Tense, Reference, and Worldmaking

Tense, Reference, and Worldmaking

The tenses of natural languages are intimately connected with our abilities to take ourselves to anything, anywhen, and to describe and tell stories about it and other things in its world, whether real or fictional. The conviction that drives the argument of this book is that it is impossible to construct an adequate view of what a tense is without explaining what these abilities consist of. This makes constructing a theory of tenses a rather complex task. But it also makes it exciting, for it draws into the fray virtually all the philosophical puzzles concerning language and our temporal perspective on a world — meaning and meaningfulness, the nature of reference, existence, and truth. A theory of tense and temporal structure based on Reichenbach's (1947) account is introduced, explained, and defended. It is applied in detail to English. The major rival theory, found in tense logic, is criticized and rejected. A source of faulty intuitions concerning time and tense - our feeling that the past, present, and future must be thought in terms of the settled ("things which are over"), the immediate, and the unsettled - is relocated, and this feeling is reinterpreted. McGilvray explains in detail the temporal and semantic structure of complex constructions in English, including prepositional attitudes (beliefs), modals (root and epistemic), and conditionals ('if-sentences), and adapts the temporal and semantic structure the theory assigns to sentences to the aspects perfective and imperfective (complete and incomplete). The philosophical implications of this novel view of temporal and semantic structure require modifications in standard views of meaning and meaningfulness, reference, truth, propositions, and the nature of worldmaking. The emphasis in the philosophical discussion is on producing a coherent view of these matters while explaining how the speaker can, by speaking and understanding sentences, both roam so freely as to be able to describe anything in any world (fictional or not) in any way and still make his or her understanding responsive to the evidence and justification for what is claimed evidence and justification that is found with the speaker at time of speech. JAMES A. MCGILVRAY is an associate professor in the Department of Philosophy, McGill University.

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Tense, Reference, and Worldmaking JAMES A. McGILVRAY

McGill-Queen's University Press Montreal & Kingston • London • Buffalo

© McGill-Queen's University Press 1991 ISBN 0-7735-0871-6

Legal deposit fourth quarter 1991 Bibliotheque nationale du Quebec

Printed in Canada on acid-free paper This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation for the Humanities, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data McGilvray, James A. (James Alasdair), 1942— Tense, reference, and worldmaking Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-7735-0871-6

i. English language - Tense. I. Title. P281.M34 1991

425

C91-090228-3

This book was typeset by Typo Litho composition inc. in 10/12 Baskerville.

This one is for Joan

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Contents

Acknowledgments xiii Introduction

3

THE BASIC TEMPORAL AND SEMANTIC STRUCTURE OF SENTENCES

11

1.1 Temporal and Semantic Structure 1.1.1 Temporal Structure

12

12

1.1.2 Reichenbach's 1947 Formalism 16 1.1.3 The 1947 Topology Supplemented

20

1.1.4 The Natures of Speakers, Tokens, "Perceiver-Describers," Companions, and Situations 22 1.1.5 Persons, Competence, Groups, and Locations 28 1.2 Applying the Theory

36

1.2.1 Adverbials and Simple Sentences 36 1.2.2 The Future Tense 39 1.2.3 The Anterior and Posterior

46

viii

Contents

1.3 Tense Is Not an SE Relationship 48 1.3.1 Tense Logic and the SE Relationship 48 1.3.2 SE Relationships and the Consequences of Tenses 54 2 COMPLEX SITUATIONS

6l

2.1 Prepositional Attitudes 62 2.1.1 The Structure in Detail 65 2.1.2 An Epistemic Matter: Responsibility and Tense 68 2.2 Modals, Epistemic and Root 2.2.1 Root Modals

76

77

2.2.2 Epistemic Modals 80 2.3 'When' 87 2.3.1 Conditioned Root Modals

96

2.4 Iterative States: Habituals, Nomics, and Generalizations 99 2.4.1 The Structure 101 2.4.2 The Nomic Difference

105

2.5 Conditionals and Arguments

113

2.5.1 The Structure of the Standard Conditional 115 2.5.2 The Subjunctive and Counterfactual Conditionals 122 2.5.3 Arguments, Conditioned Root-Modal Iteratives, and the Storytelling "We" 129 2.5.4 Conditionals, (A)s, Truth, and Scepticism 137 3 MEANING, MEANINGFULNESS, AND REFERENCE 145

3.1 Meaning and Meaningfulness 146 3.2 Truth Conditions and Meaning 148

ix Contents 3.3 Meaning as Referring 3.3.1 Indexicality

157

158

3.3.2 Exemplificational Reference to t, is, and p; Ties 161 3.3.3 On Referring: Picturing Situations 3.3.4 On Chomsky's Contribution

164

169

3.3.5 Just Slightly More Than Syntax and Lexicon; Public Meanings 172 3.3.6 Means-Sentences 176 3.3.7 Meaning, Publicity, and Scepticism

177

3.4 Semantics and World: Double Constructivism 4 REFERENCE

178

182

4.1 The Standard View of Reference 4.2 Picture Reference

183

183

4.2.1 Recognizing and Classifying 4.2.2 Synonymy and Analyticity 4.2.3 Meaning Change 4.2.4 Proper Names

184 187

191

194

4.2.5 Complex Pictures 197 4.3 Identifying Reference

201

4.3.1 Other Views: Preliminary Remarks 202 4.3.2 Salience for iji

205

4.3.3 Reidentification

211

4.3.4 Identifying Reference and the Autonomy of Contents 215 4.4 Demonstrative Reference 5 EXISTENCE AND TENSE

220

222

5.1 Existence: An Overview 222 5.1.1 Existence and Meaningfulness 224

x Contents

5.1.2 Towards a Criterion of Existence 224 5.1.3 The Platonic Gambit 5.1.4 Existence Sentences

228 230

5.2 Mathematical Sentences, the Existence of Numbers, and Mathematical Truth 232 6 SITUATIONS AND WASPECTS 244

6. i Situations 245 6.1.1 Movements 248 6.1.2 Processes (Including Activities) 250 6.1.3 Changes 6.1.4 States

252

255

6.2 Imperfectives and Perfectives of Situations with Bounds 256 6.3 Imperfectives and Perfectives of Situations without Bounds 260 6.3.1 Simple States 261 6.3.2 Scheduling States 6.3.3 Iterative States

268

271

6.3.4 Prepositional Attitude States (and Processes) 271 6.4 Discourse Effects of the Perfective and Imperfective of Situations with Bounds

276

6.5 REs (Contents) and Perfectives and Imperfectives 279 7 MEANING, MEANINGFULNESS, AND CONSTRUCTIVISM

7.1 Content Competence: Picture-Referential and Attention Groups 283 7.1.1 The Limits of Meaning: How Many Propositions Are There? 284 7.2 The Evidence and Storytelling Groups 291 7.2.1 Forces

292

283

xi

Contents

7.2.2 Truth: Time, Tense, and Storytelling 297 7.2.3 A Theory of Force? 316 7.3 Constructivism 319 7.4 Worldmaking Reconceived: Projective Illusions 323 Notes

325

Bibliography Index

371

361

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Acknowledgments Acknowledgments

I am grateful to several individuals for comments, criticism, advice, and conversations, including several anonymous reviewers. I owe particular thanks to Harry Bracken, David Conter, David Davies, Anil Gupta, Michael Hallett, Jim Hankinson, Haj Ross, and Charles Travis. They should, however, not be blamed for any difficulties in thought and expression which remain. Most of all, I am grateful to Joan McGilvray. She gave not just criticism and advice, but encouragement as well. I thank Don Akenson of McGill-Queen's University Press for his support and the editorial staff of the press for catching many errors and turning the manuscript into something far more readable than it was. Judith Turnbull deserves particular credit for this. She described what she did with the final manuscript as a light edit. I never want to see a heavy one. This work enjoyed considerable aid from McGill University in sabbatical leave support and a Graduate Faculty research grant. Some of the thoughts found in the manuscript germinated years ago during the 1972-73 academic year at MIT in the Department of Linguistics; support for this year came from a postdoctoral fellowship supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities. And the manuscript is published with the generous assistance of the Aid to Scholarly Publishing Program of the Canadian Federation for the Humanities. I thank all these institutions and agencies.

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Tense, Reference, and Worldmaking

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Introduction

AN IMMODEST AGENDA

This is a book on tense and temporal structure. Like anyone who proposes a theory of tense and temporal structure, I have an agenda. Those who are interested in tenses and time in language are interested in these matters because they think that something special is revealed in a close look at the past, present, and future, at the perfect and anticipative, and at temporal adverbs. My interest in tense and time relationships is driven by the conviction that the tenses of the sentences of our languages are intimately connected with some very special abilities we have — abilities with which philosophers and now cognitive scientists have had great difficulty in coming to grips. We are able to speak of anything, anywhen, and have our listeners know what we are talking about and what we want to say about it. We can do this while remaining tied to a time and a place. It is a fundamental feature of our mental capacity that while remaining where we are, we can, and routinely do, take ourselves in thought and imagination beyond the perceptual horizons of the moment. If we could not, we could not report (or perhaps even think about) what we remember or anticipate, we could not speak of things present but elsewhere, we could not plan and predict, and we could not tell stories of this and other times and of this and other worlds. I assume that even if languages do not by themselves give us the extraordinary power to refer to anything, anywhen, describe it as we will, and commit ourselves to the cor-

4 Tense, Reference, and Worldmaking

rectness of the description, they reflect this power in their sentences. Specifically, languages reflect this power in their tense and temporal markers. And a theory of these tense and temporal markers is likely to lead to an understanding of just what the powers and abilities of language-speakers are - of their natures and how they are exercised. My agenda is ambitious. It is to construct an adequate theory of the tenses and time relationships in a natural language and to explore the philosophical foundation for this theory. By a 'philosophical foundation' I mean a specification of the roles and natures of all the elements found in the theory's description as well as an explanation of the machinery of tense and temporal relationships. For instance, any such theory must deal not only with temporal intervals, but also with speakers, situations, things described, and the sentences that speakers produce. An account of how these things relate to one another must include a plausible and coherent view of reference, truth, and understanding. My agenda speaks directly to fundamental philosophical and semantic problems. In this respect, it differs significantly from some other recent works on tense and temporal relationships, notably Comrie's Tense and Hornstein's As Time Goes By. Comrie presents a comparative study of tense markers in a large number of natural languages from different language groups; he offers a theory of tenses that he believes captures the temporal topology of all the sentences in any natural language. He does not discuss semantic issues in a systematic way, except to suggest that his topological theory is consistent with tense logic. Hornstein is interested in a related project - showing that a non-standard theory of temporal topology - that of Reichenbach — not only is correct for all natural languages, but obeys the constraints in Chomsky's "governmentbinding" approach in syntax. Both Comrie and Hornstein, I am sure, harbour philosophical convictions about the natures of speakers, truth, and understanding. But they do not focus on these matters, and the theories they develop, focusing on temporal topologies, do not allow interesting systematic ways of speaking to them. Thus, their convictions on these matters are further removed from their theories than mine are, and their theories are not sufficiently rich to speak to these matters. I restrict myself to a single language and try to show that Reichenbach's non-standard topology is correct for it. However, more important, I supplement his temporal topology by including speakers (those who understand a language), sentences (tokens), situations, and things spoken about with temporal intervals. This not only allows, but demands that I speak explicitly to the question of how these items relate to one another. The result is a

5 Introduction

rich, though often non-standard, account of all these things and their relationships to each other. The theory I develop is sufficiently non-standard both in temporal topology and philosophical and semantic implications that I should explain right away why I adopt such an ambitious agenda. (Modesty is often a virtue, but it is not a virtue in offering a theory of tense and temporal structure.) The only way one can seriously hope to formulate an adequate theory that commands agreement is to tackle the whole interrelated set of issues and come up with a coherent account of them. Consider even the apparently uncontroversial issue of tense markers in English. Surely, it might be thought, we can begin to construct a theory of tense and temporal structure by counting on agreement on what a tense marker is. Yet there is no agreement even on this. While the observation that in English the present tense is unmarked and the past marked with '... ed' (or '... t') may be fairly uncontroversial, a cursory glance at the work of linguists dealing with tenses reveals that the claim that 'will' is a future marker is highly controversial. Even this issue cannot be resolved until it is decided what marking is, what the syntactic status of markers is, and — a different matter entirely — what a tense is. (Defining a tense is obviously not just a matter of saying it is what a tense marker marks.) Tenses, at the very least, are ways of classifying the temporal topologies of sentences. Yet, as I shall argue, tenses are much more besides; it is not enough to develop a theory of tenses that restricts itself to talking about temporal intervals and relating them to one another. To gain a clear idea of what a tense is, we need a theory that can speak to what is involved in our capacity, while remaining fixed where we are, both to think about things that are separated from us in space and time and to make judgments concerning them. If this is correct, my ambitious undertaking provides the only workable theory adequate to meet these criteria. Tense, Structure, and Understanding

A theory of tenses and temporal relationships must deal with the fundamental issues of semantics. If to speak about the nature of tense is to speak about things in times and places and their features or properties, then to speak of tense is to speak of reference. To speak of judgment in connection with tenses is to speak of truth. To speak of expressions in a language located at a time (speech time) that has significance and to participate in reference and judgment is to speak of meaning and meaningfulness. To speak to any of these things is to deal with a speaker's understanding.

6 Tense, Reference, and Worldmaking

The connection between tenses and reference, truth, meaning and meaningfulness, and understanding is not accidental. In fact, I claim, these and time relationships define the basic topology of semantics, or what I call 'basic semantic structure.' When we know the ways in which speakers who read or produce sentences at a time are related to the things of which they speak, and know how the things of which they speak can be described and what judgments can be made, we know not only what tenses are and what they do, but also the basic semantic structure of any sentence. The key to this semantic topology of sentences is found in temporal topology. This is because the temporal locations of the things, properties, situations, sentences, and speakers allow us to see what must be found together (what must be found with what else, and when), and so to see how these items are related. It is surely significant that sentences that refer to things and situations and that are understood by a speaker are always located temporally at time of speech. It is equally significant that the situation or property that characterizes a thing need not be located at the same time as the thing characterized. For instance, the situation and the thing characterized do not coincide temporally in the sentence 'Harry had been running when John saw him,' for Harry's running precedes Harry, who is located at the time John saw him. While traditional semantics easily accommodates the first fact, it does not so easily accommodate the second — or so I argue. The theory describing temporal and semantic topology that I propose is a structural theory. Because the elements of temporal and semantic structure must relate to each other in certain ways, we can determine what their natures are by seeing how they stand in relation to one another. What is the subject matter of a sentence or the thing to which a sentence makes identifying reference? It is a spatio-temporally located object (in some world or another) that is characterized by standing in a relationship to a situation; it is also that to which someone understanding the sentence "pays attention." The sentence utterance or token is something that is located at time of speech and determines, for someone who understands it in the right way, a sentential content consisting of a temporally related situation and a thing described by the situation. According to this theory, the speaker appears twice in the temporal and semantic structure of a sentence. On one appearance, the speaker is a person who makes judgments; this person is located at time of speech. On another, the speaker is a person who refers to a sentential content; this person is located with the thing to which identifying reference is made, for - intuitively - she or he is in a way transported to the thing described in some way. The speaker's dual roles play an essential part in ex-

7 Introduction

plaining what it is to understand a sentence. One kind of understanding is that found in making judgments: it is an epistemically constrained ability. Another kind of understanding is that found in referring: this is a perceptual ability - in part a matter of recognition or correct classification and in part a matter of attending to something. The details appear later. The points to insist on here are that a theory of tense should speak to the issue of what it is to understand a language (for speakers, situations, and the like are part of the structure) and that such a theory can speak to this issue in a significant way because it places speakers, situations, times, and things in a determinate structure. We can say what it is to be a speaker, for instance, because we can say where the speaker is located temporally and to which thing(s) he or she is related, how, and when. Adequacy

The philosophical and semantic claims that grow out of the proposed theory of tense and temporal structure suppose that the theory is adequate to a natural language - in particular, English. The theory must adequately describe and explain at least the behaviour of tense markers, adverbials, and — where embedding of one clause within another is an issue - the tense and adverbial constraints on embedding. The primary purpose of chapters i and 2 is to show just this: that the theory adequately describes and explains the temporal and semantic structure of the sentences in English. Chapter i deals with the structure of simple sentences — those that do not involve any embedding. It also defends the approach taken and provides the intended interpretation for the theoretical terms introduced — the interpretations discussed, explained, and defended in the rest of the book. Chapter 2 deals with the structure of complex sentences, such as prepositional attitudes, modals, and conditionals. An ancillary aim of chapter 2 is to show that there are very few complex structures and that they are regular in ways the theory makes natural. Among other things, this speaks to the "problem of acquisition," which plays such an important role in contemporary linguistic and philosophical discussion. I do not discuss this matter in detail; Hornstein's treatment of the issue is excellent and is consistent with most of the claims of these chapters. I insist that the theory, in addition to satisfying standard syntactic and semantic constraints on adequacy, satisfy a general semantic constraint. In particular, the theory must provide a uniform description and explanation of the temporal and semantic structure

8 Tense, Reference, and Worldmaking

not only of those sentences that describe the things of our world, but of those sentences that describe the things of non-existent worlds. In other words, the theory must be structurally insensitive to the distinction between fictional and non-fictional discourse. Only a theory that satisfies this constraint can deal with the fact that we encounter no difficulties in telling stories of fictional worlds and that our sentences do not seem to differ in any structural respects including vocabulary - when they appear in fictional discourse. A theory adequate to fiction as well as fact need not, as most popular theories of semantics now must, view speaking of fictional entities as somehow being parasitic upon fact. But more important, only a theory that can satisfy this constraint can adequately account for the fact that we seem to have an unrestricted ability both to "move around mentally" and to make judgments concerning things found even in fictional worlds. This fact, which is a part of our semantic freedom, is compromised by any theory of the basic semantic structure of a sentence that would constrain us and make our understanding and language parochial. Of course, it is important to speak to the difference between fact and fiction. The theory I develop makes fact a special case of fiction. Language allows us to transport ourselves to and describe any thing at any time; what needs to be explained is what is special about descriptions of the things of our world. The theory maintains semantic freedom by making descriptions of entities and our access to them independent of worlds and what is the case; it is sensitive to worlds, however, in making judgments concerning described entities dependent on evidence and accepted principles of correct judgment. It relativizes judgment, then; it also relativizes truth to worlds and times. But it does not make fictional worlds any less accessible than the real one. Methodological Restrictions

I adopt two methodological restrictions. The first is that no language other than English is discussed. I am well aware that there are prima facie differences of various sorts between tense and associated markers (such as aspect and perfect) among different natural languages, including natural languages that have common ancestors.1 There may be some important differences between the tense and basic semantic structures of languages, although I doubt it, and the evidence I have seen that suggests this seems either misdirected or wrong. There may also be less important differences between how different languages treat various tense-related factors: an example might be differences in function and specificity of adverbials. And

g Introduction I strongly suspect that there are unimportant differences, such as indications in the tense markers of some languages of the degree of distance from the present in the case of a past or future. But this speculation is premature; deciding what differences are or are not revealed and how important anything is presupposes having an adequate account of tense and basic semantic structure for different languages. My aim is to produce an adequate account for one. Second, while insisting that a speaker's recognition of the syntax of a sentence of a language plays a crucial role in one form of reference, I will not discuss the syntax of sentences in detail. I do express a preference for Chomsky's current 'government-binding' approach,2 but the theory I develop is consistent with several grammars, so long as they recognize the relevant temporal-structural constraints in their accounts of embedding and allow room for the machinery of "interpretation" my theory requires. The only claims I make that are importantly inconsistent with much of current syntax (or rather the practices of syntacticians) are in my discussion of "interpretation." To the extent that many syntacticians adopt a truth-conditional approach to meaning or adopt other views that make meaning a matter of relating sentences to the world (or to our knowledge and belief concerning the world), I think they are wrong. I offer a radical alternative, one that is, however, consistent with various sorts of what might by called syntax pure laine. Iconoclasm

At the moment, there is a cluster of theories of tense and temporal structure that share certain assumptions and views about how to go about constructing a theory of tense. The basic assumptions of these theories, including the theory of tense logic, are discussed and criticized in more detail later. I emphasize that certain features of tense logic are valuable — for tense logic makes much-needed contributions to the systematization of our principles of temporal inference. But tense logic and other theories that share one of the basic assumptions of tense logic conflict in a basic way with a claim made by the theory I develop. They claim that a tense consists, at least in part, of the relationship between the time at which a speech event or reading of a sentence takes place and the time at which some situation, state of affairs, event, or state takes place or is to be found. This claim is wrong, though not because tenses do not involve a relationship between time of speech and another time, for obviously they do — in a past-tense sentence, for instance, there is something located at a time before time of speech. The mistake lies in thinking that at that

io Tense, Reference, and Worldmaking other time is necessarily found a situation. The truth is that at that other time is found the thing, individual, or class of individuals the sentence is about. That other time, which I, following Reichenbach in his Elements of Symbolic Logic, call the 'reference time,' may coincide with the time of a situation, but it need not. And even when it does, it is both conceptually and structurally distinct from the situation time. I anticipate difficulty in convincing the reader that the tense logicians are wrong and I am right, in part because their assumption seems natural. It is included among the basic assumptions of several theories of tense, such as Comrie's linguistic account in Tense. More important, it is an assumption that almost everyone who is not confronted with the relevant facts finds obvious. I suspect that there are several reasons it is so easy to believe. Prominent among these is our unsurprising, and in that sense natural, tendency to treat language primarily as a vehicle for saying things that are true (stating the facts, describing things as they are). Languages matter to us to a large degree because we have made them indispensable tools for dealing with our environments and satisfying our needs. This is what makes them meaningful. So when we view a language, we almost automatically assume, not (harmlessly) that it is often used to "mirror the world," but (perniciously) that - in order for us to say what a language is and does at all — it must be a mirror of the world. We even go so far as to populate our world with correlates of the sentences we think are true of our world - with facts, events, and the like. The situations or facts that the tense logician and person on the street assume a tense relates us to are these "things" that make our sentences true, when they are. Because the theory I develop denies this natural assumption that a tense relates a speaker to a situation (construed in this sense), it is iconoclastic. It is also iconoclastic in a connected vein because, while it assigns truth an important place in tenses and semantic structure, it denies it the dominant place it has in tense logic and current semantic theory. As I suggested above, truth should not have a dominant role, for this tends to undermine semantic freedom by tying meaning and reference down to a single world. We may use our languages most often to deal with our circumstances, and it may even be true that languages evolved to enable us to do so (though I doubt it), but languages enable us to do much more (or at least they can express our ability to do much more).

i The Basic Temporal and Semantic Structure of Sentences

The occurrence of tense in verbs is an exceedingly annoying vulgarity due to our preoccupation with practical affairs. It would be much more agreeable if they had no tense, as I believe is the case in Chinese, but I do not know Chinese. Bertrand Russell, "The Philosophy of Logical Atomism"

Russell's complaint about tenses in 1918 was echoed, with considerably less charm, by many philosophers in the first half of this century. Tenses were thought to be a nuisance; usually they were ignored, although some took them seriously enough to try to eliminate them from a "proper" language. Russell himself ignored tenses until about 1940, when he produced a "token-reflexive" account of tenses, an interesting effort that, along with the development of tense logic and Reichenbach's temporal topology, put the discussion of tenses on the philosophical agenda. Yet in a way Russell was concerned with tenses from the start. In 1918, in the same lectures in which he voiced his complaint, he discussed the concepts of acquaintance and present experience, spoke of things past and future, worried about the natures of reference and meaning, and, in general, developed a theory of the speaker's perspective on a world at a time. As Russell himself later recognized, these are all matters that must be dealt with in a complete theory of tense and temporal structure. This chapter and the next are devoted to introducing and defending such a complete theory. In chapter i, the theory is outlined and its application to simple sentences - those that do not involve

12 Tense, Reference, and Worldmaking

complex forms of embedding — is explained. In chapter 2, the theory is extended to complex sentences - prepositional attitudes, modals, conditionals, and habituals. The rest of the book explores in detail the philosophical and semantic implications of the theory — what it says and suggests concerning meaning, reference, truth, and the speaker's involvement in these matters. The temporal and semantic structure the theory assigns to sentences guides the philosophical discussion. 1.1 T E M P O R A L A N D STRUCTURE

SEMANTIC

i.i.i Temporal Structure It is no longer necessary to convince people to take tenses seriously. There are many theories of tense available in the works of both philosophers — particularly tense logicians — and linguists. The task has changed. Now it is necessary to construct a truly adequate theory. Further, if the theory I propose is correct, those who are constructing other theories of tense must be made to recognize that they misconceive tenses. There is common ground on tenses. Everyone agrees that a tensed sentence introduces a time of speech and another time, where that second time is before (with pasts), at, or after (with futures) the time of speech. Another point of agreement is that something is to be found at the second time. These two points provide a start for all theories of tense of which I am aware, constituting, then, a core view of tense. To the extent that this core is common to all theories of tense, it is not theoretically burdened. This is in part, as I shall show, because the "something" of the second principle is sufficiently vague that it covers individuals as well as situations. The disagreement — and it is fundamental - begins when one asks which of these this "something" is. Generally, it is presumed that located before, at, or after the time of speech is an event, state of affairs, or situation. This is the 'received view.' According to the received view, the second temporal interval in a tense is what might be called 'the time of the situation' (or event, state, state of affairs). Call this time 'iE.51 The received view holds that a past-tense sentence like 'Harry left yesterday' consists (at least in part) of a relationship between two temporal intervals, one the time of speech (i$) and the other the time of Harry's leaving — the time of the event or situation (i E ) - which is before the time of speech. In effect, for the received view, tense is an IS-IE relationship.

13 Temporal and Semantic Structure The received view is popular and has distinguished supporters. All tense logicians, so far as I can see, assume that tense is an is-i£ relationship. Most philosophers who deal with tenses less formally also think of tense as a relationship between time of speech and time of situation. Russell's token-reflexive view of tenses has this assumption built into it. Many linguists assume it, as Comrie seems to in Tense* And I suspect that if the proverbial man on the street were asked what a tense consists of, he would answer that it must have something to do with our talking about things that have happened or will happen; it is easy to construe this as our talking about situations or events viewed from speech time. I mentioned in the introduction that there are reasons why this view seems natural, one being our tendency to use language to deal with our world and its states of affairs — with how things are. But despite its authority and the feeling that it is natural, the received view is wrong. The correct view, I think, is that located at the second temporal interval in a tense relationship is, not a situation, but a spatio-temporally located individual - specifically, the thing or class of things to which a sentence makes identifying reference. The second temporal interval, thus, following Reichenbach, is not the 'time of situation,' but the 'reference point.' I label it 'iR.' In Reichenbach's view, a tense is not an i s -i E relationship (the received view), but a relationship between the time of speech (is) and the reference point (iii). Call this 'the R-view.' The claim the R-view makes will seem puzzling to those who accept the standard view, and admittedly, it does complicate matters. Where before we had two temporal intervals at most, now we have three - time of speech, reference point, and time of situation. Worse — and again following Reichenbach — all three of these intervals must be used in the description of the temporal topology of every sentence in English, including sentences in the simple present tense, where all three coincide. The situation appears less bleak for the R-view when one takes into account the fact that some sentences obviously do require three temporal intervals. Everyone agrees that we need a third temporal interval besides time of speech and time of event to deal with those sentences contentiously described as "compound tense" sentences, including the past perfect and the anticipative past - constructions like 'Harry had run by the time Mary arrived' and 'Harry was going to run when Mary arrived,' where neither time of speech nor time of event is the time at which Mary arrived, the third point. The first, past perfect, example has the situation Harry run 3 located at time i E before this third interval, while in the second example, the situation and thus i F is after the third interval. 4 Similarly, it is easy to

14 Tense, Reference, and Worldmaking

see that a third interval is needed for future, and perhaps present, perfects and anticipatives. To avoid prejudging the matter for the moment, call this third interval 'i?.' I hope to show that, contrary to the received view, tense proper always consists of a relationship between time of speech and this other time, even with "simple"-tense sentences like 'Mary left' (where i? precedes is) and 'John is in the pantry' (where i? is overlapped by or is coincidental with i E ). And I must show that every tensed sentence makes three separate references to temporal intervals: every sentence, including those that are simple present, refers to time of speech (is), time of event or situation (iE), and a third temporal interval (ip). Past and future perfects and anticipatives hint of further support for the R-view. They not only demonstrate a need for three temporal intervals, they suggest that we need to introduce two relationships to deal with their temporal structures. One relationship is that between is and i?, and the other is that between i ? and i E . These two relationships are — it is agreed — alike in at least one respect: both relationships take two intervals and place one either before of after the other. But after agreeing that 'before' or 'after' plays a role in these relationships, theories diverge radically on whether the two relationships are alike in further respects. Supporters of the received view believe that they are very much alike; supporters of the R-view point to important differences. Supporters of the received view must go through some contortions to make these two relationships alike. The defender of the received view models the second relationship found in "compound tense" sentences, that between ip and i E , on what he or she calls a "simple tense" relationship — a relationship between is and i E . The tense logician provides a formalism for this that is elegant and seems compelling. 5 It consists of making a tense such as the past into a sentential operator and allowing iteration of these operators. The simple-past-tense sentence 'George was here' comes out Pq, where 'q' is (according to some tense logicians) the sentence 'George is here.' Using iteration, the compound-tense past perfect 'George had been here' becomes PPq. A future perfect comes out PFq, and so on. This formalism is simple and offers tremendous power, for it allows us to generate n-ary tenses such as PFFPPPq. But it obscures the problem for which we need a solution: just what is there at i ? if any basic tense is a relationship between time of speech and time of situation or event, and how can this thing underwrite iteration? The only possible answer for the standard view for what is at i? is 'an event.' Yet it must be a very special event, certainly not immediately rec-

15 Temporal and Semantic Structure ognizable from a reading of the sentence in the way George's being somewhere is recognizable as an event. My proposal - consistent with that of most tense logicians - is that if the third interval i? is read as a special case of the interval i E but must also, to make sense of iterating a simple tense, count as a time of speech, we must treat i E in this case (the case where it is an i ? ) as fixed by something like a virtual assertion made by a virtual speaker. We need something that approximates the logicians' favoured notion of "evaluating a sentence at a time"; for this case, a virtual assertion by a virtual speaker at i? will do. Assertions constitute the intuitive core of "evaluating a sentence" or making a commitment to a sentence's truth value, so an iterated tense in this view places a virtual person or "interpreter" assigning truth values at i?. This makes i? both an i E and an is: the event is a speaking-assertion. With this special event in hand, the supporter of the received view can argue that the third interval appears to be sufficiently like a speech interval that the relationship between this third interval (i ? ) and the time of an event proper (iE) can plausibly be thought to be an iteration of the received view's analysis of a tense.6 All compound-tense sentences, then, become iterations of the received view's conception of a simple-tense construction - an is-iE relationship. A sentence like 'Harold had left by the time Mary arrived' is analysed in terms of two 'before' relationships. One relationship relates actual speech time to an interval (the time Mary arrived) where the sentence 'Harold left' (analysed in such a way that the time Harold leaves is before time of "speech") was true (when "uttered"). The other relates this time to the time of Harold's leaving (i E ). Because all three interval sentences are analysed as iterating IS-IE relationships, a future perfect becomes a simple future of a simple past, where both future and past are relationships between an interval characterized as an i$ and an interval characterized as an i E . There are problems with the special sort of event associated with the third point that this view requires and with the idea of a "speaker." Both event and speaker seem ad hoc, for there is no obvious independent reason to introduce either. And there are problems with unlimited iteration: no natural language is so fecund. Iterating an is-iE relationship, therefore, is by no means the simple solution to a problem the formalism suggests. Yet if ad hoc speaker and events, along with unlimited iteration, suggest doubts about the received view, the popularity of tense logic shows that these are easy to ignore. The "naturalness" of tense as an iE-is relationship and the promise of a simple general theory applicable to all tenses and per-

i6 Tense, Reference, and Worldmaking haps all languages make an iterative theory compelling. Indeed, in contrast, the alternative R-view seems needlessly limited, perhaps even stodgy. Why bother with it? We should "bother" with it because it is adequate to English (and, I suspect, other natural languages) and because the structure it assigns to English sentences suggests a coherent solution to some fundamental philosophical problems of meaning, truth, and reference. I criticize tense logic in more detail at the end of this chapter because it - along with other accounts that accept the received view - is inadequate to English and other natural languages. Let me emphasize, however, that tense logicians do many things (such as tie tense logic to modal logic) that have nothing to do with tenses in natural languages. I do not want to say that all these activities are not valuable. Nor do I want to say that all are misdirected. One thing the tense logician does in offering systems that deal with time-related inference in natural languages is clearly valuable: many of these systems are essential contributions to a theory of time-dependent judgment. These systems do not, however, tell us what tenses are. 1.1.2 Reichenbach's 1947 Formalism

The first task in explaining the R-view is to introduce a formalism. Formalisms display structure and commitments and make both easier to discuss. I begin with Reichenbach's original formalism. It is adequate to and displays the temporal structure of sentences. I then supplement it to display the commitments and the implied semantic structure. The formalism of Reichenbach's Elements of Symbolic Logic introduced a vocabulary to generate a map of the temporal topology of sentences, a map that says a sentence can have one of nine possible orderings of three differently characterized temporal intervals.7 Reichenbach's vocabulary consisted of 'S,' 'R,' '£,' '-,' and ','. The first three terms refer to intervals or moments, intervals I call 'is,' 'iR,' and 'iE.' The signs '-' and ',' are relational terms; flanked by any of'S,' 'R,' or '£,' they read, respectively, as 'before' and 'at the same time as.' Thus, 'R-E' reads, 'R is before E,' and 'S,R' reads, 'S is at the same time as R.' The nine permissible orderings are produced by, first, allowing only paired combinations of S with R flanking either'-' or',' and of R with Eflanking'-'or',' - prohibiting repetition in any pair. As a result, S can stand to R in three ways (S can be before, at the same time as, or after R), and R can stand to E in three ways (before, at the same time as, or after E). The three per-

iy Temporal and Semantic Structure missible combinations of S with R are the three SR relationships, generally known as the tenses past, present, and future. The three permissible combinations of R with E are the three RE relationships, known — but not generally - as the perfect, simple, and anticipative. Second, since the pairwise orderings - all the permissible SR and RE relationships — share a term, we can combine pairwise orderings to get nine ( 3 X 3 = 9) possible temporal structures for the sentences of a language - nine 'schemata.' The claim is that any sentence of a natural language suits one, and only one, schema; if correct, Reichenbach's theory consists of a map of permissible temporal schemata.8 There are some unfortunate terminological features of Reichenbach's account in Elements. He called all nine schemata 'tenses,' though there are only three tenses proper, and he called the RE relationship 'aspect,' even though it has nothing to do with aspects proper, the perfective and imperfective. To avoid these difficulties, I shall restrict the term 'tense' to relationships between time of speech (is, or Reichenbach's S) and reference point (iR, or Reichenbach's R): tenses are SR relationships and knowing how S is temporally related to R is sufficient for determining the tense of a sentence. The three possible orderings of S and R - hence tenses - are called 'past,' 'present,' and 'future,' where S stands after, at the same time as, and before R respectively. I call relationships between i R and time of situation i E (Reichenbach's E) 'descriptum relationships,' 'descripta,' or 'RE relationships.' The three possible orderings of R and E - hence three sorts of descripta - can be called 'anterior,' 'simple,' and 'posterior' (or more traditionally, 'perfect', 'simple,' and 'anticipative'), where R stands after, at the same time as, or before E respectively. Each sentence has a single tense or SR relationship and a single RE or descriptum relationship. The map claims that whole sentences in a natural language display a single SRE structure, the join of a tense and a descriptum. SRE schemata are perspicuously presented only if SR and RE relationships are kept separate. For purposes of brevity and topography, however, I shall compromise on Reichenbach's own less perspicuous linear presentation of SR and RE relationships, one that puts them together in an ordered cluster of Ss, Rs, and Es. If we are indifferent to order, where any of S, R, or E are contemporaneous or where one completely overlaps another, we find thirteen possible temporal linear orderings of S to R and R to E. The linear orderings yield a map of permissible temporal topologies of sentences that has four redundant entries - those differing solely because of differences

i8 Tense, Reference, and Worldmaking

in the ways S stands to E. If we ignore these four irrelevant cases, we get — as we should — nine basic topological structures. The linear orderings are presented in the table below.9 Schema

Name

Traditional name

E-R-S E,R-S R-E-S R-E,S R-S-E E-R,S S,R,E R,S-E E-S-R S,E-R S-E-R S-E,R S-R-E

Anterior past Simple past

Past perfect Past

Posterior past

Past

Anterior present Simple present Posterior present

Present perfect Present

Anterior future

Future perfect

Simple future Posterior future

Future

| ? I

1 \ I

The various configurations are easily illustrated with non-complex English sentences. The simple present, past, and future structures are found in 'Harry is mowing the lawn' (S,R,E), 'Harry mowed the lawn' (R,S-E), and 'Harry will mow the lawn' (S-R,E). (Notice that differences between the aspects proper and imperfective or incomplete — as in the English progressive, 'Harry is mowing the lawn,' and perfective or complete, 'Harry mowed the lawn,' as opposed to 'Harry was mowing the lawn' - are irrelevant to the temporal topology. This is true of all sentences.) The anterior past and the anterior present topologies suit the following sentences: 'Harry had mowed the lawn' (E-R-S) and 'Harry has mowed the lawn' (E-R,S). The anterior future's (future perfect's) unchanging SR and RE relationships but varying SE relationships suit sentences like 'John will have left by tomorrow' (any of E-S-R, S,E-R, S-E-R): the reference point (R) is tomorrow, the time of speech (S) is fixed sometime today, while the time of John's going (E) can, depending on context or story, be before, simultaneous with, or after the time of speech, so long as it precedes R. This indifference to the SE relationship is found, too, in the posterior past, a structure marked by 'was going to,' as in 'The rock was going to fall' (R-E-S, R-S,E, or R-S-E). The posterior present is sometimes marked with a 'will' and adverbs like 'momentarily' - as in 'George will run momentarily' (S,R-E) - but often context is needed to distinguish it from a simple future: we

ig Temporal and Semantic Structure must be told where the thing the sentence is about is located before we can know where R is. The posterior present is also sometimes marked with an 'is going to,' as in 'John is going to fall.' (The posterior present is the immediate future, sometimes also called the 'future inherent in the present'; it does not, however, require that E be immediately after S and R.) The posterior future is often marked in English with a 'will be going to,' as in 'John will be going to fall' (S-R-E). A more detailed account of the application of this formalism to simple sentences of English follows my effort to improve Reichenbach's theory by making S, R, and E more than simply temporal intervals. Reichenbach's schemata help in an understanding of the temporal structures of complex constructions involving embedded clauses. A propositional attitude sentence such as 'Harry thinks that George is coming this evening' has an embedded SRE structure; the intentional sentence, 'Harry intends to leave tomorrow,' on the other hand, has an embedded RE in the infinitival. Other examples include conditionals and various modal sentences. These complex constructions are discussed in chapter 2. It is worth nothing that all sentences with these complex structures, considered as wholes, have, however, exactly the same SRE structures as simple sentences. Each one designates a single but complex situation, and the sentence as a whole consequently receives standard SRE assignments. Because of this, we can say that every complete sentence (main clause) has no more than a single SR (tense) and a single RE (descriptum) relationship. A glance at Reichenbach's schemata for simple-tense sentences — the simple past, present, and future — shows that while they conflict with the received view's idea that a tense is a relationship between an is and an i E , there is no reason to think that they conflict with the core view of tenses, which serves as the base for any theory of tense. That core view, I suggested earlier, places "something" before, at, or after time of speech for each of the three tenses, but it does not hold that this "something" is an event, nor that the time interval involved in a tense is i E . Reichenbach's formalism has R, not E, as the second term in a tense relationship. R, then - or something included in R - could well be the "something" that intuition requires. In fact, as we shall see shortly, the thing - or things - a sentence is about is always located at R. Consequently, the R-view is at least as well supported by the core view as the received view is. Moreover, the R-view easily accommodates all compound-tense sentences though by now it should be clear that the notion of a compound tense makes no sense in this different framework.

2O Tense, Reference, and Worldmaking 1.1.3 The 1947 Topology Supplemented10

Reichenbach's S, R, and E must be identified with more than temporal intervals alone. Everyone supplements temporal topology in some way; even the core view places a speaker at is and "something" at ip. The issue is how this supplementing should be done. We can count on agreement for some things. At the time of speech (is), there is a speaker and a sentence produced (an utterance or token). At i E , there is a situation. S and E can be identified, then, with a triple and a pair consisting of intervals and, respectively, a speaker plus a token and a situation. This leaves the problematic case, R. I propose that R can be identified with a triple consisting of an interval arid two other items. (Only the interval i R would be generally accepted as a member of this set.) I propose that the two other items be the thing or things described by a sentence — the thing or things a sentence is about or refers to identifyingly - and a "perceiverdescriber." The first is an individual or individuals located in space and time. The second is a person, not the "speaker who asserts" introduced earlier to underwrite iteration, but the actual speaker represented as exercising his or her referential competence with the sentence in question. Before trying to further explain and justify my choices, particularly for R, I present a formal statement of the theory as a whole to show how each temporal interval is joined by other elements and how pairs and triples are related to each other. Some of the devices of set theory are used in forming S, R, and E into pairs or triples: S = R = E = <0, E > i

p is a speaker or "storyteller" t is a token or an utterance c is a class of things or individuals 0 is a situation \\t is a "perceiver-describer" is, i R , and i E are intervals of time

SR (tense) and RE (descriptum) relationships become, then, unordered sets of ordered triples and pairs: SR = {, < , C, iR>} RE = {<»|i, c, iR>, < , iE>}

Where there is embedding of REs or SREs in the semantic structures of complex constructions, such as propositional attitudes, the items

21 Temporal and Semantic Structure referred to by embedded clauses are starred (e.g., v|/*, i|i**) to indicate various levels of embedding. There is a minor danger in using set-theoretic devices: it might be thought that my concerns are the concerns of those doing set theory in, say, the philosophy of mathematics. This is not so. My aim is to introduce a compact way to display structure, and the settheoretic devices I introduce make this possible without claiming anything more than that; for instance, an S identified with a triple is related to an R identified with a triple. The natures of the elements of these sets, and how these elements relate to one another (the interesting issues), are not decided by arranging the items in sets. There are also advantages in using the minimalist language of conjoining things in sets. In English one says for E, "at i E there is a 0 (situation)," where it is not at all clear that situations exist (and if they do, how), while with set-theoretic notation all one commits oneself to is a pairing. If we assume that i s , i R , and i E are temporal intervals that are dated in some way or another (normally by being mapped onto a well-ordered "time line" so that they are arranged with respect to one another in relations of temporal precedence or overlap — either by 'before' or 'overlap'), the formalism as it stands yields everything Reichenbach's original S, R, and E as arranged in a map did.11 The formalism says that S must stand to R and R to E at a minimum in relations of temporal precedence or overlap, and it says formally that S and E are related primarily to R and only mediately through R to each other. It also says that there are three order-distinct RS and three order-distinct RE relationships; hence, when we join one of each in representing the basic semantic structure of a sentence, we end up with nine temporal-order-distinct versions of each. The formalism is more perspicuous than Reichenbach's temporal map: differences in the relationship of S to E play no role. For the moment, think of iR as a short-term interval. For obvious reasons, we can think of is as a short-term interval approximating the time it takes a person to utter a sentence. The interval i E is more of a problem. Think of iE as specified with regard to bounding (closed or open at one or both ends) by the situation (0) in question.12 Assuming this, we see that i E is specified when we know boundingtype, descriptum-type, and IR. I S The ways utterances of English refer to these intervals are discussed in detail later. Often the temporal adverbials of English, at least when they are point-like ('3:00' as opposed to 'between 3:00 and 4:00'), routinely refer to i R , not to either of the other two intervals.14

22 Tense, Reference, and Worldmaking

From now on, when for convenience I use Reichenbach's 'S,' 'R,' and 'E,' I intend that they be read in accordance with the full formalization; I will only occasionally - for instance, when dealing with the complications of embedding - spell things out. 1.1.4 The Natures of Speakers (ps), Tokens (ts), "Perceiver-Describers" (tys), Companions (cs), and Situations (®s)

While the formalization as it stands is sufficient for us to begin applying the theory to cases, I detour for two sections and speak to the natures the theory assigns to the items introduced to supplement Reichenbach's topology. My reason for doing this is threefold: to provide some intuitive content for these items, to point to the philosophical implications of the novel structure this supplemented theory assigns to sentences, and, finally, to avoid misconceptions. All of the items introduced in the supplemented formalization need to be introduced with care because the philosophical foundations provided for the theory in chapters 3-7 depend on their (theory-assigned) natures. Even those items that would seem to need little introduction, such as speakers and situations, get novel natures in this novel structure. The person at i s , for instance, becomes a speaker-as-storyteller or (in Kant's terminology) a person of judgment. The situation (0) ceases to be the alethically burdened (truthdependent) notion of the tense logician and becomes something much more like a (worldless) property. In part, the natures of these items depend on the ways in which they stand to one another. Because R performs a mediating role among them, we can divide the ways they stand to one another into two relationships, one of which is the tense (SR) relationship and the other the descriptum (RE) relationship. Tenses can be further divided into two subrelationships, a relationship between a speaker (p) and perceiver-describer (if/) on the one hand and a relationship between a sentence token (t), a thing (c), and a situation (0) on the other. The first amounts to a speaker making a recommendation on the inclusion of a sentential content in a story; the second amounts to a sentence referring to or individuating a sentential content. Descripta are relationships between cs and 0s: a particular pair in a particular temporal relationship is a matter of defining what I call a 'descriptive position' for a language - a sentential content. In such a content, a 0 has one of three possible bearings on a description of a c so that each content is either a retrospective, simple, or prospective view ("description") of that c. A c can be "seen 01y" (or in

23 Temporal and Semantic Structure terms of 0) in one of these three ways. These encapsulated descriptions of tenses and descripta are discussed in more detail below. With regard to individual items, we will start with ts. These are expressions produced by a speaker; they are physically located marks or sounds. They have the discernible syntactic structure and, in a context, sufficiently discernible "grain" to determine, for that context and a competent reader, a situation (0) and a 'before' or 'contemporaneous with' for an RE relationship. They also have the structure, the lexical content, and the attention-getting properties in context needed to determine, for the world of a story, the thing or things (c) that the sentence is about, or makes identifying reference to. If, as I suggest, sentential contents are identified with what I call 'descriptive positions' or 'descripta' and these are the items and relations of an RE relationship, it follows that a token in context determines a sentential content. (I leave out the perceiver-describer [ij/] for a moment.) Intuitively, then, a sentence in context specifies or individuates a descriptive position. It does so by referring in two ways to two different items, cs at a time i R (by means of identifying reference) and 0s at a time is (by means of what I call 'picture reference'). I speak of ts, not speakers, as referring; this captures the idea that which particular individual produces a sentence is of no particular importance vis-a-vis what that sentence means or refers to; once a sentence is produced, it is its job, on a reading, to fix a content. (Minor adjustments in this claim are necessary to deal with indexicality.) My understanding the content or meaning of Dickens's or Shakespeare's sentences must not depend essentially on my knowing something about the authors, nor should my understanding the meaning of what anyone says depend upon my knowing something about him or her. The symbol 'c' is an acronym for 'companion'; cs are "with" vj/s, for they are the things the perceiver-describer perceives; cs are what situations (0s) describe. To ease into this set of claims about companions, I begin by relating them to tokens (ts) located at is and by emphasizing their connection to the interval i R . Think of cs as individuals, items that are spatio-temporally located and thus necessarily found at times in places in worlds. They populate these worlds, whether real or fictional, and they are the entities that sentences are about: they are the individuals that ts at is pick out. When someone says, 'Harold had left by the time Mary arrived yesterday,' c for the sentence is Harold, for he is what is picked out and described. The relationship between the sentence t spoken at is and the companion (c) located at i R approximates what philosophers think of as identifying reference, and I have therefore appro-

24 Tense, Reference, and Worldmaking

priated and adapted this concept. Details of the concept appear in chapter 4; there, David Lewis's account of identifying reference in terms of perceptual salience is adapted to the idea that the other item located at iR is a perceiver-describer (vj/). A c is salient to \\i wherever there is identifying reference to c. But these details are inessential here, so long as it is clear that cs are the things sentences are about and that these things can be located in any world (fictional or not) at any time — a fortiori, before, at, or after time of speech so long as they are at i R . The most obvious feature of cs according to the theory is that they are located at JR. If we think of c as that to which identifying reference is made, it turns out that Reichenbach's choice of 'reference point' for i R was a wise, if inadvertent, choice. But is the claim that all sentences in English make identifying reference to something located at i R correct? If it is, it is an interesting fact, for it provides strong empirical evidence in favour of the theory. I cannot demonstrate the claim here because that requires detailed study of various kinds of sentences. But simple inspection of some sentences shows it is plausible. Consider these sentences: 'Harry had run by the time Mary arrived' (E-R-S; i R = the time Mary arrived; c = Harry; 0 = Harry run), 'You will have mowed the lawn by then' (S-E-R, S,E-R, or E-S-R; i R = then (after now); c = you; 0 = You mow the lawn), and 'Jake will be going to leave when you arrive' (S-R-E; i R = when you arrive; c = Jake; 0 = Jake leave). With all these sentences, the thing that is "referred to" (identifyingly), or the thing that the sentence is about, is located at i R , not at or within i E or is. With all, c is at i R , and both c and i R are either before or after the situation (0). This point is sometimes rather clumsily recognized for some sentences. It has been said that the present perfect 'Einstein has visited Princeton' (E-S,R; IR = is = now; c = Einstein; 0 = Einstein visit Princeton) is permissible only if Einstein exists at time of speech; for us, with Einstein no longer with us, 'Einstein visited Princeton' (where i R
25 Temporal and Semantic Structure with the referent, and that he or she is acquainted only with something that exists at time of speech, the things to which the person refers directly must be at the moment of speech (i s ). l6 This concept of direct identifying reference tied to acquaintance resulted in Russell's disastrous account of demonstratives as proper names and its accompanying theory of descriptions (where all predicates are supposed to refer directly to things [concepts] with which a person is. acquainted). Russell's view is not particularly compelling, and I do not dwell on it here. Much more compelling are the assumptions that lead people to locate c with i E . These assumptions are at the heart of semantics as most practise it today. Let us agree that, generally speaking, sentences make identifying references to spatio-temporally located things (cs, on my account) and that they describe them. For the SRE theory, 'describing a thing' consists of relating it in an RE relationship to a 0, a situation that can be located before, at, or after the time at which the thing is located. The result is a sentential content - a 'descriptum' or unit of understanding (for those who are competent in the relevant way in a language). Traditionally and for almost everyone today, however, 'describing a thing' amounts to assigning (ascribing) a property to a thing; when a thing is correctly described, it has the property ascribed to it. Now, explaining what is involved in an RE relationship and making it plausible that all describings of things can be modelled by a partially temporal relationship between a c and a 0 is not an easy task, but neither is explaining what is involved in ascribing a property to a thing. The latter only appears simple through habituation, philosophical tradition, and devotion to simple cases. I leave the details of both views to later discussion. The crucial difference between them for present purposes is that for the SRE theory, describing allows that "that which describes" (0) can be located at a different time from that at which the "thing described" (c) is located, while the traditional view holds that when a thing "has" or "exhibits" a property, that property is temporally located with the thing. (Properties may be thought to be timeless; nevertheless, when a thing "has" a property, the property "inheres" in the thing - it does not "antehere" or "posthere.") The idea that properties are possessed by things has many roots - in a view of truth, for instance, and in the idea that the subject-predicate structure of (some) sentences is the clue to how sentences work semantically (generally, subjects refer and predicates characterize). These concepts are discussed later, and alternative views, congenial to SRE structure, of truth and the role of subject-predicate structure are offered. If it seems to the reader that the traditional view must be right, he or she should keep in mind

26 Tense, Reference, and Worldmaking

that languages with simple descripta (the simple past, present, and future) - the favoured sentences of the defender of propertied objects - have a 0 that temporally overlaps c at i R . If I take liberties with the concept of a property and treat 0s as properties, then, the traditional view can be seen as a special case. One advantage to the SRE approach is a good account of the perfect and anticipative. The perfect (or anterior) and anticipative (or posterior) both require that the thing described be either before or after the things that describes it; no semantics based on the idea that the thing described ("characterized") must "have" or "exhibit" that which describes ("characterizes") it can deal with either.17 The cost of this account of the anterior and posterior is having separate cs and 0s even where they are contemporaneous, as in the simple past, present, and future. But this is no cost at all: each is referred to by independent means, so there is good reason to keep them separate. And insisting on the difference even where there is no temporal gap allows a uniform account of description and sentential contents. What of the situation 0? I speak of 'situations' because 'situation' is the most neutral of the terms in current use for what a sentence "pictures." (Wittgenstein said in the Blue Book that if one wants a picture of a fact, a sentence serves as such a picture.) Reichenbach spoke of 'events,' a term that has unnecessary alethic overtones and only suits some sorts of situations - movements, changes, and processes, but not states. Others speak of states of affairs, again a concept with alethic commitments, but one that suits states, not movements, changes, or processes. 'Fact' suits almost any sort of situation, but the alethic burden of 'fact' cannot be removed, no matter how much effort one puts into it. As a consequence of Barwise and Perry's situation semantics, even 'situation' has recently ceased to be as neutral as it once was, but one can still use 'situation' without taking on their views of it. l8 The crucial features of situations are that they be worldless and independent of truth. A plausible theory of situations must explain how we refer to situations and know what we are referring to without committing ourselves to the truth of the sentences making reference to them (individuating them), nor to the existence of the situations referred to. In effect, situations must be worldless in much the same way as the traditional view's properties must be. Guaranteeing that situations are property-like amounts to building a theory that individuates situations independently of truth and belief — and of existence. This theory must offer a means of individuating without predicaments. Explaining how individuation

27 Temporal and Semantic Structure proceeds is the task of a theory of referring: when a sentence refers, it "picks out" something from among others. However, not all references are alike. In the case of identifying reference, a sentence picks out some spatio-temporally located thing in some world. But situations are not located in space and cannot be referred to in the same way. Picking out situations is a matter of what I call 'picture reference'; a sentence picks out a situation by picturing it, not another situation. The knowledge a competent person must have to know what situation a token (t) pictures must be of a sort that is free of involvement in worlds and free, too, of belief and truth. If such knowledge is not free of these, meanings or sentential contents - or at least our access to them - become parochial and semantic freedom is compromised. Moreover, scepticism becomes an issue where it cannot be allowed to - in our knowledge of the meaning of an expression. The right sort of knowledge for picturing situations without predicaments - individuating them and matching just the right situations to particular sentences - is found in a broadly speaking syntactic form of knowledge that informs a perceptual ability and makes recognition of a sentence token on an occasion sufficient to determine which situation is pictured. This knowledge is, I argue, a form of classificatory knowledge, a form illustrated by what Nelson Goodman in Languages of Art calls 'representation-as.' A sentence 'picture-refers' to a situation when a competent speaker-hearer perceives (hence recognizes) the sentence he or she sees or hears. This form of reference, which has its roots in our syntactic knowledge (including a lexicon), makes it easy to see how a person can understand the content of fictional and false sentences or sentences that are both at once or neither one nor the other. We can explain how we understand Macbeth's "Is this a dagger I see before me?" - a sentence that appears in a piece of fiction, refers identifyingly to an illusion, and is a question. Explaining how we understand this and other cases in a sufficiently general and non-question-begging way depends on our making content specification (content-understanding or content-referring) independent of belief, truth, and the existence of anything referred to by the sentence (i.e., situation, part of situation, or [in this case] Macbeth's dagger).19 We must know, when confronted with the sentence 'Ahab had dreamed of Moby Dick many times before,' that the sentence is about a spatio-temporally located entity, Ahab, and that he is described by a habitual situation, Ahab dream of Moby Dick many times, that antecedes the sentence's i R , and we must know this without knowing whether the sentence is true or false, without appeal to beliefs, and without knowing whether Ahab exists. We must know this to know the meaning

28 Tense, Reference, and Worldmaking

of the sentence — its content. Since we seem to know this, we must be exercising some competence when confronted with the sentence. That competence is referential. In the case of reference to situations, the referential competence is a form of picturing that depends on perceiving pictures of situations. These pictures I call '"sentences'"; they are "stripped" sentences proper. Consider that sentences must perform several tasks. They refer to c, specify both RE and SR relationships, and tell us which aspect the situation is under. Some markers, such as tense and aspect markers, are devoted to these tasks. By stripping these markers, we can produce sentences shorn of these specialized markers. The stripped sentences that result are "sentences"; they do nothing but picture situations. For example, take the English sentence 'Hamlet had been seeing Shakespeare a lot last year'; drop first its tense markers (the pair of expressions 'had been' do this job), then its RE markers ('had,' past for 'have' does this job too), its temporal adverbials referring to i R ('last year'), and its aspectual markers (the progressive '... ing' on the verb). The resulting contrived but still recognizably English "sentence" 'Hamlet see Shakespeare a lot' displays the original sentence's situation — which for the competent speaker pictures and so individuates a situation. The situation for the sentence 'Harry had left yesterday' is referred to or pictured by the "sentence" 'Harry leave.' (As above, I use the underscored "sentence" Harry leave to represent the situation itself.) For the sentence 'Nothing had been bothering him more than Geraldine's complaining,' we get, 'Nothing bother him more than Geraldine's complaining.' (The '... ing' on the last word is a gerundive, not a progressive marker.) 7.7.5 Persons, Competence, Groups, and Locations

It is time to introduce the speaker (p) and the "perceiver-describer" (4/). So far as the speaker is concerned, this might seem to be a simple task: surely since everyone speaks, everyone knows what it is to be a speaker. In fact, introducing the speaker turns out to be a most difficult task. In this context, it is useful to introduce the idea that people have certain capacities or competences that are exercised when they understand particular sentences. These competences are shared with others, for unless they were shared, people would not understand one another; the concept of membership in a group of equally competent people illuminates this. The theoretical entities p and i}j for particular sentences represent the exercise of these competences. The speaker qua p represents the exercise of those com-

29 Temporal and Semantic Structure petences involved in judging. The perceiver-describer (\\i) represents the speaker exercising his or her referential abilities on an occasion. But why is this person located at i R rather than is? To answer this question, consider what a theory of understanding must do. A sentence produced on an occasion is a sound or mark that refers and bears an indication of a speaker's recommendation: it specifies a content and has a force (it asserts, asks, denies, stipulates, merely "floats," or the like). It does so, not qua sound or mark alone, but qua sound or mark produced (and "read") by a competent individual. Sounds and marks by themselves are not signs, and they do not mean, nor are they meaningful; they come alive, as Wittgenstein puts it, only when used. Or, more pointedly, they come alive only when actually being read and understood. Because of this, a theory of meaning or meaningfulness should have a way of representing, for a given sentence, a competent person's exercise of those abilities that make him or her competent. I contend that the exercise of those abilities places a person at (in principle) two times --isi and iR. And I contend that there are two abilities involved. The abilities that are exercised on an occasion can be said to be lodged in an individual to the extent that he or she is a member of a group of individuals who share certain kinds of knowledge, duties, and responsibilities. This knowledge is not and cannot be temporally located in any particularly interesting sense; a fortiori while the knowledge is genuinely lodged in the competent speaker-hearer, it is not located at time of speech or at any other time a competent person is competent. The point about group membership is conceptual: which situation, for instance, is picked out by which sentence is something only those who are members of the picture-referring competent group can know. Only such persons can individuate the relevant situation - distinguish it from others in the conceptual space of situations. Those outside the group necessarily lack the competence or knowledge and thus cannot understand a sentence. I am not concerned here with how these abilities are acquired — how one becomes competent or becomes a member of the relevant group. Explaining how they are acquired is a popular enterprise; the behaviourist and innatist, for instance, each adopt distinctively different strategies to account for acquisition. I ignore the acquisition controversy to focus on and articulate the acquired abilities. This is a valuable enterprise, even for the acquisition controversy, for as it turns out, understanding a sentence on an occasion requires the exercise of two broadly different abilities, one that makes people competent at meanings and another that makes them competent at meaningfulness. Knowing this should help us refine discussions of

30 h 0Tense, Reference,and Worldmaraking acquisition, not to mention problems of meaning, rules, and scepticism. The fact that there are two abilities becomes apparent when one investigates and tries to represent in a theory of semantic structure the exercise of those abilities involved in understanding particular tensed sentences in English. The fact is reflected in the different locations assigned to speaker and perceiver-describer. Incidentally, the exercise of these abilities does not require an audience, although those who are members of the competent group can communicate and can do so only because they are members of the group. One of these abilities is, broadly speaking, perceptual, and can be divided into two; thus, for the SRE theory, there are three competences to deal with, two of which are perceptual. Of these perceptual abilities, one is the ability to picture-refer to a situation. This is treated as a syntactically describable perceptual ability — the ability to read "sentences" that, on recognition by the appropriately competent person, picture situations. The second is the ability to pick out an individual or individuals (cs) that a sentence describes. This is treated as the linguistic ability to make something salient — not immediately perceptually salient for the speaker at time of speech in the way something he or she is looking at is, but salient in the way that something to which one attends in hearing a piece of fiction, for instance, is salient. (Nevertheless, this kind of attention is modelled on the immediate perceptual salience we are all familiar with, and some things that are immediately perceptually salient play a role in explaining how the ability is exercised.) These two abilities are referential abilities with different tasks, procedures, and objects; taken together, however, and exercised on an occasion, they explain what is involved in a speaker on that occasion understanding a particular sentential content. I suggest describing the exercise of the two competences that together define meaning competence as 'assuming a descriptive position,' a position with the structure of an RE relationship or 'descriptum.' The position assumed is located at iIR. 'Assuming' a position is not making a commitment on the truth of a sentence; it is referring in the appropriate ways to the elements of a sentential content. An instance of assuming such a position is represented by v|/. The person who exercises these two referential abilities with regard to a token (t) is represented in the formalism of the theory by i|;, not p. The speaker-hearer so represented appears at at iIR with the thing to which he or she attends. One reason to represent the person who understands as located at this point and not at time of speech is to underscore that a person's referential abilities

31 Temporal and Semantic Structure

effectively allow him or her to transport him or herself to any time in any world. This is a defining trait of semantic freedom. The other broad ability that makes a speaker competent is not perceptual; rather it is judgmental. It is the ability to make recommendations on the inclusion of a sentential content in a story. This ability can be cast as an ability to "tell stories," for storytelling is making judgments (whether with regard to the fictional world or ours). Its proper exercise is what we think of as good judgment. It can be criticized and improved; it allows for scepticism but also for instruction and expertise. It is the ability to which epistemology, logic, accounts of rationality, theories of probability, and accounts of good theory construction are devoted. This ability, when exercised, relates a speaker to a v{/ at a time, where the v|/ is specified for a sentence by specifying (individuating, referring to) the elements and relations of an RE relationship, or sentential content. In effect, a speaker relates him- or herself to a sentential content by making a judgment concerning its inclusion in a story. In contrast to the two perceptual and referential abilities, this ability is highly dependent on factual knowledge and belief- in assessing whether a judgment is correctly made, the vagaries of other commitments on the part of an individual must be taken into account and must play a role in deciding whether someone makes a recommendation correctly. The judgmental ability also allows for a kind of free will: there is considerable flexibility and room for subtlety. Oddly, this ability, which can be exercised in a relatively haphazard and insecure way, is asked by the majority of contemporary philosophers to serve as the core of a theory of meaning or sentential contents — as central to the kind of understanding and ability displayed in knowing the meaning of a sentence (or so I argue in chapter 3). The SRE theory locates the exercise of this completely different, non-referential ability in p, the speaker-as-judge on an occasion. The exercise of this ability rides piggyback on the exercise on an occasion of the two other - referential and perceptual — abilities, for its exercise presupposes exercise of the others. While competence at recommending contributes to a theory of understanding or general semantic competence, it constitutes only one form of understanding, what I call 'force-understanding.' Exercise of the other two referential abilities constitutes on an occasion what I call 'content-understanding' a sentence. If someone is to make a recommendation on something, he or she must know what he or she is recommending: he or she must understand the content of his or her sentence. Thus, the speaker-as-p presupposes the speaker-

32 Tense, Reference, and Worldmaking

as-i}j. Linguistic perceptual abilities of two sorts underlie our ability to judge and our efforts to be reasonable. These three abilities exhaust, I think, the abilities relevant to a full theory of understanding. It might be thought that an ability to produce sentences should be added, but this "production ability" is effectively included in the others. Generally, when speakers speak, they contribute to a story. Doing so includes producing a sentence that refers in two ways. Speakers also make a recommendation. When they do all this, they take a stance: they make a commitment on the inclusion of a sentential content in a story. Using groups and group membership to deal with the abilities involved in what one knows (or "knows") in understanding a sentence is a fairly common practice among philosophers. Some comparisons might be useful. Wittgenstein in recent times linked understanding with the playing of language games and following rules.20 (This effort is discussed by Kripke and many others.) His rules govern "moves" in games; in spite of what he and others think, they contribute to a theory of force-understanding — a theory of good judgment that is essentially epistemic. In his three major critiques, Kant introduced three different "egos" to deal with certain human competences or abilities - the transcendental ego of the first critique, noumenal self of the second, and sensus communis of the third. These egos represent humans qua members of groups sharing competences. Yet the three are in one sense alike: each is, as Kant observed, a contribution to an account of good judgment ("pure," practical, and aesthetic). Thus, all three are contributions to an account of force competence, not meaning competence or referential ability. These are epistemic abilities and competences; the transcendental ego, noumenal self, and sensus communis together detail features of the speaker-as-storyteller or -judge. Being a storyteller is, in part, being a "theoretician" who tells coherent stories (Kant's transcendental ego is an idealized theoretician, someone who knows how to weave contents together), a moral judge, and a critic and person of taste. In effect, being a competent judge and storyteller includes being a member of a group of like-minded theoreticians, moral agents, and persons of taste — taken together, Kantian rational persons. But none of Kant's egos or Wittgenstein's game players makes a contribution to a theory of content competence, or contentunderstanding. Without saying what this competence consists of, however, we cannot say what it is to understand the meaning of a sentence. We cannot even say how a speaker could possibly tell stories and make recommendations: the epistemic issues only arise when one knows what one is talking about (c) and what one is saying about

33 Temporal and Semantic Structure what one is talking about (the situation pictured). I mentioned that the competences involved are referential abilities; they can be captured by an account of how humans come to pay attention to things (cs), where their attention is mediated by signs, and by an account of (broadly speaking) syntactic competence (picturing 0s). An account of the second of these referential abilities is already well under way in the work of Chomsky and others. An account of the first, though badly needed, is undeveloped. Even though the account of how we come to pay attention to things (even in fictional worlds) is far from developed, we know what it must do. It must explain how it is that in understanding a sentence that refers identifyingly to a c, we "transport ourselves" to a thing at a time in some world or another and attend to it — following what happens to it, perhaps, as a story develops, and noting what else is and becomes a part of the population of the world of the thing to which we began paying attention. A thing is placed in a spatiotemporal framework and attended to. It is made salient. The ability to refer identifyingly is the ability to make some thing not immediately present to the speaker salient. To represent the exercise of this ability, a i|i for a sentence is always located with that sentence's c and attends to it. I spoke of \\f as perceiving c; as is expected of perceptual contexts, c is temporally and spatially "with" \\f — it is v|*'s "companion." This is why the perceiver-describer is located at i R . Cs never come nude; they are always described as something or other. The other perceptual referential ability, the exercise of which on an occasion ijj also represents, is the ability to individuate a 0 that stands either before, at, or after the c. This explains why ty is called a perceiver-describer; \\i represents what a person who has two different but perceptually based referential abilities accomplishes on the occasion when he or she speaks or hears and understands a sentence. It represents, then, an exercise of content competence. In one sense, ijj could be removed from the formalism of the theory because it plays no direct role in individuating a content, since it rides on a particular c and 0 standing in a particular RE relationship. One can say "what a particular 4* is" for a sentence by referring to a c and a 0 standing in some RE relationship to each other. I insist on placing i); in the formalism of the theory to show what is otherwise left unsaid: that understanding a sentence on an occasion involves a person "transporting" him- or herself often to another time and to anything in any world. It shows that a person in reading a sentence is transported to a c and a 0 so related; it shows a person assuming a descriptive position. Notice that the perceiver-describer (v|/) is very different from the virtual speaker or assertor of the tense logician,

34 Tense, Reference, and Worldmaking

introduced to make sense of iterating what are erroneously called "simple tenses." The perceiver-describer does not "speak," nor does he or she make commitments ("assert"). To assert, someone must be tied to i s , and clearly i|/ is not. Some comments on membership in groups of competents are in order. Think of those who share a competence as agreeing with each other. They agree in different ways, depending on the group. Kant's egos characterize people as agreeing in certain ways of judging and knowing: they represent certain epistemic, moral, and aesthetic competences. His egos collapse into a partial approximation of the speaker as judge, as p; they are those who reach agreement in judgments in science, morals, and beauty. The perceiver-describers of the SRE theory, however, do not make up groups of like-minded individuals, if that means those who agree in beliefs, evidence, or judgment. They make up groups of those who see and hear sentences alike and who attend alike. Those who agree converge perceptually: the syntactically competent agree that this sentence seen or heard pictures this situation; the attention competent attend to the same thing, whatever world it is in. Thus, the referentially competent see such-and-such a sentence token (t) in the same way, and in doing so, they see the situation t pictures; they also attend to the right things. Membership in various groups confers different powers and abilities. The purely descriptive, non-committal competence that gives access to sentential contents gives us the freedom to speak of and understand anything said about anything in any world at any time: we can describe a thing without regard to which world the thing is in or to the judgmental force of the sentence used in speaking of it and describing it. This competence helps explain how we understand fictional tales as easily as real-life ones. Content or referential competence in general is independent of epistemic competence and the real world. Without this independence, we could not make sense of the idea of understanding the content of a sentence no matter what world it applies to and without regard to whether someone is asserting, denying, or conjecturing — this understanding must be independent of force. This freedom is essential to meanings or sentential contents. It defines, I think, the competence of human minds Descartes was trying to express in terms of "thinking substance"; unlike competence as viewed by Descartes, however, meaning competence is not linked with judgment or decision-making and scepticism has no bearing. In contrast, the speaker p qua judge at is is not free, for he or she is tied to time of speech and to making recommendations on evidence

35 Temporal and Semantic Structure available at is concerning a content. If referring is assuming a descriptive position, let us call referring plus making a judgment 'taking a stance.' A fully specified SRE structure counts as a stance. An assertion with regard to a particular content is an example of taking a stance. Stances also figure in the account of propositional attitudes, epistemic modals, and truth. Saying what sorts of stances one can take is saying what sorts of forces a sentence can have (see chapter 7). In general, dealing with stances is dealing with epistemic issues, that is, with the issues raised in justifying recommendations concerning the inclusion of a content in a story - where making a particular recommendation is heavily constrained by relatively storyindependent principles of coherence and largely story-particular evidence. Thus, the SRE theory treats someone who understands on an occasion as both free and tied. He or she is free to wander whenever and wherever. This is captured by the speaker-as-ij/ at i R : ty represents someone content-understanding a sentence on an occasion. The speaker so represented is a particular person, but one who is seen as exercising his or her powers inherent in membership in the group of the content competent. When content-understanding a sentence, he or she assumes the descriptive position of the "describer" at i R . (It is sufficient if he or she knows [recognizes] what a sentence refers to in two ways.) He or she is tied in making a recommendation concerning the inclusion of the descriptive position in a story where the recommendation necessarily depends on the information and evidence available at is. Therefore, while the speaker roams freely in assuming descriptive positions i)j by referring to them, he or she is tied to is by virtue of making a recommendation on the inclusion of the descriptive position in a story. I emphasize that membership in a content-competent community (all members of which can individuate or refer alike) is a necessary condition of understanding at all. This competence should not depend upon specialized knowledge, beyond knowledge of the vocabulary and syntactic structure of a language and a generalized ability to attend. The other form of competence, competence at judging, can be quite restrictive. For instance, it can require that one approximate the norms of some storytelling-relevant (recommendation-relevant) group. A group of physicists is an example. Only some of us are physicists, able to tell coherent tales concerning elementary particles. On the other hand, some beliefs (judgments) are shared by virtually everyone. All of us share (agree in judgment in) "common sense" beliefs; virtually everyone accepts a set of principles of evidence plus an amalgam of unsophisticated "theories" - connective

36 Tense, Reference, and Worldmaking

principles joining contents that go towards making tales coherent to those who accept these theories. "Folk psychology," for instance, is one aspect of common sense. I have discussed certain terms and relationships in a very general way in outlining what is involved in supplementing Reichenbach's 'S,' 'R,' and '£' (which for him amounted only to my 'is,' 'iR,' and 'iE'). By now it should be apparent that the new formalism can deal with much more than temporal topology. And it should be apparent that some of the basic assumptions of semantic theory should be rethought. The topology seems to bear important consequences for theories concerning what is involved in speaking and understanding, for the temporal structure Reichenbach dealt with emerges as the temporal schema of a novel view of basic semantic structure. 1.2

APPLYING

THE THEORY

i.2. i Adverbials and Simple Sentences Assigning the supplemented S, R, and E to simple structured (no embeddings) sentences of English is largely a matter of tacking the new elements onto the relevant temporal intervals, for nothing is wrong with Reichenbach's temporal topology. This activity is guided by temporal adverbials. There are some general features of adverbials that, if kept in mind, make specifying a simple sentence's SRE structure a straightforward task. First, adverbials very rarely specify i§; the exceptions are found in cases like 'Harry was leaving tomorrow; now he's leaving the next day.' Except for these rare cases, we can assume that an adverbial always specifies either i R or i E . Second, obvious interval adverbials such as 'between 3 and 4' and 'for a whole year' specify i E . 'Tomorrow' is not an obvious interval adverbial. In 'Tomorrow, Harry will have left,' 'tomorrow' is a frame adverbial that specifies i R , not i E ; it indicates during what general period i R is to be found. Third, a 'when'-clause that functions as a single point adverbial (i.e., when[ever] it is not read as 'whenever' or as 'while') virtually always specifies i R . Fourth, point adverbials at the beginning of a sentence almost always specify i R . Contrast 'At 3:00, Harry had left' with 'Harry had left at 3:00.' Fifth, a rule of thumb, if there is a single temporal adverbial in a clause or sentence referring to a single time (a "point adverbial"), it usually refers to i R of R. These are several exceptions, but this rule works in enough cases to make it useful. Reichenbach made it a principle,21 but the number of counterexamples advise against this. One set of counterexamples is found with the posterior constructions, where point adverbials (unless fronted) tend to specify i E : 'The rock is going to fall in a moment.'

37 Temporal and Semantic Structure Other counterexamples arise in the past and future perfect, particularly the past perfect. 'Harry had left at 3:00' can be read so that 3:00 specifies either i R or i E . 'Harry had left by 3:00,' on the other hand, can have 3:00 specify only i R . There are further complications. For instance, when the sentence is progressive (imperfective) and the verb is a process verb, 'at 3:00' can specify only i R : 'Harry had been running at 3:00.' This may, in fact, be generally true for progressives of all verbs. 'Harry had been leaving at 3:00' seems to be a counterexample, but here 'leaving' is read as an intentional verb (this is discussed below). Incidentally, the rule of thumb that point adverbials usually specify i R and the principle that 'when' when used as a point adverbial always does are useful to keep in mind when trying to discern the structures of complex embedded constructions, for they seem to apply to embedded clauses as much as to nonembedded clauses. The sentences that follow - all simple in structure, with two exceptions put in for illustration - are grouped in Reichenbach's nine combinations of tense and descripta. I offer pairs of sentences for each combination of tense and descriptum, with each pair having different sorts of 0s. The SRE analysis of the second sentence of a pair is offered only when its analysis is problematic. In no case is the token t specified further than by being displayed. The pasts include E-R-S or anterior past ("past perfect") Harry had left by 3:00. [E before R, R before S; c = Harry; IR = 3:00; 0 = Harry leave; iE before iiR] E before R] Nothing had disturbed the sleeping anaconda. R,E-S (E,R-S) or simple past The buds opened yesterday. [R at E, R before S; c = the buds; i = yesterday; 0 = Buds open; iE yesterday, overlapping iR] iR Harry's house was white. R-E-S or posterior past The rock was about to fall. [R before E, R before S; c = the rock; i R contextually specified; 0 = Rock fall; i E after i R ] Everything would disturb Harry that day. The presents include E-R,S (E-S,R) or anterior present ("present perfect") Harry has fallen several times. [E before R, R at S; c = Harry; iR = is; 0 = Harry fall several times; i E before i R ] Mary has left Harry three million dollars. [E before R, R at S; c = Harry (not Mary — I am reading the sentence as one where

38 Tense, Reference, and Worldmaking

Mary has willed the money); i R = is; 0 = Mary leave Harry three million] S,E,R (S,R,E; etc.) or simple present That wall is slightly off-white. [R at E, R at S; c = the wall; i R = i s ; 0 = Wall be slightly off-white; i E overlaps i R (= is)] Harry runs every day. S,R-E (R,S-E) or posterior present ("immediate future") That rock is going to fall. [E after R, R at S; c = the rock; i R = i s ; 0 = Rock fall; i E after i R ] Harry will be running in a moment. And finally, the futures include S-R-E or anterior future ("future perfect") Mary will have left by 3 :oo. [E before R, R after S; c = some group, perhaps at a party; i R = 3:00; 0 = Mary leave; i E before i R ] 22 He will have been running for half an hour when you arrive. [E before R, R after S; c = he; i R = when you arrive; 0 = He run] S-R,E (S-E,R) or simple future Godzilla will crush Bambi at 3:00. [E at R, R after S; c = Godzilla, Bambi; i R = 3:00; 0 = Godzilla crush Bambi; i E overlaps i R ] Five years from now, China will be eating Big Macs. S-R-E or posterior future Mort will be about to wash the dishes when you arrive. [E after R, R after S; c = Mort; i R = when you arrive; 0 = Mort wash dishes] Harry will be going to sleep when the siren goes off. Notice that ip is not individuated by being made a particular person's position, for the describer is faceless, a position assumed by anyone in the relevant speech community when he or she understands the sentence, and it is sufficient to "individuate" vj; by giving its task as description, its location at i R , and by assigning the elements and relations of an RE relationship. For instance, in the last analysis given above, \\i is, as always, at i R and represents the descriptive position the speaker (and anyone who understands in the relevant sense) assumes in describing Mort. C, often, is the referent of the subject phrase of the sentence; the exceptions (the anterior future 'Mary will have left by 3:00' and the anterior present 'Mary has left Harry three million dollars') are introduced for contrast. All other assignments should be self-explanatory, including i E s, which are unproblematic if i R , the type of situation 0, and the descriptum structure (anterior, simple, or posterior) are known.

39 Temporal and Semantic Structure The illustrating sentences designate non-complex situations, except for the 'when'-sentence and the habitual 'Harry runs every day.' Semantically complex structures include the propositional attitude, the nomic and habitual, the conditional, and the modal (root and epistemic). But as I mentioned before, these situations are single situations - propositional attitude situations, nomic situations, conditional situations. While the sentences designating these complex situations have embedded (S)RE structures, as the two cases above indicate, these sentences have as wholes the same SRE structures that non-complex sentences do. Some simple sentences pose difficulties for assigning SRE structure. So-called historical or narrative present sentences ('So Harry leaves and takes the silver with him') pose a puzzle: on what grounds do we say such a sentence is past, as opposed to present? Here c gives the answer: these sentences are assigned structures as pasts or futures depending on when c is. If we assume for the example that Harry is c for both clauses, it depends on when Harry is - where he is described. The same considerations apply to the "sportcaster present," as in 'McGraw dribbles, almost stumbles, swivels, jumps, shoots — and misses,' which is assigned a present-tense structure. These assignments are made only where the situations designated are among those that, when perfectivized, cannot appear in simplepresent-tense constructions. 'McGraw dribbles,' except for these special cases, cannot designate a process; it must designate a habitual (of a process). Finally, if the attention paid to them is any indication, even simplefuture-tense sentences as a group are difficult to assign structures to. They deserve closer attention. 7.2.2 The Future Tense

Some linguists have thought that it is difficult to tell when a sentence is in the future tense; some (because they have held that there is no "marking" for the future, perhaps holding that 'will' is a modal) have even thought that there is no future tense at all. The supplemented SRE theory makes it easy to tell when a sentence is in the future tense: placing c at i R and assuming that the primary temporal adverbial of a sentence (usually) refers to an i R solves this problem. And this theory makes it obvious that there "is" a future tense: the structure that the theory assigns to futures suits the sentences we have thought all along are in the future tense. Let us first deal with the fact that some sentences have adverbials that designate times after speech time even though they are not

40 Tense, Reference, and Worldmaking

marked with a 'will.' Keeping in mind that to be in the future tense the tense structure of a reading of a sentence must have IR, c, and \\i after , look at some sentences that have present progressive markers and "future" adverbials. What do we do with George is

(

arriving | running > tomorrow, coming J

One plausible strategy is to take things at face value, to try to preserve the rule of thumb that 'tomorrow' is an R-specifying adverb while recognizing that these sentences are marked as present-tense sentences. There is something special about these sentences, for they have highly restricted occurrences; this suggests we might be able to say that what is anomalous about them is not the present-tense markers and the adverbial, but the rest of the construction. The combination of present progressive and after-S markers is only possible with verbs that can be paraphrased with an 'intends to' or 'is preparing to' or 'is in the process of.' These verbs designate situations I call scheduling states, and these states have complex structures. Scheduling states include root modals, such as 'Harry ought to leave this evening,' and intentional states, such as T want to run this evening.' The relevant cases here are intentional states; for instance, the first sentence could be paraphrased as 'George is planning to arrive tomorrow.' Taking this paraphrase as a better rendering of the original sentence, we can think of the temporal adverbial as designating i R * of an embedded infinitival. It also designates, where there is a "successful outcome" (where things happen as scheduled), the endpoint of the scheduling state 0 as a whole, that is, i E for 0 = George plan to arrive. This interval overlaps time of speech is where, as in the cases above, George (c) is described at S (= R). The structure is, then, clearly S,R,E, or a simple present tense. Support for this reading of the main 0 as a scheduling state comes from contrasting cases where the paraphrases do not usually work, which are also cases where it does not make sense to speak of scheduling: George is {*losing/*thinking} tomorrow.23 Even clearer are cases where the subject of the sentence is not an agent: *The car is misfiring tomorrow. *The rock is falling tomorrow.

41 Temporal and Semantic Structure

(Ignore the different 'I am going to have the rock fall tomorrow/ the car misfire tomorrow.') Further confirmation is found in the fact that only with the same set of verbs do past progressives with afterS adverbials get a coherent reading: George was

(

running | *losing I tomorrow. *thinking j

(Sentences like these that get readings at all are simple pasts, with their c [George for this case] and i R before time of speech.) Progressives with 'will,' on the other hand, do not reflect the same restriction, for it is apparent that situation type is irrelevant: The engine will be misfiring tomorrow. George will be thinking tomorrow. The car will be running tomorrow. These sentences can be genuine futures if'tomorrow' fixes i R . If, however, 'tomorrow,' like the past and present cases, fixes i E or the time over which the interval spreads (read "all day tomorrow" to get this reading), they can be posterior or "immediate" presents; the decision turns on when c is located, for since c is located with \\i at i R , locating it locates the others. Speech context is sometimes sufficient to reach a decision. If Dr Frankenstein and his audience are looking at George prostrate before them, and George has just been supplied with deceased Gertrude's brain, the good doctor's utterance 'George here will be thinking tomorrow' should be assigned a structure where v)>'s companion is George at i s , so the structure is S,R-E(0 = George think; is = i R = time of speech; c is George; IE — sometime tomorrow). It is necessary to know where c is to make a decision on which tense structure to assign: syntax and morphology alone do not provide the relevant information. Clearly, this reading is a case where the rule of thumb that the primary temporal adverbial in a sentence designates i R fails. The cases where the sentence is marked as present and the temporal adverbial designates an after-i^ temporal interval i R , but an embedded one, are related to "reduced future" constructions, such as 'The Celts play tomorrow.' Consider The Celts play Georsre leaves T-U u -u- comes down j } tomorrow. The building We arrive on Mars

42 Tense, Reference, and Worldmaking The term 'reduced future' suggests that these sentences are transformations, presumably semantically or pragmatically conditioned,24 of sentences such as The Celts will play tomorrow. George will leave tomorrow. and the like, but they are not. Inspection shows that "reduced future" sentences designate scheduling states, either the intentional situations discussed above, root-modal states, or a scheduling form of standard state. All have infinitivals where the after-is adverbial specifies an iR*. The scheduling-state hypothesis is more economical and better explains the phenomena. Consider The Celts will play tomorrow at 3:00. The Celts play tomorrow at 3:00. The first is a regular future-tensed sentence. But, intuitively, 'The Celts play tomorrow at 3:00' is equivalent to something like The Celts are scheduled to play tomorrow at 3:00. Therefore, the sentence is a simple present, with i R = is = i E for the main clause and the 3:00 assigned to an R for the infinitival. Having a schedule that someone, somewhere, has the power to change is not a necessary condition. Thus, the sentences The sun rises at 6:30 tomorrow. We collide with Mars tomorrow. can both be paraphrased in terms of a schedule. Perhaps impressed by this and similar observations, some have suggested that reduced futures appear where there is inevitability or predetermination. 25 Some have even suggested that speakers can "reduce" where they feel certainty or the like,26 but clearly the latter at least is false, since any reduced future can be hedged, as in

The Celts play tomorrow at 3; 00, I

I

guess, think, believe.

And we can avoid basing transformations on judgments of inevitability or predetermination if reduced futures are not derived from

43 Temporal and Semantic Structure anything but are simple presents of scheduling-state constructions. With each, a scheduling state is designated, the time of which (iE) overlaps is and i R . We need not speak of futures, nor of "reducing." Notice that where there is uncertainty on the part of the speaker, it is straightforward uncertainty: the speaker is not sure that he or she can properly assert the sentence whose content includes the relevant scheduling state that overlaps the time of speech, yielding a plain S,R or present tense. Turning to another problem, in 'will'-sentences with double adverbials, we see that the adverbials can work in two ways. One set of functions relies on the structure of those constructions that designate situations — scheduling-state situations are again prominent examples - with sentences having two (S)REs, one embedded. The adverbials pick out i R of the main SRE clause and either i R or iE of the embedded (S)RE clause. As indicated above, the embedded clause need not always appear in "surface structure." For instance, with Yesterday the horse was to be run today. Tomorrow George will be going to Houston on Friday. only the first sentence has an infinitival construction. Paraphrases provide more perspicuous morphologies for both: Yesterday the horse was scheduled to be run today. Tomorrow George will be scheduled to go to Houston on Friday. The first adverbial usually picks out i R for the main clause, and the second picks out iR* of the embedded clause. Thus, 'will'-markers in the main clauses of such constructions mark normal futures. Double temporal adverbials also appear in change-of-venue sentences. In Now George will run tomorrow. the emphasis is on change in expectations, and we might paraphrase this as Now you can expect that George will run tomorrow. If the paraphrase is correct, there are again at least two clauses, and attaching adverbials to different clauses is not a problem. I am not arguing for the principle that any two-adverbial sentence

44 Tense, Reference, and Worldmaking

must have a two-clause paraphrase that offers a more perspicuous morphology, one for which each temporal adverbial designates an i^ in a different clause. But we can say that where there is more than one R-specifying adverbial in a single sentence, the sentence can be transformed into a more perspicuous form with at least as many clauses as R-specifying adverbials. (To be sure, the decision that there are two R-specifying adverbials is not independent of the decision that there are two clauses.) In this regard compare the habitual George will leave every day next year at 3:00. with the sentences above. This sentence has no R-specifying temporal adverbial, so we certainly do not need to find several clauses. Consider another issue involving the future tense. It has been claimed that 'will' is in fact a modal, and therefore not a tense marker. 27 This claim is much too strong. At times 'will' is a tense marker for the future tense, while at other times it marks the anterior present. Sometimes it marks a modal; sometimes, moreover, it does two jobs. While we can appeal to rules of thumb and generalizations to take us from morphology to readings or assignments of elements to SRE structures, it is the most plausible reading on an occasion, the best assignment of SRE structure all things considered, that decides the case. It may be regrettable that there is no simple mapping procedure involving 'will' that takes us uniquely from the expression to a reading, but we manage without this sort of simplicity. Keeping this in mind, look at two arguments in favour of 'will' as a modal. One argument relies on intuition. Consider Harry will not budge now. It might be tempting to say that this should be paraphrased in a way that makes 'will' explicitly modal, as Harry will not be able to budge now. Harry won't budge now. Yet there is no help here for the claim that 'will' is only a modal. On either paraphrase, 'will' can be both a modal and a tense marker. In the first paraphrase, 'will' is still fairly clearly a tense marker, whether the sentence is read as a posterior present ('Harry's not going to be able to budge now') or a simple future. It may not be a future marker in all cases, but that is not to the point. I have already

45 Temporal and Semantic Structure indicated that 'will' can mark a posterior present, so it is not always a future marker. In the second paraphrase, 'will not' presumably reads as 'can't.' 'Can't' is, however, "tensed" - it is a verb that generally leads to present-tense readings. Consequently, if the paraphrase is correct, again 'will' is a tense marker. The other argument is that 'will' is always a modal and only presenttensed. This argument is hopeless. It rests on the idea that 'would' is a past tense of 'will' and that because 'would' is a marked verb, 'will' must be unmarked and present-tensed. In addition to some assumptions concerning markedness, the argument's force depends on establishing that the 'will'-'would' connection is regular (like 'carrying'-'carried,' perhaps) and that uses of the two verbs yield present and past readings of sentences in the appropriate way. Given the many special contexts that require 'would,' regularity would be hard to establish. It is also impossible to establish that the two expressions yield present and past readings of sentences in the appropriate way. Consider that 'would' often serves as a posterior marker with established pasts (in the subordinate clauses of past-matrix propositional attitude sentences, for instance) and appears with very nonstandard tense functions in conditionals. One last issue is the relationship between the future and action contexts. Consider the sentences You will go to your room now. Go to your room now. While both sentences speak of "something that is yet to obtain," saying that they are futures on the basis of this observation rests on the mistaken assumption that tenses are to be analysed as SE relationships. This interpretation also requires unwarranted assumptions about the logical form(s) of these sentences. Both of these sentences — and most others that count as commands, promisings, permissions, options, etc. — designate a member of the class of situations I call scheduling situations. Subordinate clauses in these sentences are infinitival in form and designate a situation after R of the main clause. This is the "something that is yet to obtain." But the scheduling state itself can, and usually does, extend well before the occurrence of this "something." The state designated by George is permitted to leave tonight. antecedes George's leaving (unless this is an arch way of saying he may leave), and it overlaps i s , making the sentence a present-tense

46 Tense, Reference, and Worldmaking

structure, where c for the main clause (and for the infinitival) is George, is = i R , 0 is George be permitted to leave, 0* for the infinitival is George leave, and i R * for the infinitival is tonight. There are special conditions for the use of sentences that give orders, permission, and the like. First, when successful on utterance, such sentences make it the case that someone is described in terms of a scheduling situation. The speaker must satisfy special authority conditions for success, but such sentences need not be any less descriptions of someone. A second condition is that such sentences be present-tensed. They cannot be past-tensed: a past-tense schedulingsituation sentence can describe an obligation imposed and serve to remind someone of an obligation, but it does not "create an obligation." Nor, I think, can such sentences be future-tensed: that would entail creating an obligation or permission that only later gets instituted (perhaps because only later the person who becomes obligated becomes aware of the obligation). But this is speculation. Nothing in the tense structure of scheduling situations rules out pasts and futures, and the second - and perhaps even thefirst- of these special conditions arises because of assumptions about how successful orders (etc.) are produced. It is assumed that the person giving the order, or the speaker, gives it to a companion with whom he or she is in direct communication, so that c is at is. When a structure is assigned to such sentences, c is at i R and, because of the assumption, is = i R and i E overlaps i R or begins soon thereafter; in either circumstance, orders are present-tensed, though they may be simple or posterior. I do not claim that the SRE theory gives a unique best account of the future tense. If another account adopted the notion of a scheduling state, introduced an R in some way or another, and allowed for sloppy markings in ordinary language while discerning structure, it could give as good an account. On the other hand, no other theory at the moment offers quite this combination; nor is there another that can deal with the role of c at R and can claim that tense-relevant structure is uniform over all sentences. So the SRE theory does at the moment have advantages for analysis of the structure found in the future tense — and in the more dependably marked present and past tenses. 7.2.3 The Anterior and Posterior Another problem area is the anterior and posterior. Consider a sentence like 'Harry had left yesterday,' where 'yesterday' is read as designating i E , not i R . How does this sentence differ from the simple past 'Harry left yesterday'? If we assume that the first sentence is

47 Temporal and Semantic Structure not just a sloppy rendering of a simple past, the theory tells us that the difference consists in the fact that it locates c (presumably Harry) at a time after his leaving. It describes Harry in terms of a situation that antecedes him. This is difficult to see with perfectives of verbs like 'leave.' It is easy to see that the theory makes sense, however, with imperfectives of the majority of verbs. 'Harry had been running when Mort saw him at 3:00 yesterday' clearly describes a Harry who was already engaged in running when Mort saw him, and describing him is a matter of describing him in terms of a situation that antecedes him and i R . The theory works with the imperfective of'leave' too, so long as the relevant sentence, 'Harry had been leaving when Mort saw him at 3 :oo,' is read as describing the procedure of leaving and the sentence does not receive instead an intentional reading (a scheduling state) with the suggestion that Harry changed his plans when Mort saw him. Another problem lies in the present perfect. It has been observed that present perfect or anterior present sentences perform many tasks in English, which suggests that they cannot receive a uniform analysis. Further, there are no present perfect constructions in some other languages, which suggests that the present perfect in English is not a separate SRE structure. And to complicate matters still further, unlike with some other languages, English present perfects cannot as a rule take iE-specifying adverbials. In some languages, one can say, 'Harry has left an hour ago.' However, in spite of what Comrie (in Tense) and some others have claimed, I do not think that any of these facts prevent present perfect sentences in English from having distinct SRE structures.28 One excellent reason for thinking of them as distinct SRE structures is that, except for tense (SR), the structure of the present perfect is exactly the same as that of the past and future perfects or anteriors. In all three structures, c is located at i R and 0 before that. Another reason is that readings and implications are the same throughout all the anteriors. (I discuss this in more detail in chapter 6.) A perfective of a movement-designating verb, such as 'run a mile,' entails that the movement is over by i R , whether i R is before, at, or after time of speech. Harry had run a mile when I saw him. Harry has run a mile. Harry will have run a mile when you see him. Parallel things can be said for other types of verbs and for both perfective and imperfective constructions. The prima facie cost, then, of saying that the present perfect is not a distinct SRE structure in

48

Tense, Reference, and Worldmaking

English (making it just a present tense with some odd behaviour) is an undermining of the SRE analysis of the anterior past and future. Comrie does not want to do that, as the last chapter of his book indicates. Incidentally, the idea that present perfect constructions carry with them the notion of current relevance applies equally, with tenses changed, to the past and future. Anterior pasts have situations that are relevant to the description of some c found at an i R before i s , and anterior futures have situations that are relevant to the description of some c found at an i R that is after the sentence's is- This is just what it is to have an anterior descriptum. Finally, to conclude this brief discussion of anterior and posterior marking, I must say something about the markers for the posterior in English. One form of marking — 'be going to' — has an extra verb and an infinitival form of the main verb, as in 'The rock is going to fall in a moment.' Another form just uses the 'will'; in such instances, however, it is clear that what is being described is located at time of speech - 'This ugly little calf will be a champion in two years.' (Contrast this latter to the case where one describes the steer receiving its award, or even the case where the adverbial is fronted and hence prefers to specify i R : 'In two years, this ugly little calf will be a champion.') Notice that with the posterior present the temporal adverbial specifies i E . I have little to say about the peculiarities of the markers for the posterior in English except that it is clear that in spite of an infinitival in one of the marking forms, we cannot collapse posteriors into scheduling states and thereby eliminate the need for posteriors (making all of them simple-tensed sentences). None of the posteriors above can be paraphrased in terms of scheduling states. As a consequence, there is no obvious way to make the situation that is after i R somehow overlap i R . In a connected vein, where we are dealing with scheduling states, the temporal adverbial specifies i R of the infinitival, not some i E . 1-3 TENSE IS NOT AN SE R E L A T I O N S H I P 7.5.1 Tense Logic and the SE Relationship

Early in this chapter I introduced a strategy to deal with "compound tense" sentences that I attributed to tense logicians, although the strategy is one others have also adopted. I expressed doubts about this strategy while admitting that by adopting it, tense logicians seem to be on to something: it allows them to produce a simple and general account of temporal structure. By iterating is-iE relationships, one can generate temporal structures of arbitrary size while maintaining

49 Temporal and Semantic Structure the received view's natural-seeming concept of a tense. The problem with adopting this strategy — beyond the fact that it requires introducing ad hoc items like virtual speakers - is, I suggested, that the AS-IE relationship is not a tense relationship in English. If I am right, any theory that holds that tense is an IS-IE relationship cannot be adequate to the temporal structures found in English sentences. There is no simple proof that this relationship is not a tense. But it is possible to argue that the generative powers of tense logic are unneeded, that iteration of an IS-IE relationship is an implausible device for capturing the temporal topology for the sentences of English, 29 and that semantic considerations suggest that every sentence has a temporal structure consisting of two relationships mediated by a third term, R. In short, it is possible to argue that tense logic does not and cannot recognize the crucial difference between an SR and an RE relationship. Thus, tense logic misconstrues the basic semantic structure of English. Recalling the basic strategy that tense logicians follow, remember that they take "simple" tenses as primitive — always the past and future; the present may be given a special status.30 A past, for instance, might be symbolized 'Pp'31 and read, 'There is some time before now at which p is true.' (There are many variations on this theme, but the differences are unimportant for my purposes.)32 A past perfect would then be something like this: PPp, for which read, 'There is some time where p is true that is before the time where Pp is true (which is before now).' We seem to get the effect of a reference point in the notion of a time before now at which a simplepast-tense sentence is true; "compound" sentences such as the past perfect get analysed as iterations of simple-tensed sentences. Let us overlook for the moment the fact that this requires highly unintuitive fiddling for the present perfect or anticipative present and focus on the structural (SE) claims and on the supposed strengths of the tense logicians' strategy. The strategy certainly appears compelling because it can, through iteration, generate the temporal structure (in terms of 'before') of any sentence in a natural language. It even generates structures that are not, at least at a superficial glance, found in natural languages. This appears to be an embarrassment. But perhaps this generative power can be turned into an advantage. Perhaps, despite initial appearances, indefinite iteration is needed for a natural language. The appealing feature of iteration is that it deals with a multiplicity of phenomena through a few basic structures to which all more complex ones can be reduced. However, even if we assume that there are basic tenses, it is very difficult to see why unrestrained

50 Tense, Reference, and Worldmaking

iteration is needed. English, at least, does not have clauses that require anything more than two "simple tenses" in their analysis. Examples to convince us that more are needed are based on misreadings and misunderstandings of clausal structure. Consider a case of misreading. Clifford, in Tense and Tense Logics (41—2), claims that Reichenbach's schemata are inadequate to English because they only have three time intervals, where some sentences require four. Clifford argues that in the interpretation of A pickpocket made his inconspicuous way into the square, automatically identifying the plain-clothesman coming down the steps. It would soon be necessary to make elaborate arrangements to avoid the increased vigilance of the police. By noon the next day his brother would have made contact with their sometime accomplices and would be ready to confer about the results. But the pickpocket's mind was not on that problem, but on Milly, whom he would have seen before then.

the italicized expressions must be read with four time points: at is, i R , another i R , and i E . Clifford points out that the 'would have made' sentence might be read as reported speech, and it should be. It is the pickpocket before time of speech who is described in terms of what he thought or believed.33 Clifford tries to avoid such a reading for the 'would have seen' clause. This would be a plausible strategy if it were clear that we are not describing the pickpocket in terms of what he thought or believed. But we are, since the clause appears after another that says that the problem of Milly was on his mind. We have, then, a description of what the pickpocket was thinking about. Milly appears in the represented stance at noon the next day, and she is described there as seen by the pickpocket before that time. The clause does not, then, require more than three time intervals in its structure. Prior's argument for unrestricted iteration involves a mistake about structure. In Past, Present, and Future (13), he says, in criticism of Reichenbach's topological account, "It is too simple because, although we do not ordinarily use them, we can easily construct more complicated cases than the future perfect, e.g., T shall have been going to see John.' Here there are two points of reference." Prior goes on to argue that we need an indefinite number of "reference points," and says that we can generate them from simple tenses via the principle that simple tenses are just tenses with the speech point as a single reference point. But his claims are broken-backed because they rest on the assumption that T shall have been going to see John' requires the introduction of a second reference point for a single

51 Temporal and Semantic Structure

clause. It does not. If the sentence has a reading as English at all, it must be read as a form of intentional-state-designating sentence, a scheduling-state sentence with an embedded infinitival. It has, then, only one R for each clause. So iteration appears to be unnecessary for English. I think it is surprising that anyone ever thought that unrestricted iteration is needed. There is no sentence in English like 'Harry was is was was will be happy,' although the hypothesis claims that we can have such a sentence, and that we can give a sensible interpretation to it. Nor is there any apparent difference between the nonsense sentences 'Harry will be was happy' and 'Harry was will be happy,' even though a theory based on iteration would have to say that there are structurally relevant order differences to look for here. There is no way to distinguish one from the other, I suspect, because neither sentence can be English: the structure they require is all wrong. Nor are there sentences like 'Harry was was was was was happy,' although this too should be interpretable with at least six time intervals. Moreover, no one seemed to be puzzled by the fact that sentences that have those "compound tenses" the theory was supposed to be able to deal with, such as the present perfect and anterior past, are not marked by 'Harry was is happy' or by 'Harry was was happy.' Such locutions would represent economical ways to deal with the problem of how to mark "compound tenses" — or they would be economical ways of marking "compound tenses" if the present perfect and anterior past were a past of a present and a past of a past. The basic problem with iteration is not, however, that it is unrestricted — that it generates "tenses" that are of no use in the description of English. The problem is that iteration gets the structure of tenses wrong. This is reflected in the fact that descripta have different structures than tenses proper and there is no way in which one can get an anterior present or present perfect out of a past and a present, no matter how they are combined. More than that, neither tense nor descriptum has an SE structure. The tense logicians' semantic structural claims are the root of the problem. I am not complaining about their introducing a virtual speaker and virtual assertion; I introduce a "perceiver-describer" myself and have no objection to introducing theoretical entities. I am complaining about their introducing the wrong entities — ad hoc ones — and about their misconstruing entities, such as situations and speakers, that everyone admits should be included in the temporal and semantic structure of a sentence.34 A related diagnosis of the errors of tense logic is that it rests on the assumption that tenses are sentential operators, as in

52 Tense, Reference, and Worldmaking

TPFFFPp.'35 This assumption supports iteration. It also supports the belief that tenses are SE relationships, for one is told to read the embedded 'p' (in what is said to be the simplest possible way) as a (subject-predicate) sentence designating a situation with which a "speaker" is contemporaneous - the supposedly most-primitive case of an SE relationship.36 But while it might be possible to make sense of the notion of simplicity appealed to here in some epistemic way, this has nothing to do with what makes a "simple" tense simple even the simple present. Simple tenses are those in which the descriptum relationship involves overlap of i R and i E ; this cannot be plausibly defined in tense logic. We have seen that to analyse the semantic structure of a sentence, we need three temporal intervals, differently specified and associated with different structural elements. It is impossible to represent this structure with sentential operators introduced in the way tense logicians do. Given this, translation of tense logic into the SRE theory or vice-versa is highly unlikely. Distinct SR and RE relationships prevent this: there are no "simple" tenses as tense logicians think of simplicity, the SR and RE relations are different, and there is no recursion.37 But perhaps I have overlooked countermoves. Perhaps tense logicians could restrict iterations, allowing no more than two.38 And perhaps I have overemphasized the differences between p and \\i. While \\t is not a speaker thought of as a judge or as p, it is modelled on a human perceiver, so perhaps SR and RE relationships are closer than they appear. We should at least look at the possibility of restricting iteration and reconstructing i|/ as a form of p, acquiring in this way what we need to make RE relationships into SRs. The latter is, after all, what tense logicians in effect do already, for they take features of the speaker-as-p — making recommendations — and transport them to i R in the guise of an evaluation of a sentence at a time. They try to turn the SR relationship into an SE with a special 0, a case of "speaking" (thought of as judging). Now, restricting iterations is ad hoc, for there is nothing in tense logic to suggest that it should be necessary. Restricting iterations also undercuts an apparent theoretical advantage tense logic has. Nevertheless, it is certainly open to someone to recommend it, if this saves the theory. The more important issue is whether tense logicians can have p at is serve for v|; at i R . Tense logicians are right in seeing a connection between tenses and truth, since one non-temporal feature of the tense relationship lies between speaker (p) and descriptive position (ij>); this relationship is a matter of making recommendations that a content be included in a story, and in effect recommending in this way is recommending

53 Temporal and Semantic Structure that someone hold that some content is true. But recommending and judging, and to this extent truth, are the responsibility of p, not i|>.39 We could transform vj; into a truth-teller only by giving it the relevant features of p. But it would appear that we could do that only by confusing matters that must be kept distinct. But are they really distinct? The tense logicians' notion of an evaluation at a time is, I think, quite close to the SRE theory's concept of a speaker (p) at time of speech making a recommendation on including a particular descriptive position (i|/) in a story. (This rather complicated notion can be dealt with only once we have a fully developed theory of force based on the p-to-i|j part of the SR relationship in hand. See chapter 7). Thus, there is a good chance the SRE theory's p can adequately reconstruct the powers and responsibilities involved in making an evaluation or "interpretation" at a time. But can p do service for i[/? It must, if iteration is to make sense, and it does not seem that it can. In the SRE theory, there is a clear difference between p (necessarily located at is) and vj> (necessarily located at i R ); p and \\i represent the different ways someone who is competent at a language understands. The difference between them also recognizes a kind of priority for i|/: i|> is a person exercising his or her referential competence, while p is a person as storyteller. Any evaluation of a sentence - a recommendation that it be included in a story, for instance - presupposes a speaker's access to the content of that sentence. \\i, representing the speaker assuming a descriptive position by understanding what a sentence token (t) refers to, represents the speaker as understanding a sentence independently of any assessments made of it. In general, our access to contents — the exercise of that sort of competence a speaker has that consists of pictureand identifying-referential competence — cannot be explained by or reduced to our making recommendations on the truth of a sentence. (This is defended in chapter 3.) Thus, it would appear that the speaker-as-referring on an occasion, represented by \\i, cannot be identified with the speaker-as-judge, represented by p. To be sure, this claim needs detailed defence, but the prima facie case is against the tense logician. Tense logicians simply assume that the speakeras-judge must be the same as the speaker-who-interprets, and they offer no intuitive reason to confuse what feel like distinct matters. There is no prima facie reason to think, then, that placing a p at i^ is anything but ad hoc. The basic problem is that trying to construe v|/ as p makes a hash of responsibilities. Both the speaker as storyteller and i|; have welldefined roles in the SRE theory, and the SRE theory is explicit about

54 Tense, Reference, and Worldmaking

both what evaluation and content are and how force and content interrelate. These are the issues on which tense logic and the modeltheoretic semantics on which tense logic is, for the most part, based offer only hand-waving: sentences are "interpreted" by being given an "assignment," and they are true on a particular assignment. Who or what does what where, and how? These are not made clear. The SRE theory, relying on groups with competences and responsibilities, can, I think, make these matters clear. While I have criticized tense logic, I emphasize something I said before, that tense logic makes valuable contributions to semantic theory. One thing it does and can do well is articulate principles of time-dependent inference. Tense logic can describe the nature of time-dependent inference and also make recommendations on how we ought to infer in this domain. This is what logics have always done. In other terms, tense logic legitimately can and does investigate what has been called the 'truth-value link.' 40 Doing this makes valuable contributions to a general theory of force - to an account of what it is that makes a language meaningful for a speaker at a time. A sketch of this proposal for the task of tense logic appears in the discussion of truth and the truth-value link in the last chapter. But remember that however valuable tense logic may be in this domain, it does not tell us what meaning is. Nor, apparently, can it tell us what tenses are. 7.3.2 SE Relationships and the Consequences of Tenses

It is all very well to criticize the structure assigned to tenses by tense logicians and others who think that tense is an SE relationship, but the fact remains that there is something compelling about the idea that my primary relationship as speaker to something is as a speaker to a temporally located situation. In this section I want to respect this idea but will still seek to undermine its theoretical importance and usefulness. I argue that this relationship between speaker and situation is the result of a projective illusion that is buttressed by certain attitudes. This explains the relationship's strength and hold on our beliefs but also undermines its significance for semantic structure and the effort to construct an adequate theory. We think of "the past" as settled and gone, "the present" as immediate, and "the future" as unsettled and to come. What is meant by "the past" and the like in this sense? The only plausible interpretation depends on a picture, I think, of "the past" (for example) as a block of interlocking and unchanging "states of affairs." I suggest that this picture is a projection of our epistemic certainties concern-

55 Temporal and Semantic Structure

ing the truth of sentences that take as their subject matter the "real world," and that the attitudes in question, expressed in terms of 'being unsettled' (associated with past-tense sentences), 'being immediate' (present), 'being unsettled' (future), are habits of thought that colour and reinforce the projective illusion. They are attitudes the person concerned with telling real-world stories associates with the tenses of the sentences. I will not defend here the idea that states of affairs are projective illusions; a philosophical discussion, as is taken up in chapters 3—7, is needed to show this. Here, I will only remark that the idea is plausible: 'state of affairs,' like 'fact,' has a distinct alethic cast that reflects the fact that it correlates with not just 'sentence,' but with 'sentential content on which a positive recommendation is made.' States of affairs with this alethic cast are precisely what most philosophers and linguists who like the term 'situation' have in mind 41 - not situations as I define them, pictured referents of sentences, but things that make up the real world. These are the situations tense logicians are fond of, that Barwise and Perry put into their world, and that defenders of tense as an SE relationship typically rely upon. Consider Comrie (in Tense} on the present tense, for instance: "Our crucial claim is thus that the present tense refers only to a situation holding at the present moment" (38). A situation that "holds" correlates exactly with a true (in this case, present-tense) sentence. Notice how much structure and articulation is lost in this notion of a situation, for at the very least they must include both cs and 0s. The differences between 0s and cs are lost, there is no hope of allowing a temporal difference between their locations (i R and i E ), we are asked somehow to make sense of the "existence" of these peculiar things taken as wholes, and it is difficult to explain how a speaker is related to them (except, of course, temporally). This kind of projection seems to be a matter of taking a "simple"-structured (R,E) sentential content (as defined earlier) and making it part of the furniture of the world (declaring it exists). However, in the projection, all the structure of the sentential content, the operations performed in specifying it, and the role of the sentence at is (t) in specifying it disappear. There is no finesse in this sort of projection. It seems to be driven by the need for something "out there" that makes our sentences true (when they are). If I cannot defend in short order the idea that situations construed in this way are projective illusions, I can at least tell a likely story about how the buttressing attitudes (that "the past" is settled and gone, etc.) developed. These attitudes can be treated as "pragmatic

56 Tense, Reference, and Worldmaking

consequences" of tense structures, since it is possible to explain how they arise, given the structure the SRE theory assigns to sentences of English and other languages. Everyone has such attitudes, and while everyone might not think of them as attitudes, or not mere attitudes (for they are often given impressive metaphysical weight), most would agree that there is something right about the idea that the past is settled and the future unsettled. I argue that these are in fact generalized epistemic attitudes towards sentential contents and that they are acquired: they are habits of thought people acquire by making recommendations on the inclusion of contents in (reallife) stories. They are habits that develop depending on whether Rs for the sentences that play a role in developing the habits are before, at, or after time of speech; they are thus attitudes towards contents that depend on the tense of a sentence.42 But combined with the hypostatization of sentential contents found in projection, they get read as the settledness, immediacy, or unsettledness of situations in the projective illusion sense. They become properties of illusions. And "the past," for instance, becomes 'all those things that happened before now.' These attitudes cannot be thought of as merely the attitudes of an individual; they are attitudes shared by members of a culture. They are also very strong: even those who speculate philosophically that the past might be changeable or unsettled never actually act or plan on this assumption. And unlike the projective illusions to which they become attached, they are well-founded. But they are just attitudes and should not be taken to be definitive of the past, the present, or the future. Let us first look at the phenomena to see if something like settledness, immediacy, and unsettledness are associated with the past, present, and future tenses respectively. This involves seeing if they correlate with SR relationships, rather than with RE or - a fortiori SE relationships. Certain kinds of fiction are in the past tense; fairy tales are almost obligatorily in the past. And it is not unusual to begin stories (though not just any story, and that is part of the point) with "Once upon a time ..." The connection between the past tense and fiction may seem odd: surely — it will be said — the past is what is already there (and thus already exists in the real world). But this way of putting the matter introduces ontological considerations that are irrelevant to the attitudes associated with tenses, and it confuses a clear view of the roles of tenses. If we just say that we generally think of the past as settled, we can avoid the ontology and deal with the attitudes as they actually work. Accounting for fiction told in the past tense is easy.

57 Temporal and Semantic Structure It is because we think of the past as settled that we can rely upon what is accepted as actually having happened to force a contrast with what the fictional tale tells us happened; our attitudes towards the past provide a continual reminder that what we are dealing with is fiction. Even a superficial look at past-tense sentences - those with an R-S structure - suggests that their contents are treated as settled. This is true with anterior and simple pasts and even posteriors. The latter strikingly show that RE and SE relationships are irrelevant to settledness. For even where the situation has not "appeared" by speech time, or never appears at all (which is suggested in, for instance, 'Mars was going to collide with Earth tomorrow' [R-S-E where 0 is put after is], things appear settled. The speaker may not know which way it is settled — that is, the speaker does not know whether 0 can at is be used to offer a correct (true) description or an incorrect (false) one of c — but the speaker does believe that at speech time (is) things are settled.43 Futures seem to mirror pasts: common sense, some views of probability, and some accounts of "future contingents" tell us that speakers are uncertain about the future. "The future" is unsettled. With futures there is something like the distancing one encounters with pasts, but a distancing that has different properties and is not put to the same use. Stories that use futures reflect this: fantasy and speculation, not fiction or never-never land. Fantasy leaves options open; 0 might actually come about (be used in a true description of some c in the real world), although this does not get to the heart of the matter. Given that we are dealing with an S-R relationship, what should count is that the speaker is rarely (at least with real-life stories) able to give a very firm recommendation on whether or not to include the content of a sentence in a story, a content that describes by means of 0 something that has not yet appeared, something no one has observed - that is, something with regard to which evidence is (usually) shaky. Until the time that one can observe the something, the speaker treats the description-of-c-by-0 (or the content of the sentence) as unsettled. This is a faithful mirror of what happens with past-tense sentences. It is apparent that uses of present-tense sentences are accompanied by the speaker's belief in the immediacy of a description-of-c-by-0. With anterior presents ('Harry has left'), this characteristic amounts to the "current relevance condition" on present perfects, mentioned earlier. It is sometimes used to explain the difference between the anterior present and the simple past.44 In the SRE theory, this difference is structurally represented by the difference between E,R-S

58 Tense, Reference, and Worldmaking

(simple past) and E-R,S (anterior present or present perfect): the present perfect, with its E before S but R with S, cannot be confused with the simple past with its E before S but R with E. Because these are different structures, we should not expect the same pragmatic consequences: indeed, the two different tenses, and thus the differing epistemic positions of the speaker with respect to making recommendations regarding the inclusion of contents describing c in a story, explain (bring about) the different pragmatic consequences. Immediacy in its current relevance form is explained as a consequence of the S,R configuration. Immediacy is certainly characteristic of the "immediate future" 45 use of the present, represented by an S,R-E configuration ('The boulder is gonna fall!'); it is also true of present progressives, which in the SRE theory are imperfective forms of the simple present. Imperfectivity is not a necessary condition for immediacy with the simple present. Perfectively construed nomic and habitual sentences ('The car smokes,' 'Harry usually leaves by 3:00,' 'Marsupials carry their young') are, at least in contrast to their past or future counterparts, "immediate." The same is true of sentences likes 'The house is white,' which is perfective but — compared to its past and future counterparts — "immediate." Immediacy is used as a device in the so-called narrative present, or "historical present," but the historical present is merely a device that gives the narration of a set of past events vivacity, perhaps to gain or keep the attention of an audience. It is not a genuine present, for c is before i s - Yet since vivacity is an affect that accompanies structure, it is easy to see why people should use "presents."46 Explaining the attitudes of settledness, immediacy, and unsettledness is an exercise in armchair psychology or, more charitably, "rational explanation." We already have all the data we need. We know where to look - at tense (SR) structures, for we have seen the attitudes correlate with nothing else, not with the RE relationship, and clearly not with anything like an SE relationship. We also have good reason to think that the explanation should involve epistemic factors. This suggests that the explanation should centre on differences in epistemic factors that correlate with differences in tenses. What counts, at least at some stage of the explanation, is how a speaker feels about recommendations he or she gives on the inclusion of a content in a story, given certain (story-relevant) evidence. The relevant stories are not fictional ones. With fiction the speaker can afford to be quite confident even about recommendations concerning matters after speech: in telling the fictional tale, the speaker is largely in control

59 Temporal and Semantic Structure of what happens. The relevant stories are what I call "real life" stories, where the things described or companions (c) are taken to exist, where telling the story is largely a matter of shared responsibilities, and where the things described are - as with human beings - likely to be quirky and unreliable. These are stories where a lot is at stake (survival of the speaker, in extreme cases) — stories we take seriously. They are also the most-told stories, for most of our stories are, or purport to be, real-life stories. With such stories it is not surprising that we should develop attitudes of reasonable security (settledness) with respect to recommending that c before time of speech be described in such-and-such a way, of immediacy with respect to recommending that c at time of speech be described 01y, and of trepidation (unsettledness) concerning our recommendations with respect to 01y describing c after time of speech. This may only be another way of saying that we tend to be confident about the past, worried about the future, and watchful with regard to the present, but putting it this way has the advantage of focusing our attention on the right factors. I am suggesting that the attitudinal habits we develop concerning a speaker's recommendations on contents where different tenses are involved have to do with the evidence available concerning our recommendations that descriptions of c be included (or excluded, etc.) in a real-life story. We develop these habits because of the importance and (relative) ubiquity of real-life stories, and these habits become generalized (as habits of thought do) outside these contexts to apply to fiction too. Recommending is a matter of force, for which the speaker is responsible. Since people are pressed by practical necessity to deal with stories concerning those things that populate their own world, it is no surprise that these attitudes and affects should develop. It is natural, given the connection between forces and tenses built into p and its relationship to vj>, that tense structures should play the basic role in the account of how these habits of thought come about. If this explanation - or something like it - works, we can isolate some of our most persistent and powerful attitudes concerning the connection between various tensed sentences and the nature of the world and refuse to let them determine our views of tense structure. These attitudes are pragmatic consequences of tense structure proper (SRs) and do not determine it. If we keep in mind that the pragmatic consequences of tenses are attitudes, we should gain a better understanding of some of the problems philosophers have misidentified as problems of tense. The issue of "future contingents," with us since Aristotle, is an example. Notice, though, that since

6o Tense, Reference, and Worldmaking

these are attitudes, they could develop in different ways. One can imagine other cultures, with different concerns, developing different views of the past, the present, and the future. 47 What can be said now of the SE relationship and its hold on those who theorize about tenses? I suggested that the situations the defenders of tense as an SE relationship have in mind are not the neutral merely pictured situations of the SRE theory, but alethically burdened occupants of the "real world" that are "there" (which exist). I suggested that these situations are projective illusions. Part of what this means is that all the properties situations so construed have are better articulated, described, and explained if we speak of the properties (structural and the like) of the sentential contents people refer to and the positive stances they take towards them (holding them to be "in a story"). I need the machinery developed in the philosophical discussion of the rest of this book to begin to show this, however. If we assume for the moment that the situations of common sense and the tense logician are projective illusions, the well-founded epistemic attitudes people develop towards contents of sentences in the past, present, and future should be seen as just that - generalized epistemic attitudes - and should not be transposed into properties of situations "out there." And we should not think that in speaking of the past, for instance, we are genuinely relating ourselves to settled situations "out there." We are commenting on our epistemic situation. The compulsion that drives those who think of tense as an SE relationship is explained and exposed, and while it remains "natural" in a sense, it need not and should not be taken seriously.

2 Complex Situations

In the last chapter I restricted my discussion to "simple" constructions - those that do not involve any obvious forms of embedding (though it turned out that some constructions were only apparently simple). These simple constructions picture or designate simple situations. In this chapter, I turn to complex constructions, which picture complex situations. From the point of view of basic semantic structure, these complex situations are whole and unitary, so with respect to a single whole sentence's RE relationship, they receive the same treatment as a simple situation does. But complex situations are certainly interesting in their own right because of what they reveal in their RE and SRE structures. We shall find that complex constructions are highly regular in their (S)RE structure and assignments and that distinct situations and readings correlate with distinct structures. This attests to the fact that SRE structure is fundamental even in embedding and that readings are predictable, given this structure. Naturally, because this structure has not been recognized before - or at least not adequately1 - it is no surprise that its importance and implications have also gone unrecognized. For example, the SRE structure of the 'if-sentence (conditional) shows that it comes in one of three forms - past, present, and future. The structure of the past makes the 'if-sentence a subjunctive or counterfactual conditional; the structure of the present yields an argument; the structure of the future makes it an "indicative" conditional. Where 'if is read as 'whenever,' finally, an 'if-sentence reads as a habitual. Thus, SRE structural differences between 'if-sentences

62 Tense, Reference, and Worldmaking

lead to differences in reading. These differences correlate to a degree with differences catalogued by Dudman in his articles on the 'if-sentence that have appeared over the last decade. Dudman scolds the logician for trying to assign 'if-sentences a common logical form. The SRE account suggests a compromise. Readings of 'if-sentences have a common root in 'when'-sentences; the differences between readings are explained by differences in tense and SRE structure. So there is at root a common structure. But in deriving these readings from 'when'-sentences, I also agree with Dudman: 'if is not (usually) a "logical connective." It is, in fact, a temporal adverb. Clearly, important matters of structure and semantics depend on the correct account of the 'if-sentence - and of all the other complex constructions discussed in this chapter. Complex situations include prepositional attitudes, modals of two sorts, habituals, and conditionals. It turns out that there are really very few basic complex structures. In one cluster are found prepositional attitude and epistemic modal situations, which are basically pictured by 'that'-clause constructions. In another are the iterative states (the nomic, habitual, and generalization). These are pictured by special cases of 'when'-constructions. In a third are varieties of scheduling state - intentional constructions and the root modal. These are pictured by forms of infinitival construction. The conditional has a hypercomplex structure that combines features of scheduling states (root modals) with features of iteratives and thus 'when's. 2.1

PROPOSITIONAL ATTITUDES

All direct and indirect speech constructions - attributed quotations such as 'Harry said,' "...,"' and constructions that have 'that'-clauses following "attitudinal" verbs, such as 'believe,'2 'think,' 'hope,' 'say,' 'suggest,' and the like - are called 'prepositional attitude constructions.' The term is misleading, for many of the relevant verbs are not really attitudinal at all: 'say' and 'suggest' are not, nor are 'complain,' 'argue,' 'mention,' and "verbs of saying." But 'prepositional attitude' is the traditional term. Judging by the extent of the literature on them, prepositional attitudes are important. This is no surprise, for they are also pervasive. Any sentence read on an occasion can be turned into one. When someone in reading a sentence explicitly attributes it to another, he or she is turning it into a propositional attitude sentence with a verb of saying or an attitudinal verb: 'Harry asserted that...,' for instance. The result of explicitly attributing is a sentence that de-

63 Complex Situations

scribes a person (which could indeed be the speaker) making a recommendation on the inclusion of a content in some story. 3 The fact that any sentence whatsoever that presents a speaker's stance can so easily be turned into a propositional attitude construction has an important consequence. Propositional attitudes can help catalogue the forces of sentences - the forms of judgment, recommendation, or instruction. Not all propositional attitudes are relevant: there is no one-to-one correlation between propositional attitudes and forces. But propositional attitude sentences like 'Harry is asserting ...,' which picture a saying on an occasion (I call such pictured situations 'propositional attitude processes'), tell us a great deal about forces. This matter is taken up in chapter 7. Every full-fledged tensed sentence when understood exhibits a stance. When such a sentence is placed in an embedded position in a propositional attitude sentence, the resulting sentence as a whole (matrix plus embedded clause) pictures a propositional attitude state or process. It is significant that the embedded clause in a propositional attitude sentence is either a quotation or a fully tensed 'that'clause. Unlike other embedded clauses, the embedded 'that'-clause gets a full SRE assignment. The propositional attitude sentence as a whole constitutes, then, a picture of a stance. (It is itself, of course, a stance, but it does not picture this stance: it does not picture itself as a stance). The embedded clause can be thought of as amounting to a mock "saying" or stance-taking on the part of the speaker of the whole sentence (p), a saying that is presented as if it were produced by someone else, p*. The propositional attitude sentence as a whole, then, pictures with its subject term a p* (= c for the sentence as a whole), with its i E specifying adverbial(s) an is* ('Gerald mentioned yesterday that...'), and shows (exemplifies) with the embedded clause a t*. If the embedded sentence had not been embedded and were actually produced by p*, p* and is* would have been referred to exemplificationally (the sentence would have exhibited itself as having these features). Explicitly attributing the stance to someone has the effect of making it a mock saying, rather then a "real" one. There are two forms of propositional attitude constructions reflecting the differences between direct and indirect speech constructions; I call them 'facsimiles' (direct) and 'characterizations' (indirect). With both, a speaker pictures another speaker's (or his or her own) stance by, in effect, placing someone p* at a time that amounts to IE of the main clause and producing an utterance that counts as a mock assertion, denial, or conjecture on the part of that person (a t*) - that is, by displaying in the embedded clause a sentence with both SR and RE structures that counts as either a facsimile or char-

64 Tense, Reference, and Worldmaking

acterization of a saying on the part of the person described by the propositional attitude state. Notice that the embedded sentence cannot refer exemplificationally to its is* and p*, for exemplification requires possession and this embedded sentence is not (normally) produced by the speaker p and thus cannot have the property of being so produced. The main clause refers to these things by means of picture reference and identifying reference, using standard machinery (some of which I have not introduced). Where the sentence as a whole does correctly describe someone's saying on an occasion, the embedded clause can be thought of as a likeness of a saying proper, attributed to c = p*. It is a representation by resemblance. I avoided until now the terms 'represent' and 'representation' and favoured 'picture' and 'mock saying.' The use of the difficult and ambiguous terms 'represent' and 'representation' in perception, political theory, and theory construction may be justifiable, but these terms too often mislead in discussions of the nature and function of propositional attitudes. To be sure, it is plausible to speak of a saying on an occasion as "presenting" a content (partially specified by a picture of a situation) and a recommendation - that is, as presenting a stance. With this in mind, we see that 'presenting' suits the embedded clause too: the embedded clause exhibits itself as a saying, although it is usually assigned to someone else. The difficulty is not, then, in 'present,' but in the affix 're-.' The 're-' suggests strongly that there is a single, canonical purpose served by a propositional attitude sentence. It suggests that speakers in producing propositional attitude sentences must be faithfully rendering a saying on an occasion — rendering a stance someone actually took, is taking, or will take. 'Represent' cannot be stretched to cover cases where (as in a case of fictional narrative, for instance) direct and indirect speech are used to construct a character, nor cases where propositional attitude sentences are used by speakers to make their own views known (even though attributed to another). It cannot even easily be stretched to deal with cases where one pictures a saying after time of speech.4 All these uses and more are, by contrast, covered by 'present.' And, more to the point, all are allowed by the structure of the propositional attitude. The representational approach - the one that focuses on capturing or faithfully rendering other speakers' stances already produced or in place - speaks to interesting semantic issues, but not to issues of meaning and in particular not to the issue of the structure of the propositional attitude state or process. "Capturing" is an epistemic success story, a matter of indicating when propositional attitude sentences (and only those which are supposed to represent at that) are true or correct. This epistemic matter is relevant to meaning and

65 Complex Situations

the structure of a prepositional attitude construction only for someone who, like Davidson, thinks that the way to provide an account of meaning for a prepositional attitude is to ask for its truth conditions. Only for those who adopt this strategy is opacity a problem of meaning. But my strategy is very different: it is to look for the structure that determines the meaning of a sentence. We can do this without worrying about whether a prepositional attitude is faithful to what someone did or would say. With the structure in hand, we can turn with a fresh eye to epistemic matters. In general, if we can ignore faithfulness in settling structure, we can also ignore opacity. Once the structure is settled, we can look again at the matter of opacity. It becomes no easier to resolve, but we can afford to take it less seriously.5 2. i. i The Structure in Detail Propositional attitudes have an embedded clause that is fully tensed and so must be assigned a full SRE structure. We can obtain easily understood SRE assignments by starring expressions that refer to embedded elements, using single, double, or n stars as necessary. The full sentence has S = , R = <*J>, c, i R >, E = <0, i E >; the embedded clause has S = , R = <«V*> c *> i R *>, and E = <0*, JE*>- C for the sentence as a whole is the person who is described by the state (= p*), and it is this person who is located at and described at i R ; the person is normally the referent of the subject phrase of the full sentence. Often the embedded clause's c* is the picture referent of the subject term of the embedded clause. The time is* of the embedded clause is the same as the time iE of the main clause;6 this reflects the fact that the propositional attitude presents a "saying." Given that the embedded clause has a full SRE structure, it presents p* as giving instructions on the inclusion of \\t* in some story; that is, it presents a stance. Two illustrations follow: in the first, p* of the embedded clause (= c of the main clause) recommends inclusion of the descriptive position vj>* in a story, but in the second, inclusion of 4/* is not recommended. Yesterday George thought he had lost his swimsuit when he came up after the dive. MATRIX

S = <speaker, time of speech> () R = () E = (<0, i E >)

66 Tense, Reference, and Worldmaking

EMBEDDED

S = () R = () E = < George lose his swimsuit, the time George lost the swimsuit> (<0*, i£*>)

George himself would have said on the relevant occasion (perhaps to himself), "I've lost my swimsuit!" ('Had lost' replaces George's words 'have lost.') George denied that Mary would be in Toronto tomorrow.

MATRIX

S = < speaker, the whole sentence, time of speech> () R = , George, tomorrow> (, c, IR>) E = ndi e (<0, , iE>)I

EMBEDDED

S = < George, "Mary won't be in Toronto tomorrow," when George said this> () R = (<»V*, c*, iR*>) E = <Mary be in Toronto, tomorrow > (<0*, i E *>)

For this example, George says, "Mary won't be in Toronto tomorrow." Both of these examples are efforts to describe faithfully what someone said and so suit the representational paradigm. The two forms of prepositional attitudes I mentioned were 'facsimiles' (direct quotations) and 'characterizations' ('that'-clause constructions). Both constructions picture a saying, holding, thinking, mumbling, and so forth on an occasion. In facsimiles the speaker, using a verb of saying with no 'that' but with quotation marks — 'George said (asked, whispered, mentioned, etc.), "..."' — produces just what someone would say, said, is saying, or will say; it is a facsimile of a sentence another produces. Translated expressions in quotation marks can count as facsimiles. Facsimiles present a saying as they would be produced by p*; tense markers, adverbials, pronouns, and the like are as they would be on the occasion is*. Characterizing is less restricted. It is not restricted to verbs of saying, and — as we shall see - it is not always clear whose views are presented,

67 Complex Situations

p's or p*'s. Some verbs produce only characterizations, and not facsimiles. The following make no sense in contexts reserved for facsimiles :

* George

believes knows recognizes regrets doubts

, "Gertrude has four lovers.

Particularly with characterizations or 'that'-clause constructions, think of the prepositional attitude verbal ('believe,' 'surmise,' 'conjecture,' etc.) and the embedded clause as a package; the package contains an SRE structure with all its elements plus — in the verbal - an indication of the kind of recommendation the speaker p* makes on the embedded content (whether positive, negative, or merely a "float") and a commentary. The commentary may be a commentary on the manner of saying, as with Harry mumbled that Mort would be coming tonight. It can also comment on the place of the stance in the storytelling enterprise (which can be thought to include commentary on strategy, as with 'insinuate'): Mary interjected that she had never been to Niagara Falls. Harry hinted that Mort had left. Mort argued that we should leave Geraldine alone. It can do both, as in Mort quietly warned everyone that Margaret and Maurice had separated. The force with which p* recommends can often be determined from the verb alone; sometimes, however, we must rely on other descriptions of the person described. Verbs that make the task easy include the "positive" 'believe,' 'know,' and 'regret,' the "negative" 'doubt,' and the "floats" 'conjecture,' 'wonder whether,' and 'question whether' (which belong here, even though they do not take 'that'clauses). Other verbs, such as 'mumble,' 'mutter,' 'shout,' and the like, demand variable amounts of knowledge concerning the story context of p* at is*. But it is rarely difficult even with these to decide

68 Tense, Reference, and Worldmaking

whether the force is negative, positive, or a float. There must be some force — some form of instruction concerning the inclusion of the embedded ij;* in a story - for the embedded clause has an SR relationship and thus the machinery of force (specifically, instructions) applies.7 P* makes a recommendation on the inclusion of a descriptive position or RE in a story. In sum, keep in mind that any tensed sentence or clause presents a sentential content and a force. (In contrast, untensed infinitivals present a content alone.) Presenting a force and a content together is presenting a stance, where the presentation, unless embedded, refers exemplificationally to its producer and time of production. A stance is always the stance of a speaker ("Here I stand") and is tied (some prefer 'anchored') to a producer (recommender, speaker) and a time (the time of speech). Stances include a claim, or — in my terminology — instructions on a position v|/. What appears in the embedded clause of a prepositional attitude construction is, then, a stance attributed to someone. Stances appear in embedded positions only with propositional attitudes, where an embedded 'that'-clause is assigned a full SRE structure and p* and is* are c and i R of the propositional attitude construction as a whole. 2.1.2 An Epistemic Matter: Responsibility and Tense

If the structure of propositional attitude sentences is straightforward, the ways the structure is used or applied are not. The structure has at least two recommenders (ps), a description of one of these, and a presented embedded descriptive position concerning which explicit instructions are given; many "uses" or applications are possible, and it may not be easy to decide who is responsible for what. 8 The structure offers considerable flexibility in this regard. To get a grip on some of these matters, I investigate a linguistic device embodied in the so-called sequence-of-tenses rule. The rule is that a propositional attitude sentence with a past-tense main clause should have a past-tense embedded clause. We say, 'Harry believed that we would be in Toronto tomorrow,' not 'Harry believed that we will be in Toronto tomorrow.' There are numerous exceptions to the principle. Looking at the exceptions to see what allows them gives us insight into the rule (such as it is) and, more important, into the way propositional attitudes are used. Intuitively, a sequence-of-tenses rule seems to assure that a speaker's description of another by means of a picture of a stance gets read in such a way that the person described is held solely responsible for that stance, confusion is avoided because it is made apparent that it cannot be a stance the

6g Complex Situations

speaker takes him- or herself. Responsibility for defence of the claim is firmly assigned to the other person. Before looking into this phenomenon, I must convey an idea of what forces are. To be brief, I focus on the traditional favourite, asserting. Asserting is a paradigm case of a force. In asserting, a speaker clearly accepts responsibility for recommending insertion of a content into a story, for he or she takes some risk in making a positive recommendation. Finding conditions under which one can assert an embedded clause shows what it is for a speaker p to clearly "take over" a speaker's p*'s represented stance — in paradigm cases, to assert a content him- or herself. One necessary condition on an assertion, or on any other sentential force, is that the descriptive position (vj;) of R of the relevant clause be assumed at the time of utterance by the actual speaker who produces the utterance (by p at i s ): he or she content-understands at is "what he or she is asserting" or the content of what is said. Remember that 'assuming a position' amounts only to referring to the position; it does not amount to adopting or recommending it. A second condition on an assertion is that the recommendation be tied to the occasion on which it is made; the recommendation is one the speaker makes, not one he or she ascribes to another and ties to another occasion. A third condition is that the speaker recommend positively the inclusion of the relevant xj; in some story, where the story is one being told at time of speech by the speaker. Where this condition is satisfied, the speaker is held responsible for making a positive recommendation. A fourth condition has to do with what might be called the story's progress: in the speech context, the speaker alone (largely) is responsible for providing any justification demanded for the recommendation that 4* be included in the story. The first condition has to be satisfied for any content and so applies to the content of any clause, embedded or not. The intention of the second is to capture the idea that in the case of those recommendations that count as forces, one is actually offering a recommendation and doing something understood as one's own responsibility - presenting a recommendation on the inclusion of a content in a story. The third condition captures the idea that a speaker asserts what he or she holds to be true or correct - that is, what he or she asserts (the relevant descriptive position or i};) is something anyone in some relevant group of speakers should also be able to recommend positively, on the speaker's assurance and/or on story-specific but independent grounds. This is what it is for a content to be held to be true, but it is not sufficient to make the recommendation an assertion. The fourth condition captures the idea that an assertion

70 Tense, Reference, and Worldmaking

is a venture on the part of a speaker: perhaps the assertion's content presents new information to an audience; perhaps what it presents is controversial; or perhaps it is an advance on a story in progress. Without this fourth condition, it would be impossible to distinguish asserting a content from merely holding it to be true or correct in any number of ways that involve less risk and/or shared responsibilities. These four necessary conditions jointly satisfied constitute a sufficient condition for something to be an assertion. Notice that a speaker can say I believe that the moon is made of green cheese, and in doing so, assert The moon is made of green cheese. if, that is, he or she holds as correct that the moon is made of green cheese and if the 'that'-clause meets the fourth condition on assertions (which is likely where someone says that the moon is made of green cheese. Green cheese indeed!). Generally, however, the person who is described with a prepositional attitude construction does not actually assert the embedded clause. As condition two insists, assertion can be carried out only by the actual speaker. Of course a person may be described as asserting. This happens with 'assert,' and it may happen with 'insist,' 'continued by saying,' 'added,' 'expressed his view,' and others. But this person is not asserting except in the special cases where he or she describes him- or herself and the conditions on asserting are met. When speakers do describe themselves as asserting, they assert; where this happens, not only is the represented content one that the speakers recommend including in a story, the story is one they are telling, and the stance pictured is clearly one the speakers themselves take. With this idea of assertion in hand, the cases to look at are those where, although a person uses a prepositional attitude sentence to describe another with a picture of a stance, he or she clearly "takes over" complete responsibility for defence of the recommendation made by the speaker p* he or she describes: the speaker p asserts the embedded content him- or herself. Breaks in sequence-of-tenses accomplish this "takeover," but other things do as well. They effect a shift in the assignment of responsibility.9 Responsibility shifts can be construed in terms of the occupation of various "positions." Of the four positions in the structure of a prepositional attitude sentence, two — 4* of the embedding clause and \\i* of the embedded clause - are accessible to any competent

yi

Complex Situations

speaker of the relevant language. Either is assumable and is indeed assumed when the sentence is appropriately understood when spoken or read. The other two are p and p*. While speaking, p is "occupied" and cannot be occupied by anyone but the speaker at is. It is tied or anchored. But p* is c of a prepositional attitude content - it is something described by a picture of a stance someone takes - and it is not tied, only prima facie assigned. There is opportunity to make the position described your own, if you are the speaker p. Let us use the term 'shifting' for cases where responsibility is reassigned to p. In cases of breaks in the sequence-of-tense (hereafter SOT) rule, there is a clear indication that shifting has taken place. And in some - not particularly common - cases, speakers both shift responsibility and assert the content of the embedded clause. When they do so, they do more than shift responsibility; they take on sole responsibility. The SOT rule arises only with past-tense embedding verbs. I suspect that this is because it is only with past-tense embedding verbs that one gets the affect of settledness discussed in chapter i, which amounts here to the feeling that the main clause's content or RE (describing a person qua in a speaker's position making suchand-such a recommendation with respect to some story) is settled. If the RE is treated as settled, the stance pictured is treated as settled and is closed off. SOT seems, in fact, to be a way of recognizing settledness: we mark as past tense the embedded verb under a pasttense, embedding, characterizing verb in response to the feeling that the stance represented is closed off- that p* is closed off. In contrast, where the embedding verb is present- or future-tensed, we get inveterately shifty attributions of responsibility — cases where apart from speech context it is difficult to decide whether the speaker takes responsibility for defence of the embedded clause, leaves it with p* alone, or takes on sole responsibility and asserts. Shiftiness can no doubt be expected where a p* is only assigned and so can be turned to the uses of the speaker p, but it is still remarkable that the attribution is so loose. Consider any of

Gertrude

thinks believes is imagining knows conjectures

that

George had lost his marbles by 1964. Sylvia carried the mail for a year. her cat was going to fall, all the mice have died of overindulgence.

72 Tense, Reference, and Worldmaking will think

will believe will be imagining will know will conjecture

the moose are suffering from lockjaw. Mort is going to date Sylvia. Mario will miss his train. Harry will have lost the game. Minnie will be going to fail again.

I see no way to argue from the markers on these sentences alone that Gertrude (p*) must be held solely responsible for claims pictured as made by her (for the speaker p might also agree), nor any way to argue that the tense of the embedded clause must be that which Gertrude would have used, as opposed to the speaker (where it is tied to is, not connected to is* [= IR]). To assign responsibility for giving the instructions pictured by the prepositional attitude verb, we must look to the context of speech. Since, in contrast, SOT clearly assigns responsibilities through the markers in a sentence, breaks of SOT (i.e., cases where one introduces a present- or future-tense marked verb in the embedded clause) can clearly mark — independently of speech context - shifts in responsibility to the speaker p. All breaks in the SOT rule are clearly shifts. With all constructions that follow the SOT rule - those constructions with a past-tense main clause and a past-tense 'that'-clause the embedded clause, unless it is a genuine past, is not marked in the way it should be for a case of is* (embedded time of speech or "speech") at i R (embedding reference point). Where the SOT rule is broken, both p* and is* are moved to is and the embedded clause reads as a shift in responsibility for the instructions on the inclusion of ijj* to the speaker. These points are established by inspection. Were there no sequence-of-tenses rule, we would have

Gertrude

thought believed hoped knew guessed

that

Harry had left by 5:00. Mort lost his money at baccarat. Sylvia would (was going to) travel by muskox. Harry has discovered a new stash of Kryptonite. the raven is quoting Poe. George is going to miss the train, Louise will lose the third chapter of her book. she will have left by tomorrow, the rock will be going to fall on the Special.

73 Complex Situations With SOT, we get in embedded position Harry had left by 5:00. Mort lost his money at baccarat. Sylvia would travel by muskox. Harry had discovered a new stash of Kryptonite. the raven was quoting Poe. George was going to miss the train. Louise would lose the third chapter of her book. she would have left by tomorrow. the rock would be going to fall on the Special. Where SOT is followed, 'had' and 'would' do double duty by marking compliance with the SOT rule and serving to mark that the embedded sentence is a genuine past. All non-pasts, those marked (for various descriptum combinations) as 'has,' 'is,' 'is going to,' 'will have,' 'will,' and 'will be going to,' are turned under the SOT rule into pastmarked counterparts with the same descriptum relationships. The interesting result is that these markers are now freed of their normal marking duties. They can then be used to mark a shift. In fact, all these markers do in practice mark that the speaker assumes responsibility for the instructions given: he or she is the person to whom to turn should questions arise concerning the appropriateness or correctness of the instructions. If we are told 'Harry realized that Mort will be in Toledo tomorrow' and want to determine whether the embedded clause is true (as opposed to how Harry found out), we may ask, 'How do you know?' Two features of propositional attitude verbs make a difference in the extent to which shifting is permitted. Shifts occur relatively easily with the more process-like propositional attitude verbs. Compare the following, for instance, where Mort is p*:

Mort

mentioned suggested claimed hypothesized surmised conjectured guessed ?* believed ?*thought

that the pit is full of vipers.

74 Tense, Reference, and Worldmaking

'Believed' and 'thought' make very difficult a reading on which the speaker takes over responsibility for defence of the claim - probably because these verbs get read as 'used to believe or think.' There is the suggestion that Mort no longer believes or thinks such-and-such. From the point of view of the speaker p, this suggestion would be correct, since 'believe' and 'think,' unlike process-like prepositional attitude verbs, picture states that continue until further notice. The other feature is the "factivity" of the verb. Here the connection with shifting is obvious. In the case of factive verbs like 'regret,' 'know,' 'realize,' and the like, where to use the verb is to presuppose that the embedded clause is true, past-tense versions routinely allow breaks in SOT and a reading on which the embedded clause is, if not regretted by the speaker p where the verb is 'regret,' at least agreed to positively. So it is always possible to indicate that p would accept responsibility for defence of the claim. It might be thought that agreeing to a positive recommendation on the inclusion of the content of the embedded clause in a story the speaker tells would be a necessary condition on shifting, or on breaking the SOT rule, where that is relevant. This is not the case. With Mort denied that Harry is leaving tonight. the speaker p seems to be denying too. Changing a recommendation (taking the possible recommendations to be positive, negative, or a float) can be done only by going outside the propositional attitude construction, such as in 'George denied that Mary would be in Toronto tomorrow, but he is wrong.' Agreement in force — that is, agreement to a positive, negative, or float recommendation — seems to be a condition on shifting, on reassigning responsibility for the recommendation. Shifting is clearly different from merely indicating agreement with the three basic recommendations represented as given by p*; shifting is a shift in responsibility. We have already seen cases where there is agreement, but not shifting: these are found routinely with factive verbs, such as 'realize.' The sentence (i) George realized that Harry would be in Toledo tomorrow. has p acknowledging Harry's being in Toledo. So too does the version where the SOT rule is broken,

75 Complex Situations

(2) George realized that Harry will be in Toledo tomorrow. But the broken version explicitly shifts responsibility. Indeed, there are cases where the speaker in effect usurps George entirely and takes sole responsibility. This happens with assertions, and it was to make this point that I introduced assertions. In (i) the speaker presupposes the truth of the embedded clause in one plausible sense of 'presupposition': the truth of the clause is presupposed if there is agreement in recommending positively but there is no effort on the part of the speaker to assume responsibility for defence of the claim. In (2) there is a break and a shift, so the speaker does accept responsibility for the claim and must be willing to defend it with evidence relevant to the story he or she is telling at time of speech. But (2) can also appear in contexts where, for whatever contextual reason (that it be novel or controversial, makes an advance on a story, or adds new information), the "information" in the embedded clause satisfies the novelty condition on assertion. Where this happens, the speaker assumes at time of speech all responsibility for the claim. Brief reflection on appropriate speech contexts for broken sentences like (2) leads one to support the view that in some cases breaks go well beyond agreement plus acceptance of responsibility for defence of the claim and count as assertions of the embedded content. For instance, (2) might be uttered in a context where among the participants in the conversation only the speaker has discovered that Harry will be in Toledo tomorrow but he remembers that George had mentioned this the day before. Think of assertive prepositional attitude shifts as cases where contextual factors allow the speaker to go further in a direction already allowed by the machinery of shifting and breaks in SOT. Assertive cases are interesting for the focus they give to questions of responsibility, but they are radical. Shifts, sometimes marked by breaks, in general merely show the speaker p accepting responsibility for the represented instructions, not usurping the represented speaker's position - breaks and shifting are possible in many cases where there is no positive recommendation, much less assertion, at stake. And they can appear where there is no marking within the sentence to indicate that they are taking place. It is no wonder that the prepositional attitude has proven difficult to analyse. But if we are in a position to appreciate that what is highly variable in prepositional attitudes is neither sentence nor meaning (content), but correctness of representation and force and the assignment of responsibilities for claims, we have made progress.

76 Tense, Reference, and Worldmaking

Notice that all the epistemic moves I have made are allowed by the structure of the prepositional attitude. Notice too that understanding the meaning of the full prepositional attitude sentence, including the embedded clause, is never in question. The only constraints are on the occupation of the speaker's position p and on connecting is* with i E . 2.2

MODALS, EPISTEMIC AND ROOT

There are basically two different sorts of modal constructions: epistemic modals ('possible that/ 'likely that,' 'necessary that,' 'true that'), which have the structure of prepositional attitude constructions; and root modals ('ought to,' 'be able to,' 'necessary to'), which have a structure that makes them an example of what I call scheduling states. The distinction between epistemic and root modals is reflected in radically different SRE structures and has important ramifications. Epistemic modals, including 'true,' are all special cases of prepositional attitudes; truth can, then, be treated as an epistemic notion concerning the responsibilities of storytelling — making recommendations. Epistemic modal constructions are descriptions of persons (or groups) and constitute pictures of their stances. Root-modal constructions, on the other hand, share the structure of intentional states and other varieties of scheduling state; while they can describe persons, they do not have to, and when they do describe them, they do not describe them as storytellers. (They do not deal with epistemic responsibilities.) Because this distinction is not generally accepted particularly among philosophers and modal logicians - I begin by showing why it is important. Basically, epistemic and root modals differ in syntactic and SRE structural form, in the kinds of pictures of situations the two sorts of modals present. Naturally, the different forms lead to different uses or applications. The structural distinction between them is very useful in arranging the confusing mass of phenomena found with "modal constructions" and in resolving some puzzles concerning tense.10 Modal constructions in English do not always wear these two different semantic structures on their sleeves. Part of the difficulty is that modal auxiliaries - where one should start to look at tenses in modals - are more defective than other verbs with regard to tense markers. The tense relationships between differently marked 'can' and 'could,' 'will' and 'would,' and 'may' and 'might' are not at all straightforward and do not necessarily reflect tense distinctions at all. There are other difficulties. Some modals have several senses: 'can,' for instance, has an epistemic sense (related to 'possible'), a

77

Complex Situations

root sense (related to 'is able'), and permissive senses (related to 'may' or 'is allowed to') - and it is sometimes difficult to decide which is the correct reading. Other auxiliaries need not have only modal senses: 'will,' which may bear a modal sense, can also be just a future marker. Again, there is sometimes a choice between adverbialadsentential forms ('possibly') and adjectival forms ('possible'). Yet it is clear that the root/epistemic modal distinction applies to all cases, including the modal auxiliaries, which can — so far as I can see — always be paraphrased into a modal sentence with either the one or the other structure. I cannot show this in detail, but what I offer suggests it. I begin with a look at the behaviour of temporal adverbials in modal auxiliaries. This raises a puzzle about the tense structures of modals that can only be resolved if one accepts the structural distinction between root and epistemic modals. 2.2.1 Root Modals The puzzle concerns temporal adverbials and modal auxiliaries, and it arises with the use of 'have.' While we can get acceptable readings for all of may mjust

(i) George

can/could ought to should

be in Toledo at/by 3:00 tomorrow. have been in Toledo at/by 3:00 yesterday.

only some accept 'have' and '3:00 tomorrow' and remain acceptable:

(2) George

*may *must could ought to should

have been in Toledo at/by 3:00 tomorrow.

It appears that only root readings can be given for the coherent cases in (2). The SRE theory explains this by assigning the temporal adverbial different functions in different structures. The differences do not become apparent in the modal auxiliary constructions alone, so we must turn to plausible translations. Starting with root modals and focusing on readings for 'can' and 'could' in the sense of 'be able,' we see that the most plausible trans-

78 Tense, Reference, and Worldmaking lations for 'can' and 'could' in (i) and (2), with acceptable adverbials and the root 'be able,' are George can be in Toledo

today tomorrow

George is able to be in Toledo

.

today, tomorrow.

today tomorrow . yesterday today. George was able to be in Toledo tomorrow, yesterday.

George could have been in Toledo

To get a better view of what the temporal adverbial does, inspect the range of adverbials that seem to serve the same function in the full set of tense-structure readings for 'be able':

George

had been able to be in Toledo was going to be able to be in Toledo was able to be in Toledo

yesterday. today. tomorrow.

has been able to be in Toledo is able to be in Toledo is going to be able to be in Toledo

today, tomorrow.

will have been able to be in Toledo will be able to be in Toledo will be going to be able to be in Toledo

tomorrow.

Clearly, the temporal adverbial does not specify i R for the main clause, the time at which George (c) is found and described. Instead it specifies iR*, but it also does double duty. It specifies the scheduled endpoint of the root-modal state 0 (George able to be in Toledo), that is, the end of iE.11 Infinitivals have an RE structure alone, no SR. In this case, as with all scheduling states, the infinitival's i R * also specifies an endpoint for the main clause 0, the scheduling state pictured by the "sentence" as a whole, including main and infinitival clauses. (This is not to say that this is the actual endpoint; it is only

79 Complex Situations

the scheduled endpoint.) The i R * of the infinitival does this because it is the time at which the obligation (permission, etc.) is scheduled to end, hence the term 'scheduling state.' If we assume that the adverbials in the display above specify a scheduled endpoint for 0, in all these cases the end of the modal state must be after the main clause's i R , so that i R is earlier than the end of i E . This condition does not contort the structure the SRE theory assigns to descripta that requires a 0 before, contemporaneous with, or after i R . Any posterior or R-E satisfies the condition. And like all states (e.g., 'The roof is red') but unlike movements and changes, the root-modal state, even where considered complete (perfectively), need not be over or done by iR with an E-R ('The roof has been red for years').12 The condition, derived from the structure of the scheduling state, properly describes the diminishing number of adverbs that can be used as one goes from past- to present- to futuretense sentences in the display above. While some uses of modals are restricted to the simple present tense, the condition continues to work in the normal way with them, since it relies only on is and the end of i E (iR*). When modals like 'must' are used as orders, for instance, there are no pasts and no anteriors, posteriors are unlikely, and a simple present designates is (= i R ) as the start of the state. An order initiates a root-modal state that must end at some time after is. Compare You must visit your grandmother next week. *You must visit your grandmother last week. The interval i R for the main clause may be specified by another temporal adverbial, usually near the beginning of the sentence. For instance, A month ago, George had been able to leave tomorrow, has a 0 with a temporal topology like this: ROOT-MODAL STATE

I one month ago (iR)

I now

I tomorrow

(Root-modal states need not be closed at their starts, but they are usually closed at their final point.)

8o Tense, Reference, and Worldmaking

With this in mind, we can easily see why the temporal adverbials in (i) and (2) work as they do. 2.2.2 Epistemic Modals The permissible modal-adverb combinations with epistemic readings from (i), if we restrict ourselves to one sense of 'may,' include all the following:

(3) George may

be in Toledo at 3:00 tomorrow. have been in Toledo by 3:00 tomorrow. have been in Toledo at 3:00 yesterday. have been in Toledo by 3:00 yesterday.

If we were to restrict our data to the modal auxiliaries, we would be tempted to hold that the temporal adverbial specifies iE* for 0*, the time at which George was in Toledo. But for the most plausible translations of (3), the temporal adverbial can only specify i R * for the R* in the embedded SRE mock saying:

It is possible that

George will be in Toledo at 3:00 tomorrow. George will have been in Toledo by 3:00 tomorrow. George was in Toledo at 3:00 yesterday. George had been in Toledo by 3:00 yesterday.

Displaying permitted combinations and focusing on the embedded clause, we get:

It is possible that George

had been in Toledo by 3:00 yesterday, was in Toledo at 3:00 yesterday, was at 3:00 going to be in Toledo, has been in Toledo today. is in Toledo today, is going to be in Toledo. will have been in Toledo by 3:00 tomorrow. will be in Toledo at 3:00 tomorrow, will at 3:00 be going to be in Toledo.

8i

Complex Situations

The suitable adverbials indicate that something is going on here unlike what was found with root modals. ('Be going to' constructions are intended to get R-E readings, but [as noted earlier] they can pick out [here, embedded] scheduling states that normally have R,E readings.) With root modals, the relevant adverbial specifies the scheduled end of 0 and is constrained to be after the main clause's i R . With epistemic modals, there is no effort to specify the end of 0 and no demand on the adverbials under consideration that they be after i R . To see this, let us look at the embedding clause. The best way to analyse 'It is possible that...' is to think of it as a form of prepositional attitude matrix clause, so that tense variations in the matrix parallel those in propositional attitude constructions. Any combination of embedding tense and embedded adverbial that occurs with propositional attitude constructions can occur in 'It be possible ...' - that is, any at all. Since we cannot translate 'George may have been in Toledo yesterday' as 'It was possible yesterday that George is in Toledo,' 'yesterday' must be attached to the embedded clause alone. By contrast, the adverbial in root modals picks out i R * of an embedded infinitival clause, but also the scheduled endpoint of the main clause's 0. A different syntactic and hence semantic form for the epistemic modal explains why the adverbial acts differently. Translating epistemic modals into sentences of propositional attitude form not only solves the problem of what to do with the adverbial, but also suits the intuitive idea of what epistemic modals should do and allows us to mobilize the SRE structure of propositional attitudes. Thus, translating 'George may have been in Toledo yesterday' as 'It is possible that George was in Toledo yesterday' makes it clear why the adverbial can refer to a time before speech, for propositional attitude embedding structures do not restrict the embedded iR*. Translating epistemic modals in this way also suits the idea that an epistemic modal speaks to the epistemic status of a content: in the proposed translation, an epistemic modal is a picture of a speaker's stance — in effect, a recommendation on inserting a content into a story. Like the propositional attitude, the epistemic modal pictures a stance and explicitly pictures instructions on the inclusion of a ty in a story, the prima facie responsibility for which is assigned to the person(s) the state describes. The hypothesis has two connected difficulties. First, unlike the normal propositional attitude sentence, the translated form of the epistemic modal does not refer explicitly to the persons described with the term in its subject position: it is not obvious how to accommodate the phrase 'It is possible (necessary, certain, likely) that ...' to the propositional attitude constructions discussed earlier that have

82 Tense, Reference, and Worldmaking

person-designating expressions in subject position. Second, with some modal expressions in the embedding structure, such as 'possible,' there is a distinct preference for simple present constructions, unlike normal prepositional attitude embedding constructions. 'It is possible that...' is much more likely to be encountered than, for instance, 'It was possible that...,' although prepositional attitude constructions normally accept any tense in the embedding clause. Both difficulties are resolved if we propose that 'It is possible that...' be rendered, as a first approximation, 'Group G believes-possible that...' This paraphrase makes the thing c described by the epistemic modal a group, and it treats 'possible' and similar expressions found in epistemic modals as forms or varieties of force-specifiers. The 'that' in 'It is possible that...' becomes a sign of a propositional attitude picture — a picture of an opinion or stance with an indication in the verb of how it is "taken" - where the individuals who have the stance (who are given responsibility for it) consist of a group of persons. The epistemic modal attributes responsibility to a group, not an individual. In normal use, moreover, epistemic attitude sentences describe not just any group G but some group G of which the speaker is a member, so that 'Group G believes-possible that...' becomes instead, 'We believe-possible that...' ('We are certain that...'). Where the sentence is present-tensed, the speaker also (normally) makes the (pictured) claim. It is possible to avoid the norm, of course, and speak of groups of which the speaker is not a member. But the cases where the speaker is a member of the group are not only the norm, they are epistemically fascinating. Where the epistemic modal sentence is present-tensed and the subject effectively 'we,' the speaker p uses the sentence in such a way that he or she appeals for support to the group. The speaker p not only supposes that each member of the group holds such-and-such, but that each member supports p in an assessment: any member of the group, p implies, would maintain the same thing (offer the same assessment of the embedded position i|^* on the basis of the evidence available at is* [= i R = is] as he or she does). In these circumstances, 'it' becomes a 'we' with the "modal" overtones we expect; already different from just 'group G' because the speaker is a member, 'we' becomes something like 'those who are joint members of a group that recognizes correctly what counts as good evidence for suchand-such.' The transition reflects the fact that the sentence becomes something like a claim of support on the part of the speaker: he or she generalizes in representing the position (in the 'that'-clause) as one that anyone, on the basis of the evidence available, would believepossible (etc.).13 So while all epistemic modals speak of the epistemic

83 Complex Situations

status (the "recommendability") of a content (the content represented in the 'that'-clause) for a group at a time with the evidence available to it at that time, where the group includes the speaker at time of speech, the epistemic modal also amounts to a claim of support. This fact plays an important role in the reconstruction of 'true' as an epistemic modal verb, particularly if it should turn out - as I argue it does — that 'true' is essentially tied to speaker and time of speech. My reconstruction of'it' in terms of group-designating expressions and (often) 'we' captures the idea that an epistemic modal presents not just one person's view of the "recommendability" or epistemic status of a sentential content. The epistemic status of the content is objective, in the only sense of 'objective' that makes sense here: a view shared by a group. We cannot treat the epistemic modal as a way of saying, 'Things (or circumstances) make-possible that...' A root modal does something like this, but root modals do not present us with 'that'-clauses and the form of a prepositional attitude; we have no reason to assimilate the two. We might paraphrase the root modal 'possible,' as in 'It is possible to leave,' as 'Circumstances allow us to leave.' But nothing like this is plausible for the epistemic modal. We now also have a way to deal with the second difficulty, the fact that 'It is possible that...' shows a distinct preference for the present tense. It does so because it is a construction that is normally used to make as well as picture a claim by describing a group including the speaker, all of the members of which have the evidence available at time of speech. In both picturing and making a claim, 'It is possible that...' parallels 'I believe ...,' although the epistemic modal essentially describes a group. Just as I cannot say, 'I believe such-andsuch, but I am wrong,' so I cannot easily say, 'It is possible that such-and-such, but it may not be possible,' although I could easily say, 'Group G believes-possible that such-and-such, but it may not be possible.' Other epistemic modal constructions are less closely tied to speaker and time of speech. For instance, 'is (thought) likely,' 'is certain,' and 'is (deemed, thought, etc.) probable' are not usually tied at all. Nor is 'is thought possible,' which can undergo all the tense variations that 'It is possible that ...' cannot. While we cannot have all of

It

??had been ?has been is Pwill be ??will have been

possible that ....

84 Tense, Reference, and Worldmaking we can have

It

had been has been is will be will have been etc.

thought possible problable likely etc.

that ....

While 'It is possible that..." is relatively closely tied to speaker, time of speech, and speaker's group, it is easy enough to represent the views of others at other times with 'thought possible' or 'believedpossible.' An epistemic modal construction even more tied to speaker and time of speech is 'It is true that...' Unlike 'possible,' however, 'true' is happy in contexts such as 'It was true that...' This might tempt people into thinking that 'true' is not tied, a view contained in one interpretation of the principle of the temporal transparency of 'true.' ("If true at /, true at any other time /.'") But — Largue in chapter 7 - 'was true' in its primary use really amounts to something like 'we would have held that...' (approximately, 'we would have unqualifiedly maintained that...'), where 'we' is the speaker's group at time of speech, with the evidence available to it. If this proves right, 'true' (unlike 'believe true') is tied to speaker and time of speech, even when it appears in past- and future-tense forms. Indeed (I argue), this tie is essential to the temporal "transparency" of 'true.' Epistemic modals present a group as having evidence of some sort and being able, on the basis of that evidence, to agree in a recommendation on the inclusion of a content in some story. It is not essential, as we have seen, for the speaker to agree with this recommendation. The exceptions are tied uses, such as 'true that,' and — to a lesser degree — 'possible that,' and the like. (And while 'true that' cannot be loosened, the related 'believed true that' is not tied.) It is unnecessary that the relevant group be specified as anything other than those who hold that such-and-such. Nor need evidence be given (in terms of actual speech occasions) that someone does hold such-and-such. But such groups must retain their distinctively modal character: the members of the group feel justified in holding suchand-such in the way they do because anyone in the group would so agree. Further, when anyone uses an epistemic attitude sentence and describes a group that includes him- or herself, he or she effectively describes him- or herself as believing-possible that such-and-such where this is not the same as simply saying, 'such-and-such.'14 He or she also appeals for support and effectively represents him- or

85 Complex Situations

herself as justified. Such groups, which I dub evidence groups, have important explanatory roles in the theory of force or meaningfulness I develop later. If in discussing epistemic modals we are dealing with prepositional attitude constructions, it is not surprising that one can have It will be thought possible that Harry had left yesterday. where the embedded adverbial is not constrained in the way adverbials in root-modal constructions are. The lingering difficulty with the view, though, is that there is no way to translate a sentence like this back into a sentence with modal auxiliaries alone. This should not count against the structural distinction, nor the general account. The distinction allows us to explain the way adverbs work in both types of construction, and since there are reasonably good translations of all sentences with modal auxiliaries into sentential forms that more perspicuously represent their pictorial forms, nothing is lost. Also, we have seen that even in translation some constructions are relatively restricted in their use: they become entrenched and carry assumptions. Consequently, though lacking an explanation for why modal auxiliaries are as deficient in their tense markers as they seem to be, we lose nothing by translating, and we need not be surprised that standard modal terms are not as flexible as the translations. We get a much better view of the nature of modals if we concentrate on translations. The translations have several other advantages. First, the right things get described by the relevant sentences. Root modals are analysed as special states used in the description of both things and people, while epistemics are analysed as states that can be used only in the description of people - assuming that only people have attitudes, at least in paradigmatic cases. Second, the two different reconstructions explain why there is often a morphological difference between the complements associated with root modals and those found with epistemics. The epistemic - as is normal with prepositional attitude clauses - gets 'that'-clauses, while the root can get 'for'-clauses. Thus, we can say that It is possible for George to go. gets a root reading, in spite of resembling It is possible that George will go.

86 Tense, Reference, and Worldmaking

Third, the much greater structural detail afforded by the translations disentangles the functions of adverbials in more complex cases than those discussed so far. Consider the root-modal construction ?For three years George could have left Toledo next year. This may not make sense in untranslated form. Probably it is to be interpreted For three years, George was able to leave Toledo next year. which does make sense and with regard to which we can attach adverbials to structural elements. 'For three years' specifies the extent of the modal state, before i R , and 'next year' picks out i R * of the embedded clause. (It makes no difference that the sentence suggests strongly that George at time of speech — or indeed at any time after i R - is not able to leave Toledo next year. Next year is only the scheduled time of leaving.) Epistemic modals seem to be quite close to what de dicto modals should look like, while root modals seem close to what de re modals should be. This is a suggestive parallel, but as matters stand in the extraordinarily complex discussions of modals, it is foolhardy to say that it is anything more than a suggestive parallel. I venture this: the epistemic/root distinction is structural (this is easily defensible by showing how the two constructions deal with adverbials), while various forms of the de relde dicto distinction are based on everything from intuitions to metaphysics. Perhaps discussion of modals should stick with the root/epistemic distinction and pursue its consequences for a while, letting the other distinction rest. In this discussion I avoided the adverbial-adsentential versions of modality (e.g., 'necessarily' and 'possibly'). One reason to ignore these is that they have no interesting tense consequences and suit different idioms. Another reason is that they are quite limited in ordinary speech, where they appear in phrases like 'he can't possibly be right' and 'it ain't necessarily so.'Judging by these examples, 'possibly' and 'necessarily' function in idioms that give us ways of speaking to and criticizing the claims others have made, and generally they speak specifically to the truth of a sentence or - more accurately - to the grounds on which a claim is made with respect to a particular sentential content. There is no evidence that these idioms, or the contexts that require them, should take centre stage in a discussion of

87 Complex Situations

modals. Certainly there is no evidence that all modals expressions should be modelled in terms of them; if they play a role, it is a secondary one. Nevertheless, it is worth noticing that even as adverbials such idioms cannot easily be made into operators. I have also been silent on the philosophers' favourites, not just 'necessarily,' but 'necessary.' However, for the purposes of this discussion of tense in modal constructions I need add little to what has been said about 'possible.' 'Necessary,' like 'possible,' takes both 'that' and 'for ... to' complements, so it can be reconstructed or translated into sentences of either epistemic modal or root-modal form. It is related to the auxiliary 'must,' where 'possible' is related to the auxiliary 'may.' Notice, however, that 'necessary' is not an operator on a sentence. It is a verb.

2.3 'WHEN' I outlined the structure of propositional attitudes and argued that this is also the structure of certain modal constructions. I also argued that the structure characteristic of the scheduling state suits another class of modal constructions. The epistemic modal reappears in a minor role later when I explain the structure of the conditional; the scheduling state plays a major role in this structure. But modal notions are not enough to deal with the conditional. Another feature of the structure of the conditional is owed to nomics and habituals, so I must discuss their structure before taking up the conditional. To explain the structure of nomics and habituals, however, I must first show how 'when'-constructions work. Certain 'when'-constructions are the core of nomics and habituals. When restricted to a special class of embedded situations, they are the core of conditionals too, for the English 'if,' it turns out, is just a form of 'when.' 'When'-clauses always serve as temporal adverbials, virtually always specifying i R of the clause they modify. Combined with certain sorts of perfectivized situations and placed in certain RE structures, a 'when'-clause and the clause it modifies are, without further information, read as connected in such a way that we can speak of them as a condition; with certain situations, this reads as a "causal link." The condition reading and its specialized cases (causal, for example) are - I shall emphasize - obtained entirely on the basis of contentbased (RE) information. They do not depend on epistemic factors like Hume's "habit," on "experience," or on justification. Notice that 'when' can be elliptical for 'whenever.' 'When(ever) it is, its clause states a condition and provides a frequency specifier for

88 Tense, Reference, and Worldmaking

a picture of an iterative state (a state that amounts to a tendency to 0 on the part of c). These iterative states are nomics or habituals and are discussed in the next section; 'when' in such a construction is, I argue, derivative from the more primitive condition-'when' construction. In such a construction 'when' serves as a temporal adverbial, states a condition for the main clause "coming about," and adds a frequency specification; taken together, we get a picture of an iterative state, discussed in the next section. As I said, 'when'-clauses are at the very least temporal specifiers, or temporal adverbials. They typically specify a modified clause's i R . They do so by linking this interval to their own i R , not - perhaps surprisingly - to their i E . For instance, with 'Harry left when John had run a mile,' Harry's leaving takes place not during the running of the mile, but after it. The 'when'-clause here has a E-R structure. The fact that i R is linked to iR* helps explain, I suspect, why 'when'clauses can carry additional semantic burdens. In specifying a main clause's i R , a 'when'-clause brings about not just the temporal conjunction of the main clause's i R and its own iR*, but in addition a conjunction of c and c* for the two clauses. This {c, c*} pairing, where each is described by some situation 0, brings things so described together so that some "reaction" can be expected. These reactions are general and predictable. Given certain additional features of the RE structure of the 'when'-clause and main clause, the 'when'-clause can be read as 'until' or as 'after.' The latter leads to the notion of a 'when'-clause functioning as a condition, where the content of the 'when'-clause serves as something like a condition of the main clause — a cause or a reason. Neither the structural features that bring about the condition'when' reading nor its significance are recognized in the literature. Some have remarked upon the reading, sometimes only to point out that German reflects an "ambiguity" of'when' in the contrast between 'wann' and 'wenn.' But since most philosophers, at least, assume that they can deal properly with the concept of a condition by looking to the 'if-clause of an "if-then connective,"15 the condition-'when' gets analysed in terms of an overly simple and distorting "logic" with connectives linking independent "propositions," and as a result the condition-'when' is obscured. This is, I believe, a serious error. Simple cases ('when's, and also nomics and habituals) are treated as instances of what are in fact far more complex constructions (conditionals). The simple-minded syntax of the conditional connective linking two sentences not only radically misconstrues what conditionals are, but makes it appear that conditionals really are simple

89 Complex Situations

in their forms and that all one needs to do in order to understand the ways in which independent "propositions" get connected (in inference, habit, and law) is to invent various forms of "conditional connectives." Incidentally, although I focus on 'when,' there are parallels between 'when'- and 'where'-clauses. I do not pursue these parallels here, but it is worth remarking that these may well be due to the. fact that a 'where'-clause effectively conjoins a c and a c*, doing in a "spatial" way what a 'when'-clause does temporally. I begin by showing that 'when' always serves a temporal referential function, and typically does so by linking its iR* to another i R , thereby specifying iR for the modified clause. It is enough to show that the time interval iR* found in the 'when'-clause's R is always the same as the time interval iR found in the "main" clause's R. To illustrate this, I eliminate the other possibilities: (a) that iE* of the 'when'clause specifies the main clause's i R , and/or (b) that i E of the main clause is specified. We can ignore i s ; there is no possibility that a 'when' would specify it.16 Simple-descriptum cases do not help show that (a) can be eliminated, but anteriors and posteriors do. Consider (1) Harry left (E,R) when Mort had snubbed him (E-R). Clearly, Harry leave (0) is after Mort snub (0*), so it cannot be the time of the iE* of the 'when' but its iR* that does the work. Similarly, (2) Harry left (E,R) when Mort was going to snub him (R^E). has the embedded i R * doing the work: Harry left before Mort could snub him. While use of a 'when'-clause like that found in (i) leads to an 'after R' reading for the main clause's E, this has nothing to do with the fact that the 'when'-clause happens to have the structure E-R, where its i E * is before its iR*. This is shown by a sentence with a simple past structure in the 'when'-clause, yet Harry's leaving occurs after R: (3) Harry left when Mort snubbed him. The perfective main clause gets its R-E reading because it and its 'when'-clause satisfy the criteria that make certain 'when'-main constructions into "condition" constructions. These criteria are intro-

go Tense, Reference, and Worldmaking

duced later; one of them is that the main clause be construed perfectively.17 Notice, for instance, that an imperfectively construed main clause with an R,E 'when'-clause does not get an R-E reading: (4) Harry was running when Mort walked by. Here, in fact, the main clause can be read in such a way that 'when' is more like 'until' than 'and then' or 'after.' On this reading (which is not the likely one), Harry stopped running. Nevertheless, notice that sometimes such readings can almost be forced: Harry was running when Mort walked onto the track. The combinations of RE relationships in (1—4) show that (a) is wrong. They also suggest that alternative (b) is too: the 'when'clause's iR* typically specifies the time of the main clause's i R , not the time of the interval i E . To see this, inspect the temporal topologies of the sentences just discussed, (1—4) — leaving out S for simplicity: (iT) Mort snub Harry R Harry leave (aT) R Harry leave

[Mort snub Harry]

(3T) Mort snub Harry R (4T)

Harry leave

Mort walk by Harry run ............... R

The dotted line in (4T) reflects the fact that Harry's running could continue beyond i R . The brackets around 'Mort snub Harry' in (aT) indicate that it does not take place. A further indication that a 'when'-clause always specifies iR is found in the contrast between Harry had left when John arrived. Harry had left at 3:00. 'At 3 :oo' can specify either i R or i E ; the 'when'-clause can only specify iR.

gi

Complex Situations

The only plausible cases of a 'when'-clause specifying an i E are found where the 'when'-clause's situation is a change situation and the clause is perfective. Consider the future perfect construction Harry will have left when Mort arrives. Here, I think, the proper reading of 'when' is something like the archaic 'whensoever.' These cases are rare enough and uninteresting enough to ignore. Since the i R * of the 'when'-clause is at the same time as the i R (iR**, etc.) of the clause it "modifies," it follows that c* in the semantic structure of the R of the 'when'-clause and c in that of the R of the main clause (Mort and Harry for the cases discussed above) are cotemporal. They are then "in community" in Kant's sense. Kant rightly observed that community is a necessary condition for any sort of connection, such as causal connection; to connect in any way, two things must be "in the same world and at the same time" or "with" each other. While a necessary condition, community is by no means a sufficient condition for a causal relationship or for speaking of the content of the 'when'-clause as a reason for the content of the main clause. But I think we can get a reading from a sentence with a 'when'-clause that amounts to a picture of a causal relationship or a reason wherever there is community and where certain further conditions on 'when'- and main-clause REs obtain.18 To assess this idea, let us look at some cases in which a main clause and a 'when'clause together create a reading on which "there is" a causal connection - with the result being a description of the pair c and c* related causally to each other. With a perfectively marked main clause picturing a situation that, when perfectivized, is bounded (one paradigm case is a movement, such as that referred to by a sentence with a verb phrase like 'run a mile'; another case is a change, such as that referred to by the phrase 'win the race'), the 'when'-clause and main clause together produce a reading on which the main clause, even though marked as a simple descriptum, receives a posterior reading. Thus, we have with the sentences John ran a mile when Harry saw him. John will run a mile when Harry sees him. main clauses for which the main-clause 0 is clearly after iR, and the the R , and 'when'-clause is read as something bringing about or instrumental in initiating the running — or, what amounts to the same thing, c*

92 Tense, Reference, and Worldmaking

described 0*ly brings about c described 01y. Before going into more detail, let me make clear what I am doing in tracing "causal connections" to features of these constructions. I am certainly not offering an epistemically based account of causality, but rather an account that can plausibly be held to be based on knowledge of the meanings of the constructions involved. In offering this, I can rely on knowledge of situation type, perfective and imperfective, and SRE structure. 19 In looking for causality in 'when'-main constructions, I am looking for sufficient RE-structure reasons for saying that there is a "causal" or temporally sufficient "reason for" a relationship between a 'when'-clause and a main clause, a relationship relating a c described 01y and a c* described 0*ly in such a way that they are not merely juxtaposed, but that c* 0*-described is enough for something like, 'So, then, c 0-described.' I do not want - as this intuitive description of a "causal relationships" might suggest - to have it appear that a causal relationship is an argument relating two separate contents that are held true by a speaker. That it is not will become clear in the discussion of conditionals. One thing 'that is fundamentally wrong with construing a causal relationship this way is that an argument essentially involves the concept of truth. I want to find features of the REs involved in 'when'-main constructions that are sufficient for any of us who content-understand the complex picture presented to "see the causal connection." This makes causal connections recognizable without regard to what story they appear in, if any. Nor do I want to have a causal connection picture depend on a speaker's knowledge of or belief in or commitment to some form of iterative or generalization involving the same content. The point of approaching causal connections through RE-structure features of two contents is to explain how we can have knowledge that there "is" a causal relationship without having to appeal, not only to truth and justification, but to "knowledge that is essentially general" — to sentences involving iterations of causal connections. Because this is the aim, my approach differs radically from the normal approach. The normal approach starts with habitual and nomic sentences ("generalizations," or iterative states) and supposes that the connection cannot be known or understood apart from the generalization. This makes it very difficult both to understand where cause and reason connections come from (particularly where this is interpreted, as it usually is, as a problem in acquiring the use of causal language) and to make sense of the fact that we recognize "singular causal connections." The appeal of the normal approach rests on the fact that when someone claims that a causal connection sentence correctly

93 Complex Situations

describes something in some world (normally ours), the claim is subject to justification, and the justification of causal claims does make appeal to generalizations or - to avoid oversimplification - to theories that are held by groups of people (storytellers), where a theory's acceptability rests on its ability to apply on different occasions (to explain phenomena by laws). The idea that causal connections cannot be conceived apart from generalizations is false, but understandable if one refuses to think of sentences apart from their truth conditions or the claims they make. If it were impossible to understand causal connection apart from truth, justification, and coherence, as it seems it must be for the normal epistemically based approach, no world-independent account of causality is possible. If I am right and causal connection is a matter of content-understanding, we can recognize that two clauses "state a causal connection" no matter what the 0s in the 'when'-clause and main clause are, so long as they picture movements or changes. This automatically makes causality world-independent. Interestingly, it also undercuts that form of Humean scepticism that leads to denying there "are" causal connections. Epistemic problems of justification play no role in securing causal readings of the relevant clauses. They do play a role, of course, in deciding whether a causal connection is correct. If we assume that 'when'-main constructions conjoin c and c* plus i R and iR*, the operant factors that bring about the "causal connection" reading must rest in the situations involved, 0 and 0*, and in their aspects — whether they are read as complete or incomplete. First, the situation in the 'when'-clause must either be a change situation or, in being the start or end of another situation, must amount to a change situation. It becomes clear why this is so in the discussion of aspect in chapter 6. Intuitively, one needs a c* that is 0-described to be "in place." Second, the situation (change) must be perfectivized because, as suggested by the first point, the c* so described cannot still be "in process." Examples include, then, Life as we know it will cease when the sun becomes (has become) a dwarf. Mort squeezed Harriet's neck when the clock struck (had struck) twelve. It makes no difference whether the 'when'-clause is R,E or E-R. Keep in mind that the issue is not whether these sentences are true - whether there "really is" a causal connection between a clock striking and Mort's squeezing - but whether they get a reader or hearer

94 Tense, Reference, and Worldmaking

to see the clauses as related causally. Only if they are (are so understood or so seen) can we raise the issue of whether they are true. Third, the main clause's 0 must be a situation that, when perfectivized, becomes bounded. The relevant situations are changes and movements. Fourth, this 0 must be perfectivized or considered complete. All of these conditions apply to discernible features of sentences that go towards picturing one content as opposed to another. When all the conditions are satisfied, the result is an R-E structure for the main clause; hence, that the main-clause 0 is after iRRand andC*'S c*'s change is the occasion for c's change or movement after i R . The 'when'-clause is read as a condition (cause or reason) of the main clause. Equally, c* is read as instrumental in effecting the result. Notice that this reading does not depend on which situations are inserted, only on their sorts and on their being construed as complete. The relevant RE-structure conditions correlate with causal readings. Further confirmation comes from the fact that where different conditions are satisfied by 'when'-main constructions, different readings arise — some with different emergent properties. With imperfective situations in main clauses (i.e., those designated by '... ing' markings on the main verb), simple-descriptum-marked main clauses yield a reading on which 'when' reads as either 'while' or 'until.' In the first of Harry was running (a mile) when John saw him. Harry was running (a mile) when John stepped on the track. the usual reading is one on which John saw Harry while Harry was running, and the main clause's structure is E,R-S. (There is also an 'until' reading.) The imperfective is crucial to the 'while' reading, for we could not read the main clause in the same way if it were 'Harry ran a mile.' It is also crucial to the 'until' reading, the more likely one for the second sentence. Here John stepping on the track is the occasion for Harry to stop running, and the main clause gets an E-R-S structure. The 'until' reading (as opposed to the 'while') seems to be produced by other things known of John and Harry so described. Unlike with the condition-'when' reading, we cannot go from easily discerned features of RE structure to a decision on what kind of reading to give the sentence. We need to know more of the story concerning c and c*. Perfectives of those situations that when perfectivized do not get bounds (standard states, usually) yield the same results as imperfec-

95 Complex Situations

tives of those situations that do get bounds when perfectivized. Consider New York was filthy when Harry saw it. The house was mauve when Harry started painting. The first of these sentences does not allow a reading on which Harry's seeing New York was the occasion for New York becoming clean. The second may suggest that Harry's painting is an occasion for the house to cease being mauve, but this is by no means forced. The 'when'-main relationship that emerges as an E-R plus a stop or 'until' reading for the two clauses taken together, for example, Harry was running when Mort stepped on the track. where the 'when'-clause leads to an end for the main clause's situation, could be called causal too. However, there is enough bite to the idea that causal relationships involve bringing about or initiating something that I prefer to treat these as "terminating" relationships. Notice that there is no sufficient, easily discernible RE-structure criterion for these: these readings are not forced by pictures of the two REs alone. No temporal precedence or consequence reading emerges with those sentences where 'when' is read as 'while.' Here there is genuine "temporal conjunction," in Hume's phrase, but no influence. Sometimes, in fact, exclusion of influence is suggested. For instance, with Harry was running when Tom blew up the waterworks. there is a reading on which 'when' becomes 'while,' and on one scenario a suggestion that Harry must not have been helping Tom - he was, after all, running at the time. Clearly, there is no modification of the RE structure of the main clause. Such readings are decided on what Comrie calls "pragmatic" grounds, not on the basis of RE structure alone. To summarize, 'when' always functions as at least a temporal adverbial, and it conjoins an iR with an iR* and a c with a c*. We have seen that a 'when'-main combination can also be read as doing considerably more - for example, cases where 'when' is read either as 'until,' 'while,' or as a causal condition or reason. In the two cases where the RE structure of the main clause is modified - where 'until' or 'cause' is produced - it seems to make sense to speak of a c* (so described) that is instrumental or effective in something c be-

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coming 0. (C and c* can be the same — there are numerous examples of this below.) Yet, the only case that is determined or forced by easily discerned features of the complex 'when'-main construction is that in which 'when' is read as a causal condition or reason. Assuming that a causal reading is secured independently of the truth of the relevant sentences and independently of any knowledge about c and c* (except that they are found in the structure they are), I can introduce singular causal sentences and explain what it is for these sentences to be true. A condition-'when' construction connects two situations without introducing any iterative adverbs. We can turn such a 'when'-construction into a singular causal sentence by treating both the 'when'-clause and main clause as correct and effectively turning them into "conjoined events" in a world of a story. One can do this by joining gerundives of the verbs in the clauses with a verb like 'cause' or 'bring about.' 'George left when Harry arrived' becomes something like 'Harry's arriving brought about George's leaving.' Thus, to say that this complex picture of a pair {c, c*} is correct is to say something like this: Such-and-such involving c* {brought about/will bring about} such-and-such involving c. where 'bring about' reads as 'is the (temporally specific and also antecedent) reason for such-and-such involving c at iR.' This sentence is tensed, and thus a claim is made; this is reflected in the displayed sentence by the fact that 'bring about' has clear alethic overtones — 'bring about' amounts to something like 'took place.' Making such a claim amounts to explicitly endorsing the inclusion of a complex content derived from a 'when'-main construction in a story. 2.3.7 Conditioned Root Modals One more delay before taking up iteratives (nomics and habituals) - I must discuss how the framework developed for condition-'when' structures involving movements and changes (situations that obviously take on endpoints when perfectivized) applies to root-modal structures, which do not involve movements and changes. One reason for doing this is to provide more data against which to test the account. Another reason is strategic. I argue at the end of this chapter that conditional sentences, of the form 'if... then,' are forms of condition-'when' construction with hidden root-modal verbs. Briefly, an indicative conditional is the future-tense 'when' ('When someone is ... [root modal] to recommend content RE', he or she will be ...

97 Complex Situations

[root modal] to recommend content RE'), and a subjunctive conditional is the past-tense form ('When someone was ... [root modal] to recommend RE', he or she was ... [root modal] to recommend RE.') Clearly, I need to say something about how root modals work with 'when'-constructions. I aim to capture the nature of inference in the structure and verbs placed in my reconstruction of conditionals. The account I give is sympathetic to elements of several traditional accounts, including C.I. Lewis's, C.S. Peirce's, and the "inference ticket" approaches, but the guiding intuition is that inferring is something that people do that is constrained by group norms — hence the central role of root modals. The SRE theory contributes to a view of the nature of inference a clearer and more articulate structure and a better understanding of the person who infers - that is, the storyteller. 'When'-clauses functioning with root modals pose two obvious problems. One is that root modals have infinitivals with embedded iR**s in embedded REs, so the 'when'-clause can "modify" this embedded RE** as well as the main clause. Usually there are clues to which reading is correct. If 'when' is at the front of a sentence, its i R * usually specifies the main clause's major i R : When Harry has left, you will be permitted to leave. Here, you will receive permission only when Harry has left. At the end of a sentence, the 'when'-clause's iR* often specifies the infinitival's iR**: You are permitted to leave when Harry has left. In this case, the permission is given at or before time of speech. The 'when'-clause placement criterion is not always sufficient to disambiguate, however. The tense of the main verb plays a role. The best reading of the present-tense When Harry has left, you are permitted to leave. is, I believe, that you have or are given permission at is. Only those constructions that have the reading where the 'when'-clause's iR* specifies i R are suitable for use in reconstructing the conditional. Obviously, the 'when'-clause of the second sentence is not a condition-'when' on the root modal: Harry's arrival is not the cause of nor the temporally sufficient reason for your receiving permission. Or, to put this another way, Harry as c*'s temporal conjunction with

98 Tense, Reference, and Worldmaking you as c (= c**) on his arrival does not make him the "source" of the permission or its instrument. What one has is conditional permission, not a condition on permission or on receiving it. The more serious problem regarding getting a condition-'when' reading out of a main clause with a root-modal verb is that rootmodal states do not gain bounds when perfectivized. I claimed that a 'when'-clause gets a reading that makes it a condition where it and the main clause with which it works are perfective, where the 'when'clause designates a change, and where the situation designated by the main clause is one that is bounded when perfectivized. Rootmodal 'when'-constructions do not obviously suit these constraints. Clearly, though, something remarkably like a condition-'when' reading arises with at least some root-modal states. There is a hint to a resolution of this dilemma in what I said above. Remember that wherever a condition-'when' reading arises, the 'when'-clause serves as a cause or temporally sufficient reason for a c to begin to be described by a situation. In the cases in question, cs are persons described as receiving a command, permission, or authorization to do something. Receiving authorization is a change, not a state, and changes, like movements, receive bounds when perfectivized. Thus, the bounding constraint is satisfied for the main clause. The same manoeuvre works for the 'when'-clause wherever it designates a nonchange situation while the whole sentences receives a condition'when' reading. We have already encountered cases like this. It is convenient to think of sentences as picturing changes elliptically where a condition-'when' reading obviously arises, although the situations pictured appear to be wrong for satisfying the conditions. Elliptical pictures are shorthand versions of what would otherwise be much more complex constructions. To put this another way, their crude surface structures are unrevealing and can be misleading. Let me outline how this discussion of condition-'when' constructions and root modals applies to the indicative conditional. My reconstruction of the indicative conditional goes approximately like this: When you are able to assert (come to be in a position to correctly assert) RE, you will (then) be authorized to assert RE'. Assuming that the main clause is read 'will receive authorization to assert,' the situation pictured is a change-to-a-modal-state situation, and the bounding constraint on a condition-'when' is easily met. If the 'when'-clause reads as coming to be in a position to assert, it too

gg Complex Situations

designates a change, and the relevant constraints are satisfied. And, while complicated, this reconstruction suits the intuitive idea that conditionals are constructions that say (picture) what one may say, once something else can be said. Notice that c* of the 'when'-clause serves as the instrument of change, and that c*, like c, is a person. Intuitively, when you come into a position in which you can legitimately assert such-and-such, in that circumstance you are also authorized to assert so-and-so.

2.4 ITERATIVE STATES: HABITUALS, NOMICS, AND GENERALIZATIONS The structure of the iterative-state construction (and hence of the iterative state) is simply the structure of the condition-'when' with the addition of a frequency adverbial. Adding a frequency adverbial makes a complex picture of a single complex situation - what I call an iterative state. The state is emergent, for it — unlike any 'when'construction - slots right into normal RE structure: it can be placed before, after, or at the same time as an i R and it acts as any other state does. Since it is possible to treat the picture of the iterative situation as syntactically derived from the structure of the condition'when,' it is not difficult to say what the structure of an iterative state is. The more difficult task is to distinguish laws (nomics) from "mere" habituals and generalizations. This turns out to be a task for epistemology; it involves the p-i|j side of an SR relationship. Describing a thing in terms of a habit or law (iterative) situation is saying that it (c for an iterative sentence) tends to do something (tends to 0) in circumstances C (when some c* 0s). Iterative sentences in ordinary language do not always picture circumstances or contain adverbials that specify a frequency, although (I argue) they cannot be (picture-)understood apart from both. To understand a sentence that pictures a nomic, habitual, or generalization is to know that the thing(s) described "has (have) a tendency to 0" only where one can ask, 'When?' and 'How often?' This is a conceptual truth in the way 'Every effect has a cause' (but not 'Every event has a cause') is one. Tendencies are conceptually dependent on conditions and frequencies, or "analytically dependent" on them.20 Given a link between syntactic structure and picture reference, if iterative-state pictures were syntactically dependent on condition-'when' constructions, it would be easy to see why this should be a conceptual truth. Nomics and habituals differ from empirical generalizations, not structurally, but by virtue of the fact that empirical generalizations essentially involve observers among the things described (cs). An

ioo Tense, Reference, and Worldmaking

example of a nomic is 'Copper conducts electricity.' Its counterpart empirical generalization is 'Copper is (always) observed to conduct electricity.' The ordinary-language sentence 'Copper conducts electricity' does not distinguish between nomic (or habitual) and generalization readings. The pictorial forms of both are rendered in a first approximation as 'When circumstances C, copper conducts electricity'; the difference consists in what one includes in the circumstances C. Broadly, nomics and habituals describe things (which may include observers - though not usually qua observers), and generalizations describe things and observers qua observers. I have insisted on a clear distinction between pictorial-structural issues and epistemic issues; these are particularly difficult to disentangle with habituals and nomics. Generally, according to the philosophical tradition, the term 'iterative state' suggests the existence of several cases in which something 0s when in circumstances C. This idea is built into a psychological-genetic account of such states. Hume, for instance, held that "causal relationships" are really habits of persons (sometimes he spoke of expectations instead), and he assumed that habits required several "instances" to develop. In the SRE theory the habit or nomic is defined without recourse to the "existence" of several instances. Both situations are defined structurally: they are designated by sentences with a shared pictorial structure, where that structure does not depend upon there being several instances, on anything obtaining, or on there being any experience of "constant conjunction" of circumstance and result. Seeing or hearing a "sentence" with the right structure and lexical content is sufficient to read it as an iterative sentence that pictures its iterative state. No doubt many of the habitual and probably all the nomic sentences we accept as correct, including those we find natural or even necessary, are ones we use to offer descriptions of the things of our world. Normally, justification for these sentences requires evidence of several instances of connection. Nevertheless, experience of the connection in the real world and the acceptability of an iterative are irrelevant to structure, or even acquisition. I suggested that the nomic and habitual differ epistemically, not structurally. Consider two standard proposals for ways to distinguish nomics from habitual states. One proposal relies on necessary properties, real connections, or essentialism. The other relies on the concept of a "closed" nomological net. 21 Below, I transform these apparently realist criteria into epistemic and constructivist ones. My strategy is pragmatic: the nomic differs from the habitual in speaker commitments. Storytellers "make" certain habituals nomic by including them among what I call 'stiff sentences,' perfectivized state-

ioi Complex Situations designating sentences restricted to R,E structure with contents held to be true by groups of people. I derive necessity and the "closed" nature of nomological nets from the commitments involved and further relate these commitments through needs of storytellers to essentialist claims. This pragmatic approach rests on the relationship of p to \\i, part of an SR relationship. 2.4.1 The Structure In my discussion of structure, I focus on examples of habituals. The most important clue to the structure of the habitual state is found in the temporal adverbials that appear in habitual sentences. There are several types. Their surface ordering, however, is not very interesting - almost anything goes. Last year George left at 3:00 every day. George left at 3:00 every day last year. Every day last year at 3:00 George left. Looking instead just at the types of adverbials, a way to nest and thus order them appears. Habituals have a special kind of temporal adverbial, the frequency adverbial, as well as a durative and another interval indicator. The most plausible way to nest these adverbials is as follows: [[[When C, c 0s] FREQUENCY] DURATIONAL] (FREQUENCY = usually, sometimes, generally, often) (DURATIONAL = last year, from ... to, next summer) (C = circumstances) But there is no explicit 'when'-clause in the George sentences above, so it may not be obvious that a 'when'-clause must appear in a schematic representation of the sentences' 0-structure. Actually, there is a 'when'-clause. 'At 3:00' amounts to something like 'when the clock struck 3:00.' To confirm this, substitute this phrase in the George sentences for 'at 3:00.' However, not every habitual sentence bears the trace of a 'when' on its sleeve in this way ('Mort usually leaves' does not, although context can usually supply such a clause — for example,'... when a party starts'), but nevertheless, there is reason to think that a 'when'-clause appears in the structure of every iterative state. Intuitively, it must be there to make sense of the frequency adverbial — an adverbial peculiar to the iterative state (habitual, nomic, or generalization alike). The frequency ad-

io2 Tense, Reference, and Worldmaking verbial can and should be thought of as operating on the temporal and non-temporal pairing (iR with i^* and c with c*) found in a condition-'when' construction, "saying" that this pairing should be read as repetitive. The nested form above becomes, then, [[When c* Cs (0*s), c 0s] FREQUENCY] Everything within the outermost brackets is a schematic picture of the pictorial form of an iterative state. This form is, I claim, what a content-competent person "sees" in ordinary iterative sentences, whether the sentences have explicit 'when'-clauses or not. FREQ specifies, to varying degrees of precision, the number of times such-and-such happens when something else does. 'George has been twitching his eyelids three times out of four when Lydia smiles' tells us how often George twitched, given Lydia's smile. We make sense of this sentence by picture-referring to a habitual situation, and we succeed in doing this without assuming any experience of George, Lydia, or George's twitching eyelids. If asked whether the sentence were true, we would have to appeal to experience, but we need not appeal to experience to know what it pictures. Hence, 'specifying a frequency' so far as content-understanding goes (picking out the right habitual state) does not mean assigning some "probability" to George's twitching in the presence of Lydia. Incidentally, frequency adverbials need not be in numerical form. 'For the most part,' 'often,' 'sometimes,' 'occasionally,' and 'sometimes on Sundays' (or 'never on Sunday') give iterative readings no less than 'three out of four.' 22 The frequency adverbial, then, "shows" that iterative states have conditions or circumstances built into them. If so, one can grant that many habitual and nomic sentences do not explicitly say what these conditions or circumstances are, but still claim that the states these sentences designate "have" circumstances. Perhaps context indicates the circumstance. Perhaps the speaker, when asked to say what such circumstances are, can provide some; he or she might say, lacking anything better, something like 'George runs whenever something happens, I'm afraid I don't know what.' But it is not essential that the speaker actually provide even this. What is essential is that he or she recognize or know that some circumstance is presupposed. The speaker must know that a frequency adverbial determines an iterative state and thereby that there "are" conditions. Moreover, as this realization does not depend upon the speaker being able to specify what the circumstances are at all, a fortiori it does not depend upon his or her being able to specify more than a disjunction of

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circumstances. 'Harry leaves whenever such-and-such or so-and-so or ... happens' is a picture of an iterative state as much as is 'Harry leaves whenever Mort arrives' (or, for that matter, 'Harry leaves'). In effect, my defence of the idea that iteratives have 'when'-clauses is that they can only be understood (conceived) in terms of iterations of condition-'when' constructions, where this amounts to saying that iterative pictures are "derived from" non-iterated condition-'when' constructions. I mentioned one argument in favour of this "derivation" before - the morphological identity (ignoring tense markers, for they are irrelevant anyway) of the verb and the rest of the predicate used in the "ordinary" iterative sentence, even with no 'when'clause, and the verb in the "main" clause of the condition-'when' construction(s) from which it can plausibly be held to derive. Another argument is found in the fact that the frequency adverbial seems to "operate" on the iR-iR* and c-c* pairing found in condition-'when' constructions. Another argument is that any sentence of condition'when' structure can be turned into an iterative-picturing sentence if a frequency adverbial is provided. Still another is an intuitive one. Habituals and nomics certainly seem to be "causal principles" — or, if the word 'causal' seems too specialized - they seem to be situations involving iterated temporally sufficient reasons; if so, they should be derived from a likely source for such a reading. There is also an argument from learnability: holding that iterative pictures are derived from condition-'when' pictures allows one to reduce the number of basic semantic structures and improve prospects of easy language-learning and translation. To give an account of the derivation involved is — since picturing a situation is at stake — a matter of accounting for how a competent speaker sees the relevant pictorial form in the relevant sentences. It is not a matter of authorized inference from one true sentence to another. Rather, it can be explained by a sort of syntactic derivation principle. I suggest it is captured in this case by a simple lexicaladdition rule — surely within the picturing competence of any speaker of English - which says that a 'when'-main connection "sentence" (actually, pair of "sentences") becomes an iterative picture with the addition of a frequency adverbial in the appropriate place.23 Again, derivation does not depend on having a plausible condition'when' connection; we need not insist that we be familiar or happy with the resulting habits or laws. This derivation is enough to guarantee picture reference and thus a form of understanding; it is enough to guarantee that if someone understands the "sentences" in the 'when'-main construction, he or she understands the iterative - that is, which situation is referred to.

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Hume's account of causes — habits and laws — confused what are properly psychological issues with epistemic ones, and confused these in turn with the issue of the nature of a law, which can be thought of as an issue of pictorial and contentual form and elements. The first confusion is usually avoided these days, but the second is not; it appears where philosophers attempt to derive the tendency state from "happenings," "occurrences," or other alethic (truthrelated) notions or, in the same vein, where they attempt to make necessity a mark of the iterative (as opposed to making it an additional feature, characteristic only of nomic sentences). The danger in my using the term 'derive' is that it might seem to associate my pictorial view with these epistemic ones. Thus, I emphasize that all that is meant is that for any 'when'-main connection RE picture there is a "regularization," or tendency-state picture — indeed, a large number of them, for one individuates different regularizations by different frequency adverbials. And where there are such pictures, there "are" such states. The structural claim applies to all tendency states, if to any. If U 235 decays radioactively. is read as an iterative, it has circumstances built into it. This might not seem right, for radioactive substances decay randomly and it might be argued that a random happening does not have circumstances. A circumstance is ordinarily a cause or reason for something; a random happening cannot have a cause or reason in the same way other happenings do. There are several ways to deal with this issue. We can say that there are circumstances (causes), though we do not know what they are or — weaker — we do not know when they apply. We can also say that there are circumstances - "normal conditions" — and leave it at that. Or we can say that the sentence is not an iterative at all, but just a process-designating sentence (which does not require circumstances). If we say the last, the sentence is properly put 'U 235 is decaying ...'I hold no particular brief for any of these approaches, so long as it is recognized that if the sentence is recognizably nomic or habitual, it refers to a complex situation including circumstances. If the issue of the structure of the iterative state is settled, what do we do about the rest of the items in the RE relationships into which iterative situations are placed? Unlike many sentences in English, none of the adverbials in the sentences used above as examples specify i R for the RE of the iterative sentence as a whole. But it seems

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there must be an R in the RE structure of habituals. Since there are anterior and posterior constructions with habituals and they cannot be constructed without an R, there must be an R. This gives us: By 1948 George had been running for 13 years. [iR = sometime in 1948] George has now run every day for 13 years, [iR = now] In 1937 it was clear to everyone that George was going to run every day for several years, [iR (matrix and embedded) = some time in 1937] By parity, simple-descriptum habitual constructions require an R too. Simple presents pose no problems: they are at is. With pasts and futures, such as George walked to work for many years. Mary will sing every day at 3:00. context can be used. Habitual sentences are rarely isolated; where they are, i R can be placed somewhere in the middle of the interval over which the habitual spreads, so long as c is to be found there. In such a case — rather hard to imagine — it does not matter exactly where within i E i R is placed. Since c is not precisely located, its perceiver-describer (ijj) need not be precisely located either. 2.4.2 The Nomic Difference

The special status of the nomic is reflected in the fact that the nomic's interval i E cannot be bounded. There are no nomic-picturing sentences with E-R and R-E markers, for anterior and posterior are impossible if no 'before i R ' or 'after i R ' applies. Nomic readings require a simple-descriptum RE structure. The simple present is common: Copper conducts electricity. Simple past nomics indicate that there are no things (cs) left that the nomic describes: Saber-toothed tigers ate meat. Where markers on a nomic sentence like 'Copper conducts electric-

io6 Tense, Reference, and Worldmaking ity' are changed to past perfect markers - with additional verbiage to get a sensible reading — the nomic reading is lost: PCopper had conducted electricity until 1933. We are left with a habitual state, though one that feels peculiar, since we know that 'Copper conducts electricity' is a law. The same thing happens with PCopper is going to conduct electricity! PCopper will have conducted electricity. Moreover, even a simple-descriptum sentence with an interval imposed around a situation that normally counts as a nomic no longer receives a nomic reading: PCopper conducts electricity for three centuries. It therefore seems that nomics cannot have E-R or R-E tense structures, and they cannot have bounds imposed on them even in simpledescriptum structures. But if we cannot bound the i E of an iterative state if we want a nomic reading, where does this constraint come from? The restriction on bounded i E s rules out R-Es and E-Rs and repels any bound even with R,Es. It might seem that because this is a restriction on i E , which is a feature of an RE relationship, an explanation should be found in the nature of the situation. This is very unlikely, for several reasons. First, a nomic situation that is bounded does not cease to make sense, for one still picture-refers to an iterative situation. Second, the markers involved in picture-referring to an iterative situation are the same for nomics and habituals. Third, the restriction has the smell of a restriction on the commitments one can make with such sentences - what is held in the case of a nomic is that it is true so long as there are things like the cs described in existence. Given these reasons, the constraint lies in the uses to which nomics are put — in the p-ijj part of an SR relationship. A glance at the nomic sentences just considered suggests that this is the right course. It is not at all difficult to construct an iterative sentence picturing a bounded habit and use it in the description of anything whatsoever, in any world whatsoever. But none of the sentences above get nomic readings unless they concern, are about, or are used in offering correct descriptions of the things of our world (things that exist). There is furthermore a strong preference for the

TT

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present tense; past-tense law sentences describing saber-toother tigers are acceptable, but only because these tigers are now extinct in our world. And I, at least, find it extraordinarily difficult to construct a nomic sentence that describes something not yet in existence, even for our own world. We somehow build our commitment to the truth (for us) of a nomic into the reading itself, so it is difficult to imagine a law concerning something that does not yet exist in our world. Generally, it seems right to turn to the SR relationship, not just because it can deal with matters of existence, but because it deals with matters of commitment: the "you can't bound these situations" looks like it has to do with epistemic commitments. 24 If this is on the right track, the nomic's trait of being "unboundable" can be put in terms of a principle of commitment. If we apply the principle to a particular case, people using and accepting the nomic sentence 'Saber-toothed tigers ate meat' are committed to holding that if there were still saber-toother tigers, they would now describe them (present tense) as meat-eaters and would continue to do so, so long as there were saber-toothed tigers and meat for them to eat. Continuing commitment makes the nomic state unboundable.25 Tracing this feature of the nomic to a commitment seems to make the difference between nomic and habitual a matter of use, something involving the p-ij/ part of the SR relationship. Regrettably, this does little more than label a difference. We should see if it is possible to tie the state of being unboundable more firmly to the p-\\i relationship. The proper route is to focus on stability in truth value with respect to telling stories concerning "our" world, for that is what the commitment amounts to. The nomic shares this trait with other sentences (which I call "stiff sentences"), and locating the nomic in this larger field of sentences is not only illuminating, it leads to a better understanding of the principle of commitment. Nomics hold everywhere and anywhere in our world. Consider a related feature of nomics. As things stand in the "logic of explanation," the stability of nomics is taken to rest on structural properties of things. This is essentialism read into the logic of explanation: things act as they do (have the tendencies they do) because of how they are. More to the point, things continue to have the tendencies they have (to do various things in various circumstances) because of features that make them what they are — that is, in general, because of their structural properties. Essentialism captures something important about the "necessity" of law (for our world), and I want to appropriate it without the realist baggage usually built into essentialist claims. To do this, I make essentialism constructive, turning the essentialist claim to ground this necessity in objective features of

io8 Tense, Reference, and Worldmaking

the real world into traits of commitments of storytellers. This requires reconstructing objectivity in terms of features of storytelling: the real world becomes a world that is designated by "real world" stories. This strategy sets a complicated agenda, but it can be dealt with in reasonably short order. Objectivity can be made constructivist if we treat it as a public specifically, joint-group - commitment. But there are several sorts of commitment, since there are different kinds of responsibilities correlating to different kinds of aims - different "group projects." In the intended interpretation of p and v|/ of the supplemented SRE theory explained in chapter i, we can appeal to groups to explain responsibilities and powers. There are effectively four groups - the picture-referential we, the identifying-reference we, the storytelling or theoretical we, and the evidential we. The picture-referential and identifying-reference wes are groups with projects and responsibilities so clearly different from those of speakers construed as storytellers or recommenders that they can clearly be distinguished from the other two. One way to see how they differ is in terms of the degree of individual variation allowed: the agreements that underwrite meanings or contents of sentences allow no variation. In other words, meanings are "objective." What I shall call lexical constructivism amounts to "lexical determinism," for the meaning effectively becomes a feature of the sentence token (t) produced on an occasion itself. The speaker's role is to produce the sentence t; it, however, means whatever it does. This kind of objectivity makes the nomic and habitual situation — indeed any sort of situation at all — "objective" in the sense that it is what is referred to by a "sentence" with the proper syntactic form and lexical items.26 Given, in addition, that identifying reference is a feature of t, we can say generally that all the items of an RE or content, as well as the structure of the RE, are objective. Since this sort of objectivity is independent of the truth or acceptability of a content, it cannot bear on the continuous commitment to truth found with the nomic and some other constructions.27 For these, we need something like "objective claims" — agreement in opinions. We must turn to those groups that detail the responsibilities and powers of claim-makers or storytellers (ps) — the evidential and theoretical wes. The objectivity associated with the evidence group — that group consisting of all those who would recommend such-and-such on the basis of such-and-such evidence available at time of speech - is a form of agreement in opinion. (The evidence need not be explicit, but it should be ponderable.) To define this group, begin with a

log Complex Situations

judgment in a story at a time and ask what justification can be given for the claim made. Justifications are themselves judgments on which everybody at least ought to agree. Since such judgments are relative to stories, however, the agreement in opinions reflected in members of this group of storytellers is story-relative. We saw that the evidence group is what the epistemic modal is "about"; the evidence group is what 'it' of 'It is possible that...' refers to. This group appears, differently described, in the antecedent and consequent of the indicative conditional, the argument, and the subjunctive conditional (which includes the counterfactual). In whatever form it appears, it is a group in such-and-such an evidence position at a time with respect to a story. The agreement or publicity, and also the continuity, of commitment found with essential property sentences such as 'Water is H 2 O' can be traced to this group. It is also the source of the continuing commitment found with nomic sentences. It is the "we" in the principle of continuing commitment found above, a group dedicated to deciding truth value (or probability, etc.). Since it is an evidence group, the continuity of commitment to truth claims with nomics can be put this way: with certain contents someone telling a real-world story always has evidence sufficient to say that such a content should be included in the story — so long, that is, as the thing(s) described is (are) to be found at all. Remember from the discussion of epistemic modals that it is not necessary that the person making a claim actually has and can give at time of speech the relevant evidence; actually giving evidence may require an expertise and knowledge no one has. With nomics (at least if one wants more than often-haphazard observations like "That's what it always does"), the evidence is notoriously difficult to give unless one has an articulate theory that relates a thing's tendencies to its structural properties. This is where contemporary essentialism gets its strength. So far as scientifically sophisticated, modern-day storytellers engaged in telling real-world stories are concerned, it is because structural truths do not change that tendencies based upon them do not change. Water acts the way it does because of its molecular structure, and no doubt saber-toothed tigers did what they did because of their natures. With a good theory, we inevitably feel, we can make the continuing commitment found with nomics depend on reasonably firm evidence for continuing structure. A third form of agreement and hence objectivity is found in the storytelling we. Unlike the agreement in opinion (often truth value) involving representation found with the evidential we, this agreement is agreement in authorizing. It is found in the agreement of

i i o Tense, Reference, and Worldmaking

the storytelling we in authorizing certain connective principles or principles of inference. The principles are not story-sensitive (and neither is the storytelling we), for these principes govern what counts as coherent for any story whatsoever, real-world or otherwise. Examples of these principles - referred to later as '(A)'s (for "authorizing principles") — are found in some of the rules of Wittgenstein's language games. The issue of which of these principles of inference are "right" or correct (not, I think, 'true,' for that speaks to a different issue), not to mention which ones are continuously right for temporally distinct inferential communities, is a difficult one. However, it seems quite clear that some of those that are selected as right (or, better, are applied in the storytelling or world-constructing linguistic behaviour of speakers) mirror the habituals and nomics we accept as or think true. Thus, 'Copper conducts electricity whenever a current is applied' is accompanied by a principle, an (A), that says that whenever anyone in the relevant community is in an evidence position with respect to some story at some time of speech where he or she can recommend that a piece of copper has at a story time (iR for some content proposed for a story) a current applied to it, he or she is authorized at that speech time to recommend that the copper conducts electricity at that story time. Principles of authorization are obviously structurally and epistemically related to the empirical laws and habits I am investigating now, and I explore these connections after discussing the structure and epistemic features of conditional sentences. But, intuitively, at least some authorizations mirror regularities in the world (i.e., tendencies of things described in real-world stories) and must do so if the story teller as authorizer is to survive in that world. In part because of this, we can speak of the storytelling we's principles as "influenced" by the "way the world is." (Perhaps, in fact, this is what Hume was after with his notion of habit.) The storyteller is not worldless, and what makes his or her stories meaningful is in part the fact that the stories he or she tells, even fictional ones, are "relevant" to his or her getting along in the real world. In effect, their coherence or connectivity in considerable measure reflects the patterns of behaviour or tendencies of things in the real world. I leave open for the moment the issue of just how this continuity of commitment is to be described. We have already seen that other sentences besides nomics involve continuous commitments to positive truth value. The essential property sentence, one designating a state — in practice, normally a structural state - no doubt gets its status as an essential property sentence largely because of the commitments found with it. Another example

111 Complex Situations

is the "natural kind" sentence, one that places something as a member of a kind of things. Examples are simple subject-predicate sentences with property-designating phrases like 'is a man,' 'is a hippopotamus,' 'is jade.' The natural-kind statement has a checkered history; while people are quite convinced that things are necessarily members of their kind (continuously truly describable by the situation designated by the relevant sentence), natural-kind classifications do break down. One discovers, for instance, that jade is actually two sorts of mineral. This is no doubt why — parallel to what happens with the nomic — only for those members of natural kinds where we think we know their distinct structure do we really feel secure about classification and continuity of commitment. In the case of biological species, structural specifications tend to be given in terms of genetics even though, with very few exceptions, we are nowhere close to actual specifications of species in terms of gene structure. We are antecedently convinced that that is where to look. While some continuous positive recommendations of contents by an evidential community have reasonably firm reasons or justifications (at least in principle) behind them, not all do - nor is it necessary that they do. Some contents are continuously positively recommended for purposes other than the above, sometimes almost to the point where good evidence against them is ignored; they are treated in practice as continuously true. Call all sentences with positively and continuously recommended contents "stiff sentences"; their stiffness allows them to serve several purposes, not just those of the theoretician. The stiff sentences that Putnam nicely called "stereotypical" (those that say tigers are striped, lemons are yellow, and humans are bipedal) are useful in the efficient, though sometimes faulty, perception and identification of things of our world. Our holding them continuously true is obviously connected with our need to speedily reach decisions on identification. Many sentences that philosophers call "synthetic a priori" sentences are clearly stiff; such sentences play crucial roles in our action and our theories of the world — they are fixed nodes around which we organize our knowledge. A related class of cases is found among what Wright calls 'hinge propositions.'28 Many of the sentences Moore called attention to (such as "There are other people") in his celebrated defence of commonsense knowledge count as stiff sentences; many of Moore's remarks about how these sentences are central to our understanding of ourselves and our world are apt.29 Our beliefs come in networks, and we need foci to develop our networks in the way others do. This is one function the stiff sentence serves.

112 Tense, Reference, and Worldmaking

There are certain SRE characteristics common to all stiff sentences. First, stiff sentences are all of R,E structure. Whatever c is described by such a sentence, then, it is "covered" by the 0 used to describe it, for R with c at i R must be within the interval JE of the situation. Second, all such sentences designate states that allow them to have indefinitely extensible bounds. This is important because of the third characteristic, which is that all stiff sentences have situations that are construed perfectively (or treated as complete), and because no standard state, unlike other sorts of situations, gets (sometimes closed) bounds when perfectivized. Fourth, all contents of stiff sentences are held true continuously by a group of storytellers or ps. As I argued, the relevant group is an evidence group at time of speech. The result is a set of sentences with fixed situation type, fixed aspect, fixed descriptum structure, fixed truth value, and largely fixed temporal relationship for tense. The only way to get pasts or futures is to locate in the relevant story a thing that no longer exists or does not yet exist. The term 'stiff sentence' is clearly apt. Notice that while stiffness reflects fixity in the storytelling and theorizing enterprise (where the story is a real-world story), nevertheless none of the restrictions introduced to stiffen sentences are relevant to determining the structure of the states designated or the SRE structure of the sentences as wholes. So while there is reason to think that nomics and habituals share structure, it is difficult to recognize this unless one can discount features of nomic sentences that are entirely due to the needs of storytelling. More generally, focusing on stiff sentences, as philosophers tend to do ('Snow is white'), inhibits a clear view of semantic structure. I took features of essentialist doctrine (objectivity and underwriting continuity of commitment) and traced them through the commitments of speakers as members of groups to the storytelling enterprise. In doing so, I offered a way to appropriate essentialism for constructivism. From the commitment built into essential property sentences, realism argues for something "out there" that guarantees the commitment, making it "real." The constructivist acknowledges the commitment and also the special status that structural property descriptions have in the storytelling enterprise, but lodging both the commitment and the status of essential properties in the real-world storytelling enterprise, the constructivist does without the supposed guarantee of an objective "reality." No doubt we must acknowledge the influence of the real world on our storytelling. But the real world does not make the decisions. We makers of judgments, epistemically constrained as we are, give essential property sentences their importance. We also, acceding to group-induced con-

113 Complex Situations

straints but still with considerable freedom, make worlds, including the "real world" — by telling stories, including real-world stories. This makes essentialism epistemic in the broad sense that associates 'epistemic' with storytelling or SR relationships, and contrasts with non-epistemic reference to elements of contents or REs. Kripke makes essentialism a "metaphysical" doctrine. This is consistent with what I have claimed, for insofar as metaphysics involves decisions about what exists, metaphysics too is epistemic in the broad sense. But Kripke also ties his essentialism to a doctrine of reference, which must be rejected, and to a doctrine of necessary truth, which rests on his account of reference. I see no reason not to have necessary truths, so long as they are not explicated the way Kripke explicates them. Stiff sentences are true, continuously true, and to varying degrees and in various ways, they constrain storytelling; they are necessary. Having adapted realist language to the SRE theory and making such concepts as necessity epistemic, I can now say that nomics are typically necessary, involve long-term commitments, often involve essential properties, and are "closed," where all of these are read in epistemic terms and associated with the p-vj; part of SR relationships, not - in any way - RE relationships. The difference between the habitual and the nomic, then, is clearly epistemic and does not challenge the structural identity of nomic and habitual iterative pictures and the situations they picture. 2-5 CONDITIONALS AND ARGUMENTS

Conditionals are sentences of'if ... then' form that do not allow commitment at is to the truth of the 'if-clause. There are two basic varieties: the "indicative," or regular conditional, and the subjunctive, which includes the counterfactual. Not all 'if-sentences are conditionals. Some 'if-sentences can be read as arguments (where 'if reads like 'since' or 'because'), and others can be read as generalizations ('whenever,' discussed below). I focus on indicative and subjunctive conditional forms of 'if-sentence, and on the argument form. 3° Conditionals (indicatives and subjunctives) are structurally related to arguments; indicative, subjunctive, and argument are differently tensed contextualizations of root-modals iterative sentences that authorize people to recommend such-and-such be included in a story once they are in a position to place another content in that story. The core of my claim is that the regular conditional is a futuretense condition-'when' construction, the subjunctive a past-tense

114 Tense, Reference, and Worldmaking

condition-'when' construction, and the argument a present-tense condition-'when' construction, all three counting as differently contextualized versions of iterative authorizing principles. Since some 'if-sentences can be read as arguments, these three classes of 'if-sentences fall into Dudman's category one and category three 'if-sentences. My approach brings out most features of the structure, content, and use of the conditional and related constructions. Its disadvantage is that it seems too complex to those brought up to think that there is something called a conditional connective with a simple syntactic form that is easily formalized, though — reluctantly admitted — difficult to apply. However, the conditional connective as ordinarily understood fails to handle the complications of ordinary language and of informal argument. If a conditional connective is to be introduced at all, it must be based on the structure of conditional sentences in English and on their roles in storytelling. What we have learned of the SRE structure and the application of iteratives, root modals, and 'when'-clauses tells us how to deal with the structure and application of conditional sentences in English. I do not discuss the enormous literature on the conditional.31 There is too much to do by way of establishing the structure of this construction to speak to the details of how the SRE approach relates to this often-insightful but usually structurally naive literature. I focus on those conditionals (etc.) for which time of utterance is relevant — in effect, only those where changes in evidence available to speakers and their audiences (and thus where their abilities to recommend sentential contents or make claims) count. "Timeless" sentences such as If the sum of two internal angles of a Euclidean triangle is 147 degrees, the third angle is 33 degrees. can be treated as special cases where evidence is always available. I emphasize that the concept of a condition is independent of and more basic than the concept of a conditional; hence there is no definitional circularity in using conditions to analyse conditionals. Conditions amount to causal antecedents or temporally sufficient reasons for something's beginning — for a c being described in suchand-such a way. Whether cause or reason, a condition is met before a conditioned situation ensues. This is reflected in the fact that in a condition-'when' construction, the RE structure of the main clause becomes R-E. The condition-'when' figures in the analysis of the

115 Complex Situations

conditional and in the analysis of the subjunctive and the argument. It also figures in the structure of the conditioned root-modal iterative, which stands as rule or principle to the subjunctives, arguments, and conditionals that, in particular speech contexts, contextualize it. 2.5.1 The Structure of the Standard Conditional The evidence for the structure I appeal to depends on adverbial markers and tense markers. The structure of the picture of the conditional situation should also be the structure of the conditional situation, but we have already seen hints that this structure need not be "on the surface." Let us begin by getting a grip on what counts as a regular or indicative conditional structure. One way to do this is to contrast it with other conditionals. The subjunctive and counterfactual conditionals are relatively easy to pick out: they have a 'would' or 'could' in the consequent clause of their sentences and often a 'were' or a 'had' in the 'if-clause. For example, the sentences If Harry had left yesterday, he would be here today. [Counterfactual] If Harry were to leave tomorrow, no one would complain. are subjunctive. The 'would' or 'could' is a more reliable test than 'were' or 'had,' since If Harry left yesterday, he would arrive tomorrow. is also a subjunctive, although there is no 'were' or 'had.' The regular conditional does not constitute the entire complement class of'if ... then' sentences without 'would/could' in the consequent. The class also includes arguments, where 'if is read as 'since,'3a and generalizations, where 'if is read as 'whenever.' Often the only way to decide if sentences without 'would/could' are conditional is by appeal to speech context: if it is apparent that the speaker, at time of speech (is), recommends inclusion of the antecedent, the sentence is an argument; if a general claim is made, the sentence is a generalization. By these criteria, regular conditionals are 'if... then' constructions without 'would/could' where arguments and generalizations have been eliminated. I should add that the criteria apply only to sentences in standard English. They do not apply to the philosopher's reconstruction of nomic and habitual (or other) pic-

i i 6 Tense, Reference, and Worldmaking

tures with 'if... then's. We can and should ignore these reconstructions, for they misconstrue the structure of the relevant pictures of situations. My hypothesis is that the regular conditional sentences. If Mort comes today, he'll leave tomorrow. If Mort came yesterday, he'll leave tomorrow.33 have the following complex SRE structure: When someone (c) is able to recommend inclusion of R,E in some story p (where c** for R of this RE is Mort, IR** = sometime today/yesterday and within iE**, and 0** = Mort come), someone (c*) will (then) be authorized to recommend inclusion of R,E (where c*** for this R is Mort, iR*** = j£*** = sometime tomorrow, and 0*** = Mort leave). In schematic form, assuming that c = c*, the regular conditional looks like this: (AF) When someone is able to positively recommend RE, he or she is able to positively recommend RE'. I refer to this form as (AF), which represents the .Future contextualization of an Authorizing principle (A), introduced below. Both detailed and schematic forms construe the regular conditional as a future-tense condition-'when' sentence with root modals in both the 'when'-clause and the perfectivized 'then'-clause. The regular conditional describes a person as coming to be permitted, with respect to a particular story, to recommend the content displayed in the 'then'-clause once the content displayed in the 'when'- (or 'if-) clause can be recommended. It is not an "inference ticket" or general licence for inferring with respect to a class of stories; a close approximation to a general licence is found with the iterative state that this conditional "contextualizes." I discuss the iterative general licensing principle (A) below. The regular conditional is a complex structure with two levels of things described or cs. At the most basic embedded level, a conditional "sentence" presents us with two contents will full iR and RE R and markers, two contents that a storyteller is licensed to include together in a story if he or she can positively recommend the content found

iiy

Complex Situations

in the first 'if-, or 'when'-, clause. These are contents with cs that, generally, are referred to by the subject phrases of the 'if- and 'then'clauses. At time of speech (is) neither of these contents is either recommended for inclusion in story (3 or denied this status. These contents are perspicuously displayed in the morphology of the conditional sentence, but not much else is clearly displayed; the conditional sentence is an elliptical display. According to the hypothesis, the contents are the "objects" of two root-modal verbs, which, combined in a condition-'when' structure, constitute the second level of complexity, where one describes a pair, c and c*, who are both "persons" — in fact, the same "person." The root modal of the 'ifor 'when'-clause is '(come to) be able to recommend at some speech position' — a verbal that, with its content "object," in effect describes a speech position at which a storyteller telling story |3 has sufficient evidence to recommend the relevant displayed content or RE. The root-modal verb of the second, or consequent, clause (the main clause) is '(come to) be authorized to recommend at the same speech position' - a verbal that in effect describes a speech position (a "person") at which the same storyteller telling the same story (3 is authorized to positively recommend the embedded content displayed in the second clause (which is not "the content of the second clause," since that is an R-E structure constituting a description of c*, not c***). The antecedent 'if- or 'when'-clause specifies, as all 'when'clauses do, an i R for the second or main clause. In the case of the regular conditional, this i R is always after time of speech (is). This explains why the regular conditional is always a future, opencondition construction. It contrasts with the past-tense condition'when' construction, which is always subjunctive and includes the counterfactual. The past tense of the subjunctive often appears marked in the verb 'were,' as in 'If Harold were to leave ...,' but it can appear in the verb of the RE display too: 'If Harold left, he would ...' With the counterfactual, it appears in a 'had,' as in 'If Harold had left, ...' Things begin to fall into place: the subjunctive is a past-tense condition-'when' construction and is so marked, while the regular conditional, like all future-tense 'when'-constructions, is not marked for future. Unfortunately, matters are not so simple. Markers seem to pose a difficulty for the hypothesis. One of the (AF) illustration sentences and a sentence like 'If Harry left yesterday, he'll be in Toledo next week' certainly seem, when their 'ifclauses are suspended, to be regular, non-subjunctive conditionals (there are no 'would's in their consequent clauses), but they have a past-tense marked verb in the antecedent clause. What is this past-

i i 8 Tense, Reference, and Worldmaking

tense marker doing when it appears in a regular conditional antecedent, which is a future-tense construction? Before speaking to this issue, let me establish first that descriptum markings on the displayed first-level REs are regular - that so far as picturing of contents or REs as opposed to tenses or SRs is concerned, the markers in clauses of a conditional work as they do in other clauses. I focus on the first clause, and to focus further on basic descriptum structure (R-E, R,E, or E-R), I assume that the terms in subject position in the clause refer to c** and c*** and that it is not difficult to decide what 0** and 0*** are. 'Has' seems to mark an E-R or anterior descriptum. Consider If Harry has left when you get there, he'll be in Manitoba. If no one has finished the dishes, they'll be damned hard to do. In both cases, 0 clearly precedes some i R . 34 With R-E markings, a 0 seems to come after some i R : If Harry is going to leave when you see him tomorrow, he should be told the ice is breaking up. If Harry was going to leave yesterday, Mort was going to too. 'Be going to' can be used with a clause designating a scheduling state as well as marking an R-E, but however it is used, the relevant use is as transparent in the conditional antecedent's picture of an embedded content as it is elsewhere. All simple (R,E) markers seem to be regular too. With some situations we must use a progressive marker with the combination of 'now' and an R,E: If Harry is bicycling to Toledo now, he'll arrive by tomorrow. but markers in the conditional seem the same in this regard as they are anywhere else. Point-like adverbial markers in conditionals seem to mark an i R of some RE, as they usually do outside the conditional; in particular, they mark iR** or (taking the consequent into account) iR***: If Harry left at 3:00, If Harry is leaving now, If Harry leaves at 3:00,

he will be in Toledo next week.

iig

Complex Situations

Notice that where a 'when'-clause appears in an 'if-clause, it does not serve as a condition-'when' clause, but still acts as a temporal specifier for an i R (here, JR**): If Godzilla has arrived when you get there, run like hell. It can, however, be read as a 'whenever'-clause if the 0 of the antecedent's RE is a habitual: If dogs eat when they are hungry, Fido is not hungry. When 'when' is used in this way, 'if can be read as 'since' and the antecedent's present-tense markers are honest ones. Both of them are present tense and a recommendation is made; thus, the conditional is read as an argument. I discuss such cases shortly. If markers for the elements and structure of descripta are regular, the same is not true of tense markers. But we should not expect them to operate regularly - that is, as they do outside of conditional clauses. In the first place, according to the hypothesis, we are dealing with a 'when'-clause construction, and tense markers in the futuretense 'when'-construction, at least, are irregular. In such cases, one always gets present-tense markers in the antecedent - at least in English. But, more important, the temporal adverbial of the antecedent obviously does not specify IR as it does in a normally tensed clause. Such specification is unnecessary, since a 'when'-clause always specifies i R for the main clause. Further, the temporal adverbial does not correlate with the tense markers of the antecedent clause: the sentence If Harry left tomorrow, he would arrive the next day. is a perfectly acceptable subjunctive, but 'tomorrow' clearly does not correlate with the past-tense-marked 'left.' Since there is no correlation between tense markers and temporal adverbials (which we have seen are put to use in specifying an iR** or iR*** for the displayed contents), it is plausible that the tense marker marks the tense of the conditional sentence as a whole. If past, the conditional is a subjunctive. If present-marked, it is a regular conditional — that is, a future-tensed 'when'-main construction. All would be well for this claim if past-tense markers in the antecedents of conditionals always correlated with a subjunctive reading for the conditional as a whole. But the problematic case, the one we have to deal with, is a conditional construction that is obviously a regular conditional and

12O Tense, Reference, and Worldmaking

therefore should be future, yet the marker on the antecedent's verb is past. If the hypothesis is to remain plausible, I must provide an account of what the past-tense marker is doing. Actually, it is not very difficult to do so once it is accepted that a conditional sentence describes "speech positions" — that c and c* of main and 'when'clauses are storytellers described as able to make recommendations. To see what needs to be done, let us look at the data. The following is ruled out: *If Mort leaves yesterday, he will arrive tomorrow, but this is allowed: If Mort left yesterday at 3:00, he'll arrive tomorrow. Present-tense markers allow several adverbials, so long as they are at is or after: If Mort is leaving now, George left yesterday. If Mort is leaving now, he'll arrive tomorrow. If Mort leaves tomorrow, he'll arrive the next day. If a similar adverbial, one at is or after, is used with past markers, we always get a subjunctive: If Mort left today, he would arrive tomorrow. If Mort left tomorrow, he would arrive the next day. Apparently the only case that causes tense-marking problems for the hypothesis that a standard conditional is in fact a future-tense condition-'when' construction is the one where the temporal adverbial specifying an iR** for the content pictured in the antecedent ('when'-)clause precedes the time at which the conditional as a whole is uttered (is). The problematic sentence I began with, 'If Mort came yesterday, he'll leave tomorrow,' when spelled out goes like this: When some storyteller is able to recommend inclusion of R,E (in** = yesterday, 0 = George come), he or she will be authorized to recommend inclusion of R,E' (iR*** = sometime tomorrow, 0 = George leave). We already know that the adverbial in the antecedent must specify i^** of the displayed content; we also know that the marking prob-

12 i

Complex Situations

lem arises only when this iR** is before the time of actual speech, is- Given this, the best explanation of the "past tense" marker would seem to be this: the "past tense" marker is a way of indicating that, no matter which speech position described by the future conditional (any speech position in story (3 after is where one is able to recommend RE) is "realized" (where someone telling the story speaks or thinks, actually recommending the inclusion of RE in story £), one will have an R,E-S. According to this explanation, the future-tense conditional with its 'when'-clause describes a position-to-be at which someone is able to recommend inclusion of RE - a way of referring to the potential members of the group c or "someone"s in the schematic (AF) - and the past marker here says that in any position so specified (given that any such c must be after time of speech), the result of being in a position to recommend is an ER-S (in this case, an E,R-S) because IR** is before is- This form of marking serves a distinct function, for with no other combination of antecedent's recommendation positions (speech times) is the SR relationship topologically determined. For instance, If George has left when you arrive tomorrow, he'll be in Toledo Tuesday. is consistent with all these possible recommendations: George will have left (when I arrive) tomorrow.35 George has left. George had left.

So, he'll be in Toledo Tuesday.

Intuitively, "when someone is able to recommend RE" acts like a description in the technical philosophical sense: it determines a set, in this case a set of "speakers" (c*, which is the same as c) - for the indicative or regular conditional, this set consists of the potential recommenders of RE. These are the "speakers" (c) who have sufficient evidence to recommend RE - specifically, they have the evidence that the speaker and hearer are lacking, where speaker and hearer constitute an evidence group at time of speech isIt is part of the job of a conditional to specify some "speakers" or speech positions (cs - "someone"s having the necessary evidence, relative to (3) both temporally and with respect to story-relative epistemic accessibility to the actual speaker and hearer in an evidence group at i s . For the regular conditional, at least, the pictured speech position (a place where one can actually recommend RE) is one that could be taken by the actual speaker and hearer or by someone else

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in their evidence group with respect to story (3. The evidence is not sufficient at time of speech to actually recommend RE, so a conditional, as opposed to an argument, is required. With the conditional - regular as well as subjunctive - as opposed to the argument, it is always the case that the pictured contents are not recommended (which is not the same as denied). With the regular conditional, as opposed to the subjunctive, the speech position is still "open"; it is one that could be assumed, while with the subjunctive, the speech position is closed (to varying degrees). Conditionals cannot properly be used unless the speaker and/or his or her audience are not at speech time in a position to positively recommend RE. This principle derives from the analysed form of the conditional as a condition-'when': speakers cannot use a 'when'clause of the relevant sort if they are in a speech position where they can recommend its embedded content RE. In the reconstructed structure of the conditional, this is reflected in the contrast between the c described and the speaker and hearer, in their own evidence position at time of speech. The fact that the condition-'when' has not been met and the authorization is therefore not yet available reflects the intuition that regular conditionals are ways of saying what someone will be authorized to say when satisfactory evidence (being in the proper position) arises. The fact that (AF)s are futuretensed condition-'when' sentences (even though this is not obvious in surface morphology) and the principle that tenses are related to issues of evidence help explain the truth- or (positive-)recommendation-related "tie" between antecedent and consequent. The antecedent presents a descriptive position (RE) that is understood (assumed by anyone with the right abilities) but not recommendable for inclusion in a story at time of speech; the conditional says not only that another position may be recommended when the first is, but that the "speech position" presented by "someone" (c) is epistemically accessible to those in the evidence group found with speaker and hearer. Thus, the SRE reconstruction of conditionals not only can explain markers, but can capture intuitions about how these constructions are applied - that is, what they have to say about the accessibility to speaker and hearer and others in their evidence position of various other evidence positions. 2.5.2 The Subjunctive and Counter/actual Conditionals Where the standard or indicative conditional, because of its futuretense condition-'when' structure, says there are speech positions

123 Complex Situations

(evidence-within-a-story positions) that are accessible to the speaker and/or his or her audience, the subjunctive conditional, because of its past-tense condition-'when' structure, says there were speech positions that in effect are now (epistemically) inaccessible. The counterfactual is a special case; it says that the speech positions are not only (to varying degrees) epistemically inaccessible, but also closed, for there is evidence (with respect to story (3) that the content of the antecedent is false - that it is denied admission to story (3, now and later. This interpretation is due to the assignment of an SRE structure to the relevant 'if-sentences. The assignment explains what it is thought these constructions say. With the counterfactual, for instance, the assignment of an SRE structure explains the idea that "the [content of the] antecedent is false." Before discussing this assignment and just what it explains and how, I distinguish counterfactual from subjunctive conditionals. The form 'if... had ... then' almost always gets a counterfactual reading on which it seems the speaker (at least) believes the content of the antecedent to be false. With all of If Hannibal had used tanks, his task would have been easier. If Harry had left tomorrow (instead of today), we would have been able to talk to him until then. If the housing problem had been solved last year, we wouldn't need to spend twice as much this year. the speaker normally believes that the antecedent is false. The 'if ... had' of the antecedent is not by itself enough to yield the counterfactual reading because such a construction can appear in sentences used as arguments as well as in those used as subjunctive conditionals: (Well, I guess you're right) if (since) the housing problem (really) had been solved (by February) last year, we won't need to bring it up again. One sign of this use of 'if... had' is the appearance of some verbal form in the consequent besides 'would' or 'could.' There are also related constructions that, lacking a 'would' or 'could,' do not necessarily get a counterfactual reading - for instance, If Harry had left by 3:00 no one told me. If Mort had run before, I couldn't tell.

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Similarly, there is the "reverse" form of conditional with 'had,' which again is not counterfactual: (You tell me it had, well,) if the mouse had eaten its pill, it (must be because it) pushed the lever. If Mort had escaped by 3:00, Mary must have let him out. Moreover, progressive markers in the antecedent, even with 'would' in the consequent, can still allow a non-counterfactual reading, at least if the consequent is carefully chosen: If Harry had been running when Mort arrived, he would keep going. These last exceptions and qualifications aside, however, the 'if... had ..., then ... would' sentential "picture" form yields a counterfactual reading. Although 'If... had ... would' is almost sufficient for a counterfactual reading, it is not necessary for such a reading. Another construction that often gets a counterfactual reading is the simple 'were ... would' construction found in If Harry were here, we would go. The 'were ... would' construction can be used only where the time of the 'if-clause's pictured RE's i R is the time of speech. The R,E form is common; an R-E is possible for If John were going to leave, Mary would be a lot happier, but not for either of If John were to leave,... If John were to be going to leave,... Unlike 'had ... would' constructions, a counterfactual reading for antecedent 'were'-clauses appears to depend on more than the form of the construction alone; intuitively, it depends on our having already established the truth of the negation of the content of the 'if-clause, or on the immediate availability of the information that would be sufficient for establishing the truth of the negation of the

125 Complex Situations

'if-clause. The counterfactual reading is almost forced where, as in 'If Harry were here, we could go,' we suppose that the speaker and his or her audience will certainly know if Harry is in their immediate environment. In contrast, we have with If Harry were in Tasmania, he would (have) let us know. a presumption that the content of the 'if-clause is false, but it does not yield a strictly counterfactual reading. Whatever it is that leads to a counterfactual reading with these constructions, it is not such gross structural features of the sentences as 'were ... would,' since this gross structure is consistent with non-counterfactual readings. An 'if... were to ..., then ... would' construction is the least likely of the constructions looked at so far to get a counterfactual reading. With the possible exception of an E-R antecedent, as in If Harry were to have eaten his gruel, he would have been a lot healthier. this form allows for the possibility that the content of the antecedent be held true at some later time. If Harry were to eat his gruel, he would be a lot healthier. If Godzilla were to be going to leave when you arrive, he would be difficult to stop. 'Were to ... would' constructions are often used for giving advice, coaxing, warning, and the like, so while suggesting that the antecedent is unlikely, given these purposes, they must not rule it out. We can say, in general, that while the constructions we have considered thus far are all contrafactual, in the sense that every construction involves both a refusal to affirm the antecedent of the conditional and a presumption that it is unlikely that the content can be affirmed (recommended, asserted) by those in the relevant evidence group, only one construction - the 'had ... would' construction - carries on its own shoulders the stronger claim of counterfactuality. Let us see if a past-tense version of the condition-'when' used to reconstruct the regular conditional can deal with these data. There are two problems — distinguishing the subjunctive reading from the reading of the indicative or regular conditional and, within the class of subjunctive readings, distinguishing the counterfactual reading from all others. I claim that the markers on pictures of "conditional

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situations" both reveal structure and make for the differences in these readings. The schematic form of the subjunctive should, paralleling the regular conditional, look like this: (AP) When someone was able to recommend inclusion of RE in story p, he or she was authorized to recommend inclusion of RE' in story (3. Here, P stands for Past. We should expect, as with the regular conditional, that markers for REs (for RE type and temporal adverbials for IK** and iR***) are regular — that they operate as they would outside of conditional constructions. Inspection of the sentences above shows this. We should also expect there to be some form of past-tense marker in the conditional construction to indicate that the condition-'when' is past tense. This is found in the 'were' and 'would' of subjunctives in general and the 'had' and 'would' of the counterfactual. This past-tense marker, keep in mind, is a past tense for the conditional construction as a whole. It is not a way of putting one of the displayed contents into a past-tense relationship. To do this is to take a stance, and the stance presented is one the speaker makes with respect to the content of the conditional construction as a whole, not with respect to the contents of the first and second clauses. We should also expect the distinctive subjunctive reading to come from the structure of the past-tense condition-'when' construction, just as the distinctive indicative reading of the regular conditional came from the open- (future-)tense condition-'when' construction. No conditional of any sort allows the actual recommendation at is of RE of (AF) or (AP): both (AF) and (AP), by separating their described speech positions or cs (someone with the evidence needed to positively recommend that the content of the first clause be included in story (3) from the speaker and hearer and their evidence group, instruct the hearer against this. But built into both the future (regular conditional) and past (subjunctive conditional) are views on the recommendability of RE by the speaker and/or his or her evidence group. With the regular conditional, evidence is likely to become available and RE to be recommended, since speech positions after is (those represented in SRE structure by c) are made epistemically accessible to members of the group with story-relative common knowledge or "assumptions" at time of speech — to those in a like speech position. The subjunctive, like the regular conditional, is an instruction to not actually recommend inclusion of RE now; how-

127 Complex Situations

ever, unlike the regular conditional, it indicates that it is sufficiently unlikely that anyone in the speech context at is can recommend inclusion of RE that it is unreasonable to expect that inclusion of RE will ever be recommended. The counterfactual, we could say, goes further and tells a listener that he or she will definitely not ever (with respect to the relevant story) be able to recommend RE; there is at speech time sufficient evidence of the falsity of RE to provide a reason for not ever recommending inclusion of RE in (3. With the counterfactual, c of (AP) cannot be anyone in the speaker's evidence group vis-a-vis the story to which the evidence is relevant. How do these readings arise? The SRE structure of the subjunctive conditional explains the subjunctive reading. This is evident when we show - keeping structure in mind — how a person listening to an utterance of a subjunctive sentence must understand the utterance in such a way that the subjunctive reading (the unlikelihood of recommending the content of the first clause) is the only possible one. As with the regular conditional, we should focus on c, for this is the group of "speakers" with evidence sufficient to recommend RE, the speech positions or recommendation positions the conditional as a whole describes. Like other condition-'when' constructions that are in the past tense, (AP) pictures a complex of situations that amount to a condition already met and an ensuing result; the antecedent's content - involving a root-modal situation in this case - is treated as settled, and c (the "someone" the subjunctive is about) is fixed. The strategy is to make the contrafactual reading depend on the epistemic inaccessibility of these speech positions to those in the evidence position of the speaker and hearer at speech time. Clearly, with respect to a given RE, one person or several persons can be in the same evidence or recommendation position at different times. In some cases virtually all of "us" are in the same position at all times. "Timeless truths," for example, are routinely recommendable by any one of "us," at any time, because we assume the relevant evidence is available to anyone, all the time. But the conditionals we are dealing with here are those for which time of speech makes a difference, where accumulation of evidence and other forms of change of evidence play a role. On the basis of the structure that the subjunctive conditional (AP) shares with (AF), it is possible to say that the position where "someone" had evidence sufficient to recommend RE is not the position of the speaker at speech time. If a speaker has evidence for something - evidence sufficient (modulo story P) for recommending or ruling out a positive recommendation - then, all things being equal, he or she still does. If

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someone had sufficient evidence for or against RE (where RE is, of course, fully specified as a sentential content - including temporal references), he or she still does and can now recommend RE or rule it out. This principle might be confused with what Dummett calls the "truth-value link" ("if it was true, it is true"), which plays a central role in tense logic. To avoid confusion, call this epistemic principle a principle of continuity of commitment. With this principle in mind, we can see why someone hearing the speaker's (AP) When someone was able to recommend RE, he or she was authorized to recommend RE'. knows that (the speaker believes that) he or she cannot now recommend RE, for he or she is not the "someone" mentioned. Any member of the evidence group defined as those who were able to recommend RE must either include the hearer or not. The group is "settled" because this c, being in a past-tense construction, is part of a settled content and is "determinate." If the hearer was a member of the group, he or she still is, by the principle of continuity of commitment, but obviously the hearer is not a member or he or she could recommend RE (and would be doing it). Nor is it plausible for him or her to anticipate membership in this group. Unlike the group found with the future-tense (AF), this is not a group for which membership is still indeterminate for those in the evidence position of the speaker and hearer at time of speech. In effect, a contrafactual or subjunctive has to do with what might be said by someone else with different evidence than that available now to the speaker and hearer at time of speech, or likely to be available later. The content (RE) could perhaps be recommended in a different story, but not in the one being told. Keep in mind that although the subjunctive is a genuine past-tense 'when'-construction and c is determinate, the past-tense use of a 'when'-clause does not commit the speaker to holding that c — evidence and speech positions — exists. Keep in mind, too, that this reasoning does not depend on the availability at is of evidence or reasons for the view that RE is false. It is still possible that RE can be recommended by someone in the relevant evidence group, in the sense that it is not shown at is that RE must not be recommended (that such a recommendation would be false) on the basis of evidence available at is. Assuming that this shows how the special structure of the pasttense condition-'when' construction explains the contrafactual, the remaining task is to see how the counterfactual comes about. I assume the counterfactual is among the contrafactuals. If this is true,

129 Complex Situations

the issue is clear: we must explain how it is that one reasons beyond what has already been shown to be the commitment on the part of the speaker in the case of the subjunctive or contrafactual to the counterfactual claim that the content of the antecedent of the 'if clause is false — that this content cannot be admitted into story (3. I also assume that the issue has something to do with the 'had' in the 'if-clause; this is the only feature that distinguishes the subjunctive from the counterfactual. A simple hypothesis is that the 'had' does double marking duty here. It not only marks the pasttense form of the conditional-'when' construction, but also marks a commitment already made on the part of the speaker. If the 'had' does this, it is easy to show that the commitment must be to the falsity of the content of the antecedent. The content is in a subjunctive, so it is, so far, "floated" but still held unlikely to be recommendable. But assume that there is an indication that the speaker had made a commitment. If so, it cannot be to the truth of the content, since by continuity of commitment, the speaker would have to then recommend the content and we would be presented with an argument, not a conditional. Thus, the speaker must hold the content to be false. The float is not a sham, for the counterfactual gives one a way to speak to what could happen if something had been different in story p. The counterfactual, on this hypothesis, is built on the contrafactual but independently indicates that the evidence is already in at time of speech. 2.5.3 Arguments, Conditioned Root-Modal Iteratives, and the Storytelling "We"

Think now of an argument as the present-tensed counterpart of the regular conditional and the subjunctive. By an argument I mean a two-clause counterpart to a conditional or counterfactual. With the conditional we have If George leaves tomorrow, Harry will arrive the day after, and with an argument we have instead George will leave tomorrow. Therefore, Harry will arrive the day after. Syntactically or morphologically speaking, arguments are fully tensed sentential constructions that have the tense markers found in independent clauses. Each clause in an argument has a positively recommended RE or sentential content, so each clause receives a full

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SRE structure. Thus, the word 'clause' in connection with arguments is slightly misleading. The two clauses of an argument are in fact syntactically and also semantically - independent sentences. Fully tensed clauses indicate either that evidence is available for assertion or inclusion in general, or that it is presumed to be available, as in (Let us {assume/agree} that) Harry will leave tomorrow,... Unlike with the conditionals, there are no conditions here and there is no suspension of commitment (contrast it with 'If we assume that...'). The word 'if can appear in what is in fact an argument (in the above sense), but where it does, it is always possible to substitute it with 'since' or 'granted'; moreover, the clause following the 'ifclause is fully tensed. 'Since' and 'granted' can appear only where the truth of the "antecedent" has already been demonstrated, assumed, or given: (Granted) Harry will have left by 3:00,... If (since) he will have left by 3:00, he will not be at the party. Note the 'will' in the 'if-clause; it would not appear in a conditional, as in If Harry has left by 3:00, he won't be at the party. When (to simplify matters) the person to whom the conditional is addressed and/or the speaker have at some interval i sufficient evidence that he or she can recommend inclusion of RE, he or she will, instead of the conditional, produce one of these arguments: (a) Harry will have left he won't be at the party, by 3:00. (b) Harry has left. So, he isn't at the party, he wasn't at the party. (c) Harry had left by 3:00. 'If-clauses with nomic antecedents satisfy the "presumed to be true" condition on 'since' substitution, and wherever there is a nomic in an 'if-clause, we can treat the 'if... then' as an argument:" If (since) Harry leaves whenever Mary comes, we should invite Mary.

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Here the 'if-clause is fully tensed. The thesis that an argument has the structure of a present-tense counterpart to a (future) conditional or (past) subjunctive cannot be defended by superficially inspecting the two-clause argument's surface form: there is not even an 'if for a "condition," and only a 'so' or 'therefore' (at best) for a "consequence." Moreover, there is no indication at all of the present-tense form of the argument. All three versions (a—c) above can serve as surface forms of the relevant argument form — that is, (ARG) Because you are now able to positively recommend inclusion of RE in story (3, you are now authorized to positively recommend inclusion of RE' in story (3. (ARG') I am able to recommend RE, so I am authorized to recommend RE'. These marking deficiencies, though perplexing to someone looking for a morphology that reveals all, are unimportant. The argument is only slightly worse in revealing its form than are regular and subjunctive conditionals. And semantic considerations argue that, irrespective of markers, arguments have the form (ARG). The primary reason to hold this is that we should expect the argument to share features of its form and gain its authority from the same basic source as the regular conditional and the subjunctive. I call this source an authorizing principle, or (A), which can be construed as an iterative root-modal construction that "contextualizes" as a subjunctive in past-tense 'when' form, as an argument in present form (where there are no 'when's), and as a regular conditional in futuretense condition-'when' form. I delay discussing authorizing principles to emphasize that if it is assumed that there is some connection between conditionals and arguments, the hypothesis that arguments are present-tense contextualizations of authorizing principles has much to recommend it. It cannot be an accident that just as there is no genuine present-tense condition-'when' construction, there is no genuine present-tense conditional. Nor can it be an accident that the "persons" with evidence sufficient to recommend RE in the conditional construction become the speaker carrying out an argument when he or she is in the relevant position. The person who presents an argument recommends inclusion of the full content of the (ARG)'s antecedent's content in story (3, but in doing so automatically becomes someone authorized to make and making a positive recommendation on the

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embedded content (RE). In using the first clause in a fully tensed way, he or she says that there is someone now with the evidence required to make a positive recommendation on the embedded RE, and in saying this, he or she makes a positive recommendation himor herself. This makes the recommendation self-referential and yields the argument's claim, unique to it as opposed to (AF) and (AP), that the actual speaker p is able to recommend RE and - in uttering the argument - is recommending RE. He or she has adequate evidence and takes over one of the speaker positions the conditionals merely describe in terms of cs able to make a positive recommendation concerning RE. This neat result gives good reason for thinking that the argument is in fact a present-tense contextualization of an authorizing principle that says that people in a position to recommend one content are authorized to recommend another. Now I can discuss authorizing principles. It is easy to explain their structure - they are related to the condition-'when' constructions in the way that iterative sentences stand to non-iterative condition'when' sentences. Thus, authorizing principles are pictures of single, emergent situations, subject to the standard RE modifications. Producing a single iterative picture rather than simply joining clauses makes for further differences too. Authorizing principles always describe a group of people as those who share a characteristic over a time (the period over which the situation is "in effect") and who authorize recommending something (RE') whenever (or some other FREQ) they recommend something else (RE). In this regard they are not, as the condition-'when' sentences are, relativized to evidence in some story |3. These principles are not, then, story-relative. In effect, they do not describe people with such-and-such evidence with respect to such-and-such a story, but people who authorize recommending such-and-such a content, given that they can recommend another, without regard to a story. The principles describe people in terms of ways they "connect ideas" reasonably (at least in their view). By producing an iterative sentence, one describes a tendency of members of a group and in a way universalizes: the group described changes from those in such-and-such an evidence position (as in the antecedent of the conditionals) to a group that "connects" contents without regard to stories. I call this new c the group of storytellers. It becomes, where the authorizing principle is one accepted by the speaker p, the storytelling "we." The general conditioned root-modal iterative principle (maxim, or general authorization) is

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Storytellers are authorized to recommend inclusion of RE' in a story when they are able to (positively) recommend inclusion of RE. or, in a form that better reflects its origin in 'when'-clauses, (A) Whenever storytellers are able to (positively) recommend inclusion of RE, they are authorized to recommend inclusion of RE'. 36 where 'RE' and 'RE" stand for sentential contents (some combination of elements described structurally by {, c, i R >, <0, i£>}), and where both main clause and condition clause are root-modal designators. For example, consider the maxim that contextualizes as the conditional If Harry arrives, Joan will leave. The maxim (A) is: 'Whenever storytellers (c) are able to positively recommend inclusion of the descriptive position ij;* of RE [an E,R amounting to {> <*!>*, Harry (= c*), iR*>}], they (c of the iterative again) are authorized to positively recommend inclusion of the descriptive position i|i** of RE' [an E,R consisting of {<Joan leave (0**), iE**>, }].' This sentence as a whole, but without tense markers, pictures an RE with a 0 that is the root-modal iterative state as a whole. Sentences of form (A) picture a tendency of speakers construed as storytellers, a root-modal tendency that amounts to a rule by which these storytellers put stories together. The fact that (A) refers to a tendency or iterative situation is sufficient to distinguish it from a conditional sentence, for the conditional as a whole does not refer to such a situation.37 An (A) sentence, in referring to an iterative, can in principle be past, present, or future and can have any RE-structure form (simple, anticipative, or perfect). Nevertheless, an (A) in use normally designates, not just "someone's" rules, but our rules: (A)s designate what amount to our principles of inference. Such (A)s have no useful pastor future-tense counterparts, and their only descriptum structure is a simple one. Consider a past-tense (A): Whenever storytellers were able to recommend inclusion of RE, they were authorized to recommend inclusion of RE'.

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Since an (A) is an authorization for a group of people to (positively) recommend something once they can recommend something else, and since anyone authorized must be a member of the group, saying that there was such a group puts the people described by the authorization situation before time of speech and effectively excludes them from among us. Past-tense (A)s do not designate our rules, maxims, or principles of inference. Past- (and future) tense (A)s are likely to appear in discussions of conceptual or theory change. They describe the rules and principles that people used to use in their arguments, rules that licensed their arguments or conditionals.38 However, present-tense (A)s are not ipso facto accepted by us. If we isolate the class c from us ("How oddly these people reason!"), (A)s describe other people by what they authorize. Making such comparisons, we usually suppose that the contents their language(s) refer to are sufficiently similar to our REs and RE's that we can at least display "connections" that we do not ourselves accept. It might be argued that it is conceptually impossible to have another group that refers to the same contents but does not have the same rules of inference we do; someone might claim this who thought that the meanings of sentences (their contents) are completely determined by their roles in inferences. This claim is simply wrong. Not only are the contents of non-complex sentences usually decidable without appeal to accepted patterns of inference, but contents must be individuated independently of rules of inference. (This point is defended in chapter 3; it is discussed further in chapters 4 and 7.) Rules of inference as introduced here presuppose contents independently specified. Conditionals, arguments, and subjunctives "contextualize" (A)s. They are contextualizations because they are about speakers described as being in story-relative evidence positions, where (A)s are about speakers who are members of groups described storyindependently; the former are in a particular story context, where the latter are not. An (A) leaves open what is to count as adequate evidence to recommend the inclusion of the content of an RE' in a story, but a conditional or an argument always suppose that there is an evidence position that the speaker and hearers are in at time of speech (a recommendation position), and that with respect to the relevant story as told thus far, the recommendation position and thus speakers described by the conditional are (variably) accessible to the speaker and hearer - to those in that evidence position fixed at is. Speakers described as being in story-relative evidence positions are of course subsets of speakers described as being authorized story-

*35 Complex Situations

independently, but this does not give us a route by which we can "reduce" the story-independent group to story-relative groups. We could reduce in this way only if we could characterize all possible evidence positions, which also requires characterizing all possible stories — that is, saying what is "sayable" so far as evidence and inference are concerned. That would require enumerating not just (A)s, but (A)s accepted by a group of storytellers and, for us, the (A)s we accept or think correct. The point can also be put in terms of the way authority is conferred. One person in a speech context is (or groups of people are) authorized to recommend inclusion of RE' whenever he or she is (or they are) able to recommend RE because he or she is (or they are) among those who are authorized to do so in a variety of speech contexts, over many stories and evidence positions. This asymmetry is genuine: one can say that people construct conditionals and arguments as they do because they are dealing with the epistemic accessibility of the relevant "speech positions" in accordance with principles they think reasonable (which they accept), but one cannot say that people think the relevant principles are reasonable because they construct conditionals and argue in accordance with them.39 Moreover, the reductivist project fails because extensional definitions of the storytelling we fail. One might try to draw boundaries around the class by saying that it consists of all speakers of some language or another, assuming that there is a way of providing an extensional definition for this class.40 That does not, however, yield what is needed. What we need is something like "those who tell like stories in a language or who connect things up in more or less the same way." But this appeals to a set of (A)s to define the storytelling group. It is to say that the group consists of all those who "follow an argument" or "see that" something follows from something else - that is, who are described by the root-modal iterative or who constitute c(s) for the (A) or (A)s. We can also say, to a limited extent, that the storytelling we is a group whose members all accept a "theory." Yet this too moves in the same circle of concepts if, as seems reasonable, those who accept some theory are those who are members of a group that authorizes connecting contents together in some specific way. I mentioned earlier a way in which the iterative derives from condition-'when' constructions — it derives in such a way that some condition-'when' construction becomes an iterative when a frequency specification is added or, in terms of pictures or "sentences," a particular condition-'when' complex picture becomes an iterative picture when an appropriate frequency adverbial is added. This form of

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effectively syntactic derivation clearly has nothing to do with possibilities of reducing (A)s to conditionals and arguments, even though the conditionals are particular conditional-'when' constructions and (A)s are iterative "sentences" that derive in this sense from them. The fact that (A)s so easily derive syntactically from conditionals and arguments is important for a different reason. It is sometimes thought that it is difficult to produce examples of "rules of language." Actually, it is extremely easy and within the competence of any speaker if by a 'rule of language' one means something like a rule of a language game, one that governs "moves" by storytellers. These are, in fact, (A)s. Take any conditional "sentence" in the form of an (AF) or (AP) and transform it into a rule of language in this sense by changing subject terms and adding a frequency adverbial. Anyone can make the simple syntactic move. The interesting moves are epistemic, not syntactic. They have to do with justification. There is a strong epistemic relationship between conditionals and (A)s, the weight of which is borne by the root-modal 'authorize' and the changes in things c that the sentence is about. If a conditional sentence is thought to be correct by a speaker (typically, if he or she is not being mendacious or perverse), we can not only say on the basis of syntactic competence that the speaker knows which rule he or she is following when he or she utters a conditional, but also say (assuming storytelling competence) that the speaker thinks that the "connection" between contents in terms of which he or she describes a storytelling position (a "someone") is justified or reasonable (so that this "someone" could be he or she, with different evidence) because he or she is authorized by a principle others (a storytelling group) accept. It is important to say just what sort of justification this is. If asked for justification for a conditional uttered, someone might speak to a different question by attempting to justify the (A) that authorizes it - perhaps by appealing to a habitual or nomic that describes the thing(s) (c** and c***) described in the displayed contents of the conditional or (A). I speak to this shortly. However, the justification I have in mind consists in the speaker's "universalizing" the connection, not by saying that all c**s always act that way, for that is a misguided and sloppy way to try to speak to the issue of the justification of an (A), but by appeal to a group of like-minded theoreticians, to those who would (he or she must believe) agree in producing that conditional on that occasion in that story fj. The speaker effectively says that he or she believes the conditional is correct because it is reasonable, because "anyone" would say so. Justification by appeal to (A)s is an appeal to the storytelling group who connect ideas in a more or less uniform way

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across several stories and without regard to the evidence available at some time or another in some story or another. (A)s include Wittgenstein's rules of a language game. They do not encompass all of the things he seems to have meant by the notion of a rule of a language game; he certainly did not seem to be aware of their form in any explicit way, and he tended to focus on mathematical examples, which are demonstrably different. Nevertheless, (A)s suit the intuitive idea of something that controls moves in a language game. They are general principles in terms of which anyone in a group reasonably (according to them) argues or infers — in effect, tells a story (in a core sense of "tell a story" - says something is true if something else is true). If one argues by going from an SRE to an SRE', for instance, the argument is reasonable if anyone else among the group would so argue from the positive recommendation of the one sentential content to the positive recommendation of the other. These rules may not always be articulated. All we usually encounter are contextualizations of the rules — subjunctives, arguments, and conditionals as found in speech. But they are very easy to articulate, and it is easy to say what it is like for one to know that one is following a rule: producing a conditional or an argument is following a rule. 2.5.4 Conditionals, (A)s, Truth, and Scepticism Philosophers and others concerned with semantics have inherited in the truth-functional logical connectives - the material conditional is a prime example — a simplistic view of the structure of the conditional that leads to serious misunderstandings, not only with respect to the structure of the conditional — as I have shown - but also with respect to the truth of conditional sentences. I think the SRE theory helps clear up misunderstandings with respect to truth as well as with respect to structure.41 The starting point for a better understanding of the truth of a conditional is its structure. The conditional certainly is not - as the logical connective approach makes it out to be — a structure consisting of two fully tensed sentences (sentences making claims) joined by a "conditional connective."42 The ordinary-language conditional consists of two clauses that are structurally fixed and structurally related to each other in such a way that they cannot be thought completely independent of one another. All conditionals have the form of pastor future-tensed condition-'when' constructions. Both of the clauses involved always describe people — the same one(s) for each clause — by means of root-modal constructions, and both clauses have full

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pictures of sentential contents embedded under their root-modal verbs, where in neither case is the content held true or recommended at time of speech. Little of this structure and detail is apparent. All one finds in the apparent structure of the conditional are the two pictured contents, an 'if and 'then,' and tense markers that have nothing to do with the pictured contents as such. No doubt this unrevealing appearance partially excuses the simplistic syntax of the conditional connective approach. It also partially explains, but should not excuse, the tendency for one to ignore the most elementary fact about truth and the conditional: neither displayed clause is true or false (indeed, no claim is made), even though something that looks like a claim is made by the complex construction as a whole. Given this, no account of the truth or correctness of the conditional as a whole in terms of the truth of its parts even makes sense. Fortunately, with a better understanding of structure in hand and with recognition of the fact that neither clause is true or false, we can begin to say something more useful about the truth of the conditional. By speaking to this issue, we make a partial contribution to the question of how the conditional is "applied," what makes it meaningful. Given the complexity and nature of the structure of the conditional, however, we should not be surprised if simple cases of true sentences - of sentences with single non-complex situations describing single things - give few clues about what is going on. The task is different from but certainly no less complicated than the task posed by the structure of the prepositional attitude, where the issues are those of (re)presenting stances - sometimes (more or less faithfully) another's, sometimes one's own, sometimes both. The conditional describes people too, but deals with what these people ought to say, given that they say something else and assuming that they are members of the group that authorizes connecting things in suchand-such a way. The truth of a conditional has to be a matter of correct descriptions of these people located at differing speech positions and telling varying stories with varying evidence. To get a grip on the issues, let us exploit the fact that conditionals are condition-'when' constructions and see if there is anything we can learn about the truth of the conditional by asking what it is for a relatively simple condition-'when' construction - one without the complications of root modals describing people trying to tell coherent tales - to be true. Sentences like 'Harry left when Mort arrived' appear to be reasonably straightforwardly decidable, or at least more straightforwardly decidable than (AF)s and (AP)s. 'Harry left when Mort arrived' says that Harry left, that Mort arrived, and that there was a causal relationship such that Mort's arrival was the cause of

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Harry's leaving. Given the appropriate story, there is no difficulty, it would seem, in deciding on independent grounds that Harry left and that Mort arrived, nor in deciding that Harry left temporal'when' Mort arrived. Matters seems to get complicated when one tries to decide whether Mort's arrival caused Harry's departure, but let us ignore this for the moment. Pursuing the parallel suggested by sameness of general structure and also ignoring any "connection" claim made, can we with conditionals at least be confident that we can decide on the truth of "the antecedent," "the consequent," and the temporal relations? I doubt that anyone would think that, compared to 'Harry left' and 'Mort arrived,' there is a straightforward way to decide whether 'Someone was able to recommend RE' and 'that person was authorized to recommend RE'.' were true, or even decide what time is picked out by inserting the first in a 'when'clause. There is no independent way to decide whether either of these is true — no way apart from assuming that the "person" described is a member of the right storytelling group, that group described by the (A) that gives a general authorization to members of the group. One reason this is so is that the "person" introduced, c (= c*) for the conditional sentence, "is" only as he or she is described. The person is effectively a speech position and - particularly in the case of the subjunctive — may never be "realized." There is therefore no independent way to gain access to this "person"; no story, fictional or otherwise, gives us further information concerning him or her. This should not be surprising, of course, since the conditional is a way of speaking of how one can or could tell stories - a way of talking about "speech positions" or "people," not about people described as, say, two metres tall and weighing 100 kilos. One could conclude that the conditional, in a way, is not in a story at all.43 There is a second and more important reason why there is no independent way to decide on the truth of a conditional: the person must be the "right" one if the conditional is to be correct. It must be a person who accords with the speaker's (p's) "rules of language" or (A)s — the (A)s the speaker holds correct. Therefore, if the conditional is to be correct, it must reflect a "connection between ideas" that we accept as correct. This does not prevent us or anyone from constructing and pictureunderstanding wild and incorrect conditionals. But where we want them to be true or correct, it does prevent us from constructing conditionals with which we are out of accord — which do not go along with the (A)s we accept. The "person" described by the conditional must be "one of us" if the move he or she is authorized to make is to be one we sanction. Authority - what we accept - devolves on the person described by virtue of his or her being a member of our

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group. Here, this amounts to a "person" being described as a member - that is, it amounts to the introduction of a c that "does" as we do. This authority is the last court of appeal in dealing with "connective" sentences, even for the uncomplicated condition-'when' 'Harry left when Mort arrived,' which seemed to be largely independently decidable. The truth or correctness of the causal claim in this and like sentences is, in the final analysis, dependent for justification not on its iteration 'Harry left/leaves whenever Mort arrived/arrives,' but on an (A) with Harry leave in the most-embedded RE and Mort arrive in the most-embedded RE'. One is led to this authority by the causal claim that the condition-'when' construction imposes. It might be thought that it would be enough to hold that the truth of this causal claim depends on the acceptance of some habitual or nomic iteration with the relevant contents. But at best this move offers a delay, for it turns out that justifying the truth of a habitual or nomic depends on acceptance of an authorizing principle (A) with most-embedded RE and RE' the same as those found in condition and main clauses of the structure of the iterative. I explored some features of the truth of nomic and habitual sentences by relating their truth to commitments - especially to the continuing commitments found with stiff sentences and nomics. The aim was to distinguish nomics from habituals on epistemic grounds. By drawing out connections between nomics and essential property sentences, I displayed some of the "logic of explanation" relevant to these sentences - some of the coherence that is a crucial feature of understanding in the storytelling sense. But I did not say what it is for a nomic or habitual to be true, nor did I speak directly to the matter of coherence. To do either is to appeal to (A)s, and for this reason, the truth of a sentence like 'Harry left when Mort arrived' depends on (A)s. Intuitively, one must have recourse to (A)s because iteratives of a non-(A) sort cannot confer authority to make recommendations, nor deal directly with the core of coherence, which is the rulefollowing behaviour of human beings. (A)s do both, and it is obvious from their structures that they do both. If all this is on the right track, conditionals are correct when they are contextualizations of correct (A)s and when justifications of habituals and nomics proceed through correct (A)s. This epistemic priority of (A)s reverses the structural or pictorial priority of condition-'when' constructions. Iteratives, including (A)s, are syntactically derived from condition-'when' constructions. This variety of non-epistemic derivation preserves structure and lexical "content." It also guarantees that for any condition-'when' construction there "is" an iterative version. Interestingly, this derivation even guaran-

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tees that where one has a non-(A) form of iterative, such as 'Copper conducts electricity whenever a potential difference is applied,' there "is" a corresponding (A) form, 'Whenever someone is able to recommend RE (where RE = the content of the 'when[ever]'-clause in the nomic sentence), he or she is authorized to recommend RE' (where RE' = the content of the main clause).' This correspondence no doubt leads some to write "the laws of nature" in conditional form, even if this confuses matters. It also partially underwrites for persons who are not just syntactically or picture-referentially competent but storytelling competent too - a correspondence in commitments. Whenever someone holds a nomic or habitual to be correct, he or she ought to hold a sentence of form (A) to be correct, and vice-versa. Given this, one can even use commitment to a nomic or habitual as a sign or indication that the person who holds it also holds the corresponding (A), with condition RE and main RE' written into the (A)'s most-embedded RE and RE'. But it is wrong to think of things in this way if commitment to a nomic or habitual is taken to be a criterion for commitment to an (A). To reiterate, commitments to (A)s are and must be epistemically prior to commitments to nomics or habituals, for no other sentences have the machinery to deal with the authorizations we suppose "our" nomics and habituals involve. The central justificatory role of (A)s (at least so far as connective sentences and storytelling are concerned) and the fact that they are about groups modally characterized are crucial to the constructivist account of meaningfulness that I shall defend. It might be argued, however, that justification for iteratives of a non-(A) sort and even of (A)s must depend on a "scientific method" that makes direct appeal to "experience" of "conjunctions of events," so that what bears the weight of justification are cases of "direct confrontation" with the world. According to this view, the world is what makes our connective sentences true and coherent, so perhaps we should think of authority moving through "particular instances" of causal connection to iteratives and eventually (in ways left vague) to principles of inference. There is something right about this line, but if handled carefully, what is right about it can be preserved and made entirely consistent with constructivism. The strategy is to view most of what is usually called "scientific method" and "appeals to experience" as implied by the structure of (A)s and inconceivable without them. Consider the notion of repeatability. "Experimental procedure" is based on such a principle: if behaviour in circumstances cannot be repeated, throw out the claim that there is a connection. But notice to whom or what this repeatability injunction is addressed: it is addressed to people

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who consider themselves constrained by standards of good evidence (what one is able to recommend) and who wish to decide "what happens" when something is in such-and-such circumstances. These are members of a storytelling group, and it is their decision, not the world's, to accept or reject a "principle of inference." Put in this light, the "repetition" implied by constructing an iteration of 'Harry left when Mort arrived' does not speak directly — as Hume thought it did — to the truth of the causal claim.44 Repeatability is not iteration, which is solely a syntactic notion. Repeatability is relevant to the truth of a causal claim only because it amounts to another way of saying what is already said by the structure of (A)s, where authority is universalized over a group and independently of speech context, story, and actual speaker. Once this is acknowledged, it is possible nevertheless to say that "the world" does constrain the class of sentences that we consider connective by "allowing" only some combinations, at least where one is engaged in describing cs of our world. Those cases where we are engaged in telling stories about the things of our world are typically the cases where we are and must be sensitive to "what actually happens" when something is done to something or when something is found suddenly in circumstances that bring about changes in its behaviour - in how it is to be correctly described. "The world" also plays a role in making "coherent" the entire set of contents that are placed in connective rules or (A)s. This becomes most apparent when one asks how it is that one can reliably move from considering the conjunction of a c* so described (in a 'when'clause) and a c (which becomes so described) to a further conjunction of c with another c - how we can make reasonable predictions, extending through several things and across a reasonable amount of time, that allow us to get along in our world (where an interest in being able to do this is surely one root of "meaningfulness"). What makes for reliability is a reasonably constant environment and things with constant properties - among which are essential properties. Without reliability, it would be impossible to construct theories that offer large-scale iteratives and allow inference to small-scale iteratives and particular condition-'when' constructions. The "glue" for theories is continued commitments and authorizations on the part of members of the storytelling group, and theories "reside" in these commitments, in the interative root modals that I call (A)s. But it is unlikely that we could or would be able to construct theories unless things were reliable — unlikely, indeed, that we would be here to construct theories. Theories play an essential role in making sense of what counts as "evidence" or support for an (A), and thus for a conditional and

143 Complex Situations even for the crucial part of a causal claim. To be correct, an (A) need not just seem to be correct, seem to be a way we storytellers tell our stories, or seem to be a way of being reasonable. We have an appeal beyond the fact that we think an authorizing principle is correct; we can go beyond "expressing" our belief in the principle through our construction of arguments and conditionals that we think are correct. Justification of a particular principle or (A) comes largely through the (A)'s coherence with others, so that a principle is correct or justified if it is part of a theory, where a theory is read as a group of (A)s that hang together and support one another. Justification of (A)s is essentially holistic. This fact is recognized in Neurath's figure, adapted by Quine, to the effect that it is impossible to rebuild the ship of theory (which Quine wanted to identify, incorrectly, with language) from the start. At most, one rebuilds it plank by plank while the ship is under way. Given all this, it is correct to say that "the world out there" in some sense is the basis for the coherence and correctness of the principles that fit together in a theory, and that in this sense the world "decides" the theory we consider reasonable or coherent. But it remains implausible to speak of the world "choosing"; people choose, and they are responsible. "The world" plays at best an indirect role in justification of connective principles. Responsibility for the decisions rests on speakers or, since we are now in a position to be much more precise, on speakers thought of as members of storytelling groups. This is the view of at least some traditional sceptics, and I adopt it. This form of scepticism is related to the "rule scepticism" Kripke claims (in Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language) to find in Wittgenstein's work. Rule scepticism is a matter of not being able to guarantee, except by appeal to membership in a group, that on an occasion where one speaks one is following the same rule as that which one follows on a different occasion. In discussions of the issue, there is very little effort to state clearly what a rule of language is.45 As a result, no distinction is seen or made between authorizing connective principles like (A)s (which are what Wittgenstein had in mind for rules of language games) and calculational rules or principles. In part because of this, but primarily because Wittgenstein and others insist on confounding meaning or content with meaningfulness, rule scepticism is supposed to threaten the concept of meaning. We can ignore this threat, and I propose, notwithstanding the carelessness, to point to the connection between traditional and rule scepticism. The "sceptical problem" is posed by doubts about whether there is continuity of commitments to authorize over time. Hume put it this way: there does not seem to be a guarantee for the connections

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between "ideas" found in "causal" relationships. Notice that, at least so far as the SRE theory is concerned, there is little room for doubt about which principles one is following at a time. One can take a conditional that one produces and iterate it in the appropriate way, and one has the principle. Nor is there room for doubt about (content-)understanding at a different time which principle one followed at a different time. The issue is whether authorizations to recommend stay the same. The merit of looking at the matter this way is that it becomes clear that interests and the satisfaction of interests are at stake; the SRE theory enters here to construe the relevant interests in terms of the interests of storytellers. These authorizations are principles that govern how stories are put together, the principles that make stories coherent, when they are. What guarantees that these principles stay the same? Only the continuing interest of the storytelling or theoretician's "we" to have its stories allow its members to deal with their world and the threat to that interest when something fails, even in part. In effect, what keeps the principles the same is a continuing "intention" of the group to get along in a fortunately stable world. These observations bring out the connection between traditional and rule scepticism and emphasize the connection between scepticism and what makes language meaningful to us.

3 Meaning, Meaningfulness, and Reference

The first two chapters outlined a theory of the basic semantic structure of sentences of English. They took temporal structure to be the clue to a rich and highly regular set of relationships between storytellers, companions, "perceiver-describers," and situations. The most striking characteristic of this structure is that it requires that a person who understands a language be divided into two - that is, the speaker who on an occasion understands a sentence is, first, someone who understands a sentential content and, second, someone who makes a recommendation on its inclusion in a story. In this chapter I begin to explain and defend the philosophical implications of basic semantic structure and, particularly, of the dual personality of the person who understands a language. The theory has important consequences for semantics. Most who study semantics think of their task as that of providing a theory of meaning for a language. They think that the best, or perhaps only, way to provide a theory of meaning is to explain how a language relates a speaker to a world. This is too simple. It does not recognize that semantics must deal with two different problem areas and at least two different forms of speaker knowledge or competence. One area is "the problem of meaning," where the primary task is to detail a speaker's ability to refer to or specify sentential contents. The other is "the problem of meaningfulness"; here one must detail the speaker's ability to judge and make claims about the world. Strictly speaking, only in dealing with meaningfulness does semantics speak to the relationship between language and a world. Meaning must be world-independent.

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This chapter begins with criticism of the idea that a theory of meaning explains how language relates to a world — an idea reflected in the view that tense in an SE relationship. I suggest that much of what is offered as a theory of meaning in this vein can be reconstrued as a contribution to a theory of meaningfulness, or the competence of p; the prospects of a serious theory of meaningfulness (not meaning) are in my view dim, but I do not discuss this issue in detail until chapter 7. After playing the role of critic, I turn to constructing a theory of meaning proper, or of the competence of the speakeras-i|/. This amounts to constructing a theory of reference. Most of the chapter is devoted to clearing the ground for the right kind of theory of reference and outlining parts of the theory itself. Here I focus primarily on picture reference to situations, which are parts of sentential contents. The primary constraint on the theory is that it guarantee semantic freedom — figuratively, guarantee that i|> can go anywhere, anywhen — and show why scepticism about meaning is unwarranted. The detailed full theory of reference to contents is left to chapter 4, however. The aim in this chapter is to place this "meaning as reference" approach in the philosophical and linguistic landscapes. 3-1

MEANING AND MEANINGFULNESS

To the extent that a distinction between meaning and meaningfulness is recognized today, it goes like this: the meaning of a sentence is its interpretation or perhaps sense, and the meaningfulness of a sentence lies in its being syntactically well formed and "interpretable." I agree that the meaning of a sentence is its interpretation, but I tie interpretation much more closely to syntax than is usual. My view of meaningfulness reintroduces the usage of pragmatists like C.I. Lewis and some positivists. Intuitively, what makes a language meaningful is what makes it matter to us. For pragmatist and positivist, this was an issue of relating language to experience, giving it "experiential content." For me, this is a matter of language use of correctness of judgment, not meaning. The positivist's attempt to treat meaning as a matter of meaningfulness and provide experiential contents for terms threatened to make meanings private and risked scepticism: how could anyone possibly understand anyone else if in order to be meaningful, a language had to be tied to private experience? In the mid-19308, Carnap, recently converted from positivism, diagnosed this difficulty and suggested an alternative that has proved tempting to many others. He thought the problem lay in making meaning an epistemic

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notion; largely relying on Tarski's view of truth, he pressed to make meaning depend on truth, separating (he thought) objective meanings from epistemic and subjective matters of meaningfulness. He was right in the diagnosis: meaning and epistemic matters do not mix. But I will argue that moving instead to truth is the wrong strategy to secure the kind of objectivity or publicity needed for meanings. Neither meanings nor our access to them can rely on what is the case; neither can rely even on what has been called "knowledge of truth conditions" - or so I will show. Worse, truth is really a matter of correctness of judgment after all, so tying meanings to it just makes them parochial. Thus, although Carnap was right in thinking that meaning could not be an epistemic notion, he was wrong in looking to truth for a way out of privacy and scepticism. The proper route is found in concepts of reference that are divorced from matters of truth and existence. I suggest that one can construct a serious theory of meaning or interpretation by doing two things. First, one combines elements of Chomsky's views on the perception of syntactic structure with Goodman's concept of "representation as" to yield an account of "picture reference" - reference that looks decidedly Meinongian.' This task is taken up later in this chapter and in chapter 4. Second, one modifies considerably David Lewis's suggestions concerning the link between salience and reference to things to yield an account of identifying reference that allows reference to fictional entities. This is done in chapter 4. The two accounts of reference that result, both of them perceptual in different ways, explain people's access to sentential contents or sentential meanings - what they see or hear when presented with sentences. Picture reference and identifying reference - because they are based upon perception rather than judgment also escape the usual forms of scepticism. SRE structure guides these accounts: sentential contents can be identified with RE structures, and the exercise of the two forms of reference via ts individuates cs and 0s. The combined account of perceptual-referential abilities is a theory of meaning or sentential contents. Explaining how we have access to cs and 0s is essential to such a referential theory of meaning; the theory of interpretation tells us what is "done" to a syntactically described entity S (or t, in the formalism of the theory) to yield the state "knowing the meaning of S on an occasion." Knowing the meaning of an expression is referring in the relevant ways; it is represented as assuming the descriptive position i(/. The SRE theory's i}/ represents someone who understands the content of a sentence on an occasion - someone who reads it correctly by exercising certain specifically linguistic perceptual abilities.

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A theory of meaningfulness is an account of how meanings are "used" - a theory of the application of a language. A theory of meaning deals with the elements and relationships (structure) of an RE relationship and how the RE relationship is fixed (for a competent speaker) by a sentence token (t); a theory of meaningfulness deals with the relationship of p or speaker-as-judge to a sentential content. An account of meaningfulness is indubitably epistemic, for its tasks include dealing with truth, probability, existence, and rational thought. I emphasize that meanings, including sentential contents, must be not only "objective" but also autonomous. Whatever else meanings are and do, they must be the sorts of "things" that explain how we speakers can speak of and describe anything in any world at any time and be understood in doing so. Meanings cannot be restricted to a world, to a time, to a set of beliefs (or sentences held true), to a theory or set of theories, or to an individual or set of individuals. A theory of meaning that relies on any of these cannot individuate meanings in the right way and cannot explain semantic freedom; nor can it easily avoid scepticism. I show that the theory of meaning as reference developed below does not have these difficulties. 3-2

TRUTH CONDITIONS AND MEANING

"To know what the meaning of a sentence is, is to know under what conditions it is (or would be) true." If this is correct, perhaps the meaning of a sentence is its truth conditions. The catch-phrase and the resulting account of meaning are, I think, false. Nevertheless, one form of the thesis that the meaning of a sentence is its truth conditions is interesting and deserves serious consideration. According to this version, being able to individuate the meaning of a particular sentence amounts to knowing what evidence can be adduced in favour of the truth of the sentence and/or what would make it correct to hold the sentence true. This way of individuating the meaning of a sentence is effectively a holistic enterprise. With the possible exception of sentences that are "directly confirmed" in experience, knowing the meaning of a sentence is knowing which other sentences would make it true, if they were themselves true. Distorting - but only slightly - Wittgenstein's dictum that knowing the meaning of a word is knowing a language, we can say that knowing the meaning of a sentence is knowing a theory - knowing what else is or would be true if such-and-such were true. Knowing the meaning of a sentence is, among other things, having and operating with a set of evidential and inferential principles. Here in kernel is

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the idea that language, semantically considered, is a theory (or theories, to allow for the diversity of ordinary language) of the world; knowing what the meaning of a sentence is, is having that theory and arguing, acting, and even seeing in accordance with it, or "applying" it. Knowing the meaning of a sentence involves predicting, explaining, conjecturing, and more, all in accord with the theory. It involves having a particular set of interlocking beliefs. Realist (Davidson et al.) and constructivist (Dummett et al.) versions of the truthconditional account agree on at least this, even if they disagree on what counts as effective knowledge of truth conditions (what counts as a warranted claim). The uninteresting version of the thesis drops the requirement that the meaning of a sentence for a speaker or linguistic community has to do with beliefs actually held — sentences actually held true. Someone might hold, for instance, that knowledge of truth conditions for a sentence amounts to knowing what it would be for a sentence to be true, no matter what world or circumstance one is concerned with. It is easy to appreciate the motivation behind this version of the truth-conditional view of meaning- it is the motivation that leads me to insist that meanings be autonomous and that a theory of meaning be detached from worlds, truth, and belief - from the commitments people have concerning sentential contents. But it is difficult to see what "knowledge of truth conditions" could amount to in such a theory: if the beliefs - both particular and theory-laden - a person holds do not do the work of individuating meanings, what does? 'Possible beliefs' does not do the trick because we need an independent account of what a possible belief is, and it is difficult to imagine what such a thing might be unless we appeal to 'permissible beliefs' — which again introduce (correct) theories and sets of beliefs to do the work. Of course, 'possible belief could be defined in terms of 'possible sentential contents' where this is independently defined, as in the SRE theory. But this definition undercuts the motivation for speaking of "knowledge of truth conditions"; only Pickwick would be tempted by it. The knowledge someone exercises when he or she assumes a descriptive position \\> is largely a form of perceptual classificational knowledge; it is a matter of knowing which sentence one is hearing or reading. It is not in any interesting sense knowledge of a world, a matter of correct judgment. Before I describe this kind of knowledge in more detail, let us see what is wrong with the interesting form of truth-conditional theory of meaning. The interesting form of the truth-conditional approach to meaning must be very appealing, for even where not explicitly adopted, it encapsulates the views of many who hold, explicitly or not, that

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the knowledge the speaker exercises when he or she knows the meanings of words is systematic, theoretical knowledge of the world. Clearly Wittgenstein holds this: for him, the meaning of an expression is best explained by its use, where its use is found in its application (to the world). 2 In rarefied form, Frege also holds this: meaning (sense) can be thought of as a function from sentences to truth values. Morris's classification of ways of dealing with language builds knowledge of the world into the nature of semantics: where syntax deals with relationships between signs, and pragmatics with relationships between signs and speakers, "semantics" deals with the relationship between signs and things in the world.3 David Lewis complains in his "General Semantics"4 that "translational" accounts of meaning are empty because they do not relate world and word. He is echoed by Evans and McDowell in the introduction to their Truth and Meaning.^ The idea that knowledge of meaning is worldly lies in the popular view that language is an "inferential net," with the roles - "meanings" - of sentences and, derivatively, the roles of expressions within sentences determined by their places in this inferential net. The rules of inference that tie sentences together in a net are those articulated by logic plus the "connections of ideas" Hume called "matter of fact" - that is, by the principles we use in describing and explaining phenomena in our world. It is difficult to find a briefer or more appealing statement concerning how the serious truth-conditionalist conceives of truth conditions as individuating meanings than the following: meanings of sentences are conceptual roles within a theory known to a speaker. Most would agree that there is a common thrust to the views just mentioned. While we might, by painting in sufficiently broad strokes to include not only Davidson and Dummett but also Frege, Wittgenstein, Lewis, Morris, and the "conceptual role" approach, be ignoring some otherwise important differences among them, we do not, I think, distort the basic view of the nature of meaning. Further, we do not diminish the importance of a broad criticism from outside this approach to meaning by focusing on Davidson's instantiation of it, his theory of interpretation. Davidson's theory of meaning or "interpretation,"6 although "realist," is based on belief- on what we hold true. Like others, he holds that the central task of a theory of meaning is to provide an articulate account of the ability or knowledge language-users display when they understand sentences. A theory that articulates this ability must itself be internalized; a speaker must know this theory in order to be competent at understanding a language. A speaker shows that he or she knows, or has internalized, the theory by displaying

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believings-true (his or her saying what he or she believes) that correlate with circumstances in the right way. The sentence 'The snow is particularly dirty today' must be held true or believed only when the snow is particularly dirty today. Incidentally, this much of Davidson's view is typical of the truthconditionalist view in general. Notice that an anti-realist - Dummett champions the cause7 - should not find much beyond terminology to dispute in this summary. Moreover, there are no serious technical disputes between Davidson and the anti-realists. They agree on the nature of the connective in the (for them) all-important T-sentences: the connection between "The snow is particularly dirty today' is true' and 'The snow is particularly dirty today' is the standard truthfunctional 'iff.'8 They do not dispute the propriety in English of saying of quoted sentences that they are true or assertible; Tarski in this regard is not questioned. The dispute is over the advantages of 'true' as opposed to 'assertible,' and while no doubt the dispute is serious, with Davidson's emphasis on belief (believe true) as opposed to "objective" truth this seems unimportant. 9 Thus, I can focus on Davidson's generally more clearly expressed views as representative of both realist and anti-realist truth-conditional approaches. But keep in mind that in criticizing the truth-conditionalists, I am really targeting something that explicit truth-conditional theories maintain with many others: that knowing meanings is a matter of having a theory of the world. Constructing a theory of meaning or interpretation for a particular language - a theory of the ability the speakers of that language have to understand its sentences — is, says Davidson, a matter of constructing an empirical theory under constraints: The process of devising a theory of truth for an unknown native tongue might in crude outline go as follows. First we look for the best way to fit our logic, to the extent required to get a theory satisfying Convention T, on to the new language; this may mean reading the logical structure of firstorder quantification theory (plus identity) into the language, not taking the logical constants one by one, but treating this much of logic as a grid to be fitted on to the language in one fell swoop. The evidence here is classes of sentences always held true or always held false by almost everyone almost all of the time (potential logical truths) and patterns of inference. The first step identifies predicates, singular terms, quantifiers, connectives and identity; in theory it settles matters of logical form. The second step concentrates on sentences with indexicals; those sentences sometimes held true and sometimes false according to discoverable changes in the world. This step in conjunction with the first limits the possibilities for interpreting individual

152 Tense, Reference, and Worldmaking predicates. The last step deals with the remaining sentences, those on which there is not uniform agreement, or whose held truth value does not depend systematically on changes in the environment. This method is intended to solve the problem of the interdependence of belief and meaning by holding belief constant as far as possible while solving for meaning. This is accomplished by assigning truth conditions to alien sentences that make native speakers right when plausibly possible, according, of course, to our own view of what is right. 10

Clearly, the idea is to produce a map of meanings by fixing beliefs in a logical space, where the logical space is that defined by logical and non-logical principles that connect the beliefs to one another. In effect, if you fix truth values of sentences relative to each other (for speakers at times), you fix meanings. This "empirical theory of meaning" is a matter of determining what theory of the world a person holds. And much of the procedure consists of getting a fit with one's own beliefs and view of what counts as reasonable — in logic, science, and common sense. It is significant that what Davidson is offering us here is not the articulation afforded by a theory of the world as such - he assumes that this articulation is built into the logical and non-logical principles of the theory a person has as a condition of being a reasonable being at all - but rather a way of deciding what another person's theory of the world is. But notice that to look at the matter in this way is simply to assume that knowing the meaning of an expression is a matter of having a theory that includes the expression. With this assumed, the task is set: one asks if another person holds such-and-such in those circumstances where the enquirer-become"interpreter" holds so-and-so, and one hopes that if he or she does, he or she holds and rejects other things too in ways that parallel one's own theory of the world. There is room for doubt, of course - the underdetermination of theory by data, different logics, odd views of the identities of things — and the sceptic must be answered. Appeals to reasonableness, to entrenched common behaviour, to common backgrounds, to custom, to principles of charity, and to an objective common world become the obvious routes to follow. The agreement that speakers display when they understand the meanings of expressions gets no more and no less a foundation than agreement in the theories we construct of our world. It is no wonder that for this approach the knowledge one displays in knowing the meaning of a word is thought to be subject to sceptical doubt. "The problem of meaning" becomes the traditional issue of answering the sceptic.

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A theory of meaning - anyone would agree - should tell us what sort of ability we display in going from a sentence with suchand-such a syntax and lexical items to its meaning. The truthconditionalist tells us that the ability we display amounts to our knowledge of the world as articulated in our theories of the world. Logic, science, and common sense play roles in this: articulation is in terms of logical and non-logical principles joining commitments together, where such principles are (largely) of logical and nonlogical inference. These principles make stories coherent or rational, and they are what make us reasonable beings. Here, clearly, is the idea that the meaning of a sentence is its "role" in the complex language game(s) we all play when we describe and explain our world, including ourselves in it. Yet it is surprising that the interpretation of lexical items in syntactic structures should be so easily subject to sceptical doubts. We never encounter any serious doubts about what a word means except in perfectly obvious cases - where we speak or try to speak an unfamiliar language, for instance. But the linking of knowing the meanings of expressions with beliefs and judgments suggests we should be worried about whether anything we say is ever understood. Before undermining the idea that knowing the meaning of an expression is a matter of having a theory of the world, let me insist that principles of inference and coherence and, more generally, "making the right moves in a language game" (including saying the right things in the right circumstances) represent clearly linguistic abilities that play a crucial role in semantics. And I think it is plausible and correct to treat these abilities in terms of internalized theories, in Davidson's sense. But there is no reason to think that these abilities are those we display when we recognize the meaning of an expression or sentence. Rather, these abilities are articulated by a theory of meaningfulness. Such a theory has a distinctly epistemological cast, for it deals with correctness of judgment, or that part of the SR relationship that relates a speaker as judge (p) to sentential contents; in this domain, answering the sceptic is a serious issue. In fact, constructing a theory of meaningfulness (a theory in which principles of coherence play a role) is one half of the task of semantics; nevertheless, a theory of meaningfulness cannot serve as a theory of meaning. It cannot because it is essentially directed by an ideal, that of the "rational judge," on which, though there may be convergence, there is nothing that grounds agreement. In contrast, the agreement

between those who know what a word means must be well-founded

and not subject to doubts; disagreement on meaning must be im-

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possible. Knowledge of the world will not do. The agreement of those who share a theory of the world is haphazard, and in fact, disagreement must always be a possibility. This is built into any enterprise where correctness is driven by ideals. The truth-conditionalists concerned with constructing a theory of meaning are forced to allow the problem of "private languages" to arise in a serious way; they must always allow a person to question whether his or her theory of the world is the same as another's. The reason for this is obvious: the articulation of meaning that the truthconditionalist offers is the articulation of beliefs, and — like it or not - the commitments people make are subject to their wills. Epistemologists might eventually agree that all people should recommend one way rather than another, although this seems unlikely. Even if epistemologists do reach such an agreement, it is unlikely that a community of like-minded individuals in this sense will ever develop. All this goes to show, however, that sameness of commitment and belief cannot lie at the centre of a theory of meaning, for here "decisions" on what a sentence means are reached routinely, reliably, automatically, and (within the relevant community) universally. This criticism cannot be countered with the idea that (as Wittgenstein suggested) we simply do agree in judgments - the idea that there are in speech contexts "givens" and that we can rely upon "custom" and "institutions" to make our judgments uniform. There is no doubt that there are epistemic givens in some sense, and no doubt that institutions and custom shape our judgments. But we can and often do disagree; we can and often do doubt; and we can and often do speculate or consider changing. In all these cases where we speak, we are understood. Nothing in givens, custom, or institutions can account for this. The Wittgensteinian response and other versions of what is now called a "sceptical solution to the sceptical problem" do not speak to the issue. They do not explain how it is that we do agree in understanding the meanings of expressions, without regard to what we may or may not believe. Another indication of the misdirected nature of a semantics based on belief lies in the holism of belief. Since we know what a sentence means without knowing whether it is true, surely we know what it means without knowing the truth of other sentences that it implies or that are implied by it. But this is not true of belief: belief (what is held true) is a matter of commitment for which evidence and justification (through other commitments) are relevant. Articulating one's beliefs involves appeal to patterns of commitment. 11 To believe one thing concerning something (hold true something concerning it) is to be committed to holding a rather large number of other

h155 Meaning, Meaningfulness, and Reference beliefs concerning that thing and other things. Davidson recognizes this, and so must anyone who wants to offer a plausible account of holding-true sentences. The truth of some sentences entails (suggests, makes probable, etc.) the truth of others (or makes others more probable, etc.); otherwise our discourse is incoherent. But holism (or corpuscularianism, to accommodate Wittgenstein, Dummett, and others) in belief makes the story about how to individuate a meaning hopeless. The knowledge required to individuate the meaning of a particular sentence is absorbed into knowledge of how a commitment to the truth of the relevant sentence is related to commitments to the truth of a large number of other sentences. Specifying a particular meaning involves placing it in an interlocking pattern of commitments. But at no point is it clear why such-andsuch a set of commitments vis-a-vis some set of sentences should be attached to one sentence as opposed to another. The "problem of

interpretation" - linking a particular syntactic configuration to its

meaning — is not solved. Still another difficulty for the truth-conditionalist appears in the fact that he or she must treat the meanings of sentences - perhaps whole languages - as primary, and the meanings of individual lexical items as secondary. This skewed approach makes it very difficult to say what compositionality of meaning might amount to. It also misconstrues the work of the lexicographer. And it commits the person who wants to offer a theory of compositionality to looking for truth conditions in syntactic structures that have nothing to do with them, like prepositional phrases. No doubt the concept of truth plays a role in certain structures; it does in the 'that'-clauses after prepositional attitude verbs, for instance, and in event expressions. But there is no reason to force everything into this Procrustean bed. When it is, the work of both the lexicographer and the syntactician becomes skewed in ways it need not and — if it is to make contributions to a theory of meaning — should not. Truth-conditionalists should restrict themselves to matters at which they are expert — to making sense of the constraints on combining sentences carrying commitments with each other. That is, they should tell us what is involved in telling coherent and reasonable stories about this and other worlds. The most telling criticism of the meaning-as-theory-of-the-world (or -a-world) approach is that the approach inevitably becomes parochial. In order to escape the sceptic and provide a foundation for the agreement displayed by speakers when they clearly understand the meanings of the expressions they use, truth-conditionalists inevitably appeal to a single world. In order to prove that meanings are

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public, they begin to insist that there really must, in the final analysis, be one correct theory of the world and perhaps one story holding all the true sentences. A single world, our world, must underwrite this story. If we do not assume that there is one correct story (they suppose), we cannot find support for the extraordinary degree of agreement in judgment that is required to make meanings public: publicity of meanings seems to demand convergence. If anything does, this parochial ("our" world) constraint on the meaningthrough-belief approach explains why realism is compelling. It also explains the strength of Wittgenstein's private-language argument. But this guarantee of a single world, thought of as a guarantee of publicity of meaning rather than a guarantee of agreement in judgment, is unnecessary. There is another way to underwrite this publicity; the need for a single world to guarantee publicity is an artefact of a misdirected project. The truth-conditionalist project undermines itself in its attempt to establish a theory of meaning that allows meanings to perform the duties they must. At the risk of being tedious, I say again that parochial meanings cannot deal with the language-user's ability to speak of anything at any time in any world and, moreover, to say things that are true for that world. Davidson speaks of the "autonomy of meaning" and thinks he can make sense of it even if his "theory of interpretation" (meaning) is based on beliefs or holdings-true alone.12 But he offers no serious strategy to deal with these problems; rather, he gestures towards the notion of something being socially true and towards "public norms."13 It is difficult to see how these gestures solve problems. Nothing in the concept of "social truth" (and the related notion of common-sense belief) shows how to move us beyond the parochialism of beliefs concerning our world. Having said all this, I should mention that the project of extracting meanings from applications is not logically impossible. A set of commitments to contents suggests a way to map contents "externally": such-and-such a content can be specified or "determined" by all the ways it is or could be "used." (This is the idea behind some versions of possible-worlds semantics.) But to specify all the ways a content is or can be used is to specify a sentence's role in all the stories that can be told; it is to speak of all possible worlds. Worse, to argue that our knowledge of meaning is our knowledge of world(s) is to require as a condition of understanding a sentence's meaning omniscience with respect to all possible worlds. Surely it is obvious that this makes the task of specifying content impossible for us. An apparent compromise, Davidson's reliance on fallibilism to avoid the need for omniscience, is no help to a project of determining meanings either.

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Bluntly, understanding the meaning of a sentence is not a matter of working out a theory of the world or of several worlds. We must understand each other in the relevant way in order to construct such theories; indeed, we must understand each other in the relevant way if we are to make sense of being wrong or right concerning a particular content - which is what fallibilism involves. Thus, the reduction of contents or meanings of sentences to how sentences are held - true or false - is, on reflection, a misdirected project, for it does not explain our access to contents. We must know how to specify contents in order to know what is believed. In this sense, contentunderstanding is presupposed by force-understanding. Again, I am not arguing that what the truth-conditionalist offers is trivial and uninteresting. Consider what McDowell calls, following Dummett, 'naive semantics,'14 according to which an account of meaning can be given by listing Davidsonian T-sentences alone, without doing anything else. To offer a theory of meaning, perhaps all one can do is list all sentences of the form "S' is true iff S.' If this were what Davidsonian meaning theory amounted to, it would certainly be trivial and uninteresting, for it could not appeal to why people hold certain sentences true. But this is not all it amounts to. Davidson and other truth-conditionalists can afford to give the appearance that they simply list such sentences (in effect, say what the conditions of adequacy on a theory of truth are) because - perhaps logic aside - the work of articulating what they think of as a "theory of meaning" has already been accomplished. We speakers all do and have done the work of constructing an articulate theory in this sense, because a theory of meaning is provided by a theory of the world. Hence, if we want articulation, we should look to the extraordinarily complex and detailed theories - from "common sense" to theoretical physics — we have constructed concerning our world. Thus, the truth-conditional approach is not trivial because it is inarticulate. It is just wrong-headed; the articulation it offers is not an articulation of meaning. It offers, in part, a contribution to a theory of meaningfulness. 3.3 MEANING AS REFERRING

A referential theory of meaning, I have suggested, can avoid at least the traditional sceptical problems and underwrite semantic freedom. Before explaining just how it does this, I must explain what "the problem of reference" is in general, introduce a policy on indexicality of reference, and briefly outline what is involved in reference to speaker and sentence token at time of speech.

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The task for a general theory of reference is set by the SRE structure. Each sentence in English has three temporal intervals; found at each of these intervals are different kind of "things." As it happens, different forms of reference are required to individuate items at each of the three clusters of things at i s , i R , and is. The sentence token (t) and speaker as judge (p) at time of speech are referred to exemplificationally; the companion (c) at reference time is specified through identifying reference; the situation (0) at situation time is referred to by picture reference. \\i, which represents the speaker as referring on an occasion to a sentential content, is found at i R ; ijj is specified, individuated, or referred to if c, 0, and the RE relationship for a particular sentence are indicated. Whether exemplifying, identifying, or picture reference is at stake, reference is individuation. Referring is the task of specifying or "picking out" some item in the basic semantic structure of a sentence. These "things" need not be located in space: the situation (0) is not. Yet individuation can and sometimes does rely on spatial location and ordering; spatio-temporal position in a particular world is essential to companions (cs), for instance, and sometimes specifying "which c" one is talking about is a matter of specifying its spatiotemporal position. Individuation of situations must proceed in a different way, for not even the temporal position of a 0 is essential to it. Nor are situations to be found in a "logical space." These matters are explained later. The lesson for the moment is that while all reference is individuation, not all reference is the same, and not all referents are the same. 3.3.7 Indexicality

Any account of any sort of reference whatsoever needs a policy on indexicality. We need a policy that makes good sense, applies generally, and does not conflict with the requirement that the ability someone displays when he or she refers correctly to sentential content is shared by all others who know the meanings of the words of a language. Some policies on indexicality pose a problem for this last requirement. Suppose that a theory of sentential content or sentential meaning must preserve the freedom we enjoy in being able to speak of anything at any time, in any world, and describe it how we will. This freedom is underwritten by the guarantee that reference to the elements of contents is not parochial, that one can refer to some c in any world whatsoever, and refer to any 0 to describe it, in such a way that both items are picked out by anyone who understands the

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sentence at all. Yet both picturing or picture reference and identifying reference can be, and often are, indexical; that is, both can depend essentially upon knowledge of the circumstances of speech - those circumstances, including speaker, intonation, time of speech, and discourse context, that can play a role in getting one reading rather than another. Determining or deciding what a sentence refers to - by either picture or identifying reference - can depend on knowledge of a speech position, a speech position that must be in the real world, the world in which the speaker is located. If I want to claim that neither form of reference is tied to this world or is parochial, I must speak to the idea that if reference is indexical, it must be ipso facto reference to something in this world — often, usually, or even always to something at time of speech. The idea that indexicality entails parochial reference has its roots in a cluster of connected ideas that can appear in several forms. Among other considerations, these ideas are taken seriously: some terms can only be assigned a referent in situ (recent favoured examples include proper and common names); in situ assignment of an expression to a referent depends on the expression's being able to "pick out" or refer to the referent independently of the assignment, and this is accomplished by demonstrations, involving demonstrative expressions; demonstrative expressions can only refer to things in the speaker's immediate perceptual environment; demonstrative expressions are essentially indexical; and demonstrative expressions can only refer to things that exist or that the speaker would be strongly inclined to say exist. I suspect that none of the claims in this list is true, and I am certain that neither this nor any other way of expressing the cluster of connected ideas that associate indexicality with reference to existing things can bear scrutiny. But philosophers have taken such associated ideas seriously. Russell relies on something like such a cluster in his "Lectures on Logical Atomism" view of demonstratives (nee 'proper names') and even of concepts (with which one must be "acquainted" — they must be "in one's head," for one refers to [names?] them with predicate expressions). To take another example, Putnam in "The Meaning of 'Meaning'" relies on a connection between what he calls indexicality and existence when he insists that common nouns like 'gold' involve an indexical element and therefore refer to things in our world. They cannot refer to things on Putnam's Twin Earth. I assume what is common coin to all policies on indexicality - that is, if reference is indexical, we can only fix a referent of such an "indexical term" by knowing something about the context of speech. I assume also that the expressions that make indexical reference are

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located in "the real world." But it by no means follows from these assumptions that the referents of indexical expressions are in the real world. This is apparent even in the referential behaviour of the expressions most favoured by those who want to make indexical reference parochial, the demonstratives 'this' and 'that' and the personal pronoun T.' (These expressions are always indexical, and they make the sentences in which they appear indexical.) Observe that 'this' and 'that' are often used when the speaker is talking about something in his or her immediate perceptual environment; in these cases, the thing is taken to exist. Observe too that the pronoun T must — as philosophers from Descartes on observe - refer to something that exists.15 Further, these demonstrative expressions and T typically refer to things that exist. Nevertheless, with the possible exception of 'I,' there is no defensible connection between the appearance of one of these "indexical expressions" in a sentence and this-world referents. Consider Macbeth's Ts this a dagger ...,' where the clearly indexical demonstrative expression 'this' refers to an illusory dagger perceived by a fictional character. Here, the cost of defending a connection between indexicality and existence would be to make 'this' non-indexical. But it clearly is. A good policy on indexicality must recognize that indexicality can be a feature of reference with almost any sort of term, not just demonstratives and 'I.' For instance, the definite description 'the last one to appear' is indexical. As a rule, proper names are indexical too. An instance of the expression-design 'Richard Nixon' is not in itself sufficient for reference to the familiar hero of Watergate. On the other hand, with the exception of T and demonstratives, no member of a category of expression must be indexical. Consider mathematical proper names, which to refer to a determinate thing do not seem to rely in any way upon knowledge of speech situations. It is hard to imagine a speech context in which '333' refers to anything but 333 if the term is in one's vocabulary at all, no matter when or who produces or writes it, and no matter which story the expression is in. Similarly, while '3:00' is indexical, '3:00, Tuesday, i March 1988' is not. Clearly, since so many terms are or can be indexical, if indexical reference were parochial, a referential theory of meaning that demanded reference to things in different worlds and to worldless situations would die on the vine. Indexical reference does not even appear parochial, however, if one adopts a policy of thinking of indexical reference as no more than a more complicated form of non-indexical reference. Whether reference is picture reference to 0s (or parts of 0s) or identifying reference to cs, think of indexical reference as a procedural compli-

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cation of non-indexical reference by ts, one that requires knowledge of speech context on the part of the person who understands the indexical expressions. It is certainly reasonable to hold that the things referred to (in our case, any of c, 0, JR, or AE) do not change when they are referred to in different ways. None of these must be referred to by demonstratives, so not even the cluster of ideas looked at before makes them look any more parochial. Nor are any of them "private" in any way. Yet reference to any of them may require that a person who "reads" a t know enough about the circumstances in which the t is produced to know that it refers in one way, rather than another - that 0 or c rather than 0' or c' is "picked out." Think of the additional knowledge of speech context required in the case of an indexical term as that which is sufficient to disambiguate the term - enough to make it this term, rather than that, to the meaningcompetent (referentially competent) reader. Generally, indexical expressions are expressions that require knowledge of the context of speech in order for one to decide which expression it is. If the aim of reference is individuation where (as with cs and 0s) one is referring to elements of content, it is plausible to speak of individuation as "disambiguation." If we look at it this way, it is clear that we need knowledge of speech context in order to "disambiguate" indexical expressions. There are many policies on the concept of ambiguity, and I am wary of introducing the notion at all. But it is useful to speak of indexical disambiguation. We must often rely on speech context to settle what is said. Speech context resolves not only the commonplace ambiguities of 'She went to the bank' and 'That is gold' (colour or substance) but also the subtler ambiguities allowed by the many factors — who speaks, when, how, in what tone, in which story — that constitute the contexts on which indexical reference depends. In one context, a set of words refers to one situation or a c; in another, the "same set of words" refers to other situations or cs. Nevertheless, given the words and context, one content is (in principle) determined.16 Perhaps all differences in readings for a single set of sounds or marks can be traced to differences in context, differences that must be recognizable to the (doubly) referentially competent speaker-hearer. If this is so, context should resolve any indeterminateness. I flesh out this idea in regard to picture reference after discussing exemplificational reference. 3.3.2 Exemplificational Reference to t, i$ and p; Ties The token-reflexive theorists Russell, Sellars, and Reichenbach were right in thinking that every tensed sentence or tensed t makes ref-

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erence to itself and its speech situation. They were not particularly articulate about what kind of reference this is. I suggest that reference to tensed t, and derivatively p and is, is essentially exemplificational. It is important to say what this reference consists of and how it works because, unlike other forms of reference (whether indexical or not), exemplificational reference is essentially parochial (this-world referents are required), and exemplificational reference in a sense underlies both picture and identifying reference, including indexical versions of both. The objects of exemplificational reference are is, p, and t. The time of speech is is the time referred to by 'now,' p is the person producing a token now, and t is the token produced. To understand what exemplificational reference to these items amounts to, one must pay attention to the fact that producing a sentence is an action consisting of both the production of a token and the making of a recommendation on the inclusion of a content in a story. Consequently, all three elements included in S - the speaker p, the time of speech is, and especially the token produced t - are tied or necessarily fixed to a spatio-temporal location in "the real world." Clearly, it is difficult to make sense of an action performed by the speaker who is not in the real world. Of course, there is a sense in which the speaker is not located in the real world. The speaker as referentially competent is free to speak of anything, at any time i R , and describe that thing with any situation he or she wishes, referring to whatever elements of content c and 0 he or she wants. When the speaker does so, he or she is represented by iff and is located at i R . However, the fact that speaking qua producing sounds and making a recommendation is a form of action means that the speaker is not free to speak (or think) at a time without speaking or thinking at that time. 17 He or she must produce a token, even if inforo interno, and he or she and that token are located in the real world. The speaker qua p is tied to the speech occasion. Exemplificational reference is a form of self-reference in which a token refers to itself and its properties. Exemplificational reference requires that something be presented to a perceiver, whether visually or orally; this perceived entity has such-and-such features, and for the thing to exemplify these features is for it to refer to itself as having those properties (or labels, as Goodman would have it) that it has. Exemplificational reference by an utterance that refers to itself as having certain properties clearly cannot be either picture reference or identifying reference. With both of these, one "reads through" an utterance in context to its referent(s) 0 and c; the utterance is not read as referring to itself or its properties. And in neither case

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need the referent exist. With exemplificational reference by whole sentence tokens, t refers to itself and it must exist. It refers to itself as a token, as a token of a sort, and as produced by a speaker at a time. In saying of itself that it is a token of a sort produced by a speaker at a time, it "says" of itself that it is an utterance of this sort (a very detailed sort, which partially determines its content) and as produced by p, and thus it also "says" that it is the making of a recommendation on the inclusion of the content that it refers to in some story. Reference to is or to now falls out of this analysis of exemplificational reference of a token (or better, 'tokening') to itself. l8 Now is simply the time at which this token is produced. Notice that unlike the sampling one finds in the tailor shop, where a tailor offers a piece of a bolt as a sample of the whole, the utterance itself as a whole, not part of it, exemplifies its relevant properties. In marked contrast, in a propositional attitude construction a person's views or utterances are explicitly attributed to its author (the c pictured by the subject term of the propositional attitude sentence) at the time he or she says (or "says") what he or she does.19 Propositional attitudes picture someone saying something; they picture a complex situation in which a person at a time makes a recommendation concerning a content (takes a stance or adopts an attitude). Attribution of the attitude to a person or persons at a time proceeds through non-exemplificational forms of reference to cs and 0s: one says, 'Harry suggested yesterday that...' and produces a picture of Harry saying something (which includes a picture of "what he said" [the content of what he said] and the embedded phrase counts as a mock saying). The propositional attitude sentence produced on an occasion by a person — Gertrude, say — itself makes exemplificational reference to itself, thereby to its producer Gertrude and time of production, but does not picture itself as a saying. Even an uncomplicated propositional attitude utterance, then, pictures a propositional attitude state as a whole, pictures "what is said" in the embedded clause, makes identifying reference with both clauses, makes as a whole exemplificational reference to its producer and time of production, and includes in its picture a mock saying. The view of exemplificational reference I advance has interesting consequences for some philosophical views of tense. Some have insisted on eliminating tenses from language; tenses should be eliminated from language, it is said,ao because that would eliminate one form of subjectivity from utterances. Ignore the subjectivity claim for a moment and consider what it would be to eliminate tenses. If the elimination of tenses is understood as an effort to remove tense markers, this is possible even if the result is clumsy. We can do

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without tense markers, but we would have to introduce a stultifying number of temporal adverbs. If elimination of tenses is understood as an effort to eliminate exemplificational reference to t, p, and i s , it is clearly self-defeating. No doubt every sentence uttered could be rendered, 'I hereby at this time say, " ... ",' but which I and time are referred to by T and 'this time' could be fixed only by exemplificational reference by the utterance to itself. The clearly indexical references these expressions make depend on fixing p and is exemplificationally. If, on the other hand, elimination of tenses is thought to be elimination of SR structures, the project is ludicrous. Every full sentence has an SR relationship: it refers to a content and makes a recommendation at a time with respect to its content. Perhaps, however, it could be thought that elimination of tenses is elimination of some tied elements, p and i s , from issues of semantics. This is as close as one can come, I think, to making the elimination of tenses a compelling project. But this wrong-headed view rests on an implausible view of semantics. It is laudable to keep the tied elements p and is out of contents because we need to keep contents or meanings autonomous, but the theory of meanings or contents is not the whole of semantics. Semantics includes the theory of recommendations on contents — the theory of meaningfulness. This is essentially a theory of the abilities of p at is. Eliminating these is eliminating forces from language and — I argue later — effectively eliminating the concept of truth too. 3.3.5 On Referring: Picturing Situations

Picture reference constitutes the essential core of a referential theory of meaning that both escapes scepticism and underwrites semantic freedom. Picture reference is designed to explain this fact: competent people have no difficulty at all recognizing, on being presented a sentence token, the situation the token refers to or individuates. I see 'The saddened troll saw soon that he would never manage to make friends with Morag' or 'It's a matter of a googolplex or two' or another sentence in a language in which I have syntactic and lexical competence and recognize immediately that the situations referred to are The saddened troll see that he never manage to make friends with Morag or It be a matter of a googolplex or two. This recognition does not in any way require that I be able to apply or use the sentence. Picture reference accounts for this fact, since reference to situations is a matter of perceptual classification and recognition of the token, and nothing more. My account of picture reference to situations joins the views of an improbable trio consisting of Alexius Meinong, Nelson Goodman,

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and Noam Chomsky. The idea is that on perceiving a token (t) on an occasion and recognizing it as the token it displays itself to be, the competent speaker-hearer classifies it (sees/hears it as the token it displays itself to be, with the lexical content and syntactic form it has) in such a way that it refers to (pictures) a situation. The speakerhearer refers to a situation by "seeing" a situation displayed in a sentence-in-context. To say what is seen - the situation - one in effect simply produces the picture, which presents the situation. The picture does not present the situation in a way that occasions discussion or admiration, as ordinary pictures often do. We do not discuss the merits of such-and-such a font or pronunciation when we look at the way a sentence refers to its situation. It refers without comment, in such a way that a reference to a disjoint referent (a distinct one for that expression) is in principle possible. Thus, unlike the sort of pictures Goodman discusses in his Languages of Art - Rembrandts, Picassos, and M. Nonames — these sentence pictures are (given context) syntactically articulate and picture-referentially unambiguous and disjoint. There is a situation for any picture and at most one situation for each picture because any relevant difference in a picture makes it different from any other and ipso facto constitutes it as (picture-)referring to something else. Chomsky is called upon to contribute to the account of picture reference because I need some way to make sense of the idea that when competent speakers in a language look at or hear a sentence token, they see or hear a highly structured and articulate item that is in itself sufficient to allow them to disambiguate or individuate its interpretation or reading — see it in a way that requires that they recognize it, even if, beyond repeating it, they cannot articulate its structure and fine grain. From this point of view, it is clear that syntax will play an essential role in disambiguation. Syntactic forms delimit classes of nominals, verbs, situations, etc. I turn syntactic form into picture form and ask it to determine a class of possible readings on the occasion it is described or perceived by someone. ai Goodman's contribution lies in a notion he develops in a discussion of pictures (and other sorts of syntactically characterized items, such as words) that seem to refer to fictional entities. Goodman holds that a picture of Pegasus never actually refers to ("denotes," in his terminology) Pegasus, yet we know what a Pegasus picture or Pegasus inscription looks like and never have to encounter Pegasus to know that we have a Pegasus picture before us. 22 In his view, 'picture of x gets turned into 'x-picture.'23 In effect, a clearly semantic classification of a sign ('picture of x') amounts to a way of saying what kind of sign it is ('x-picture'). If the translation is adequate, semantic classification of a sign captures a way in which a sign is "of some-

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thing, but clearly it is "of that thing for the person who can classify it whether that thing exists or not and whether the person who classifies the sign has any empirical or other form of knowledge concerning the thing to which the sign refers. I need not be acquainted with, or have any other sort of knowledge concerning, the referent in order to say that some sign refers in this way to that thing: it does so by being a particular kind of sign. This conception of reference is ideal for my purposes. At a stroke, a notion of reference is introduced that cannot in any way be accused of being parochial, for referents need not exist, they "apply" to things in any world whatsoever, and the person who can classify in the relevant way only need know which sign he or she perceives. Goodman himself takes a different tack. He turns this form of classification to the task of rejecting the view that 'Pegasus' must denote Pegasus, for he does not want denotation defined over non-existent things. One can agree to this use of 'denote,' however, while still insisting that this form of classification does define a sense of 'of that can be made into a notion of reference. The resulting notion of reference remains indifferent to existence and to speaker knowledge concerning the referent. I call this concept of reference 'picture reference' and insist both that the knowledge involved in classifying a sign as a Pegasus sign is sufficient for picturing, and hence picture-referring to, Pegasus, and that the knowledge involved is a form of perceptualclassificational knowledge. Picture reference to Pegasus is quite different from identifying reference to Pegasus, of course; classificational knowledge is not sufficient for identifying reference. Finally, there is Meinong's contribution. He insists that it is plausible to speak of reference to all sorts of things, existent or not — even to what cannot exist. Intuitively, as 'Pegasus' pictures Pegasus, so any expression that makes sense at all pictures its "entity." Entities and syntax correlate exactly: a predicate refers to some property, for instance, and a prepositional phrase to a relationship. In the important case where the expression is a sentence, what it pictures or refers to is a situation. Like Meinong and pace Russell, I insist that an expression or sentence refers in order to have meaning. It does not need to denote, of course. It must picture its referent. This amounts to saying that it must be classified correctly by a competent speaker-hearer. Incidentally, every expression must also picturerefer to be meaningful, but that is because knowing the meaning of an expression is a necessary condition of its use or application. Picture-referential competence is the knowledge the speakerhearer has and exercises when he or she classifies correctly. It is in one sense inarticulate: the speaker-hearer cannot be expected to say

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what this competence consists of beyond exercising the competence in particular cases when asked. He or she must be able to "say what a sentence means" by saying, for example, "Harriet left yesterday means Harriet left yesterday" but no more. ("Means sentences" are discussed below.) But even if this is all that is expected of a speaker who is competent, we are still left with the all-important question of how this competence should be articulated. What kind of theory of speaker knowledge properly details what the speaker knows when he or she knows what some sentence means in the sense of picturereferring to something? I have shown that appealing to the speaker's knowledge of a world misses the point. Something else must be at work. I suggest that this knowledge is syntactic and lexical, and that the job of articulating it does not belong to the physicist or person of common sense, but to the syntactician (for structure) and the lexicographer (for classification of individual expressions). And if the basic claim of picture reference is correct, we know in which ballpark to place the exercise of this kind of knowledge. Its exercise must be a form of perceptual recognition, ruled by syntactic constraints (largely innate, I believe) and leading to the recognition of particular signs in speech contexts. The competence exercised in this sort of perceptual recognition must be shared. It is easy enough to see that it is shared; after all, we have no trouble understanding what others say. It is not so easy to explain, Kant-like, how it is shared. Innate principles, like those Chomsky has suggested, must be involved. Another factor must be uniformity in training, understood as contributing to recognitional capacities. I take these up later. I also, like Kant, try to express the sharing between those who understand one another by speaking of them as members of a group who share certain characteristics and agree in certain ways. Competence at picture reference can be put in terms of membership in a group whose members think of themselves as "we" (the "[picture-]referential we") who know what a particular picture or inscription picture-refers to by knowing (in the appropriate sense) the language (set of pictures with appropriate forms). Members of this group see or hear such-and-such an inscription as this inscription (whatever it is). Part of what is involved in correct classification is knowing what syntactic category the expression is a member of, and as we shall see, this can be a highly specific category. Another part is knowing just which member of the category it is. When these are taken together, members of the group share a syntax and a vocabulary. My claim is that this is sufficient for them to exercise their knowledge or competence on an occasion by recognizing the relevant expression.

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Again, in picture-referring we are not saying anything about a world or things in a world. We need not, for if what I have said about relevant competence is plausible, recognizing a sentential picture in its context is sufficient for fixing to the extent necessary the referent - that is, the situation 0. For the sentence 'Pegasus was a winged horse,' the situation 0 pictured (referred to) is the situation Pegasus be a winged horse, a situation that includes Pegasus. Indexicality enters as a feature of picture-reading, a feature of the task of disambiguating what the picture is of. Any or perhaps all of the expressions that go into a sentence (situation picture) may be indexical without making the situation parochial — without locating it in a world or requiring knowledge of a world. Therefore, while it is likely to be necessary to know the context in which the word picture appears in order to know what it refers to, and while the picture or word is in the real world, the referent is not similarly parochial. I am adding three things to what Goodman claims about knowing that a picture is an x-picture: (i) The classification of a sign as an x-sign (e.g., a Pegasus sign) can be called syntactic-lexical classification where it is not necessarily expressible by the classifier beyond the production of another instance of the sign ('strike' means strike, dammit!). (2) Classifying on an occasion is perceiving the sign in the relevant way, and this is sufficient for an account of "reading a sign" (so far as its picture-referring is concerned) on an occasion. Syntactic classification becomes a way to capture what an expression is of. (3) The structure of the sign is the structure of what is referred to: perceiving a sign in the specified way is sufficient not only for referring to the relevant thing(s), but for their having the relevant structure. The sentence 'Harriet leave' refers to (pictures) Harriet leave,' and the situation has the structure of'Harriet leave.' In picture reference, the syntactic structure of the token effectively determines the structure of its situation. This brief overview of the concept of picturing needs to be filled out with some indication of how pictures pick out just the situations they do with the structure they have, and how speakers-hearers know that pictures do this. The purpose of a theory of reference is to explain how individuation of this sort can plausibly proceed. Goodman pointed in the right direction with his observation that we need not encounter Pegasus to know that a Pegasus picture is a picture of Pegasus, nor a corn cob or a pipe to know that 'corncob pipe' is a corncob-pipe word; this rules out an appeal to knowledge of the world or independent knowledge of the referent. However, while it is progress to place the kind of knowledge involved in the area of perceptual classification, it is only by looking at how syntactic and

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lexical knowledge contributes that we get a clearer view of how individuation proceeds in particular cases. We also need to be reassured that the knowledge required is attainable and routinely exercisable; if it is not both, scepticism about meanings can get a grip. We cannot allow any interesting form of scepticism to arise with regard to determining meanings. Some of Chomsky's views on language acquisition can help here. I will make three preliminary remarks before proceeding. First, the 'sentence' that I refer to in picture reference is the truncated "sentence" introduced earlier, one that lacks tense, descriptum, and aspectual markers and temporal adverbials. It refers to or pictures a situation alone. Second, and as a consequence, situation structure is the structure of "sentence" and 0 alone: RE and SR structures are irrelevant - added on once a situation is determined. Third, keep in mind that the aim of a theory of meaning is to provide an account of what "interpreting" a syntactically characterized sentence amounts to. I am suggesting that so far as picture reference is concerned, this task for the syntactically and lexically competent is extremely simple, for it does not require any further manoeuvring. To perceive the syntax plus lexical items in context - that is, to classify - is to picture a situation. 3.3.4 On Chomsky's Contribution It is easy to say that I want to adopt Chomskian views on the accessibility of structure and its crucial role in interpretation, plus his views on innateness (and by implication their role in recognition of structure). It is more difficult to say just how to adapt the SRE view of basic semantic structure to Chomsky's views on the nature of syntax and interpretation. There are problems here; some turn out to be only apparent or trivial, but a serious one remains. Situations are not, remember, the alethically and existentially burdened situations of tense logic and common sense - those that are supposed to make true sentences true and stand as one term of a tense relationship. Situations more nearly resemble the properties of the traditional view, for they are completely worldless. They are, however, located temporally (although not spatially) - at least relative to c and i R . And they do have the structure and detail of a sentence, not of a property expression alone. Like properties, their principles of individuation are plausibly due entirely to the language that designates them. And like properties, recognizing the expression ("sentence" in this case) is plausibly sufficient for knowing which situation one is aware of. And again like properties, situations are used in the

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(non-alethic) description of (spatio-temporally located) individuals. What follows for the role of syntax in specifying these things? The syntax must itself be recognizable; it must play an essential role in "choosing" the right situation, and — in my view — it must, along with lexical content, be virtually sufficient for determining a situation's structure. And for the SRE theory, it is most important that the relevant syntax exclude anything having to do with aspect (syntactically, a form of operator on a situation-designating "sentence"), RE specification (accomplished by verbal auxiliaries), tenses (a special form of adverbial), a4 or temporal locatives for i R and i E (adverbials). Thus, if one wants "pure" situation pictures, the "sentences" that picture situations should have none of this paraphernalia. This poses a problem. Clearly, no one who studies syntax — including Chomsky — has any level of syntactic representation that corresponds to these purified "sentences." Take, for instance, one of Chomsky's recent discussions of the syntax of sentences, that found in his 1988 "Some Notes on Economy of Derivation and Representation." Chomsky holds that a syntactic representation of a sentence includes tense, verbal auxiliaries, temporal adverbs, and the like. And his Principle of Full Interpretation seems to demand that all this and more be in a syntactic representation. Does this show that Chomsky's views cannot be adopted by the SRE theory? I do not think so. Clearly, a sentence proper does contain all of these things, and the SRE theory has no difficulties with that. This suggests that situation pictures are parts of full sentence. But if so, perceiving a situation while perceiving a sentence proper is easy: in perceiving the whole, one perceives the part. Since we get "sentences" from sentences proper by deleting markers, there is no issue here. Hence, it is possible to adopt Chomsky's views on accessibility of structure. By 'part,' incidentally, I need not and do not mean a complete segment of a tree structure "below" a particular node. Chomsky clearly insists on accessibility. His views have changed (occasional protestations to the contrary) to a considerable extent in the last thirty years. But one thing that has remained the same is his view that the sign that is perceived (cognized)25 by the competent speaker-hearer on an occasion whether it is "interpreted" is structured and is perceived as structured. This structure plays a central role in the "interpretation" of the sign (typically, sentence). The structure perceived can for my purpose be what Chomsky, in recent work, calls a sign's 'S-structure' (read "surface structure," but keep in mind that this is not the surface structure of Chomsky's early, transformational grammars).* 6 My view is that what one perceives

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on seeing or hearing a sentence is the full structure, that the relevant part of the structure indicated above should be called 'pictorial form,' and that this form, when perceived, partially disambiguates the sentence by determining, in one way as opposed to another, a class of possible situations. Members of the class of situations all share the same form. Further, given lexical content and context, a sentence determines a single situation of the relevant form. So far as I can tell, this much of my view is consistent with Chomsky's view of syntax - and with that of others. One apparent inconsistency between our views is that Chomsky holds his syntactic structure to be "context-free." If I am to adopt his views of the accessibility to the perceiver of syntactic structure and to insist that it play such an important role in interpretation that S-structure determines situation structure, must I not rule out a role for context in individuating a content — that is, rule out indexicality? I do not think so. For Chomsky and his school, context freedom has to do with principles of "universal grammar." Something is context-free in Chomsky's sense if it is both universal and innate; as a rule, innate principles of grammar satisfy this condition. But the permissible syntactic forms of "sentences" could well be universal and innate (subject, in recent Chomskian work, to paramaterization), as Chomsky claims, without excluding appeals to speech context to fix particular "interpretations," including different forms. So far as I can see, then, Chomskian context freedom or "autonomy" is consistent with the context dependence of indexical reference. The serious problem with assimilating Chomsky's views, so far as I can see, lies in the nature of interpretation. Chomsky holds that the input to the process of interpretation is what he calls 'logical form' (which in some cases may be trivially derived from S-structure). The terminology of 'logical form,' common in philosophical circles, suggests that now one can begin to try to relate syntax to world; it suggests, in fact, some version of a truth-conditional theory of meaning. Chomsky himself tends to talk about logical form relating in turn to "conceptual structures," which is relatively non-committal. But many who adopt his general framework like the suggestion; the "configurational semanticists" Hornstein, Higginbotham, and May, for instance, hold - like me and many others - that a syntax guides a sentence's interpretation, but taking seriously the 'logical' in 'logical form,' they also hold that truth is central for interpretation. a7 Let me emphasize that much of what these three offer by way of detailed syntax, particularly in their analysis of quantifiers, is correct and compelling. Further, it suits my claims about syntax's role in

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interpretation beautifully: recognition of the detailed syntactic form of a quantifier (there are different types) leads to "reading" a sentence in different ways. Hornstein and May independently show, further, that much of what might otherwise be thought as merely semantic matters, such as co-reference, binding, and scope (central to how quantifiers are to be read), are matters of syntax. Generally, quantifier readings can be explained by syntactic rules and lexicon. Thus, members of this trio do a lot of what used to be called semantics by doing syntax. 28 Nevertheless, when it comes to the matter of what "determining an interpretation" consists of, they opt for a truthconditional account. Here they are in error, for a theory of interpretation needs to be based on a theory of reference, not on a theory that concerns itself with correctness of judgment. The problem concerns what sentential content should be assigned to a particular sentence. As I have been arguing, there is a very simple answer to at least a part of this, an answer implicit in the detailed syntax this trio does. A sentence with its syntactic form and lexical content determines, through a truncated form of itself that I call a "sentence," a situation. Only once interpretations are fixed can we begin to worry about correctness of judgment. To the extent that Chomsky and Chomskians ignore the distinction between content specification and content adjudication, they cannot produce a clear account of interpretation. 3.5.5 Just Slightly More Than Syntax and Lexicon; Public Meanings

I admit that, as Searle has emphasized, manipulating symbols or "doing syntax" in a sense cannot be the same as "doing semantics," nor can it explain what knowing what an expression means amounts to. Generally, developing an account of syntactic form alone, of form-plus-lexicon, or of form-plus-lexicon-plus-phoneticshape-plus-context will never satisfy someone who wants to know what takes us from items (signs) so described to the meaning or content of a particular sentence: syntax pure laine gives no account of reading or "interpretation," but only an account of what it is that is or can be "read" - the very complex but highly structured "sentence" that the semantically competent speaker-hearer sees or hears. In this sense, syntax is neutral vis-a-vis meaning or interpretation, and we need to do something more to say how signs get interpreted. May and Higginbotham think that one gets from syntax to meaning by following a familiar path. They take seriously the 'logic' of

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'logical form' and insist that interpretation is a matter of assigning truth conditions to sentences syntactically characterized.29 This is an impressive route. It goes from syntax to meanings through assignments and functions correlated with lexical items; it offers formal machinery and the promise of tying language to the world. But it is derivative. It does not really deal with meanings or contents, but rather tells us what we can and do do, once contents are determined. In contrast, the route of picture reference is unimpressive. It leaves all the impressive machinery and formal articulation on the side of syntax. Picture reference involves only two claims: that recognition of form and lexical content a cognitive capacity of human beings, and that perception of a "sentence" and immediate recognition of it on that occasion as that "sentence" is the same thing as knowing which situation it pictures. But if this is correct - and the fact that we so immediately and automatically recognize the meaning of a sentence suggests it is — we get a solution to Searle's puzzle. We get a clearly semantic relationship between a sentence, syntactically characterized, and its meaning - one that does not depend on commitments or patterns of commitments. As with Meinong, and even the Russell of "On Denoting" so far as his "concepts" were concerned, expressions (here, "sentences") refer to their meanings (here, situations) directly, so that for each "sentence" in context, a definite situation is pictured. The articulation of this form of reference lies in the picture. All the detail in the situation, plus the situation's structure, is found by the competent perceiver in the picture (in context). Thus, it is plausible that classification of the picture ("knowing what picture it is") is sufficient to determine what it picture-refers to or, in this sense, means. The general formal syntactic features Hornstein et al. adduce can be treated as the general structural features of "sentences" that make us read pictures in one general way or manner rather than another, and we can treat the form-plus-lexicon found in the "sentence" (having some S-structure with such-and-such a lexicon, perceived in a context) as a complete and detailed picture of a situation. The result is an account of interpretation - determination and individuation of meanings - for situations entirely without existence or truth commitments. What the picture pictures or refers to neither exists nor does not exist, and truth is irrelevant to determining it; yet it has all the detail one needs for individual situations to serve as parts of sentential meanings or sentential contents. This proposal automatically solves problems of compositionality in meaning. Composition of meanings is a matter of syntactic com-

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position — of detailing how "sentences" are composed by a syntax out of lexical items.3" (It does not deal with how stories are composed out of independent clauses, of course.) This proposal will strike many philosophers as making a theory of meaning far too easy - the once intractable concept of meaning cannot be shrugged off this easily, surely? But the picture-referential part of a theory of meaning or sentential content is easy. Explaining it is a matter of pointing out that perceiving a structured set of lexical items is picturing a situation. Articulating the structure (doing the syntax) and detailing the lexicon remain difficult tasks, tasks at which philosophers are not usually proficient. I also said that situations are public objects. If that is so, it is because knowledge of the syntax and lexicon of a language is shared. The situations pictured and the pictures that pick out situations are highly detailed, so individuating a situation cannot depend on linguistic universals common to members of the human species alone. Thus, what Chomsky calls "abstractness" (generality based upon innate syntactic schemata) offers only basic (though genuine) support for the publicity of meaning. Linguistic communities can differ in grammatical details and in their "lexical entries" or dictionaries, which makes for differences in "sentences-to-be-interpreted" — and, of course, in interpretations. I suggest looking to particular linguistic communities or "picture-referential we"s, partially defined in terms of more general universals, 31 for the publicity needed for situations. The community can bear the responsibility for the details and the dictionary that abstractness misses. The community's responsibilities in deciding what individual words mean are undoubtedly underwritten by universal but not formal-syntactic "schemata" common to members of the human species. Words for colours, for instance, have the uniformity and ordering they do across linguistic populations because of the way the human perceptual system works. Biological interests, built through evolution into this and related neurophysiological equipment, makes for and underwrites considerable agreement. But in spite of these foundations for sameness, variety is obvious. I leave discussion of dictionaries and the form of classification they give for terms, plus an account of meaning change and analyticity, to chapter 4; the primary issue at the moment concerns explaining what public access to the meanings of these terms amounts to. On this matter, after it is noted that individual expressions come in syntactic categories (often very fine-grained ones), it is difficult to say much more than that defining a picture-referential community is largely an exhibitionist's exercise: a picture-referential community

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is the group of people who understand both this word or sentence and that one. We must assume, on good evidence, that individuals do learn and afterwards can recognize the textures and syntactic shapes of individual expressions. The crucial claim is that in the learning the eye and ear are educated to recognize, for the competence involved is perceptual. Beyond this, one can be reasonably agnostic on the learning techniques involved, so long as immediate perceptual recognition of expressions results.^ With picture reference to situations in hand, it is possible to expand the role of picture reference somewhat to create pictures of what can be called descriptive places — RE structures minus cs. Descriptive places take the place of the traditional predicates, so that — intuitively speaking — picture reference specifies properties and identifying reference specifies individuals. The aim is to capture with picture reference the intuitive idea that access to "properties" is world- and truth-autonomous. The mechanics is simple. Let us start with "sentences" that picture situations alone. For instance, 'Harold mention that nothing bother him more than Geraldine's muttering' pictures the situation, Harold mention that nothing bother him more than Geraldine's muttering. We get a picture of a descriptive place including this situation by adding aspect and descriptum markings. This almost full-fledged sentence determines a unique place; when identifying reference to a c and a i R is specified, the result is specification or individuation of a full content or a descriptive position. There are three basic descripta or types of content or proposition — the perfect, simple, and anticipative. We can think of them as retrospective, contemporaneous, and prospective descriptions of something c. Alternatively, we can think of them as describing c by its influxes, involvements, and "exfluences." These sometimesstrained metaphors seem to suit all cases, for example (assuming 0 = Mort run, c = Mort), 'Mort has run,' 'Mort is running,' 'Mort is going to run.' In the first, Mort run antecedes Mort, in the second, it overlaps him (this approximates the idea that Mort "instantiates" or "is covered by" a property [here, his run]), and in the third, it is after him. These are discussed in detail in chapter 7. The RE relationship, in general, defines a content's structure, and in doing so, it also defines the functions of elements of contents. In effect, the RE relationship gives us the structure of all possible contents and yields thereby the coordinates in terms of which we can map all that "can be meant" by the sentences in a language. It yields a map of meanings. It is not Wittgenstein's map — his general form of a proposition in the Tractatus (meaningfulness was the core of meaning in this work, as logical form was made essentially to involve

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truth) — but a structural map that gives the form of possible ways to describe a c with a 0. This "general form of a proposition" is discussed in chapter 7. 3.^.6 Means-Sentences

The truth-conditional approach offers theories of the world to provide articulation for the "theory of meaning." I have suggested that syntax and lexicography offer the articulation we need, that part of offering a theory of meaning (carefully, a theory of the interpretation of "sentences") is a matter of doing syntax and constructing dictionaries. The only things syntax pure laine and dictionaries leave out are perception and picture reference. The output of this referential theory of meaning can be expressed in terms of "means-sentences," which, when applied to "sentences," look deceptively like Davidson's T-sentences. The output consists of sentences that say which expressions considered merely syntactically refer to which situations (or other items, such as properties). Schematically, 5 (picture-)refers to s. gives the form of such sentences. 'S' is a syntactically-lexically specified "sentence" — a "sentence" merely displayed without being "read" — and V is the same sentence "read," so that it determines (picturerefers to) the situation s.33 It can be said that correct matches are adequacy conditions on the theory, but since being able to read an S at all is sufficient for knowing which situation is pictures, talk of adequacy conditions suggests problems that do not need to be solved. For the picture-referentially competent speaker, the truth or correctness of such sentences is obvious, if true at all. For people who do not know (in the relevant sense) the language in which 5 appears, of course, it is not obvious. They cannot perceive the expression in the right way, and the sentence is not informative; they cannot even understand it. They might, of course, be told the meaning of the expression if there is a translation of the expression into their language. If they were German, for instance, they might be told that 'rot' translates 'red.' But translation is another issue; it is not accomplished by these 'means'-sentences. The situation is directly given "through" the syntactically characterized "sentence," and a correspondence is created. Picturing situations is automatic for the picture-referentially competent person. Anyone who is competent knows what an 5 (in context) refers to, for it refers to s. Picturing of situations is also world-independent.

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Picturing descriptive places as a whole, so far as this involves adding descriptum markers and aspectual markers to "sentences," is also automatic and world-independent. Since reference to cs is neither automatic in this sense nor world-independent, we cannot say that reference to contents as wholes is both. But we can at least say that much of individuating a content is accomplished automatically and independently of worlds. An important feature of picturing situations and descriptive places is that the relevant pictures not only resemble the things they refer to, but what they refer to has the form it does by virtue of the fact that the syntactically characterized picture has the form it does. In fact, one sees the form of situation and place on seeing the picture. Picture reference is direct and virtually "automatic." Having the picture and reading it is having the place; with the exception of c, the picture "determines" the content. This insight is embodied in the notion of lexical constructivism (a.k.a. determinism) I discuss below. It explains how sentences like that above can have linguistic items on the left side and what appear to be non-linguistic items on the right. Intuitively, the only access I or anyone else has to a situation is that got by being picture-referentially competent with regard to the "sentence" that pictures the situation. 3.3.7 Meaning, Publicity, and Scepticism Competence at picture reference constitutes only one half of content competence; the other half is competence at identifying reference to cs. I say no more about this other half here except to point out that it too proceeds from sentences-in-context in such a way that reference is not restricted to things of this world. We can and do attend to things in arbitrary worlds. When this form of competence is joined to picture-referential competence, their joint exercise is sufficient to refer to a sentential content, or the meaning of a sentence. I cannot provide a complete answer to meaning scepticism here, but in the section below I speak to the sense in which meanings qua picture referents are objective and I explain what the overall strategy is. The idea is to take the issue of meaning out of the epistemic sphere, where correctness of judgment, belief, and knowledge are crucial, and place it in an area of human competence that effectively is exercised automatically. That area of competence is perception to which a large part of the brain is devoted. There is strong evidence that the human auditory system, where the understanding of language begins, is adapted to recognition of speech.34 My claim is simple: the exercise of this and perhaps of visual perceptual com-

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petence on objects that I call "sentences" constitutes recognition of the "sentence," and this recognition is sufficient for knowing what it means. There is no step between the recognition of a sentence and knowing what it means, so there is no gap between perceiving a sentence and interpreting it. A fortiori, there is no reason to look for alternative interpretations. Therefore, there is no gap into which the sceptic can introduce doubt — error is not possible, since providing a different interpretation is perceiving something else. Notice that there is a straightforward way to test someone's competence at meaning. Wittgenstein suggested that to know the meaning of an expression is to know how to go on, but he meant by this to have the ability to continue in accordance with a practice or a rule-governed activity. This is a plausible reconstruction of how we decide that someone is using a sentence meaningfully, for, as I explain below, this is about all that can be hoped for in this domain. But what do we have as a criterion for deciding whether someone knows the meaning of an expression? Since knowing how to go on presupposes knowing what the meanings of expressions are (since engaging in a practice presupposes correctly exercising one's perceptual-referential abilities), someone who knows how to go on also knows what the meaning of an expression is. More generally, "knowing how to use a language" and actually applying it correctly constitute sufficient evidence (if it is needed) of someone's referential competence. But this is not to say that referential competence is the same as "knowing how to go on." 3.4

SEMANTICS AND WORLD: DOUBLE CONSTRUCTIVISM

The constructivist/realist debate provides a useful set of categories that enables us to say something about the way in which picture referents or meanings are objective. It also provides us with an opportunity to continue to fit the SRE view of the double task of semantics - constructing both a theory of meaning and a theory of meaningfulness - into the landscape. I explain how both the theory of meaning and the theory of meaningfulness are "constructivist." "Sentences" picture situations. In their book Situations and Attitudes, Barwise and Perry explain that their aim is to avoid the Lockean (empiricist, and generally idealist too) view that meanings are in the head and the equally difficult view tht meanings are in the world (whether this takes a Platonic or Millian turn). They want a compromise, a "new realism" that is the counterpart in semantics of JJ. Gibson's ecological realism in perception theory and that spreads the responsibilities for meaning across a relation between linguistic

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and non-linguistic items — their "situation semantics." I agree that putting meanings "in the head" is wrong. Putting meanings "in the world" is also wrong. But I do not think that Gibsonian ecological realism in the theory of meaning works. The result is inevitably parochialism. Only a constructivist account of meanings can give them the autonomy they need: they are "made" by us to suit our purposes in understanding through language. Yet meanings must also be "objective" so that they can be shared. Consider Barwise and Perry's notion of a situation. Their (real, as opposed to abstract) situations exist in the world and are described. The predicate 'exist' applies directly to situation-designating expressions. My situations are elements of sentential contents and partially constitute meanings. They are picture-referred to by "sentences" without tense, aspect, or descriptum specification. Given the way in which reference to them proceeds and their position in basic semantic structure, it does not make sense to say they exist: 's exists' (not to mention 's is true') makes no sense when applied to 0s. Nor are situations described - rather, things are described with them. They are "entities" of semantic structure that describe whichever c they are related to by an RE relationship. Like the predicates of the traditional view, situations must be able to appear in contents of sentences that describe anything, anywhere, and anywhen. But in order for them to accomplish this task, they must be accessible to all members of the group who can produce sentences with contents that describe things. How can situations be both "constructed" and accessible without being "real" in the Barwise-Perry sense? They are both by virtue of this fact: for the relevant community, all members of which have a certain competence, to recognize which "sentence" one encounters is for the sentence to picture-refer to its situation. Situations have the status of linguistic objects because they are determined for all members of the relevant community by "sentences" that have syntactic structure and lexical content. This claim is one part of the thesis of constructivism in meaning; I call it 'lexical constructivism.' Intuitively, the individual person has no choice in how an expression is to be interpreted; knowing which expression it is, is recognizing it and knowing what it means, or pictures. Defence of the rest of meaning constructivism depends on defence of the idea that sentences in context, when read by those with the right competences, also "pick out" cs, although these need exist. I take up this matter in chapter 4. If constructivism in the theory of meaning proceeds by detailing features of two forms of reference by sentences in context, what about constructivism in the theory of meaningfulness? The argu-

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ment earlier shows that the realism/constructivism debate found in and derived from the works of Davidson and Dummett is irrelevant to the matter of meaning, for both camps miss the point. If their debate is, however, a debate about the relative merits of objective truth as opposed to assertibility in providing a theory of meaningfulness, the choice is clear. Assertibility is the only choice because objective truth is irrelevant to dealing with the relationship between a p tied to a speech situation and constrained by evidence available then and a i[/ that is free to roam. This relationship, amounting to that of making a recommendation or placing the sentence in some "mood," is through-and-through epistemic. (Our brief look at Davidson suggested that realism is irrelevant anyway. He makes no direct appeal to objective truth, but only to belief, or holding-true. In his view, when it comes to asking whether those speaking another language "interpret" correctly, our decision is made in accordance with "our beliefs." Something like a group of which the speaker is a member is held responsible, not the world "out there.") A choice between constructivism and realism in the theory of meaningfulness is no real choice at all. Given that the relevant relationship is that between p and \\i, it is clear how we should go about developing a constructivist theory of meaningfulness. It seems plausible that a sentence is meaningful for a speaker — and for others who both are in his or her epistemic position and who share the relevant epistemic norms — if it is genuinely decidable, that is, if a judgment can be made. As in ethics, the sentence must be a "real option,"35 if it isn't, the issue will not appear relevant. Now, judgment is a form of decision-making, and it raises the issue of meaningfulness. Again, in the SRE theory, this is a matter of a p-vj; relationship, with the speaker as p made out to be an engine following epistemic rules; he or she can also be called a storyteller, someone whose task is to tell coherent and plausible tales that hang together and prove convincing or "relevant." The device of group membership clarifies the storyteller's position: he or she as judge or p is a member of two modally defined groups, the evidential we and storytelling (or story-weaving) we. Storytellers have shared epistemic responsibilities. They ought to recommend in some way that is in accordance with the standards of these communities, but how, really, should they recommend? The constructivist answer is this: they should recommend as they must according to the group, for there is no effective "external" constraint. Yet this is consistent with saying that storytellers are constrained. Storytelling is a form of what Nelson Goodman calls 'worldmaking,' and worldmaking does appear unconstrained. Still,

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Goodman's version of judging or worldmaking explains how, even though one is a constructivist (in the account of what is meaningful), the real world nevertheless constrains. The world constrains what we consider reasonable and rational by helping "choose" the principles in terms of which we infer or weave stories. Storytelling, when fittingly done, depends heavily on entrenched linguistic practices, those that determine what we take to be a reasonable, coherent, force-understandable world - a world detailed in a coherent story. The practices and principles can be stated in terms of principles of inference and of iterative sentences, such as habituals and nomics which Goodman dealt with in his seminal Fact, Fiction, and Forecast. Those principles we accept are those that are entrenched. According to Goodman's notion of entrenchment, not unlike Wittgenstein's given,36 groups of people agree on principles that make their stories coherent; they accept certain principles of inference. It proves impossible to say how these principles are justified - what makes them, as opposed to some others, correct. They are just accepted. But even this "sceptical solution" to the problem still allows us to discern the world "out there" as having an effect. In ways quite beyond our comprehension, the world controls us and guides us to accept these principles.37 Some principles are entrenched, and that is all there is to it. This is, I think, close to a correct view of one way in which the world has a responsibility for worldmaking. It guides and controls us by making it seem reasonable for us to follow one sentence held true by another.

4 Reference

This chapter completes the discussion of picture reference and introduces identifying reference in detail. Remember that both, taken together, specify for a sentence read on an occasion its content. The task of a theory of reference is to explain how an expression individuates, picks out, or specifies something; such a theory explains this by outlining what sort of competence people display when they know to what an expression refers — when they exercise that competence. If the SRE view of basic semantic structure is correct, we should expect neither a single form of reference nor a single sort of competence. The SRE theory of semantic structure suggests that there are several sorts of reference and several sorts of competence, since every sentence picks out something at is, at IR, and at i E . These are different sorts of things, with different natures, that stand in different relationships to each other and the speaker. Individuating each is a different task. Broadly, we need exemplificational reference to deal with t and p, picture reference to deal with 0 (and all of an RE relationship except for c and i R ), and identifying reference to deal with c. Exemplifying reference plays a role in the account of analytic truths I offer in this chapter and the next, but it is not discussed further. In my continued discussion of picture reference and in introducing identifying reference, I emphasize that these are different but related forms of perceptual competence. I also emphasize that their exercise on an occasion is constrained neither by truth nor existence. Taken together, they specify contents, and contents or sentential meanings must be and appear to be autonomous, not parochial.

183 Reference 4-1

THE STANDARD VIEW OF REFERENCE

If there is a standard view of reference, it is an inheritance from Frege and Russell. Call it 'Fressellian reference.' 1 To preserve semantic freedom, I must disarm a basic assumption of this form of reference, that reference is always to things that exist in the speaker's world. This assumption is built into Goodman's concept of denotation, for instance — a term he borrowed from Russell. No doubt qualifications are needed — Russell's private worlds can hardly be called 'the' world — but it is still correct to say that most of those trying to produce a theory of reference these days agree that reference is to things that exist in the world. I disarm the assumption by showing in this chapter and the next that Fressellian reference is just a special form of identifying reference: reference to things that exist is a special case of reference to spatio-temporally located things in some world or another. Those things that exist are the cs of realworld stories, and Fressellian reference's basic assumption is no more than a decision to take only these stories seriously. The assumption, like the view that tense is an SR relationship, is an artefact of parochial interests - it is natural, but semantically disastrous. Treating identifying reference to existing things as a special case turns out to be both more economical and elegant than the alternative of making fiction parasitic on fact. Everything is treated alike, no special machinery needs to be introduced, and no one needs to explain how fiction is parasitic on fact. 2 4-2

PICTURE REFERENCE

Picture reference is, as I suggested earlier, like the reference found in Meinong's work, but it is divorced entirely from existence claims and from the attempt by Meinong and his supporters, such as Chisholm, to defend even reference to impossible objects by appeal to the concepts of truth and existence.3 One need not and cannot defend the view that 'the golden mountain' or 'Harry's unicorn' picture-refer by appealing to the truth of 'The golden mountain is golden' or by appealing to Sosein or Aufiersein. In chapter 3 I appropriated the views of not only Meinong, but two others, Goodman and Chomsky, to explain how Goodman's "representation as" could be combined with some perceptual and structural claims to outline a competence the speaker exercises that allows him or her, when presented with such-and-such a "sentence," to know it means (refers to) a particular situation. This theory of picture reference can be extended downwards and upwards to serve as a theory of meaning for expressions of arbitrary syntactic com-

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plexity up to and including the level of REs of independent clauses (excluding c and i R ) — so long as the expressions make sense at all. The theory does not have to say what it is for 'in, for Harry had' to picture, but it does have to say what it is for 'for Harry had left,' 'Harry,' and 'leave' to picture. All of the latter 'make sense.' An appropriately sensitive member of the relevant picture-referential community who sees or hears an expression in the right way classifies it or recognizes it, and this is also knowing what it means. The competence exercised on an occasion is, broadly speaking, a syntactical one; it involves recognizing syntactic forms or pictorial forms as well as the relevant vocabulary (having lexical knowledge). Much of the work of a theory of meaning is done, then, by syntacticians and lexicographers. But tasks remain. There is the task of clearly distinguishing picture reference from identifying reference and explaining the role of picture reference in identifying reference. And there are the tasks, within the theory of picture reference, of dealing with synonymy and analyticity, with meaning change, and with picture reference by proper names and Russellian descriptions. In chapter 3 I distinguished meaning from meaningfulness. To recall and update what I claimed about a theory of meaning, we might compare the idea that a theory of meaning is a theory of two competences - identifying and picture reference - with what Putnam in "The Meaning of 'Meaning'" said an account of the meaning of an expression consists of. He said that it consists of a "vector" that includes the expression's syntactic description, its dictionary definition, its associated stereotype, and its referent. Using his terms, I tie Putnam's first two contributions to a "vector" together in a theory of perceptual competence of a special kind, arguing that having the relevant knowledge and exercising it on an occasion by perceiving the expression is sufficient for a form of reference Putnam does not countenance, picture reference. In the case of "sentences," for example, it is sufficient to individuate a situation. The other two contributions to Putnam's vector, stereotypes and (as he calls it) referent, both reappear considerably modified and shorn of truth, existence, and what Putnam calls 'indexicality' in an account of identifying reference to cs. I return to this comparison with a Putnamian vector later. 4.2.1 Recognizing and Classifying Picture reference is not extralinguistic reference if that amounts to relating an expression to some spatially located thing (as an identifying reference or in Goodman's "denotation"), but it is reference

185 Reference

nevertheless: the activity of "picking out a meaning" from among all meanings and — where indexicality is involved — disambiguating is individuating. It is a form of reference that involves no commitments at all on existence: to so refer is only to classify or perceive in the relevant way. This form of classification assumes the exercise of a special form of exemplificational and demonstrative reference to something that does and has to exist, however - it involves exemplificational and demonstrative reference to the expression that is being classified and that exists in the world of the speaker who perceives it. This imporant fact play a role in an account of synonymy and analyticity (on which, more below). The decisions and responsibilities involved in picking out meanings are different from the decisions and responsibilities involved in identifying reference; they are also radically different from those involved in making assertions and generally dealing with truth and existence. The latter are constrained by principles of good judgment or epistemic principles; neither of the first two are. In fact, there is really no reason to talk of decisions for which the speaker is responsible with picture reference. The label 'lexical constructivism' embodies this fact: although the particular combination of words (or the single word) that appears on an occasion is under the control of the speaker, the words or tokens (ts) by themselves determine their picture referent. In Goodman's language, their referents are semantically disjoint. If this were not the case, it would be implausible to speak of the picture-referentially competent person or member of the group of persons who perceive signs in the same way perceiving the expression or expressions (tokens, or ts) on an occasion. The syntactic structure and lexical content of a set of words, those features of the words that determine which items they picture-refer to, are features of the words themselves; they are recognized by anyone who can classify them correctly at all. Neither the person who produces the sentence nor the person who "reads" it changes the features of the words by his or her decisions. The syntactic structure of an expression or set of expressions determines, moreover, the structure of its picture referent. To see this, assume a naive syntax. Any syntax has a distinction between single expressions and combined expressions. Included in the former are 'red' and 'carry'; included in the latter are descriptions in the Russellian and Quinian sense (a variety of relative clauses, such as 'the man who left in a huff), prepositional phrases ('in the pantry'), sentential nominalizations ('Harry's leaving'), infinitivals ('to be going to leave'), and situation-designating "sentences" as a whole, including those with the complex structures discussed in the last chapter. Do

i86 Tense, Reference, and Worldmaking

not include coordinate constructions, such as those involving an 'or' or an 'and' (e.g., 'Harry left and Mort came') because this sort of complexity is better dealt with by a theory of storytelling; only such a theory says interesting things about how to combine fully tensed independent clauses. Now, to see that syntactic structure carries over to picture referent, one need only observe that members of the same syntactic category picture in more or less the same way the same sorts of "things." Prepositional phrases like 'of a house' and 'under the mosquito net' refer in the same way to similarly structured things - to one-place relationships. 'Gave' refers to a three-place relationship. 'Red' and 'naive' refer to "qualities." Descriptions have a complex structure, discussed briefly below. All the complex constructions discussed in chapter 2 map into identically structured situations. And this point about syntactic structure mapping into picture referent is, not diminished, but intensified by appealing to a more sophisticated syntax. Quantifier phrases, I mentioned earlier, have been shown by the configurational semanticists to differ in structure; surely this structure maps into the situations they help determine. Again, lexical determinism explains the phenomenon: it is not the producer of words who "makes" a situation or its structure, but the structured words he or she produces that do. Of course, as my remarks about syntax pure laine suggest, there is a sense in which expressions or tokens do not refer by themselves - they must "be interpreted." And in order to understand an expression — have it picture-refer — one must have some knowledge. The picture-referentially competent person must have sufficient lexical information available, information that can, in principle, be used as a test to see whether he or she "knows what term or expression t means" — that is, knows what t refers to. Knowing what expressions mean involves knowing the sorts of things that appear in dictionaries in the definitions of these expressions. Not all expressions involve definitions, nor such knowledge; proper names, for example, as I argue below, "just refer" (picture) individual things, without carrying further information. Nevertheless, with most expressions, detailed lexical information is displayed wherever one understands in perceiving - whenever one classifies an expression in the relevant way. Lacking this knowledge makes one incompetent with respect to a word or structure. Moreover, partial competence is possible and even likely with some lexical items: someone may not be able to fully disambiguate an expression such as 'free,' which has multiple meanings, some of them technical. Remember that indexicality plays a role in a speaker's correctly perceiving and classifying many expressions. Some expressions are

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relatively non-indexical, so the lexical knowledge a speaker has concerning them does not require careful attention to speech context for him or her to perceive and classify them correctly. Such expressions are also, not accidentally, unambiguous. Numerical expressions such as '33' are examples. But disambiguating many expressions requires seeing or hearing them in some perceptual context. 4.2.2 Synonymy and Analyticity

The knowledge required to perceive and classify a term is genuine knowledge, but it is not the same as ordinary "factual" knowledge concerning things that are not signs (words), such as pigs and thieves. It can be called 'analytic knowledge' because the kind of knowledge involved — that found in dictionaries — is expressed by sentences which, if true, are (in one plausible sense) analytically true. The traditional view that analytic truths are world- and story-independent is preserved in this sense of 'analytic,' for analytic truths must be known by a speaker for that speaker to qualify as someone who knows where to put a term in a "sentence" that makes sense (not necessarily saying something true or false), a term that can appear in sentences referring to situations that can be used in the description of something in any world whatsoever. But analytic truths should not be confused with the necessary truths I introduced in discussing nomics, natural-kind properties, and essential properties. Necessary truths are truths concerning things of our world (here the cs are our companions, and they are [typically] perceived by us), things held to be continuously true; they are stiff sentences concerning things in our world. Necessary truths differ from analytic truths at least in that analytic truths, unlike the metaphysical truths that I call 'necessary,' are "truths of meaning." Analytic truths concern words, not other things. Analytic truths cease to apply when a term ceases to have a meaning; they correlate exactly with ambiguities in a term ('bank,' 'free'), and knowledge of them can be construed as an entry condition for becoming a member of the relevant picture-referential community. Moreover - and this closely ties my notion of 'analytic' to the tradition's - analytic truths, because they involve only the perception and classification of signs, are immediately recognizable as true if they can be and are known to be true at all. Analytic truths in English might mislead by appearing to be about (refer identifyingly to) things or properties. They are actually about parts of sentences and about "sentences" thought of as pictures of situations. When one says and knows 'Red is a colour' and treats this as a matter of the meaning of 'red,' the sentence is not true of red,

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nor is it about red things; these are not what is being described. The only things described by an analytic sentence are inscriptions or expressions in a language qua picture-referring — that is, pictures qua picturing. It is less misleading to say, '"Red" is a colour-term,' although this is only a first approximation. To clarify the form of reference found in an analytic sentence, I propose a form of quotation. Analytic truths in English do not reveal their pictorial form perspicuously. 'Red is a colour' has an 'is' of classification. A sentence like 'Bachelors are unmarried men' has an 'is' of identity. But what is classified and identified? To facilitate answering this, I suggest rewriting the first sentence as 'pRedps are among pcolourps' and the second as 'pbachelorps are punmarried manps.' Subscripts take the place of the underscored expressions that appear in the meanssentences of chapter 3. In contrast, the italicized expressions in means-sentences display (refer exemplificationally to) expressions qua syntactic and lexical items pure laine. They remain the same. The subscript 'p' at the start and end of an inscribed word, phrase, or sentence amounts to a quoting device that has the inscribed item plus quotes serve to call attention to the item as a picture that is read.4 The inscribed item displays itself in a particular way: it calls attention to its pictorial character while continuing to picture-refer. This quoting device appears in a means-sentence in this way (using 'E' and 'e' to recall 'expression'): E means (pictures) pep. Notice that the quoted expression is something referred to demonstratively (on which, more later), and the quoting device is, in part, a demonstrative device. The quoting device also involves a form of exemplification: the expression goes on display. The quoting device does not produce a name, not even a name in a syntactic metalanguage; rather, it displays an expression. Moreover, what appears between the subscripts is an expression that picture-refers in its usual way to whatever it picture-refers to. Taking this into account, we see that it is plausible that English sentences dealing with meanings of expressions, including the sentences above, are ways of talking about pictures or expressions while and as picture-referring. These existing and spatio-temporally located referring pictures are the cs of such sentences. Thus, sentences that claim synonymies, as the bachelor case does, are in fact sentences about expressions that are pictures serving as pictures, and these sentences identify, not meanings as such (though this is the result), but pictures. Hence, 'Bachelors are

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unmarried men' says that pbachelorps are identical with punmarried manps and is true in the case where pbachelorps picture what punmarried manps picture. "Full synonymies," cases where one picture is identical to another, are not so rare as they have been thought to be; p + p is pplusp is an example. They are even more common if indexicality is taken into account. Although it is usually implicitly demanded of synonym pairs not only that they be synonymous on an occasion, but that (relatively) context-free expressions get paired, these expressions need not be non-indexical. Nothing in the p-subscribting device demands context-free perception of a picture. Thus, there are, in principle, large numbers of context-sensitive synonym pairs. The context-dependence of synonym pairs is, of course, consistent with the fact that homonymous pictures are not all the same ('All pbankps are pbankps' need not be true, for instance). The quoting device I introduced can deal with some features of translation. Translations sometimes involve synonymies; relatively index-free synonym pairs are particularly useful, although inessential. 'pDreickigps are ptriangularps' is a clear case of an index-free synonymy or identification. Notice, however, that to know that this last sentence is true in the relevant way - to recognize on perceiving that the two displayed expressions are "the same" - one must be both a German and English speaker. Indeed, one must be a German and English speaker even to produce the relevant sentence, for it is built into the quoting device that the pictures are serving as pictures. The people using the device must "know what the words mean." If they do, of course, they know that pdreieckigp and ptriangularp are the same. It follows that one does not know that pdreickigps are pdreickigps, even assuming that 'dreickig' is not ambiguous in German, unless one knows German, for unless one knows German, pdreickigp cannot be formed. (It does not follow that identification and classification sentences like these cannot be used to teach someone a foreign term.) Sentences that seem to be about the meanings of expressions, then, turn out to be sentences that are about (make identifying reference to) the existing, real-world, pictures of meanings - they are about expressions. Where a sentence says that two expressions have the same meanings, it is not about the meanings (or anything else, such as bachelors in the world), but about the expressions. Thus, such sentences are about things that exist and say of these things that they are "the same in meaning": these things picture the same property, thing, or relation because they are the same picture. Given the way the subscripting quoting device works, moreover, the relevant sentences are "analytically true" when they are true at all.

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In Kant's examples of analytic truths, it turned out that when one "analysed" the subject of a sentence, its "predicate" was "contained in" it. With tongue in cheek and taking considerable licence, I could make the 'Red is a colour' case suit Kant's story. However, rather than looking to Kant for the meaning of 'analytic,' I believe that avoiding associating "analytic truths" with a Kantian, or any other, process of analysis is the wiser course. Analytic truths are those that are perceptually true - true on the evidence of an actual reading by a competent speaker-hearer of the pictures found in the relevant sentences. They are in a special but important sense "true by virtue of their meanings alone," where this special sense amounts to the fact that a speaker-hearer need only read (perceive) their pictures to have evidence that they are true. Justification for an analytic truth is clearly different from justification for worldly truths, including the metaphysically necessary ones I discussed in chapter 2. One does not appeal to the way things are or even might be in different possible worlds, but to what words mean, where being a member of the relevant community is a precondition of understanding the term in the relevant way or knowing what its meaning is (being able to individuate its meaning — that is, classify the term in the proper way). If one is a member of this community, justification is automatic: it is sufficient to say, "that's what the word means" (in this context, where relevant) and leave it at that. Quine's criticism of analytic truths in "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" depends on a criterion of analytic truth that appeals to matters of fact and/or fiction — how things are and might be, rather than what words mean. His criticism succeeds only by allowing decisions about what words mean to turn on storytelling knowledge or matters of meaningfulness. To be sure, the confusion that makes this plausible is well entrenched. The criteria for analytic truths he investigates are drawn from the works of respectable philosophers who confound issues in just the way he needs to permit his argument to go through. And Quine commits himself to the confusion when he suggests having some sentences from among what I call "stiff truths serve, however poorly, as substitutes for "analytic truths." To avoid the central confusion in this notion of analytic truth, keep in mind that analytic truths are about words as pictures, rather than about the world or worlds, and that sentences that state analytic truths are misleading. It may be understandable why Quine and others have thought that one is talking about bachelors or members of the class of bachelors when one says 'Bachelors are unmarried men,' but there is every reason to avoid the confusion.

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4.2.3 Meaning Change

The meanings of expressions change — what they refer to or picture changes over time. I do not have in mind here the fact that an expression picture-refers to different things on different occasions because it is an indexical expression, one that requires that a person have knowledge of the speech position of the speaker to decide just what it does refer to - that is, to properly classify the term for that context and thus decide what it means for that occasion. An indexical expression has a range of things it can refer to for a referential community at a time; it does not acquire a new picture referent on different occasions, but selects one it already has. Meaning change is change that modifies the properties or things pictured, including, where the expression was indexical and remains so, a change in the range or ranges of things referred to. Such change effects a change in analytic truths and a change in the picture-referential community.5 Cases of meaning change (usually the accretion of particular features rather than completely new meanings) are found where expressions undergo modifications when transferred from one theory to a new one ('mass' in several scientific theories is an example). The concept of meaning change in theories is currently hotly debated. Most of those involved in the debate assume that a term is "defined by the theory in which it appears" and worry about whether 'mass' in relativity mechanics "means the same thing as" 'mass' in Newtonian mechanics. Of course it does not, for what a technical dictionary would give for 'mass' in the one theory is not what it would give for 'mass' in the other. But the different meanings of this term have plenty of features in common. And in general, it is very rare that a term is solely "defined by a particular theory" (clearly 'mass' is not). What drives the debate and makes it seem deep where it is not is, I suspect, the assumption that meanings are to be thought of in truth-conditional ways: the meaning of an expression is its "conceptual role," where that role is thought to be definable in terms of the truths and inferential patterns of the theory. Once we give up on this, meaning change (including accretion) can be seen for the commonplace that it is, and the supposed threat of "incommensurability" across theories disappears. The decisions concerning whether a theory is correct, or whether some sentences a theory has in it are correct, or whether a theory should be given up, do not threaten or change the meanings of the expressions in the theories. One presupposes the terms' having the meanings they have in order even to ask the question of whether sentences containing them are

192 Tense, Reference, and Worldmaking true or not. To be sure, it may well be the case that someone has to know enough of the other terms of a theory to be able to decide what 'mass' means in the vocabulary of those who use the language of the theory (this can be taken as a contribution to an indexical reading) and what someone said on an occasion when he or she said 'mass.' But that just reflects the need to know, in general, what a term can mean (for members of the relevant picture-referential community) before deciding what, on an occasion, it does (on that occasion) mean. The "ambiguities" of a term are built into it, but its potentials for meaning one thing rather than another are only apparent to someone who knows the language in the relevant way. Meaning change is a commonplace, and relationships between terms, those expressed by "analytic knowledge," are only rarely completely determinate over time. (Mathematical terms constitute cases where determinateness over time is the rule.) Interestingly, the changes that do occur in the meaning(s) of a term are, although complex, usually understandable and almost predictable; the multiple and complex entries and changes over time chronicled in the Oxford English Dictionary often reflect this. One of the advantages in the view of picture reference I am developing is that, given indexicality, it accepts meaning change with equanimity. If plentiful examples of the kinds of things one needs to know in order to be said to know what a term picture-refers to or what it means are found in dictionaries, we nevertheless need not take everything found in a dictionary and make it into something one needs to know in order to understand and be understood, at least at some level. Some information under entries in a dictionary may be too specialized. Any speaker must know that red is a colour, but not all need know that — as a dictionary I have before me says — red is a colour at the lower end of the spectrum. Nor — to communicate with others — need everyone know that red is a "primary" colour, nor that red is opposed to green in the opponent-process theory of colour many now defend. Nor need everyone know that something cannot be red and green all over at the same time, nor that there is a Pickwickian sense in which something that is orange is both red and yellow all over at the same time. But likely everyone does need to know that 'red' is a different colour term than 'green,' and if they have both in their vocabulary, they must know that both are colour terms. They must also know that a range of colours can count as reds, though it is asking too much to insist that everyone be able to say how they are ordered with respect to one another, or with respect to colours that would be differently labelled. This fact about what one needs to know in order to be said to

igs Reference know the meaning of an expression, at least at a minimal level, is partially captured by the fact that - as Putnam says - meaning is a normative notion. The norms and standards at issue are, in my terms, the norms and standards of the picture-referential community. This community "decides" what must be known in order to know what the meaning of'red' and 'mass' is. Of course, these norms and standards are not those involved in deciding whether a sentence is true or whether one is justified in holding that a sentence is true. Nor are they the different norms and standards involved in deciding to what a sentence makes identifying reference. These points clarify, I think, the puzzles and difficulties involved in someone's saying, 'Whales are large fish.' There are two relevant ways of reading this sentence; neither of the readings concerns whales directly — so it would, for this reason and others, be silly to reconstruct this sentence as '(x)[Whale x D Large Fish x].' Both ways involve matters of perceptual recognition. On one reading, the issue concerns the meaning of the expression 'whale.' Someone might believe that pwhaleps are among plarge fishp. A brief consultation of a dictionary quickly settles this. If the person continues to believe this, he or she is not a member of our picture-referential community, although we can understand the nature of the mistake and sympathize. After all, 'whale' did not get the meaning it has until fairly recently, and there are other reasons to be charitable. In dealing with words translated from ancient texts, with the language of children, and with the words of primitives, we must often recognize that words (in this case, 'whale') are classified properly (for many of them) in ways that would seem in error to us (in this case, 'large fish'). On the other reading of this sentence, the issue is what Putnam calls a stereotype and what I call a caricature. Stereotypes play a role in identifying reference involving common nouns for "natural kinds" and proper nouns for individuals. If what people are saying when they say that whales are large fish is that so thinking of whales gives them a way of recognizing whales, the sentence is not obviously wrong, for it seems to amount to appealing to the salient features of large fish to explain what is involved in a whale being perceptually salient, and even if it is wrong, it can still perform its duty. On this reading, the meaning of the term 'whale' is not at issue. The sentence rather amounts to a sociolinguist's observation on the kinds of perceptual characteristics we appeal to in picking out whales (and populating other worlds with them, to the extent that we want them to be easily recognizable). Recalling Putnam's meaning vector, it is easy now to see why I insist on a distinction between the first two contributions to his vector

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and the last two. A theory of meaning qua picture-referential theory involves the classification and perception of words, and that can be dealt with by appeal to the knowledge (competence) that underlies the first two contributions alone (syntactic description and dictionary definition). The last two (stereotype and "referent") play a role only with nominal expressions making identifying reference, and as it turns out, their roles must be reconstrued in a non-Putnamian way. Nevertheless, in a way these two vector contributions make a contribution to a theory of meaning, for the meaning of a sentence is its content referred to in both ways, and the c to which identifying reference is made is a part of content. Putnam, therefore, is right to put all four vector contributions into "the theory of meaning." 4.2.4 Proper Names I have been defending the idea that knowing the meaning of a single term often requires on the part of the speaker (analytic) knowledge of features of the thing referred to. Proper names are a clear exception to this principle; they "just refer" or they simply picture their referent, and the speaker need make no commitments at all with regard to the thing referred to. (Keep in mind that this is not identifying reference.) Moreover, there are proper names of fictional entities and of things (such as numbers) that cannot exist. These bald statements need defence. Picture reference vis-a-vis names of numbers is discussed in chapter 5; the rest are discussed here. I anticipate several complaints: (i) "Surely," the Kripkean will say, "while I agree with you that proper names have no meaning in the descriptivist sense, we must provide an account of how they refer that connects them up to particular things in the real world; there are no proper names of fictional things, nor even of things in the future." (2) "Surely," the descriptivist will say, "proper names have an associated sense, though it is clearly not a matter of analytic knowledge, and that associated sense in the form of a description determines the referent of the proper name when it is a true description." (3) "Surely," almost everyone will say, "you can't mean to say that a sound or a mark on a page — 'John,' for example — pictures John? If nothing else is wrong with the thesis, does it not entail that the mark pictures all those named John'?" (4) And if these three complaints were not enough, others will say that while, on the view I defend, proper names are parts of sentences that are supposed to refer to situations independent of stories and worlds, there is a conflicting intuition. If, for example, 'John' names one of my friends in this world, then surely if John is the referent, it cannot be him in

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another world when a sentence with his name in it appears in a fictional tale and this person is c for the relevant sentence. I speak to the last two complaints first because answering them brings out salient features of my approach to proper names. They are reasonably easy to deal with. One problem is that morphologically identical inscriptions or sounds can refer to an indefinitely large number of things. There are many people called 'John' in the world, not to mention in history and in fiction. Would this not entail the need for an indefinitely large number of pictures? After all - as everyone acknowledges - proper proper names can only refer to single entities. One way to try to answer this is to enlarge names instead of 'John,' we can introduce 'John Fred Gerald WaverleySmythe Jones' with, if necessary, 'III.' In the same vein, we could try to introduce a universal catalogue of names that arbitrarily assigns different numerals to otherwise morphologically identical proper names. But if the impracticality of such suggestions does not argue against them, the lack of need for them does. We get along perfectly well without such devices. We do so because proper names are indexical expressions that require one to know something about speech position in order to determine their referent. Indexicality effectively makes for different pictures for different referents. In context, one knows what 'John' refers to, for that picture-in-context is unique to John. In effect, a morphologically similar set of inscriptions can be, in fact, a set of different pictures; in one case we have a 'John'j picture, and in another, a 'John'2 picture. The distinctions are made outside the inscription, as it were, by relying on speaker-contextsensitive knowledge. The effort of cataloguing proper names and making them unique is accomplished without producing different inscriptions. This speaks to the third complaint. The fourth complaint is dealt with, not in Kripke's way, but by insisting that proper names make singular reference to whatever they do without requiring that the person using the proper name have any knowledge concerning the referent of the name, other than that the name refers to what it does. In effect, 'Nixon' refers to Nixon qua the proper name it is, if it is known at all by the speaker. The referent is set by the referential community. Moreover, the referential community maintains the practice of having proper names picture (speaker-context sensitively) just what they do not only independently of speaker knowledge, but independently of what the thing happens to be (in a real-life story, assuming that the referent is a c in a real-life story). The referential community must do this to have proper names do what we want them to do — refer to the thing they picture-refer to without regard to whatever vicis-

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situdes the thing undergoes, either in a person's views of it, or in the real world, or in imagination (fiction). 'Nixon' refers to Nixon even if I have quite odd beliefs about the referent; it refers to Nixon in the sentence 'Nixon is an honest man,' and it refers to Nixon in 'Nixon is a turnip.' This practice of the referential community effectively builds singular reference or uniqueness into the notion of a proper name. Any member of the community confronted by an obvious proper name - even if he or she does not know which proper name it is (or what it refers to) - knows that it refers to a single thing (or single group of things). And if persons do know which name they see or hear, they — because they are necessarily members of the relevant community - know just which single thing is named. Kripke's account of proper names captures some of the effects of this practice, but does so in an unnecessarily restricting way. In Kripke's view there cannot be proper names of fictional entities. What does 'Hamlet' name? In his view, nothing at all. This is counterintuitive, and one advantage to the view I defend is that 'Hamlet' names Hamlet. Just as there are pictures of a fictional object such as Zeus that are pictures of Zeus by virtue of our classifying them as Zeus pictures, so there are names of fictional subjects such as 'Hamlet' that we recognize to be names of Hamlet by virtue of our classifying them as Hamlet names (pHamletps). We tell from the picture or name (in context) what the picture or name is of in the relevant sense - we know "what is pictured or named." We obviously do this without ever encountering the fictional entity in our world. And, in the case of proper names at least, we do this in a way that ignores what the speaker or hearer may believe concerning the thing named, whether this belief or knowledge is analytic or story-based, except (trivially) for the knowledge that Hamlet is pictured by 'Hamlet' and that 'Hamlet' is a proper name, so that singular reference is in question. This latter is lexical knowledge and readily exercised: all it involves is that the person know that he or she is dealing with some particular proper name by recognizing it as the proper name it is. Giving up Kripke's views of how proper names refer does not force us into a descriptivist position like Lewis's descriptivist view of names — a view that can in principle deal with names of fictional entities, but at the cost of making reference depend on resemblance.6 Nixon in another possible world is that thing in that world that most closely resembles our this-world Nixon, so Hamlet in a possible world is that thing that most closely resembles the Hamlet of Hamlet's world, presumably the world of Shakespeare's story. The view that 'Hamlet' names Hamlet, period, is far less costly than either (in one

ig7 Reference way) Kripke's approach or (in another) Lewis's. Proper names "just refer." Fictional or not, by virtue of the fact that a name is read as a proper name, one knows that it refers to a single thing (or single group). Could there be more than one referent of a proper name? Consider a puzzle. It may turn out on historical investigation that there were two men called by the morphologically and until then indexically similar name Thales' (the ancient philosopher). To which person does a pre-discovery use of 'Thales' refer? The answer is that 'Thales' referred then to a unique Thales; no decision was forced, there was no inkling that one needed to be made, and so far as anyone in the picture-referential community using the term then could have been concerned, it was a proper name that picked out a single individual. Any picture-referentially competent speaker would have agreed to this; this is a result of the idea that picture reference determines a referent. After the discovery - however that is made - we must do some linguistic reform, and when returning to philosophical texts written before the discovery, we have to keep in mind that there (now) were two Thales. The issue concerns which names are used on an occasion: the fact is that before there was no 'Thales' 1 and 'Thales'2, just 'Thales.' In sum, picture reference with proper names gives a good account both of what it is for a name to "just refer" and what it is for a name to pick out the same thing, no matter which world it appears in. Having the name in one's vocabulary is sufficient for both; the proper name itself does these jobs. Identifying reference with proper names is a different matter; I deal with it later. Kripke's views of reference can make an interesting contribution to some aspects of the theory of identifying reference. 4.2.5 Complex Pictures es

Complex pictures of elements of situations include prepositional phrases, infinitivals, complete predicates, sentential nominalizations, relative clauses, and others. Some of these expressions are candidates, or seem to be candidates, for expressions that refer to things identifyingly. In particular, sentential nominalizations like 'Harry's leaving' (which refers to or pictures a situation [within a situation] and is often found in factive constructions, such as 'Harry's leaving surprised us all') and those relative clauses philosophers call "definite descriptions" seem to involve reference to some things in the (or a) world. The other expressions, as a rule, refer to what we call properties or relationships. Properties and relationships figure in dis-

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cussions of truth and existence, as do referents of singular terms like proper names, but generally it is less difficult to convince philosophers that reference to properties and relationships has the world-independence needed for elements of content. Everyone is reasonably happy with the idea that the property red and the relationship is in front of the mast are at least world-independent in the sense that they can appear ("be instantiated"?) in any world whatsoever. The more interesting challenges to the principle that picture reference is world-independent are the nominalizations (which usually appear in discussions of the nature and existence of "events") and descriptions, particularly definite descriptions.7 Because they would take us too far afield, I ignore sentential nominalizations8 and discuss Russellian descriptions and quantified phrases alone. 4.2.5.1 Russellian descriptions. A description in the Russellian sense is a fully tensed though subordinate clause that is always in a syntactic location that could also be filled by, for example, a nominal, a proper name, or a demonstrative. Being fully tensed, it gets a full SRE assignment. Because there is an SR relationship, the issue of the truth of the clause arises. Its truth is relevant for identifying reference. Specifically, I argue below, the recognizably true description helps the identifying-referentially competent speaker-hearer attend to the c for the sentence as a whole. (By "seeing" what the description is true of, often one can determine what a sentence is about.) But the truth of the clause does not bear on the issue of what the clause picture-refers to, nor on the pictorial form of the clause. That is a matter of the form of the embedded RE structure, including a "sentence," that the description clause displays. On display are one or more predicative expressions in a "sentence" that has a quantifier in subject position. Since "sentences" picture situations that precisely mirror their form, we should expect that this special form of "sentence" pictures a special form of situation, one virtually designed, when placed in an RE structure, to be a class-fixing situation. If this is correct, Russell was on the right track when he said that a description is a class-determining construction that makes the things it describes out to be some number of things that are as described by the phrase. But he was wrong in several respects. He was wrong in thinking that what determines the class is a predicate, rather than a (admittedly special) form of situation that helps define a descriptive place, without c or cs. He was also wrong in thinking that referring to a class necessarily involves truth or existence claims; he failed to see that descriptions, by virtue of their pictorial form alone, picturerefer to a class without commitment to truth or existence. Truth is

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irrelevant: the descriptive form determinately picture-refers to a class so that we know which class is pictured without having to ask which things in some world or another the description is true of. Specifically, the descriptive form determines a class by denning a descriptive place, not by virtue of being true of some thing or things. Think of the embedded "sentence" as having whatever surface form it does and the pictured RE as looking something like this: {x I 0}, where '0' is the situation pictured and V is read as 'construed as' or (non-alethically) 'described as,' not 'such that it is' (since the latter carries almost unavoidable alethic baggage). Because picture reference to a class is at issue, Russell was also wrong in what he had to say about the existence commitments of quantifiers. There is nothing in the expression 'some' appearing in a description that commits anyone to the existence of some thing. It is a quantifier pure and simple, not - as Russell and others construe it to be — a disguised existence claim. Thus, it should not be read as 'there exists.' Confusing different forms of reference and objects of reference led to much of the mess we now face in philosophical discussions of reference for descriptions and quantifiers. To disentangle oneself from Russellian confusion on the role of truth in fixing the reference of a descriptive phrase, one should think of the syntactic machinery of the description as determining (picturing) a class in the way I indicated and think of the truth of the descriptive phrase as possibly contributing to a different form of reference, reference to c for the sentence as a whole. When a descriptive phrase is in subject position, as with any phrase in subject position, it can play a role (discussed soon) in making some one thing or class of things in a world salient or in fixing what the sentence as a whole is "about." It usually does so successfully only if the sentence is in a story and the person who "reads" the sentence is sufficiently au courant with the story; the descriptive phrase contributes when the person recognizes that the descriptive phrase is true of something at i R . When this happens, the descriptive phrase contributes to identifying reference for the sentence as a whole. But a necessary condition for the descriptive phrase to play this role in identifying reference is that it allow a person to know which class is at issue, in the sense of knowing which class is pictured by a descriptive phrase. Understanding "which class it is" in this sense is presupposed by coming to know, with respect to a story and a time, "which things (in that world) are members of the class." Donnellan's distinction between referential and attributive uses of definite descriptions might be thought to bear on what I claim about descriptive phrases, but it does not. An attributive use of a definite description is one that succeeds in making an identifying reference

2Oo Tense, Reference, and Worldmaking

to something — when it does — in part by virtue of being true of that something. This use does not have the truth- and existence-independence of reference to a class provided by my notion of a descriptive phrase determining a class. His referential use of a definite description shares characteristics with some cases of identifying reference made by sentences that contain definite descriptions. All the features that make his referential use of a definite description interesting, however - for instance, the fact that (as we say) a person using a sentence with a definite description that is false of the thing he or she wants to refer to succeeds at referring to it anyway - can be dealt with without supporting Donnellan's claims about "speaker reference." I discuss Donnellan cases in more detail later. 4.2.5.2 Quantifiers. The Russellian description is just a special case of a quantified phrase. Fully disabusing onself of Russell-induced confusions with regard to quantifiers takes a book, not a few remarks, but it is easy enough to see the direction in which to go. If descriptive phrases are class-specifying expressions that do their work without appeal to truth, the work they do is not changed if a quantifier is added to the class specification — in effect, they specify a class and, with the quantifier, enumerate, but still without appeal to truth or existence. Only by allowing descriptive phrases to do this work without appeal to existence or truth can we make them refer worldlessly to elements of situations — as surely they must, for even proper names do. Worldless reference to classes makes sense of a 'some' that is not an "existential quantifier" and an "all" that is truly free of existence commitments: neither, as a class-determining expression alone, carries a commitment. Clearly, descriptive phrases differ, but only when we begin to look at the ways they differ pictorially do we really begin to see the differences.9 Quantifiers have oddly been claimed to unlock the mysteries of reference and existence. Quine, for instance, thinks that quantified variables can handle all referential tasks10 and deal with existence too. This makes sense only within a framework of Russellian confusion. No doubt everyone would agree that phrases with 'some,' 'every,' and the like refer to somethings (xs) described in a certain way and that they say how many there "are" — how many are so described. Reading solutions to the issues of truth and existence into this commonplace requires reading 'are' as 'do exist in the real world.' But these phrases do not bear this commitment. Consider Someone will meet Harriet in Fiji and she'll want to marry him. Anyone who owns a donkey beats it.

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Neither 'someone ...' nor 'anyone ...' need say anything about any existing things; they do only if the full sentences are in real-world stories. Russellian and post-Russellian logical formalization has tended to contribute to confusion by not recognizing the SR/RE distinction: p-4» parts of SR relationships control issues like truth and existence and should not be reflected in a formalization that otherwise approximates what is needed for quantified phrases. The prime source of confusion is the "existential" quantifier. I am certainly not objecting to formalization as such, only to imperspicuous and confused formalization. Variables and quantifiers can, in principle, give a perspicuous account of the form of quantified phrases (forms of these pictures) and moreover give syntactically perspicuous versions of "co-reference" and pronominalization relations where quantifiers are involved, as in the donkey-owner sentence above.11 Furthermore, they can perspicuously display various "ambiguities" of such sentences. But the logician begins with one strike against him or her, for to the extent that logic is concerned with truth, and so long as formalization is seen as an effort to find "logical form," the logician's formalizations tend to be misdirected. Formalization should be seen in the first instance as a syntactic exercise. If nothing else, this gives better results. It is clear that we must distinguish several sorts of quantifiers on syntactic grounds. The formalizations of Hornstein make the needed distinctions by showing how different quantified phrases react differentially to syntactic principles. And the distinctions he introduces, operating with syntax already in place, can do the tasks other complex notations (e.g., branching quantifiers) do. In effect, we end up with more perspicuous formalizations than the logician because focusing on syntactic form gets closest to the central task of formalization, capturing what I call "pictorial form." 4.3 IDENTIFYING REFERENCE

Think of identifying reference as a complex task performed by a sentence in a story, where that task is drawing a competent speakerhearer's attention to a thing or things (cs) at the sentence's i R - in other words, making something salient and a "companion" to f. The notions of attention and salience are, I think, the right ones to choose to get a grip on identifying reference. First, there is the fact that humans and other organisms have, by virtue of their perceptual systems, built-in capacities to look at (listen to and, more generally, perceive) some things to the exclusion of others. Because this exercise of these capacities (to which large parts of the brain are devoted) both serves important needs and provides most of our

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information concerning the things of our world, it would be surprising if languages did not somehow build their exercise into the basic semantic structure of sentences. The SRE theory is a theory of basic semantic structure, and it, at any rate, makes the selectivity of attention — focusing on something in a spatial field — the core of the form of selectivity found in identifying reference. The "individuation" of identifying reference is a matter of perceptual focusing. Of course, languages, by virtue of the autonomy of contents, allow us to go considerably beyond our immediate perceptual field — to other places and other times for our world, and to other worlds. But focusing on c — that thing to which identifying reference is made — remains a matter of focusing on something in a "perceptually" accessible spatial field. Second, perceptual notions suit the phenomenology of speaking and understanding. Understanding a sentence concerning something c that is not immediately perceptually present to the speaker-hearer at time of speech does actually (in my experience, at least) seem to involve something like taking oneself in imagination to a thing or things somewhere and somewhen and "perceiving" it then and when. The SRE theory, which makes understanding the content of a sentence depend upon one's "assuming" the right descriptive position — a position that includes "perceiving" the right thing at i R - exploits this. Third, if one assumes that identifying reference is a matter of attention and salience, some puzzles of identifying reference fall into place. The role of stereotypes, or of what I call 'caricatures,' is to help make some things easily recognizable and distinguishable. The role of demonstratives becomes clearer. Donnellan's examples of "referential use" of a definite description are explained, as are some of Kripke's observations on proper names and descriptions. And — perhaps most important - the identifying-referential role of subject position in the subject-predicate structure of sentences falls into place. 4.3.1 Other Views: Preliminary Remarks Three general approaches to identifying reference are found in the following ideas: the thing a sentence is about is what the speaker intends it be about; it is the thing the speaker is related to by some informational link; it is the thing the sentence the speaker uses is true of. Features of all three approaches have their place in an account of identifying reference to cs, but as they stand, none of them is a complete explanation of how identifying reference is made. Nor are any of them adequate, for they all miss the point: none of them makes perceptual salience essential to the principle of selection

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involved in identifying reference. (The information link comes the closest.) Both the truth-based and information-link approaches, moreover, typically make autonomous contents impossible. While the speaker-intention approach could, in principle, deal with the problem of autonomy, where the two other approaches fail, it unfortunately fulfils its promise by declaration, rather than serious theorizing. It is not helpful to be told that what a sentence is about is what the speaker intends it be about; something else seems to do the work of securing identifying reference to things. In fact — I argue below — the concept of speaker reference seems to be useful only when it becomes apparent that a speaker has made a mistake with respect to some discourse or another — where he or she produces a sentence that makes an identifying reference to something the story he or she is telling makes clear is not the "right" thing (or, rarely, produces an uninterpretable sentence - which fails to make any identifying reference at all). In such circumstances, listeners or readers say, "He or she must have meant...," and supply a referring term that, were it to appear in what was said, would have constituted a sentence that would have made the right reference. It is possible to determine "what is meant" by appeal to the story in which the sentence appears. This supports the idea that whether sentences make correct or incorrect references with respect to some story, the sentences speakers produce refer, not the speakers as such. The approach that makes identifying reference depend on truth is limited by the fact that the truth of a description, say, must be easily recognizable if it is to aid the task of bringing something to attention. In the case where things already in one's visual field (things at is) are referred to, there is usually (although notoriously not always) easy recognition, but in such cases the truth of a description often plays little or no role in making something salient. This suggests that anyone interested in a comprehensive theory of identifying reference could not expect, in explaining how such reference proceeds, to rely exclusively on the recognizable truth of a sentence or Russellian description. A related problem — still assuming recognizable truth is required — arises in the case of reference to things not immediately present. Since in such cases a person, in determining whether a description is true, would have to rely on what is already known by the participants in a discourse about the things to which reference is made, it is difficult to explain identifying references to things that are being introduced for the first time to a world through a story. But the major difficulty with relying on truth to explain identifying reference arises when it is assumed that truth must be truth of descriptions or sentences with regard to the real world alone. Making

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all truth real-world truth severely undermines autonomous contents. The only things to which identifying reference could be made would be real-world entities. The information-link approach, at least as usually presented, also compromises the autonomy of contents. It does so by building causality into the concept of information. Since it seems plausible that no fictional thing could itself cause an information state to come about in a speaker-hearer, no fictional thing could be referred to identifyingly. Unless an author is particularly inept, however, we referentially competent speakers and hearers have no trouble at all while reading a novel or watching a play that deals with fictional objects and characters in attending, for some sentence, to some thing c at a time i R in its spatial12 part of a fictional world. The fact that identifying reference is accomplished in fiction as easily as in "real life" - indeed, often more easily - should be an embarrassment to both the information-link and real-world truth accounts. It displays their regrettably parochial interests. A plausible account of identifying reference should allow fictional identifying reference. If it does so, identifying reference to realworld entities become a special case. Of course, parochialists try the opposite: they try to make fictional reference parasitic upon parochial reference. But such a strategy fails to explain how fictional identifying reference appears to be as easy as it is: we just do not need, in referring to Hamlet, to refer to Shakespeare.13 The parochialist has a counterargument. There are Strawsonian (nee Kantian) arguments, based on a view of reaching a decision, that might be thought to count against my effort to generalize identifying reference to stories of all sorts. It is claimed that identification and reidentification of things require that one be a part of the same spatio-temporal framework as the thing(s) to be (re)identified, for it is only if one is a part of that framework that it is possible, at least in principle, to reach a justifiable decision concerning whether a sentence refers identifyingly to an x. A justifiable decision is one that commands agreement. I cannot and do not speak to all aspects of this argument, but I do undertake to demonstrate that it is wrong. For one thing, I show that it is groundless: we easily reach decisions on what is referred to identifyingly in fiction too. Further, I show that the factors that control salience for t|/ operate as easily in fiction as in fact. I also explain why this objection on the part of parochialism is question-begging: it depends on making the only possible "decisions" concerning identifying reference real-world decisions. Finally, I defend the view (especially in chapter 7) that the world a story is of or about is public and shared because there is a story about it;

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we do not need "real world" objectivity to reach agreement, and indeed "real world" objectivity is just a special case of objectivity through shared knowledge of a story. In effect, I undermine parochialism by making it obvious that decisions on what a sentence refers to identifyingly are story-relative. The decision-making argument is on to something, although it misstates what it is. It recognizes that the only things that could cause confusion concerning what is being referred to identifyingly are the individuals of a single spatio-temporal framework - what we usually call a world. There is something very odd about thinking that decisions concerning what a sentence is about can be made for arbitrary sentences, disconnected from a story of a world. But the "no decisions except real-world decisions" school goes too far in moving from the fact that a c must be located in a world to permit any decisions to the idea that therefore all decisions must be made with respect to a real-world story. Any coherent story and the population of its world constitute a spatio-temporal framework in which cs are to be located by identifying reference. Incidentally, it may appear that by building a "perceiver" vj; into the theory of identifying reference I advance, I am psychologizing the concept of reference. In a way I am, but not — I think - in the damaging way found in the currently popular effort to make something of Frege's "mode of presentation," having it deal with some issues of identifying reference. The whole point of introducing such a "perceiver" is to make it freely transportable anywhere and anywhen, while still mobilizing the concepts of perceptual salience and having them make sense of the sort of individuation involved in identifying reference. My impression, gained from the work of those who have revitalized modes of presentation, is that this notion cannot be used to deal with identifying reference to fictional objects. If it could, I would be happy to appropriate some of the insights contained in it. 4.3.2 Salience for fy

I propose using perceptual salience to explain identifying reference.14 To defend my account, I must explain why salience serves and how it is controlled (how, in effect, identifying reference is accomplished). To preserve semantic freedom, I must show that at least some of the procedures followed in making a successful identifying reference must work for reference to fictional entities. The germ of my account of identifying reference via salience is found in David Lewis's work. In Counterf actuals and "Scorekeeping

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in a Language Game," salience is introduced to deal with the issue of which x a definite description of the form 'the x is about where there are several things, at the same time, of which the description is true. Staring at a pen full of pigs, someone points and says, 'The pig Geraldine wants is over there.' It is likely that in the perceptual context the pointing helps make the pig salient, and its salience for that conversational and perceptual situation makes it the thing the sentence is about or — as Lewis would have it — the referent of the definite description 'the pig,' which would without salience fit at least all of the speaker's observed porcine companions. To make salience do the work it must, however, it cannot rely upon pointing, demonstratives, or gesturing. These are limited to the speaker's perceptual context. I must introduce a concept of salience that applies without relying on circumstances in which indexical demonstrative reference by the speaker plays, or can play, a role. I must generalize the concept so that it will serve for any sentence in any story; this detaches it from an existence requirement. And - for definite descriptions - I must clarify the role of the (recognizable) truth of the description in producing salience and insist that, where truth does or can play a role, its role is not restricted to real-world truth. The key to accomplishing all this is to make salience salience-for-vj; for a sentence, so that what a sentence is about becomes a matter of what is "perceptually" salient to the "describer." If I can make sense of how salience is controlled without appealing to existence and by appealing at most to "perceptually" recognizable truth-in-a-story, I can generalize identifying reference to make it as applicable to i R s where the speaker is not present as to i R s where the speaker is. There are significant differences between the treatment of salience in Counter}actuals and that in "Scorekeeping in a Language Game." In the earlier work, salience seems to amount to something like speaker-perceptual salience alone. The examples Lewis considers are examples where the choice of which pig is picked out by 'the pig' concerns a class of pigs the speaker perceives. In the later work, salience is extended to deal with cases in which one must pick out things that are not perceptually present. Lewis has no theoretically motivated warrant to use the term 'salience' in this extended use because he gives us no way to extend it - no way to speak of something being salient where it is not salient to the speaker at time of speech. Successfully making salience "perceptual" salience for if; would provide the theoretical underpinning lacking in Lewis's account, and would generalize it - if done properly — well beyond the immediate perceptual context of the speaker.15 Making vj; central also suggests where to look for an account of what is involved in

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making something salient, for ty must be accessible to the competent speaker-hearer and is so only if this speaker-hearer routinely manages to assume the correct descriptive position, which constitutes the content of a sentence. Another difference between Lewis's two works is that in the article he speaks of salience as dependent on "rules of accommodation" in a language game, while in the earlier work he speaks only of how a salience measure depends on context. He does not tell us, except by example, what dependency on rules of accommodation is, and he fails to clarify the relationship between this dependency and the earlier version, where immediate speaker-perceptual salience did the work. But his "rules" do reflect certain facts about keeping one's attention on something, or switching one's attention to something else, and they hint at some possible accounts of salience. Consider a fictional tale, not one of Lewis's examples but containing some of his favoured characters. 'There were three pigs ... The littlest pig, Harold, went to market; the two others stayed home. Harold met a wolf on the way. The pig regretted not bringing his can of Mace ... Fortunately, the biggest pig, Gerald, decided he would go to market after all. He saw Harold being chased by the wolf. The pig rescued him.' In the happy conclusion to this mercifully brief tale, the larger pig gets referred to with the phrase 'the pig.' No one who understands the tale has difficulty recognizing that this later 'the pig' requires a different object than the earlier 'the pig,' nor in recognizing that the first 'the pig' refers identifyingly to Harold. The fact of (identifyingly) different referents for the same term can be explained by its position in the story. But to explain how either 'the pig' refers, we need this: the salience of a c does not degrade immediately. We clearly rely upon a principle like this in telling stories, and there are valuable insights in such a principle that can be built into an account of salience as salience-for-vj/: the identifying-referentially competent person must be able to "track" something through changes in the ways it is described - must be able to "keep the same thing in mind" as a story progress. Often, too, he or she must be able to recognize the same thing when it is reintroduced in a story. Some of the factors that allow for what can be called "reidentification" are dealt with below. But before discussing them, I must explain how something is made salient in the first place. Nothing in the modified Lewis principle explains how something that is not already salient becomes salient-for-4». One class of such cases consists of those cases where something for some reason or another becomes salient to the speaker in his or her own perceptual context. The camper from Toronto is likely to attend to the wolfs

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cry and will have little doubt that she manages to communicate with her companion by saying, without preamble, 'That's frightening.' The thing to which identifying reference is made must be antecedently salient to both. In contrast, the slithering snake in the sleeping bag will gather the attention of the bag's occupant, but she cannot count on her companion managing to pay attention to the right thing by saying, Tut your foot on it.' She will have to say something like Tut your foot on the bag over here [pointing]. There's a snake in here.' Where there is something immediately perceptually salient to both, demonstratives can be used and are sufficient. These cases are not the only ones where demonstratives are appropriate (though they may be the only ones where demonstratives are sufficient), but they are important cases. The stories being told in these cases are, obviously, real-world stories. The most generally used and least-restricted procedure for making something salient for ijj is found in what amounts to a deceptively simple extension of immediate perceptual salience. In English, word order puts "the subject" first, verb second, and object third. This is a marking device that may be reflected in other languages in other devices, such as different word order or markers on a nominal. For whatever language, the term we call the subject term is always a nominal term (naming something or describing it) and the term is immediately perceptually salient to the person who "reads" the sentence. I suggest that this immediate perceptual salience of an expression is routinely transformed by speakers of a language into "perceptual" salience of something c in some world for i|/. In order to accomplish this transformation, these speakers rely on picture reference and the concept of an observation space within the world of a story for an "observer" ij; at a time i R . Picture reference, as we know, is worldless. But it is automatic and depends only on one's having the right vocabulary. Where a person has the right vocabulary - has the right picture-referential competence, assuming indexical matters are resolved - a referent is determined. My proposal takes this feature of picture reference and puts it to use in a reasonably reliable procedure for securing identifying reference - that is, by having the identifying-referentially competent speaker transfer (real-world and immediate) attention to a term to (not necessarily real-world) attention to its referent. I am suggesting that this attention shift is in fact what occurs whenever we take "the subject term" of a sentence and have it play a role in specifying what the sentence is about. This is consistent with the traditional idea that subject terms refer, but it explains how this takes place in a way that preserves the autonomy of contents and suggests that the procedure has its limitations.

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Cs are anything but worldless, so we must somehow fit them into spatio-temporal frameworks. Their temporal position - i R - can be thought to be fixed by a sentence's primary temporal adverbial or by context. Their spatial position is necessarily somewhere in the world of a story, but this is far too general. The thing (c) to which identifying reference is made must be slotted into an observation space for the "observer" i[f at the time i R . While I am concerned with introductions to a world for a story here, usually this observation space into which something is to be introduced is already populated with other things - with other things to which vj; has or still is paying attention. When this is the case, the cs' spatial position has to be properly placed with respect to these other things, where 'properly placed' means suiting the principles of coherence (including, typically, such principles as that no thing can occupy the same position at the same time) accepted by the storyteller and his or her audience - members of some storytelling or theoretical we. Observation spaces for \\i need not be and typically are not fully populated, and are almost never fully specified. As a rule, observation spaces for real-world stories are fuller than those for fictional ones. The gaslight on Sherlock Holmes's wall may be made salient by some sentence in one of the tales that concern him and so it is in the relevant observation space. But it is unlikely that we would feel it necessary to include the gas pipe that leads to it, and it is extremely unlikely that the gas mains that feed the pipes and eventually the lamp would ever become salient in the theory, or need to be. We put as much into an observation space as a story requires as much as is relevant, given the story. But this is a flexible notion. So far as full specification is concerned, I suspect that only real-world stories are candidates - only with regard to real-world stories do we even bother to apply the law of excluded middle, which demands for all ways of describing any one thing that each be either true or false. And I think there are good arguments for not applying it to real-world stories, though that is a topic for another occasion. The restricted group of things in an observation space is within the ken of a "perceiver" (i{/) and is included among a class of things that is itself restricted, a class that can be called the discourse-relevant class of things at i R for a sentence in a story. l6 The discourse-relevant class is the population of a world for a story at i R . The world of a story at iR, where some of the story has already been told, includes any of the things explicitly introduced (made salient) until or to i R , less any that have been withdrawn (people who have died, things that have ceased to exist). Also included at a time are the things that must be in the world of the story at that time in order to describe a salient thing in the way it is described. The small pig of our tale

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walked, rode, drove, flew, or otherwise on his way to market, and he did so on or through something - a road, a path, tracks, the air (should he be a winged pig or have had a hang-glider). And if Ribbit the frog became a prince, this could only be because one of the things in his world was a beautiful princess. So these things, too, are in the worlds of things at i^ for the stories in question. Real-world stories pose more of a problem because it is not always clear what is to count as relevant. A discourse-relevant class for a sentence describing Nixon pulling Checkers's ears needs Checkers with his ears, but does it include Nixon's aides? Perhaps, although it likely does not include some soft-shell crabs on the Bay's bottom, or even a tick on Checkers. Observation spaces need not be pre-populated, however. In certain very special circumstances, the procedure I outlined is sufficient for making an identifying reference that amounts to introducing a single new object into its own observation space effectively created for it, and sufficient, in addition, for naming it - introducing, creating a space, dubbing, and carrying out an identifying reference without recourse to a pre-formed observation space all at once. Consider a sentence in a story never told before - a fortiori a fictional tale - that has a subject phrase with a proper name. A sentence like 'Throgmorton moved out from his home under the bridge,' in circumstances like these, refers identifyingly to a male creature named 'Throgmorton' (dubbed by the very act of someone producing the sentence in these circumstances) placed in a space specified only by the fact that he is in it and that it is under a bridge. By hypothesis, he is the only thing — except, perhaps for a bridge — made salient in his world so far. Such a sentence would also be true — virtually trivially so. But its truth, clearly, plays no role in understanding it - not even in successfully referring to Throgmorton. A Russellian definite description could be employed to introduce something in much the same way, except that in such a case something must be introduced by the "perceptually" recognized truth of the description. In the case of something immediately perceptible by speaker and audience, introduction is not, strictly speaking, at issue. The thing is immediately or easily observed at the time observable; it need only be singled out by some recognizable feature or features. I say, for instance, 'The book on the table is really a cigar box.' In genuine introductory cases, both real-world (somewhere or somewhen else) or fictional worlds, the definite description is (barring certain errors) assumed to be correct, and the thing with the characteristics assigned to it is made salient on the spot. In a case parallel to the Throgmorton one, the description in effect creates a

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world too. Obviously, in such a case it would be difficult to imagine circumstances in which one could doubt the correctness of the definite description. I should emphasize that the procedure outlined is not always reliable. There are cases where subject terms do not picture-refer to the c or cs for a sentence. This happens quite often with E-R and R-E constructions, though it can happen with R,E constructions too.. Consider a case where we are watching John and lisa getting married and someone says, 'All of John's children are going to be blond.' This R-E sentence is about John and likely lisa too, not their children (who are not around at JR to be salient). Anterior or posterior constructions are not required. Take the case where Geraldine is driving an anxious Margaret to a party and Geraldine seems to be in no hurry at all. Margaret says, 'Harriet and Martha are already there.' No doubt this simple-descriptum (R,E) sentence is about Harriet and Martha, but it is very likely also about Geraldine and Martha; it is a way of saying, 'We're late,' and Geraldine would be right to take offence if she left on time and is driving reasonably under the circumstances. Similar remarks apply to sentences that seem to be about something in the immediate environment of speaker and hearer, for otherwise they would be inappropriate. David, usually reluctant to say anything at staff meetings, takes offence and berates Geraldine in the chair. Someone remarks, 'The mouse roars'; it seems clear in the circumstances that the sentence is about David. I discuss some other interesting cases later. But while the procedure is not always reliable, it relies on simple and easily learnable techniques, and it is not in any way real world-dependent. 4.3.3 Reidentification Now I can talk about procedures involved in reidentification - in effect, making something salient again that was salient before. This is a more difficult process with real-world stories than fictional ones - there are too many things in the real world to keep track of easily — but the procedures are common to both real-world and fictional stories. The central feature of these procedures is that they rely upon story-based knowledge. Some would insist that it is not necessary to explain the ability to (re)identify something in terms of knowledge or belief regarding something, relative to a story. Much of what Kripke says in "Naming and Necessity" could be construed this way, at least so far as proper names are concerned. But if I am right, the kind of connection between name and thing named that Kripke needs is something only picture reference can yield - and

212 Tense, Reference, and Worldmaking that is not to the point. A serious theory of reidentifying reference has to be couched in terms of perceptually recognizable features of something or other, so far as a particular story is concerned. Let us look at the kind of knowledge a person must have to be able to produce and understand sentences making reidentifying reference to some thing in some world. These are complex epistemic states of the speaker, but they must be shared if a sentence in a story is to be understood. At least two factors contribute towards bringing about convergence in our views concerning things. First, we caricature mercilessly. The Mulroney of the television newscast and photographs is easily recognized as the Mulroney of the Aislin cartoon. Caricaturizing has the effect of making something recognizable with minimal, easily accessible, and memorable information. Second, storytelling of any sort, fictional or otherwise, inevitably reflects our interests - which is hardly surprising, for p's relationship to ij> is what makes language meaningful - and the things which interest creatures like us with common needs and desires are likely to be the same. This is reflected in the fact that we can almost always expect people, even those with whom we are not acquainted, to know who Nixon (ex-politician) and Brigitte Bardot (actress and seal-defender) are. It is also reflected in the fact that we can almost always expect others to know who Santa Glaus is. Let us say that for each thing put in a story, where a speakerhearer satisfies at least minimal conditions on being au courant with the story, he or she has a notion of that thing. 17 Most of us telling real-world stories have a fairly rich notion of Nixon (as appearing in a real-world story), and I and anyone reading this book have a meagre notion of Throgmorton. Having a notion is being in an epistemic state that is story-dependent in a strong sense. My notion of the Nixon who is in the real world (is described in real-world stories) need not and generally would not match my notion of Nixon garnered from a tale in which he is a used-car salesman in Ecum Secum, Nova Scotia. The degree to which a notion is meagre does not correlate with a real/fictional distinction, however; the man on the street may have a notion of Gell-Mann, for instance, that is very meagre indeed, and quite a rich notion of the Santa Glaus who lives at the North Pole. Richness of a notion correlates with how much of the history of something (according to some story) one happens to know. One's notion of a close friend or oneself, for instance, tends to be very rich. A notion can include imagery of varying detail, as ordinarily is the case with me for a close friend, Nixon, Santa Glaus, and even Throgmorton (I imagine him as a troll — what else lives under bridges?), but it need not. In any case, it seems plausible that

213 Reference

one shares notions of something with someone else at a time to the extent that one understands to that time the same story in much the same way the other person does. Interestingly, fictional tales tend to lead to more sharing of notions than "real life" ones, or at least fictional tales with texts do, for a text produces a complete story and a canonical history of the things of its world. If one wants to find out what should be in one's notion of Hamlet and Ophelia, one need only go to the script. (I suspect that something like this helps explain why it is so much easier with fictional tales than real-life ones to conclusively and easily reach agreement on what a sentence refers to reidentifyingly.) Real-life stories are inevitably incomplete at any stage - they neither give a replete history of something, nor ever describe something in exactly the same way. In fact, with respect to a thing in the real world, we should speak of histories, rather than a single history. The history one person gives of Nixon is likely quite different from the history another gives, and to the extent that the stories of these two differ, their notions do too. Nevertheless, there are usually at least some "important" characteristics that are shared. Moreover, we are quite charitable about what another's notion must include, and tolerant of error. We want to reach agreement on what is talked about. In part because of limitations on memory — one does not remember everything that happened to Hamlet in Hamlet - and in part because the most we can expect in some cases (with real-world stories, for instance) is limited overlap in the histories people assign to something, we tend to develop caricatures of things, summaries and often distortions of histories made up of reasonably time-independent features of a thing as described by a story. Hamlet becomes the indecisive prince of Denmark; Nixon becomes the president with the tapes and the five o'clock shadow. As with the properties that make up a Putnamian stereotype, the features that make up a caricature are not typically necessary properties of the thing. Also like stereotype properties, they need not even be true of the thing they are caricatures of. And again like stereotypes — and for our purposes, most important - the features that make up a caricature are weighted towards features that allow easy recognition; they often, in fact, include features that both are easily perceived and tend to distinguish the thing caricatured from most other things likely to be perceived wherever the caricatured thing is found. Tigers are striped, where leopards are not. Likely locales are often a part of the caricature, however, so that while Nixon's five o'clock shadow might be difficult to distinguish from that of my uncle Ted's if the two men were put in the same room together, we assume that it is not likely that they

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will be found in a room together. If they are, they get assigned other features that are sufficient to distinguish them. Proper names used in stories become associated with the caricatures the story supports. There is a danger in this. While the caricature, like the notion on which it is based, is story-dependent and story-limited, it is tempting to carry the caricature from one story to another. Unless one is careful, features of the caricature, such as Mulroney's big chin and small mouth, are made into worldindependent "denning characteristics" of Mulroney in another, fictional tale. Any tale has to have a big-chinned and small-mouthed Mulroney to be a tale about Mulroney at all. The truth is that if the term 'Mulroney' that picture-refers to our Mulroney appears in an arbitrary story and the conditions on identifying reference with regard to the world of that story are met, that story is about its Mulroney in the way our real-world stories are about ours, yet nevertheless 'Mulroney' picture-refers to the same Mulroney in both. No properties of Mulroney in one world — other than analytic ones — need be transported with him to another. A fortiori, nothing in our caricature of Mulroney need be transported. Nevertheless, this said, the point of telling fictional tales about Mulroney — what makes telling these tales interesting and meaningful to us — is to "relate" the Mulroney of one world to the Mulroney of another in an illuminating or otherwise useful way. Because of this concern we have, there is often overlap in the notions one has of Mulroney in two clearly different stories where he appears in two clearly different worlds (in this case, one which is fictional), for often we put Mulroney in different stories to see what might have been for our Mulroney. To make him easily recognizable, moreover, we carry our caricature over to another world too. One can put Mulroney into Mesopotamia, but if he is put there, it is more likely that he has a big chin and small mouth than a small chin and wide grin. This is the reason caricatures appear world-independent, although they are not; certain interests that we have constrain the stories we tell to make them appear so. Resemblance of things across stories is not a condition of picture reference to the same thing in a different world. It cannot be a condition on identifying reference for the term 'Mulroney' used in another story; notions need not carry over, and strictly speaking, identifying reference is entirely world-relative. It may, however, help make the Mulroney of another world meaningful, "accessible," and interesting to us. We want to recognize our Mulroney in Mesopotamia. Notions and caricatures articulate some of what we must expect of a speaker-hearer who is capable, with respect to a story, of re-

215 Reference

identifying something. Unlike picture reference, at least some "factual" knowledge is required. Another sort of knowledge required to make sense of our identifying and reidentifying abilities is knowledge of how things generally unfold in a world, so that knowing something about Nixon as a young man, we can with a reasonable degree of reliability trace him though his career in a world. I will not say much about this sort of knowledge because its nature and our need for it to deal with reidentification are acknowledged by virtually everybody. Speaking objectively, all worlds in which it makes sense to talk of reidentification at all are spatio-temporal worlds in which there are at least some recognizable spatio-temporal objects that evolve in accordance with at least some of our most basic assumptions about the ways things come to be, change, and pass away. 4.3.4 Identifying Reference and the Autonomy of Contents We have seen that a sentence can always initiate an identifying reference in a world that differs from all other worlds; this fact is a sufficient guarantee of the autonomy of contents. In the limit case, a sentence creates a thing and its world. Reidentification suggests that in many cases there is a "fact of the matter" so far as the salience for 1(1 of some c at some time i R is concerned. This is correct - and this is the surviving insight of the decision-based argument for parochialism I mentioned before. But reidentifying reference is worldrelative and story-relative. 4.3.4.1 Privacy. Relativizing both identifying reference and reidentifying reference through notions to stories suggests how to deal with some philosophical problems of privacy and publicity of identifying reference. Russell's early views on what amounts to identifying reference were insightful but disastrous for the issue of agreement on what a sentence is about. For him, identifying reference was obviously connected with salience, since his paradigm case of an identification consisted of acquaintance with the object, where acquaintance amounted to something like "being the object of one's attention." Yet for Russell an object of attention was private and time-restricted, so while I might identify something conclusively at a time - sensations are favoured cases - I can have no assurance that it is what others would or could identify, or even that it is the same thing as that which I identify on another occasion. Stories become private stories because they are about private objects, and indeed they are not only private to me, but private to me at a time. A person's notions have so little survival value that they cannot be

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extended beyond the "specious present." Russell's proper names, modelled on demonstratives, conclusively referred to the things they referred to, but could do so only on the occasion of their use. Russell had no means of disentangling singular reference with his proper names from his extraordinary view of identifying reference as involving private demonstrations. All the work more reasonable individuals would think of as having to be done by a theory of identifying reference and reidentifying reference had to be done by Russellian descriptions, operating through truth. Here Russell thought truth had to mean 'true in one world independent of any one of us,' for he thought the only alternative was to allow truth with respect to any one of our private stories, and that would make it impossible to ever limit the range of things that are candidates for public identifying or reidentifying reference — or even to specify them, for that matter. Avoiding Russell's private identifying reference (attention to a private object) and the serious difficulties his account produces for reidentifying reference does not mean having to resort to identifying reference to things that are immediately perceptually salient to several people and to reidentifying reference restricted to things in our one real public world. We need publicity for reidentification, but it is enough to have shared caricatures, relative to stories (plus membership in the storytelling and evidence groups that allow one to see that one has a coherent story in the first place). There is publicity with-respect-to-a-story for reidentifying reference. We in fact reach decisions in what a sentence is about without appealing to the real world in any essential way — without making identifying or reidentifying reference parochial. 4.3.4.2 Attending and "what is meant." To treat the speaker as a member of evidence and storytelling groups is to give him or her abilities that are sufficient to understand coherent stories and keep stories and their worlds apart while developing notions and caricatures for particular stories. It is also to permit a reconstruction of two plausible ideas put in bad odour by the Russellian model of private salience and the Cartesian notion of intentionality. We can say that whatever is referred to identifyingly is that thing the speaker is paying attention to, and we can say that for a hearer, what a speaker is referring to identifyingly is what the speaker "has in mind" as the thing he or she is talking about when he or she produces a tensed sentence as a contribution to a story. We can salvage these mentalistic notions from the privacy of mentalism by making a competent (in the relevant ways) person's judgments concerning what a sentence

217 Reference

refers to depend on his or her being a member of the proper groups. These notions can be made public, and in the right way; they are public for those who understand the contents and a story. One advantage to reconstructing the Russellian and Cartesian notions is that the reconstruction allows us to keep some aspects of the concept of identifying reference as "speaker reference" - we can keep the non-mysterious parts. We can make sense of what it is to make an effort to refer to something and fail, to make mistakes, and to be corrected in one's mistakes. To see this, let us look at DonnellanKripke cases where it is plausible to say that a speaker "succeeds at referring" to something with a sentence that has in subject position a false definite description or a name that refers to the wrong thing. It may appear from the examples generally used in the literature that sometimes there is identifying reference without consideration of the sentence as a contribution to a story - surely a necessary condition of treating the speaker as storyteller and of making speaker reference story-dependent. I think this is merely an appearance, however, and that the only way to make sense of "succeeding at referring" in spite of producing a sentence that refers identifyingly to something else is to treat the sentence that "misrefers" as incorrect because it is a faulty contribution to a story. A speaker says, 'The man in the corner drinking a martini is Danny Daniels.'18 We are told, so we know, that Danny is not drinking a martini at all, but ginger ale. Yet — it is said — the speaker "succeeds at referring to" Danny even though the definite description is false. Consider, too, someone saying, 'Her husband is kind to her,' where the person being kind to her is really her lover; her husband's cruelty led her to take a lover. Kripke gives an example with proper names:19 Two people see Smith in the distance and mistake him for Jones. They have a brief colloquy: "What is Jones doing?" "Raking the leaves." "Jones," in the common language of both, is a name of Jones; it never names Smith. Yet, in some sense, on this occasion, clearly both participants in the dialogue have referred to Smith, and the second participant has said something true about the man he referred to if and only if Smith was raking the leaves (whether or not Jones was).

In all these cases the speakers seem to be mistaken in some way, although the sentences they use in a context seem to successfully make something salient or refer to that thing or things identifyingly and say correct things about them - they make genuine contributions to a story. The key to what is going on is that identifying reference

218 Tense, Reference, and Worldmaking

is story-dependent, and that while the speaker or speakers are making a mistake of sorts, the cognoscenti — those who know enough of the story — have no difficulty in correctly seeing what is described by the sentences used by the speaker or speakers. There are differences between the Donnellan cases and the Kripke case. In the Donnellan cases, the actual hearers in the conversational context are the cognoscenti who determine what ought to be salient for the sentence, given the story. They also know what the error is - a procedural error, a mistake in normal practice. Let us assume that with R,E-structured sentences like the ones we are dealing with here, if a definite description is in subject position and the sentence is in a story and is hence claimed to be correct, the normal function of the definite description in subject position is to correctly describe something in order to make it salient to an audience — that is, in order to have the sentence refer identifyingly to the relevant c. Let us say that when the description is true of something, this something is the normal referent. Kripke in "Speaker's Reference and Semantic Reference" might call it the "semantic referent," but his notion of a semantic referent confuses the notion of a normal referent (with respect to identifying reference) with that of a picture referent. The definite description in the sentence 'The man in the corner drinking a martini is Danny Daniels' always picture-refers to the class the man in the corner drinking a martini. When the definite description is in a sentence that contributes to a story, it has, as a normal referent, whatever the description correctly describes from the discourserelevant class at i R (if anything), since 'normal' is defined by reference to practices and procedures in making something salient. When things are put this way, the task of the hearer in the situation is simple. He or she both content-understands the sentence and knows that in normal practice the subject phrase, a definite description, makes something salient by being recognizably true of it. The hearer may also see that it is false of anything in the discourse-relevant context at i R and yet know enough of the story to be able to see what "the speaker is trying to refer to" - that is, what the speaker wanted to make salient. Unless the misapprehension is relevant to the story, the hearer is unlikely to correct the speaker. But if he or she tells another what the speaker said, he or she will use a sentence that, for this new audience, serves to make the relevant thing (in this case, Danny Daniels) salient without requiring any corrective effort on the part of the new audience. A fair way to describe what is going on is to say that the sentence in the story, given the story, had to make Danny Daniels salient, although the speaker - unknowingly and unintentionally - did not properly follow a principle of inducing

21 g

Reference

salience. We hearers can correct the speaker because we know that he or she is engaged in the project of storytelling and that if he or she had done his or her job correctly with respect to the discourserelevant class, he or she would not have made a mistake.20 The Kripke case differs in one respect. Here both speaker and hearer are wrong to use the proper name they do, since the notions they associate with the name do not suit the thing observed; yet we cognoscenti outside the conversational context at their is judge that they nevertheless managed to make something salient and say something correct about that thing they made salient, or referred to identifyingly — that is, they managed to make a contribution to a story. (Perhaps they will find out what their error was if they walk closer.) There is a parallel with the Donnellan cases. In this case, as in the others, the subject term - in this case a proper name — is put to the use of making something salient. A necessary condition of a proper name doing so is that participants in the conversation not only picture-understand it, but also are able to recognize the referent of the proper name, in the appropriate circumstances or discourserelevant context, for the relevant story. They have the right notions and caricatures. The practice of using expressions to make things salient would have no application unless it rested on this recognitional base. In the example, neither speaker nor hearer is in a position to recognize Jones. Nevertheless, something is made salient in this case, no doubt, through immediate perceptual salience aided by a description - and it can be taken to be the story-correct thing. Therefore, in this case, like the others, something is the story-relevant correct salient thing. While this account is not restricted to dealing with reference to things in the speaker's or hearer's observational context, if we treat such an observational context as part of what is known to the cognoscenti in that context - who by definition are telling real-life stories - we can deal with the fact that independently induced salience can play the overriding role in determining what a sentence is about. Consider a radical case, based on another example of Donnellan's: someone asks, 'The man on the hill with a walking stick is the professor of history.' In the speech situation envisaged by Donnellan's example, the discourse-relevant class becomes what is immediately seen. Suppose that the definite description fails to make anything in this class salient in the normal way, by being recognizably true of it. Various things might go wrong, which the hearer makes corresponding efforts to correct. Perhaps he or she thinks the sentence is about a man with an umbrella, not a walking stick, if there is a man with an umbrella but no one with a walking stick. In more

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drastic cases, the hearer might think the sentence is about a tree on the other side of the hill with some branches showing, or perhaps a rock, for the speaker in the context is looking and pointing at something and any salient item in the field provided by the perceptual context might be judged to be the thing the sentence is about. These are not always easy decisions, but we storytellers know more or less what we would do to provide something for the sentence to be about. But if there is nothing at all on the hill worth mentioning — we "realworld" storytellers cannot see anything that is salient in any relevant way — we may say that the speaker is in complete confusion or is under an illusion. The sentence uttered by the deluded speaker picture-refers, of course, to the man with a walking stick on the hill (obviously — how else could we tell that the speaker is under an illusion, or made any other sort of error, unless we knew what he or she actually picture-said [even though he or she failed to refer identifyingly to something that fit that description or to anything at all]). But in the illusion case, there is no sentence we cognoscenti could use to tell another person what the speaker's contribution to a story was, what he or she story-said. This is probably why we would say that the speaker failed to say anything comprehensible or meaningful at all. Principles of charity can only go so far, and we must surely draw the line with cases where we certainly should be able to make a decision, since we have all the relevant information - we are looking directly at all the things in the discourse-relevant class, and there is no way to construe the speaker's sentence to be about any of these things. The illusion case comes closest to any plausible support for Russellian private salience, and if it can be dismissed, there is no reason to take seriously any notion of speaker reference that differs from what the competent storyteller who is a member of various group intends - that is, from what the story makes salient. The storyteller is, of course, the actual speaker — or is the actual speaker to the extent that he or she is a member of the relevant groups. Being at least putatively a member is a condition of the cognoscenti — inside or outside the conversational context at is - applying a principle of charity to faulty contributions to a story. 4.4

DEMONSTRATIVE REFERENCE

Demonstrative reference is held by some to depend upon perceptual input - that is, we can demonstrate only those things that are immediately perceptually salient to us. All demonstrative references do indeed require that something be salient. But if immediate percep-

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Reference

tual salience can be treated as a special case of salience-for-i);, realworld immediate demonstrative reference can be treated as a special case of demonstrative reference to anything that is salient to vj> for any reason. One can refer demonstratively not only to things in the near past ('that thunder'), but to things far more distant ('That hat was the ugliest you ever had') and to fictional things as well ('You remember, that one - the troll under the bridge to Twickenham'). The only constraint is that demonstrative reference works (succeeds where hearers are concerned) only when the thing to which reference is made is already (at least virtually) salient to the hearer too. In other words, not only must speaker and hearer have "the same thing in mind" (the same thing is salient) but, as a condition for this, they must be co-members of the relevant evidence and storytelling groups at is. Both speaker and hearer must be strongly au courant with a story so that they are in a position to have the relevant thing salient at i R and can thus be "paying attention to" the same thing, where that thing is at some i R . But in the case of two people obviously engaged in dealing with their immediate perceptual context, being a member of the same evidence group is almost trivially satisfied, and 'salient-for-i};' becomes what is perceptually salient to the participants. This explains why demonstratives are so easily produced for the immediate perceptual case.

5 Existence and Tense

Companions to i|/, or cs, are the only candidates for existence. These companions are also necessarily attended to and "perceived." In this chapter I further explore the connection between existence and perceptual attention. I also speak to the connected questions of existence vis-a-vis mathematical objects and tense in mathematical sentences. 5.1 EXISTENCE: AN OVERVIEW To say what exists is to make a decision. While clearly p or the speaker as storyteller is the one responsible for making the decision, and while no doubt p would include him- or herself among the things that exist, these facts do not tell us what kind of decision it is or should be, nor give us a criterion or guide for the decision. Intuitively, I believe, it is a decision concerning those things that are thought to directly or indirectly causally affect the speaker by way of furthering or hindering, harming, or hampering his or her interests. Those things exist that do or can do this; to be unable to help or hinder is to not exist. If this is so, a connection emerges between the concept of existence and the concepts of salience, identifying reference, and companion. To appreciate this complex connection, start by asking what things are typically immediately perceptually salient to a human or other animal. The answer to this is, largely, those things to which the perceptual machinery of the human or other organism is adapted

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or designed, where these things partially define an ecological niche wherein surviving and thriving depend on early detection and reliable recognition, in the immediate environment, of friend and foe. The ecological niche provides a sort of ur-concept of a world. Within this niche, clearly, the perceptually interesting and the salient tend to coincide, and something is interesting for the organism that tries to survive and thrive only if it is actually "there" and not an illusion — only if it exists. The organism whose machinery attends to or constructs illusions will not survive; it cannot thrive. Survival turns out, then, to be a kind of existence proof, and the things to which the organism usually attends are automatically "assumed" to be the things that exist. This is a sort of decision, though hardly an articulate one. If an ability to understand a language were to develop in an organism, it would not be surprising if the organism's use of language would in many cases be devoted to dealing with the world in which it had to survive and tried to thrive. Indeed, its language would give it the ability to describe and explain things distant in both space and time, greatly improving its ability to understand and control its environment. To describe and explain, it would use sentences devoted to describing and explaining the things of its own world — not necessarily the immediately perceptually present companions, but still companions in its own world. These sentences combine in what I call 'real-world stories.' This effort to tell a likely tale about language use and its connection with surviving and thriving reveals the connection between real-world stories and existence. It also suggests an explanation for the connection the Fressellian sees between identifying reference and existence. And it explains how a language can extend salience far beyond the immediate perceptual environment of the speaker. But along with language comes the ability to speak, not only of the things of this world, but of arbitrary things in arbitrary worlds. Once we can extend salience beyond the immediate perceptual environment and gain this degree of semantic freedom, we cannot restrict its operation to things that exist, for the machinery that serves real-world cases also serves others. In fact, the real-world case becomes only a special instance. Further, it is only because language gives this ability that it is plausible to speak now of a genuine decision concerning what exists; only because of this ability is the decision articulate; and only now is there a genuine need for what might be called a criterion of existence — something to guide our choice. The only plausible criterion, I shall suggest, amounts really to a restatement of our interests in surviving and thriving, and that cri-

224 Tense, Reference, and Worldmaking terion must continue to speak of things "affecting" us. The statement of a criterion of existence must reflect clearly the connection between existence and perceptual salience. 5.7.1 Existence and Meaningfulness Because the issue of what exists concerns cs standing to ps in a relationship involving interests, "the problem of existence" unsurprisingly falls within the theory of meaningfulness for a language. Existence also naturally overlaps with other central concepts of storytelling: coherence, relevance, and truth. The relationship between existence and truth is not as straightforward as Evans finds it to be in The Varieties of Reference (49), where he says: It seems to me reasonable to hold that the semantical relation of reference (between singular terms and objects in the world [objects which exist]) is empirically anchored by its connection with the concept of truth as applied to atomic sentences (sentences in which an n-place concept-expression is combined with n singular terms. The most elementary form of the principle connecting reference with truth is (P) If S is an atomic sentence in which the n-place concept-expression R is combined with n singular terms tl ... tn, then S is true iff satisfies R. Satisfaction is also whatever relation makes (P) true. (P) may be regarded as simultaneously and implicitly defining reference [to existing things, i.e., the objects of Fressellian identifying reference] and satisfaction in terms of truth. One thing that complicates this overly tidy package is, as we have seen, the more complex semantic structure of English even for "atomic" sentences, a structure that underwrites a distinction between contents and forces, leading to a distinction between the meaningfulness of a sentence and its meaning. Another complication is a distinction between picture reference and identifying reference. Still another is the relativization of identifying reference to worlds of stories. Consequently, we must deny the too-close connection between existence, identifying reference, and truth found in Evans's Fressellian version of identifying reference. But we must still recognize that there is a connection. 5.7.2 Towards a Criterion of Existence Those things that exist, as opposed to "exist-in-a-world-W," are referred to identifyingly by sentences in real-world stories. This terse

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principle maintains some of what is found in Evans's principle, but it relativizes the question of existence to cs in worlds of stories and raises the questions of what a real-world story is and what it is for a "sentence to be in a story." It is easy to deal briefly with what it is for a sentence to be in a story — albeit with the characteristic circularity of principles or definitions of this sort. For a sentence to be in a story, the c in its content must be a thing located in the world of the story. Or to put it another way, a sentence is in a story if it makes identifying reference to something that is in the world of that story. This also defines the notion 'exist-in-a-world-W.' Something exists in a world W if it is referred to identifying by a sentence that is in the story of W. (This is "relative existence" and is appropriate for fictional things as much as for existing things. It is reminiscent of a traditional view of "intentional existence," but keep in mind that stories, and not minds, do the work here.) It brings out the close indeed, analytic - connection between exist-in-a-world-W and identifying reference. In stating the principle, I emphasized 'sentence' because I want it understood that what is at stake here is sentences in a story, not contents of sentences in a story. The latter is closely linked with the concept of truth, a position I defend in chapter 7. (The concept of a content of a sentence being in a story is conceptually related to the notion of the sentence's "fitting" a story, and - at risk of being gnomic - being "satisfied" by a story. This is not Tarski's conception of satisfaction.) The concept of existential presupposition can be used to show the difference between sentences in a story and contents of sentences in a story. In order for a sentence to be true or false with respect to a story (for its content to be "in the story" or not), its content must contain the relevant c (the sentence must be in the relevant story or make identifying reference to the appropriate thing in the world of the story). I call this relationship existential presupposition. (It is not semantic or pragmatic presupposition, as these are usually discussed; it is not defined over the truth of a sentence that "states the presupposition.") The truth of a sentence in a story is sufficient for the existence-in-a-world-W of the thing to which it refers identifyingly, but so is the falsehood of a sentence in the story. It must be possible for a sentence to refer identifyingly to a c that exists in some world and describe it incorrectly or falsely, so far as the relevant story is concerned. Identifying reference "precedes" truth, or as I put it earlier, one must fix a content with its elements "before" dealing with the issue of whether the content is to be included in a story or not. Evans looks in the right direction for an account of existence proper and I follow him though I change the nature of the question

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"What exists?" The direction he proposes is apparent not so much in what he says in the quote above as in what it implies in speaking of an empirical anchoring of reference - by which Evans means, in my terminology, identifying Fressellian reference - to things that exist.1 Once we disentangle identifying reference from the Fressellian assumption that identifying reference can only be to things that exist, and acknowledge that the things to which identifying reference is made at least exist-in-a-world-W, for some world (fictional or not), we make the things to which identifying reference is made, or cs, the sole candidates for existence. Then we can treat the issue of just which cs exist as an empirical issue. The cs that exist are those that are referred to identifyingly by sentences in real-world stories. What makes a real-world story "real" is, I hold, an empirical issue. The issue of what exists is certainly an empirical one at least in this sense: whatever exists is "perceived" by i|/ in the sense of "perceive" explained earlier. But that is not the interesting sense in which "What exists?" is an empirical issue, since it does not settle what does exist or the question of real-world existence, only what exists-in-aworld-W. Explaining how the issue of what does exist is empirical is brought out by reflection on what people do in fact generally agree exists (decide to say exists). The list of those things people generally agree exist — as opposed to lists of things existing in some world or another — almost certainly includes those things we speakers immediately perceive in our world — that is, concerning which we get more or less direct empirical information through our senses. Those things that exist are not just those that are "perceived" (by ij>) but those that are perceived (by p) - these are cases where the things are the speaker's own companions. The things that can exist are "perceived," where this "perceiving" — particularly when read in the light of what was said about identifying reference and salience - makes them out to be not just temporally but spatially located. In effect, this is a necessary condition on something existing-in-a-world-W, a condition sufficient to distinguish something that can exist from members of the class of things that are not candidates for existence. This condition on things that can exist applies equally to things located in the space of the "real" world and things located in the space of some fictional world. Fictional things are located, and can be salient, but they do not exist; they exist-in-a-world-W, where W is merely a fictional world. This necessary condition on existence corresponds only to the less interesting sense in which existence is an empirical issue. We need to move from 'exists-in-a-world-W' to 'exists.' First recall that the question of existence is a matter of a sentence's meaning-

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fulness — hence our interests must be involved. Then look for some connection between the perceivable and interests. If we are to enrich the criterion of existence in a way that commands the agreement of other storytellers, the obvious strategy is to look for shared, perceptually relevant interests. One such interest, as suggested above, is the continued survival of ourselves as organisms. I surely need not defend the claim that our perceptual apparatus evolved at least in part to enable us to survive in our environment. A brief glance at other creatures with perceptual abilities confirms it, and a slightly closer look at their varying apparatus reveals that even the selection of things to which an organism "attends" closely correlates with its needs. (The horseshoe crab, for instance, demonstrably sees a different world than we do.) Intuitively, even as things stand for us, evolved to the position we are in and having the perceptual apparatus we do, a continued shared interest in survival still underwrites the uniformity to be found in people's lists of things that are perceived and thought to exist. If you asked someone without philosophical pretensions what he or she thinks exists, he or she would list mediumto large-sized physical objects we (more or less) immediately perceive and consider our companions in our space. The list would be headed by the thing(s) most of us are most interested in - all reflecting to varying degrees and in various ways our interest in survival. Almost everyone puts him- or herself near the top of the list and gives high priority to other people, animals, natural objects, and artefacts — including personal property. A common interest explains not only uniformity in lists, but their order. It also explains why it is no accident that the things we transport into other worlds and tell tales about are things drawn from the tops of such lists of things - perceived spatio-temporal entities with histories that directly involve ourselves. Nor can it be an accident that at least most of the things Moore puts into his list of things the common-sense man would agree exist are things we perceive and that "affect" us directly. To be sure, if one allows those interests that determine what is meaningful to play a role in decisions on what exists, nothing prevents a pathological or otherwise abnormal set of interests leading someone to choose an odd population for his or her world. 2 But by focusing on those interests that play a role in perception and are linked through evolution to survival, we could, I suspect, establish a normal set of things that anyone would (should, if his or her interests are to be served) choose to put on the list. It is unlikely that someone who said that foodstuffs, for instance, do not exist would be taken seriously for long by anyone but concerned friends, psychiatrists, and some philosophers.

228 Tense, Reference, and Worldmaking 5.1.5 The Platonic Gambit

Plato recognized a connection between interests and existence but, notoriously, denied what I have suggested the SRE theory insists upon — a necessary connection between existence and, through "perceptual" salience and identifying reference, spatial location. It is instructive to look at what he said. Consider the criterion of existence the Athenian Stranger in the Sophist proposes. He offers a "mark of the real" that the Giants (the physicists, "materialists" — here, the lonians) might agree to, though Plato thought that if they do, the Gods (the defenders of Forms, including Plato) can turn it to their own purposes. In Cornford's translation of Sophist 247% this criterion of existence reads: "I suggest that anything has real being, that is so constituted as to possess any sort of power either to affect anything else or to be affected, in however small a degree, by the most insignificant agent, though it be only once. I am proposing as a mark to distinguish real things, that they are nothing but power." It is likely that this criterion had real appeal to the "materialist." Cornford suggests that among the sorts of examples that people encountering the dialogue would come up with as having power (examples which Plato himself offered, at least for dialectical purposes, in other dialogues) and so fitting the criterion were medical examples. Cures and remedies are "real" if they have power or they are effective. (Such examples are congenial, obviously, to my claim about a connection between meaningfulness, interest, survival, and agreement on what exists.) These examples suited Plato's purposes, for they suggested a way to argue for a non-spatial and "more real" existence. Compressing a long story, Plato declared himself (and really everyone else, once they thought about it) to be ultimately concerned with the health of the soul. While going along with the criterion that he got the "materialist" to accept (that that exists which is efficacious, affects us, or has "power"), he insisted that the only truly efficacious "things" for maintaining the health and survival of the soul are nonspatial Forms. I put the connection between existence and interests in a different light than Plato; if the SRE theory is correct, the connection is built into language to the extent that a language in use must be meaningful, and the connection must be read in terms of the perceivable. If the connection between interests and existence pertains to the perceivable and only that, Plato's use of the connection is undercut and it seems that the "materialist" is right — anything that exists is both spatially located and actually seen (or was actually seen, etc.) or otherwise perceived by us as storytellers (ps). It is not enough to

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undercut Plato's use of the connection between existence and interests to point out that he seemed never to fully escape the perceptual metaphors that he used to explain the nature of Forms, even while denying that Forms are spatially located. It must be shown that in order for something to be genuinely efficacious so far as p is concerned (for that is what is at stake), it must be spatially located in a world and be perceived by p. I cannot demonstrate this here, if at all. But it is possible to argue, as I do below, that sentences that picturerefer to some of Plato's favourite candidates for the "world of Forms," numbers, do not refer to these numbers identifyingly, but refer identifyingly only to spatially located things, so that there is no reason to think that numbers exist. We (picture-)refer to mathematical objects, but they do not exist; only the expressions that picture them and the mathematicians who employ the pictures exist, and these are the things the mathematical sentence is "about" - they are cs for the mathematical sentence. "Perceivable" should not become merely metaphorical (where it does not even meet the spatially located condition for exists-in-aworld-W) as Plato tried to have it do, but the list of perceivable objects (hence candidates for existence) need not be restricted to things that we human beings "immediately" perceive. Take, for instance, an elementary particle, which cannot be perceived immediately by us with our eyes (or perceived by anything with anything that resembles an eye), with or without the aid of optical instruments. That it is unperceivable in this way does not entail its being unperceivable so far as the SRE theory is concerned. It does not even entail its being unperceived. The concept of perception the theory builds into the notion of a perceiver-describer v|; (that is, what 4/ "perceives"), enriched to yield an account of what we actually perceive and so say exists, can be explicated in terms of having a spatial location plus (actually) affecting the senses. So far as I can see, there is no reason to say that elementary particles are not only "perceived" (in a sense that is appropriate for fictional entities too), but perceived, so that they can count among the things that really exist. Clearly, elementary particles are spatially located. They may not be precisely locatable or even, in fact, precisely located, and in normal affairs we only locate large groups of them through locating molar things; but this is irrelevant to their being spatially located in a way that suffices for the theory. Moreover, elementary particles thought of as things that make up the things we do immediately perceive - and that at least partially explain the perceptual and non-perceptual properties of these perceived things — are certainly things in which we have an interest. They also directly affect us in various ways — including

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perceptual ways.3 Thus, nothing in the condition on and criterion of existence prevents our saying that these elementary particles really exist. The criterion does not even rule out our arguing, as some scientific realists do, that "in the final analysis" people, foodstuffs, and most of the other molar and immediately perceived things on almost anyone's list of things that exist "do not really exist," for only elementary particles "really exist." The strategy behind this argument would be to show that it is these particles that "really affect us," where these particles interest us in the appropriate way. It calls for an appearance/reality distinction within the class of perceived entities, however. 5.1.4 Existence Sentences

I try now to encapsulate what I have been saying about the SRE theory's implications for the issue of existence. In the last chapter I argued that any case of identifying reference is a case where we can say that i|/ "perceives" some thing c. Following the introduction of 'exist-in-a-world-W,' we can now say that any case of identifying reference is a case where c exists-for-\\i. Given that all cases of identifying reference locate a c in some world or another, we can also say of any given c that it necessarily exists-in-a-world-W (allowing that in limit cases the world's population consists of a single c alone.) These definitions are consequences of the link between existence and identifying reference. They define a concept of existence that satisfies the necessary condition on existence discussed above, although it applies equally to fictional worlds and the "real" world. This necessary condition on existence does not tell us what "really" exists or exists-in-the-real-world; to deal with this, I have suggested that those things that really exist are those things that are our companions. This amounts to saying that things that exist are the things that occupy our space, that affect us "directly" through perception, and in which we are interested by virtue of having interests in our (physical) survival. With this in mind, let us see how to reconstruct existence and nonexistence sentences. One standard complaint about existence sentences (e.g., 'Aristotle existed') is that they are redundant or trivially true, if true at all. This complaint is based on the principle that to refer to something is automatically to commit oneself to its existence. The obverse complaint is that non-existence sentences are impossible : one has to refer to something in order to say that it does not exist, but if one refers to it, then clearly it must exist. Is there any strength to these complaints?

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If reference is picture reference, obviously neither complaint makes sense. When someone says 'Aristotle existed,' he or she produces a sentence that pictures an Aristotle who is a part of the situation Aristotle exist, but in doing so, does not commit him- or herself to the existence of Aristotle. If, however, identifying reference is at stake and we assume that the sentence refers identifyingly to Aristotle, is it redundant to describe Aristotle as existing at i R ? It is redundant if the sentence 'Aristotle existed' is assumed to be in the story of the world that includes the speaker p and the utterance. But sentences like 'Aristotle existed' can alleviate confusion over what story one is dealing with. If this is the issue, when such sentences are produced, they are "informative." Someone who thought that Aristotle is a fictional entity should be told that he or she has put Aristotle into the world of the wrong story. Non-existence sentences speak to the same issue. Imagine someone who has been told about Pegasus. Suppose this person thinks that Pegasus is a member of the real world. Saying "Pegasus did not exist" disabuses this person. It says, in effect, that something that is referred to identifyingly and thus exists in some world or another, does not exist in the "real" world. Both existence and non-existence sentences make identifying reference to a c and deal with the question of which space or world that c is to be located in. In speaking of existence and non-existence sentences, I have assumed and built into my definitions and criterion of existence the claim that only those things exist that "really" exist, where the thing to which identifying reference is made is located within the world of a "real world" story. This is how most people would read unqualified 'exist' and how one normally reads existence sentences. But it is possible to make the same moves and distinctions with relativized "existence sentences," which look like existence sentences proper but deal with a world W, the world of a given story, fictional or not. A relativized not-for-world-W existential sentence is one that denies that its companion c for \\t is to be found in the world W of story (3. It must, of course, be found somewhere else, in another world, if identifying reference is made to it. It is not surprising that the negative existential - and, indeed, the positive - has fascinated philosophers since Parmenides and Plato. It raises issues of the connections between reference, truth, and existence in a way that is particularly likely to mislead. The SRE account properly locates the point, use, or application of nonexistence sentences (I believe) by telling us what both non-existence and existence sentences do: they help the speaker, who as storyteller is a constructor of worlds, to avoid misunderstanding. With 'Pegasus

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does not exist,' the storyteller denies a listener's explicitly stated or implicit belief that x is one of our companions. This analysis treats existence as a "predicate," but making it a predicate is not the bugbear it was with a tradition that too closely tied together (picture) reference, identifying reference, truth, existence, and the subjectpredicate form. The problem raised by existence and non-existence sentences for that tradition disappear once the issue of existence is aligned with the issue of identifying reference, once picture reference is divorced from existence, once we see how the subjectpredicate form makes something salient, and once we know when and how to apply 'exist.' 5.2

MATHEMATICAL SENTENCES, THE EXISTENCE OF NUMBERS, AND MATHEMATICAL TRUTH

Linking existence with perceiving and hence spatial location suggests a nominalist approach to mathematical entities such as numbers and operations (+, X , roots, and the like). I defend a view that resembles nominalism so far as existence is concerned but that differs from nominalism because it insists that mathematical expressions (picture-)refer to numbers and it tries to account for the peculiarities of mathematical truths — that they are often self-evident and seem analytic. The keys to this view are found in the distinction between picture reference and identifying reference together with a willingness to look beyond the "surface form" of at least some mathematical sentences. Existence, I have argued, is linked with identifying reference and hence c. Thus, we should begin by looking for cs for mathematical sentences. It might seem that numbers themselves could be cs. Numerals such as '33' act much as names like 'Harold G. Jones' do, and there is little doubt that Harold can be a c, for he is an entity that can easily be located spatially. As with ordinary proper names, numerals refer to "things" as opposed to properties, and they do so immediately. They refer to whichever number they refer to without appeal to definite descriptions and without the aid of the truth of the sentence in which they appear.4 In general, the "mechanics" of their reference makes no direct appeal to other forms of reference, nor to any kind of knowledge we might think we have concerning them. In the mathematical case, this has an interesting and important consequence: the fact, for example, that no one's knowing or being able to know the infinite decimal expansion of pi is irrelevant to knowing what 'pi' refers to. A sentence with the name 'pi' in it, picture-refers

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to the number pi, and nothing but pi, without requiring that the sentence's user know what its decimal expansion is. In fact, so far as picture reference is concerned, there is no need for anyone to "know" the decimal expansion - for instance, for a god who surveys the infinite sequence. The term just refers to pi.5 This fact cannot, however, warm the heart of a realist unless it is shown that numbers can exist, or be cs. There is nothing in the fact that mathematical sentences have nominal expressions in them to show that the things picture-referred to serve, or can serve, as cs for mathematical sentences. The kind of reference we have been discussing for numerals is picture reference, and that by itself in no way implies existence. If numbers are to be cs, they must, like Harold G. Jones, be spatially locatable, in at least some world. There is no reason to think that they are, and every reason to think that they are not. It does not make sense to ask where the number referred to by '42' — that is, 42 — is located in our or any other world. It does not even make sense to ask where such "spatial" entities as triangles are located. The isosceles triangle is not to be found anywhere, though there are many things, including drawings, that have the shape of an isosceles triangle. Confusion concerning the non-spatial character of numbers and other mathematical entities has a source in the use of the commonnoun expression 'number' with demonstrative and descriptive constructions. Demonstrative expressions, for instance, presuppose identifying reference even where they do not aid in making it, and such expressions include some that seem to refer to numbers. Demonstratives, I have argued, presuppose salience; they also apply only to spatially located cs. Working backwards, if there are demonstrative expressions in mathematical sentences that genuinely refer to numbers, we can construct aprimafacie case for numbers as companions and perhaps argue that they exist. The case is bankrupt, however, if it turns out that demonstratives in mathematical sentences turn out to refer to numerals. It will not do in an account of picture reference for numbers (or anything else) to say that referring to pi is referring to the symbol 'pi.' Thus, if I can show that demonstrative expressions that seem to involve picture reference to numbers are really demonstrations of numerals, I can deny that demonstrative references involving numbers constitute a prima facie case for spatial location for numbers. The exasperated mathematics teacher expostulates to the pupil, "That number is added later!" Here the teacher is not referring demonstratively to the number, but only to the numeral that refers to a number. Or consider the case where someone says, "Remember

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that number you told me about." Here, too, we should say that what the demonstrative is referring to is an utterance of a numeral (which picture-refers to a number), not a number. Of course, there are sentences that go like this: "2 plus 2 equals that number which is the square of 2." This would seem to be a case of a demonstrative referring directly to a number. But in this case it is doubtful that one has a demonstrative at all. The 'that' can and, when one is careful, should be rendered, 'the.' There may be plausible examples of demonstrative expressions in mathematical sentences that demonstrate a number, rather than a numeral, but I can think of none. Descriptions involving the common noun 'number' can refer to either numerals or numbers proper. Judging by the way 'number' is used with demonstratives, it is not enough to have a description run 'the number that...' to have it refer to a number, as opposed to a numeral. 'The number (figure) you mentioned yesterday ...' seems to refer to a numeral and only indirectly to a number. On the other hand, 'the number that is the limit of this series' seems to refer to a number, not a numeral. But there is still enough looseness here to invite someone who is a substitutional quantificationist to read this as, 'the numeral that is the solution for the equation that...' To clinch the number reading, we could say, 'the number that is referred to by the numeral that is the ...' Incidentally, descriptions can refer to numbers even though they operate by producing a descriptive place for something. Formally speaking, they offer a "content specification" of a c; informally, they "specify a class." This is not, as it would be if it were a reference to a c through identifying reference, a commitment to the spatial localizability of the thing referred to. Descriptions are "general" in Russell's sense unless they are also employed in effecting an identifying reference. The issue here is whether they can be used to effect an identifying reference when they refer to numbers. It is the same with mathematical nominals; they too can be used to effect an identifying reference only if they refer to something that is spatially localizable, not by virtue of the fact that they picture-refer alone. Perhaps, appearances to the contrary, numbers "really are" spatially locatable things. There are attempts enough found in the history of thinking about mathematical entities to suggest this is so. These are efforts to reduce numbers to spatio-temporal objects, at least in some sense of 'spatio-temporal object.' I suspect that these reductionist efforts are motivated in part by a confusion between picture reference and identifying reference. Everyone but the rabid nominalist wants to be able to speak of referring to mathematical objects, but if this desire is coupled to the mistaken belief that ref-

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erence is always to spatio-temporal things (which is true of identifying reference), it is easy to suppose that numbers really must be spatial and temporal, for we seem to refer to them. Perhaps a bit of analysis - the thought goes - allows us to see numbers as proper candidates for identifying reference. The usual reductive strategy is to make numbers into things that are perceived by making them very special perceptual objects. This is done in a fascinating, if computationally nightmarish, way by the Pythagoreans, who identify numbers with shaped spatio-temporal expanses. Kant is also trying to reduce numbers to perceived entities, I believe, when he places the root of mathematics and geometry in the "pure intuitions" of space and time. Numbers become for him, in effect, different-length segments of a line that can be counted. The idea is to make the truth of '7 + 5 = 12' depend on counting off segments of a "perceived" line. To be sure, one has to avoid making mathematics a clearly empirical science by making the intuitions "pure"; one also has to avoid privacy by making the operation one anyone with the right mental faculties does, and indeed must do. It is conceivable that an approach like this would give us perceivable mathematical cs. But the approach becomes plausible only if it is made mathematically respectable and philosophically coherent. The only way it can succeed at the first task, even for simple computational cases, is by appeal to an inevitably dubious account (which Kant wisely does not attempt) of what it is to "perceive" large numbers, not to mention infinites. In effect, Kant is computationally not much better off than the Pythagoreans. His account might be appealing for small numbers and some "geometric" objects, but not for large numbers or complex geometric objects, let alone the notorious problem of geometries of four or more dimensions (or even, for that matter, Euclidean three-dimensional geometries, unless Euclidean geometry is read into what makes one's intuitions "pure," for while our perceptual geometry seems to be three-dimensional, it does not seem to be Euclidean). Kant has an equally serious problem making his account philosophically coherent. Let us see if it might work by considering a computation involving small numbers. For '5 + 7 = 12,' we might say that the relevant cs are 5, 7, and 12, construed as segments of appropriate length. 0 would be 5 + 7 = 12; let us call this an "addition situation." Any RE other than R,E would be inappropriate; perhaps mathematical situations are like nomics and other stiff sentences in not being i E -boundable. I R would, in most cases, be the present moment, so the mathematical sentence comes out presenttensed, which is reasonable. Do the cs the Kantian program provides

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exist? And does the sentence come out true? These are the issues to which the reduction is supposed to speak and where we can judge whether the reductive effort is worthwhile. I do not see how Kant's reduction helps with the issue of existence. At least as far as the criterion of existence worked out earlier is concerned, those things exist that are spatial and also "affect" us perceptually. I leave aside the issue of whether the Kantian line in pure intuition is spatial in any interesting sense. It is enough to point out that there is nothing like a causal relationship between such a line and any perceptual organ that a human has. As for the truth of the sentence, making the "intuition" of the relevant spatial object "pure" and having computation consist in counting segments of this pure object do not yield a plausible view of what makes the truth of '5 + 7 = 12' "necessary" and public. Anyone might go wrong in counting. No individual has any serious assurance that the counting he or she does will or — more important — should get the same result as the counting of others. So mathematics might be a private exercise. I admit that philosophers have told odder tales about mathematics than Kant's, and it is important to emphasize — as Kant's analysis does — the role of the mathematician in mathematical truth, but there are more coherent solutions. With a distinction between picture reference and identifying reference in hand, we can allow reference to numbers, even if they are not spatial and thus cannot (by the criterion defended earlier) exist. They cannot be the objects of identifying reference, and there is no prima facie reason for them to be. Once this is taken seriously, the interesting issue ceases to be the existence of mathematical objects and becomes the question of the extent to which concepts developed for the semantics of "ordinary" sentences can apply to mathematical ones. If they are to apply at all, we must find something to serve as a "mathematical situation" and something else to serve as a c to which identifying reference is made. We must also, if such things are found, use them to give a plausible account of how mathematical sentences are true, an account that captures the intuitive differences between mathematical and "ordinary" truth and traces these differences to differences in mathematical situations and cs. We speakers are perfectly happy to call mathematical sentences true and false, but if the SRE theory's account of truth as involving recommendations that contents be included in a story is to apply to them, we must find the machinery that mathematical sentences refer to, as required by SRE theory. Mathematics is by no means a uniform field. To focus the effort to find situations (0s) and companions (cs) for mathematical sen-

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tences, I must choose a restricted but plausible class of sentences to count as "mathematical." The obvious choice is simple computational sentences involving numbers and standard operations: addition, multiplication, roots, and the like. Sentences like Kant's '7 + 5 = 12' are mathematical, if any sentences are, and it is in these computations that numbers have their "home," if they have one anywhere. There are, however, distortions involved in focusing on computational sentences to the exclusion of others; I speak to some of these distortions below. The first task is deciding what a mathematical situation is. The principle with which I operated earlier - that the "sentence" is an adequate picture of the situation, both with regard to form or structure and lexical "content" - should serve here as well. The only exceptions to this principle found so far are those cases where there is embedding of some sort, where (S)RE structures appear within other (S)RE structures. There is no obvious indication of SREembedding with a simple mathematical sentence like '7 + 5 = 12,' however, so it seems reasonable to say that this sentence, stripped (easily) of any tense, descriptum, or aspect markers, becomes a "sentence" that pictures the situation 7 + 5 = 12. The only fly in this ointment is that the sentence involves an operator and an equal sign, and there are those who have called sentences like this "rules." Could the sentence, perhaps with some stretching, be construed to be a "rule" sentence? If it were a rule sentence, we might try to construe it in terms of the rules we have encountered, (A)s. We would thereby establish right away that cs for mathematical sentences are storytellers or mathematical "theoreticians," but at the cost of complicating the mathematical 0 by making it a structure that authorizes people to say certain things, given that they can say others. It takes little reflection to see that this attempt at construing a computational sentence in terms of (A)s or their contextualizations would not work. No calculational sentence can be parsed this way: if you have evidence that such-and-such a content is true (is to be included in a story), you are authorized to include such-and-such a content. Mathematical sentences just do not have two contents and hence two situations embedded within them. The problem is not the lack of an 'if and a 'then'; arguments do not have them either, but the calculation sentence cannot be construed as an argument unless — as seems impossible — there is a way to dig at least two separate embedded contents and situations out of a computational sentence like '7 + 5 = 12.' I do not deny that there is something right about calling '7 + 5 = 12' a rule sentence, but if it is a rule, it is so only if 'rule' amounts to something very different from anything

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we encounter in (A)s and their contextualizations. Let us, then, at least provisionally adopt the obvious solution, so that '7 + 5 = 12' pictures the unitary situation 7 + 5 = 12. If following this principle yields a plausible account of the semantics of mathematical sentences and of how something that might be called a computational "rule" can play a role in a decision about whether such a sentence is true, there is no reason not to follow it. We still do not know what cs are for mathematical sentences. The calculational sentence, particularly if we assume that numbers cannot serve as cs (at least so far as identifying reference is concerned),6 does not offer the obvious clue to identifying reference that most sentences do. The calculational sentence has no terms in subject position. There is no subject position; nor does the structural distinction between subject and predicate apply. Moreover, if we were to insist on applying inappropriate measures and took the first expression in the sentence as that which goes into the machinery of identifying reference, we would — certainly in simple cases — more often than not encounter a numeral referring to a number. We have already seen that numbers cannot be things to which identifying reference is made, so trying this is hardly worthwhile. We need something "perceivable" to serve as a c to which identifying reference is made, something that is spatially locatable in some world or another. With mathematical sentences I propose taking cs to be the sentences themselves qua pictures of situations. As a consequence of this proposal, mathematical sentences are about themselves as spatially located pictures; further, if mathematical sentences are contributions to stories at all, they are contributions to a realworld story. Mathematical sentences are not just perceivable by fy in some world or another, but are immediately perceived by us when and as we read them or produce them. The arguments in favour of this proposal are that it makes sense of the phenomena, accords with intuitions, and closely relates mathematical truth to the account of analytic truth developed in the last chapter. Making pictures into cs for mathematical sentences solves Kant's mathematical problem of computability and the semanticphilosophical problems at the same time. As a bonus the proposal also incorporates contributions from Platonists, intuitionists, and formalists who work in the philosophy of mathematics. The Platonists' contribution has already been discusse.d. Mathematical sentences can and do refer to numbers, even infinite numbers; in the case of proper names like numerals, moreover, numbers are referred to "directly." Of course, the Platonist's view that numbers exist is rejected. Plato's perceptual metaphors concerning numbers and other Forms are

239 Existence and Tense mere metaphors. The intuitionist claims that the truth of at least some mathematical sentences directly relies on the speaker or person (or on his or her mental processes). This claim is automatically incorporated in the account of truth for mathematical sentences if the structure required of mathematical sentences is not different, so far as recommendations that contents be included in stories are concerned, from the structure found in other sentences, for my account of truth for non-mathematical sentences, relying essentially on the speaker as a member of an evidence group as it does, is "intuitionist" from the start. The formalist's contribution is more germane to special features of the mathematical case. If we say that a mathematical sentence is about the signs that make it up, mathematical cases can immediately be distinguished from most others and it would seem worthwhile to explore the formalist's idea that mathematical calculation is a matter of carrying out operations on syntactically structured shapes that are perceived by speakers. We might even be able to say that computations, and perhaps proofs, "are" displayed patterns. (This line of thought is found in David Hilbert's work, but Wittgenstein, in his Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics, also seems to adopt it, at least when he insists on surveyability in mathematical proof.) Since the usual subject-position device for inducing salience does not apply to mathematical sentences, we need a more suitable account of the mechanics of identifying reference for these sentences — one that makes the sentences refer identifyingly to themselves as cs. Such an account is already available. When in chapter 4 I introduced the concept of an analytic truth as a sentence that is self-evident by virtue of the fact that the relevant sentence is about itself as a perceived entity, or at least about the perceived terms that compose it, I did so by relying on the concept of p- (picture-) subscripting a term or terms. A p-subscripted term does not picture-refer to itself. It makes no sense to say, for instance, that a p-subscripted term is a name or description of itself. Rather, it is a term that exhibits itself as a picture. It is useful to think of p-subscripting as a variety of exemplificational reference. All sentences, when produced, make exemplificational reference to p, t, and is (p is pictured when it appears in a propositional attitude sentence, but not by a sentence on the occasion of its production). Some sentences (in particular analytic sentences and, I am suggesting now, mathematical sentences) make, on a reading, exemplificational reference to themselves as pictures, where this form of exemplificational reference constitutes what it is for such sentences to make identifying reference to the things they are about or of - that is, cs.

240 Tense, Reference, and Worldmaking

This form of exemplificational identifying reference is in fact, I claim, what everyone relies upon when they read a mathematical sentence or an analytically true one. But I am not claiming that it is a form of reference that everyone realizes they rely upon. If it were realized, the formalists and nominalists would have a much easier task, since everyone would know that in the case of analytic and mathematical sentences, exemplificational identifying reference is made to the perceived (heard or seen) sentence. Notice that this form of reference, like that which relies on the immediate perceptual salience of the subject term, is a salience-inducing device. Notice also that it is a special form of self-reference, one that, in making cs (the things with respect to which evidence for the truth of a sentence is to be gathered) be the perceived sentence itself, suggests that the truth of the sentence is to be decided by reaching a decision on the "admissibility" of this perceived sentence. Whether a sentence is true is a judgment made by a storyteller on evidence, where the judgment concerns the issue of whether a sentence's content, including the thing the sentence is about, is to be included in a story or rejected. The sentence under discussion is '7 + 5 = 12.' Its content inevitably has an R,E structure, and its unavoidably perfective ('7 + 5 is being 12' is surely unacceptable) situation (0 = 7 + 5 = 12) non-alethically describes its c located at i R , which is here is- Its c is p7 + 5 = i2p. Given this, the story is a realworld story concerning certain calculational verbal pictures in our world, and the question of truth is whether we want to admit the relevant content, which includes the relevant picture (p7 + 5 = i2p), to the story. Notice that because of the way these sentences specify a c for themselves and because of how picturing proceeds, the situation (7 + 5 = 12) designated by the picture (p7 + 5 = i2p) has the same form as the thing it describes. This is most unusual — nothing like it arises except when the thing described is a picture or sentence - and it has interesting consequences for what can be said about relations between numbers, but it does not contribute to the decision concerning whether the sentence is true, for the same kind of mirroring arises with clearly false sentences, such as '7 + 5 = 13.' In general, with these kinds of cases, a situation non-alethically describes a picture that has the same structure as the situation: 7 + 5 = 12 non-alethically describes p7 + 5 = i2p. But what is it for such sentences to be true? - that is, again, what is it to recommend that the content of '7 + 5 = 12' be included in a real-world story while recommending that the content of '7 + 5 = 13' not be? If truth is related to evidence and evidence concerns the thing(s) described, let us focus on the thing described - the picture - to see what we know about it. We know it exists, since pictures are

241 Existence and Tense

perceived immediately by us. But what can be called false pictures (p? + 5 = !3p) exist as well as true ones. That said, however, we can ask which pictures ought to exist. I am not trying to be perversely enigmatic in asking this. The pictures in question are sentences in our language that picture what can be called "computational situations." They picture, that is, numbers and relationships between numbers that we speakers have a strong interest in keeping as firm as possible, but where the firmness of the relationships between numbers depends on our allowing only certain sentences with certain forms and vocabulary items to be admissible. These pictures are obviously under our control, and in order to maintain firm relationships between numbers, we in effect admit p7 + 5 = i2p into the sentences of our language, but exclude p7 + 5 = i3p- We firm up the "world of numbers" by allowing only certain sentences (pictures) into our language, relying on basically syntactic constraints to do the task. With most sentences in English, not including the ones under discussion, the question of whether or not they "ought to exist" is answered independently of their truth or falsity. Even notwithstanding context sensitivity, if sentences say something false with respect to one world, they can say something true with respect to another — we want them all. And, in general, we need at least relatively free variation in cs and 0s within contents. In the case of the mathematical sentences we have been considering, however, I submit that those that do not picture relationships between numbers that we want to maintain are (supposed to be) excluded. Ideally, we want some way to recognize perceptually the "good" ones and distinguish them from the "bad" ones, so that we have a perceptual criterion of truth for mathematical (computational) sentences. This is conceptually plausible because what the mathematical sentence is about is something that is perceived, and it uniquely picture-refers to a mathematical situation. It takes only mentioning the possibility to recognize that we have such a criterion. It is what we call calculating. In the case of very small number calculations, such as 'i + i = 2' and 7 + 5 = 12,' we recognize the truth of the sentence immediately because we have been trained to. What, however, about a perceptual criterion for pictures that refer to even moderately large numbers, such as '35,227 + 433,666 = 468,893'? With such pictures, calculation takes time, but if one follows the rules of calculation, applied step by step to perceived signs, the question of whether the sentence is admissible and true is decided. The purpose of calculation is to make this decision. In asking whether a mathematical content is to be admitted to a story, given that the story is the story of our signs in our world, the issue of whether or not a mathematical sentence is true becomes, I

242 Tense, Reference, and Worldmaking

have claimed, the issue of whether or not the sentence is one we admit in our language. I suggest that the issue can now be be put more formally as the question of whether or not the sentence is a wff (well-formed formula). There is no doubt that we can produce the sentence '7 + 5 = 13,' and to the extent that it can be produced, it (that sentence) is in our world. But the issue is whether the sentence really is well formed, syntactically speaking. In the case of smallnumber calculational sentences, the answer is usually straightforward; we just look and see if the sentence is one of the admissible ones. In the case of large-number calculational sentences, we have devised tests. These tests are effectively syntactic. If the sentence passes a manipulation-of-symbols test, it is a well-formed formula and should be admitted. There is no question here of comparing the content of the sentence with reality, but then there is no question of that with ordinary sentences either. Nor, however, is there a question of "deriving" the sentence from others by some set of truthpreserving principles, such as (A)s. This feature of calculations explains why we are happy to have computers carry out our calculations, even though it turns out that the computer is in a sense "deciding whether a sentence is true." When properly functioning, computers are considerably more reliable than we are (no matter how well trained one might be), and they are typically very much faster at carrying out the task. They are also, in the case of solutions to some problems, indispensable; some calculational tasks take too long for a human to do. Nothing is lost by giving a calculation to a (reliable) computer, and a great deal is gained. When the results of the calculation are "announced" on the computer's display device, the symbols no doubt picture-refer to the numbers they always do for the members of a picturereferential community and they do not picture-refer for the computer (they are not, strictly speaking, pictures), but the test for whether the sum (for instance) is correct is best performed by the automaton dealing solely with non-ambiguous and indexicality-free pictures. Computers make a picture-referentially blind but swift decision for us — at least with regard to whether a mathematical sentence is true 7 - by producing the relevant picture. Intuitively, they are supposed to produce only admissible pictures - pictures that ought to be in our repertoires. That they do not produce pictures they should not (false ones) unless they malfunction shows that there is no real "judgment" involved, but that is irrelevant. In the case of sentence pictures that are too complex for us to tell immediately whether they are true or not, we have developed techniques, operating on the pictures alone, to produce only admissible

243 Existence and Tense

pictures. In these cases, the truths are formal ones. They are formal by virtue of the fact that if well formed, they are true, where there is a test for well-formedness. They are not formal in the tradition of formal logic. What we have in the case of calculation techniques is a way of deciding whether a sentence with a single content is true. It is not a matter of satisfying some formalization that essentially involves moves one can make, given that a particular sentence is true — for example, the formalizations found in a truth-functional calculus. No "logical particles" like 'not,' 'and,' and the like play a role in this sort of formalization. The formalization involves the syntactic form of the picture. The relevant formalization deals with what might be called "internal" relations, not "external" ones. Notice, by the way, that I am not claiming that the truth of mathematical sentences is always decided by calculation. Calculation is not a matter of argument or inference, but there are mathematical arguments and inferences. With this in mind, recognizing the truth of a calculational mathematical sentence can be seen as a more complicated version of recognizing the truth of an analytic sentence. Analytic sentences are those that only change on pain of changing the language; they picture "relations between ideas" that we have an interest in keeping firm; they are, like calculational sentences, "about" themselves as pictures; and they are obvious to anyone who is picture-referentially competent in the relevant language on being presented with the sentence. No calculation is involved; sentences like 'Dogs are animals' are supposed to be "self-evident" and, if I am right, are so because the evidence for them is the structure (including lexical items) of the sentence (picture) itself. Analytic sentences are subject to indexicality and ambiguity, of course, in a way that computational sentences and other mathematical sentences generally are not. However, as I argued earlier, one can treat the picture in context, where indexical factors have operated and a determinate picture is formed, as a unique picture that pictures only a single situation. Perhaps computers are not very good at resolving context-sensitive factors that go into making up a picture, but speakers are.

6 Situations and Aspects

I have, so far, ignored aspects proper - the perfective and imperfective - even though they are essential parts of sentential contents. Moreover, I have not tried to classify situations, with the exception of the complex descriptions in chapter 2. Aspect and classification of situations go together. With them in hand and with RE specification, I can provide a map of possible propositions. I do so in chapter 7. There are two aspects in English, the perfective (complete) and the imperfective (incomplete). The aspect of a sentence is decided routinely by markers on sentences. If the verb is progressively marked (with an '... ing,' as in 'John had been walking ...'), the sentence is imperfective; with no markers, the sentence is perfective. There are two tasks. First, aspects must be placed in SRE structure. This requires distinguishing aspects from, on the one hand, tenses and tense relationships of all sorts and, on the other, the temporal relationship found in descripta — in particular, 'before.' I hold that an aspect is an operation on an element of a content, a situation (0), making it either complete or incomplete. It is an obligatory operation. Further, it "occurs" before RE specification. Thus, aspects are fully "within" contents or RE structures. They have situations in their scope. The "aspectualized" situation is in turn in the scope of the RE's 'before' and 'describes by,' the two relations that relate it as a unit to i R and c. Second, one must say what the speaker must know in order to be said to know what the aspect of a sentence is. It turns out that

245 Situations and Aspects

knowledge of 0-type and the operation of aspect is "lexical" and, broadly speaking, syntactic knowledge. Knowledge relevant to truth and existence, even identifying reference, is irrelevant. One part of the first task can be dealt with immediately. Perfective aspect must not be confused with the perfect. The perfect is an RE relationship involving 'before' and is better called the 'anterior' to avoid confusion. The perfective is compatible with anterior, simple, or posterior; the temporal relationships of descripta play no role in the difference between complete and incomplete situations. 'John has run a mile' and 'John is about to run a mile' (where the latter is read as an R-E) have equally complete situations (John run a mile) in their structures, and they both contrast with the imperfectives John has been running a mile' and 'John is about to be running a mile,' where the situation is incomplete. While the hundreds of discussions dealing with aspect1 in the literature of linguistics are useful, illuminating as they do the richness of many languages, the discussions often confuse descriptive categories and are theoretically weak. Confusion between aspect and descriptum, and sometimes even situation type (as in discussions of Aktionsarten), is routine; and there is rarely a clear understanding that aspects are operations on situations. Philosophical and semantic discussions tend to be slightly better off theoretically in their handling of aspects.2 As a rule, their authors classify situations carefully and insist that aspect can only be dealt with once a classification of situations is in hand. However, they also tend to confuse aspect and descriptum and are fundamentally misguided on the nature of aspect because they do not have a clear, structure-based, content/force distinction that places situations as elements in contents and makes aspects operations on situations within contents. They cannot place aspect squarely in the theory of content because they lack the machinery to make the distinctions. They do not even have a way to isolate aspect from the speaker's or storyteller's perspective (p) and thus make the blunder of immediately entangling aspect with issues of truth and existence. Linking aspect to truth and judgment - to the p-iji part of a tense relationship - is easy once we see where to place the aspects and have separate SR and RE relationships. Only with this machinery in hand, I believe, can there be a "unified" account of tense and aspect.3 6. 1 S I T U A T I O N S

Aspects operate on situations to different effect, depending on the sort of situation they operate on. One example of different effects

246 Tense, Reference, and Worldmaking

from different sorts of situations is that complete or perfectivized movements react very differently in perfect (E-R) constructions than do complete or perfectivized states. If one says, 'Harry has run a mile,' the complete movement is over by the time i R . If one says, 'The house has been white for years,' it does not follow that the complete state is over by the time i R ; the house could well continue to be white after i R . These different effects are explainable by differences in the "situations themselves," where these differences are analysable in terms of a picture-competent speaker-hearer's lexical-syntactic knowledge. To get a grip on the differences in situations, we must classify them. The classification is correct if all situations of a class have like "effects." There are four different sorts of situation: movements, changes, processes, and states. The four can be grouped in two classes of two sorts each. In one are the two sorts of situations with bounds, movements and changes. In the other are the two sorts of situations without bounds, states and processes. The bounded situations movements and changes — have different contours and slightly different reactions to the perfective and imperfective, but sufficient similarities to be placed together. For instance, movements have two bounds that "point inwards" towards each other; movements tend to form a closed "package" when perfectivized. Changes, usually serving as boundaries between one situation and another ('Harry won,' 'The express is stopping'), have two bounds that "point outwards"; they tend to collapse into a single point when the change is perfectivized ('Harry won'). Within the class of unbounded situations - processes and states - reactions to the perfective and imperfective, though different, are not as different from each other as they are from the reactions to the perfective and imperfective of movements and changes. Processes and states are sufficiently alike in this regard to constitute a class. The perfectivized state ('Harry is a nerd,' in contrast to 'Harry is being a nerd') suggests persistence, but no bounds are introduced; the same is true of perfectivized processes ('The bee buzzed'), at least when contrasted with the imperfective ('The bee was buzzing'). The knowledge the competent speaker-hearer has of a situation is at the root of classification. It explains the way the situation "reacts" when perfectivized or imperfectivized, and also explains what happens to the situation when it goes through the rest of the machinery of REs, tenses, and, eventually, discourse. The knowledge behind the classification is, at base, syntactic knowledge in the broad sense that includes knowledge of lexicon. Moreover, it follows that the sort of situation in question is determinable from "sentences" stripped

247 Situations and Aspects

of markings for aspect, descriptum type, and tense. The knowledge is even more specialized, in fact. The classification depends on lexical knowledge concerning the main verb and the rest of the predicate of the "sentence." Alone, the verb 'run' in a "sentence" is not enough to get a decision on the sort of situation the "sentence" pictures, for 'run' can appear in "sentences" that picture processes as well as those that picture movements. If 'run' appears in the predicate 'run to the store,' however, the "sentence" pictures a movement. 'Be' serving as a main verb almost always designates a state, as in 'be happy' and 'be under the couch.' When it appears as an auxiliary, the "sentence" it is in can picture other situations; for example, 'be running a mile' pictures a movement. Prepositional attitude verbs can yield either states ('believe') or processes ('say'). Most of the (S)RE-complex "sentences" involving embedding (discussed in chapter 2) refer to or designate states — including (many) prepositional attitude, rootmodal, conditional, scheduling, and iterative constructions. While it is possible to introduce several sub-sorts of situation, the four basic ones — movement, change, state, process — are all that are needed. Other classifications of situations include activities, achievements, and enjoyments (satisfactions, such as 'enjoy'), but for the purpose of discussing effects after application of aspects and insertion into the rest of the machinery of the SRE theory, these can be absorbed in the basic four. These other classifications - Aristotle's classification is an example - tend to be motivated by the issues of action and intention. Action and intention are irrelevant to the workings of aspect, descripta, and tenses — they "flow through" the machinery without making any difference in it. For instance, an intentional state (Harry want to leave for Bermuda) is, for SRE purposes, just a state like others. But keep in mind that the SRE theory insists on a structural distinction between intentional states and, for instance, prepositional attitude states. These are real and important distinctions, but irrelevant to the subject at hand. The "sentences" that designate or picture situations are purely situation-designating expressions; they lack what is needed to picture-refer to the other elements and relationships of REs, including c, the temporal relationship 'before,' the temporal intervals i R and i E , and, a fortiori, v|/. They also lack any indication of aspect. The sentences we encounter in ordinary language do, of course, specify all these things, and SR relationships too. For purposes of exposition, I delineate the four classes of situation using full-fledged sentences, not marker-stripped "sentences." The practical reason for doing this is that differences in "effects" of the various situation types are easily recognized and help give a good intuitive feel for the

248 Tense, Reference, and Worldmaking

"natures" of the situations that "cause" these effects (i.e., for the knowledge we have that allows syntactic structures and lexical items [pictorial forms and lexical "content"] for 'strike,' say, that it rules out for 'buzz'). Temporal extent adverbials, for instance, help distinguish movements from processes even though the adverbials involved ('from 3:00 to 4:00,' 'all day yesterday,' and the like) can only appear when a content is put into a story - where all of the rest of an RE and an SR has been specified. 6.1.1 Movements Movements have a "whence" and a "whither." Sentences that pick out movements include John

Gertrude

ran a mile. is running a mile. will have run a mile. is going to write a letter. has written a letter. will be writing a letter.

The neighbours

have brewed beer. are brewing beer. will be going to brew beer.

Mention of a "goal" or some sort of terminus distinguishes a movement from a process, though not from an intentional state or root modal. Where a sentence has the adverbial construction 'in a/an i1 (where T is a temporal adverbial), it pictures a movement: The mice will be boxed in an hour. While a sentence with 'for a/an C pictures states and processes, 'for {a mile/a furlong/two kilometres}' (a distance-specifier) pictures a movement: Ribbit hopped for a furlong. These grammatical clues reflect the fact that a movement begins somewhere and ends somewhere else.

249 Situations and Aspects

Think of a movement as a path; to know what a movement is, is to know the relevant whence and whither, where these are specified by the relevant "sentence." The times at which the movement begins and ends in a story are not features of the situation pictured by the relevant "sentence"; they are not assigned until the situation figures in a content that is proposed for a story. Only with respect to a story can one ask, and in principle answer, the question, "When did it start and when did it end?" This is because the bounds of a movement are not defined temporally. It is not unusual to use temporal scaling to answer questions about movements in stories (questions such as "How much of it is over?"), but temporal length, including normal temporal length, should not be considered part of what it "is" to be such-and-such a movement. Nevertheless, because in a story there "are" temporal endpoints for completed movements and as a rule we know how long it takes to carry out at least certain standard movements, if something is described with a simple-descriptum sentence (E,R) as moving (imperfective), answers to queries like "How much of it is done?" or "Is it close to completion?" by i R are answerable by appeal to amount of time elapsed.4 Assume that Harry is running a mile, began at 2:00, and we know that he is a first-class runner. We can answer the question "Is it half over?" by looking at our watches, rather than by checking to see how far he has run. It is not important to decide how scaling is done (when it is). Rather, it is important to realize that movements invite division into parts to be measured and estimated by scaling. In contrast, situations without bounds do not break into parts such that different temporal parts are different proper parts of the situation. We can ask "Is it half done/over?" of a description of something "in movement," where we cannot with the process-designating John is rubbing his arm. unless this process is associated with a movement. Nor, obviously, can we ask the question with the state designator. The chair is red.5 This fact is behind the notion that with movements in E,R descripta in stories we can ask to what degree 0 has progressed, and it is what makes calling the imperfective's '... ing' marker the 'progressive marker' at least marginally appropriate. It really does not make sense to speak of progress with states, or even with processes.

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Along with degree of progress, with movements in stories one can speak of rates: George ran a mile slowly. Ian built the house quickly. These assessments presuppose real-world-based knowledge of how long such movements normally take, but whatever may or may not be known in this regard, clearly movements invite rate adverbials (and movements are used in the measurement of rates). (Standardized) paths are required for rate adverbials. In sum, it is plausible to describe movements as paths. These paths, when put in a story and complete, start sometime and end sometime. 6.1.2 Processes (Including Activities) Sentences that answer questions like

What

has is was will be etc.

x (been) doing?

What is (etc.) happening? How long has (etc.) x been 0ing? tend to picture processes or activities (though they can also designate movements and some states). Processes and activities should be classified together. An example of a process sentence is George is scratching his arm. and a reasonably clear example of an activity is George is caressing Gertrude's arm. Generally, activity-designating sentences accept performance-evaluating adverbials ('carefully,' 'deliberately,' 'artfully,' etc.) more cheerfully than process sentences do, particularly if the subject of a process sentence is not an agent and the process not an action: The rock is rolling {slowly/?artfully} down the hillside.

251 Situations and Aspectsh

But for the purpose of saying how they contribute to descripta and aspect, there is no difference between the two. There seem to be two classes of processes (and activities): those that are movement associated and those that can be called standard. The two classes are basically alike, but where movement-associated processes accept rate adverbials — Harry is washing the dishes Gertrude is running Sylvester's outhouse is rotting There's something decomposing in the refrigerator

quickly. slowly. faster than usual.

standard processes do not — My back is itching Mary is watching Mort's window The B flat strings are fuzzing again

'slowly.

The movement-associated process differs fundamentally from the movement, for the process has no whence and no whither. This is apparent where the process and movement appear in a story. At each point between the (actual) start of Harry's dish-washing and its end, he washes the dishes, and no temporal part of the process is different from the whole. Temporal parts of actual movements, by contrast, are different movements from the whole, for unless the end of the movement is reached, a different "whither" is reached. In contrast, while a movement-associated process designated by a sentence in a story might be assigned endpoints by association with a movement, any endpoints acquired are accidental. Thus, the movement-associated process "remains the same" even where the process "extends beyond" the movement proper. Let us assume that Gertrude's one-mile swim is preceded by a warm-up swim and that afterwards she continues to swim for a while. During the mile, and before and after, the process — swimming — is the same. Sentences with manner and intensity adverbials tend to refer to processes and activities rather than movements: He's running well. It is itching terribly. She's running poorly. There are similarities between processes and states, and I will propose later on that processes can be thought of as one end of a

252 Tense, Reference, and Worldmaking

continuum and states that do not progressivize as the other end of the same continuum. Their common feature is that they do not have bounds. (They may have, and ordinarily will have, temporal endpoints when put into a story.) The movement-associated process seems to have bounds, but these come via association with the movement, not because they are of the nature of the process itself. Processes have often been misidentified. For instance, they have been thought to be "inherently imperfective." But there is no difficulty in getting processes to perfectivize ('George scratched his back'), though, as we shall see, it is rather difficult to say precisely what the "effect" of perfectivizing a process is, since - particularly with the movement-associated variety — processes seem to lie "in between" movements and states. 6.1.3 Changes Wax-and-wane situations are not changes. The situations designated by Harry's spider {became a monster/grew into a monster}. The soup cooled slowly. Her blush deepened. are usually subject to adverbial modification as to degree, and in some specifiable respect (size, temperature, beauty) and for all theory-relevant purposes, they are processes. Coming-into-being and passing-away sentences often designate changes, as in Harry died. Mort was born at 3:00 a.m. The syiithetic alligator hide has disappeared into thin air. Other examples of change verbs are those that can be read as ends of scheduling, root-modal, and intentional states. Where they can, the change situations George won the 400. Harry scaled the rock-face. count as successes or accomplishments. The verbs in all the sentences above are specialized change-designating expressions with relatively limited applications, but other constructions with more general applications can accomplish the same and similar tasks. 'Becoming' and

253 Situations and Aspects

'ending' constructions are examples, as in the contrived "event" expression, the becoming (ending) of 0. In effect, we can often form change-designating sentences by making more complex expressions out of expressions that, taken alone, pick out other sorts of situations. Change-forming expressions include 'start,' 'begin,' 'quit,' 'cease,' and 'end': George started walking. Harry quit running. The race finally ended at 3:00. 'Stop,' 'quit,' and the like prefer processes and states. 'Finish,' 'end,' and the like are attracted to movements, where they respond to the notion of a proper bound. As we have seen, even where not designated by complex expressions of these sorts, sentences in stories that designate changes tend to serve as ways of speaking about starts and stops of other situations. This may be apparent enough from 'born' and 'die,' but it is most obvious with 'win' and the like. Winning involves a status acquisition as well as a change in a situation. (Status) changes, successes, and failures belong together in a class. Examples include The train has arrived on time. Gertrude reached the top. Mort missed the target. Sylvia became a masseuse. Usually they are preceded by related processes (climbing, for instance, and reaching the top). But so-called "lucky achievements," such as Gertrude found a fishmonger.

Mort

sighted recognized glimpsed spotted spied

a bobolink.

can be thought of as combined ends of situations of some sort and acquisitions of a status, or as beginnings of a state, process, or whatnot. These are related to "accidental changes" like the following: Sarah slipped on Jeremy's alligator shoes.

254 Tense, Reference, and Worldmaking

Sylvester tripped over George's tricycle. His shot glanced off a twig. Gertrude muffed the kick. Accidental changes are limiting cases: we do not know what situation preceded the inception of another, so we supply filler — "it came about by chance." In part because of this, we can think of a change as a situation that, like a movement, has two bounds, usually - but not necessarily — constituting the end of one situation and the beginning of another in a story, where the bounds are "turned outwards" to explain how it is that when one encounters a perfectivized change in a story, the interval between the two ends tends to collapse into a single point. This need not happen, as with 'It took a month, but Harriet stopped smoking,' but with many changes it does. And with verbs like 'win,' it is difficult to create anything like an interval we would allow into a real-world story, even with an imperfective. For example, Harriet was winning for an hour. does not appear to designate a change, but rather a temporary state (she was ahead for a while). On the other hand, imperfectives — particularly with R-Es and E-Rs — obviously introduce intervals with some change-designating sentences, such as 'Harriet has been stopping smoking for a month now.' Undoubtedly, it is change situations like 'win' that prompt people to say that changes are "inherently perfective." They are not, but we storytellers insist on treating some change situations as having no plausible imperfective in real-world stories. It is also these situations that make the concept of instantaneous change appealing - so appealing, in fact, that there are those who treat all movements in terms of dense sets of instantaneous changes, and durational states in terms of dense sets of null changes. There is no reason at all to take this view seriously. It ignores the different contours of movement as opposed to change, ignores intervalled changes, both perfective and imperfective, and inevitably ends up speaking of instantaneous states, confusing matters while not recognizing the distinctive nature of states. In a similar vein, we should treat instants as fictional idealizations. Consider that even winnings of races do not automatically commit one to dimensionless instants. No doubt because finishes to some races interest people a great deal - in general, those races where records are taken seriously - we want to date the relevant changes with as much precision as possible, and we insist that in principle it

255 Situations and Aspects

is possible to differentiate moments to infinity. But we do not do this with all races and competitions. Anyone who insisted on timing the competitors in a cross-continent car race with chronometers capable of microsecond distinctions would and should be considered overzealous at best. A change-designating sentence can have a rate adverbial if it is an extended change, such as a stopping of smoking, but no "instantaneous" change can. There might seem to be counterexamples consider Mehitabel reached the top quickly. — but here 'quickly' is a commentary on a movement or movementassociated process, not on a change of the relevant sort. Consider that 'almost,' with any of the successes, failures, and accidental changes class, amounts to picking out a miss (where it is a hit) and a failure (where a success) or a non-occurrence (where an accident), and then look at ? Mehitabel almost reached the top quickly. There is a reading of this on which Mehitabel reaches the top, but not quite quickly. Clearly, however, she did not quickly almost reach the top. 6.7.4 States

States comprise all the situations left over after movements, processes, and changes have been factored out. One can introduce a distinction between (S)RE-structurally complex states (intentional, root-modal, iterative [habitual], and prepositional attitude states) and "simple" states, but the structurally complex ones do not act differently from the simple when they appear in REs, or tenses. There are, however, differences in the ways in which some states act with aspects. In particular, only some states take the imperfective; a further subclassification of states, including simple ones, helps bring out why this is so. For instance, virtually no "structural" states such as 'The crystal is hexagonal' progressivize, while many character-attributing states do: 'Harry is being a fool.' But further discussion and classification of states can wait until after a discussion of how the imperfective works with situations that do not have ends. Neither states nor processes "have" ends in the ways movements and changes do.

256 Tense, Reference, and Worldmaking 6.2

IMPERFECTIVES AND PERFECTIVES OF SITUATIONS WITH BOUNDS

The situations with bounds are, as we have seen, movements and changes. To make either of these situations incomplete results in an RE structure where, with respect to a i|> and c located at some i R and a 0 used to describe c, there is some part of 0 after i R . Built into this definition of what it is for the situation to be incomplete is a requirement that the situation endure over some interval in the sense that initial and final bounds be separate. Those changes that we refuse to allow to endure cannot be imperfectivized. It is a consequence of this definition that \\t, i R , and c be, in some sense, "within" the situation. Where one has an R,E or simple structure with an imperfective movement or change (0), c, i R and i|/ must be after the beginning and before the end: Harry is stopping smoking (where this is read, not as an intentional state, but in the same way as 'The train is stopping.' is read). George is running a mile. By 'end' I do not mean some temporal point, specified with respect to a story, where the situation ends for that story. It could be perfectly appropriate to use either of these sentences and be correct in the story in describing Harry or George at i R and not have it count against one that soon after i R , or at i R itself, in the story Harry took up smoking again or George stopped running. What is at issue is what the content says - how the "sentence," imperfectivized and put into an RE structure, is to be understood. Quite independently of the truth of the sentences, George and Harry are described as "in progress" on a path or interval that is not over, and what is at issue is what it is to describe something in this way, not what it would be true or false to say, given some story. Connected with the notion that imperfectives have i R within the situation is the requirement on all imperfective situations (not just the imperfectives of bounded situations) that they be continuous. Continuity demands of any i R within a situation that it not be within the situation in the trivial sense of being a temporal interval that is temporally between an initial point and a final point, where the points are specified with respect to some story. A movement, say John's driving from his home to Toronto, could in some story start at 3:00, stop at 4:00, and begin again at 5:00 to continue to its end at 6:00.

257

Situations and Aspects

John described as driving to Toronto at 4:30, when he is having a cup of coffee in a restaurant at that time, is not a proper description of John as actually engaged in driving to Toronto (a movement). It is a description of John as intending to be in Toronto (by driving), but the movement was interrupted and at 4:30 he could not be described as driving (to Toronto). With the anterior and posterior, the requirement of continuity comes out in an obvious form: the 'before' of an E-R, for instance, quasi-bounds the situation at a point immediately before i R , so that when one says 'John has been driving to Toronto for two hours' (where this is not read as an intentional state-designating sentence), John so described is located at an i R immediately after the two-hour mark in his drive. Similar considerations apply to the posterior. When one says, 'John is going to be driving to Toronto for three (more) hours,' John is described by that part of a situation (it may be the whole) that is (quasi-)lower bounded immediately after i R . No such continuity requirement arises for perfectives. The principle of unfinished parts for imperfectives of bounded situations clearly applies to anterior and posterior constructions as well as simple. In the case of the anterior, Harry has been stopping smoking (for a month). George has been running a mile (for two minutes). there is at i R some unfinished part of the situation, and i R is "within" the situation (even though the situation may end at or after i R ). The anterior (E-R) construction describes c with that part of the situation that antecedes i R , but there remains an unfinished part. It is very different with the perfective, where the situation is definitely complete: Harry stopped smoking. George ran a mile. (It is necessary to use the past with movements and changes; the simple present perfective is read as a habitual.) Similarly, the posterior construction has at i R some unfinished part of the situation, and i R is "within" the situation: Harry is going to be stopping smoking for another month. George is going to be running a mile for another two minutes.

258 Tense, Reference, and Worldmaking

In this case, of course, it is the unfinished part of the situation that describes the relevant c. Notice that — at least with imperfectivized movements and changes (where 0 must be continuous) — without the durational adverbial these sentences read as scheduling statedesignating sentences with imperfectivized 0s in the infinitival (embedded) clause. The sentences George is going to be stopping smoking in a month. George is going to be running a mile in a month. designate not just scheduling states, but scheduling states with embedded imperfectivized habituals (if the first makes sense at all). Notice that the principle that i R is within the bounds of the situation with imperfectives applies even with 'when'-clause constructions that strongly suggest that the path is never to be completed in the story. Consider, for instance, The wave was building to a crest when God opened a path through the sea. Gertrude will be running the 5000 when Harold steps on the track. We find similar results with anterior progressives and 'when'-clauses: Harry had been building his house for thirty years when ... Harry will have been running the 10,000 for twenty minutes when ... C, at i R , cannot have fully traversed the path, and will not, yet i R is "within" the situation in the sense that there "is" an unfinished part of it. Perfectives of situations with ends are, predictably, matters of completion (for changes) or of a path run (for movements). With anterior or E-R constructions, the result is the description of something at i R with a situation that is over, as in Harriet had run a mile. Mort has stopped smoking. Here, i R is wholly after the situation. With posteriors, the situation is wholly after i R , so that c is described by a situation that is complete, though after i R :

259 Situations and Aspects

Harriet is about to run a mile. Mort is about to stop smoking. (I use these constructions to avoid the intentional state reading that is likely from 'George is going to run a mile.') I italicize 'over' to display its special significance. When one correctly picture-understands a sentence with an E-R structure and a perfectivized movement or change, one has "analytic knowledge" that the situation is over by i R . This knowledge does not depend upon knowledge of a story in any way. I discuss this after looking at the perfectives and imperfectives of processes and states, so that I can emphasize that nothing like this arises with situations that do not have endpoints. The simple-descriptum construction with perfectives of movements and changes is also interesting for its discourse effects, which must be distinguished from what one knows about the meanings of sentences with this construction. With this construction, one gets "homogenization" and "packaging" of situations - development, inner "structure," and texture are lost and one "sees" the wrapped package "from outside." Further, in the case of a movement, there is a focus of interest on the beginning and, in the case of a change, a focus on the end. Any feelings that the movement or change might involve efforts on the part of c or that c might be on the way between bounds ("in progress"), any hint of interruptions or modifications, any notion of development — just those discourse effects that the imperfective encourages — are ignored. The path is presented complete (the "race is run"); the change is accomplished. While i R , and thus \\i too, are placed "within" i E (as required of a simple-descriptum construction), with movements they definitely appear at the beginning of the path: Mort ran yesterday (at 2:00). With changes, they ordinarily appear at the end of the change's interval, assuming there is one: The train stopped here at 2:00. Mort finally stopped smoking at 3:30. Homogenization and packaging help explain why with simplepresent-tensed perfectives of movements and changes, the sentence may be read as a "sportscaster's present," as, for example, with Wilt feints, dribbles, shoots, and scores!

260 Tense, Reference, and Worldmaking although it is normally read as a habitual: Harriet runs a mile (every day). Mort stops smoking (at least three times a month). The express stops here (occasionally). The sportscaster's present (and the historical and anticipative presents, as in 'Yesterday Harry leaves, drives to the dump, and picks up this mattress you wouldn't believe') could only be accomplished by packaged and homogenized paths and changes. 6.3

IMPERFECTIVES AND PERFECTIVES OF SITUATIONS WITHOUT BOUNDS

The terminology of perfective and imperfective, of complete and incomplete, might seem at first to be designed only for situations with bounds. A perfect perfective of a change, such as 'Harry has missed the target,' associates 'complete' with scenarios calling for joy, regret, accomplishment, and failure: the situation is over (and one succeeds or loses). If one confuses 'complete' with 'over,' however, one cannot make sense even of the perfective of situations with bounds when one encounters a simple or anticipative, and it is impossible to make any sense at all of the perfective of situations without bounds. The better course is to think of 'complete' and 'incomplete' as operations on situations that yield different results depending on the situation. When looked at this way, complete states are naturally different from complete movements (or changes): they are different sorts of situations, for states have no bounds and cannot be counted as over when found in E-R constructions. There is, however, an important difference between bounded and unbounded situations vis-a-vis where to look for the effects that we use to gauge the operations of perfective and imperfective. With bounded situations, the most striking effect, that of a situation being over when perfectivized and placed in an E-R construction, is entirely within the RE relationship, where the truth of the sentence and its place in a discourse or story is irrelevant. With unbounded situations, clearly, there can be no similar effect, and it turns out that to find any effects at all we must look at sentences in discourse - at the ways in which perfective and imperfective make a difference to sentences with full SRE assignments that tell stories about things in worlds and are (generally) true. Keeping this in mind, we see that the effects are as follows: the incomplete or imperfective operates on states and processes to yield something like "temporary and requiring support

261 Situations and Aspects

(or effort)." (The continuity requirement applies, of course. Not all states can be counted incomplete; I try to say why later.) The complete or perfective operates on the state to yield something like selfmaintaining, autonomous, or, as a technical term, selbstandig — built into, I suspect, the concept of stativity, or "the stative." The complete or perfective operates on the process to yield something like "maintained," a variant on self-maintenance appropriate for processes. To show that these are the effects and to bring out what it is about some situation without bounds that prevents the use of the imperfective, I present the data by looking at various sorts of states and processes. 6.3.1 Simple States

The use of the progressive with sentences designating simple states is increasing in English.6 I mention this to indicate that speakers' judgments can vary on the point of whether or not a particular simple state type of situation can be considered incomplete. To focus matters in an extraordinarily large and diverse field, I divide simple states into several categories. one kind of simple state is the classification/type situation: That creature is a dog. The tarantula is a spider, of sorts. 'Horace' is a noun. These are situations that describe a thing by putting it into a class, often a basic class. As I mentioned in the discussion of nomics, at least some of these classifications are taken to be explanatorily crucial. Then there are fit and position situations, such as The time is 3:00. Each of the members of the set will satisfy the formula. My property borders on a public dump. These include temporal and spatial situations and such sentences as 'This object satisfies this function.' Status (health-and-wealth)situations seem related to both the preceding (to fit situations because we imagine a set of "positions" one can be in): George was drunk. Gertrude is company president. That box is upside down.

262 Tense, Reference, and Worldmaking Related to these are psychological state situations, Hortense adored/loved macaroons. George trusted his ancient .45. Gretchen preferred the latest ray gun. Then there are structural situations, His piece of lead is square. That lattice structure is based on a hexagon. (essential property sentences picture these), basic property situations, including possession situations, The house had been white. This cement is hard. Harry has 52 kilos of 99 percent titanium. dispositional situations,

This cement mix will be crumbly. That glass is fragile. Murgatroyd is volatile. and several combination situations, involving verbs like 'is snarky,' 'tastes,' 'pleases,' 'is secure,' 'is ebullient,' 'is a nerd.' Finally, there are evaluation situations, such as The suet is good, judging by the birds. That chair is particularly dumpy. The classification is somewhat haphazard, but it speaks to the issue of the extent to which states can imperfectivize. Generally, classification/type states do not accept the progressive at all. The sentence *This is being a Barbera, I think. seems impossible. Perhaps this is because for such situations it is difficult to think of something being so sorted or so classified only temporarily, or by pretense. Although something of kind A could conceivably be or become something of kind B, we prefer to say that it either "really is" that something else or "becomes" something en-

263 Situations and Aspects

tirely different when it changes. Even should Igor the prince alternate every fortnight with Ribbit the frog, ?*Igor (or Ribbit) is being a frog today. is still not tempting, for Igor is either frog or prince on whatever day it is. Fit and position situations are almost equally reluctant. Some progressive-marked sentences with the same verbs designate other kinds of situations, as in My property is bounding on a public dump. which designates an intentional state, imagining the sentence to be elliptical for something like Whatever property I get, it's bounding (going to border) on a dump. Also, watching a line being generated slowly on a cathode ray tube, we can say The line is intersecting the plane now. Making sense of this requires a background of operations or activities in which positions are becoming established; what we get are movement-associated processes, not states. Sometimes, too, verbs that are ordinarily position-designating expressions get progressive forms from neighbour expressions, such as 'surround' and 'surrounding.' Thus, there is the somewhat barbarous process- or movement-designating The Huns are containing the town. Fit and position situations that do not allow an imperfective include Our house is on the bay. Mort's property is (located) to the right of the stake. It may seem odd that these states should not accept the imperfective; if the imperfectivized state is "temporary," surely by approaching the stake from the other direction, Mort's property switches to the

264 Tense, Reference, and Worldmaking

left. To see why they do not, let us contrast these situations to position situations that do imperfectivize, those designated by sentences with verbs like 'rest adjacent to/ 'stick up,' 'lie,' and 'stand.' Focusing on 'stand,' we have7 Myrtle's statue is standing in the driveway. The Hudson is standing in the driveway. The Empire State will be standing on your right. The first suggests that the driveway is not the proper or "final" place for Myrtle's statue; the imperfective says just that, unlike the perfective Myrtle's statue stands in the atrium. We know that statues have proper places. In contrast, Hudsons have no natural place, so use of the perfective is odd: ?The Hudson stands in the driveway. The perfective would only seem correct if this particular Hudson is a monument or if the sentence is given a habitual reading. Here the imperfective is expected because we expect c to be mobile. This information comes by way of knowing how cars and statues normally are. But this strategy does not explain the imperfective in 'The Empire State will be standing to your right'; obviously the Empire State Building is well secured, and if it is not in its "natural place," nothing is. What could it mean to speak of the thing described here as being in an unstable position ? The anwer comes from the observation that this sentence appears in discourse that gives directions to and orients a person. The Empire State Building is described as unstable relative to a person, and persons are mobile. Considerations similar to those raised with this example apply to 'lie,' 'stick up,' 'rest adjacent to'; sentences with these verbs imperfectivize only where they are used to give directions or orient a person. In spite of the use of these verbs for orientation purposes in sentences that designate processes or movements, such sentences continue to designate states: ?*'The house will be lying with difficulty near the road.'8 What, then, of a sentence like 'Harriet is under the bed'? It does not seem to imperfectivize, for the result does not make sense: ^Harriet is being under the bed.' But this sentence seems to be about a person and a mobile one at that; surely she is unlikely to stay under the bed for long. The intuitively correct answer is that the sentence

265 Situations and Aspects

that seems to be perfective is not in fact so - that it is elliptical for something else, such as 'Harriet is lying ...' or 'Harriet is hiding under the bed.' If this is so, the problem disappears. Status situations are often receptive to the imperfective, particularly with a "pretend" reading: Hortense is being a proletariat this evening. Where the imperfective cannot be used - presumably — c's status in the relevant respect is taken to be more or less permanent, almost essential. Since the imperfective yields impermanence, one knows that Hortense is not really a proletariat; she's pretending to be one. Psychological state situations are a mixed lot. Some sentences used in designating them, or normally designating them, never take a progressive - even if an effort is made to redo the relevant situation by forcing it into a sentence with the form of an iterative, *George is knowing many facts these days, or the object is extended in time, * George was knowing all about it yesterday afternoon, or a "pretend" reading is suggested, *George was knowing the answer, no matter what Hortense asked. or a short time is given, *George was knowing the answer for two seconds. No doubt the intransigence of'know' comes from the demand, much explored by philosophers from Plato to Austin, that knowledge be a stable and relatively unconditioned state. Some psychological state-designating verbs do allow the progressive under at least some of the above conditions: Harriet was loving Julius Caesar. George was trusting his ancient .45 on this trip. Mort was adoring Harriet on his knees. Although some of these sentences seem to designate other situations,

266 Tense, Reference, and Worldmaking

a plausible example of an imperfectively construed state is found in the 'trusting' case. Consider now Harry is seeing

things. heffalumps. a pink elephant.

where there is an interesting variation on the "unusual" use of the progressive with a state, a reading where the speaker holds that what Harry is seeing is delusionary. The same can be said by the speaker of him- or herself: I'm seeing

things. heffalumps. a pink elephant.

Similar uses arise with 'hearing' (but constrast these with the habitual though slightly odd 'Harry's hearing the birds these days.') but do not with 'tasting' or 'touching.' It is difficult to say precisely what is going on here. Note that the denial things. Harry isn't seeing

heffalumps.

a pink elephant. can be made on the grounds that Harry is seeing something else, or seeing nothing, or not merely seeing things. The latter is best said with emphasis: Harry isn't just seeing a pink elephant. Perhaps "unusual case" uses serve as a contrast to the normal epistemic claims of 'see,' as in I see a juniper under that pine. which implies that the speaker thinks there is a juniper there. If so, they are interesting variations on the imperfective's "temporary" with states. Sentences designating structural situations generally do not accept the imperfective because in many cases if something has a different structure or even has it unstably, it is really something else; clearly, the "pretend" reading found with status situations is unavailable,

267 Situations and Aspects

and the others are either unavailable or irrelevant. Some basic property situations, like classification situations where essential properties are involved, depend upon structures (e.g., be hard), so naturally they are not subject to variation for the same reasons that the structural situation itself is not subject to variation. When the structure changes, so does the basic property. (I am assuming, for this purpose, that with regard to the relevant type of structure, ice differs in structure from water.) Even where a basic property situation is not obviously related to structure, however, it still cannot be considered imperfectively: * Homer's zebra is being striped today. In the case of dispositions, the issue seems to be how deeply engrained or embedded the disposition is. It helps if c is animate or is an agent. Imperfectives are routine with character and personality traits, where they often get a "pretend," "unusual," or "temporary" reading, such as George is being testy today. Where dispositions are deeply engrained in widely accepted stories and perhaps related to structural properties, they do not allow a progressive in the sentences that designate them — *That glass is being breakable today. - unless one puts the sentence into a fantasy context where objects seem to threaten, perhaps because thought of metaphorically as like agents. But even in a fantastic context, the following sentence is marginal: PThat glass seems to be being particularly fragile today. Evaluation-sentence constructions are sensitive to object (c) and mode of evaluation. Sentences used in the description of agents are more likely to be able to take progressives: *That chair is being good. George is being good. * Harry's painting is being ugly. The second claims that George's good behaviour is temporary.

268 Tense, Reference, and Worldmaking In sum, once the uninteresting cases are cleared away — those where a standard state—designating sentence when progressivized picks out a different situation with its appropriate reading for "incomplete" - it is not difficult to find at least some standard state situations that can, to varying degrees, be considered incomplete. By placing these in subcategories, the reasons some do not allow imperfectives at all while others do become apparent. Those sentences that are progressivized and designate standard states are saying, with respect to the description of c by the situation, that the description is temporary, a case of pretense, unusual, or peculiar. It seems that whatever controls the application of the imperfective, it is something that we recognize in not allowing the imperfective (progressivization) to make sense and that we therefore know to be a feature of the state. Moreover, there is evidence that we can speak of degree of acceptability. Let us introduce a general feature of a situation - the "strength" of the state - that allows for grading and can express what it is we know about the situation that controls the application of the imperfective. 6.3.2 Scheduling States Root-modal verbs progressivize only in a "passive" form:

Harry is being

required ordered * meant driven forced allowed *able

to leave tomorrow.

The verbs starred above work only in the perfective 'is Ved to V tomorrow,'

Harry is

required ?ordered meant *driven *? forced allowed able

to leave tomorrow.

Clearly, not all root modals can be incomplete, nor, as the last group seems to indicate, can they all be complete or perfectivized.

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Situations and Aspects

The difficulty arises in the use of the present tense, for sentences like 'Harry was forced (ordered, driven) to leave tomorrow' are acceptable. Two considerations argue in favour of saying that root-modal sentences with progressives designate root-modal processes (or activities) rather than root-modal states. One consideration is that all the relevant situations have someone or something doing the forcing, driving, allowing, or requiring at i R of the main clause. That there is something at i R besides Harry is clear from the fact that if the ordering or driving are over by i R , one can no longer use the progressive but must say 'Harry, has been ordered (etc.) to leave tomorrow.' The other consideration is that at least some of these situations do not easily perfectivize in the simple present tense, as processes do not. Just as 'The bee buzzes' is preferably read as a habitual-designating sentence, so 'Harry is driven (forced) to leave tomorrow' reads — if anything at all - like an odd habitual. To be sure, 'Harry is required (allowed) to leave tomorrow' allows the perfective with a simple present, but this sentence is an example of a constituting use of the root modal — amounting to something like 'Harry is hereby required to leave tomorrow' — and designates a root-modal state. One difficulty for the claim that root-modal sentences designate either states or processes is that neither sort of situation is supposed to have a bound, and root modals and intentional states do seem to have a clearly denned upper bound. The infinitival effectively says what this bound is; when this is reached, the state is at an end. Thus, perhaps root modals and intentionals should not be classified as either states or processes. The fact is, however, that in all respects the root-modal and intentional states (processes) act very differently than situations with bounds, and very much like situations without bounds. If a root modal or intentional is put in an E-R or perfect description and perfectivized, there is no implication at all that the situation is over: Harry has (had, will have) been able to leave the hospital (for several months). There is, rather, an implication that Harry has not left the hospital, and that - in this sense - the putative upper bound of the situation has not been reached. We do not need to use an imperfective with the situation to get this implication, as we would with a movement or change. Yet, nevertheless, the state is complete, in just the way any state would be counted as complete. There is therefore good reason to count root-modal and intentional situations as states,

270 Tense, Reference, and Worldmaking

among the situations that do not have bounds — or, at least, no bounds in the way that changes and movements have them. This makes intuitive sense if one thinks of the fact that these states or processes can never be used to describe some c in such a way that the situation is, at i R , over. One can, of course, describe Harry as having left the hospital, but the sentence that does this refers to a change, not to a root-modal state. There is no E-R description of Harry by means of a root-modal or intentional state that could be read in such a way that the situation is over by JR. So far as Harry (c) is concerned, the state cannot have reached an end. Progressivized intentional state verbs yield a process too, but only some of these progressivize, and when they do, they seem to refer to the same process. Consider the imperfect!ves

Harry is

intending to leave planning to leave hoping to leave preparing to leave * wan ting to leave *wishing to leave

tomorrow.

and contrast them with the perfectives

Harry

intends plans hopes * prepares wants wishes

to leave tomorrow.

As with root modals, a simple hypothesis to account for the starred 'prepare' is that 'prepare' sentences always designate an intentional state process. But then what does one do with 'intending,' 'planning,' and the like. Do they designate processes too? If they do, it would appear that 'intending,' for example, is systematically different in "sense" from 'intend,' and, unlike with root modals, this does not seem to be plausible. If nothing else, besides Harry there is nothing else around that can do the intending. A more plausible hypothesis arises from a closer look at the full slate of sentences. The progressive also is ruled out with 'want,' 'wish,' and 'desire,' and these are the verbs that designate situations for which it does not really make sense to say that one is preparing for the outcome found in the infinitival.9 This suggests that wherever there is a progressive on an intentional

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Situations and Aspects

state verb, the sentence designates the intentional state process 'prepare' as well as the intentional state normally designated by the relevant verb. The other intentional state sentences are read — when they have present progressive constructions — as preparings to leave. 6.3.3 Iterative States The '... ing' of

Harry is bicycling every day. either says of the habitual state that it is more temporary than would be expected of a state of that sort, or reads as a habitual of imperfectively construed situations of other types, typically processes or movements. A point adverbial permits the habit-of-a-process reading Harry is bicycling from home to work every day at 3:00. but the reading where Harry temporarily leaves every day at 3:00 to bicycle to work is preferred. Habituals are all receptive to the imperfective. This no doubt stems from the fact that habits are usually habits of organisms and thus subject to change - for the habit is taken, to a degree, to be the organism's or agent's responsibility. No nomic, however, accepts the imperfective. The sentence Copper conducts electricity, is fine, but its progressive counterpart ??Copper is conducting electricity (these days). is not nomic and does not make much sense. The nomic cannot be temporary. 6.3.4 Propositional Attitude States (and Processes) Most prepositional attitude states, such as Joseph knows Hortense is a harridan. cannot be construed as incomplete; they do not allow a c being described by 0.

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Prepositional attitude state verbs, when progressivized, usually pick out a different kind of situation, as in

Geronimo was

arguing conjecturing saying demanding complaining musing thinking mentioning

that that....

All the verbs in this list are closely related to sayings, and since it is possible to have slow or fast sayings ('Harry said quickly that I should get out of there'), we have at least some propositional attitude processes. Thinking slowly, for instance, is a movement-associated process, associated with a path (an argument, say). If some of the verbs above are processes, all can be. In those cases where no rate adverbial can be used, the processes are standard. Examples are musings, complainings, and conjecturings. Process-designating sentences like the above can paraphrase an ongoing discussion or argument, the imperfective indicating in a natural way that the person whose views are being represented by the embedded clause has not finished the process of saying, arguing, etc. Paraphrasing a prolix argument, we can say Harry is arguing that Oxford is a banana republic university. This is a description of Harry involved in a process. Unlike the above, the sentences below designate states, though not propositional attitudes: Harold has been mentioning (of late) that he would like to be promoted. Sylvester has been conjecturing that the CO2 level has been going down. These sentences designate incomplete iteratives with a "temporary" reading. There are progressive forms of 'expect,' of one sense of 'hope,' and of 'bet.' These yield the only clear cases of imperfective propositional attitude states.

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Harry's expecting Mort to jump seven feet. Throgmorton's hoping that Thelma will stay the night. I'm betting on Harriet('s winning the race). As I said above, only one sense of'hope' can take a progressive form. The sentence Harry's hoping to leave tomorrow. amounts to 'Harry is planning to leave tomorrow' and is an intentional state designator.10 The prepositional attitude state of hoping is progressively marked where there is an unknown, as in Throgmorton's hoping that Geronimo won last night. The progressive indicates the uncertainty of the person whose state it is, and the view that the whole situation is temporary or "incomplete" in the appropriate way. We are now in a position to try to come to a systematic understanding of the effects of the perfective and imperfective on unbounded situations that will allow us to see what prevents certain situations from being made incomplete (in the appropriate sense). We already know that processes are eager to be imperfectivized, and many states very reluctant. Perhaps some feature of the relevant situation, or class of situations, determines whether or not the situation will accept the imperfective. To account for the facts, such a feature should be one that can be graded and can change. Something like a strength-to-weakness scale will serve us here. On such a scale, all processes are very willing to accept the imperfective because they are weak; many standard states, all intentional and root-modal states,11 and most prepositional attitude states are very unwilling because they are strong; and habituals are more or less in the middle. The scaling allows us to put the data together in the following way: Strength scale for boundless situations 1. Strong (unwilling to accept imperfective) 2. Moderately strong

Discourse effect of the imperfective, for each 0

Discourse effect of the perfective, for each 0

None

selbstandig

temporary (or variation)

selbstandig

274 Tense, Reference, and Worldmaking 3. Weak (prefer imperfective)

temporary (or variation) 12

?

The term 'selbstdndig (unlike the traditional "stable") captures something like 'autonomous'; it describes how the perfectives of states get seen, and differs radically from how the perfectives of movements and changes are seen. With 'selbstdndig the idea is that the c described by the state, unless notice is given to the contrary,13 continues "as is" so long as the relevant c remains in the world. The state continues "without support" — nothing need be done to maintain it. The result is a sort of hegemony with respect to a description of things at and near i R : the perfectivized state endures. This no doubt reflects the fact that perfectivized states provide "backdrop" or "background" descriptions of things at and near i R , the field against which things move and change (against which things, often the same things, are described as moving and changing). A characteristic of 0s of group (2) is that they have both the effect of (i) perfectively and the effect of (3) imperfectively. For instance, both effects apply to dispositional or habitual states: George is testy. George is being testy. The first describes George as quite set in his testiness; should he be someone we are acquainted with, given the truth of the sentence, we can count on him being testy when we encounter him. The second makes his testiness temporary. The categorization might suggest that group (i) states are "essentially perfective," but this would be wrongheaded. Rather, they are strong or unwilling to accept the imperfective, and so do not - though it is possible that the strength of the state will change. Similarly, there is no reason for thinking of processes as "essentially imperfective," some traditional analyses to the contrary. But if most things fall into place, it still is not clear what to do with the perfective of the process. While 'The bee buzzed all day' is a perfective of a process, as is 'Harry walked all day,' it does not appear that we can say that these situations, when perfectivized, are selbstdndig. Processes cease when they are not maintained or supported, so they are not autonomous in the right way. I suggest that an estimate of the "strength" of a situation without bounds is known to the story-competent speaker who describes realworld c by means of unbounded 0s. There must be something like this to explain why such speakers accept and reject sentences with imperfectivized situations without endpoints. Whenever a state can be considered imperfectively, it is for reasons that make, or can make,

275 Situations and Aspects

appeal to real-world stories. One might find a case where a description must be made temporary or atypical because the relevant cs are not typically like that — where agents are involved, for example, perhaps a state becomes one of pretence or conceit. These features of situations of these sorts can and do vary over time and with respect to "theoretical commitments" on the part of storytellers. There is room for disagreement, but also, in principle, for agreement. Judgments on the acceptability of imperfectivized state-designating sentences are not grammatical judgments, however, for there is nothing in the nature of states as such that rules out imperfectivizing any state whatsoever. Just as there are changes that we refuse to imperfectivize because in our real-world stories we do not allow them to have sufficient intervals, so there are states we refuse to imperfectivize because we refuse to count them as giving unstable or temporary descriptions of things. There does not seem to be a real gulf between the process and the state, but if there is not, what are we to do with the fact that the perfectivized process remains "temporary"? We know that the process, even when perfectivized, has to have support to begin and has to come to an end when that support is removed. Part of the answer is provided by a distinction introduced in the discussion of processes, the distinction between movement-associated and standard processes. Movement-associated processes seem to begin and end with the movements with which they are associated, although they need not. Harry's run may continue beyond the end of the 5000 metre race, but ordinarily we feel that when the race is over, his run is over too. The perfectivized process therefore gets quasi-bounds by association with a movement. But this does not deal with the perfectivized standard process, which seems equally "temporary." The sentences George scratched for an hour. The bee will buzz. certainly have nothing of the flavour of the perfectivized strong (or even moderately strong) state's "continues until notice given otherwise." I say any of My toe itched. It drizzled all day. The wasp droned for an hour. and everyone understands that these are perturbations that might bring me sympathy, but - fortunately - only perturbations; they go

276 Tense, Reference, and Worldmaking

away eventually, assuming I can't get them to stop by getting rid of the causes that they must have and that sustain them. The perfective of the process, I suggest, amounts to something like 'caused' or 'maintained,' where it is understood that without the cause, c could not be described in the way it is. This is what it is for a process to be "autonomous": it is maintained pro tern. Notice that this suits both the standard and movement-associated process. The notion of support pro tern explains why processes might seem to behave in E-R constructions as movements and changes do, although in fact they do not. It might seem that Harry had churned some butter. forces a reading on which the churning is over by i R , but it is only the movement — Harry's having churned butter — that is over. 6.4

D I S C O U R S E EFFECTS OF THE PERFECTIVE AND IMPERFECTIVE OF SITUATIONS WITH BOUNDS

The situation without bounds has the discourse effects just discussed. With the imperfective of either process or state, one gets instability or unreliability, with doubts for storyteller and hearer that c can continue to be described in that way (ceteris paribus) after i R . With the perfective of the state, one gets reliability and stability and a corresponding assurance to the describer and storyteller. With a process, one gets support pro tern. It is not surprising, given this, that the perfectivized state should serve as a background or backdrop to "the action." With the imperfectivized movement and change, there is close focus on c at some time within the proper bounds of the situation and on the way to the later bound. Imperfective descriptions of things with movements and changes force the speaker-hearer, embodied in ij/, to "watch closely" and stay with c, probably throughout the span between initial bound and final, unless the situation comes to an untimely end. The interval preceding i R to the time point associated with the beginning of the situation can be counted as a measurement of progress made, and the interval after i R to the time point associated in some story with the final bound as a measurement of the task to be done, or the path to walk. With perfectivized movements and processes, there are two related and quite striking effects, packaging and homogenization. The completed path for the movement is presented as a single unit with no

277

Situations and Aspects

indication of development; the path is presented "at once." Earlier intervals of the movement are not distinguished in any particular from later, except as merely earlier or later. One ends up with something like a uniformly wrapped package, extended through time between the ends. Similar things happen with the completed change, except that here there is also compression of the ends upon one another, tending towards the shortest of intervals. Packaging and homogenization help make clear why when one encounters a simple-descriptum perfectivized-change or -movement sentence with an iR-specifying adverbial, such as Harry left at 3:00. Mort ran at 3:00. the temporal adverbial specifies the beginning of i E , where there is a movement, or the end of 1%, where a change. It is not important to pay close attention to c throughout the interval. One instead pays attention to the interesting part, given that one knows that the situation is complete - the end in the case of the change, and the beginning in the case of the movement. This is where the describer v};'s interest would naturally tend to be with such situations. The "sportscaster's present," the stage-setting present, and the historical and expectant presents always involve a form of simplification that relies on the packaging and homogenization found with perfectives of movements and changes, and they also often involve a form of sequencing of "events" where the sequencing is brought about, not by saying something like 'and then,' but by using a simple-present-tense construction with perfectivized movements and changes. These are precisely the situations that do not normally allow perfectives in the simple present tense. Where one finds an isolated simple-present-tense sentence apparently designating a perfectivized change, such as Harry leaves. the preferred reading is one where the sentence designates a habitual, with Harry leave as the main 0. I suspect the reason for this is that, with the (real, not historical) present tense, i R is fixed at time of speech, and it is not possible to move it with the degree of freedom demanded by situations that, when perfectivized, want their i R s at their initial or final points, irrespective of when (is) the speaker happens to be uttering sounds. Of course, in the special case where one can treat the situation as quasi-instantaneous - found primarily

278 Tense, Reference, and Worldmaking

in the case of changes, but not difficult for short-term movements — one can still use the simple present. This is surely what happens in the case of the sportscaster's present, as for example, Harold picks up the pigskin, throws the bomb, and stumbles. Ali feints, tries a left, misses, dodges, and here's the bell. Packaging and homogenization are turned to simplifying, and where things are happening so quickly that one could not pay attention to details of development in any case, the perfectivized situations can easily be used in simple-present-tense constructions. Moreover, the packaging and homogenization produce discrete units - feints, misses, throws - units that, when used in the description of a single c as in both of the examples above, must be read as sequential. The sportscaster not only can simplify and summarize the action in a way that avoids detail and presents it tied together in bundles, but can produce a sequence without saying, 'and then.' The historical and expectant presents, as in 'Harry pulls up to the curb, puts on his mask, and pulls off the heist, y'see,' are special cases of the sportscaster's present moved to non-present iRs. They too involve simplification and sequencing. Sequencing is also found in differently tensed sentences — for example, with movements: Harry ran a mile, carried his cat to Gertrude's, and washed the Jaguar. With changes, exclusivity is particularly emphasized and sequencing is virtually demanded, even where the sequence is unusual: Gertrude will win the race, trip over a spectator, and leave. Gertrude tripped over a spectator, left, and won the race. In order for sequencing to be avoided under these conditions, two or more changes must "amount to the same thing," as in 'Harry stopped smoking and won the prize,' where stopping smoking is in the circumstances winning a prize. Perfectives, even of movementassociated processes, do not give the same results: George ran, walked, and meandered. Harry pedalled, whistled, and wobbled (along). Here there is no firm sequencing. Imperfectives of movements and

279 Situations and Aspects

changes, by contrast, almost demand simultaneous 0s, to the extent possible. Where confronted with sentences such as George was running to the river, walking through the fields, and meandering around town. we feel compelled to put the 0s together, but to do so we must change them into (imperfectives of) habituals. The best reading of this sentence is one where for some period George ran, walked, and meandered on several occasions. Still another effect that depends on packaging and homogenization plays a role in argumentation. Perfectively construed changes and movements appear - by contrast to their imperfective forms "established." One wants an argument to begin from something established, and the perfective is preferred. In George went to Harry's so Harry will come, the condition for Harry's coming is satisfied, whereas with George is going to Harry's so Harry will come. we have, on the most plausible reading, the 'so' clause giving the reason for George's going. The principle at work seems to be that situations like movements must be complete before any results can be results of that movement as such; the movement as such is not really "there" until complete.14 No doubt this feature of the explanatory uses of movements is tied in with the fact that the termination of the movement is sometimes a change of quite a special type, including the status change (winning, being promoted, losing); thus, the agent's status, or his or her powers and abilities, must await the termination of the movement. But the basic point is independent of this additional fact - and must be, for these considerations do not apply to changes. 6.5 RES (CONTENTS) AND PERFECTIVES AND IMPERFECTIVES One claim of my theory of aspect is that aspects are operations within contents on situations. Every situation is operated on by either the perfective or the imperfective, and the effects (wherever they appear in the "flow" that involves the situation in more and more SRE machinery in moving from situation outwards) of the operation depend upon whether the situation has endpoints or not. I claim

280 Tense, Reference, and Worldmaking

that all situations can be operated upon by either 'complete' or 'incomplete'15 - any such aspectual operation makes sense, although it may be difficult to fit it into a real-world story. Real-world constraints rule out imperfectives of certain changes and certain states, but there is no reason — especially with variability of judgment over a population and change in such judgments over time for a fixed population — to rule out the "forbidden" combinations on the ground that they are nonsense. They are not only not nonsense, but stories can be invented in which they can appear in true sentences. It is possible to tell stories in which even 'Harry is knowing that 2 + 2 = 4 ' turns out to be plausible and true. To make the machinery work, all we need suppose of a contentcompetent person is that he or she know whether a situation he or she refers to has bounds or does not, and where to apply the aspectual operation. It is not, I think, asking very much to expect this knowledge of any competent speaker. Interestingly, given this knowledge alone, plus knowledge that must be expected of any referentially competent speaker who can deal with contents (RE relationships) at all, we can place the over of E-Rs of movements and changes within the theory of the understanding of the contentcompetent speaker — that is, without appeal to storytelling competence at all. We can also underwrite one inference that proceeds on the assumption that a sentence with a particular RE-aspect situation combination is put in a story and is true there. To review the data and exhibit this inference, let us look at situations with and without endpoints in various RE combinations. Imperfectives of all situations require that i R be "within" the situation so that there "is" a part of it directly before i R with the anterior, on both sides of i R with the simple (there must be some non-negligible interval on both sides), or directly after i R with the anticipative. Because a simple construction that is true in a story must in fact have some portion before i R , and because the imperfective demands continuity, one can generally infer from the truth of a simpledescriptum sentence the truth of a perfect or anterior construction with an imperfective in the same story.

George

was is will be

rubbing his nose, running 400 metres, stopping smoking, being a nerd, leaving tomorrow, seeing heffalumps. being forced to leave.

281

Situations and Aspects

George

had been has been will have been

rubbing his nose running 400 metres stopping smoking being a nerd leaving tomorrow seeing heffalumps being forced to leave

(for ...).

Evidence for the truth of the simple is sufficient for the truth of the anterior. It is not possible to infer in a similar way the truth of a simple from the truth of an anterior because there can be no guarantee that the situation, quasi-bounded by the anterior's 'before,' continues at or after i R to describe c. Nor is it possible to infer an anticipative from a simple; one needs independent evidence of the truth of the R-E. It is not possible, even with the "continuity" of the imperfective, to infer the truth of a simple from an anticipative, for the situation could begin immediately after i R and still meet the requirements. 'Harry is going to be running the marathon for another hour' certainly implies that he is running it now, but only because of the 'another.' Keep in mind with the allowable inference that the situations must be kept imperfective. One cannot move from 'Harry is being testy' to 'Harry has been testy,' from 'Harry is seeing pink elephants' to 'Harry has seen pink elephants,' nor from 'Harry is stopping smoking' to 'Harry has stopped smoking.' The perfective of the unbounded situation with various RE combinations is consistent with continuities but does not demand it, so while it yields the same results so far as parts of situations are concerned (some part before i R with anteriors, etc.), it does not support the inference above. 'The house is white' is perfectly consistent with 'The house has been green,' where both sentences describe the house c at the same i R . The perfective perfect of situations with bounds is sufficient for the situations to be over, where it is not for the perfectivized standard state. While Throgmorton had been silly. certainly describes c with a state that antecedes i R and is complete, its completeness is consistent with Throgmorton being silly after i R . The situation's being over requires proper bounds plus a perfective, but with them and the E-R's 'before,' we know, not by inferring or by any appeal to story-based knowledge, that the situation is over at i R . With any of

282 Tense, Reference, and Worldmaking

John had washed the dishes. Jerome had lost. Priscilla will have churned the butter. we know that the washing, losing, and churning are over. It might also seem that process-designating sentences associated with the movements are over in the same circumstances, that 'Harriet will have churned' and 'John washed' say that the churning and washing are over by i R . But this could only seem so to someone who insisted that churning and washing on the relevant occasions in some story are temporally coextensive with the movements, and the movement with which the process is associated in some story is over. This is a commitment that can by no means be garnered from knowledge of the relevant contents alone. Only the movement and change yield this. But with these sentences, we can say that the situation's being over by i R is analytically true. (The sentence as a whole is not, of course, analytically true.) In any case, it seems that aspects are fully "within contents" and that they are operations on situations (concerning which the competent speaker-hearer has considerable story-independent knowledge). In the next chapter I discuss the content/force distinction in detail and outline a theory of propositions to which my claims about aspects contribute.

7 Meaning, Meaningfulness, and Constructivism

In this chapter I fulfil my promise made in chapter 3 to elaborate upon both the distinction between meaning and meaningfulness and the constructivist implications of the SRE theory. These issues are connected through the notion that the competent speaker-hearer is simultaneously a member of several groups with varying responsibilities and powers - evidence, storytelling, attention, and picturereferential groups. 7-1

CONTENT COMPETENCE : PICTURE-REFERENTIAL AND ATTENTION GROUPS

Earlier I defended the view that being a member of the picturereferential group requires being syntactically competent in a rich sense with respect to a particular language. The competent not only know the syntactic forms of sentences, but have a store of lexical knowledge. For a given "sentence" presented as a token (t) on an occasion and thought of as a picture, but without tense, descriptum, aspect, or temporal adverbial markers, each member of the group at time of speech knows which situation that "sentence" pictures; for instance, each knows that 'Harold run to the store' pictures or individuates the situation, Harold run to the store. One can exercise this ability on a large - perhaps indefinitely large — class of sentences, determining what each of the sentences in that class means or picture-refers to. Having this competence is being a member of the

284 Tense, Reference, and Worldmaking

picture-referential group. It is far from enough to be a languageuser. Having picture competence is not even sufficient for specifying a sentential content; for that, competence at identifying reference is also required. But picture competence is a crucial part of content competence. In a way, competence at identifying reference is a perceptual ability — the ability to pay attention, given a sentence in a story, to some one thing or things that count as the things described by the sentence. As I argued in chapters 4 and 5, this is not strictly a perceptual ability — it extends far beyond what is immediately perceptible by a person at a time - but it is like one. Having this ability and exercising both it and picture reference on an occasion is represented in the "perceiver-describer" (vj/) at the time JR. i}> also represents the content or meaning of a sentence: if; is something referred to or individuated by a sentence t on an occasion is. In chapters 3 and 4, I emphasized that meanings are not and cannot be "tied." We cannot connect meanings to parochial epistemic matters such as truth and verification, nor to existence, without losing the ability to explain how it is that we language-users routinely tell stories that are fictional and understand them (in the relevant sense) in the same way as the stories we tell about our "real world." Something like what I called 'lexical constructivism' conjoined to a freely transportable perceptual ability is needed to underwrite semantic freedom. The exercise of both abilities is largely determined, I argued, by the t as it appears (in a context) on the occasion is. Briefly, sentences refer to sentential contents. Content specification is a t-i|/ relationship. 7.1.1 The Limits of Meaning: How Many Propositions Are There ?

An important part of content-understanding can be explained in terms of picture reference. While most of the discussion of picture reference in chapter 4 was devoted to an account of how situations are pictured by "sentences," the scope of picture reference was extended beyond situations to other elements of an RE structure. An RE structure to which picture reference is made consists of everything but the c to which identifying reference is made. This pictured, truncated RE structure is called a 'descriptive place.' Picture reference, relying upon indexicality where necessary, is sufficient for individuating descriptive places. These places are completely worldindependent and so can be applied to anything in some world (c) to yield a "description of a thing in some world (c) as in that (worldless)

285 Meaning, Meaningfulness, and Constructivism

descriptive place." Descriptive places parallel the traditional view's properties, for they are worldless. Fixing a descriptive place includes fixing not only 0, but also aspect and descriptum type. When these are all fixed together, one gets a place in what might be called a 'space of places for cs,' a place into which something from some world can be inserted, some c referred to independently by identifying reference (which spatially locates a c in some world). When inserted, the result is a retrospective, simple, or prospective description of something; this something is seen 01y in one of these ways. There is more discussion of this below. In insisting that understanding the content of a sentence consists in the joint exercise of two abilities, the SRE account of the structure of a content seems to satisfy what Evans calls the 'generality constraint.'1 The generality constraint insists that the abilities we have to specify or refer to properties (the closest analogue, in the traditional view, to descriptive places) are sufficiently separate from the abilities we have to specify or refer to things or individuals that we can, in principle, produce propositions that conjoin arbitrary things with arbitrary properties. The generality constraint can be read as a constraint on a semantically interesting language. To find out if the SRE theory's view of content satisfies this constraint, we must avoid two assumptions Evans makes. First, Evans assumes that subjects of sentences refer to things and that predicates characterize these things. This is, as we have seen, simplistic and misleading. Avoid thinking in terms of subject-predicate structure, then, and think instead of specifying cs on the one hand and descriptive places on the other. Second, Evans couches his discussion of the generality constraint in Fregean views about compositionality of sense and in his own conception of an Idea. We have no need and no use for Fregean compositionality of sense, nor for Fregean senses, nor for Evans's Ideas, since we can make much more powerful and, I think, interesting claims about how we can compose meanings of sentences out of meanings of words by relying on the syntactic base of picture reference, where compositionality of meanings, excluding the concatenation of cs and descriptive places, takes place entirely within this sphere. We can also avoid the psychologizing and intractable notion of senses, not to mention thoughts and Ideas. Disassociating the generality constraint from subject-predicate structure and ignoring the Fregean and Evansian addenda and agenda, let us see if the ability to specify cs and the separate ability to specify descriptive places do not yield a plausible account of how there can be free variation. One ability is exercised in identifying reference; the other is exercised in picture reference. Identifying

286 Tense, Reference, and Worldmaking

reference locates something spatially in a world, while picture reference individuates a descriptive place, a place filled by that thing picked out by the other form of reference. When jointly exercised to yield an interpretation of a sentence, the two abilities work together. Usually, in fact, identifying reference depends on picture reference by relying on the immediate perceptual salience of the subject term of the sentence. But identifying reference need not rely in this way on picture reference - we have seen cases where it does not, and nothing rules out salience for vj; arising in another way. These separate abilities, therefore, guarantee that the SRE theory satisfies the generality constraint. Notice, moreover, that not only can we refer independently to a spatially located thing (c) and a "property," but these can be temporally located in different places. No subject-predicate-based semantics can deal with this. And, further, when we specify the elements of a sentential content by exercising these abilities, we specify descriptive positions independently of any appeal to truth; that is, we can, in principle, take an arbitrary something from some world and say arbitrary things about it, without commitment to the truth of what is said. There are no apparent constraints on free variation of cs and descriptive places. Thus, there can be an infinite number of these "descriptions of things," or sentential contents. And all of them are accessible to us, at least in principle. For we can, in principle, assume the descriptive positions of them all. The positivists and many others — even Evans — would be very unhappy with this. By their standards (or anyone else's), a large number of these contents would not be meaningful, for another way to put my claim about the number of accessible descriptive positions is to say that contents can be specified or referred to that have no point and perhaps cannot conceivably have a point — there is no use for them and no conceivable use, or, to say the same thing, they cannot contribute to a story or be meaningful. Indeed, it seems plausible that the majority of understandable descriptive places, REs, or propositions will never have a use and may not even have a conceivable use. I doubt that there is a story that would "make sense of a content consisting of the familiar Nixon of our world related in an R-E structure to this perfectivized state: Feldspar be a mineral. Nevertheless, it is difficult to rule out some story that might make some prima facie useless content meaningful. Imagine a group watching a Nixon interview, where he is clearly salient in the speech situation. Someone says, 'At least some quarks have charm.' Assume it is obvious from the context that the subject matter of the discourse is not quarks, but Nixon. Here the familiar Nixon of the real world

287 Meaning, Meaningfulness, and Constructivism

is referred to identifyingly and is described with an R,E structure involving a perfectivized state, At least some quarks have charm. While no doubt grasping the point of this takes some stretching, it is not impossible, given the story, to see that there is a point in saying what is said and that the sentence does make a contribution of sorts to a tale about Nixon. With most of the sentences we encounter, of course, we do not need to stretch. That this is so, however, does not tell us anything about meaning, nor about our access to meanings. It only reflects the fact that sentences usually do have a point, and often an obvious one - to say something true, for instance. They serve our interests; otherwise we would not produce them. But whether or not a sentence has a point and, if it does, how obvious the point is are irrelevant to our ability to determine "what is said" by referring to it. Not just descriptive places but contents, or propositions as a whole, are autonomous. Thus, contents are, as claimed in chapter 3, largely worldless and certainly independent of truth. (The only clear exceptions to this principle are the analytic sentences discussed in chapters 4 and 5. The traditionalist will find this odd.) But if one cannot constrain meanings by appeal to how sentences are used, how does one map them? The answer is simple: meanings are all things that fit into an RE relationship. RE structure offers the coordinates for a map of meanings. Mapping meanings requires saying how many forms of RE structure there are; all meanings must have one of these forms. Then there is the question of how the coordinates for such a map are constructed. RE structures or descriptive positions can also be called propositions. Take the four basic sorts of situations — movements, changes, states, and processes. Operating on a member of any sort by considering it complete or incomplete yields eight different situation-aspect combinations. Take any member of any of these different combinations and place it in one of the three different RE relationships; the result is twenty-four different kinds of descriptive places. Cs are not type-cast, so this is also the number of possible types of proposition. Is this plausible? If the SRE theory is adequate to English, the class of possible types of proposition must be "psychologically real." To adapt Plato's metaphor, the theory - like the good butcher — must cut up our intuitions about the ways to content-understand at the joints. The theory predicts there are twenty-four ways to content-understand or to mean, and not only should there be this many, but any instance of a type should have the properties the theory predicts it should. Chapter 6 demonstrates the psychological reality of eight different sorts of propositions — the combinations of two aspects with the four differ-

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ent sorts of situations. Let us see now if the three different sorts of descriptum relationships are psychologically real. Incidentally, this discussion cashes a promissory note placed in chapter i - to make intuitive sense of the idea that a descriptive position consists of perceiving a c in terms of its influences, involvements, or "exfluences." For convenience I restrict sentences illustrating the three descripta to the present tense. Anyone unconvinced that descripta are independent of tense can transform the sentences into pasts or futures; RE structure, situations, and results are the same. I begin with the anterior because sentences that designate anterior sentential contents are easy to distinguish; the auxiliary 'has' marker is one of the more reliable in English. The SRE theory says that sentences and clauses with anterior readings have a c at i R (which in the present tense overlaps i s ) and situation (0) before i R . My examples are by no means complete, but they are sufficient for my purposes.2 A movement placed before i R and (non-alethically) describing c at i R (that is, constituting part of a descriptive place occupied by a particular c from some world) produces an RE that details a path, complete or incomplete, up to c. Where the path is incomplete and Harry is described, as in Harry has been running the marathon for two hours. Harry at i$ is in an unstable position (this from the imperfective) and still "on the way." With Harry has run the marathon. on the other hand, we get Harry still described by his relationship to the path, but it is a complete one. Where the sentence appears in a story, Harry is likely to be described later as exhausted or elated. Both perfectively and imperfectively, with any c described by a movement before i R , we get a reading on which 0 describes c in terms of a path antecedent to c and "leading up to" c. This - given the nature of a movement — is what should be expected. Consider the following: The house has been wired. The rocks have fallen. That pine has been battered by the wind. The jalopy has gone 100,000 miles without an oil change. Mort has drunk his milk. With each, a complete movement describes c at i R and c is described by what leads up to and "influences" it at i R — a path on which

289 Meaning, Meaningfulness, and Constructivism

something has (at least partially) travelled. These features seem to be common to movements. With changes, the anterior 0-c relationship gives us a c (often, just) transformed. For instance, with acquisition and loss changes like Mary has won the presidency. Tom has reached the top. Sylvester has failed in his bid. one describes a c with a change 0 that precedes time of speech and is the beginning of a state that the c, at time of speech, is in.3 In describing c at i R (= is) in this way, one makes c a success or a failure. Similar considerations apply to Mort has died. Harry has left. George has arrived. The first two sentences may amount to "He is no longer with us" (i.e., with the group, including the speaker) and hence c is not Mort or Harry but "us." Nevertheless, the principle remains: we have been changed. With processes and E-Rs, we get persistences, sustainings, progresses, efforts, and the like: Harry has {been running/run} for an hour. The yeast has been working in the primary fermentor. The buzzing has been getting louder. Being unbounded, processes are not very different from most states in the ways they work, and unsurprisingly, states with E-Rs tend to get read as persistences: Harry's house has been red for ten years. Gertrude has been shirking her duties. The same is true of Kant (Kant's writings) has not shocked students for years. Harry has run the marathon (before). Everyone has drunk milk, but only a few have had absinthe. With perfectivized states, but not with processes, one gets with E-Rs

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something like a "weight of the past" reading. C is described by a state that antecedes i R , and that state can be expected, ceteris paribus, to continue. Intentional and root-modal states yield interesting variations on the theme. The root modal I've had to do that for a month. gets read as a burden on me - more so, at least, than a reading of 'I must do that.' The obligation is still not fulfilled, even though it is an obligation that has been with me for quite a long time. The posterior is the mirror of the anterior. A movement placed after c produces a description wherein a path leads from c, rather than - as with the anterior - to it. Thus, we have sentences that get read as descriptions of c in terms of a path about to be begun (with perfectives) or continuing to an end (with imperfectives): I'm going to throw up. Harry's going to lay the linoleum. Mort'll be running for a while longer. A particularly useful type of R-E using a movement or change is the warning: The rock is gonna fall! where what is described is not just the referent of the subject term, but the listener as well. Other posteriors with changes mirror the acquisition and loss readings one gets with anteriors. With the posterior we get instead approaches, impendings, brinks, onslaughts, and almosts. For instance, Mary's going to be president (tonight). The race is going to start. Like the anteriors, these effects require perfectivized changes; unlike them, where the change is a change at some end of a 0 of some other type, the beginning is the relevant end. Processes can produce readings as launches, particularly where they are movement associated, as with Harry's going to be running in a moment. but even where processes are divorced from a movement, they can get such a reading. Imagine Harry requiring a long warm-up for a

291

Meaning, Meaningfulness, and Constructivism

run. He starts at a saunter and works up to a jog, and the sentence above describes him just before he breaks into the run. Processes can also describe something persisting in or at something: He's going to be running for a half hour yet. This obviously mirrors the anterior 'He's been running for a half hour now.' States get persistence readings: Harry's house is going to be red (tomorrow too). Where the inception of a state is used to describe a c, a change — the beginning of the state - is what is designated. With posteriors in general, something is described as "having" a 0 "inherent" within. This suggests we can think of posteriors as describing something in terms of their exfluences, to coin a barbarism. Anteriors, by contrast, describe something by that thing's influences, if by that we mean the situations that flow to it. Using this terminology, we can say how simples are read and leave illustration up to the reader. Since with simples i E and i R overlap, instead of speaking of influences and exfluences, let us speak of "involvement with" a 0.4 There are different kinds of involvement to the extent that there are different kinds of 0s. (Aspects must be taken into account too, of course.) Nevertheless, there "are" involvements, just as there "are" influences and exfluences. The descripta seem to be psychologically real. This goes to show that while there "are" an infinite number of propositions, they all fall into one of twenty-four different classes of propositions, and each member of a given class has the features the theory says it should. Philosophers habitually look for a single form of proposition, tend to involve truth in the specification of a proposition,5 rely in the wrong way on subject-predicate structure, and become sceptical about being able to say what a proposition is at all. With the SRE theory, it is difficult to argue that the concept of a proposition is an empty one, difficult to claim it is impossible to make determinate reference to propositions, and difficult to say that one cannot map meanings. 7-2

THE EVIDENCE AND STORYTELLING GROUPS

Explaining the responsibilities and powers of members of the evidence and storytelling groups is explaining what it is to be a speaker

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as storyteller (p), someone who makes recommendations on the inclusion of a content in a story. I try to do this in two ways. First, I outline what sorts of recommendations a speaker can give concerning a content. In effect, I outline the forces and, in doing so, say how the speaker as storyteller (p) can stand to a sentential content, represented by vjj. Second, I offer an account of truth. In clearly demonstrating that truth is a matter of epistemic responsibility assigned to a group, I make it an epistemic constraint on that group; in doing so, I also partially outline some of the responsibilities and powers of members of evidence and storytelling groups. 7.2.7 Forces

Forces can be classified in three basic groups: inclusions, rejections, and floats. A speaker can instruct an audience either to include a descriptive position fy in a story, to reject it, or to "float" it.6 We need positive forces for assertions, reminders, avowals, constitutings, and the like; we need negative forces for denials and refusals; and we need floats for questions and for the special kinds of instruction found with conditionals and subjunctives. The full catalogue of forces is based on a subset of propositional attitude verbs.7 Most propositional attitude verbs present instructions on the inclusion of the RE embedded under them. Thus, we can look to a constrained set of propositional attitude verbs to find represented instructions, and we can use these to construct the full catalogue of forces. The relevant verbs tell us what a speaker at some time recommends on the basis of evidence available at the time at which the recommendation is offered. This captures relevant features of a speaker's position by an appeal to a selection of the ways in which recommendations are represented. The fact that with these verbs the authority for a recommendation is assigned to a person at a particular time reflects the fact that authority for giving instructions is always placed with someone at a time. Authority is tied. Similarly, any instruction given on the inclusion of a descriptive position (represented in the theory by a i|>) is tied to the epistemic authority of the person instructing at a time. This authority is conferred on someone who is a competent recommender, a p. Normally sentences, when uttered, do not actually state what their forces are. 'Harry left yesterday,' for example, does not. But there are some sentences, such as 'I am (in saying this) stating that Harry left yesterday,' that, when correct, represent an instructing on an occasion. Indeed, when such sentences are correct, they effectively constitute an instructing. 8 The relevant constructions must be say-

293 Meaning, Meaningfulness, and Constructivism

ings and cannot have verbs like 'believe' and 'know' (*'I am [in saying this] believing that Harry left yesterday'), which cannot progressivize in the simple present. They must also be claimings, unlike the following:

I am (in saying this)

grumbling whispering gushing stuttering mumbling gasping thrilling complaining whining

that he was going to leave.

The right constructions include these:

I am

claiming asserting denying conjecturing avowing noting

averring

reminding us stating

that Harry left yesterday

mentioning

indicating stipulating answering

One can insert 'hereby' in front of each verb, yielding sentences like I am hereby stating that Harry left yesterday. Each such construction represents and makes a claim. The claim demands that the speaker be in some relevant epistemic position before he or she can describe him- or herself in the way these sentences do. This can be seen by contrasting these constructions' to constructions that focus, not on claims, but on ways of saying: I am (?*hereby) {cajoling/stuttering/gushing} that...

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The relevant constructions map into three basic forces. The following are "positive": claiming asserting conjecturing avowing averring noting reminding us stating mentioning indicating stipulating answering They leave 'denying' as the sole negative form. The verbs for floats are limited and include George is wondering whether ... George is asking whether ... Conditionals — standard and subjunctive — and (A)s also "float" REs, in the ways discussed in chapter 2. Particular forces can involve complications. To assert is, in part, to advance a story. An assertion presents a content and recommends its inclusion. No doubt it is possible to think of assertion abstracted from a particular speech situation: an assertion could be defined in terms of a positive recommendation where the speaker has the required authority. But this definition loses the constituting and occurrent features of making an assertion, and also eliminates what is unique to assertions as opposed to avowals, reminders, and the like. An assertion, unlike these other positive recommendations, invites others to join the speaker in advancing a story; the others are not already among those who at i$ already agree that i|j is in the story. The speaker offers his or her authority for a claim that is an advance on information available, and a risk is taken. Since many contents are already authorized by others, they are not, strictly speaking, assertible, for there is no risk. Reminders and avowals are unlike assertions in that they assume the audience already authorizes the inclusion of if;; thus, "inviting" makes no sense. They assume a pool of authorized positions; they differ from each other, however, in that reminders tend to recall

295 Meaning, Meaningfulness, and Constructivism

something from other contexts, while avowals tend to involve repetition within the same context. (I have no strict distinction in mind here.) With reminders and avowals, the (re)introduction of a sentential content is assumed to be relevant to the speech situation; it recalls something accepted before, for instance, so that the authorization for a move to another speech position — as in an (A) - is given. Exclamations are another form of positive instruction. They are likely to be assertions. When something is announced to someone else in an exclamatory mode, the information is usually thought to be new to the audience. The relevant form of exclamation must make a claim, of course. In this respect, we can think of an exclamation as joining an assertion to a manner form of verb 'exclaim,' so that unlike with 'shout,' we get a dual focus, both on epistemic authority for a claim and on a manner. Given this, there is reason to exclude exclamations from the primitive forces. A stipulation is a special case. The speaker says, in effect, "Include RE, but do not demand that the inclusion be justified on the basis of evidence available at this point." This is found with sentences that begin, "Assume for the purposes of argument..." Beginnings of fictional stories tend to be stipulations, assuming the story has not been told. After the story begins, coherence makes demands on accessible speech positions and stipulation is no longer in order. Conjectures and perhaps speculations are positive instructions, but they are not very strong recommendations. They approximate what is found with questions, but unlike the question that assumes there is someone in the audience who can answer, a conjecture assumes there is no one available who can give a firmer recommendation. There are two important varieties of denial. The most "independent" type of denial is simply an effort to reject the inclusion of if; or to exclude it from a story. Amounting to a rejection on grounds, a denial says that there is evidence that v|; is not to be included. Where the denial is of this sort, a claim that there is evidence can usually be borne out by producing a sentence with positive force that is the contrary of the sentence that denies, and the claim found in the rejection can be thought of as something like someone's saying, "That is wrong, because ..." Another variety of denial is captured in someone's saying, "I don't think that's right." It is a refusal to include v^, or a denial that there is authority to include it. This kind of denial is found where a listener rejects another's positive instructions with regard to a particular content. It does not, in general, require that one have evidence that \\i should not be included; rather, it is a refusal to agree to the inclusion of \\). Perhaps the listener thinks that the

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evidence is inadequate or that the speaker is not in a position to make the claim. In any case, such a denial is more dependent than the first, in addition to constituting a different way to instruct against the inclusion of \\). Denial is presented as a force (or as two sub-varieties of negative force) and is by no means intended to cover all roles of the word 'not.' 'Not' can serve as a situation operator where its work is "inside" a sentential content and is irrelevant to force. Denial should be thought of as akin to what happens with the use of 'not' in 'It is not the case that...' or 'There is no evidence that...' It may not always be possible to say what use 'not' is being put to in an English sentence where it appears in a main clause or some other tensed clause, but, in principle, it is possible for these two sentences to be non-equivalent in force: It is not the case that George's house is green. George's house is not green. The latter can be an assertion that George's house is not green. There is a special form of instruction-giving found with conditionals. Neither positive nor negative instruction is given on recommending the most-embedded RE, but features of differently tensed condition-'when' constructions argue to the view that the speaker tends towards either a positive or a negative instruction. These instructions, already investigated in detail, are forms of floats. Questions can also be floats. The semantics of questions is complex and deserves much closer scrutiny than can be given here.9 Only yes/no questions are relevant to a theory of force, however. To see this, think of all questions as having the form of a positive-force sentence that looks like this: I (the speaker) want to know {whether/what/who/which/ when/why/where/...} ... This is a constituting construction. Of the bracketed expressions, only 'whether' gives insight into forces, since all the others (except for 'why,' about which I say something below) amount to requests that gaps be filled in the speaker's knowledge - knowledge relevant to his or her ability to recommend inclusion of a particular sentential content. The speaker cannot recommend positively (or reject) inclusion of a sentential content until all gaps are filled, but unless a specific content is specified, it does not make sense to speak of in-

RTTTT eaning, Meaningfulness, and Construct ivism

structions regarding its inclusion, rejection, or even consideration. 'Whether' questions, which take yes/no answers, are sufficiently specified. 'Why' questions are also sufficiently specified for inclusion of a content; indeed, the content of the clause that follows the 'why' is already recommended for inclusion. The issue with a 'why' question is different. We can still speak of gaps, but with 'why's the gaps are missing positively recommended positions that, with an (A), authorize the inclusion of the embedded clause, or they ask which (if any) (A) is relevant. One seeks reasons or explanations for something happening or being. Thus, while there are several ways to make requests and seek information, only those ways where answers amount to advice on the inclusion of a content (i.e., 'whether' questions) are relevant to the theory of force. Where a 'whether' question is posed, the content that follows is clearly floated: the speaker does not recommend either rejection or inclusion. 7.2.2 Truth: Time, Tense, and Storytelling

If the discussions of the conditional and the epistemic modal in chapter 2 are correct, the natures of the evidence and storytelling groups are already reasonably well established. Members of these two groups are cs of sentences with epistemic modal and iterated root-modal situations. Members of the evidence group would describe themselves as agreeing on grounds to the recommendation of some content, and members of the storytelling group, as agreeing to recommend further things, assuming that a member of the group is able to make a positive recommendation on some content. The epistemic modal and iterative root-modal situations permit descriptions of arbitrary groups, including those to which the speaker at time of speech does not belong. The interesting cases, however, are those where the speaker is a member of the group being described and who, in uttering an epistemic modal sentence or conditional sentence, appeals for support to the agreement of the group of which he or she is a member - in effect, says there ^justification for what he or she says and there are others who would agree with him or her. Where the sentence is a description of a group that includes the speaker, the speaker effectively says that he or she is right in assessing the embedded claim in the way he or she does. I mentioned that one epistemic modal, 'true,' is such that when it is used by a speaker, the speaker cannot but make an appeal to a group of which

298 Tense, Reference, and Worldmaking

he or she is a member, and cannot but say that he or she is right. This was expressed by saying that 'true' is tied. I explain more precisely here what I meant. The best way to get a better understanding of the evidence and storytelling groups is to look more closely at 'true.' This is not just because truth is central to the concept of storytelling — this is obvious from the fact that (A)s are authorizations to declare other things true, once one knows that something is true - nor because Tt is true that/?' authorizes 'p' where Tt is possible that/?' does not, but because in looking at the cases where we use 'true,' we get a focused view of the natures of the obligations, responsibilities, and powers that we have by being members of storytelling and evidence groups. The "problem of truth" is a problem of locating responsibilities. When a speaker says something, he or she makes a recommendation concerning the inclusion of the content of the sentence he or she utters in some story. The story may deal with any world at any time, but the speaker and utterance are necessarily located in the real world at time of speech. In the case of an assertion, the speaker recommends the inclusion of a content in a story: he or she holds that the sentence is true with respect to that story. In doing this, the speaker accepts responsibility for the recommendation — or we demand this of the competent storyteller. Having such responsibility requires abilities and knowledge at time of speech — the kind of knowledge (or belief) that counts as evidence. Thus, the speaker's responsibilities in making a recommendation can largely be discharged by what is available to him or her. What, however, of the truth of the sentences the speaker produces? Can we seriously hold that the truth of a sentence depends just on what the speaker has available at time of speech — even when, for instance, he or she uses sentences describing things in the distant past or future? I think we can. Truth is not just a matter of what the speaker happens to have immediately available, for truth involves an extension of responsibility to others. Nevertheless, truth remains tied to time of speech and, if not to the actual speaker alone, to what I call an 'evidence position' that is partially denned by the story-relevant evidence at time of speech — evidence necessarily located at i$. In saying of a sentence that it is true, we necessarily represent it as true-for-us-now. I defend this thesis by showing not only that '... is true' is - as any tensed sentence is - tied to a speaker's position p, but that it must represent a sentence as tied to the actual speaker's position. The thesis can be put as the claim that '... is true' says the sentence is so tied. Defence of the claim depends on the fact that'... is true' has its home in epistemic modal sentences of the form 'It is

299 Meaning, Meaningfulness, and Constructivism

true that ...,' where the sentence said to be true is represented in a 'that'-clause. Like all prepositional attitudes, the sentence said to be true is represented as tied to some speech position. The argument establishes that the position to which the sentence is represented as tied must be the actual speaker's position. Being indexical and being tied are clearly distinct. Intuitively, indexicality is a matter of reference and entails no parochialism with regard to the referent, while being tied is a matter of responsibility and justification, so of inherent parochialism. An expression is indexical if, in order to fix its referent, one needs knowledge of time and further contextual features of utterance. (Often, successful reference to things referred to indexically is possible without using indexical expressions.) In contrast, certain elements in SRE semantic structure, not expressions, are tied. Elements of semantic structure do not refer; they are referred to - in the case of the tied elements of S, largely by means of exemplification. To speak is to tie these elements in semantic structure and to fix the elements of S - the speaker (p), the utterance (t), and the time of utterance (is). Tied elements are parts of the SR-semantic structure of any tensed sentence or SRE structure. They are also represented in all prepositional attitude constructions (which have SRE structures in their embedded clauses). With prepositional attitudes, exemplification (of two sorts) is still a factor, but reference to the speaker (or "speaker" [p*]) described is explicit. We say, 'John believes ...'10 There are those who think of truth as something "objective." However, crucial features of the "objectivity" of truth — the "temporal transparency" and "transportability" of 'true' — actually depend on 'true' being tied. To see this, let us focus on sentences like Since p is true, it {was/will be} true at t. which authorize transporting truths to other times.11 To make the argument both general and pointed, I begin by investigating a sentence schema I call the omnitemporality principle (OT), an axiom of some tense logics.12 (OT) If p is true at t, then at any other time t', it is true then that p is true at t. This schema usually appears in the form of a biconditional, but it is best to begin with the one-way version - the other direction is quite a different animal. The one-way version (OT) differs from sentences of conditional form — that is, (A)s and (A)-contextualiza-

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dons — as discussed in chapter 2, for there is a sentence described as true in the content of both antecedent and consequent, and in the consequent, one "truth predicate" is embedded under another. Nevertheless, (OT) is nominally of conditional form, and will be treated in the same way that sentences of conditional form were earlier, that is, as an (A) or a (A)-contextualization. Subjunctives, two-sentence arguments, and conditionals are past-, present-, and future-tense contextualizations respectively of a conditioned rootmodal iterative, and the iterative is essentially about the storytelling "we," including the speaker at time of speech (though not the speaker's evidence group). It will be remembered that contextualizations are epistemically committed to what the speaker and his or her evidence group hold now, with present evidence. But unless they have representations in embedded positions, these contextualizations do not involve representations as such, and thus do not represent these ties. When truth sentences are embedded, they do represent these ties - and in the case of (OT), they not only represent them, they speak to the issue of the "temporal transportability" of what we hold true at times. 7.2.2.7 Policies and accommodation. To deal with (OT), we must first decide how to deal with the expressions in it, the temporal nominal (t), the 'true (then) that p (is true)' clause, the expression 'p,' and the phrase 'p is true.' I proposed earlier that 'true that/?' be read as what it appears to be, a form of propositional attitude construction. Ignoring for the moment that we do not yet know what to do with the phrase 'p is true' as a part of 'true (then) that p is true,' we see that 'p is true' does suggest what to do with lp': it is a fully tensed SRE representation. This assumed, while t could in principle specify either i R for the propositional attitude state as a whole (iR of an SRE with an embedded SRE) or i R * of the embedded SRE (i.e., p), there is something else to take into account. The temporal variable t' in the 'then'-clause can only specify i R for the outermost 'true (then) that...,' the embedding SRE's i R . Thus, since one point of (OT)s is to speak to differences that depend on the temporal difference between t and t', we should say, to preserve parallelism, that t refers to i R of the relevant propositional attitude state taken as a whole. On this reading — the only plausible one, I believe — t is the time at which it is true that p. The phrase 'p is true' is a technical locution and, unlike with regard to 'true that// or the demonstrative 'That is true,' nothing in ordinary English tells us how to read it. According to the favoured proposal, '// is written 'p' and is a name or description (produced by some form of name- or description-forming device) of a set of expres-

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sions.13 Before deciding whether this is plausible, let us look in some detail at the non-technical 'true that p1 locution and more briefly at the demonstrative. If'true that/?' is a propositional attitude construction, what is true is not a sentence thought of as a string, nor even an independent clause, but a linguistic representation, a form of characterization. Nor is 'true' a simple predicate in the way 'green' is in 'The house is green'; rather it is a verbal that appears in a predicate with a characterization (in this case, a form of representation),14 giving the instructions of some individuals on the inclusion of the embedded RE in a story. Propositional attitudes describe people in certain epistemic (story) positions by presenting samples of what they say. If this is correct, this 'true' functions only with a 'that'-clause that itself has a full SRE structure. 'True,' functioning in this way, best deals with the issues arising for the concept of truth. Truth, so understood, is related to a more primitive notion, the notion of a speaker's recommending positively on an occasion the inclusion of a content in a story. The notion of inclusion of a content in a story is an intuitive one, something like the notion of "belonging" in a story; to this extent, it is like notions such as 'fit' and 'satisfaction,' but unlike these, it makes stories important to truth, and it makes recommendation central. In saying that a positive recommendation for inclusion of a content in a story by a speaker at a time is a more primitive notion than truth, I do not intend to suggest that 'true' be defined in terms of a positive recommendation (as, for instance, Tarski defines his 'true' [in "p' is true'] in terms of the more primitive notion of satisfaction). There is no obvious way to define 'true' over sets of positive recommendations by a group of speakers on several occasions. What such a definition leaves out is what is essential to truth, the notion of justified agreement. 'True' is an epistemic modal verbal that appears in sentences that have structures describing groups — the groups that are the c for an epistemic modal. Intuitively, where the epistemic modal 'true' appears, one finds a complex claim involving at least the speaker's positive recommendation of the embedded RE plus the claim that there are grounds for the recommendation, and in this latter claim an appeal to a group that would agree in so recommending and claiming. There is no way to tease this out of a set of positive recommendations on the part of several speakers alone. It is not difficult to see that there is some connection, however, and that it is the sort of connection one expects to find between what individual speakers do in uttering sentences with contents they recommend for inclusion in stories and ways of speaking of (representing) and especially evaluating (thus modalizing) what they do. Assuming that a content is held true with respect to a

302 Tense, Reference, and Worldmaking conversational context if its if is positively recommended by both speaker and hearer, or where speaker and hearer agree in recommending the relevant RE, to get the right modal reading, one must think that anyone else in the same evidence position would agree.15 Only when speaking of this agreement and treating the agreement in recommending as epistemically sanctioned does the concept of truth appear. This is agreement in opinion, but more than that. The potential for all this is built into epistemic modals. When correct, an epistemic modal insists that it is the case. To be sure, there is a way in which asserting invites the concept of truth. All the forces proper are the responsibility of the speaker at time of speech who has the evidence available at that time. Since force is a speaker's responsibility and since a positive recommendation is a recommendation that asks for agreement, a recommendation invites the concept of truth by virtue of the fact that the speaker opens him- or herself to criticism for the recommendation and, if asked to justify the recommendation, might give the basic answer "Anyone in my evidence position would make such a recommendation" — that is, "What I recommended is true." Where the hearer does agree, moreover, we can assume that he or she does so on grounds and the same (story-relative) grounds as the speaker appealed to. We treat the recommendation as one anyone (in the appropriate evidence group) would also make. This relationship between asserting and truth suggests that the view that truth is assertibility is plausible. It underscores the fact that 'assertible' does not amount solely to 'does assert,' for either an individual or a group. Unlike 'holds true,' which amounts to 'positively recommends' — a technical term of the SRE theory defined only over classes of SR relationships16 - truth essentially represents agreement in opinions. It also treats the agreement as sanctioned for and with respect to that group at that time (with such-and-such evidence) - this is the modal aspect of the notion. Because of this, truth (and related epistemic modals) invite idealizations. Truth overreaches the unrepresented agreement in opinion found where a speaker holds true some content and is joined by the hearer, and extends agreement to anyone who is in the same epistemic position as the speaker and listener — to an "evidence group," all the members of which at the relevant is and with respect to story ft would agree, that is, anyone at some speech time with such-and-such evidence. (The members of the group so specified need not be named or otherwise referred to, which is one reason we must speak of an idealization.) Idealization countenances overreaching what can reasonably be demanded of the actual speaker in providing evidence for making a positive recommendation concerning a content, so that while in asserting (for instance),

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the speaker takes responsibility for recommending vjj, we do not normally demand that he or she be able to produce detailed evidence for the correctness of the recommendation — the speaker may not, in fact, be able to say anything more than that there is good authority for recommending, evidence he or she cannot detail or perhaps even (fully) comprehend. The evidence group, which in relevant cases can be thought to consist of at least some experts, is said to have the resources for fully defending the truth claim. Once set on this path, we are tempted to go further. Once we allow an evidence group so construed to bear the weight of justification, it seems only a small step to something like the truth: what anyone with complete evidence with respect to story (3 would agree to. But we should remember that such an extension often goes beyond justifications that can actually be given, 17 and that the text of the idealization (the core notion of truth) is the concept of sanctioned agreement to positively recommend the inclusion of a content on the basis of evidence actually available at is with respect to story (3. Let us see what can be said now about differences between the two phrases It is true that... That is true. My hypothesis for 'That is true' is that the expression 'that' functions as a demonstrative, not (as some theories would have it)18 a demonstrative referring to a sentence (usually one in the immediate linguistic environment), but one referring rather to the RE or content of a sentence in the immediate linguistic environment. 'That is true' amounts to saying 'I (the speaker) (hereby) agree to include that (RE) (in some story).' It amounts, then, to the speaker saying that he or she holds the content true too. The agreement here is explicit, but there is no sentential representation as there is with the 'true that' form, nor is there an explicit appeal to the support of an evidence group. Since there is no explicit reference to the "we" of the evidence group, no such claim is made. I cannot pursue this point here; the aim is to contrast this demonstrative 'that' with the 'that' in 'it is true that.' Nevertheless, notice that ?!That is true is true ... is senseless except as expostulation; neither is there a plausible reading for ?!That is true is false.

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'That is false,' however, is perfectly acceptable. These oddly anomalous sentences are the peculiar beasts they are just because 'that' refers to an RE; 'That is true' is a sentence, and another 'is true' following it does not do the job it did originally — indeed, it does nothing sensible at all. We need not insist, even if 'that' refers to an RE, that 'true' is a predicate of an RE; the sentence is properly only a way of saying that the speaker positively recommends an RE. Thus, c for the content of 'That is true' is the speaker; we could perhaps say that 'true' is a predicate of a person, but it is better not to try to force things into inappropriate moulds. Thus, 'that' in 'It is true that...' does not function as a demonstrative picking out an RE. It, like other 'that'-clause constructions, helps form a complex predicate for a prepositional attitude "sentence" that pictures a propositional attitude 0. The discussion of epistemic modals showed how to deal with the difficulty that the subject term 'it' is not obviously a person designator, even though there are good reasons for thinking of epistemic modal constructions such as 'It is possible that...' and 'It is likely that...' as propositional attitude states describing some group — a group usually (especially with presents) including the speaker. Thus, 'It is likely that...' is something like 'We (some group) believe likely that...' For truth, we could use the paraphrase 'We (some group) think true that...,' but this is imperspicuous. Instead, 'It is true that...' should be treated as 'Group G agrees that...' with the glosses mentioned above on 'agree' (that it be modalized in the right way). Briefly, where 'that' serves as a demonstrative that picks out a sentential content, there is an RE already presented in another sentence, and the speaker in saying 'That is true' agrees to include RE in some story. With 'It is true that...,' a representation is offered through a propositional attitude construction, agreement is introduced, and another claim is made - that there is a group, of which the speaker is a member, whose members would all agree in making a positive recommendation on the inclusion of the RE of the embedded 'that'-clause. The claims both involve agreement, but there are differences that correctly reflect the different environments in which these two constructions are found. 'That is true' makes no explicit claim to the agreement of a group, and it is found in environments where a single speaker includes a content offered in a particular story. 'It is true that...,' on the other hand, appears where an epistemically defined group is introduced; 'true that...' is an epistemic modal. It is time finally to formulate a policy for lp is true.' Much of the appeal of this phrase in contemporary philosophy is due to Tarski's

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work on truth; the sentence form "p' is true iff/?' (as in "Snow is white' is true if and only if snow is white') is almost an incantation. Yet while the locution "p' is true' is elegantly defined in Tarski's "The Concept of Truth in Formalized Languages," unless it is related to the ordinary sense of 'true,' it is of no interest to the project of this book. The only way to so relate it is, I believe, to read "p' is true' in the way proposed above, so that it becomes 'It is true that /?.' (Obviously, we cannot model it on 'That is true,' where 'that' works as a demonstrative.) This makes 'p' into a sentence of sorts, but restricts its environment to the embedded clause of a prepositional attitude construction. Only if we read "p' is true' in this way do "T-sentences" even sound plausible as ordinary English. Thinking of T-sentences as arguments in two directions, they come out: "It is true that/?, sop" and "P, so it is true that/?." The first is unexceptional, if unlikely as an argument anyone would feel he or she had to offer. Surely, if there is (sanctioned) agreement that p, then p: this is as close to an a priori truth as we are likely to get. The second requires that the sentence p be a sentence that has positive force, and that furthermore there be (sanctioned) agreement or truth. The second is a very different animal and is by no means a priori obvious — if it is correct at all. We cannot go from the fact that an individual speaker takes on responsibility for the defence of a claim (asserts, for instance) to the fact that there is a group that agrees. The speaker makes a claim, but it does not follow from this that it is true. This clear asymmetry may explain why T-sentences do not often appear in the less-plausible-sounding form '/? iff'p' is true,' for one direction is much more plausible than the other. Notice, by the way, that if this translation for 'is true' is correct and if there is a parallel translation for 'is false,' the liar paradox in the form 'This sentence is false' has no intuitive appeal. There is good reason for this: this sentence does not make sense, amounting to 'It is false that this sentence.' (I do not want to make an argument against the plausibility of the liar paradox rest on this translation alone; the more general strategy is to show that liar sentences have no content.)19 If the translation of'/? is true' into 'It is true that p' is correct and the other policies are adopted, we should change (OT) into the more perspicuous version (OT'): (OT') If at t it is true that p, then at any other time t', it is true then that at t it is true that p. This version makes it possible to accommodate (OT) to conditioned

306 Tense, Reference, and Worldmaking root-modal iteratives or (A)s. Changing 'true that' into the form that speaks explicitly of agreement sanctioned at a time, we get: Whenever we are able to positively recommend evidence group G agreet that p, we are authorized to recommend evidence group G agreet> that evidence group G agreet that p. This way of construing (OT) reads 'if,' not as 'when,' but as 'whenever,' making it something like a law of commitments; it indicates that commitments sanction other commitments. This law can be construed as something like a sociolinguistic principle (allowing sociolinguistics to deal with epistemic or evaluative principles). I speak to the defence of the principle in the next section. First let us look at contextualizations of this accommodated root-modal iterative. For the conditional form we get the following: When you are able to positively recommend group G agreet that p, you are authorized to positively recommend group G agreet< that group G agreet that p (Where t'>i^). A "surface" form in which it might appear is If it is true that p then it (will be/is/was} true that it is true that p. But there is an important difference between the indicative contextualization of (OT') and this surface form. The surface form has the verb 'is true,' and it is difficult for speakers of English to relativize 'is true' in the way that 'group Gt' is relativized. We insist 'is true' amount to true.20 If we do insist that 'is true' amounts to true, two changes take place. First, we lose the generality of the contextualization and get instead a restricted instance of it. We get the case where the speaker who makes a recommendation is a member of the evidence group G, so that he or she is the one who is willing, when he or she agrees that p, to transport his or her commitment elsewhen - making 'true' temporally transparent. Second, the speaker contextualizes (OT') as an argument, not a conditional, where arguments in general go, T am able to recommend an RE. Thus, I am authorized to recommend RE" (and he or she so recommends and is so authorized). For the RE and RE' under consideration, this becomes Evidence group G agrees that p. Therefore, evidence

307 Meaning, Meaningfulness, and Constructivism group G {would have agreed/agrees/will agree} at t' that evidence group G agrees at t that p. Since by assumption the speaker is in G, he or she can say It is true that p. Therefore, it {was/is/will be} true at t' that it is true that p. Keep in mind that p can have any tense-descriptum structure whatsoever - in effect, it can deal with anything at any time. The subjunctive contextualization of (OT') differs from the indicative in being past tense. When someone was able to recommend group G agree\ that p, he or she would have been able to recommend group G agreet- that group G agreet that p. With the subjunctive, of course, unlike the conditional, it is held that it is unlikely that the speaker or others in the appropriate evidence group will be able to positively recommend RE — or RE'. Without the restriction that 'is true' introduces, the present-tense contextualization of (OT') or argument goes I am able to positively recommend RE; I am authorized to recommend RE'. or, as above, Since evidence group G agrees that p, evidence group G {would have agreed/agrees/will agree} that evidence group G agrees at t that p. Here there is recommendation of the content RE, but not, as such, recommendation of the embedded content found in p. The person(s) who produces this argument need not think that p is true. He or she only need think that group G think it true. 7.2.2.2 Is the omnitemporality principle (OT) correct1? (OT') may seem intuitively obvious but it is still important to say why this is so. I do not have in mind defence of (OT') in any ordinary sense of'defence.' We know already that this is barely possible with any (A), and (OT') is hardly an exception. I have in mind an effort to say why it should appear obvious.

308 Tense, Reference, and Worldmaking There are philosophers who think this task is easy. Those who believe in "objective truth" think that it is a feature of truth itself (on their conception of it) that (OT') - or rather, something like it but without the complications of groups and recommendations - is obvious. It is obvious, so it is said, that if a sentence is ever true it is always true, because truth has nothing to do with the storytelling perspectives of the speaker or with evidence. Truth is "objective," and this is what underwrites the omnitemporality principle. It is just because the truth of a sentence has nothing to do with perspectives that it does not matter when or where a sentence is spoken. If it is true, it is true — and was and will be, too. It has been said often enough that if truth is made "objective" enough to be completely perspective-free, it can have nothing to do with us and our knowledge, with the decisions we have to reach and the responsibilities we have to assume. This strategy is typical of the constructivist who insists that if something is to be meaningful, it must "make a difference" in our judgments, in what we actually say is true or false, correct or incorrect. Some of those arguing in this way suspect that our "ordinary" conception of truth offers too much support to the objectivist and they recommend giving up on truth and adopting assertibility instead. While I am sympathetic to the claim that objective truth is largely irrelevant, my strategy with truth itself is different. There is nothing wrong with 'true' as it appears in ordinary English; it just needs to be understood in terms of what it is in fact — in terms of epistemic modals. Thinking of 'true' in this way gives us all we can reasonably want from an account of truth. Indeed, we not only get (OT'), but we understand why (OT') works the way it does and what the temporal transparency of truth amounts to. Thinking of truth as an epistemic modal tells us what sort of commitment we are making when we say of an arbitrary sentence that it is true. Truth as an epistemic modal also explains how that commitment can be extended to other times. We saw in the discussion of propositional attitudes that sequenceof-tenses respects speaker positions by indicating that a represented attitude belongs to the person described by the sentence, the speaker or "speaker" of the embedded clause. Something related to sequenceof-tenses can be found with the 'agree that' reconstruction of 'true.' Looking at argument contextualizations of (OT') we find Group G agreed yesterday that p, so it {would agree tomorrow/would have agreed a week ago} that it agreed yesterday that p. Group G agrees now that p, so it {would agree tomorrow/ would have agreed a week ago} that it agrees now that p.

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Group G will agree tomorrow that p, so it {would agree next week/would have agreed yesterday} that it agrees tomorrow that p. Reflected in the markings of the embedded 'agree's is a form of indexing. This form of speaker-perspective-indexing clearly goes beyond sequence-of-tenses as such, for it works with all the tenses. But as with SOT, it is obvious what it does: it keeps responsibilities clear. It makes certain that the projected agreement — projected before or after the time at which G is presented as agreeing - is the text for the projection. The indexing plays an essential role. None of the above arguments go through in the way predictions or retrodictions would be expected to. In fact, if we treated them as predictions or retrodictions, there is a good chance that these arguments would be wrong, and no one would be likely to accept the (A)s that they would contextualize as the basis for the temporal transparency of 'true'; they certainly would not consider them anything like a priori true. Say G agrees now thatp; it does not follow a priori that it will in fact agree tomorrow. Only if the group represented as agreeing in the 'so'-clause is the same as that represented as agreeing in the first clause does the argument become obvious. It might be thought to be an advantage of the objective truth account that we can ignore perspective-indexing and forge ahead. But not only does the objective truth account give ultimate responsibility for the truth of judgments to "the world" and make the world so construed and its "responsibility" irrelevant to us and our judgments, but it cannot speak to the nature of the commitment one makes in using 'true.' At least on the evidence so far, it is clear that on the epistemic modal account we are not dealing with predictions and retrodictions concerning the world — not even with predictions and retrodictions concerning the agreement behaviour of people. There is reason to think that one feature of the kind of commitment we make when we use 'true' and are willing to transport it to other times is that, to use traditional terms, this commitment is not a posteriori but a priori. We are not describing or explaining our behaviour or behaviour patterns, linguistic or otherwise. This does not quite tell us what sort of a priori this is. No doubt it has to do with certainty on our part that such-and-such a sentence can be held true at any time, but we need to say more about what sort of certainty this is. In the argument contextualizations discussed above, we were not concerned with what we would consider true, but only with what is "true" — what some group considers true. Here, to be sure, indexing is a factor, but not necessarily from our storytelling perspective (p) now. It is important that for something to really count as true, it be

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so considered by us. In contrast, according to the claims of the objective truth view, it should be possible to go from a sentence's being true once to its being true now. In this view, "Whenever/? was true, p is true." There is an accommodated reading on which this is correct: 'Whenever we (now) would have agreed that p, we agree that/?.' But this is not the reading objectivists want; they would have to say something like this: 'Whenever we agreed that p, we agree that p,' which is patently wrong. It is only when 'true' is tied to our perspective now that moves to other times are authorized. Consider It is true that Nixon was president in 1972, so it was true in 1066 that Nixon would be president in 1972. It is true that Nixon was president in 1972, so it will be true in 5392 that Nixon was president in 1972. These seem to be correct arguments. Changing them into accommodated form, we begin to see why. They become We agree that Nixon was president in 1972, so we would have agreed in 1066 that Nixon will be president in 1972. We agree that Nixon was president in 1972, so we would agree in 5392 that Nixon was president in 1972. with the embedded 'we' tied to the evidence group of the utterer. Only these tied readings seem to make sense of the linguistic facts (the "indexing" we find) and, more important, yield the transparency of (tied) 'true' (i.e., agreement by us now). If the epistemic modal view is correct, transparency is easy to understand. It consists largely of transporting our views to other times - not just any views, to be sure, but those we consider justified. I have suggested from the beginning of the book that truth is a matter of meaningfulness, rather than of meaning. Consider how difficult it would be to take seriously the idea that the sentence 'Nixon will be president in 1972' was true in 1066, where this amounts to having this sentence represented as part of an epistemic modal, agreed to by a group in 1066. Who could conceivably utter the embedded sentence, much less present it as true by embedding it correctly (according to the standard then) under a 'true that' in some language in 1066. I grant that a sentence uttered then could have the relevant meaning or content, assuming that the relevant expressions were in the vocabulary in the relevant language, but it is dubious that there could be a story told with respect to which the content was meaningful. I doubt it is plausible at all to say that anyone then

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could have evidence for this, or against it — particularly if one assumes that 'Nixon will be president in 1972' is part of a real-world story in 1066, rather than a soothsayer's fantasy. In contrast, there is no difficulty, given that we are committed to a sentential content being included in a story, in transporting that commitment elsewhen, so long as we are the ones who at the different time are represented as bearing responsibility for the claim made. When 'group G' refers to some other group, not us, (OT') continues to apply and there is "transportability of truth" for this group, yet we at speech time are not committed to whatever another group is represented as agreeing to at another time. What this group transports is not truth, but "truth." The same can apply, on an extensional criterion of sameness of group, to a group at a different time but extensionally identical with that which counts as the epistemic position group G now (assuming, counterfactually, that G can be enumerated). Recall a point made before about the impossibility of going from 'p was true' to lp is true.' If the earlier group is coextensive with members in the speaker's evidence group at speech time, there can be transportability then We (some group coextensive with us now) agreed yesterday that p, so we then would in 1066 have agreed that we would agree yesterday that p. (that is, 'Yesterday it was "true" for all of us that p, so in 1066 it would have been "true" for all of us that it was yesterday true for all of us that p.') Nevertheless, we now are not committed to p, nor to transporting our commitment to p. Hence, it is not just a matter of some group coextensive with the group that now agrees being committed at some time, it is a matter of us now being committed. The group that is committed is defined not so much by enumeration of members, an enumeration that is in any case for the most part impossible (and unnecessary), but by storytelling position — by what is required for such-and-such a story at such-and-such a time. These features of transportability of commitment indicate something about the nature of the a priori character of (OT'). It is reminiscent of what Austin said about an analogy between 'know' and 'promise.'21 I do not want to defend his analogy. Nor do I want to defend some of the speech-act claims he hung on his discussion of 'promise.' I want to emphasize, as he did, that the use of certain epistemic expressions involves claim-making. (This should not be a surprise, given the close connection between epistemic issues and storytelling-tensing.) I have argued that 'true' is itself an epistemic

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expression and that, in using it, one is making a claim and representing responsibilities. The claim is not like promising. Granted, it is made by an individual, as when someone says, 'It is true that...'; however, unlike promising, the claim essentially involves a group. And, unlike promising, it goes in all directions (one is willing to transport 'true' backwards in time too). Nevertheless, like promising, the claim is an undertaking. It is also unconditioned. The a priori character of (OT'), the certainty found in our willingness to carry what we think is correct to other times, is due to the unconditional commitment made in saying that something is true. 22 7.2.2.3 We do not need "objective truth." In addition to dealing with the linguistic facts and accounting for the nature of the commitment involved in the temporal transparency of truth, the epistemic modal view has the additional advantage of giving us all that might be needed from "objective truth." Consider sentences like these: (You thought you were right, but) you were wrong in thinking that Harry will come tomorrow. It was never true that each event has a unique simultaneity class (even though people in 1890 thought each did). Even in 500 B.C., it was true that the atomic number of gold is 79. In 1,000,000 B.C. it was true that Nixon would be president in 1972. Some members of this group of sentences appear where one criticizes what someone said or held, others where one remarks the ignorance of a group of others, and others where we transport truths to do odd jobs. In the case of criticism, one holds that someone would have been right at a time to hold something that some person(s) did not (will not) at that time hold; in the case of ignorance, one holds that someone would have been right at a time to hold something that some person(s) was (were) not (will not be) at that time capable of holding. Both criticism and ignorance involve persons; in the ignorance case, however, the person was (will be) incapable of positively recommending the relevant RE, and so does not count as among "us" (either those who speak a language and have access to the relevant sentential contents or those who share a theory - a storytelling "we" - or those who are in such-and-such a storytelling position - an evidence group). All cases, whether there are persons involved or not, require the "transportability of truths." But it has

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been claimed that the proper explanation of the examples requires some sort of principle of atemporal fixed truth. Supposedly, reconciliation of perspectives requires an objective perspective, found in the notion of objective truth. These sentences require transportability of truth proper (thus transparency too) through the omnitemporality principle, but not omnitemporally fixed truth. Transport of transparent truth amounts to saying what we would claim at t, ti$, where what we would claim is to be explicated in such a way that 'we' is fully tied to time of speech. We can say that if something is true, it always was true, because is true is always sufficient to overrule claims made earlier, where they have been different, or to "insert" claims, where none were or could have been made. We can also say of our "ancestors" that they should have said p, where p is what they would have said if they were one of us now. So long as we hold that it is true now that p, we have all we need to deal with these cases. A similar interesting case is ??I knew it, but I was wrong. Assuming that 'know' includes, among other things, 'having sufficient evidence for the truth of,' perhaps - untying 'true' for this case — we can read this sentence as I held it and G agreed then, but it turns out that I was wrong. which is acceptable. But making the sentence acceptable does not show why it sounds anomalous. It sounds anomalous, I suspect, because 'knew,' like tied 'true' in 'was true' (we would have agreed'), is tied to one's claims now, not claims made at some prior time; thus, it amounts to 'I have evidence now, and I (now) would have agreed then ...' The tied account of truth thus gives a plausible reason for why the sentence should appear anomalous. It approximates *When I said that, it was true, but it was false. *I was right, but I was wrong. which are anomalous because 'was true' is read as tied ('we would ...'). (Keep in mind that 'agreed then' and 'will agree' do not by themselves amount to 'was true' and 'will be true.') The existence of objective truth means that one runs the risk of being wrong, even where one makes a claim to know something or

314 Tense, Reference, and Worldmaking

represents something to be true. With any of the following sentences, for instance, Nothing will happen to prevent your leaving. I know there are fifty-two more cats in that house. David knows that Harriet lives in Ecum Secum. the speaker can add — rather sententiously — "But of course, I might be wrong." (In the 'David knows ...' case, moreover, the speaker can be wrong in two claims.) It is wrong to think of such an addition as a hedge on the claim, for the claims are unconditioned. There is no particular reason for hedging the claim, no evidence that goes against it — nothing that allows that the claim is anything other than what it appears to be: there is sufficient evidence that one can positively recommend an RE, and (particularly where there is presupposition or presumption) no reason for denying inclusion. "Still," we feel, "there is always a risk." Perhaps - it is thought — the risk that always exists (even though one has satisfied oneself to the best of one's ability that one is correct) is to be explicated in terms of the existence of an "objective truth": how else can it be allowed that any claim may be challenged? We have seen how to allow for criticism of the claims of others and for calling others ignorant without objective truth. Generalizing these tied claims we make to claims we make at other times, we can allow that claims made at other times by ourselves are equally open to criticism, and we can allow that we were ignorant in parallel ways (as infants, for example — not yet full-fledged language speakers — or as those who do not understand a theory). We can also allow that claims we will make will need criticism. Therefore, generalizing, we allow for criticism of "present" claims. I put 'present' in scare-quotes because generalizing like this can allow for risk while making an unconditional tied claim only so long as one says 'while'1 without insisting that one allows for risk in making a claim, for this seems to make risk a part of the claim. We can even treat the risk as inherent in claim-making, so long as it is understood that in speaking of claimmaking, one is nominalizing a habitual (or generalization, at least) and effectively describing the class of language-users by an iterative state. Because, even with the best of evidence, humans are occasionally wrong when they make claims, we can allow that this iterative state describes claims at all times, without insisting that what one is really doing whenever one makes a claim is hedging like this: ??I know p, and I might be wrong.

315 Meaning, Meaningfulness, and Constructivism

The iterative state carries the burden of explaining how one can be wrong even while making a claim by generalizing on the claimmaking of human beings. As an iterative state, it applies throughout an interval and thus describes something at all times within the interval, if it applies at all. So the constant risk of being wrong gives no reason to abandon the epistemic modal account's tied truth in favour of an objective form. This said, we might still want something like what the objective truth account suggests we can have, a completed world story, consisting of a complete (and true) history of a world — the sort of thing one might get out of an omniscient describer of a world, describing his or her world. The notion of a complete world story raises a number of issues. For instance, does it make sense to speak of a complete history of Hamlet's world? This issue is too complicated to discuss here. I mention the matter to indicate that resolving the issue does not require objective truth. The concept of a complete history can be treated as an extension of an idealization invited by the epistemic modal 'true,' an extension where all the sentences in a story have ideally good evidence and where the speakers of the story no longer apply the above risk generalization to their commitments. Notice that even if we were in this sense omniscient describers of our world(s), routinely producing complete world stories (including descriptions of ourselves as describers, although this introduces complications), truth would still be tied. It would still involve a true-for-"us" at a time where "we" are an idealized community of describers at a time. McTaggart's C-series, his truly objective or godlike description of a world, is unobtainable. 7.2.2.4 Truth and stories. Any tensed sentence whatsoever gives recommendations or instructions. These instructions are received with the understanding that they are at least in principle justifiable — the speaker is held responsible for them. For them to be justifiable, there must be sufficient reasons for the recommendations and instructions. Reasons — that is, evidence — must be such that anyone in the relevant position can appeal to them. These reasons (this evidence), then, partially define the relevant position. One of the functions of epistemic modals is to say what sort of epistemic position some person making a recommendation is in at time of speech. Agreement is built into the nature of the epistemic modal. When someone at some is says that such-and-such is probable, true, necessary, likely, possible, or the like, he or she is saying that others would agree, given evidence available at that time, that such-and-such is probable, true, etc. Through (A)s, the (accepted) truth of sentences earlier than is can

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count as evidence for what one says at i s . Except in the case of beginnings of stories or stipulations, at time of speech the storyteller has a story already partially told, so there are certain "givens." (In real-world stories, there are never absolute beginnings for anyone, and "givens" can include true descriptions of things that are immediately perceptually salient.) With "givens" in hand, there are a limited number of authorized moves to be made - moves sanctioned by (A)s or by the speaker positions authorized by sentences of form (A). To this extent, the storytelling "we" constrains the evidencegroup "we," and thus the speaker's position. Evidence is never story-neutral, and neither is truth, but both are tied to is, no matter what the story. Correlatively, both evidence and truth are story-relative. Since not all stories are real-life stories, therefore, evidence available at time of speech could well be evidence for some claim made in a fictional tale. There are, then, fictional "givens." It is unavoidable that evidence is placed at speech time - it is a matter of the evidence being tied. But this does not entail making the only evidence "available at time of speech" evidence that is or would be offered for a real-life story - that is, evidence that concerns the world in which the speaker is found. 23 While the speaker is of course in "the real world" and his or her position, defined through membership in evidence and storytelling groups, is tied to time of speech, evidence is not tied to this world of the speaker. So far as evidence and thus truth are concerned, the real world is not the only one. Nor is the real world (existence) at any time the sole "source of evidence." Truth can be a feature of any sentence, in any story. 7.2.3 A Theory of Force?

If a theory of meaning is a theory of the picture-referential and attentional competence of the speaker, a theory of force is a theory of the storytelling competence of the speaker. There is an essential difference between the two. The theory of force is an epistemic theory, while the theory of meaning is a referential theory - an account of how a sentential content is specified. The theory of force focuses on the speaker as someone making recommendations on the inclusion of contents in a story. It deals with the speaker as judge constrained to be correct and meaningful - as tied to time of speech and having certain story-relative information available to him or her and constrained to certain moves. It deals with the speaker as a member of evidence and theoretical or "storytelling" groups. (Most (A)s are relatively story-independent and control what counts as coherent across stories.) The theory of force must therefore also be

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a critical theory, for it is obvious to anyone that there is really no uniform agreement on what and how to recommend, nor on what counts as a permissible move. Any particular evidence and storytelling group is likely to have a rival. A theory that must deal with the modalities and authorizations that constitute the core of a theory of force might try to get universal agreement by criticizing various proposals and finally making a single proposal. It would tell us the principles that lead to a single correct recommendation on an occasion, or if it is decided that there can be more than one way to correctly recommend after all efforts have been made to converge to a single one, it would tell us why this should be so. Clearly, the critical aspect of a theory of force is unavoidable. If some of the theory of meaning can be left to the syntactician (for pictorial form) and lexicographer (for pictorial "content") and the rest is in the domain of a yet-to-be-developed account of attention, who constructs the theory of force? There are already many who contribute to such a theory. With respect to A(s) and the groups they describe, there are contributions from theoreticians of all sorts - physicists, anthropologists, and so on. These scientists and others who try to tell us what it is to be reasonable with regard to a specific domain do not, of course, think of themselves as engaged in constructing and justifying (A)s, but to the extent that they contribute theories with regard to particular subject matters (cs for the mostembedded RE and RE' of (A)s) and thus offer proposals on how one ought to argue, they not only contribute to human knowledge, but also in fact contribute to a theory of force. They of course dispute among themselves and criticize each other's efforts, and in doing so further the critical aspect of the theory of force. Dealing with what counts as good recommendations for some (A)s and for specific evidence groups — with standards of acceptable evidence — practising statisticians also contribute to the critical features of a theory offeree. Some of the responsibility for dealing with (A)s is also in the domain of sociolinguists, to the extent that they develop reasonably reliable ways of deciding how people do in fact evaluate. Traditionally, however, most of the task of constructing a general theory of force - a theory that also speaks to the critical and domainindependent aspects of the issues - has been undertaken by the philosopher as epistemologist. The philosopher as epistemologist includes the logician, formal and informal. And I suspect that when it comes to dealing with the most general, critical, and "foundational" features of a theory of force - what is and ought to be reasonable — the responsibility will remain the epistemologist's. One reason I hold this is that the work of constructing a theory of force is enor-

318 Tense, Reference, and Worldmaking mous and cannot be completed. It is not even obvious what would count as completing it. And Davidson would say — I think rightly — that since the theory must take beliefs (represented recommendations) as its domain, nothing resembling a serious theory is possible. There is no way to limit the boundary conditions on such a theory,24 or as I would put it, no way to guarantee agreement that suchand-such a theory is the uniform and final theory - one that defines for all time what it is to be reasonable. My reason for thinking the task uncompletable is related to the Davidsonian worries about boundary conditions, but my emphasis is on the critical nature of the task. Working within one set of (A)s, for instance, we may agree that some stories are coherent, but there is no obvious way to reach agreement on, or produce a decision procedure for, the correct set of (A)s. No doubt there is, from time to time, convergence or even full agreement on those (A)s that correlate with "laws of nature" or other firm sentences of iterative form. They are treated, at least for a while, as firm. And these (A)s are used to make our stories about other worlds coherent. Nevertheless, speaking of convergence or even agreement in fact in these cases does not count as a decision procedure. The epistemologist and historian of science who remarks that there is increasing agreement over a long period sometimes says that this is evidence that a single theory is emerging, at least in the physical sciences. But even if it were correct that there is growing agreement, the convergence claim does not yield a way to decide if a candidate (A) really is correct. We get a decision procedure like that only if extrapolation on the history of scientific theories yields a unique final theory to which others converge, and no one seriously claims that it does. The only way to show it does is to produce the theory and get agreement on it. If extrapolation did anything like this, we could stop funding fundamental research right away. Instead of thinking of convergence as giving a decision procedure, we should think of it as a goal, fortunately supported to a degree by a reasonably reliable world. What we have in practice is not a decision procedure, but what has sometimes been called the critical stance. We compare, attempt to make things systematic, adjudicate opposing views, and "see if things work" by appeal to "the test of experience." Someone might want to call the epistemic practices that make up the critical stance a decision procedure, but these practices have been used by philosophers, theoreticians, and everyone else for centuries and -judging by their success — they do not deserve the name.

319 Meaning, Meaningfulness, and Constructivism 7-3 CONSTRUCTIVISM

Background helps in understanding the current state of constructivism and its relationship to the meaning/meaningfulness distinction. In the 19208 and early 19308, issues of meaning and meaningfulness were debated in the context of the problem of privacy. Some early twentieth-century philosophers who were constructivists of a particularly radical form - members of the Vienna Circle committed to methodological solipsism — explicitly made meaning into meaningfulness (meaning was read in terms of the differences sentences made to the experiences of individuals) and made meaningfulness depend essentially upon the (supposedly) private stock of evidence the individual speaker had available. Virtually everything even closely related to semantics was taken to be analysable in terms of epistemically "given" phenomena, the basic sense data with which construction was supposed to begin. Generally, the meaningfulness, or what was called meaning, of a sentence was thought to depend upon its empirical content, where this content is analysable into sense-datum sentences. These philosophers soon discovered that their epistemic givens were crude and far too weak to resemble anything like the data scientists rely upon. And soon these givens and the primitive devices they relied upon to "construct" the physical world were rejected by most of the members of the movement. But the joint assumption that meaningfulness is meaning and that meaning is basically an epistemic notion persisted. Schlick, for instance, insisted as late as 1936 in "Meaning and Verification" that verifiability, (sentential) meaning, and "logical possibility" amounted to the same thing. In the early 19305, a one-time radical member of the movement, Carnap, began to see what he thought were serious dangers for meaning and semantics in this collapse, and undertook to distinguish meaning from meaningfulness on another footing, thereby establishing meaning on an independent and objective ground. He hoped to make meanings genuinely public. By relying on Tarski's account of truth, he believed he could make meaning into a non-epistemic notion and avoid the danger of privacy that lay in equating verifiability (or other epistemic notions) and meaning. In 1936 in "Truth and Confirmation" he argued that truth is independent of epistemic notions such as confirmation and verification, and he placed meaning with truth, both outside the epistemic and the meaningful. Since then, while the meaning/meaningfulness distinction has been forgotten in a debate about meaning (in my view, meaningfulness)

320 Tense, Reference, and Worldmaking

alone, there has been an implicit acceptance of Carnap's principle that truth is the route to meaning. Both realist and constructivist, I argued in chapter 3, accept this basic premise. And both, I also suggested, in fact make meaning an epistemic notion — the constructivist explicitly, the realist by having to acknowledge that it is the beliefs that are held that play the important roles in a "theory of meaning" for a language. I suggested earlier that the constructivists are correct in making truth into an epistemic notion; the account of truth above shows this. But both current constructivists and realists are wrong in thinking that meaning should be placed in either the truth or the assertibility camp. As I argued in chapter 3, we need to reintroduce the meaning/meaningfulness distinction, place epistemological issues such as truth in the meaningfulness camp, and provide a separate referential account of meaning. But I still insist on constructivism. To be a full-fledged constructivist, I should provide recognizably constructivist accounts of both meaning and meaningfulness. This is the aim of what I call 'double constructivism.' Clearly, this is an easy task for meaningfulness. The reconstruction of truth as an epistemic modal, as outlined above, resembles the constructivist views of Dummett and Wright, though without the contortions they feel they have to introduce to make assertibility do what meaning is supposed to do. And the theory offeree is well within the traditional constructivist camp. All assessments of what is said (assessments of contents or propositions) are based on evidence available at time of speech, and an assessment is made by a speaker who is a member of epistemically and root-modally denned groups of speakers. While being a constructivist is a straightforward matter with respect to meaningfulness, it is not with respect to meaning. This is because constructivism, as the history of philosophy and current practice suggest, relies upon the intuition that the world, or whatever is thought to be "objective," depends in some way on minds - that somehow the world and objective "reality" are the responsibility of mind. Nelson Goodman puts this graphically when he suggests that people who speak languages (or understand symbols of various sorts) are worldmakers. He holds that the person who understands a language 'projects' (in his terminology) when he or she accepts (it is enough if he or she employs) a sentence - a view that, so far as I can see, easily translates into the view that a person who understands in this sense is a person of judgment or a storyteller. The person as worldmaker or language-user can be reconstructed, then, in the person as p - not, however in the person as i|>. So the Goodmanian account of the person who understands does not help us deal with

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the construction of meanings, only with the construction of stories and perhaps worlds. Thus, while it is clear that constructivists insist that we "make objective things" or that we are responsible for their existence and objectivity, we are no clearer about what this means for meanings. It might seem it should be an easy task to be a constructivist in meanings (reference to sentential contents). Wittgenstein spoke of how our meanings are under our control. A time-honoured tradition holds that meaning is a matter of convention, suggesting that we can decide to change our conventions. But it is difficult to find real answers in suggestions and observations like these. They remark that we are responsible, but they do not say how. The SRE theory's view of the person who understands the meaning of an expression sheds light on the question of how persons or minds are in control of meanings. In exercising his or her abilities by understanding a sentence, this person is exercising two sorts of perceptual ability. We should, then, look for what underlies these perceptual abilities. Further, since the person who understands is a member of a group of persons with like responsibilities and powers, we should seek an account of what qualifies a person to be a member of this group. If constructivism in meaning has to show that minds in some sense are responsible for meanings and that minds are, in this domain, perceivers - specifically, perceivers of sentences and other expressions - one thing we can do is ask if there are constraints on the abilities of these persons. There must be if the perceptual hypothesis is to work at all, for "readings" of sentences by perceivers depend essentially on their recognizing (though not consciously) the structure in the sentences they perceive, plus the lexical content. If Chomsky is right, some of these constraints must be innate: recognition of the structure must depend essentially on inborn schemata that allow us to recognize this structure. It is not clear just how far one can go by relying upon innate capacities — particularly for lexical items. But there are surely some lexical items that rely heavily upon certain hard-wired features of the brain. There is strong evidence for this with colour words, for instance, where our perceptual mechanisms seem to focus and limit the categorizing we can do with our language. Berlin and Kay's study of colour words25 shows that all languages share basic colour terms, and it cannot be an accident that many of the basic terms happen to be those that our brain-eye combinations give a special status - black, white, red, yellow, green, blue. Further, the orders in which colours appear (can appear) to us must have something to do with the ordering of what might be called the

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"lexical field" of colour words. I take the high probability of something like Chomsky's thesis being right and the existence of other innate constraints as evidence that, at least at some levels and in some domains, the group of same-seers that constitutes the meaningcompetent group (so far as picture reference is concerned) consists of the human species. Something like this idea is needed in order to explain not only Chomsky's favoured cases - cases of language acquisition — but also how there is and can be so much agreement in what is and can be meant within human languages. How can this set of facts be turned to the support of constructivism? I think a plausible strategy lies in claims about species-based relativism. A delightful language-based version of this thesis is found in Wittgenstein's remark that if lions could speak, we could not understand them. My efforts to explain constraints on perception of linguistic items via hard-wired features of the human brain represent a version of relativism that can, in principle, be unpacked in 'terms of comparative neurophysiology (or some successor science). Focusing on perceptual constraints makes this relativist strategy particularly plausible. Assuming that some form of species-based perceptual relativism is correct, what does it show? At the least, it shows that being a human makes one a member of a group of competents (assuming sufficient development, maturation, and perhaps training) and that (very likely) the objects that members of this group (species) can perceive are likely to be different from the objects other groups can perceive. Where the objects are sentence tokens, this seems obvious. Where, moreover, seeing these objects in the right way is sufficient (as I argued) for knowing their meanings, species relativism is put in a particularly interesting new light. Probably Wittgenstein was right, though not — I venture - for reasons he did or would give. And perhaps there is support for constructivism in this area, for now we can make sense of the idea that if there were another species that perceived sentence tokens and understood them, a necessary condition on its members' understanding as we do is that they share our (likely neurophysiologically grounded) perceptual capacities. If they genuinely differ, what they perceive would be wholly different than what we do. Something about their minds, or brains, "made" for them a different "world" - or rather, a different set of meanings. Remember that the structure of a sentence token is, if I am right, transferred on its being read directly into the situations they picture. Consequently, the structure of their situations would be different. In a very strong sense, the "world" of meanings is the human world of meanings, and cannot conceivably be otherwise. is Picture reference is not all there is to meaning, for there is attention to cs too. But to the extent that this is a separate problem — and

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it is not all that separate, since in limit cases, cs can just be the things to which a subject phrase picture-refers - a parallel strategy should work. The things to which we would and could attend, in fictional worlds or real, are the things to which we are suited to attend. My earlier remarks on the human's ecological niche are apropos here, assuming that that niche is at least partially defined by our neurophysiological endowments. We must allow for individual variations and contributions, of course, but by and large variations and contributions are based on a fixed stock, both structurally and lexically speaking. There is thus no particular reason to think that any "new meaning" would be strictly inaccessible to others. Far from it — it would have to be accessible to be a meaning. Much of this line of argument can be encapsulated in what is perhaps an excessively brief and enigmatic way by giving the name 'lexical constructivism' to my thesis concerning the construction of meanings found in picture reference. This is the thesis that lexical items, in structures, determine situations. Nothing is needed but the perception of a situation. But on its perception, the situation is "created"; it is not "there" before — referring to it is the same thing as "making" it. This, surely, is a constructivist thesis. 7.4

WORLDMAKING

RECONCEIVED:

PROJECTIVE ILLUSIONS

At the end of chapter i, I criticized that conception of situations accepted by many of those who find the idea that tenses are SE relationships compelling. Their situations are like the traditional conception of an event, state of affairs, or fact. A fact is something like an object and a property taken together, plus a commitment to the effect that they indeed are together - they "exist." To speak of a fact is to say in the same breath that it exists in that funny sense that correlates with both the modal 'is true' and the philosopher's odd existential 'is (really) there.' Surely, however, there are no such things. Facts are introduced correlates of true sentences. They are things that owe their existence to what might be called 'the truth move.' When people think a sentence is true, they "objectify" their beliefs by projecting the content of a sentence (the one they hold to be true) into the world. Facts are projective illusions. But why should a constructivist reject these projective illusions, so long as it is acknowledged that, strictly speaking, they do not exist - that is, they do not exist in the way the objectivist and probably the common-sense believer think they exist? I have three objections to accepting projective illusions.

324 Tense, Reference, and Worldmaking The first relates to a complaint about the structure of the facts ("situations") under discussion. Facts or "situations" so conceived are assigned a structure that mirrors the idea of a sentence consisting of a referring term (the subject) and a characterizing term (the predicate), and from this come the notions of thing and property. Further, facts or "situations" are alethically loaded: saying they are there is, effectively, insisting that the sentence they mirror is true. The closest SRE analogue for the relevant structure is a simpledescriptum structure of one of the three tenses. But to point this out is to show that there is something fundamentally wrong with the idea of a "situation" or fact in the first place. In "situations," situations proper (0s) disappear. The status and role of reference to a sentential content are obscured. The potential for a situation to be before or after c cannot be represented in structure. The mistakes of tense logic ensue. Nevertheless, could we not create a sophisticated "situation," a correlate for an RE structure of some form, and allow it to be the projection of a true sentence? Perhaps we should attempt this, as a special way of saying that the sentence is true. Two objections remain. First, in order to express that a sentence is true, it is far better to speak of its content as being recommended for inclusion in a story, not in a world. Speaking of the "truth move" as a way of populating worlds is at best afa^on de parler, not a serious way of doing metaphysics. Second, the things that can exist are cs, not contents of sentences. Worlds consist of things so situated, not of "situations."

Notes

INTRODUCTION

1 Comrie's Tense has a useful discussion of tense constructions in various languages. His theoretical claims are criticized below. Hornstein's discussion of tense in As Time Goes By, interestingly, allows languages to have unfilled places in his chart of possible tense structures. 2 Chomsky prefers not to use this terminology. See Chomsky, "Some Notes on Economy of Derivation and Representation" (1988). CHAPTER ONE

1 I use the subscript 'E' on 'i'; this follows Reichenbach, for whom it indicated 'event.' This compromise allows using the subscript' s ,' which could indicate 'situation' on 'i,' to indicate 'time (interval) of speech' instead. It is an unfortunate compromise because 'situation' is not only the most neutral term - it covers states, events, and other sorts of situation - but it is far less alethically burdened. 'Event,' for instance, suggests something that has taken, is taking, or will take place, and as we shall see, this suggestion must be avoided. 2 See chapter 2 of Tense. Some linguists do not hold this; Hornstein (As Time Goes By) does not, and neither does Eng (Tense without Scope.) 3 The technical device I use here of underlining and dropping tense and descriptum markers to get a situation-designating "sentence" is properly introduced later in this chapter. 4 Both sentences are past-tensed, so this is constant: the third interval precedes time of speech. In the first example, a past perfect, the situ-

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5

6

7

8

9

Notes to pages 14-18

ation Harry run precedes the third point. In the second, an anticipative past, the situation Harry run comes after the third point. It could come after time of speech. As Hornstein points out in As Time Goes By, the generative semanticist's device of introducing tenses as "higher verbs" amounts to the same thing. Explicit acknowledgment that a virtual speaker is being introduced in iterating sentences is rare. Typically, the tense logician speaks of an "interpretation" or "assignment" to a sentence at the time i ? . I am aware that there are also other complicated issues raised by the fundamental assumptions of tense logic — those, for instance, found in the debate on "the temporal transparency of the 'now'" and the debate on the special status of the present - that a detailed and sympathetic criticism of the project should take up. But since I think some of the basic assumptions on which the enterprise is based are faulty, I do not pursue them. My aim in introducing a virtual speaker and speech event is to approximate the minimum topological and metaphysical assumptions made by a tense logician who wants both to preserve the view that tense is an is-i£ relationship and to speak of iterating tenses. In Elements Reichenbach also attempts to show by examples from various European languages that his nine possible orderings fit the temporal structure of at least some sentences of natural languages. His system seems to apply quite nicely to languages outside this group. See, for instance, Johnson, "A Unified Theory of Tense and Aspect." Reichenbach's system is related to nine-"tense" systems popular for centuries and developed for Latin and other languages and to Jespersen's account of tenses in A Grammar of Modern English. 'Permissible' can for the moment simply amount to something like 'what the theory permits.' If the theory is adequate to English and perhaps other natural languages, 'permissible' will amount to something like 'possible in language L' and one can speak of "constraints" on the language. Hornstein in As Time Goes By tries to turn Reichenbach's theory to the service of Chomsky's effort to find languageindependent constraints so as to explain language learning. My own interest in such constraints is to explain what constitutes a speaker's "temporal perspective." The map is taken from Reichenbach's Elements of Symbolic Logic (297). Imperspicuity arises for the posterior pasts R-E-S, R-E,S, and R-S-E, which are in fact equivalent: in all, R is before S, and E after R. A mirror-image imperspicuity arises with the anterior future. Hornstein, in his 1977 article "Towards a Theory of Tense," held that these were three different tenses. In 1990 (As Time Goes By), they are equivalent.

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Notes to pages 20—1

10 To the best of my knowledge, none of the various efforts to adopt and adapt Reichenbach's views on tense supplement his basic formalism in the way I do. Compare Bull, Time, Tense, and the Verb, Johnson, "A Unified Theory of Tense and Aspect," Hornstein, As Time Goes By, Smith (various), Taylor, Modes of Occurrence, and Comrie, Tense. 11 Intervals are not, strictly speaking, found in Reichenbach's discussion. He speaks of moments and points of time, not intervals. But intervals are preferable to moments or points. We can always have points or moments, if we want them, as limit cases of intervals. More important, points are not very useful. They are useful in English only with a restricted set of success situations, like those found with 'George won the race at 3:42:56' and in some discourse of measurement. Intervals have the advantage of generality. Moreover, intervals are clearly required for habituals, movements, nomics, and almost all states. What could an instantaneous habit possibly be? Intervals also capture the times associated with S in a more natural way, for no speaking is ever instantaneous. Intervals do introduce complications so far as ordering is concerned. Where contemporaneity and succession are easily defined with instants, intervals require inclusion and overlapping. 12 Movements (John run a mile) are, when perfectivized, closed at both ends, but most states and some processes (John scratch himself) are open at both, even when perfectivized. 13 The interval i E is not as a rule fixed independently of i R . Where it is, a temporal-interval indicator is common, as in 'Harry was rubbing his back between three and four yesterday morning' and 'The chameleon was green for three minutes.' In both cases, i R is within i E . In the sentence 'Mort left yesterday at 4:00,' 'yesterday at 4:00' fixes R; it also indicates the time of the leaving, but only because what we have here is a change situation (a leaving, which ordinarily takes a short time), and a simple past tense, where E overlaps R. Think of the thing the sentence is about at i R as the focus of the description offered by the sentence, and think of the temporal extent of the situation as aiding in the use of that situation to describe that thing at that time. If one thinks in this way, the specification of i E appears derivative. Notice that i E does not amount to "the actual length of the situation." The process-designating sentence 'Harry has been running for three hours' by no means rules out Harry's continuing to run after IR14 There are several exceptions to this principle. Some exceptions are only apparent, where one of the relevant adverbials refers to an embedded i R (an iR*) rather than to the main clause's i R , as in 'Harry intends to leave tomorrow.' Others are real, as with the habitual 'John leaves every day at 3:00.' A problematic case is the 'at 3:00' in

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Notes to pages 24-6

'George had left at 3:00': does this here refer to i R or i E ? This is discussed below. Notice that 'George had left by 3:00' is unproblematic: here, '3:00' is i R . 15 Conversational French — this happens in other languages too — makes profligate use of present perfect markers for cases where in English one would use simple past markers. (Reichenbach remarks on this for German in his Elements.) If we take the markers seriously, we must assume that what is being talked about in a sentence which translates as a simple past in English is at time of speech. This is actually not impossible. What is being talked about need not be the referent of the subject phrase of the sentence, as I argue later, and it would not be surprising if conversational contexts often — or even usually — turned out to be descriptions of the persons involved in the conversation, or of things in their immediate contexts. However, another way to deal with the markers is not to take them seriously. The location of the thing(s) talked about (c) determines where i R is and thus what tense the sentence has. In effect, French's "present perfect" markers are in fact past-tense markings. Hornstein takes this line in As Time Goes By. Incidentally, discussion of the present perfect is complicated by worries about whether this is really a tense and the suspicion that the present perfect is unique to English. See Comrie's Tense on this matter. In my view, the present perfect gets just the structure Reichenbach assigns to it. 16 This is not strictly true for Russell. In "The Nature of Acquaintance," he holds that the thing with which one is acquainted need not be located at the time of acquaintance, at least in a minimal sense: one can be acquainted with timeless objects, such as numbers. 17 I suppose, for the moment, that the iterative account cannot deal with these cases. I also assume that the SRE view of the present perfect as just another anterior descriptum can be defended against claims like Comrie's (in Tense) that the perfect is a special case with no structural consequences. See chapter 7. Incidentally, it can be argued that since most situations span quite long intervals (particularly in the case of states) and since identifying reference even with simple descripta must be to the thing described (c) at some interval within the interval i E , determining iE cannot be equivalent to determining i R , the time at which c must be located. Notice too that the idea of an instantaneous state (movement, process, etc.) is, if not incoherent, at least irrelevant to the semantics of natural languages. 18 For those familiar with Barwise and Perry's terminology (Situations and Attitudes), all my situations are their "abstract" situations and none of them become non-"abstract." However, I prefer not to use the ter-

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minology of abstraction, primarily because it suggests that there must be situations that are not abstract. I argue later that while things to which identifying reference can be made must be both spatial and temporal entities, they need not be in our space and time — they need not be "real-life things." Defending this claim demands that the salience of things that identifying reference depends upon be definable in a way that does not require immediate perceptual salience for us, here and now. Salience is denned for the perceiver-describer (ijj) which is always found at i R , not (except accidentally) at is. Rules of a language game are modelled in chapter 2 in terms of inferential principles. Wittgenstein seems to have inferential principles in mind as examples of rules, but also countenances other things. He sometimes speaks of what might be called "interpretive principles" — "434' means 434' — as rules. It is, however, difficult to treat these principles as rules of a language game. My picture reference gives a good account of such "rules," I believe; I do not think Wittgenstein can. See chapter 3 on this. Reichenbach, Elements of Symbolic Logic (294): "When a time determination is added, such as is given by words like 'now' or 'yesterday,' or by a nonreflexive symbol like 'November 7, 1944,' it is referred, not to the event, but to the reference point of the sentence. We say, 'I met him yesterday'; that the word 'yesterday' refers here to the event obtains only because the points of reference and of event coincide." Where exceptions to the principle arise in particular languages (German, for instance), Reichenbach blames the language (295). In a related vein, he holds as a general principle that where a language does not conform to his schemata for tenses, it is because it is not properly logical: "The history of language shows that logical categories were not clearly seen in the beginnings of language but were the results of long developments; we therefore should not be astonished if actual language does not always fit the schema which we try to construct in symbolic logic. A mathematical language can be coordinated to actual language only in the sense of an approximation." The irony in this, as I see it, is that Reichenbach's theory fits natural languages quite well, but the theory is neither mathematical nor is it a logic. I mentioned earlier that reference to c is a matter of salience and is story-dependent. The most likely stories for sentences with the verb 'leave' and a perfect (anterior) construction are stories in which what one pays attention to at the sentence's i R is the group of things minus the referent of the subject phrase of the story. ("She's left? Thank goodness.") But there are many stories with 'leave' and this construction that "follow" the thing referred to by the subject phrase or some-

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Notes to pages 40—9

thing else: 'Harry has left by now, so watch for him to come around the corner.' I use the device of placing a '*' before a sentence or — as in this case — a candidate for insertion into a sentence to indicate that it is unacceptable. Similarly, I use '?' to indicate that a sentence is questionable, and a combination of the two to indicate that, if not unacceptable, it is close to it. Linguists do similar things, but adopt various policies, often requiring a distinction between syntactic acceptability and semantic. One policy is to have '*' indicate only syntactic unacceptability, or "ungrammaticality." I use it to mean 'unacceptable, for whatever reason.' In particular cases it is clear why a sentence is unacceptable, so that what '*' amounts to is 'unacceptable, because it violates semantic structure.' Some linguists would deny that there are transformations conditioned in this way, some (as in Chomsky's government-binding approach, would (also) deny that there are eliminative transformations, and some would deny that there are transformations at all. Since I do not think we have a transformation here, I can avoid committing myself on the issue. Later I can get away with a minimal commitment. At various stages in the book I speak of sentences as having complex structures. It is clear in the relevant contexts that this means that some sentences designate situations with complex SRE structures, structures that can in some sense be "analysed" into simpler structures. For sentences that designate situations with complex SRE structures I must at least insist on a syntax that generates sentences with embedded sentence-like clauses, "tensed" and not. But almost any syntax will do this. I happen to think that something like Chomsky's government-binding approach is on the right track, but the theory of this book does not depend on such an approach. See Wekker, The Expression of Future Time in Contemporary British English, 85. G. Lakoff, "Presupposition and Relative Well-Formedness"; R. Lakoff, "Tense and Its Relation to Participants"; Jenkins, "Will-Deletion"; Vetter, "Someone Solves this Problem Tomorrow"; F. Goodman, "On the Semantics of Futurate Sentences." One example of this claim is found in Partee, "Some Structural Analogies between Tenses and Pronouns in English." Comrie construes them as simple pasts with special features. Others (e.g., Bennett and Partee) construe them as simple presents with special features. Hornstein in As Time Goes By argues convincingly on syntactic grounds that tenses are not operators. My argument is semantic; it depends on

331 Notes to pages 49—52

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33 34 35 36

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the crucial differences between S, R, and E in the supplemented theory. Hornstein, like Reichenbach, treats them as time points. The present's special status consists in the "fact" that present-tensed sentences are (supposed to be) found in the most-embedded place in iterations: a past of a future of a ... always has at the end a present. While there were early hints of tense logic in the work of others, it was really begun by Prior in his 1957 Time and Modality. The literature now is extensive. I should mention that I include among tense logics the theory of Michael Bennett, who follows Montague; see Bennett's "A Guide to the Logic of Tense and Aspect in English," (with B. Partee) "Toward the Logic of Tense and Aspect in English," and "Of Tense and Aspect: One Analysis." Bennett's work does not quite fit the paradigm found in most tense logics, but it is close enough that my criticisms apply to it. It is not quite so clear that my criticisms apply to the work of David Dowty in "Tenses, Time Adverbs, and Compositional Semantic Theory." I use 'P' for 'past,' and T' for 'future.' Curiously (though understandably, given the penchant for collapsing descripta into "basic tenses"), there are those - such as Montague - who use 'H' for past, to recall 'has.' Rescher and Urquhart's topological approach (Temporal Logic) is a variation; tenses become relationships between times. The times are, however, the times at which one finds, first, a speaker, and second, an event, state, or other situation. The sentence is to be read as an embedded clause, one with an anterior future reading. Its 'would' marker comes from the sequenceof-tenses rule to be discussed in detail in the next chapter. I suggest in the next section that the situation of the tense logician is a projective illusion - a sentential content read into the world. See Hornstein and Eng on this matter. Hornstein argues in As Time Goes By that tenses are adverbs (since they modify verbs); it follows, according to him, that tenses are not operators. Or a time at which a sentence is (fully tensed) true. The roots of a correspondence theory lie in the conviction that speakers directly confront the "things" that make sentences true with the simple present tense. It is no accident that the tense logician takes the simple present so seriously. Taylor's effort in Modes of Occurrence to accommodate Reichenbach's work to deal with problems of tense and adverbs makes the error of collapsing SRs and REs in order to bring them into line with a tense logician's account. This strategy was suggested to me by Anil Gupta. I am grateful to Anil for his efforts several years ago to make me see the point of

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doing tense logic and for his insistence that I make the SRE theory considerably clearer than it was then. (I hope I have succeeded.) This claim is defended in chapter 7. The term is Dummett's, discussed in "The Reality of the Past." It is discussed in more detail by Wright in "Realism, Truth-value Links, Other Minds and the Past" and "Anti-realism, Timeless Truth and Nineteen Eighty-Four" See Also McDowell, "On 'The Reality of the Past.'" The only truly plausible examples are those "situations" (in the projective illusion sense) that amount to projections of true simple-descriptum sentences (the simple past, present, and future). Only in these cases is it even tempting to suppose that c and 0 are parts of the same thing. This is discussed in this book's conclusion. Johnson, in "A Unified Theory of Tense and Aspect," applies one form of Reichenbach's topology of tense to Kikuyu. She calls the SR relationship 'tense' and (following Reichenbach) the RE relationship 'aspect' (a real error, but understandable given Reichenbach's terminology); she also calls the SE relationship 'status.' This notion of status is very close to some of the things I have in mind when I speak of beliefs or attitudes on the part of the speaker, and it is gratifying to find that observations based on English and some European languages also apply to Kikuyu. But Johnson seems to be willing to give status equal importance with the other two relationships, which is — I think — an error. It is better to treat status as a "pragmatic consequence," based on features of the semantic structure found in ER and SR relationships. It is also better to treat it as an attitude on the part of the speaker to a content, given a tense (and thus a form of epistemic relationship, given such-and-such evidence). We can, however, read much of what Johnson says about status into an attitude on the part of speakers to contents. Settledness is characteristic only of genuine uses of the past tense. Most past-tense markers in the antecedents of conditionals do not yield past-tense readings; thus, with

If George left

tomorrow today yesterday

, Mary should be here next week,

the speaker is not attitudinally committed to George's leaving being settled. I ignore cases like this for the moment. 44 See Palmer, A Linguistic Study of the English Verb, and Twaddell, The English Word Auxiliaries. Compare Huddleston, "Some Observations on Tense and Deixis in English," with McCawley, "Tense and Time Ref-

333 Notes to Pages 58-63 ere nee in English." Comrie discusses the matter in both Aspect and Tense; in the latter (78ff.) a present perfect is held to be — structurally speaking —just a simple past. For him, then, the present perfect is not a variation on the present. Contrast, in this regard, both Dowty in "Tenses, Time Adverbs, and Compositional Semantic Theory" and Bennett and Partee in "Toward the Logic ..." 45 Binnick discusses this in "Will and be going to II." The immediate future is also sometimes called 'the future in the present.' Given the fact that what is described is a c at time of speech, we should not think of it as a future at all, but as a posterior present. 46 Another characteristic of S,R configurations, but not of others, is that they naturally appear in initial positions in discourse. It feels peculiar, unless a context is already given, to start a conversation with, for instance, an R-S (past) configuration such as 'The farmer killed the duckling yesterday' [iE at i R , iR before is; c = the farmer; iR = sometime yesterday]. R,S configurations, on the other hand - presumably because there is often enough in the present extra-linguistic shared context for what is described to be independently accessible — are not puzzling in discourse initial positions. In effect, S,R configurations allow one to begin from a context already shared to a certain extent, whether for purposes of planning, deciding, narrating, arguing, or even engaging in that form of storytelling that begins with "I'm going to tell you a story ...," where the speaker is put forward as the initial object described. This characteristic of presents is not a speaker affect, however, and is not treated as a pragmatic consequence. 47 Based as they almost certainly have been on an inadequate theory of tense, however, some of the observations about how "tenses" differ in different languages are suspect. Benjamin Whorf s observations are, I think, an example. CHAPTER TWO

1 Hornstein investigates this structure syntactically in As Time Goes By. This work is a clear exception to what I said, but its effects, since it was only published in 1990, are yet to be felt. 2 'Belief has become a technical term for any positive prepositional attitude state - as, for instance, in Davidson's work. When I discuss 'believe' here, I am talking about the usual, non-technical, verbal construction. 3 In effect, prepositional attitudes picture what I called 'stances' in chapter i. Notice, by the way, that at no point in saying what a prepositional attitude is need one introduce "psychological" concepts. Neither sentential contents nor propositions need be "in the head."

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Notes to pages 64—5

4 Some philosophers speak of sentences "represented" in the brain or mind and defend what they call a theory of mental representation. (See Fodor, The Language of Thought and more recent works, and McGinn, "The Structure of Content." For a related discussion, see Peacocke, Sense and Content.} I confess to finding is difficult to understand the Fodor et al. notion or notions of 'representation,' but that is a matter for another occasion. In any case, the "in the brain (or mind)" view is not the sense of 'represent,' or of 'representation,' I am criticizing. I reject the sense of 'represent' I mention - faithfully describing a stance someone has taken — because it does not cover all the ways in which propositional attitudes are employed: not all prepositional attitude constructions are the tools of faithful exhibitionists. 5 Translating into SRE formalism while keeping in mind that sentences both picture and refer identifyingly, we find that the problem of opacity for referential terms is a matter of how much variation one can allow in a mock "saying" while still claiming that, for some context and some audience, one correctly or faithfully renders someone's stance. Let us assume that I know that George believes that Mort is a thief and I also know that Mort is the bank manager. When I describe George's belief to someone who is not acquainted with Mort but has heard of the bank manager, I might say, 'George believes that the bank manager is a thief.' Is this a correct or faithful description of George? Is it a correct account of what he said (or, in this case, "said")? That depends: the answer to the first question depends on which content is specified, on what has been referred to identifyingly and by picturing a descriptive place. The pictured descriptive place is not the same: in one case, the situation pictured by the embedded clause is the bank manager be a thief, and in the other, Mort be a thief. The things referred to identifyingly are the same. Nevertheless, the contents are different, so the answer to the second question is no. In spite of this, the answer to the first may be yes. The correctness of a description depends on evidence available to an evidence group at time of speech. If I tell George that he believes that the bank manager is a thief, he will - at least at first - deny that I have correctly described him. But if I use the same words to describe George to the audience unacquainted with Mort, the description might count as correct even on the assumption that one is trying to represent (render faithfully) a belief of George. It would not, I think, be correct if the aim is to represent George's beliefs in the plural: it would be at least misleading because my audience, on being told that George believes that the bank manager is a thief, would thereby have reasonable evidence that George had other beliefs that he does not have. He continues to bank at the local bank, for instance.

335 Notes to pages 65-76 6 Hornstein has an extended discussion of this fact in As Time Goes By. He argues convincingly that the form of embedding found with propositional attitude constructions follows the general constraints on embedding in Chomsky's government-binding approach to grammar. To this extent, at least, the SRE theory and the government-binding approach are complementary. 7 'Forget' ('Harry forgot that he was supposed to be here this evening') is an interesting case where p* is described as having made a positive recommendation concerning a content (Harry supposed to be at place x at time y), but the commentary goes beyond what it usually does to explain why things are as they are at time of speech. 8 Hornstein has demonstrated (As Time Goes By, i26ff.) that what he calls sequence-of-tenses obeys syntactic governance constraints. These constraints are implicit in the formalism I offered above. What I mean by sequence-of-tenses is quite different: it is a "rule" that governs markings on verbs for indicating responsibility. 9 I am aware that 'shift' has various uses in discussions of sequenceof-tenses phenomena. The use I give it seems plausible: the person to whom epistemic responsibilities are assigned in the first instance is the person whose prepositional attitude it is (c of the matrix clause). For anyone else to accept responsibility — a fortiori the speaker p — is for responsibility to shift. 10 I do not attempt to deal with all the "modalities" that various forms and types of modal theory with various types of modal operators have tried to capture ('necessary' in C.I. Lewis's modal system 85, for instance). My approach is not defective if it suggests a better way to deal theoretically with modals. In favour of this new approach, there are three considerations, ( i ) The SRE theory demonstrates a structural distinction between root and epistemic modals, and differences in semantic structure should surely be taken as fundamental. (The structural distinction is related in complicated and unhelpful ways to the de relde dicto distinction; I comment on this below.) (2) Other considerations having nothing to do with modals as such have been thought to be relevant to modals and to be properly dealt with only in a theory of modality. An example is the notion of a "future contingent," which if I am right is properly dealt with in an account of the pragmatic consequences of tense structures. The same is true of the "settled" past. These notions tend to infect intuitions concerning modals proper, and unless we begin with a structural distinction, it is unlikely that we will ever get matters sorted out. (3) The basic and uniform theoretical structure that modal logics assume for modality — operators on sentences — is suspect if it does not reflect clear differences in how modals work (root and epistemic) and if it does not

336 Notes to pages 78-89

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show that it can perspicuously deal with all modals. We should be much more cautious in constructing our formal "languages" than we have been; they tend to cause more problems than they resolve (which may benefit philosophers, of course). Hornstein's discussion of infinitival constructions in As Time Goes By (i46ff.) is not consistent with claims I make. I insist that, in the case of these scheduling-state constructions, the embedded i R * is always after the main iR. This entails that the endpoint of the main iE is always after i R . For instance, the sentence 'George has been able to leave next year for three years' is not any less perfective for having a scheduled endpoint next year. The sentence is, of course, a perfect, but that is a different issue. I am not claiming that this "impersonal" 'it' refers to a group, but that a plausible translation of 'It is ... that...' has a term that does refer to a group. The 'it' of the epistemic modal sentence is what Chomsky (Lectures on Government and Binding) calls a "non-referential," "nonargument" 'it.' His claim has to do with what he calls "thematic" relations in "logical form." I do not think that what he has to say about 'it' being "non-referential" could be used to argue that epistemic modals do not refer (in my sense - see chapters 3 and 4) to a group. This indicates a crucial difference between 'It is possible that...' and 'It is true that...' Nevertheless, we can treat 'true' as an epistemic modal verb. Dudman's work will help change this, I think. See, for instance, "Tense and Time in English Verb Clusters of the Primary Pattern" and "Conditional Interpretations of//^-Sentences." The views of the conditional I develop in this book were developed independently; I did not see Dudman's work until recently. Our views mesh reasonably well, though I think that it is an advantage to be able to derive the various forms of conditionals from complicated 'when'-constructions in the way I do. Besides, temporal adverbials rarely - if ever - specify is in English. Unlike 'whenever's, which introduce iterative states, there are only two tenses for 'when's — the past and the future — though both undergo all variations in descripta: anterior, simple, and posterior. There are two incorrect arguments against this point. One rests on the use of 'when' to mean the same as 'whenever.' An example of such a use is found in A dog eats when it is hungry. The 'when' in use here is followed by a present-tense clause, but this is not a counterexample to the two-tense principle for 'when's because

337 Notes to pages 90-2 this 'when' is in fact a 'whenever' and is tied to the different structure of iterative states. The other argument is that there are present-tense markers on 'when'-clauses that are joined to future-tense main clauses. Some languages do mark the relevant 'when'-clauses with a future; Polish is an example. But it is not necessary to go to other languages to show that 'when's with present markers in English have future readings. First, the rather complex machinery of 'when'-clauses is never needed to refer to a present i R ; the act of speaking is adequate for that, and so a present-tense 'when' marker is hardly needed to pick out JR for the main clause, which coincides with the time of speech. Second, given that R of the main clause is after S, since - as already established - the times are the same, R of the 'when'-clause must also be after S. (Perhaps one reason the 'when'-clause is not marked future is that it does not need to be.) 17 Comrie in Tense and Hornstein, following him, in As Time Goes By treat this and related phenomena as "pragmatic." They are not. Given situation type (movement, state, etc.) and the perfective or imperfective, they are completely predictable. They are, then, decided on the basis of "linguistic" knowledge, In fact, given (as I argue in chapter 6) that situation type and the perfective/imperfective are known elements of sentential content, these are decided on the basis of the meanings of the expressions involved. Naturally, this is important for my claims about the nature of the 'when'-clause and its involvement in the conditional. 18 I obviously do not have in mind necessary and sufficient conditions for the truth of a causal statement, nor for the truth of a "reason" — merely necessary and sufficient conditions for saying that we have a causal relationship or reason "displayed" by some 'when'—main clause sentence. Content-understanding, not force-understanding, is at stake. The idea is to find necessary and sufficient conditions in features of complex contents picturing, in this case, two situations. If this can be done successfully, the notion of causality is independent of such notions as truth (including justification) and existence, and — I think independent too of generalized "causal principles." Thus, we can make sense of a sentence in a story about a fictional world where things happen differently than they do with us (strictly, the world is not coherent), yet know that the sentence "expresses" a connection, whether a cause or a reason. We can also make sense of the idea that we can recognize a connection without having to know or believe, or having to have acquired some generalization. 19 My strategy of making causal connection depend on features of REs of certain constructions depends on the assumption that features of content are determinable without appeal to commitments and epistemic factors like justification. One feature is perfectivity; the idea

338 Notes to pages 99—107

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that the perfective/imperfective is intra-contentual is defended in chapter 6. Another feature is what might be called "natures" of situations — whether they take bounds when perfectivized, for instance. The idea that situations' natures are known independently of stories is defended in chapters 6 and 7. I defend a version of analytic truth in chapters 4 and 5. Intuitively, an analytic truth relies on knowledge of picture reference of words alone. This is essentially Davidson's position, usefully expressed in "Mental Events." While I limit myself for the moment to habituals, nomics do not need precise frequency measurements either. Nor do nomics require exceptionless frequency specifications. There is nothing wrong with the "statistical" nomic. We shall see that something in the nomic says 'always,' but it turns out that this adverbial cannot be read as FREQ, but as a way of expressing the strength of commitment found with nomic sentences — a matter of "use," not structure. I assume we are dealing with RE pictures. Any tenses in the sentences involved in carrying out a "derivation" have been deleted: we have "sentences" plus RE markers, including aspectual markers. As a rule, the "actual bounds" of i E are determined only with respect to a story, that is, where the concept of truth has an application. We may know as a matter of content alone that a situation is bounded when perfectivized (for instance), but this does not commit us to any actual bounds. Thus, since what we are worried about is the "unbounded character" of i E with nomics, it should be expected that this is a matter of commitment (RSs), rather than content (REs). On a separate issue, Putnam claims in "The Meaning of 'Meaning'" that certain common-noun expressions are "indexical," or refer to things in our world. His notion of indexicality is wrong-headed, since it restricts referents of indexical expressions to the real world. Further, I do not think that he properly disentangles what the contribution of these common-noun expressions is, but when their role is understood, it is possible to accommodate the idea that our world figures in uses of them - that is, when they appear in nomic sentences. Putnam's realism (in this article, at least) cannot be hung on this, but a (constructivist) version of "essentialism" can. Putnam's more recent "internal realism" is close to the constructivist view I defend, at least in this regard. This makes explicit what is implicit — that in going to the p-v}; relationship, we are no longer concerned directly with tigers in conditions, but with what we are committed to claiming about tigers in conditions. The remaining issue is which "we" this is.

339 Notes to pages 108—13 26 It also makes the empirical generalization objective, even though there is a sense in which both habitual and nomic situations, as opposed to empirical generalizations, are objective because neither picture observers qua observers. The sentence designating an empirical generalization is often syntactically or morphologically — at least on the surface - indistinguishable from that designating a normal nomic or habitual, but its content differs because the generalization includes people qua observers among the things described with the situation. Neither the habit nor the nomic has people as observers among circumstances C — unless one speaks of people's observational habits, but then not only c, but c*, are observers. This is fortunate, for then 'Saber-toothed tigers ate meat whenever they were hungry (and food was available, and so on)' can designate a nomic without requiring that there be any observer, or even possible observer, watching sabertoothed tigers. I make this point with saber-toothed tigers instead of more popular examples designating "unobservables" such as muons because muons and their relatives are arguably observable by us. 27 I emphasize that this kind of publicity or objectivity - common to all situations - does not imply the existence of a situation. It does not even imply a Meinongian form of non-real existence. I suspect it does not really make sense to say situations exist or do not exist. But they are referred to publically, and so they are objective in the appropriate sense. 28 See Wright, "Facts and Certainty." 29 Moore's claims appear in his "A Defence of Common Sense." Parenthetically, establishing a firm distinction between meaning and meaningfulness is the only way to deal with the so-called "problem of meaning change" vis-a-vis theory change. If the account given in chapter 3 is correct, what most people have called the meaning of an expression in a scientific theory (its "role" in the theory) is really an account of the term's meaningfulness. Meaning is another matter, independent of theories and stories told. But notice that a term can also be meaningful independently of a particular theory if it is rooted in common sense — the beliefs glued together in a network by a set of agreed-upon continuous truths. 30 Dudman encapsulates some of the possible readings in "Antecedents and Consequents": In the first category [of'if-sentence], we find, [if] ... is a paradigmatic alternative to '(al)though,' 'as,' 'as long as,' 'because,' 'since,' 'while,' 'unless,' 'whether or not' and 'provided/assuming/ supposing that.' In the second category, it is in paradigmatic relation with temporal conjunctions, '... ever' conjunctions, 'unless,' 'whether or not' and 'provided/etc, that.' In the third category it

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is in paradigmatic relation with only 'unless,' 'whether or not' and 'provided/etc, that.' In the fourth category it is in paradigmatic relation with absolutely nothing. I note with approval that these particular findings strongly confirm my divisions between the categories : they ought to embarrass exponents of the old indicativesubjunctive dichotomy. (198—9) First-category 'if-sentences include arguments and constructions where the 'if-sentences is assumed to be true; in all first-category cases, the 'if-sentence amounts to two full-fledged tensed sentences joined by a "connective." Second-category 'if-sentences state nomics or habituals, the subject matter of the previous section. Third-category 'if-sentences include the subjunctive and indicative conditionals. I do not take up fourth-category cases. My categorization of 'if-sentences into subjunctive conditionals, indicative conditionals, and arguments (iteratives have already been looked at, but a special case is discussed below) is different from Dudman's, for reasons which may already be obvious. My aim is to find the readings of these three forms of 'if-sentences in their SRE structures, and in particular, in their different tenses. Those used to Dudman's account of tenses in conditionals are warned to prepare for a different view of tense and structure. 31 Some interesting fairly recent strains in the discussion of the conditional (in various forms) are found in Harper, Stalnaker, and Pearce, eds., Ifs: Conditionals, Belief, Decision, Chance, and Time, and in Adams, The Logic of Conditionals. These discussions directly connect conditionals to issues of good reasoning and reasonable action, which is worthwhile, for it brings out features of the application or meaningfulness of conditionals. However, such discussions tend to leave unsolved the more basic issue of the structure of the conditional sentence — what sort of complex picture it is. The structures of the indicative, subjunctive, and counterfactual conditional are both more complex and more deeply related to one another than Stalnaker, Lewis, et al. seem to think. I suspect that this is because these latter confuse meaning with meaningfulness and think that in providing an account of how conditionals are related to truth in possible worlds, they are providing an account of the structure of the conditional. This is methodologically ill-advised, if nothing else. It turns out that structure, separately defined, provides useful clues to application. Tenses play a central role in the structures of the conditional: once we know what the p-i|; relationship is for a conditional, epistemic factors or issues of meaningfulness fall in place. The tense of the conditional indicates the likelihood that the antecedent of the conditional will be "realized" for some story. To anticipate, all conditionals introduce "speakers" or recommendation positions (what I referred to ear-

341 Note to page 114 lier as evidence positions), the epistemic accessibility of which from the actual speaker's recommendation position at time of speech (for some story) varies according to the tense, hence type, of conditional. The subjunctives, for instance, are past-tensed and refer to an inaccessible speaker's position, while the indicatives are future-tensed and refer to an accessible one. These notions ground an account of the role of conditionals in good reasoning and action. Perhaps what best emphasizes the difference between the SREstructure approach to conditionals and the standard approach through meaningfulness is that for the SRE theory conditionals of all sorts are about or describe storytellers, speakers described in terms of enabling conditions and ensuing authorizations to make positive recommendations that a content be included in a story. Conditionals are applications of the inferential habits of people, and inferring is something people do. The connection between conditionals and good reasoning and action comes naturally. Think of the speaker and hearer as sharing assumptions at speech time, in the way Stalnaker requires for the determination — if one believes in the efficacy of possible worlds — of what he calls a context set (Stalnaker, "Indicative Conditionals"). I prefer to deal with these "assumptions" without the machinery of possible worlds because the machinery makes one think that something is going on over and above storytelling and talk about evidence positions. Moreover, possible worlds need to be relativized to speech times and stories anyway, suggesting the latter are doing the work. With this in mind, assumptions can be thought of as fixing a "recommendation position" or an "evidence position." They constitute a group of sentential contents that are "agreed upon" by speaker and hearer at a time in a storytelling enterprise - the contents the speaker and hearer would recommend for inclusion in the story at the time some sentence in the story is uttered. (If necessary, we could idealize and say that some set of contents defines a recommendation position for an ideal person who understands a story — for anyone who properly and fully understands the story, and would agree at some speech time to (positively) recommend the inclusion of a set of contents at that time.) A recommendation position determines a set of "speakers" - those who are in the relevant recommendation position. With the conditional strictu sensu (neither argument nor generalization), the actual speaker's recommendation position cannot be that of one who recommends inclusion of the content of the antecedent in a story. If it were, he or she would be authorized to so recommend and would not be able to suspend such a recommendation; the speaker would not be able to properly utter the conditional, but would have

342 Notes to pages 115—16 to utter an argument or other construction which assumes the truth of the 'if-clause. Therefore, if the conditional describes a recommendation position, it is not the speaker's, and the "speakers" determined by the recommendation position do not include the actual speaker. The group of "speakers" the conditional deals with is defined by a set of assumptions, and these must be assumptions that someone else has, or that are had by the actual speaker at another time (perhaps in another story). The conditional is about or describes this "someone," not the speaker and hearer; it refers to and describes "someone" in a recommendation position in which evidence for a positive recommendation of the content of the antecedent is available, and the consequent follows. This "someone" has the required assumptions sufficient to make a recommendation; broadly speaking, he or she has the relevant evidence. So we can think of the conditional as being about a recommendation position different from the speaker's, or about different "speakers." Recommendation positions have an intuitive advantage over Stalnaker's least-divergent worlds (least divergent from the "actual" world) where the antecedent is true. It is not at all clear what least divergence in possible worlds amounts to, nor what counts as accessibility of worlds from other worlds. It is relatively easy to think of "speakers" different from ourselves, with different assumptions or different evidence (relative to a story), and it easy to make sense of how they differ from us, and in what degree. In effect, they have different evidence. If the "accessibility" of these "speakers" from our present positions is what is at stake in conditionals (and I argue it is), we can think of accessibility as an epistemically-controlled notion, and of speaker's positions to which the actual speaker may or may not move as what is accessible or inaccessible. I should mention that speech positions are not stances as defined earlier. Stances are sentences wherein the speaker makes a recommendation of some sort. Speech positions are places where one would take a positive stance — that is, where one would recommend positively a content for inclusion in a story. 32 If the speaker assumes the truth of the 'if-clause, one has a "hypothetical." This is Dudman's term. See his "Conditional Interpretations of If-sentences" and "Antecedents and Consequents." 33 Remember that the antecedent cannot be held to be true if this sentence is to be read as a conditional, for there is a reading where it is. This sentence and others like it show that Dudman's chart of "category three" 'if-sentences (which include what I call the indicative, subjunctive, and counterfactual conditionals) is wrong in at least one important respect. (His chart appears in "Conditional Interpretations of If-sentences" [150], and "Tense and Time in English Verb Clusters

343 Notes to pages 118-35

34

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of the Primary Pattern" [28].) His chart does not allow a conditional sentence with a "past" marker in the 'if-clause to have a "future" interpretation (on my account, one on which the time at which one is willing to accept the truth of the 'if-clause is after time of speech). It is crucial to the view I develop that this sentence is a future-tense condition-'when' sentence, not a past-tense one. I do not discuss in detail the basic differences between my approach and Dudman's. But let me emphasize that I share his unhappiness with what he calls the "logician's" efforts to assign a single, and often distorting, reading to all 'if-sentences. The 'had' of the counterfactual, as in 'If Harry had left, he would be here by now,' is a reasonably reliable counterfactual marker, but it does not always mark an E-R. This is discussed in detail later. 'Tomorrow,' as this set of sentences indicates, may be indexically fixed at the time of utterance of the conditional, but there is no reason to suppose that it is anything but "purely referential," so that R is picked out in a manner that allows the person to whom the conditional is spoken to refer to it at different times with different terms, possibly with terms that are equally indexically fixed, but tied to another speech time. 'Whenever' requires comment. (A)s are iterative, and while some frequency specification has to be given, the specification need not be without exceptions. In this schema for an (A), 'whenever' combines a condition-'when' with a frequency expression ('ever') to yield something like 'always when' or 'at any time when.' But I do not mean to exclude 'almost always when' or 'most of the time when' or similar frequency specifications. Patterns of reasonable inference do not have to be without exceptions, and in ordinary language are often far from it. A conditional can refer to an iterative that is part of some embedded sentential content, as in If Harry leaves whenever Mary arrives, he wasn't at the party at 10:00.

The conditional sentence as a whole, however, cannot refer to an iterative. 38 Consider an argument that might have been offered in 1800: 'event e occurs at t, so there is a unique set of events simultaneous with e at t.' The reasonably scientifically sophisticated among us no longer hold the argument to be correct, nor accept the principle that authorizes it. 39 Sellars argued for a parallel thesis of irreducibility in early papers, though for moral principles rather than principles of inference: the

344 Notes to pages 135-43

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"we" of moral principles cannot be enumerated by 'you', T, 'she', and so on. It can be argued, of course, that inference is a form of action, so that principles of inference become practical principles. This claim is a version of the Kantian universalization principle in ethics. This is very doubtful. If the SRE theory is right, "speaker of L" can only be defined in terms of various groups, none of which are extensionally defined. The important thing is to see that there is a connection between structure and truth. Dudman's accounts of the correctness of 'if sentences (e.g., in "Antecedents and Consequents") seem to lose sight of this fact. Incidentally, my view is that logic deals with recommendations on how arguments should proceed; it is not "empirical," then, but neither can it get out of touch with how arguments do proceed. Consider the material conditional's answer to the question of what makes a "conditional" true, that it is true unless the antecedent is false and the consequent true. The claim is not totally false, but misdirected. The right way to read this claim, I believe, is this: a minimal condition on the adequacy of an (A) is that it not generate any arguments that take one from a true first sentence to a false second. It follows that there is no interesting sense in which a conditional as a whole is asserted. This should be kept in mind in discussions of conditional assertions as opposed to assertions of conditionals. Interestingly, the argument is in a story: the argument describes the speaker carrying out a recommendation and authorized to do so. On the notion of a sentence (as opposed to a content) being in a story, see chapter 5. Intuitively, a sentence is in a story if and only if the sentence's cs are in the world of the story. This should be obvious in any case from the discussion of iterative states. The mere construction of an iterative state does not even say that there "are" several instances. Wittgenstein (and Kripke following him) tends to focus on mathematical examples such as addition as a "rule of language." Philosophers often accept these examples without demur — Wright and Dummett are two - and immediately begin to discuss "the sceptical problem." While Wittgenstein might have an excuse, there has been a lot of work done on the structure of language since Wittgenstein's time. We must distinguish basically syntactic "rules" from storytelling ones — paradigm examples of which are (A)s. As I argue in chapter 5, calculational principles are much closer to syntactic principles (albeit of a unique sort) than storytelling principles of the form (A). (The differences were more clearly recognized at the turn of the century by Edmund Husserl, Gottlob Frege [sometimes], and Alexius Meinong than they tend to be now.)

345 Notes to pages 147-5x CHAPTER THREE

1 Chomsky and Alexius Meinong may not be such strange bedfellows, but Nelson Goodman and Meinong are. 2 Wittgenstein's devices for describing the functions of expressions (language games) were not constrained to fact-stating. Nevertheless, it is possible to claim that Wittgenstein, although he relativized facts, made them central. See Travis's The Uses of Sense. 3 Morris, Foundations of the Theory of Signs. Unlike some who followed him, Morris reluctantly allowed reference to (designation of) nonexistent objects (5). 4 In Davidson and Harman, Semantics of Natural Languages. 5 Evans and McDowell, Truth and Meaning. I am sympathetic with criticisms of this approach found in Travis's The True and the False: The Domain of the Pragmatic. But I am convinced that the only way to undercut the intuition behind applicationist semantics is to relocate the intuition (allowing it to support theories of meaningfulness) and develop an independent and plausible non-applicationist theory of meaning. Since it is not obvious what a "translational" approach is, it is not clear whether it is opposed to the Morris-Lewis view. Sellars, for instance, a good example of an "applicationist," is also known as a "translationalist." It seems to me the opposites ought to be applicationist/non-applicationist. An account of meaning should be nonapplicationist, but an account of meaningfulness should be applicationist. 6 Davidson, in his early accounts, focuses heavily on adequacy conditions on a theory of truth, Tarskian T-sentences, and neglects an account of what does the work in what he used to call a theory of meaning and now calls a theory of interpretation. In later work he emphasizes that the theory of interpretation is an empirical theory that is tested and supports counterfactuals, a theory that has the "laws" of speaking built into it - in effect, one that should be able to predict what someone would believe or hold true, should he or she be in such-and-such circumstances. This is an obvious link between language and a world. (Evidence for the generalization "Snow is white' is true [in English] iff snow is white' consists [for the left-hand side of the iff] in English speakers' believing that snow is white (holding-true 'Snow is white'). The role of belief in a theory of interpretation is dealt with below. See, in this regard, Davidson, "Reply to Foster" and "Thought and Talk." Both are in Davidson, Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation. 7 The shortest introduction to Dummett's views is found in three articles, "What Do I Know When I Know a Language?," "What Is a The-

346 Notes to pages 151-60 ory of Meaning? I," and "What Is a Theory of Meaning? II" (in Evans and McDowell, eds., Truth and Meaning). Several articles in his Truth and Other Enigmas are useful, as is his major work, Frege: Philosophy of Language. Sometimes clearer, but not always briefer, accounts of Dummett's assertibility approach are found in the work of Wright, particularly in his Realism, Meaning and Truth. 8 To seriously adopt the terminology of assertibility the anti-realist recommends, one should not only give up "objective truth," but also 'iff,' because — as I argue in chapter 7 — the relationship is by no means symmetrical. Wright tries to keep both assertibility and 'iff with his notion of super-assertibility. (see "Davidsonian Meaning-theory and Assertibility" in Realism, Meaning and Truth). 9 We can still insist that one terminology is better than the other. If what is at issue is capturing an ability of speakers that concerns what "matters" to them (is "meaningful"), assertibility is preferable to truth. Truth suggests objectivity of a sort that outpaces the ability of speakers. Yet 'true' can be rescued from this suggestion. I show later that it should be construed as an epistemic modal verb. Undoubtedly part of the appeal of making a theory of meaning depend on objective truth is that this seems to make meanings objective. But if what we get in fact is a contribution to an account of meaningfulness, this motivation disappears. (To be sure, we do want public contents, which are public in a different way, for instance, than shared principles are public, but objective truth is not the way to get them.) 10 Davidson, "Radical Interpretation," 136—7. 11 Belief is not holistic in a strong sense — a fact recognized by Dummett and many others who follow Wittgenstein. Any "theories" that help form the meaningfulness base of our ordinary language cannot be construed as parts of a single theory. We rely on several "theories" for our principles of inference. On the whole, there is not one single way to be "reasonable," even for a single person. Davidson acknowledges that there is no unique ordering and placing of beliefs (and desires), but he holds that we have to try to achieve a unique ordering to make someone's actions reasonable. No doubt one reason to hold this view is to allow meanings (as Davidson understands them) to be uniform. If Davidson were to divorce meanings from belief and truth (meaningfulness) as I recommend, he would be less inclined to worry. 12 See Davidson, "Thought and Talk," i64ff. 13 Ibid., 165, 170. 14 Cf. McDowell, "Anti-Realism and the Epistemology of Understanding," 224—48. 15 Hector Castafieda has pointed out that T refers to the producer of the utterance even when it appears in embedded position in indirect

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Notes to pages 161—3

speech prepositional attitude constructions. Castaneda's principle does not apply to direct speech contexts, however, so one can have sentences like 'Hamlet said, "I think Ophelia has a certain charm."' There are special cases where it is useful to maintain an ambiguity, as in poetry, for instance. In these cases, the term should be read as ambiguous; understanding the term correctly requires this. I suspect it is the fact that speaking and thinking are tied that bothered Aristotle in 45038 ("Why we cannot exercise the intellect ..., or apply it even to non-temporal things unless in connexion with time, is another question"). It may have been something like this that the token-reflexive theorists of tense (including Reichenbach) had in mind when they introduced special quotation marks (such as Reichenbach's "arrow-quotes") to make utterances "refer to themselves." Unlike them, I do not treat the special features of this form of reference as due to peculiarities of self-reference; rather, I trace these features, and the special form of self-reference, to a special case of exemplification. Clearly, utterances do not refer (in the ordinary sense) to the speaker unless they have personal pronouns like T or (in arch uses) the name of the speaker; when they do refer to the speaker, nothing is revealed about why the utterance is tied to speaker. As chapter 2 indicates, I do not assume that propositional attitude constructions are restricted to descriptions of someone actually saying something. We can picture a saying of Hamlet, and thus present Hamlet's words as tied, without supposing that Hamlet ever said anything, or that he produced utterances that were in fact tied, or that there actually existed a Hamlet. Nor do I suppose that all uses of propositional attitudes are efforts to (faithfully) represent the views of someone. Nevertheless, all propositional attitudes attribute a view. It is arguable that when any utterance at all is read, we in effect end up with a propositional attitude sentence, something that goes more or less like this: 'Jones said, "...,"' where what appears in the double quotes ("...") is a direct quotation. There is much to recommend this view, for it seems that to read a sentence at all is to read it as a sentence produced by a speaker at a time. Nevertheless, we must respect the difference between a case of unaided exemplification and an explicit propositional attitude. Let us say that a reading is a "protopropositional attitude": everything is "there" in the reading for it to develop into an explicit propositional attitude, but reference to speaker and time of speech is made merely by recognition of the utterance as produced on the relevant occasion. Unlike with the explicit propositional attitude, there is no picture or identifying reference to p, nor is there attribution of a saying to this person. This view is supported by the account of the propositional attitude in chapter 2.

348 Notes to pages 163-5

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Readings of written texts require adjustments in this view. The interesting issues with such readings are often who p is taken to be and when is is. Reflect on the ease with which one can treat a narration as though it were produced at the time of reading, or the ease with which one can consider oneself a spectator of a conversation taking place in a piece of science fiction. The effort has a long and convoluted history, going back at least to McTaggart. A prime example is found in Russell. Both 'discern' and 'perceive' carry the implication for most of us that when someone does either, he or she can say what is discerned or perceived. When Geraldine perceives a wombat, she can at least say that she sees a four-legged animal, even if she cannot say that she sees a wombat. When we are asked what we perceive on being presented with a sentence, most of us can do no more than repeat the sentence. The syntactician can do more — or at least the syntactician tries to do more — by saying what the structure of what is perceived is. In any case, for my purposes, saying what is perceived by repeating what is said or written is enough to underwrite the claim that perception involves being able to say what is said. Goodman does not speak of reference to fictional objects, and consequently denies himself the power of a view of reference based on picturing. To preserve what he denies, we must revitalize some of Meinong's insights into reference. This is done below and in chapter 4. The basic idea in Goodman's Languages of Art view of "representation-as" is found in his "On Likeness of Meaning." It is developed further in Of Mind and Other Matters and Reconceptions. Goodman takes representation-as to support nominalism. I suspect it does, but in by no means as straightforward a way as he believes. And he is wrong to insist that identifying reference is always made to existing things (his 'denote'). Stories about Pegasus make identifying reference to Pegasus, and Pegasus so referred to exists in some world. On these matters, see chapters 4 and 5. More generally, 'picture of x as such-and-such' gets turned into 'x as such-and-such picture.' This applies to sentences as easily as pictures, though Goodman insists that in the case of sentences one speaks of 'x as such-and-such descriptions.' I reserve the terminology of description for other purposes. Further, the concept of picturing has advantages, but for reasons Goodman would shy from. I want to insist that the situations pictured by "sentences" share pictorial (syntactic) form with their pictures. Thus, they "resemble" their pictures in a sense. This should be harmless, since situations do not exist, or rather, are not the sorts of things it makes sense to say exist. On this, see chapters 4 and 5.

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Notes to pages 170—2

24 This view of tenses is defended by Hornstein in As Time Goes By. 25 Chomsky prefers terminology that does not imply or even suggest a speaker's ability to say what is going on when he or she recognizes the structure of a sentence. (He says repeatedly, for instance, that one 'cognizes' the principles of grammar; he avoids 'know' and the suggestion that one is conscious of what one knows.) I use 'perceive' and continue to do so for the reason given earlier. At the very least, speakers-hearers can report what they perceive by repeating the sentence they perceive. In this sense, they do know consciously "what they see or hear." 26 I ignore hotly debated issues. For an articulate proposal on what the perceived form might be, one that relates it to SRE structure, see Hornstein's As Time Goes By, chapter 5, and "Levels of Meaning." Incidentally, Hornstein divides S-structure into two interpretational streams by denning two types of "logical form" (on which, more below). One deals with anaphora and quantification, the other with nonnominal elements of a sentence. He places tense relationships on the non-nominal side, largely because he insists that tense relationships in embedding are matters of government, not scope. As chapter i indicates, I strongly endorse the view that tenses are not operators. I am worried, however, about the concept of interpretation as it appears in Hornstein's work and that of others who agree with Chomsky. It seems to me that interpretation should be separated from questions of truth and judgment, or "applying" a language and best thought of as a matter of referring to a sentential content. Chomsky and his followers seem to ignore this distinction. Hornstein certainly does, at least in the book in question. (His largely topological approach to SRE structure seems to invite it.) 27 See especially Hornstein, Logic as Grammar, and May, Logical Form. Similar views are found in Higginbotham, "On Semantics" and "Logical Form, Binding, and Nominals." The term 'logical form' is Chomsky's. These three develop their semantics on the base of the syntax of Chomsky, in particular his "government-binding" variation on the Extended Standard Theory (EST), found in Lectures on Government and Binding and The Knowledge of Language. Clearly, in these works May and Higginbotham are committed to an account of interpretation (meaning) based on truth. Hornstein and perhaps Chomsky are less committed. But in Hornstein's recent As Time Goes by (1990), he seems to have become committed. 28 Let me insist that syntactic form need not be described only in Chomsky's way. For instance, some formal features of quantified sentences could be represented in the syntax of variables and formulae familiar to logicians. Notice, however, that the syntax of logic (including sophisticated forms, such as those found with branched quantifiers) is

35<> Notes to pages 173—5

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unlikely to tell us much else about the syntactic form of sentences, so its usefulness as a vocabulary of syntax is limited. Moreover, there is nothing in the treatment of syntax among logicians, except perhaps among some formalists in the foundations of mathematics (such as David Hilbert), that would suggest that sentences are "seen" as having a form that partially determines (through picturing it, as I would say) a situation. Hornstein argues that syntax might be sufficient for semantics and that we might be able to drop terms like 'refer,' 'true,' and the like with regard to semantics. This leaves "interpreting" completely mysterious; it is difficult to see how "interpreting" could consist of syntax pure laine. He comes up with no alternatives to truth-conditional semantics in Logical Form. The intuition behind Montague grammar's paralleling of syntactic and semantic derivations is captured by this, without requiring separate and parallel derivations. To be sure, we can say of any part of a sentence that it pictures its picture referent and that the point of a grammar is to construct "sentences" that are complex pictures and picture situations, but there is nothing to compositionality over and above syntactic "derivation." If Chomsky's current theory is right, there is a single universal grammar that is paramaterized in such a way that there are groups of languages that share characteristics. I should say something more about gaining picture-referential competence. To be brief on a complicated topic, I suggest three reasons why acquiring picturing competence is well within the capacities of humans. First, the view that contents are RE structures suggests that content competence is easy to acquire: the structure of the RE is simple, and since any possible content can fit into an RE structure, acquiring this simple structure is sufficient for knowing what any content must look like. It is possible that this much of structure is "innate": we have a propensity to see things (companions) as such-andsuch (in terms of situations in which they are involved or otherwise related to). In effect, we naturally join things and situations to produce descriptive positions. (This may be why subject-predicate structure - a special case of RE structure - is taken so seriously.) Second, the classes of possible situations are limited because of the kinds of complexity that situations can have. For instance, I show that propositional attitudes and epistemic modals share one form of syntactic and semantic structure. Nomics, habituals, and (though there are complications here) conditionals share another. Root modals, intentional states, and the like share a third. While there are other complex structures not dealt with in this list, there are few of them. The

351 Notes to pages 176-83

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possible forms of situations and the syntactic forms of the "sentences" that refer to them are both extremely limited. Again, this makes learning (syntactic and semantic) relatively easy to explain. Third, while we need to acquire many lexical items, vocabulary items, or dictionary entries in learning a language, there are not so many that the human mind or brain is not easily capable of acquiring them. They constitute a finite, and not very large, number. If we take this into account, plus the limited number of structures into which these items can be placed and the very limited group of RE structures, it is not at all difficult to think of contents as being learnable. It is tempting to say that the expression on the left is "mentioned," while that on the right is "used," but avoid this. Too much additional baggage is borne by both 'mention' and 'use.' See the work of Liberman, for instance. See, for instance, Lear, "Ethics, Mathematics, and Relativism." This is not like Hume's habit, with its overtones of the psychological and - worse for explaining the kind of responsibility involved - its implication that habit formation rests with the individual. Naturally, any acknowledgment of this is sotto voce. Goodman, like all those in the Humean sceptical tradition, treats any such "influence" as strictly beyond comprehension. CHAPTER FOUR

1 The term 'Fressellian' is Schiffer's, found in his "Indexicals and the Theory of Reference." Schiffer attacks the Fressellian position, though from the point of view of the theory I develop, his views are still well within the tradition. 2 This idea is usually put very programmatically. A partial exception is found in chapter 10 of Evans's The Varieties of Reference. Evans adapts Walton's interesting discussion of children's make-believe and reference in "Pictures and Make-Believe" and "Fearing Fictions." Incidentally, no one should be committed to the idea that there is a single sort of fictional entity. Hamlet and Santa Glaus are not of the same sort; one is a character in a play and the other a cultural fiction. Nor should anyone hold that all fictional entities should go in a single "realm"; they belong in the worlds of the stories that describe them. The only characteristic they share is that none of them exist in the real world; in this sense, none of them exist. 3 Meinong's Sosein, the status he assigned to referents of all expressions - even those that do not exist - seems to have something to do with 'being able to say true things concerning,' as 'It is true that the golden mountain is golden.' Meinong assigned the status of Aufiersein to

352 Notes to pages 188—98

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things that do not exist and even cannot exist. These are fascinating concepts, but unnecessary for the defence of picture reference: expressions picture-refer to (picture-determine) whatever they refer to, without consideration of the truth of the sentence in which they appear and independently of the existence of anything referred to identifyingly by the sentences that the expressions make up. But like Meinong, I hold that the only items referred to that it makes sense to say exist are spatio-temporally located things, my companions (cs). Incidentally, picture determination provides, I think, a better account of the connection between referring expression and referent than some essentially mentalistic notion of intentionality - the view both Meinong and Chisholm favour. p-subscripted items, like Sellars's illustrating sortals in his "Abstract Entities," refer to themselves. They also picture-refer. Sellars's functionalist (truth-conditional) account of meanings leads him to think of semantic classification of terms as classification by role or function, where this is construed truth- or assertion-conditionally. This is wrong. On this matter, see chapter 3. Metaphor is often touted as the linguistic community's device for meaning change. It cannot be that for all expressions - not for expressions like proper names, for instance. As a rule, it is common nouns like 'wolf,' when used as classificatory predicates, and singlepredicate terms like 'blue' that have "metaphorical extensions" — extensions where, for example, one speaks of blue moods, not bluecoloured things. I cannot deal with the issue of metaphor here, but it is worth remarking that whatever changes might be brought about by metaphor, the change tends to rely on the analytic truths with regard to the relevant expressions at a time for a referential community. That blue is a colour is an analytic truth; given that it is and that 'blue' is typically found in sentences as a predicate of physical thing expressions (this too is analytic knowledge), we know that 'blue mood' is a metaphorical extension. Resemblance is relevant to other matters — for example, to questions of meaningfulness. The Nixon we put in a different world, in order to be sufficiently like our Nixon to be interesting and recognizable, should have a five o'clock shadow and shifty eyes. Otherwise the story told concerning him is not interesting. It is usually assumed that descriptions beginning with 'the' are "definite" descriptions denoting single things, and those beginning with 'a' indefinite, not implying uniqueness. I assume that both are classspecifying expressions but allow that both may have uses where they do not do their "normal" jobs. Chastain, in "Reference and Context," discusses many cases where 'a x1 refers to a single individual, and argues that when it does, it does so because of the discourse in which

353 Notes to pages 198-205 the phrase appears. I prefer to say that 'a x refers to a single thing where either the speaker's circumstances or the story demands it; this allows for dependence upon either. I also want to say that 'the x* carries with it, in normal contexts, the presumption that it refers to a unique thing (in a field of things if the definite description is also an identifying reference). But there is also the institutional 'the lion,' as in 'The lion is a tawny beast.' 8 This is a complicated issue. While the nominalization can be taken to refer to at least a situation, it often appears in factive contexts, so that it — or it in conjunction with the structure of the rest of the sentence — refers to a full SRE structure where a content is held true. To be sure, it is not represented as held true, which requires a prepositional attitude construction. It acts more like an independent clause with content held true by the speaker and others. This suits the idea that such nominalizations refer to "facts," where facts can be thought of as agreed-upon truths. See in this regard, too, the discussion of the role of projective illusions at the end of chapter i and the conclusion of chapter 7. 9 Expressions such as 'a certain' and 'anyone' do not have the same syntactic (formal and pictorial) properties as quantifiers like 'each,' 'every,' and 'some,' even though all operate in accordance with the general form I outlined. To recognize different features, we should classify 'a certain' and 'anyone' differently, but this classification does not depend on issues of existence or truth. Hornstein in Grammar As Logic calls 'a certain' and the like Type I quantifiers and most of the others Type II. He argues that the differences in the behaviour of these quantifiers have their explanation in different syntactic features. As I mentioned in chapter 3, this is congenial to my effort to make "sentences" and parts of "sentences" pictures of situations and parts of situations. 10 Word and Object states this position, but see also Roots of Reference. i l l intend this as syntactic co-reference in the first instance. 12 The view that identifying reference is to spatially located things has been defended by philosophers since Aristotle. It plays an important role in several contemporary accounts of identifying reference, including Evans's in The Varieties of Reference. Probably Strawson's Individuals has had the greatest contemporary influence; Evans's account, for instance, grows out of it. 13 I do not deny that in listening to or reading "Hamlet" we refer, exemplifingly or through something like a propositional attitude, to Shakespeare. But all sentences make these references, fictional or not. 14 This example and those following involve singular identifying reference. There is no reason the account cannot be extended to nonsingular cases, however.

354 Notes to pages 206-27 15 Lewis in "Scorekeeping in a Language Game" (348) tells the following story: "The cat is in the carton. The cat will never meet our other cat, because our other cat lives in New Zealand. Our New Zealand cat lives with the Cresswells. And there he'll stay, because Miriam would be sad if the cat went away." Although 'the cat' of the first sentence may well pick out a cat seen at time of telling (indeed, Lewis so introduces it), 'the cat' of the last sentence must pick out a cat that is nowhere near the storyteller, the conversationally most recently salient cat. 16 Lewis's early suggestion (in Counterfactuals) is that the set S is the set of "things that have captured my attention just now" (i 15). This obviously will not do. 17 Evans speaks instead of Ideas and distinguishes fundamental from non-fundamental Ideas. See his The Varieties of Reference. My approach makes such a distinction irrelevant. 18 This case and the next - or ones like them — are discussed by Donnellan in "Reference and Definite Descriptions." 19 It is irrelevant that the case concerns names as opposed to descriptions. The case is originally discussed in a footnote in Kripke's "Naming and Necessity" but is taken up in more detail in his "Speaker's Reference and Semantic Reference" (14). The latter criticises Donnellan, who in turn defends his approach in "Speaker Reference, Descriptions, and Anaphora." 20 Donnellan introduced a distinction between referring and attributing uses of definite descriptions. It should be supplanted. All descriptions picture-refer by attributing — by defining a class as that which is so described. Some descriptions, normally those in subject position, etc., help make something salient by virtue of being recognizably (to those in a speech context) true of it. A few picture-refer but, while failing to help make something salient, refer by charity to what the sentence is about. Thus, attributing gets relocated, and the truth of a description is put to a different task, which relies on attributing. As for the referential use, any interesting features of referential uses are better dealt with by thinking in terms of salience and knowledge of a story. CHAPTER FIVE

1 The argument of Evans's book is largely devoted to a defence of an empirical account, broadly speaking, of Fressellian reference and existence. This explains his linking reference with gaining information from one's environment. 2 Perhaps this is what mathematicians do when they treat the world of mathematical objects as something "real," even to the extent that their

355 Notes to pages 230-45

3

4

5

6

7

talk of perceiving mathematical objects seems to cease being metaphorical. I pursue this suggestion below. What about "direct" perception of distant objects, such as Alpha Centauri? Which is the Alpha Centauri that is the companion when I look at it on an occasion, the star "now" or a star of several years ago? I can certainly treat the star as a companion of me now, and it would be "perceived" at is = i R in the sense required by the SRE theory. But that star is not, I think, directly perceived. Obviously, the causal theory of names is no better off with numerals and numbers than it is with fictional names and fictional entities (or, for that matter, names of things in the real world yet to come). This is surely a necessary condition on allowing the realist/constructivist debate concerning infinites to arise at all. Constructivists must allow that sentences containing the term 'pi' have a meaning, that is, picture-refer to pj; they only insist that such sentences may not be meaningful, or fully meaningful. The qualification is necessary because there is "content specification" of cs, and this plays an essential role in descriptions (definite or indefinite) of numbers. It can only decide if it is false if it can be shown that it cannot generate the relevant sentence, but in simple calculational cases, it is sufficient to compute the right answer and compare it with the wrong one. C H A P T E R six

1 A good bibliography of the major works is found in Comrie's Aspect. 2 Compare, in this regard, Comrie, Aspect; Dowty, Studies in the Logic of Verb Aspect and Time Reference in English and "Toward a Semantic Analysis of Verb Aspect and the English 'Imperfective' Progressive"; and Verkuyl, On the Compositional Nature of the Aspects. Other relevant works include Bennett and Partee, "Toward the Logic of Tense and Aspect in English"; Kenny, Action, Emotion and Will; Mourelatos, "Events, Processes, and States"; Penner, "Verbs and the Identify of Actions - A Philosophical Exercise in the Interpretation of Aristotle"; Potts, "States, Activities, and Performances"; and Vendler, "Verbs and Times." 3 Compare, in this regard, Johnson's "A Unified Theory of Tense and Aspect." Because Johnson depends on Reichenbachian terminology, she has the germs of an SR/RE distinction, but they are not developed. In a related vein, she makes the serious error of following Reichenbach's terminology too closely, treating the perfect as the perfective and not developing an independent account of the perfective and imperfective.

356 Notes to pages 249-79

4

5

6 7

8 9

10 11 12 13

14

Some tense logicians have tackled the problem of aspect (Dahl, Aqvist, Guenthner) with the clumsy machinery of sentential operators and an attendant misunderstanding of sentential structure. Working in the tradition of Montague grammar, Bennett attempted to produce a unified theory of tense and aspect in "Of Tense and Aspect: One Analysis," "A Guide to the Logic of Tense and Aspect in English," and, with Partee, "Toward the Logic of Tense and Aspect in English." His work contains some excellent observations. Actually, we will find that these questions are appropriate for anterior and posterior constructions too, for the imperfective of the movement requires that i R be within the bounds of the movement (even if it is never completed). Of course, we can say what the half-way point is for a chair's being red in a story, but that is simply taking the interval over which it is red and dividing it in half. It does not yield a proper sub-part of the situation, the chair's being red. See, on this point, Scheffer, The Progressive in English. I do not have in mind the sense of 'stand' found in sentences such as 'George is standing up,' where a process or movement designation is in question. Notice that these verbs cannot be used to orient if they are perfective. This suggests that the orienting use is quite specialized. Notice that we can say 'Harry has been hoping (wanting) to leave tomorrow' without being able to say *'Harry has been wishing (desiring) to leave tomorrow.' It is difficult to account for these phenomena, unless hoping and wanting in cases like these also designate these preparings. Having the same c for the main clause and the 'to'-clause aids this reading, as does imputation of responsibility for the state to Harry alone. These states do not imperfectivize; rather, progressivized sentences with the relevant structure designate processes instead. The kinds of variation I have in mind are such things as "pretense" and "unusual," which came up before in the discussion of states. With some states (the weaker ones), one might expect notice to be given when presented with a perfect (E-R) construction, but the perfect construction does not say that the state is "at an end" with any unbounded situation, even the weakest. With the strongest states, on the contrary, it is unlikely that 0 would be at an end by i R . 'George is running in the race, so he will get a reward from his mother' is not the counterexample it seems to be, for on the most plausible reading of this sentence, the first clause is not a movementdesignating clause, but one designating an intentional state.

357

Notes to pages 280—92

15 In English, by at least one and at most one for any given clause. There may be languages that iterate aspects. On this, see Comrie, Aspect. CHAPTER SEVEN

1 Evans says, "If a subject can be credited with the thought that a is F, then he must have the conceptual resources for entertaining the thought that a is G, for every property of being G of which he has a conception" (The Varieties of Reference, 104). His primary interest in the generality constraint is the support he supposes it gives to his claim that we must have "fundamental Ideas" of things, where these are ideas of things that individuate them from other things of their kind (where appropriate) and all other things. I suggest below a way to sanitize the constraint. 2 There are parallels between my classification of anterior presents and McCawley's classification of present perfects in "Tense and Time Reference in English." See also his "Notes on the English Present Perfect." But McCawley's classification entangles issues of truth and existence where they do not belong - in what amounts to a classification of propositions. Look especially at his description of the existential and universal present perfects, noting the theoretical commitments in the classification. Incidentally, it has often been remarked that the present perfect carries, or suggests, "current relevance." This observation is correct, so far as it goes, and it can be explained. The notion of a subject matter for an anterior construction, that c — in the case of the present tense — is at is, allows us to say how the notion of current relevance arises. 'Current' is there because discussion focuses on the anterior present; the notion of relevance derives from the fact that 0 describes c. "Relevance" to c generalizes to the past and future anterior construction, so that one can speak of past and future relevance. See the last section of chapter i. 3 Notice that if the sentence were read as designating a state, we could not make sense of the SRE structure of the sentence. 4 I do not say "involvement in," for that seems to suppose that the referent of the subject phrase is c. As we have seen, it need not be. 5 Consider one popular approach wherein the proposition is a function from sentences (or from sentences in contexts, or other variations on this theme) to possible worlds. 6 The three forces may remind us of the three truth values found in some logics, but it is wrong to assimilate them here. Speaking of truth values introduces a set of irrelevant intuitions. The normal reasons

358 Notes to page 292 given for introducing a third "truth" value have little to do with what I mean by a 'float,' and the fact that floats can be used for both conditionals (which I have already defended) and questions (which I will defend) matches no arguments for three-valued logics of which I am aware. 7 My general approach differs from the efforts of most speech-act theorists to deal with a classification of forces (or illocutionary acts). Compare Austin, How to Do Things with Words, and Searle, Speech Acts and "A Taxonomy of Illocutionary Acts." Beginning with action concepts, speech-act theorists tend to have difficulty saying just what a force is, not only because theories of action are often theories in name alone, but also because they neglect the contribution forces proper make to recommending. It is both more straigthforward and more fruitful to begin with the concept of an instruction on inclusion of a content - connected to a theory of the semantic structure of a sentence - and, for classifying purposes, to look to the sorts of constructions (prepositional attitude verbs) where it is obvious that such instruction is not just presented (as it is in every sentence), but represented. Searle's notion of "direction of fit between words and world" (further discussion of which is found in Intentionality), designed to handle the difference between promises (which are supposed to require that the world fit them) and assertions (which are supposed to require that they fit the world), needs comment. This distinction seems to me to be the residue of questionable views of intentionality, and is extraneous to the classification of speech acts; yet it plays a central role in Searle's attempts at classifying. From the point of view of a theory that gives every sentence a single aim (description), building that aim into the semantic structure of all sentences, the distinction appears groundless — promises have the same basic structure as any other sentence, for they are just (constituting) descriptions of people c in terms of intentional states 0. In effect, Searle confuses some classifications of forces with classifications of situations. 8 Every sentence with an RS structure — that is, any tensed sentence at all — includes in its making (according to my account) an instruction because all such relationships include a p-ij; relationship. Sentences such as 'I am (hereby) denying that Harry is a bigot' are special cases. They are descriptions, which may be correct or incorrect, of the person speaking. They are produced by the speaker, describe the speaker, and assert something. Because each is a prepositional attitude describing the speaker, each also effectively constitutes an instructing on the inclusion of RE of the embedded clause. (Here it is a recommendation that the content be excluded.) These features make the investigation of such sentences worthwhile, for if we can properly

359

Not

es to pages 296-99

delimit the relevant class of sentences, we get an excellent idea of what forces (instructings on an occasion) are. Such sentences are like constituting scheduling-state constructions in certain respects. 'I (hereby) promise ...' and 'I (hereby) order you to ...' not only are descriptions of the speaker but, when correct as descriptions, constitute promises and orders. When they are correct, the speaker has to have the relevant authority and be in the proper position to promise or order. The constituting propositional attitude sentence has a special feature, however: the authority and position required of the speaker for the description to be correct seems to be the same as the authority and position required for one to be able to say the sentence in the first place. Such sentences, therefore, are virtually automatically correct. The relationship between a sentence of the form 'I (hereby) assert (etc.) that ...' and '...' (no tenses need adjusting in this case, because there can be no shifting) is found in the relevant (A). 9 A useful source is Belnap and Steel, The Logic of Questions and Answers. 10 All propositional attitude sentences as wholes are tied to their actual speech positions and their embedded clauses are represented as tied to the speech position of the subject of the sentence as a whole. Thus, 'John believes that Harry is gay' is tied to the speaker's position and represents 'Harry is gay' as tied to a speech position (story position) of John's. Clearly, it need not represent the embedded sentence (SRE) as tied to the actual speaker's position. But - I claim - epistemic modals with 'is true,' where 'is true' amounts to is true rather than 'believes true' or something of the like, must so represent the embedded sentence (SRE structure). 11 Since Dummett's "The Reality of the Past," a related issue has been discussed, the nature of "the truth-value link." On this, see particularly McDowell, "On 'The Reality of the Past,'" and both of Wright's articles, "Realism, Truth-value Links, Other Minds and the Past" and "Anti-realism, Timeless Truth and Nineteen Eighty-Four." McDowell's paper is a response to Dummett's defence of anti-realism, and Wright's first paper, a response to McDowell's defence of realism. The second of Wright's papers is the more interesting; only here is there a serious investigation of assumptions built into the notion of a truthvalue link. It is, of course, worthwhile to find out what our commitments are, given that we hold a sentence to be true at a time, but I emphasize that, this trio to the contrary, this has nothing to do with meaning. Dummett, McDowell, and Wright simply assume that it does, which may account for the deep (but confused) seriousness with which they take the issue. They think that what is at stake is being able to speak

360 Notes to pages 299-321

12

13 14 15

16 17 18 19

20

21 22

23

24 25

at all of what happens at other times. If meaning is divorced from truth and verification, that threat disappears - as does the problem of how one speaks of things in fictional worlds, and of fictional worlds at various times. For the schema that follows, compare Rescher and Urquhart, Temporal Logic. While my primary aim in this discussion is to deal with truth, focusing on this schema allows me to suggest a plausible principle to base a tense logic on. Tense logics, as I suggested earlier, make important contributions to a theory of meaningfulness. This is basically Tarski's view in "The Concept of Truth in Formalized Languages." On both 'characterization' and 'representation,' see the section on prepositional attitude constructions in chapter 2. While Protagoras was at least partly right, then, for truth involves agreement in opinion, Plato was partly right too: there is an appeal to grounds that anyone would accept. I claim that we can make sense of this appeal without recourse to an objective world. This approximates the technical sense of 'belief found in many philosophical discussions. Interestingly, this is largely true of "real world" stories, but to varying degrees less true of fiction. See Davidson, "On Saying That." There are parallels here to Grover, Camp, and Belnap, "A Prosentential Theory of Truth." See also Grover, "Truth: Do We Need It?" and "Truth." It is even difficult, in fact (unless one is careful), to keep in mind that 'is true' here is embedded under a conditional. If it is read as true, period, the sentence becomes an argument; this is discussed below. An argument reading of "surface" sentences of conditional form is, as we have seen, possible, but arguments are hardly perspicuously presented in conditional form — or at least, not in a formal context like this. Austin, "Other Minds." Perhaps once the epistemic character of 'true' is clear, we can draw better analogies between 'true' and 'know' than between 'promise' and 'know.' Primitive forms of meaningfulness constructivism make this error; the error is built into phenomenalism and some forms of pragmatism. See, for instance, C.I. Lewis, An Analysis of Knowledge and Evaluation. See Davidson, "Mental Events." Berlin and 'Kay, Basic Color Terms: Their Universality and Evolution.

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1949

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Index

A, 237, 294, 300, 306,

318

Abilities. See Competence Achievements (as situation type), 247 Activities (as situation type), 247, 250 Adverbs, 36—7, 329 n2i, 336 ni6; with conditionals, 115, 118; with epistemic modals, 80— 2; with future 39-46; with propositional attitudes, 63—8; with root modals, 77—9; 'when,' 87-99 Agreement: of groups, 32—6, 317; in opinions (judgments), 302 Anterior, 17, 46—8. See also Perfect Argument, 129—32, 300— 7 Aspect, 244—82; as operation on situations, 175, 245, 282 Assertability, 180, 320, 346 n8 Assertion (as force), 15, 69, 294

Assignment (in tense logic), 326 n6 Attention, 30, 33, 202, 205—11, 222—6 Austin, J.L., 311, 358 n7 Authority, epistemic, 292 Authorize, 116, 131, 134 Authorizing principle (A), 131» !33-7. ! 39-44 Avowals (as force), 294 Barwise, J., and J. Perry, 26,55, 179, 328 ni8 Berlin, P., and P. Kay, 321 Bounds: on nomic and habitual, 105—13; and situations, 246—7 c, 22, 23-6, 33, 205-11, 222—3 Calculation (and mathematical truth), 242 Caricature, 193, 213 Causal claim, 142 Causal connection, 92, 104 Causal principles, 103 Causal sentence, singular, 96

Cause, 88-94, 98 Changes (as situation type), 94, 246, 252-5, 289 Characterizations (as type of propositional attitude), 63, 66 Chisholm, R., 183 Chomsky, Noam, 5, 9, 33, 147, 165, 169-72, 174, 183, 321, 330 n24, 336 nl 3> 349 n n i 7> 25, 26, 28, 350 nsi Claims, 293 Class, 198 Classification, semantic, 184—94; of situations, 245-55 Clifford, J.E., 50 Cognize, 349 n25 Coherence, 141-53, 181 Companion, 22, 23—5, 205—11, 222—4. See also c Competence, 28-36, 14581; at identifying reference, 201—11; perceptual, 177-8; at picture reference, 176, 350 n32; at judgment,

372

Index

292 ; at reidentifying, 211—14. See also Group Compositionality, 155,

Description(s), 121, 198— 201, 210 Descriptive place, 175, 284; as class determi173-4 Comrie, B., 4, 10, 13, 55, ners, 198—9 95, 328 ni7, 337 ni7, Descriptive position, 30— i. 53. 14T> assuming a, 357 ni7 Condition, 88, 94, 114—15 33 Descriptum, 17, 20, 22—6, Conditional, 61—2, 113— 245; as descriptive po41, 296, 299-312; adverbial markers in, sition, 30; markers, 118; connective, 114; 118, 288-91; as i|», 38; as proposition, 284—91; counterfactual, 123-9; material, 137; standas sentential content, ard, 115—22; subjunc22 Dictionaries, 186, 187, tive, 123-9, 139 Condition-'when' con192 structions, 94—6, 103, Disambiguation: and indexicality, 158-61; as 113-29. ^s-6 individuation of Conjectures (as forces), expression, 161, 185, 295 Constructivism, 141, 178— 195. 197 81, 319—24; double, Discourse effects (with 178-81, 318-23; lexiperfectives and imperfectives): of bounded cal, 108, 179, 185, situations, 276-9; of 319—24, 323; in meaning, 178-80, 319-24; unbounded situations, 260—76 in meaningfulness, Donnellan, K., 199—200, 179-81, 319-24 Content, 29, 53, 54; au217-20, 354 nni8, 19, tonomy of, 8, 202-4, 20 215—16, 287; compeDowty, D., 330 n3o, 331 n tence, 30—36, 177, 3°. 332 "44 283—92; functions of, Dudman, V., 62, 114, 336 175, 291; REs as, 279ni5. 339 n3°. 342 nn 2 82; in a story, 301 3 , 33. 344n 4i Context set, 341 n3i Dummett, M., 150—1, Contextualize (an author180, 320, 332 n4o, 344 n izing principle), 131, 45> 345n7. 346 n n , 134, 306-7 359 m i Continuity (of imperfectives), 256, 280 E, 16, 20, 36, 65-8 Convergence, 318 Enc, M., 325 n2, 331 n35 Core view (of tenses), 12, Entrenchment, 181 Epistemic: access (with 19 standard conditionals), Davidson, D., 65, 149, 123-4; commitments, 81—4, 107, 109—10, 150-7. i76. 3i8. 338 137—44; inaccessibility nai, 345 n6, 346 nn (with subjunctives), Demonstratives, 160, 126; and meaning, 220-1, 234, 303 Denials (as forces), 195—6 146—57; modals, 80—7

Epistemologist, task of, 317 Epistemology, and meaning, 146-57 Essen tialism, 113 Evans, G., 224—5, 285, 35i n 2, 353 m 2 . 354 ni7, 354 ni Exclamations (as forces), 295 Existence: criterion of, 224—7; in-a-world-W, 226; irrelevance to reference, 183; and meaningfulness, 224— 8; overview, 222—4; Platonic account, 228— 30; sentences, 230-2 Experimental procedure, 141 Facsimilies (as types of prepositional attitude), 63, 66 Factivity, 74 Facts, 55, 323 Fallibilism, 156 Floats (as forces), 129, 292, 296 Force, 29, 54, 59, 63, 69, 292—7; theory of, 31618 Force-understanding, 31, 59. H5-57. 292-7. See also Meaningfulness Form: logical, 171, 201; pictorial, 28, 172—6, 201 Formalists, 238, 350 n28 Frege, G., 150, 183, 285, 344 n45 Frequency adverbials, 101-2 Future, 38, 39-46, 54; contingent, 59, 335 nio; reduced, 41 Generality constraint, 285-6 Givens, 316 Goodman, N., 27, 147, 165-6, 168, 181, 183, 185, 320, 348 nn22, 23

373

Index

Grammar: Montague, 35° n3°> 355 n3; universal, 171 Grammaticality, 330 n23 Group: evidential, 108—9, 116-22, 122-9, 128, 291-316; identifyingreference, 108, 201-11, 215—16, 283—91; membership in, 32—6, 82—4, 108—10, 132—7, 116— 29, 178-81, 320-3; picture-referential (attention), 108, 154—94, 283—91; storytelling, 109-15, 132-7, 291316; use in explaining competence, 28—36, 177-8, 316-18 Habitual, 61, 99—105, 141 Higginbotham, J., 171, 349 n 27 Hilbert, D., 239, 349 n28 Hinge propositions, 111 Holism (of belief), 154-5, 346 nn Homogenization (of situations), 259, 276—7 Hornstein, N., 4, 171, 325 n2, 326 nn5, 9, 330 n29, 331 n35, 333 n i , 335 n6, 336 n n , 337 n i 7 > 349 n°26, 27, 35° n29. 353n9 Hume, D., 104, no, 143 i E , 12, 13, 20-1, 36-8 iR, 13, 20-1, 36-8 is, 13, 20—i, 36—8, 162 Iconoclasm, 9—10 'If-sentence, 61, 113-14 Illusions, projective, 54— 60, 323 Immediacy, 57—9 Imperfective, 244—5, 279—82; with bounds, 256—60; without bounds, 260—76 Inclusion: of contents in stories, 292-7, of sentences in stories, 225

Indexicality : and computation, 243; Putnam on, 338 n24; of reference, 158—61, 186— 7, 191 Inference: and arguments, 129—31; principles (As), 132-44; ticket, 116 Infinitivals, 78-9 Information link, 204 Innatist, 29 Instructions, 63, 68-72, 81, 358 n8; and assertion, 69; and forces, 292-7. 358 n8 Intention, irrelevant to classifying situations,

Language: application, 148; and competence, 28-36, 145-81; structure of, 6—7, 11—22, 61-144, 169-78, 349 nn27, 28, 350 n32; use, 146 Lewis, C.I., 97, 146, 335 nio, 336 n23 Lewis, D., 24, 147, 205—7, 34° nsi, 354nni5, 16 Lexicon, 172-6, 185, 191-3, 195; lexical constructivism, 108, 179, 185, 284, 319-23; lexical determinism, 108; lexicographer,

247 174.3!7 Logical space, 152 Intentionality, 216 Logic of explanation, 107 Interests, 212, 228 Interpretation, 9, 171—6; McCawley, J., 357 n2 in tense logic, 326 n6 Intervals, 12—16, 325 ni, McDowell, J., 157, 359 ni i 327 ni i McTaggart, J.McT.E., Intuitionism, 238-9 315, 348 n20 It: in epistemic modal May, R., 171 constructions, 82—3; in 'it is true,' 302—6 Meaning, 5, 29, 145—81; change, 191; and conIteration, of tenses, 14— structivism, 319—23; !5> 49-5 * 148—9, 156; Iterative states, 99—113, 129-37, 140-1, 314;parochial, as referring, 157—78, 129-37, 140-1, 314; 184—201; theory of, root modal, 133 194, 283-91, 320-3; as truth condition, 148— Johnson, M., 332 n42, 355 n3 Judgment, 5, 31, 32, 53, 68—75, 1O9' agreement in, 32, 109, 146, 298— 305, 316-18 Justification, 69, 100, 136, 297

Kant, I., 32, 190, 235, 343 n39 Knowledge: analytic, 187, 192; perceptual classificational, 149; as verb, 265, 314 Kripke, S., 32, 113, 143, 196, 211, 217, 344 n45, 354 n i 9

57 Meaningfulness, 5, 29, 138, 145-57' i79-80; and constructivism,

!79~81' 3 * 9-24; theory of, 157, 316—18; and truth, 310 Meaning vector, 184, J93-4 Meinong, A., 147, 164, 166, 183, 339 na7, 348 n22, 351 n3 Metaphor, 352 n5 Modalities, 76, 335 mo; de dicto, 86, 335 mo; de re, 86, 335 mo Modals, 44, 45, 76-87;

374 Index conditioned root, 96—9, ll ?> iSS- !36' 268-71; epistemic, 76, 80—7, 301, 304; root, 76-80 Moore, G.E., 111, 339 n29 Morris, C., 150, 345 03 Movements (as situation type), 246-52; and over, 246, 259, 288 Names: numerals as, 187, 232-3; proper, 194-7 Natural kind, 111 Nomics, 99—100, 107, 109, 110, 130, 141 Nominalism, 232 Nomological nets, 101 Normativity, 193 Norms, 132—4, 156, 195-6 Notion (of a thing), 212 Now, 163, 326 n6 Numbers: existence of, 232—42; numerals referring to, 233—4; as picture referents, 233, 236 Objectivity, 108, 109—10, 147, 179, 204-5; and truth, 312—15 Omniscience, 156-7, 315 Omnitemporality of truth, 299—300 Opacity, 65, 334 n$ Over, 246, 259, 260, 279— 82 p, 22, 28-32, 34, 132,

167,

107,

291—316

p-i|/ relationship, 22, 106, 113, 292—318; theory of, 316-18 Packaging (of situations), 259. 276-9 Past, 16-18, 37, 55—8; in conditionals, 122-9; m sequence-of-tenses, 7°~5 Paths, 250, 256, 288 Perceiver-describer (i|i),

20, 22, 28—36, 65—6, 108, 284 Perception, 228—30; and attention (salience), 33, 205—11; direct, 355 n3; and existence, 222—4; perceptual recognition, !67. !73> 178, 321, 348 n21; and scepticism, 177-8; of "sentences," 33~4' J69-73; of structure, 165, 170-4 Perceptual relativism, 322 Perfect, 12-20, 145, 288; present, 328 ni5, 357 n2. See also Anterior Perfective: and complete, 274—82; in condition'when' constructions, 93—4, 96—8; and effects with perfect, 279—82; not perfect, 244-5; and over, 280—2; of situations with bounds, 256-60; of situations without bounds, 260— 76; in stiff sentences, 112 Perspective, 11; indexing, 3°9 Picture(ing), 28, 30, 61, 64, 103, 104, 164—9, 182—7; acquiring picture competence, 350 n32; and mathematical truth, 241; -refer, 239; -referential we, 108 Plato, 228-30, 360 ni5 Position: assuming a, 33, 69, 284; descriptive (descriptum or »);), 30, 33, 284; evidence, 122, 134, 340 n3i; speech (in conditionals), 121— 3, 126—8, 340 n3i. See also Stance Posterior (anticipative), 17—18, 46—8, 290; in 'when'-clauses, 91 Pragmatic consequences, 55—6, 59; in sequenceof-tenses, 71; in sub-

junctive and counterfactual, 128 Present perfect, 47, 328 ni5 Present tense, 13, 37—8, 54; expectant, 277; historical, 39, 277; sportscaster's, 39, 277 Presupposition, existential, 225 Principles: authorizing (As), no, 132; inferential, 329 n2o; interpretive, 329 n2O Prior, A.N., 50, 331 n3o Privacy, 215—16 Processes (as situation type), 246, 250, 271-3, 289, 290; movement associated, 251—2; standard, 251 Progressive, 256 Project, 320 Property: essential, no; as referent of word(s), 185—6; resembling situations, 26-7, 169; in traditional view of structure, 25—6, 285 Propositional attitudes, 62-8, 347 nig, 359 nio; constructions, 163; and epistemic modals, 82—5; and forces, 292—4; states, 271-6 Propositions, 287—91 Psychological reality, 287, 291 Putnam, H., i n , 159, 184, 193, 194-5, 338 1124

Quantifiers, 200—1 ; substitutional, 234 Questions (as forces), 296 Quine, W.V.O., 143, 190, 200 R, 13, 16, 20, 36, 65-8 RE relationship, 17, 19, 20, 21, 22, 30, 31, 33,

375 Index 46—8, 61, 116—18, 279— 81, 288; as contents (propositions), 284—91; as infinitival, 78 Realism, 156, 181, 312— 15; Barwise and Perry's, 178; Davidson's, 149, 151; Putnam's, 338 n24 Reason (as opposed to cause), 94, 96-8 Recognition, and perception of syntax and lexical items, 165—6, 173, 177-8, 184-9 Recommendation(s), 69, 74, 291-315; floats, 292, 296; and inclusion in a story, 225, 292; negative, 292, 296; positive, 292, 294—6, 301 Recommender, 29—31; competence of, 148, 291~315 Reference, 157—78, 182— 221; demonstrative, 220-1; exemplificational, 158, 161—4, 182, 188; and existence, 22— 32; identifying, 201— 11; picture, 183-201; reidentifying, 211—15. See also Demonstratives; Picture(ing); Reference point Reference point, 13, 16— 17, 20, 24, 36 Reichenbach, H., 4, 11, 16-18, 24, 50, 161, 329 n2i Reidentification, 211—15 Rejections (as forces), 292 Reminders (as forces), 294 Repeatability, 142 Representation, 64-8, 353 n8; mental, 334 n4; syntactic, 170 Responsibility, 31, 70, 74, 81, 185, 309; of speakers, 143, 319-24; of world, 143, 178—81

Rules, 133, 139, 237; of language game, 329 n2o Russell, B., 11, 24-5, 159, 161, 183, 198-201, 215—16, 328 ni6, 348 n2O R-view, 13, 14, 19 S, 16, 20, 36, 65-8 Salience, 201, 222, 226— 31; for v|/, 205—11, 286 Scepticism, 27, 143, 146, 154, 177-8, 215-16, 316-18 Scheduling state, 40, 42, 76, 78, 118 Schlick, M., 319 Searle, J., 358 n7 Selbstandig, 261, 270 Sellars, W., 161, 345 n5, 352 n4 Semantic classification, 165 Semantic freedom, 8, 31, 146, 223, 285 Semantic structure: basic, 5, 36; of a content, 285-8 Semantics, dual nature of, M5 Sentence: complex-structure, 61—144; existence, 230-2; means-, 176, 188; as "sentence," 28, 169, 173, 283; stiff, 111, 190; simple-structure, 19, 61 Sentential contents: as descripta (REs), 23, 179, 284—91; as propositions, 284-91 Sentential operators: and modals, 76, 87; tenses as, 14, 51-2, 326 n5 Sequence-of-tenses (SOT), 68, 71-5, 308 Sequencing (of events), 277 SE relationship: and consequences of tenses, 54—60; and received

view, 12—16; and tense logic, 48—54; and nature of semantics, 146 Settledness, 57—9 Shifts: in attention, 208; in prepositional attitudes, 70-1, 73—6 Situation, 22, 169—70, 176-7, 244-82, 323; abstract, 328 ni8; and aspect, 245-8; Barwise and Perry, 179; with bounds, 246, 248—50, 252—5; complex, 19, 61—144; as projective illusions, 54—60, 323—4; time of, 12, 21; unbounded, 246, 250-2, 255, 260-73 Speaker, 6, 15, 20, 22, 28, 31; dual nature of, 6, 145; as judge (p), 312, 316; as perceiverdescriber («J>), 33—4, 201—2; virtual (in tense logic), 15, 49 Speech: and 'now,' 163; position, 117, 121—2, 159, 161-4, 315' 340 1131; time of, 12—15, 161—4 Speech acts, 358 n7 SR relationship, 17, 19, 20, 22, 59. See also p-v|» relationship; t-»|* relationship S-structure (Chomsky), 170 Stalnaker, R., 340 n3i Stance, 35, 63—5, 68, 126, 342 n3i; critical, 318 States: epistemic modal, 80—6; instantaneous, 254; intentional, 269; iterative, 99—113, 1327, 271; propositional attitude, 62-8, 271-6; root-modal, 77—80; scheduling, 77-80, 268-71; simple, 261-8; as situation type, 246, 255, 290-1; strength of, 268

376 Index Stativity, 261 Status (SE), 332 n42 Stereotype, 193, 213 Stipulation (as a force), 295 Stories: and conditionals, 137—44; contents in stories, 301; and mathematical truth, 241-3; real-world, 58—9, 180— i, 223; and reidentifying reference, 215—16; sentences in stories, 225; and truth, 315—16 Storyteller, 97, 100-11, 144, 292; competent, 298 Storytelling, 31, 56-9, 109—10, 129—37, 211— 15; groups, 32-5, 316; position, 311 Strawson, P., 204, 353 ni2 Subject term, 63, 208—9, 285; and not referring toe, 211, 289, 357 n4 Subjunctive, 122-3, 3°7 Syntax, 28, 353 ng; and government-binding approach, 4, 349 n7; and pictures, 33, 103, 165, 170—1, $i7',pure laine, 9, 172, 176, 186

t, 20, 23, 34, 162—9 t-\\i relationship, 22, 176— 7, 184-211, 284 Tarski, A., 319, 345 n6, 360 ni3 Temporal adverbials, 36— 7; and conditional constructions, 118—20; with epistemic modals, 80-1; and iR, 21, 36; and iterative states,

101—3; and 'when'clauses, 87—9 Temporal scaling, 249 Temporal structure, 12; possible, 17 Temporal topology, 13 Tendency (iterative state), 99 Tense, 9—10; "compound," 13; core view of, 12; duality of, 22, 53; elimination of, 164; future, 39-46; as p-v|j relationship, 22, 106-13, 224—32, 292— 318; received view of, 12; not sentential operators, 51—2, 330 ngg; "simple," 14, 50, 52; as t-4» relationship, 22, 184—211, 284—91 Tense logic, 9, 13—16, 48-54, 297-316 Tense markers, 5, 18—19, 20, 36-46, 46-8, 61-8, 77-9, 80-5, 119-29 Theory, 32, 142-3, 152-3 Tied, 68, 69, 71, 83, 84, 162, 284, 298,316 Token-reflexive theory of tense, 11, 347 ni8 Tokens, 22, 34, 37. See also t Travis, C., 345 nn2, 5 True, 84, 298; holds true, 304; p is true, 304; true thatp, 299, 301, 3°4 Truth, 52, 297—300; analytic, 190, 238; of a conditional, 138; for mathematical sentences, 239—43; necessary, 113, 187; objective, 108—9, 3°8>

312; transparency of, 4' 299. 3 10 > 3 J 3; transportability of, 299, 311, 312; truth-value link, 54, 128, 359 n n ; -values, 357 n6 Truth conditions, 148—57, 171; effective knowledge of, 149 T-sentences, 151, 157, 8

305

We, 28-36; evidential, 108, 126-7, 297—8, 340 1131; identifyingreference, 108, 283—4; picture-referential, 108, 283—4; storytelling, 108—11, 129—37, 144, 297-8 When, 36, 87-99, 101—2, 306 'When'-clause, 36, 101—2; tenses of, 336 ni6 WTzen-constructions, 87— 96, 97-9 Whenever, 133, 306, 336 ni6, 343 n36 Whensoever, 91 While, 94 Wittgenstein, L., 150, 175, 178, 321, 329 n20, 344 n45. 345n2 World, 209, 223 Worldmaking, 142—4, 180-1, 224-5, 231, 323 Wright, C., 111, 320, 344 n45, 346 nn7, 8, 359 n11 n11

0, 26-8, 37-8, 62-144, 244-82 l|>, 22, 24, 28—34, 35, 147,

107,

l 8 2 — 2 l 6 , 283—91