n re sou rce s, and p roviding t he complex and de ta i led rules necessary to give a revealing description of t he struct u re of natural language . W hatever range the sem a ntic t heory of t ruth ul timately turns ou t to have, we may welcome t he i nsight t hat comes whe re we unde rstand language well enough to apply i t . The second d i fficulty is on a nother level : w e have suggested h o w i t might be possi ble t o interpre t attributions o f tru th to stateme nts or to sente nce s relati vized to occasions of use, but only in contexts of the sort provided by t he left branch of (7). We have give n no indic ati on o f how the anal ysi s could be extende d to apply to sen tenc es l i ke (8 ) I t i s t r ue that i t is r a i n i ng. ( 9 ) The stateme nt that i t is raining is true .

52

Truth and Meaning

Here is how we might try to meet the case of (8). We have, we a re su pposing, a theory of truth-in-English with truth treated as a relation between a sen tence, a speaker, and a time. (The alternati ve version in terms of statements would apply to (9) . ) The problem is to find natu ral cou nterparts of these elements in (8). A speake r of (8) speaks the words 'it is raining', thus performing an act that em bodies a particu lar sen tence, has its speaker, and its time. A reference to this act can therefore serve as a reference to the th ree items needed to appl y the theory of tru th . The reference we can think of as having been boiled down into the demon st rative ' that' of ( 8) an d (9). A long-winded ve rsion of (8) might, then, go l ike this. First (reve rsing the order for clarity) I say 'It's raining' . Then I say ' That speech act embodied a sentence which, spoken by me now, is true' . On this analysis, an utte rance of (8) or (9) consists of two logical ly (semantically) independent speech acts, one of which contains a demonstrat ive reference to the other. A n in teresting featu re of these utte rances is that one is true if the other is ; perhaps this confirms an insight of the redu ndancy theory. A fu rthe r p roblem is raised by ( 1 0) Pete r's statement that Paul is hirsute is true. Following the su ggestion made fo r (8) and (9), the anal ysis of ( 1 0) should be 'Paul is hirsu te. That is true, and Peter said (stated) it'. The 'that' , as befo re, refers to an act of speaking, and now the 'it' picks up the same reference . What is needed to com plete the account is a pa ratactic analysis of indirect discou rse that interprets an utterance by a speaker u of 'Peter said that Paul is hi rsute' as composed of an utterance of ' Pau l is hi rsu te' and another utte rance ('Pete r said that') that relates Peter in a certain way to u's utte rance of 'Paul is hirsute'. The relation in question can, perhaps, be made intelligible by appeal to the notion of samesaying : if u says what is true when he says 'Peter said that' , it is because, by saying 'Paul is hirsute', he has made Peter and himself samesayers. 1 4 One may, o f cou rse , insist that the rel ation of samesayi ng (which holds between speech acts) can be understood only by reference to a third entity : a sta tement, meaning, or proposition. N othing I have written he re bea rs on this question, except ind i rectly, by showing that, with respect to the p roblems at hand , no need a ri ses for such 14

For more on this approach to indirect d i scourse, see Essay 7.

True to the Facts

53

en tI tIes . I s this simply the result of neglecting trou blesome cases ? Consider, a s a final example, ( 1 1 ) Peter said something true. This cannot be rendered, 'Some (past) utterance of Peter's makes u s sa mesayers', for I m ay not have said, or know how t o say, the appropriate thing. Nor wil l it help to try 'Some utterance of Peter's em bodied a sen tence true under the circumstances' . This fails becau se ( 1 1 ) d oes not tell what language Peter spoke, and the concept of tru th with which we are dealing is necessaril y limited to a specific l anguage . Not kn owing what his language is, we cann ot make sen se of 'true-in-his-l anguage'. What we can hope to make sen se of, I thi nk, i s the idea of a sentence in an other ton gue being the translation of a sentence of Engl i sh. Given this idea, it becomes natural to see ( 1 1 ) as meaning something l i ke 'Pete r u ttered a sentence that translates a sentence of Engl i sh true u nder the circumsta nces'. The exact nature of the counterfactu al a ssumption barely concealed in this analysis depends on the details of the theory of truth (for English) as relativized to occasion s of u t terance . I n any case, we seem required to u nderstand what someone el se would mean by a sentence of ou r language if he spoke ou r language. But difficult as this concept is, it is hard to see how commun ication can exist without it. The conclu sion I would tentatively draw is this. We can get away from what seems to be tal k of the (absolute) tru th of timeless statements if we accept truth as relativized to occasion s of speech, and a st rong notion of translation . The switch may create more probl ems than it solves. But they are, I think, the right problems : providing a detailed account of the semantics of natura l language, and devising a theory of t ranslation that does not depend u pon , but rather foun d s , whatever there is to the concept of meaning. Stra wson describes Austin 's 'pu rified versi on of the correspon­ dence theory of truth' in this way : His . . . theory is, ro u gh l y, t hat to say t hat a statemen t is true is to say that a cert a i n speech-epis ode is related in a certain conve ntional wa y to so methi n g i n t he world excl usive o f i t se l f. 1 5

It i s this theory Strawson has in mind when he says, 'The corre sponden ce theory requ ires, not purification , but elimination '. I 15

P . F. S trawson, 'Tru t h ' , 1 29 .

54

Truth and Meaning

would not want to defend the detail s of Au stin's conception of correspondence, and many of the poi nts I have made against the st rategy of facts echo Straw son's criticism s. But the debilities of pa rticular formu lations of the correspondence theory ought not be held against the theo ry. I f I am right, by appealing to Tarski 's sem antical conception of tru th we can defend a theory that almost exactly fits S trawson's description of Austin's 'pu rified version of the correspondence theory of truth'. And this theory deserves, not elimination, but elaboration .

4

Semantics for Natural Languages

A theory of the sem antics of a natu ral language ai m s to gi ve the meaning of every meaningfu l expression, but it is a question wha t form a theory should take if it i s to accompl i sh this. Since there seems to be no clear limit to the number of meaningful expressions, a workable theory must accou nt fo r the meaning of each exp ression on the basis of the patterned exhi bition of a finite n u m ber of feat u res. Even if there is a practical con stra int on the le ngth of the sentences a person can send and receive with u nderstanding, a satisfactory semantics needs to explain the contribution of repeatable features to the meaning of sentence s in which they occur. I suggest that a theory of truth fo r a l a ngu age does, in a minimal bu t important respect, do what we want, that is, give the meanings of all independently meaningful expressions on the basis of a n analysis o f their structure. A n d on t h e other hand , a semantic theory of a nat u ral language cannot be considered adeq uate unless it provides an account of t he concept of t ru t h for that langu a ge a long the general l ines proposed by Tarski for formal ized langu ages . I think both linguists and philosophers interested in natu ral languages have missed the key impo rtance of the theo ry of truth pa rtly becau se they have not realized that a theory of truth gives a precise, profou nd, and test able an swer to the question how finite resou rces su ffice to explain the i nfinite semantic capacities of l a ngu age, and partly because they have exaggerated the difficu lties in the way of giving a fo rmal theory of truth for a natural language. In any event the at tempt is in structive, for in so far as we succeed in giving such a theory for a natural language, we see the natural language as a form al system ; and in so far as we make the con st ruction of such a

56

Truth and Meaning

theo ry ou r aim, we can thi nk of l i ngu ists and analytic phi losophers as co-workers ' . ] By a theory of truth I mean a set of axioms that entai l , for every sen tence i n the language , a statemen t of the conditi ons u nder which it is true. O bviou s l y if we ha ve a definition of a truth predicate satisfying Ta rski's C onven ti on T we have a theo ry of tru th , 2 but in general the c harac teriza tion of a theory of truth demand s less. I f no fu rther restric ti ons are imposed , some theories of tru th will be of l ittle intri n sic i n terest. For example, we could simpl y take as axioms all sentences of the form 's i s true i f and only i f p ' where 's' i s to be repl aced by a standardized description of a se nte nce and 'p' by that sentence (assum i n g tha t the metalangua ge contai ns the object language). Such a the ory w ould yield no i nsight i n to the structure of the language and wou ld thus pr ovide no h i n t of an a nswer to the question how the mea n i n g of a sente nce depends on its composi tion . We could block this par ticular aberration by stipu l a ti ng that the non-l ogical axi oms be fin ite in num be r ; in what fol lows ] shal l assume that this restricti on is in force, thou gh i t may be that other ways exi st of ensu ring t ha t a theory of t r u th has the prope rties we want. What proper ties do we want ? A n accepta ble theory should, as we have said, accou nt fo r the meaning (or cond i tions of t r u th ) of eve ry sente nce by ana l ysing it as composed , i n truth -releva n t ways, of elements d rawn fr om a fi ni te stoc k . 3 A second natural demand is tha t the theory provide a me thod for decidi ng, gi ve n an ar bitrary sen tence , what its mea ning i s . ( By sati sfyi ng these two cond i ti o ns a theory ma y be said to s h ow that the langu age i t descri bes is learnable and scrutable .) A third conditi on is that the stateme nts of truth conditions for individual se nte nces entailed b y the theory s h ou l d , in some way yet to be made preci se, d raw upon the same concepts as the sente nces wh ose truth conditi ons they s tate. 4 Theories of the sort Ta rski sh owed h ow to devise clear l y e nough I 2

See foo t n ote 1 4 t o E s s a y 2 .

A . Tarski, ' T he Concept of T r u t h i n F or m a l ized L a n g u a ges' ] T r u t h co n d i t i o n s a re n o t t o be e q u a ted w i t h mea n i n gs ; at best we can say t h a t by givi n g the t r u t h c o n d i t i o n s of a sente nce we gi ve its m e a n i n g , But t h i s claim too need s Cla rificatio n . For some needed q u a l i ficati o n s, see Essa ys 9 a n d 1 2 . [ N ote a dded i n 1 98 2 . ]

4 Fo r i m p o r t a n t reserv a t i o n s o n the possibi l i t y of m a k i n g th i s co n d i t i o n p recise. see

S. K ripke, ' I s There a Problem a b o u t S u bs t i t u t i o n a l Q u a n t i fica tion ? ' , [ N ote added i n 1 9 82.]

Semantics for Natural Languages

57

h ave these desirable characte ristics. The las t co nd i ti o n, for example, is satisfied i n a n elementary way by a theo ry couched i n a metalanguage that contai ns the o bject language , for i n the requi red sta teme nts of the fo rm 's is t rue if a nd only if p ' the tru th cond i tio ns o f s are given by the sente nce that repl aces 'p' , namely s i tself, and so make no u se of any concepts not d i rectl y called upon in u nderstand­ ing s. If the metalangu age d oes not contain the objec t langu age, it i s l ess o bvious when this criterion i s sati sfied : and natu ral langu ages r aise fu rther pro blems that wi ll be touched upon presentl y . I t seems natu ral to i nterpret the third condi ti o n as prohibi ti n g the appearance of a semantic ter m in the statement of the truth cond itions of a se ntence u nless that sen te nce alread y contains the semantic term ( o r a translation of i t) . I t is not clear whe the r or not this wou l d rule ou t explici t reso r t to seman tic concepts i n the statemen t of truth conditions for m odal sentences ( si nce it i s u ncertai n whether o r not these could b e co nstrued from the s tart as seman tic i n natu re) . B u t this cons traint does appear to threate n theories that appeal t o a n unanal ysed concept of denoti ng o r naming, a s well a s th ose t h a t make tru th i n a model the fu ndamental semantical n o ti o n . 5 To pu t this i n terpreta tio n on the third condi tion i s , i t seems, t o judge much recen t work i n seman tics irrelevant to prese n t pu rposes ; so I inte nd he re to leave the question open, along wi th many fu r ther questions co ncer n i n g the detailed formu lation of the s tandards we should req u i re of a theo r y of tru t h . M y prese n t i n terest is not i n arguing -d ispu ted poi n ts b u t to u r ge the general relevance and productiveness of req u i ri ng of any theory of meaning ( semantics) fo r a natural language that i t give a recu rsive account of truth . I t seems to me no inconsiderable meri t of this suggesti on that it provides a framework withi n which a m u l ti tude of issues and pro blem s can be shar pl y stated . To give a recu rsive theory of tru th for a language is to show that th e syn tax of the language i s formalizable in at least the sense that e very t rue expressio n may be analysed as formed from eleme nts ( the ' v ocab ulary'), a finite supply of which suffice for the l anguage by the applicatio n of rules, a finite number of which suffice for the l a n guage . Bu t even if we go on to assume that falsehood may be defi ned in terms of tru th, or i ndependently a nd simi larly c harac­ terized . it d oes not fol low that sentencehood or grammatical ness can 5

S e e J . W a l l ace, ' N o n s t a n d a rd T heorie s of T ru t h ' .

58

Truth and Meaning

be recursi ve l y defi ned . So arguments desi g ned to establish tha t a formal recu rsive accou n t of syntax (se ntenceh ood o r grammatical­ ness) ca nnot be given for a natural language do not necessari ly disc red i t the attempt to gi ve a theory of tru th. I t should also be men ti oned that the sugges ted cond i ti ons of adequacy for a theory of tru th d o not ( obviously, a nyway) e ntail that even the true se nte nces of the object language have the form of some standard l o gical system . Thus supposing i t were clear ( which i t i s not) that the deep structu re of E nglish (or another natural la nguage) ca nnot be represe nted by a formal la ngu age with the u sual quantificational structure, i t stiH would not fol low tha t there was n o way of givi ng a the ory of tru tho A theory of tru th for a natural language mu s t take accoun t of the fac t that many se n tences vary in truth value depend i n g on the time they are spoken , the speaker, and even, perhaps, the audie nce . We can accommodate thi s phen omenon ei the r by declari ng that it is particular u t terances or speech ac ts, and not sen te nce s, that have tru th values, or by maki ng tru th a relation tha t holds between a se nte nce , a speaker , and a time . To thu s accommodate the indexica l , or dem onstrative, elements i n a natural language i s to accept a rad ical conceptual change in the way truth can be defined , as wiH be appreciated by reflection on how C onvention T must be revi sed to make tru th sensi tive to context. But the change need not mean a depar tu re fr om formal ity . The fear is often expressed that a formal theory of truth ca n not be made to cope with the problems of ambigui ty in na t u ral language that abs orb so much of the energy of linguists. In thi n k i n g abou t this question it may help to di s ti nguish two claims. One is that formal theories of tru th have not tradi ti onally been designed to deal wi th am bi gui ty, and it wou ld change thei r character to equ ip them to d o s o . Thi s claim i s j u s tified , and harmless. Theories o f tru th in Tarski ' s style d o n o t i n general treat q uestions o f defi n i tion for the primi tive vocabu lary (as opposed to questions of translation and l ogical form) ; on the other hand there is nothing in a theory of tru th i ni mical to the satisfac tory treatme n t of the pr oblems a lexicon is desi gned to solve. The sec ond claim is that s ome sorts of ambi gu i ty necessarily prevent our givi ng a theory of tru th . Before this thesis can be eval uated i t will be necessary to be far clearer tha n we are now abou t the cri teria of success in givin g a theory of truth for a natural language. Withou t attempting a deep discu ssi on here, let me

Seman tics for Natural Languages

59

indicate why I think the issue ca nnot be se ttled by qu oting a few puzzling cases . Bar-Hi ltel gives an example l ike this : "They came by sl o w train s and plane.'6 We can take 'slow' as modifying the conjunc tion tha t fol t ows, or only ' train' . Of course an adeq uate theory wou ld u nc ove r the ambigui t y ; a theory o f tru th wou ld in particular need to show how an u ttera nce of the sentence could be true u nder one interpretation and false u nder anothe r . S o far the re is no d i fficul ty for a theory of tru th. B u t Ba r-Hillel makes the fu r ther obse rvati on that the contex t of u tterance might easily resolve the ambigu ity for any normal speaker of English, and yet the res ol u tion could depe nd on general k n owled ge in a way that could not (practically, at least) be captured by a forma l theory. By granting this, as I think we mu s t, we accept a l imitati o n on what a theor y of tru th can be expected to do . Within the l imi tation it may still be possi ble to give a theory tha t captures an important concept of meaning. We have touched l ightly on a few of the considerati ons that have led linguists a nd phi l os ophers to dou bt whether i t is possi ble to give a formal theory of truth for a natu ral la nguage. I have sugges ted that the pessimism is premature, pa rticularl y in the abse nce of a d iscussion of cri teria of adequacy. On the other hand , i t would be foolish not to recognize a differe nce in the i nte rests and me thods of those who study contrived languages and those who study natu ral languages. Whe n logician s and phil os ophers of la nguage express rese rva ti ons concerning the treatme n t of natu ral l angu ages as formal systems , it may be because they are interested mai nly in me tathe ore tical matters like consistency, c omplete ness, and decidability . Such studies assu me exact knowled ge of the language bei n g s tud ied , a kind of precision that can be justified only by viewi n g the relevant features of the object language as fixed by legislation . This attitude is clearly not appr opriate to the empir ical study of language. I t wou ld be mislead ing, however, to concl ude that there are two kinds of langu age, natu ral a nd artificial . The contrast i s better drawn in terms of gu id ing inte rests. We can ask for a desc ription of the structu re of a natural langu age : the ans we r must be an empi rical theory, ope n to test and su bject to error, and doomed to be to some e xtent incomplete and schematic. O r we can ask abou t the formal " Y . B a r - H i l l e l . Language and In/o rmation, 1 8 2.

60

Truth and Meaning

proper ties of the structu res we thus abs tract. The difference is like that betwee n applied and pu re geometry . I have been urging that no definite obs tacle stands in the way of givi ng a formal theory of truth fo r a natural language ; i t remains to say why it would be desirable. The reasons are of necessity general and programmatic, for wha t is bein g recommended is not a particular theory, but a criterion of theories. The claim is that if thi s criterion is accepted , the empi rical study of language will gain in clarity and si gnificance. The question whether a theor y is correct can be made reasonabl y sharp and testabl e ; the theories that are called for are powerfu l in expl ana tory and predictive power, and make use of sophisticated conceptual resources that are al read y welI under­ s tood . Amo n g the problems which a satisfactory theory of truth would solve, or help solve , are many which i n terest both lingu is ts and phi losophe rs ; so as a fri n ge benefit we may anticipate a degree of conver gence in the methods a nd i n terests of philosophy and l i nguistics . Let me try, briefly, to give colour to these remarks. One relatively sharp d emand on a theo ry for a langu age is that it gi ve a recu rsive cha racte riza tion of sente nceho od . This part of theory is tes table to the exten t tha t we have, or ca n con trive, reliable ways of tel l i n g whether an expression i s a se ntence. Let u s imagine for now tha t we can do this wel l enou gh to get ahead . I n defining sentencehood what we capture, roughl y, i s the idea of an in­ dependen tly meaningfu l expression. But meaningfulness is only the shad ow of meaning ; a ful l -fled ged theory should not merel y ticket the meaningfu l expres sions, but give their mea ni ngs . The poi n t is ackno wled ged by many l i n guists today, but for the most par t they admit they do not know how to meet this add i tional demand on theory, nor even how to formu late the demand . 7 So now I shou ld l i ke to sa y a bi t more i n support of the claim that a theory of truth d oes ' gi ve the meaning' o f sentences. A theory of tr u th entails, fo r each sentence s, a statement of the form 's is true if and only if p' where in the simplest case 'p ' i s replaced by s. Since the words ' is true if and o n l y if ' are i nva riant, we may i n terpre t them if we please as meaning 'means that'. So construed , a sample might then read ' " Socrates is wise" means that Socra tes is wise' . Thi s way of bringing out the relevance of a theory of truth to 1

For example see Chomsky's remarks on semantics, 'Topics in the Theory of

Ge nera tive Gramma r ' .

Semantics for Natural Languages

61

q uestions o f meaning is i l l u minating, b u t we mu st beware lest i t encou rage certain errors . One such error is t o think that all we ca n learn from a theory of tru th about the meaning of a particu lar s entence is contained in the biconditi onal demanded by Conventi on T. Wha t we can learn is brou ght out rather in the proof of such a bicond i tional , fo r the proof must demons trate, s tep by step, how the truth value of the sentence depends upon a recu rsivel y given structu re. Once we have a theory, produci ng the requ i red proof is easy enough ; the process could be mechanized. To see the str ucture of a sentence through the eyes of a theory of tru th is to see it as bu i l t by devices a finite n u m ber of which suffice fo r every sentence ; the structu re of the sentence thus determi nes its relations to other sentences. And indeed there is no givi n g the tru th conditions of all sentences withou t showing that some sentences are l ogical conseq uences of other s ; i f we regard the structu re revealed by a theory of truth as deep grammar, then grammar and logic must go hand in ha nd . There is a sense, then, in which a theory of truth accounts for the role each sentence plays in the language in so far as that role depends on the sentence's being a potenti al bearer of truth or fal si ty ; and the accou n t is give n in terms of structu re. This remark is d ou btless far less clea r tha n the facts tha t inspi re it, but my pu rpose i n pu tting the matter this way i s to j u s tify the claim that a theory of tru th shows how ' the meaning of each sentence depends on the meaning of the word s' . Or perhaps it is enough to say tha t we have give n a sense to a su gges tive bu t vague claim ; there is no reason not to welcome a l te r native read ings i f they are eq ually clea r . I n an y case, to accept my proposal is to give up the attempt to find enti ties to serve as meanings of sen tences and words . A theor y of tru th d oes withou t ; bu t this should be counted i n its favou r , a t least u n til someone gives a coherent and satisfactory theo ry of meaning that empl oys meanings. Convention T, suitabl y modified to appl y to a natural language, pro vides a criterion of success in givi ng an accou n t of meaning. B u t h ow can we tes t s u c h an accou n t empi rical l y ? Here is the sec ond case in which we m i ght be misled by the remark that the bicondi tionals requ i red by Convention T could be read as givi ng meanin gs, for wh at this wrongl y su ggests is that tes ting a theory of tru th call s for direct insight into what each sentence mea ns. B u t in fact, all tha t is need ed is the abil i ty to recogn ize when the req ui red bicondi tionals

62

Truth and Meaning

are true. Thi s means tha t i n principle it is no ha rder to tes t the empi rical adequac y of a theory of truth than it is for a competent speaker of English to decide whether se ntences like ' "Snow is whi te" is true i f a nd onl y i f snow is whi te' are true. So sema n tics , or the theory of truth at least, seems on as fi rm a footing empi r ical l y as syntax. It ma y in fact be easier i n many cases for a speaker to say what the truth co nditi o ns of a sente nce are than to say whether the sentence is grammatical . It may not be clear whether 'The child seems sleepi ng' is grammatical ; b u t s u rely 'The chi ld seems sleeping' is true i f and onl y i f the chi ld seems sleepi ng. I have been imagi ning the situation where the metalanguage contains the object language, so that we may ask a native speaker to react to the fami liar bico nd i tionals that connect a se n te nce and its descripti o n . A more radical case arises i f we want to test a theory stated in our own language about the language of a forei g n speaker. Here again a theory o f truth can b e tes ted , thou gh not a s easi ly o r di rectly a s befo re . The pr ocess w i l l have t o b e somethi n g like that described by Quine i n Chapter 2 of Word and Object. We wi l l notice conditions u nder which the alien speaker assents to or dissents from, a variety of his sente nces. The relevant conditi ons will be what we take to be the truth conditions of his sentences . We wil l have to assume that i n si mple or obvi ous cases most of his assents are to true, and his di ssents fr om false, se ntences-a n ine vi table assumpti on si nce the al ternative is u ni ntell i gible. Yet Quine is right, I think, in holding that a n important degree of indetermi nacy wi l l remai n after a l l the evidence is i n ; a number of significan tl y d i fferent theories of truth will fi t the evidence equal l y wel l . 8 Making a sys tematic accou nt of truth central i n empi rical semantics is i n a way merely a matter of stating old goals m ore sharpl y . Stil l , the l i ne between clar ification and inn ovation in science is blurred , and i t seems l i kely that the change would shift pri orities in li nguistic research. Some problems that have d ominated rece n t work on semantics wou ld fade i n importance : the attempt to give ' the meaning ' of sen te nces , and to accou n t for syn onymy, analy ticity , a nd ambi guity. For the fi rs t of these, the theory of tru th pr ovides a kind of substi tu te ; the second and third become u n necessary appendages ; the fou r th reappears i n a special form . Wh at would 8

F o r fu rthe r discussion o f t h e p r i n c i ples gu idi n g i n terpre t a t i o n s e e E s sa y s 2 , 9- 1 1 .

1 3 , 1 4 . There a re some diffe rences bet ween Q u i n e ' s method of radica I t ra n sl a t i o n a n d

the method I a m suggest i n g ; see Essay 1 6 .

Seman tics for Natural Languages

63

emerge as the deep problems are the d ifficul ties of reference, of gi vi ng a satisfactory sema n tics for modal sentences, sentences abou t propositional a ttitudes, mass terms, adve r bial modification, attri­ butive adjectives, i mperati ves, and interrogati ves ; and s o on throu gh a long list familiar, for the most part, to phi losophers . 9 I t i s a question how much o f a real i gnment we a r e talk i ng abou t for l inguistics . This depends largely on the extent to which the structu re revealed by a theory of truth can be identi fied with the deep s tructu re transformational grammarians see k . I n one respect, l ogical s tructure (as we may call the s t ructure devel oped by a the ory of truth) and deep structu re could be the same, for both are i ntended to be the fou ndati on of semantics . Deep s tructure must also serve, however, as the basi s for the transforma ti ons that produce surface structures, a nd i t i s an open questi on whether l ogical structu re can do thi s job, or do it wel l . l o Final l y, deep s tructure i s asked by some l i n guists to reflect the 'i nternalized grammar ' of speakers of the language. Choms k y in pa r ticular has argued that the superiori ty of transformational grammars over o thers that mi ght be equall y good a t accou n ti ng for the totality of grammatical sentences lies in the fact tha t transfor­ mati onal grammars can be made to 'correspond to the lingu i s tic i ntuition of the native speaker'. I I The problem is to find a relativel y clea r test for when a theory corresponds to a speaker's l i nguistic intuitio n . I would l i ke to suggest that we can give one sort of empirical bi te to this idea if we take deep structu re to be l ogical form. C onsider this passage in C homsky . 1 2 Choms k y says that the fol l owing two sen te nces, thou gh they have the same surface structu re, differ i n deep structu re :

( I ) I per suaded J oh n to leave . (2) I expec ted J oh n t o leave The demons trati on rests chiefly on the observa ti on tha t whe n an embedded sen te nce in a se nte nce somewhat like ( 2 ) i s transformed to the pa ssive, the resu l t is 'cognitively syn onymou s ' with the acti ve form ; but a similar transformation d oes not yield a synonymous 9

S i nce t h i s w a s w r i t t e n , m u ch h a s cha n ged : l i nguists have recognized t hese

problem s a n d m a n y m o re , while phil osophers h a ve been pr odded by l i n g uists to ap p reciate problems t hey had n eve r noticed . [ N ote a dded in 1 98 2 . ] 10 Fo r devel opment of t h i s t heme, see G. H a r m a n , ' Logical For m ' . I I 12

N . Chomsk y . Aspects oj the Theory I bi d . , 22 .

a/" Syn tax,

24.

64

Truth and Meaning

result for the anal ogue of ( I ). The observation is clearl y correct, but how d oes it show that ( I ) and (2) have rad icall y different deep s tructures ? A t most the evide nce suggests that a theory that assi gns different structu res to ( 1 ) a nd (2) may be simpler than one that d oes not. But how our lingui stic intuitions ha ve been tapped to pr ove a d iffere nce here is obscu re. But of course C homs ky i s right ; the re is a contrast betwee n ( 1 ) and (2), and it emerges d ramatical l y the mome nt we start thi nki ng i n terms o f constructi ng a the ory o f truth. I ndeed we need go n o fu rther than t o ask about the sema ntic role o f the word 'John ' i n both sentences. I n ( I ), 'John ' can be replaced b y a n y coreferri ng term without alte r i n g the truth value of ( 1 ) ; this is not true of (2). The contribution of the word 'John' to the truth conditi ons of ( I ) mus t therefore be rad ica l l y d i ffe rent from its c ontribution t o the truth conditions of (2). This way of showing there is a d iffere nce in the semantic structure of ( 1 ) and (2) requ i res no appeal to 'the speaker's tacit knowled ge ' of the gramma r or the 'intrinsic com­ petence of the ideal ized native speake r ' . It rests on the explicit knowledge any speaker of Engl ish has of the way in which ( 1 ) a nd (2) ma y va ry in truth u nder su bstitutions for the word 'John ' . Yet these l ast remarks d o not begi n to d o justice t o the method of tru th. They show tha t by bearing the requ ireme nts of a theory of truth i n mind we can throw i nto relief our feeling for a d i fference in structure be tween ( 1 ) and (2). S o far, thou gh, the evide nce to which we are appea l i n g is of much the same sort as Chomsky uses : mai nly q uesti ons of the loss or preservati on of truth val ue u nder transfo r­ mati ons. Such con sidera tions will no dou bt con ti nue to guide the constr uctive a nd a nal ytic labours of linguists as they l o n g have those of ph i l osopher s . The beauty of a theory of the sort we have been d i scu ssi ng is that these i n timati ons of structu re, however use ful or esse n tial they ma y be to the discovery of a su i table theory, need pl ay no direc t role in testing the final product.

5

In Defence of Convention

T

Let someone say, 'There are a million s tars out toni ght' and another repl y, 'That's true ', then nothi n g cou ld be pl ai ner than that what the first has said is true i f and onl y i f what the other has said is true. This familiar effect i s due to the reciprocity of two devices, one a way of referring to expressions (work done here by the demonstrative 'that'), the other the concept of tru th. The first device takes u s from tal k of the w orld to tal k of l an gua ge ; the second bri ngs u s back again. We have learned to represent these facts by se nte nces of the form The sentence "There are a mil\i on s tars out toni ght" is true i f and onl y if there a re a million stars out toni ght ' . Because T-se nte nces (as we may cal \ them) are so obviou s l y true, some phi l os ophers have thou ght that the concept of truth, at least as applied to se n te nces, w as trivial. Bu t of cou rse this is wrong, as Ramsey was perh aps the first to poi nt out, si nce T -sentences provide an al ternati ve to tal k of truth for some contexts only. T-sentences are no hel p if we want equivalents of ' E very se ntence Ari stotle spoke was fal se' or ' W h at you said l ast Tuesday was true' . ! T-sentences d o n ' t, then, show how to live witho u t a tru th predicate ; but taken together, they d o tel l what i t would be l i ke to ha ve one . For si nce there is a T-sen tence correspondi ng to each se n te nce of the language for which truth is in question, the totality of T-se ntences exactl y fixes the exte nsi on, among the sentences, of any p red icate that plays the role of the words 'is true '. From this it i s clea r that although T- sentences do not define truth, the y can be u sed t o define truth pred icatehood : any predicate i s a truth predicate that makes all T-se nte nces true. 1

F . P . Ramsey , 'Facts a n d Propositions', 1 43 .

66

Truth and Mean ing

T- sentences shed what light they do on tru th by exhau sting the cases, bu t since fo r an y i n teres ti ng langu age the number of cases is i nfi n ite, it is instruc tive to ask what properties tru th must have if i t i s to ac t as the T-sen tences say i t does . To spell ou t the pr oper ties i n an instructive, i.e. finite way, is to provide a theory of truth. We may thi n k of a theory of tru th for a la nguage L simpl y as a sen tence T containin g a predicate t such that T has as logical consequences all sentences of the form 's is true if and only if p ' with 's' repl aced by a canonical description of a sen tence of L, 'p' repl aced by that sentence (or its translation), and 'is tru e' replaced , if necessar y, by t. I n essence this is, of cou rse, Tarski's Con ventio n T. 2 It differs in one si gnifican t respec t on l y : it d oes not requ ire tha t the cond i tions on the tru th pred icate suffice for an expl ici t definition. ( I shall retu r n to this poi n t . ) Throu ghout Tars ki's writings on tr u th, C onven tion T provides the transi tion from informal intu itions concerning the concept of tru th to sharp s ta temen t of problem . We first c ome across Conven ti on T in 'The Concept of Tru th in Formal ized La nguages' (pu blished i n Pol ish i n 1 933, i n German i n 1 936, and i n Engl ish i n 1 956). I n a su bsequen t a r ticle aimed mainly at phil os ophers , Ta rski appeals to T-sen tences to relate classical phi losophical issues to his work i n sema ntics . 3 In a later popular piece he takes the same l i n e . 4 F o r alI i t s familiarity, I think a central poi n t abou t Convention T has been la rgely lost on philosophers . I t is this : Con venti on T and T­ sentences provide the sole link between i n tu i ti vel y obvi ous tru ths abou t tru th and formal seman tics. Withou t Conventi on T, we shou ld have no reas on to believe that truth i s what Tarski has shown us how to characterize. The weight Tarski pu ts on Con ven tion T is i n teresting in another way, for it sets up a mi ld terminological strai n . Accord i ng to Ta rski,

Semantics is a d iscipl i ne which , speaking loosel y , d e a l s w i t h certain rel ations

be tween expressi ons o f a l anguage and the objects . . . ' referred to' by those exp ressions. 5

He gi ves as examples of semantic concepts designation (denotation), which relates singular terms and what they denote ; satisfaction , which holds between an open sen tence and the entity or en ti ties i t is 2 3 4 5

A . T a r s k i , 'The Conce pt o f T r u t h i n For m a l ized L a n g u a ges' , 1 8 7 , 1 8 8 . A . T a r s k i , 'The Sem a n t i c Conception of T r u t h ' . A . T a r s k i , ' T r u t h a n d Proo f ' . A . Tarski, 'The Sem a n t i c Con ception o f T r u t h ' ,

345 .

In Defence of Conven tion T

67

tru e of; and definition , which rela tes an eq uation and a number it u niquel y determines . He conti nues, While the words

'designates', 'satisfies',

a nd

'defines'

express relations . . . ,

th e word 'true' is of a d iffere n t logical nature : i t expresses a property ( o r d enotes a class) o f certain expressions, viz. , of sen tences. 6

H e goes on to remark that ' the simples t and most natu ral way' of defining tru th goes by way of satisfac ti on , and this explains hi s c alling truth a seman tic concept. But we cannot help noticing that tru th is n ot, by Tarski's own accoun t, a semantic concept. A glance at the l ogical grammar of T-sentences shows that it is essential that the truth predicate n ot expres s a relation : i f it did, there cou ld not be the crucial disappearance, from the right branch of the T-sentence biconditional, of all seman tic concepts, and i nd eed of ever ythi ng except the very sentence whose tru th condi tions i t states (or a translation of that sentence). 7 I t wou ld d o much to jus tify Tarski's termi nol ogy i f i t cou ld be shown that any theory that meets the cri terion of Convention T has resou rces ad equate to characterizing the satisfaction rela tio n. Clea r l y there are languages for which thi s does not hold, b u t it wou ld be i nteresti ng i f for sufficientl y r ich languages it did. Recent work sugges t s a posi tive answer. 8 The feeling that truth bel ongs with the other semantic concepts is also enha nced by the fact tha t i n each case there is a pa radigm that both u ses and mentions the same expression : 'Plato' designates Plato ; y satisfies 'x is white' if and onl y if y is w hi te ; ' snow i s whi te' is true i f and onl y i f snow is whi te ; the equation '2x = l ' defines the number y if and only if 2y = 1 , etc . The existence of such a parad igm can n ot, however, be taken as a sign of the semantical , for there is no appropriate a na l ogous parad igm for relati vized seman tic concepts like truth i n a model . My present pu rpose is to defend , on grou nds of philosophical inte rest and importa nce, concepts tha t meet the criteri on of C onventi on T (and for which, then , there is a familiar paradigm). b 7

I b id . ,

34 5 .

This claim is modified below. 8 Se e J. W a l l a ce, ' O n the Frame of R e ference' and 'Convention T and S u bs tit u t i o n a l Q u a n t i fi c a t i on ' ; also L Th a rp , Truth, Quan tification, a n d A bstract

Objec t s ' . A l t h o u g h K r i p ke c r i ticizes Some of W a l l ace's a n d Tharp ' s a r g u m e n t s , he

concurs w i t h the c o n c l u sion t h a t i n a l a ng u a ge with normal expressive power, some of the q u a n t i fi e r s a t l e a st m u st be provided with t h e k i n d of sem a n tics for which Tarski 's sa t isfa c t i o n i s designed. See S . K r i p k e, 'Is There a Problem about S u b s t i t u t i onal Q u a n t ifi c a t i o n ? ' . (Footn ote a d ded in 1 9 82.]

68

Truth and Meaning

One reason Tarski appealed to Convention T was tha t he hoped to persuade phi l os ophers that fo rmal work in sema n tics was relevant to their concerns. It is a scandal that this cause sti ll needs suppor t in some quarters ; but this is not my worry in this paper. I now add ress those who thoroughl y appreciate the relevance of formal semantics to philosophica l issues , but see no significant difference be tween theories tha t are i n accord with Conven tion T, a nd theories that are n o t. (There is even a danger that the know-n othi ngs a nd the experts wil l j oin forces ; the former , hearing mu tteri ngs of possi ble worlds , trans-world heir lines, counterparts, and the like, are apt to think, now semantics is getting somewhere-out of this world, anyway.) Before giving my reasons for thinki ng Convention T captures a concept worth a ttending to, I wan t to register some d i sclaimers . First, to seek a theory tha t accords with Convention T is not, i n i tself a t least, to settle for M odel T logic o r semantics. Convention T, in the skeletal form I have given i t, makes no mention of extensionality, truth fu nctionali ty, or first-order l ogic. I t i nvites u s to use whatever devices we can con trive appropriatel y to bridge the gap between sentence men tioned and sentence used . Res trictions on ontol ogy, ideology, or inferential power find favou r , from the present poi n t of view, only i f they resul t from ad opti n g Convention T as a touchstone. Wha t I want to defend is the Co nvention as a cri terion of theories, not any particular theories tha t have been shown to satisfy the Conven ti o n in particul a r cases , or the resou rces to which they ma y have been limi ted . Convention T defines a goa l i rrelevant to much contemporary work in sema ntics. Theories that cha racterize or define a rel a ti vized concept of truth ( tru th in a model , truth in an i n terpretation, val uation, o r possible world) se t out from the start i n a directi o n differen t from that pr oposed b y Convention T. Beca use the y substi tu te a relational concept for the si ngle-place truth predica te of T-sentences, such theories cannot carry through the last s tep of the recursion on truth o r satisfaction which i s essential to the quota tion­ lifti ng featu re of T-se n tences. There i s a tradition, ini tiated by Ta rski himself, of cal l i n g a re1ati vized theory of tru th the ge nera l theory of which the abso l u te theory ( which satis fi es C onve ntion T) is a specia l case. Ta rs ki says tha t ' the concept of correct or true sen tence in an individual domain [is] a co ncept of a rela tive cha rac ter [that] pl a ys a much greater part than the absolute concept of truth and includes it

In Defence of Con ven tion T

69

as a special case' . 9 The sense i n which this is c orrect is, of c ou r se, pe rfect l y clear . O n the other hand , i t is important to remember tha t T-sente nces d o not fa ll out as the orems of a relativized theor y of truth, and therefore such a theory d oes not necessar i l y have the same phil os ophical i n teres t as a theory tha t sa tisfies Convention T. The poi n t of these remarks is not, I hope i t is plain, to su gges t tha t there is somethin g wrong, defective, or misleadin g a bout sema ntic th e ories that do not yie ld T-sente nces as theorems . On the contrary, i t is obvi ous tha t s uch theories i l luminate important concepts ( such a s comple te ness and l ogical consequence) ; I hardl y need to expa nd on this theme i n the present context. My thesis is onl y that there a re important differe nces betwee n theories of rel ative , and of a bs o l u te, tru th, a nd the d ifferences make the ories of the two sorts appropriate as a nswers to different questions. I n pa rticula r , phi l os ophers of la nguage ha ve rea son to be conce r ned with theories tha t satisfy Conventi on T. The ories of truth based on the substitutional i n te rpreta tion of quantifica tion d o not i n genera l yield the T-sentences dema nded by Conve n tion T. The re a re exceptions i n the case of object l a n guages wh ose true atomic sentences can be effec tive l y given, but the exceptions ca nnot incl ude l a ngua ges inte resti ngl y simil ar to natu ral la nguages i n expressive power . U n l i ke theories of rela tive truth, substi tuti ona l the ories have no evident virtue to set a gainst their fail u re to sa ti sfy C onve n tion T. 1 0 Fina lly, it is n ot my thesis that all we should demand of a semantic theor y is tha t it meet the standard of Convention T. I shall suggest tha t the ories s a t isfyi ng C onve nti on T a re capable of expl a i n i n g more tha n is often thou ght. But there ma y be ch oosing among such theories on the basis of further criteria ; a nd of c ou r se there is much we want to k now that l ies outside. N ow for a catal ogue of some of the fea tures of theories tha t ac co rd with Conve n t i on T a nd wh ich should recommend such the ories to ph i l o s ophers of l a ngu a ge. The central me rit of Convention T is t h a t it substitutes for a n i m porta n t but murky pr oblem a tas k whose a im is clea r . A fter the s u bs titution o ne appreciates be tte r wha t wa s wanted in the first " A . T a r s k i , ' T h e Concept of T r u t h i n Formal ized La n g u a ge s , 1 99 . l O W hile t h e gene ra l concl usion of t h e se rema rk s m a y be righ t . t h e re m a r k s a re ca reless. I n pa r t ic u l a r . I fa i led to consider l a n guages with bo t h subst itutional a n d o n l ic q u a n t ifiers. ( See footn ote !l a b o ve . ) [ Foot note added 1 9 82 ] '

70

Truth and Meaning

place, a nd gains insight i n to the aeti ology of confusion. The origi na l q ues tion is not confu sed , o nly vague. I t is : what is i t for a sentence (or u t te rance Or s ta teme nt) to be true ? Confusion threatens whe n this questi on is reformulated a s , what makes a sente nce true ? The real trouble comes when this in tUrn is taken to s u ggest tha t truth must be explai ned in te rms of a relati on between a sentence as a whole a nd some entity, perhaps a fact, or state of affai rs . C onventi on T shows how to a s k the o rigi nal q uestion without inviti n g these su bsequent formulations. The form of T-sentences al ready hints tha t a theor y can cha racterize the property of tru th without havi ng to find enti ties to which sente nces that have the pr ope rty differentially correspond . ( I do not wa nt to say tha t an abs ol u te theory of tru th is not i n some sense a 'co rrespondence theor y' of tru th. But the enti ties i t i nvokes are seq uences, which are nothi n g l i ke facts or s ta tes of affai rs. I I ) A theory that satisfies Convention T has , the n , the vi r tue of bei ng an answer to a good question . The s tatement of the q uestion is as persu asive, in rela ti on to the intuiti ve concept of tru th, as we find the truth of T-sentences to be . Both the statement of the questi on, and the character of the answers it all ows, are revealing in that no sema ntic noti ons are used that are not ful l y characterized i n relevant respects, syn tac tical l y by C onvention T, material l y by the theories i t accepts . A recursive theory of abs olute truth, of the k i nd req ui red by C on venti on T, provides an answer, p er accidens it may at firs t seem, to q u i te another problem . Thi s problem may be expressed as that of showi n g or explai ning how the meani n g of a sentence depends on the meanings of its parts. A theory of absolute truth gives an answer in the fol l owi n g sense. Si nce there is an i nfinity of T-sen tences to be accou nted for, the theory mu s t work by selecti ng a finite number of tru th-releva n t expressions and a finite n umber of tru th-affecti ng construc ti ons fr om which all sentences a re composed . The theory then gi ves outright the sema n tic prope r ties of cer tai n of the basic expressi ons, and tells how the cons tructions affect the semantic prope rties of the expressi ons on which they operate. In the previous paragraph, the notion of meaning to which appeal is made in the s l o gan 'The meaning of the sentence depends on the meanings of its parts ' i s not, of c ou rse, the n otion tha t opposes ) ) See Essa y

3.

In Defen ce of Con ven tion T

71

meaning t o refere nce, or a notion that assu mes tha t meani ngs are en ti ties . The s l ogan reflects an importan t tru th, one on which, I suggest, a theory of tru th confers a clear con tent. Tha t i t d oes so withou t in trod uci ng mea ni ngs as enti ties is one of its rew arding q ual i ties . Theories of absolu te tru th necessarily provide a n analysis of structu re relevant to truth and to i n fe rence . Such theories therefore yield a non-tri vial a nswer to the ques ti on what is to count as the log ical form of a sentence . A theory of truth does n ot yield a definition of l ogical co nsequence or l ogical truth, but i t wi l l be eviden t from a theory of tru th that ce rtai n sentences are true solely o n the basis of the properties assigned to the l ogical constants . The l ogical constants may be identified as those iterative features of the lan guage that req uire a recu rsi ve clause in the characteriza ti on of truth or satisfacti on. Logical form, in this accou n t, wi l l of cou rse be rel ative to the choice of a metalanguage (wi th its l ogic) and a theory of tru th. All tha t I have said so fa r in defence of C onve n tion T i s that i t may be taken as clearl y formulati ng some trou bles ome issues i n the phi los ophy of language, a nd that if it is taken in this way, i t i n vi tes solutions that have conspicu ou s merits . But why shou ld we take it this way ? M ay not some ri val convention formulate the issues better ? What fol l ows is desi gned t o bear on these ques tions . The main, if not the only, ul timate concern of phi l os ophy of language is the u nderstand i n g of natu ral l an guages . There is much to be said for res tricti ng the word ' l anguage' to s ystems of signs tha t are or have been i n actu al use : uninterpreted forma l sys tems are n ot languages through lack of meaning, while i n terpreted formal sys tems are best seen as extensions or fragments of the natu ral langu ages fr om which they b orrow life . The inevi table goal o f seman tic theory i s a theory o f a natural l anguage couched i n a n atu ral lan guage (the same or another). B u t as Tarski poi n ted out, o n some obvi ous assumptions pu rsuit o f this goa l leads to parad ox . He w rote : A c h aracteristic feature of c o l l oquial l a ngu age . . . is its u n i versal ity. I t wo uld n ot b e i n harmony wi th t h e spirit of this l a nguage if in some o t her la ngu age a word occu rred whic h could n o t be translated in to it ; it could be cl ai med that ' i f we c a n speak abo u t anyth i n g at all, we can a l so speak abo u t i t i n col l oq uial l a n gu age ' . I f w e are t o mai n ta i n this u n i versal i t y of everyd a y l an gu age i n c o n nexion wi t h sem a ntical investiga tions, we m u s t , t o be

Truth and Meaning

72

consi sten t , adm i t i n t o the l a nguage, in addition to its sen tences and oth er expressi ons, also the n ames of these sen tences and ex p ressions, an d sen tences conta i ni ng these names, as wel l as such sema n tic expressi ons as 2 'true sentence ' . . 1 .

.

Once al l this is all owed into the language, semantic a nti nomies resu lt. The ideal o f a theo ry of truth for a natu ral language in a natu ral language is the refore u nattainable if we restrict ourse lves to Tarski's methods . The question then arises, how to gi ve u p as l ittle as possible, and here theories all owed by C onventi o n T seem i n i mpo r tant respects optimal. Such theories can bes tow the requi red properties on a truth predicate while d rawi n g on no conceptual resou rces not i n the language to which the predicate applies. It is only the tru th predicate itsel f (and the satisfacti on predicate) that cannot be in the object language . Here it is essential to require no more than a theory of truth ; to go beyond to an expl icit defi nition does widen the gap betwee n the resou rces of the o bject l anguage a nd of the me talangu age. ] 3 B u t i f we ask for no mo re than a theory of the kind we have been discussi ng, then the ontol o gy of the metalanguage can be the same as that of the object lan guage, and the i ncrease in i de ol ogy can be l i m i ted to the semantical concepts. Tarski is right, I think, i n proposing that we thi nk of natu ral l anguages as essenti al l y i n tertranslatable (although I don't see why this req uires word- by-w ord translatio n) . The proposal i dealizes the flex i bi l i ty and expandabi l i ty o f natu ral l a n guages, but can be j u s tified by a transcendental argument ( which I shall n o t give here) . 1 4 Conventio n T demands that each sente nce of the object language have a t ranslation in the metalanguage. The pressure from the opposite di recti on derives from the desire to give an account, as fa r as pos sible, of the l i n gu i s tic resou rces we comman d . The re are theories s tated in a whol l y extensional metalanguage that attempt to i l l u minate the sema ntic featu res of an inte nsional object language. The i nteres t of such the ories depends on the assumption that the objec t language reflects important featu res o f a natu ral lan guage . Bu t then the re is a questi on how we u nderstand the metalanguage. For the re is a clear sense i n which the meta­ language exceeds the exp ressi ve power of the object language. For 1 2

A. T a r s k i , 'The C o n cept of T r u t h in Forma l ized L a n gu a ges ' , 1 64 . For a n i n s t r u c t i ve exa m pl e , see W . V. Qu i n e , ' O n an A ppl i c a t i o n of T a r s k i ' s Theo ry o f Tru t h ' . 13

14

B u t see E ssa ys 1 3 a n d 1 4.

In Defence of Con ven tion T

73

each ' i ntensi o na l ' sente nce of the obj ect l anguage there i s a c orrespo ndi ng extensional sente nce (a bout possi ble worlds, c ou nter­ parts, etc . ) with the same truth conditions in the metal a nguage ; but the re must be metali nguistic sentences with i n tuitivel y the same s u bject matter that have no correspo nding sente nces in the object language . I nten sionality is treated by such theo ries as a lack of expressive power-a l ack we are taught how to make up for by the theory i tself. 1 5 But if we u nderstand our metalanguage, we are usin g a s ystem of concepts and a language which i s the one for which we really want a theory, for it is this riche r system that i s our nat ural on e. And fortu na tel y the richer system does n ot raise any difficul ties for a truth theo ry satisfyi ng C onventi on T, for it is extensi onal . (I d o not conside r here w hether we real l y do u nderstand such metal anguage s . ) I f a semantic theory claims t o appl y, however schematica l l y , to a nat u ral langu age, then i t m u s t be empi rical in character, a nd open to tes t. In these concluding pages I should l i ke to s ketch m y reas ons for thinking that a theory that satisfies Conventi on T is ve rifiable in an i n teres ting way. Of course, a theory of truth i s not treated as empirical if i ts adequacy i s j udged o n l y i n te rms of the T-se n tences i t entails, and T­ sen tences are verified only b y their form : this happens if we assume the object l a nguage is contai ned in the metal a nguage . When this assumption is rel axed, the theory can go empi rical . This it d oes the momen t it is claimed that the theory appl ies to the speech of a pa rticular person or group. The fac t tha t the object lan guage i s contai ned i n the metal anguage d oes n o t keep the theory from having empi rical content : rather this fact " ca n qualify as the fact to be verified . I n the cases that cou n t, the n , w e cannot assume that descri bed and describing languages coincide. I ndeed, we cannot use a formal c riterion of transl ati o n ei the r w i thout beggi ng the questi on of e mpir ical a p p l icati on. B u t then what becomes of Convention T ? H o w i s a T-sentence t o be recognized , l e t al one recognized for true? I suggest tha t i t may be e n ough to req ui re that the T-sentences be t r ue. C lea r l y this su ffices u n i quely and cor rectl y to determi ne the e x te nsi on of the truth p redicate . I f we consider any one T-sentence, th is p roposa l req ui res on l y that if a true sen tence i s descri bed as tr ue, I '

l owe t h is i n s i g h t t o John W a l l ace.

74

Tru th and Mean ing

then its truth condi tions are given by some true sentence . But when we consider t he constrai ning need to match truth with truth throughout the langu age , we real ize that any theory acceptable by this standard may yield, i n effec t, a usable translati on manual running from object language to metalanguage . The desired effect is standard i n theory building : to ex tract a rich concept (he re somethi ng reasonably close to translation) from thin bi ts of evidence (here the t ru t h values of sentences) by imposi ng a formal structure o n enough bits . If we characterize T�sente nces by thei r form alo ne , as Ta rski did, i t is pos si ble, usi n g Tarski 's methods , to define truth using no seman tical co ncepts . I f we treat T-se nte nces as verifiable, then a theory of tru th shows how we can go fr om tru th to somethi ng l i ke mea ni ng--enough l i ke meani n g so that if someone had a theory fo r a language ve rified i n the way I pr opose, he would be a ble to use that language i n communicati on. 1 6 Wha t makes i t plausi ble tha t the range of theor ies acceptable by thi s s tandard wou l d exclude intuiti vely wor thless theor ies ? One of the chief me rits of the approach, that it touches the obse rvable o nly when i t comes to se ntences, seems to leave the analysis of internal structure simpl y up for grabs. The articulatio n of sentences i n to singular terms, quantifiers, predicates, connectives, as well as the l i nking of expressions with entities in the characterizati on of satisfacti on, m u s t be treated as so much theoret ical construction, to be tested onl y b y i ts success i n predicti n g the truth conditions of sente nces . 1 7 One important, i ndeed essential , factor in ma king a truth theory a credible theory of i n terpretation is relati vization to speaker and time . When i ndexical or demonstrati ve elements are present, it cannot be sen tences tha t are true or false, but onl y sen tences relative to a speake r and to a time. A l ternative l y, we might keep truth as a prope rty, not of sentences , but of utterances or speech acts . These in tu rn cou l d be iden tified with certain ordered tr iples of se n tences , times , and speakers . The re are su btle pr oblems involved in choos i n g betwee n these al ter nati ves , but I must let them g o a t present. The point now is that a theory that makes the right se nte nces true at the right times and for the right speakers wi l l be much cl ose r to a theory that i n te rprets the sentences correctl y than one that ca n ignore the lb 1 7

Fo r el a bo r a t i o n s a n d q u a l i fi c a t i o n s see Essa ys 9- 1 2 . This po i n t i s fu rther p u rsued in Essays 1 5 and 1 6 .

In Defence of Con vention T

75

extra paramete rs. I n fact, somethi ng directl y related to the extension of an open sente nce ' Fx' wi l l be given whe n we k now the truth c ond i tions of 'That is an x s uch that Fx' . The metalinguistic sentence that gives the (relati vized) truth co nditions of a sentence with indexicals ca nnot have the for m of a T­ se ntence, even if we aband on the requ i rement of a pu re l y syn tactical cr iterion for the rel ati on between se n tence desc ribed and se nte nce used. The trouble is that the variables ra nging over persons and times , the variables introduced to accom modate the relativization, must appear in the stateme n t of truth conditions . Truth relative to a time and a person wou l d seem t o be i n the same b oat as truth i n a model . I t foll ows that the i n teres ti ng differe nce be twee n a theory of truth in a model and a theory of 'absol u te' tru th cannot be desc ri bed , as I have bee n pretending, by sayi n g that i n the l atter , but not the former, tru th is characterized for each sente nce s withou t appeal to any res ou rces not in s itself. The reas on, as we have j u s t seen , is that 'abs ol u te' tru th goes relative when applied to a natural language . A diffe re nce remai ns howeve r , a nd it is one to which I wou l d a t tach much importance. The verification of ins tances of the T-se n te nces , or rathe r the i r s u r rogates i n a theory rel ativized to speakers and times, remains respectabl y empirical . N o dou bt some pragmatic concept of demonstra tion as be tween speakers , ti mes , and objects will come i n t o pl ay. B u t such a concept is one we may hope to expl ain without appeal to notions like truth, mea n i ng, synonymy, or trans lati on . The same cannot be said fo r truth in a model . C onvention T , e ven when bent t o fi t the awk ward shapes of natural language, points the way t o a radical theory of i nterpretation.

APPLIC ATI ONS

6

Quotation

Qu otation is a device used to refer to typographical or phonetic shapes by exhibi ti n g samples, that is, i nscripti ons or utterances that have those shapes . This characterizati on is broad and vague : broad enough to i nclude not only wri tten q u otation marks, and spoken phrases l i ke ' and I quote ' , but also the fi n ger-dance qu otes ofte n used by phi los ophers condemned to read a l ou d what they have w r i tten ; and vague enou gh to leave ope n the question whether the words that bega n this se n tence ( ,This charac terizati on') s h ow a fo rm of quota ti o n . I n quota ti o n n o t only does language tu rn o n i tself, but i t d oes s o word b y word a n d expre ssi on by expression, a n d this reflexi ve twist is i nseparable from the convenience and u nive rsal appl ica bility of the device. H e re we al read y have en ough t o d raw the i n terest of the philosopher o f language ; but one discerns as well connec tions wi th fu rther areas of concer n such as sen tences about propositi onal attitudes , explicit pe rfo rmatives, and picture theories of reference. I f the pro blems rai sed b y quotation appear trivial b y comparison, we may welcome finding an eas y en trance to the labyri nth . When I was i n i tiated i n t o the mysteries of l ogic and semantics, quotati o n was usual l y i ntroduced as a somewhat shady device, and the i n troduction was accompanied by a s tern serm on on the si n of c onfusing the u se and mention of expressions. The connectio n between quotati o n o n the o n e hand a n d the use-menti on disti nc ti o n on the other i s obvi ous, for a n expression that would b e used i f o n e of i ts tokens appeared in a normal con tex t is menti oned i f one of i t s tokens appear s i n quotation marks ( or s ome simi l a r contrivance for q u o tation). The i nvi tation to sin is perhaps acc ou n ted for by the ease w i th which quotation marks may be overl ooked or omitted . But the

80

Applications

strictures on q u o tation ofte n s o u nd a da rker note . Thus Tars ki, i n 'The C o ncept o f Tru th i n Fo rmal ized Langu ages' , exam i nes the possi bili ties for a n a r ticulate theory of q uotati on marks, a nd decides tha t one is led at once to absurd i ties, ambigu i ties, a nd con trad ic­ tio n. l Q u i ne w r i tes in Mathematical Logic, 'Scrupu l ou s use of quotati o n marks is the main practical measure against confusing o bj ects with their names . . . ' but then he adds that q u otation . . . h a s a cert a i n a n oma l o u s fea t u re w h ic h c a l l s fo r spec i a l c a u tion : fro m t he standpoint of l ogic a l a n a l ys i s each w h o l e q u o t a t i o n m u s t be rega rded as a si ngle word or sign, w h ose parts count for no more t h a n se r i fs or syl l a b les. A q u o t a t ion is n o t a descr ip l ion. b u t a h ieroglyph ; i t designates i ts object nOt

on l y by desc r i b i n g i t in terms of other objec ts, bu t by pic t u ri n g it. The mea n i n g o f the w h ole d oes n o t depend upon the mea ni ngs of t he constituent

words. 2

And C h u rch , wh ile praising F rege for his ca refu l u se o f quotation to avoid equ ivocation, h i m self eschews quotation as 'misleadi n g ' , ' awkward i n pract ice . . . and open t o some u n fo r tunate abuses and misu nderstand i n gs ' . J There is mo re than a hint, then, that there is something obsc u re or confused about q uo tation. B u t this ca n ' t be ri g h t . There is n o t h i n g wrong with the device i tsel f. It is our theories a bout how it works that are inadequate or confu sed . I t i s often said that i n qu o tation, the qu oted expressions are mentioned and not u sed . The first part of th i s c l a i m is relati vely clea r . It is the second pa r t which says q u o ted expressions are n ' t u sed , t h a t seem s s u s pect . W h y isn' t incorporation into qu o tation one u se o f a n e x p ressi o n ? A pla u s i ble response w o u l d be t h a t of cou rse there i s some sense in which the q u oted mate rial is u sed , bu t its use in quota tion is unre l ated to its meaning in the language ; so the quo ted material is not u sed as a piece of l a n guage . Th i s resp onse may n o t qu i te s t i l l o u r d o u b t s . For one thi ng, there are the trou blesome cases w here i t i s convenient both to u se and to me ntion the same expression by spea king or i nscri bi ng a singl e token of the e x pressi o n . I once reso l ved to adopt a consistent way of using q u otation i n m y professional w r i t i n g. M y p l a n w a s to u se single q u o tati on marks when I wanted t o refer to t he expression a toke n of which was wi t h i n , but d o u ble quotat i on mark s w hen I wanted to u se the e x p ression in its u sual mea n i n g while at the same t ime i nd icatin g I A . T a r s k i , 'The C o nccpt or T r u t h i n f o r m a l ized L a n g u a !!c s · . 1 59 - 6 ::' .

2 W . V . Quine, MalhemalicuI Logic. C h . 4 . .1 A. C h u rc h , In l roduc l irm 10 MU lhl'l I/ul i("(l/ LORic. C h . ll .

Quotation

81

that the word was odd or special (' scare quotes '). I blush to admi t that I stru ggled w ith this absu rd and unworkable formula for a couple of years before it daw ned on me that the sec ond category contai ned the seed s of its own destructi on. C onsider , for example, a passage ea rlier in this pape r where I say, nearly enough : Quine says that qu otati on ' . . . has a certai n an omal ous feature' . Are the qu oted words used or me ntioned ? Obviously menti oned , nce the words are Q u i ne's own, and I want to mar k the fac t. B u t si equally obvious is t h e fact that the words are used ; if t h e y were n ot, what follows the word ' q uotation' would be a si ngu l ar term , and this can not be if I have p roduced a grammatical sente nce . Nor is it easy to rephrase my words so as to resolve the d i fficu l ty. For example, it is not enough to w rite , 'Quine used the words " has a certain anomalous feature" of qu otati on', for this leaves out what he meant by those words. Here is another mixed case of use and me n ti o n that is n ot al togethe r easy to sort ou t : Dhau lagi r i is adjacent to A napu r na, the m ou ntai n wh ose con­ quest M au rice Herzog descri bed in hi s book of the same n ame. The l ast phrase 'the same name' cannot mean the same name as the mou ntai n, for the mou ntai n has many names. Rather it means the same name of the mou ntain as the one used earlier i n the sentence . I would cal l this a genu i ne case of qu otati on, for the sen te nce refers to an expression by ex h i bi ti n g a token of t h at expression ; but i t i s a case that manages wi th ou t quotation marks. Or cons ider this case : The ru les of C l o u ti n g and DragofT appl y, in that orde r . 4 Temporari l y setting as ide these last examples as path ol ogical and perha ps cu rable, there is a way, now standard , of givi n g support to the idea that i n qu otation the qu oted material i s not used . This i s the interpretation of quotation proposed by Tarski as the only one he c an defend . Accord ing to i t a quotati on, consisti n g of an expressi on fla nked by qu otation marks, is like a single word and is t o be re garded as l o gica l l y simple. The letters and spaces i n the quoted material are viewed as accidents in the spelling of a longer w ord and �

The e x a m p l e i s fr om 1. R . R oss, ' M e t a l i n guistic A n a pho r a ' , 2 7 3 .

82

Applica tions

he nce as meaningless in i s olati on. A qu otati o n mark name is thu s, Tarski says, l ike the proper name of a ma n. 5 I shall cali this the proper-name theory of qu otation. Chu rch attri butes the same idea, or at leas t a method with the same conseq uences , to Frege. Chu rch wri tes : Frege introd uced the device of system atical l y ind icating au ton omy by q u otation marks, and in his later p u b l ications ( t h o u gh not i n the Begriffsschrifl ) words and sym b o l s u sed autonomously a re enc l o sed in single q u o tati o n marks in all cases. This has the effect t h a t a w o rd encl osed in single q u o tation marks is to be treated as a d iffe ren t w ord from t h a t with out the q u otation marks-as if the q u otation m a r k s were t w o additional letters in the spe l l i n g of the word-and eq uivocacy is t h u s removed by p rovid ing t w o d i ffere n t words to c orresp ond t o the differe n t mea nings. 6

U nless I am mistaken, this passage exhi bi ts a common confusion. For what expression i s i t, accordi ng to the view Church attri butes to Frege, that refers to the word a token of which appea rs i nside the qu o tation ma r k s ? Is it tha t word itsel f ( given the contex t), or the qu otati on as a w hole ? Chu rch says both, though they cannot be identical . The word i tself, si nce an expressi on in qu otation ma rks has a meani ng disti nct from its usual meani ng ; it is ' treated as a different word' w hich is used 'au ton omousl y ' . The q u otation as a w hole, si nce the qu otation marks are par t of the spelli ng . Qui ne has repeated ly and colourful l y promoted the idea of the qu otation as u n s tructured singular term. Not onl y is there his denial, al ready cited , that qu otati ons are descnpti ons, but the clai m tha t the letters i nside the q u o tation marks in a qu otation occu r there ' . . . merel y as a fragme n t of a l onger name w hich con tai ns, beside this fragment, the two qu otation marks' . 7 The me rit i n this approach t o q uo tation i s the emphas is i t puts on the fact that the refere nce of a quotation cannot be construed as owed , at least i n any normal way, to the reference of the expressions displayed wi thi n the q u otation marks. But it seems to me that as an accou n t of how qu otation works i n natu ral language, the approach i s radicall y deficient. I f qu otations are s tructure less s i n gular te rms, then the re is no more significance to the category of qu otation-ma r k names than to the category o f names that begin a n d end w i t h the 5 h 7

A . T ar s k i , 'The Co ncept of Tru t h i n Formal ized L a n guages', 1 59. A. Churc h . In / roduc/ion /0 Ma / /rcma/ ical Logic. 6 1 -2 .

Q. V. Quine, From a Logiwl Poin / of Vie w, 1 40 . Compare Q u i n e , Me/hods or

Logic, 38 a n d Word and Ohiec/. 1 43 : a l so B. M a les. Elemen /ary Logic. 24.

Quo ta tion

83

le tter ' a ' ( ,Atla nta', 'Alabama' , 'Al ta', 'Athe na', etc.). O n this view, the re is no relati on, beyond an accident of spelli ng, betwee n an ex pression and the qu otati on-mark name of that expression . If we ac cept this theory, nothing w ou ld be l ost if for each q u otati on-ma rk name we were t o substitu te some u n related name, for tha t is the c hara cter of proper names. And so no ech o remains , as far as this theory of q u otation goes, of the informal rules g overning q u otation that seem so clear : i f you want to form a qu otati on-mark na me of an expressio n, flank that expression with q u otati on mar ks ; and, a quo tati o n-ma r k name refers to ' i ts interi or' (as Quine pu ts i t). Nothi n g left, ei ther, of the i ntuitive l y attractive notio n that a quotati on somehow pictu res what i t i s about . These objecti ons are i n themselves enough to thr ow d ou bt on Ta rski's claim that this i n terpretati on of qu ota ti on i s ' . . . the most natu ral one a nd c ompletely i n accordance with the customary way 8 But there is a further and, I thi n k , of using q u o tation marks . decisi ve objecti on, which i s that on thi s theory w e cannot gi ve a satisfactory accou n t of the cond i ti ons u nder which an arbitrary sentence containing a q u otation is true. In an adeq uate theo ry, e very sentence is construed as owing i ts truth or falsity to how it is bu i l t from a fi ni te stock o f parts b y repeated appl icati on of a finite number of m odes of combi nati on. There are, of c ourse, a n i nfinite numbe r of q u otation-mark names, since every expressio n has its own qu otatio n-mark name, a nd there are a n infi nite number of expressions. B u t on the theory of qu otation we are c onside ri ng, quotation-ma r k names have no sign ifican t structu re . I t fol l ows that a theory of t r u th could not be made to cove r ge nerally sen tences contai ning q u otati ons. We must reject the pr oper-name i n terpre­ tati on of q u o tati on i f we want a satisfac tory the ory for a language con taining q u ota ti ons .9 I turn now to a quite different theory of qu ota ti on, w hich may be cal led the picture theory of qu otation. Acc ording to thi s view, it is no t the enti re qu otati on, tha t is, expression named plus q u otati o n marks that refers to the expression, but rathe r the expression itself. The role of the q u otation marks is to indica te how we are to take the exp ression w i thin : the qu ota tion ma rks constitu te a l i nguistic en vi ronment within w h i ch expressions d o s ome thi ng special . This was perhaps the view of Reiche n bach, who said that q u otation .

M q

. ' .

A . Ta r s k i , T h e Concept of Tru t h i n Form a l i zed L a n g u a ges' , 1 60 .

See Essa y I .

84

Applications

marks ' . . . transform a sign i n to a name of that sign' . l o Qui ne al so su ggests this idea when he wri tes that a qu otati on ' . . . desi gnates i ts object . . . by picturi ng i t', I I for of cou rse i t i s only the i n terior of a q u otation that cou ld be said to be l i ke the express i o n referred to ( the quotation marks are not in the picture-they are the frame) . And Church also, i n the passage just discussed , toys with t he notion that on Frege 's theory ' . . . a word enclosed in s i ngle q u otation marks is to be trea ted as a different word' i n that i t is u sed 'au tonomously', that i s , to name itself. I t should be a l l owed that the three au thors just me n tio ned , i n the passages al l uded to, vacill ate betwee n the proper-name t heory of q uotation and the picture theory. Yet the theories are clearl y disti nc t ; so beari ng i n mi nd the deficiencies of the proper-name theory, we ou ght to consider the pictu re theory on its own. A t firs t sight it promises two advantages : it attributes some structure to qu o tations, si nce it treats them as composed of qu o ta tion marks (which set the scene for i n terpretin g their conten ts) and the quoted material . And i t hi nts, i n its appeal to the rela tion of picturi ng, at a theory that will d raw on o u r intui tive u nderstand i n g of how q uo tatio n work s . These seeming ad va ntages fade when exami ned. The difficul ty i s this. What is wanted is an explanation of how q u o tation enables u s t o refer t o expressions b y pictu ring them. B u t on the prese nt theory, q u o tation marks create a co n text in which expressions refer to themse l ves . How the n does picturi ng feature in the theory ? If an expression i nside q uotation marks refers to i tsel f, the fact that it also pictures i tsel f i s simpl y a diverti ng irrelevancy . Would it help to say that q uotation marks c reate a contex t i n which we are t o view t he contents a s a picture o f what i s referred to ? Not at al l ; this i s merel y a tendentious way of sayi ng t he expression refers to i tsel f. I n brief, o nce the content of the q u otation is assigned a standard l i n guistic role, the fact that it happens to resemble somethi ng has no more significance for semantics than onomato­ poeia or the fact that the word 'polysyllabic' i s polysyllabic. A nother importan t point might escape us here . The picturi ng relation as be tween an o bject and itself is hard l y i n teresti n g and the theory, as we are interpreting i t, tries vai n ly to make somethi n g of 10 H. Reichen b a c h , Efemen ls 0/ Sym bolic Logic. 335. R e i c he n bach sa ys othe r t h i n gs t h a t po i n t to a d i ffe re n t theo ry . I I W. V . Q u i ne , Ma lhema lica f Logic. C h .

4.

Quotation

85

this drab idea. B u t the more i n teresting picturi ng we sense in q u otation is not be tween expression and expression . I n q u otation, what a ll ows u s to refer to a certai n expression, which we may take to be an abstract s hape, is the fact that we have before us o n the page or in the air somethi n g that has that shape-a token, writte n or spoke n . The pic tu re theory su ggests no wa y t o bring an i nscripti on or u tterance into the picture . Thi s could be done onl y by descri bing, nami ng, or poi nting out the relevant token, and no machinery for the pu rpose has been i n trod uced . The picture theory of qu otation is remi niscent of Frege 's theory of opaque (what he called obliq ue) contexts such as those created by 'necessari l y', 'Jones belie ves that . . . ', 'Galileo said that . . . ', and so on. There are co nspicu ous differences be twee n these contex ts as analysed by Frege, and q u otati o n as treated by the picture the ory : i n quotation word s may change their part o f speech (si nce every expression becomes a name or description) whi le i n the other contexts this never happens ; and in q u otati on, but not in other opaque contexts, nonsense makes sense . B u t there is the s tri king similarity that i n both cases some li nguistic device is supposed to create a context wi thi n which words play new refere ntial roles. This co ncept o f a context that al ters refere nce has never bee n properl y explai ned, and Frege himsel f was l eery of it : i t certainly d oes not lend itse l f to d i rect treatme n t in a theory of tru th. The trou ble with the pictu re theory, as with Frege's treatme nt of opaq ue contex ts ge nerally, is t hat the refere nces a ttribu ted to words or expres sions in their special contexts are n ot fu nctions of their refere nces in ord inary contex ts, and so the special context-crea ti ng expressi ons (li ke qu otation marks or the words 'said tha t') cannot be viewed as fu nc tional ex pres sions. 1 2 A cen tral defec t of the proper-name theory of qu ota tion was that while viewing q u otations as well -formed expressions of the lan­ gua ge, i t failed to provide an articulate theory showing how each of the i nfini tude of such expres sions owed i ts refere nce to i ts s tructure . The experiment j u s t concluded s ho wed that i t i s possi ble to treat quotations as havi ng semanticall y significant structure . Le t us press on in this d irection . Geach has l ong i nsisted that qu otations are real l y descriptions, and hence have structure, and he complains of the proper- name 1 2 Fo fu rthe r discussion on this po i n t . see Essa y 7 . r

86

Applications

theory as I have ! 3 (though he does not connect his complai nts with the need for a theory of truth). His theory, as 1 u ndersta nd it, is this. A single word in q u o tati o n marks names itsel f; this is a new item of voca bulary, and i s n ot semantical ly complex (I am not su re whether Geach says thi s last). So far, the theory is like the proper­ name theory. But a l on ge r expression when q uoted is a structured descriptio n . Thus ' ' 'Al ice s wooned '" abbreviates ' " Alice" ' "'swooned ' ' ' which reads 'the expressi on got by writing '"Al ice' ' ' fol lowed by '' 'swooned ' ' ' ' . Thi s the ory has the ad va n tages of the preceding Fregea n theory, a nd is far si mple r and more natu ral . ( I t ma y be called the spelling theory of q u otation . ) Both Tarski and Qu i ne imply, b y thi ngs they sa y, that they see the possi bi lity of a similar theory. Thu s Tarski remark s that if we accept the na me theory, then q u otation-mark na mes ca n be elimi nated a nd replaced everywhe re by structu ral-descriptive names, t 4 whi le Qui ne co ntends that we can dispel the opacity of q uotatio n, when we please, by resorti ng to spel l i n g . ! 5 The device both ha ve i n mind is l i ke Geach's except that Geach takes the s mallest u ni ts to be word s , while Tars ki a nd Qu i ne take them to be i ndividual letters a nd symbol s . The resu l t , in the abbreviati o ns of ordi na r y q u o tati on, is the same . I n pri m itive notation, which reveals all structure to the eye, Geach has a n easier time writing (for onl y each word need s qu otati on marks) but a harder time learning or desc ribing the la nguage (he has a much l arge primitive v oca bulary­ twice normal size if we disre gard i terati on). There is no d ifficu lty about e x te nd i ng a truth definition to the devices of spel l i ng suggested by Qu i ne, Tars k i , and Geach ; yet these devices can be thought of as merel y abbrevi ated by ordi nary q u otati on. This cl aim of mere abbreviatio n may be backed by describing a mecha nical me thod for going bac k and forth be tween the two styles of notati o n . Thus given the qu ota ti on-mark name " 'Alice swooned ' ", the machine starts at the left by reprod ucing the first q u otat i o n marks, the n the letter 'A', the n a nother set of quotati on marks, then a sign for co nca te na ti on, t hen a nother set of q u otation ma rks, and s o o n u ntil it reaches a set of q u otations marks in the origi na l . It repr oduces these a nd stops . The resu l t will be : 1 3

P.

T,

Ge ach,

Men tal

A c ts,

79 fT.

C o m p a re

Gea c h ,

'Quotation

Qu a n t i fi c a tion ' , 2 05-9 . 1 4 A . T a r s k i . ' T h e C o n c e p t of Tru th in Form a l ized L a n g u a ges ' , 1 60 . 1 5 W . Y . Q u i n e . Word and Obiect , 2 1 2 .

and

'A " " I ' ''' i ''' ' c ' '' ' e ' '' space '' ' s ,'" w

' '' ' 0 ' '' ' 0 ' '' '

Quotation

87

n ''' ' e ' '' ' d '

Si nce the t w o notati ons a re mecha nical l y interchangeable, the re is no reason not to consider a semantics for one a semantics for the other : so thi s could be regarded as a theory of how qu otation works i n English ( modificati ons would work for other lan guages). But would i t be a correct theory of ordi nary qu otati o n ? There are several reasons for sayi ng it would not. Notice fi rst that the appearance of q u ota tion marks i n the expanded notation is ad ventitious. The theory wo rks by identifyi ng a fi nite set of u n i ts (words or letters) fr om which every expressi o n in the language t o be described is composed . The n u nstructu red prope r nam es of these u nits are introduced , along with a notati on for co ncatenati on . Such a theory works as well, and i s less misleadin g, if qu otati on marks are d ropped e ntirely and new names of the bui l d i ng blocks are introd uced . To i l l ustrate (fol l owing Geach's method), suppose the word 'Alice' i s named by the word 'ale' a nd the word 'swoo ned ' by the word 'sw' ; then ' Alice swooned ' wou ld be descri bed by : ale"sw or, using Qui ne's method : Ay"el l "e ye"see"ee"space"es "dou ble-you" oh" oh"e n"ee"dee This tiny exercise is meant to emphasize the fact that nothing of the idea of qu otation marks is captu red by this theory-nothi ng of the idea that o ne can form the name of an arbi trary expression by enclosing it in qu otation marks . On the spel l i ng theory, no articulate item i n the v ocabulary corresponds to q u otation mar k s , a nd so the theory cannot reflect a rule for this use . The machi ne s i mpl y k nows by heart the name of each smal lest expressi o n . Clearl y, one esse ntial ele ment i n the idea that qu otati ons pictu re what they a re a bou t has been l os t . A s t r i k i n g w a y to see wha t i s a nd what i s not releva nt to structure is to try appl ying existe ntial ge neralizatio n a nd su bstitution of ide ntity . A stand a rd way of demonstrati ng that q u otation as norma lly used d oes not wear its s tructu re on its su rface is to observe tha t from : 'Al ice swooned' is a se n tence

88

Applications

we cannot infer: (3x}('x swooned' is a sentence). Nor, supposing 'ale' names 'Alice', can we infer: 'ale swooned ' is a sentence nor: alc'Hswooned ' is a sentence. But (using Geach's version of the spelling theory) we

can go from:

'Alice swooned' is a sentence to: 'Alice""swooned' is a sentence and thence to: alc'''swooned' is a sentence and then to: (3x}(alc"x is a sentence) or: (3x)(x"'swooned' is a sentence). In Quine's version of the theory, we could go from: 'Alice' is a word to: 'A' '''I''''j''''c ''''e' is a word to:

These derivations show clearly that quotation marks play no vital role in the spelling theory; and also that this theory is not a theory of how quotation works in natural language. One essential element of picturing has been lost, but not perhaps quite all, for the spelling theory does appear to depend on having the description of complex expressions reproduce the

order of the

Quotation

89

expressions described. In the description provided by the theory, names of particular expressions need not resemble what they name, but in the description as a whole, names of expressions that are concatenated are themselves concatenated. Even this residue of the picturing idea is superficial, however. The de scriptions the spelling theory provides are themselves, from the point of view of a fully articulate language, mere abbreviations of something more complicated in which the order of expressions may well be changed. I think we should conclude that the spelling theory of quotation has no connection with the view that we understand quotations as picturing expressions. There are further important uses of quotation in a natural language that cannot be explained by the spelling theory and could not be accommodated by a language constructed in the way it suggests. The spelling theory cannot, at least in any obvious way, deal with those mixed cases of use and mention we discussed earlier, nor indeed with any case that seems to depend on a demonstrative reference to an utterance or inscription. An important use for quotation in natural language is to introduce new notation by displaying it between quotation marks; this is impossible on the spelling theory provided the new notation is not composed of elements that have names. On the spelling theory we also could not use quotation to teach a foreign language based on a new alphabet or notation, for example Khmer or Chinese.

Since these are

functions easily performed by ordinary quotation (whether or not with quotation marks), we cannot accept the spelling theory as giving an adequate account of quotation in natural language. We have discovered a short list of conditions to be satisfied by a competent theory of quotation. The first is that like a theory for any aspect of a language it should merge with a general theory of truth for the sentences of the language. The other conditions are specific to quotation. One is that the theory provide an articulate semantic r ole for the devices of quotation (quotation marks, or verbal equivalents). When we learn to understand quotation we learn a rule with endless applications: if you want to refer to an expression, you may do it by putting quotation marks around a token of the expression you want to mention. A satisfactory theory must s omehow embody or explain this piece of lore. And finally, a satisfactory theory must explain the sense in which a quotation pictures what is referred to, otherwise it will be inadequate to

90

Applications

account for important uses of quotation, for example, to introduce novel pieces of notation and new alphabets. It is not

hard

to

produce a satisfactory theory once the

requirements are clear. The main difficulty springs, perhaps it is now obvious, from the simultaneous demands that we assign articulate structure to quotations and that they picture what they mention. For articulate linguistic structure here must be that of description, and describing seems to forestall the need to picture. The call for structure is derived from the underlying demand for a theory of meaning, here thought of as a theory of truth; all that is needed is enough structure to implement the recursive characterization of a truth predicate. Still, enough structure will be too much as long as we regard the quoted material as part of the semantically significant syntax

of a sentence.

The cure

is therefore to

give up this

assumption. It is natural to assume that words that appear between the boundaries of a sentence are legitimate parts of the sentence; and in the case of quotations, we have agreed that the words within quotation marks help us to refer to those words. Yet what I propose is that those words within quotation marks are not, from a semantical point of view, part of the sentence at all. It is in fact confusing to speak of them as words. What appears in quotation marks is an

inscription, not a shape, and what we need it for is to

help refer to its shape. On my theory, which we may call the

demonstrative theory of quotation, the inscription inside does not refer to anything at all, nor is it part of any expression that does. Rather it is the quotation marks that do all the referring, and they help refer to a shape by pointing out something that has it. On the demonstrative theory, neither the quotation as a whole (quotes plus filling) nor the filling alone is, except by accident, a singular term. The singular term is the quotation marks, which may be read 'the expression a token of which is here'. Or, to bring out the way in which picturing may now be said genuinely to be involved: 'the expression with the shape here pictured'. It does not discredit this theory to say that it neglects the fact that the quoted material is syntactically part of the sentence; taken in abstraction from semantics, the question of location is trivial. In spoken sentences, temporal sequence plays the role of linear arrangement in writing. But if I say 'I caught a fish this big' or 'I caught this fish today', my hands, or the fish, do not become part of

Quotation

91

the language. W e could easily enough remove the quoted material from the heart of the sentence. Quotation is a device for pointing to inscriptions (or utterances) and can be used, and often is, for pointing to inscriptions or utterances spatially or temporally outside the quoting sentence. So if I follow a remark of yours with 'Truer words were never spoke', I refer to an expression, but I do it by way of indicating an embodiment of those words in an utterance. Quotation marks could be warped so as to remove the quoted material from a sentence in which they play no semantic role. Thus instead of: 'Alice swooned' is a sentence we could write: Alice swooned. The expression of which this is a token is a sentence. Imagine the token of , this' supplemented with fingers pointing to the token of 'Alice swooned'. I take it to be obvious that the demonstrative theory assigns a structure to sentences containing quotations that can be handled in a straightforward way by a theory of truth-assuming of course that there is a way of accommodating demonstratives at all, and on this point I have already tried to indicate why there is not any real difficulty in making room for demonstrative or indexical elements in a formal theory of truth. 16 Finally, it is obvious that the picturing feature of quotation has been exploited and explained. So the demonstrative theory also authorizes the use of quotation in introducing new bits of typography and discussing languages with new alphabets. I conclude by considering how it fares with the mixed cases of use and mention on exhibit earlier. I said that for the demonstrative theory the quoted material was no part, semantically, of the quoting sentence. But this was stronger than necessary or desirable. The device of pointing can be used on whatever is in range of the pointer, and there is no reason why an inscription in active use can't be ostended in the process of mentioning an expression. I have already indicated an important sort of case, and there are many more. ('You pay attention to what I'm going to say. ' 'Why did you use those words?' etc. ) Any token 16

See Essay 2.

92

Applications

may serve as target for the arrows of quotation, so in particular a quoting sentence may after all by chance contain a token with the shape needed for the purposes of quotation. Such tokens then do double duty, once as meaningful cogs in the machine of the sentence, once as semantically neutral objects with a useful form. Thus: Quine says that quotation ' . . . has a certain anoma lous feature'. may be rendered more explicitly: Quine says, using words of which these are a token, that quotation has a certain anomalous feature. (Here the 'these' is accompanied by a pointing to the token of Quine's words. ) As for Anapurna: Dhaulighiri

is adjacent to Anapurna, the mountain whose

conquest Maurice Her zog described in his book with a name that has this shape (pointing to the token of 'Anapurna'). Finally: The rules of Clouting and DragofT apply, in the order in which these tokens appear (pointing to the tokens of 'Clouting' and 'DragofT').

7

On Saying That

'1 wish I had said that ' , said Oscar Wilde in applauding one of Whistler's witticisms. Whistler, who took a dim view of Wilde's originality, retorted, ' You will, Oscar; you will'.

1

This tale reminds

us that an expression like ' Whistler said that' may on occasion serve as a grammatically complete sentence. Here we have, I suggest, the key to a correct analysis of indirect discourse, an analysis that opens a lead to an analysis of psychological sentences generally (sentences about propositional attitudes, so-called), and even, though this looks beyond anything to be discussed in the present paper, a clue to what distinguishes psychological concepts from others. But let us begin with sentences usually deemed more represent a­ tive of oralio obliqua, for example 'Galileo said that the earth moves' or 'Scott said that Venus is an inferior planet'. One trouble with such sentences is that we do not know their logical form. And to admit this is to admit that, whatever else we may know about them, we do not know the first thing. If we accept surface grammar as guide to logical form, we will see 'Galileo said that the earth moves' as containing the sentence 'the earth moves', and this sentence in turn as consisting of the singula} term 'the earth', and a predicate, 'moves'. But if 'the earth' is, in this context, a singular term, it can be replaced, so far as the truth or falsity of the containing sentence is concerne d, by any other singular term that refers to the Same thing. Yet what seem like appropriate replacements can alter the truth of

the original sentence. The notorious apparent invalidity of this move can only be apparent, for the rule on which it is based no more than spells out I

From H. Jackson, The EiKhleen-Ninelies, 73.

94

Applications

what is involved in the idea of a (logically) singular term. Only two lines of explanation, then, are open: we are wrong about the logic al form, or we are wrong about the reference of the singular term. What seems anomalous behaviour on the part of what seem singular terms dramatizes the problem of giving an orderly account of indirect discourse, but the problem is more pervasive. For what touches singular terms touches what they touch,

and that is

everything: quantifiers, variables, predicates, connectives. Singular terms refer, or pretend to refer, to the entities over which the variables of quantification range, and it is these entities of which the predicates are or are not true. So it should not surprise us that if we can make trouble for the sentence 'Scott said that Venus is an inferior planet' by substituting 'the Evening Star' for 'Venus', we can equally make trouble by substituting 'is identical with Venus or with Mercury' for the coextensive 'is an inferior planet'. The difficulties with indirect discourse cannot be solved simply by abolishing singular terms. What should we ask of an adequate account of the logical form of a sentence? Above all, I would say, such an account must lead us to see the semantic character of the sentence-its truth or falsity-as owed to how it is composed, by a finite number of applications of some of a finite number of devices that suffice for the language as a whole, out of elements drawn from a finite stock (the vocabulary) that suffices for the language as a whole. To see a sentence in this light is to see it in the light of a theory for its language, a theory that gives the form of every sentence in that language. A way to provide such a theory is by recursively characterizing a truth predicate, along

the lines suggested by Tarski.2

Two closely linked considerations support the idea that the structure with which a sentence is endowed by a theory of truth in Tarski's style deserves to be called the logical form of the sentence. By giving such a theory, we demonstrate in a persuasive way that the language, though it consists in an indefinitely large number of sentences, can be comprehended by a creature with finite powers. A theory of truth may be said to supply an etTective explanation of the semantic role of each significant expression in any of its appear­ ances. Armed with the theory, we can always answer the question, 'What are these famil iar words doing here?' by saying how they 2

A. Tarski, 'The Concept of Truth in Formalized Languages'. Sec Essays 2, 4,

and S.

On Saying That

95

contribute to the truth conditions of the sentence. (This is not to assign a 'meaning', much less a reference, to every significant expression. ) The study of the logical form of sentences is often seen in the light of another interest, that of expediting inference. From this point of view, to give the logical form of a sentence is to catalogue the features relevant to its place on the logical scene, the features that determine what sentences it is a logical consequence of, and what sentences it has as logical consequences. A canonical notation graphically encodes the relevant information, making theory of inference simple, and practice mechanical where possible. Obviously the two approaches to logical form cannot yield wholly independent results, for logical consequence is defined in terms of truth. To say a second sentence is a logical consequence of a first is to say, roughly, that the second is true if the first is no matter how the non-logical constants are interpreted. Since what we count as a logical constant can vary independently of the set of truths, it is clear that the two versions of logical form, though related, need not be identical. The relation, in brief, seems this. Any theory of truth that satisfies Tarski's criteria must take account of all truth-affecting iterative devices in the language. In the familiar languages for which we know how to define truth the basic iterative devices are reducible to the sentential connectives, the apparatus of quantification, and the description operator if it is primitive. Where one sentence is a logical consequence of another on the basis of quantificational structure alone, a theory of truth will therefore entail that if the first sentence is true, the second is. There is no point, then, in not including the expressions that determine quantificational structure among the logical constants, for when we have characterized truth, on which any account of logical consequence depends, we have already committed ourselves to all that calling such expressions logical constants could commit us. Adding to this list of logical constants

will

increase

the

inventory

of

logical

truths

and

consequence-relations beyond anything a truth definition demands, and will therefore yield richer versions of logical form. For the purposes of the present paper, however, we can cleave to the most austere interpretations of logical consequence and logical form, those that are forced on us when we give a theory of truth.

3

J For further defence of a concept of logical form based on a theory of truth, see Es.\{/ys on Aclions and ErenlS, 137-46.

96

Applications

We are now in a posltIon to explain our aporia over indirect discourse: what happens is that the relation between truth and consequence just sketched appears to break down. In a sentence like 'Galileo said that the earth moves' the eye and mind perceive familiar structure in the words 'the earth moves'. And structure there must be if we are to have a theory of truth at all, for an infinite number of sentences (all sentences in the indicative, apart from some trouble over tense) yield sense when plugged into the slot in 'Galileo said that '. So if we are to give conditions of truth for all the sentences so generated, we cannot do it sentence by sentence, but only by discovering an articulate structure that permits us to treat each sentence as composed of a finite number of devices that make a stated contribution to its truth conditions. As soon as we assign familiar structure, however, we must allow the consequences of that assignment to flow, and these, as we know, are in the case of indirect discourse consequences we refuse' to buy. In a way, the matter is even stranger than that. Not only do familiar consequences fail to flow from what looks to be familiar structure, but our common sense of language feels little assurance in any inferences based on the words that follow the 'said that' of indirect discourse (there are exceptions). So the paradox is this: on the one hand, intuition suggests, and theory demands, that we discover semantically significant structure in the 'content-sentences' of indirect discourse (as I shall call sentences following 'said that'). On the other hand, the failure of consequence-relations invites us to treat contained sentences as semantically inert. Yet logical form and consequence relations cannot be divorced in this way. One proposal at this point is to view the words that succeed the 'said that' as operating within concealed quotation marks, their sole function being to help refer to a sentence, and their semantic inertness explained by an account of quotation. One drawback of this proposal is that no usual account of quotation is acceptable, even by the minimal standards we have set for an account of logical form. For according to most stories, quotations are singular terms without significant semantic structure, and since there must be an infinite number of different quotations, no language that contains them can have a recursively defined truth predicate. This may be taken to show that the received