Philosophical Analysis in the Twentieth Century, Volume 2

The Age of Meaning

Scott Soames

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN: 9780691123127, 9780691115740
• eBook ISBN: 9781400825806
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Modern Philosophy

This is a major, wide-ranging history of analytic philosophy since 1900, told by one of the tradition's leading contemporary figures. The first volume takes the story from 1900 to mid-century. The second brings the history up to date.


As Scott Soames tells it, the story of analytic philosophy is one of great but uneven progress, with leading thinkers making important advances toward solving the tradition's core problems. Though no broad philosophical position ever achieved lasting dominance, Soames argues that two methodological developments have, over time, remade the philosophical landscape. These are (1) analytic philosophers' hard-won success in understanding, and distinguishing the notions of logical truth, a priori truth, and necessary truth, and (2) gradual acceptance of the idea that philosophical speculation must be grounded in sound prephilosophical thought. Though Soames views this history in a positive light, he also illustrates the difficulties, false starts, and disappointments endured along the way. As he engages with the work of his predecessors and contemporaries--from Bertrand Russell and Ludwig Wittgenstein to Donald Davidson and Saul Kripke--he seeks to highlight their accomplishments while also pinpointing their shortcomings, especially where their perspectives were limited by an incomplete grasp of matters that have now become clear.


Soames himself has been at the center of some of the tradition's most important debates, and throughout writes with exceptional ease about its often complex ideas. His gift for clear exposition makes the history as accessible to advanced undergraduates as it will be important to scholars. Despite its centrality to philosophy in the English-speaking world, the analytic tradition in philosophy has had very few synthetic histories. This will be the benchmark against which all future accounts will be measured.

PART ONE

LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN’S PHILOSOPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS

CHAPTER 1

REJECTION OF THE TRACTARIAN

CONCEPTION OF LANGUAGE

AND ANALYSIS

CHAPTER OUTLINE

1. Critique of the Tractarian Conception of Language

The Augustinian picture vs. the conception of meaning as use

Conceptual prerequisites of ostensive definitions

Reference and analysis

The meaning and reference of names

Language games, family resemblances, and vagueness

2. Wittgenstein’s New Conception of Language and Linguistic Analysis

Ordinary language is not to be understood on the model of logical calculi; sentences have neither hidden logical forms nor unique analyses

Language use is not to be explained by speakers knowing and being guided by linguistic rules, but rather by unthinking, socially-conditioned agreement

3. Wittgenstein’s Deflationary Conception of Philosophy

Roots of this conception in his identification of the philosophical with the necessary and apriori, of these with the analytic

Doctrines of the Investigations as self-undermining because they lead to a conception of philosophy which they do not fit

Overview of The Philosophical Investigations

There are three main topics in the Philosophical Investigations : (i) a critique of what Wittgenstein regards as the dominant referential conception of meaning, and a proposal to replace it with a conception in which to use language meaningfully is to master a certain kind of social practice; (ii) a critique of the previously dominant conception of philosophical analysis, and the substitution of a new conception of analysis to play the central role in philosophy; and (iii) the development of a new philosophical psychology in which what appear on the surface to be sentences that report private sensations and other internal mental events or states are viewed as having meanings which license their assertion on the basis of public criteria having to do with behavior and external circumstances. The book’s center of gravity is the discussion of what it is to follow a (linguistic) rule, and the lessons drawn from it about (i), (ii), and (iii). However, Wittgenstein does not start with this. Instead, he begins with preliminary critiques of his earlier, Tractarian conceptions of language and analysis. He then uses the discussion of rule following to strengthen his critiques, to illuminate his new conceptions of meaning and analysis, and to illustrate their consequences by applying them to psychological sentences. We will follow him in this. In this chapter we will deal with (i) and (ii); in the next chapter we will be concerned with (iii).

The Critique of Tractarian Descriptivism

The Augustinian Picture vs. the Conception of Meaning as Use

We begin with Wittgenstein’s critique of the central tenets of his earlier referentialism about language. The view under attack holds that the meaning of an expression is what it names or stands for, and the meaning of a sentence is a possible fact the actual existence of which would make the sentence true. Natural corollaries of the view stipulate that learning a language, and being a competent user of its expressions, is the result of recognizing correlations between words and the objects they stand for, and that being justified in accepting a contingent, empirical sentence S involves having reason to believe that the language-independent possible state of affairs which constitutes the truth conditions of S actually obtains.

Wittgenstein introduces this picture of language in section 1 of the Investigations with a quote from Augustine:

When they (my elders) named some object, and accordingly moved towards something, I saw this and I grasped that the thing was called by the sound they uttered when they meant to point it out. Their intention was shown by their bodily movements, as it were the natural language of all peoples: the expression of the face, the play of the eyes, the movement of other parts of the body, and the tone of voice which expresses our state of mind in seeking, having, rejecting, or avoiding something. Thus, as I heard words repeatedly used in their proper places in various sentences, I gradually learnt to understand what objects they signified; and after I had trained my mouth to form these signs, I used them to express my own desires.¹

Wittgenstein’s summary of the view is as follows:

These words, it seems to me, give us a particular picture of the essence of human language. It is this: the individual words in language name objects—sentences are combinations of such names.— In this picture of language we find the roots of the following idea: Every word has a meaning. This meaning is correlated with the word. It is the object for which the word stands.

Having presented this picture, Wittgenstein immediately challenges it with his example of the five red apples. He says:

Now think of the following use of language: I send someone shopping. I give him a slip marked “five red apples”. He takes the slip to the shopkeeper, who opens the drawer marked “apples”; then he looks up the word “red” in a table and finds a color sample opposite it; then he says the series of cardinal numbers—I assume that he knows them by heart—up to the word “five” and for each number he takes an apple of the same color as the sample out of the drawer.—It is in this and similar ways that one operates with words.—“But how does he know where and how he is to look up the word ‘red’ and what he is to do with the word ‘five’?”—Well, I assume that he acts as I have described. Explanations come to an end somewhere.—But what is the meaning of the word “five”?— No such thing was in question here, only how the word “five” is used.²

In explaining what it is to understand the expression five red apples, Wittgenstein here recounts what one would do with it. Mastery of the numeral ‘five’ is not explained by finding some unique object for it to name; rather, mastery is a matter of engaging in certain sorts of routine that govern its application. The shopkeeper recites a series of sounds—one, two, three, four, five—and correlates them one-to-one with a series of acts—each act involving taking an apple out of the drawer. Mastery of the numerals is mastery of routines like this. This is Wittgenstein’s first example of the thesis that meaning is use.

In sections 2 and 6–21, he continues the theme of meaning as use with the example of the primitive language of a builder and his assistant. Here, the sentences—Pillar, Slab, Block, and Beam—are not used as descriptions; rather, they are used to give orders. Wittgenstein goes on to emphasize many different uses of sentences as a way of undermining the tendency to take describing, stating a fact, or asserting something as primary. The value of undermining this picture is that it allows him to concentrate on using language as participating in many kinds of social activity. In the elementary language game he describes, there is no referring to an object and predicating a property of it. There is only the co-ordination of words and actions. The moves in the language game are meaningful in so far as they contribute to the coordination of the actions of the builder and his assistant.

Conceptual Prerequisites of Ostensive Definitions

One case study for the thesis that meaning is use is provided by names. At section 26 Wittgenstein starts talking about proper names, common nouns like cat, red, and round, and ostensive definitions. He has already pointed out that many parts of language are not names. Now he emphasizes that even when we introduce a name with an ostensive definition, the definition requires background assumptions in order to work. For example, suppose I point to one of the buttons on my shirt and say This is red, in an attempt to convey to you the meaning of the word red. In order for you to understand my intention, you need to know what I am pointing at—at myself, at my chest, at my shirt, at the button?—and you also need to know which aspect of the thing I am pointing at is the one I am characterizing—its size, its shape, its color, its price? This is where the needed background assumptions come in; it is only by relying on them that I can get my meaning across.

It is certainly true that these background beliefs are necessary in order for an ostensive definition to work; however, Wittgenstein appears to go beyond this, and suggest something stronger—namely, that ostensive definition (in the sense of the Augustinian picture discussed in section 1) makes sense only if one has already mastered a significant part of language in advance. For example, if you are not sure how to interpret my ostensive definition of red, I might clarify things by saying The color of the buttons on my shirt is red. But that presupposes that you have already understood the words color, buttons, and shirt.

Wittgenstein realizes that there are cases in which I could give my ostensive definition, This is red, and you would get the idea without my having to use any further words, because you would correctly guess that I was pointing to one of my buttons and talking about its color. In light of this, one wonders whether further language is always needed to understand an ostensive definition after all. Wittgenstein addresses this point in section 32.

Someone coming into a strange country will sometimes learn the language of the inhabitants from ostensive definitions that they give him; and he will often have to guess the meaning of these definitions; and will guess sometimes right, sometimes wrong.

And now, I think, we can say: Augustine describes the learning of human language as if the child came into a strange country and did not understand the language of the country; that is, as if it already had a language, only not this one. Or again: as if the child could already think, only not yet speak. And “think” would here mean something like “talk to itself ”.

There is something quite striking about this passage. Wittgenstein seems to equate (i) a child’s ability to have thoughts about what the words he has been exposed to stand for with (ii) the child’s already having a language in which to express those thoughts. Since it is presumably absurd to suppose that the child already has such a language, Wittgenstein seems to be casting doubt on the idea that the child can think at all prior to having learned his first language.

To this one is tempted to reply: “Of course the child can think before he has learned to speak. Have you ever been around young children? It is obvious that they have thoughts before they can speak. Moreover, they would be in pretty bad shape if they couldn’t have such thoughts. How could they learn anything—let alone language—if they couldn’t do at least some thinking first? ” However, Wittgenstein would not accept this reply. One of the themes of the Investigations is that terms like think and understand, whi...

Table of contents

• Table of Contents
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• INTRODUCTION
• PART ONE
• CHAPTER 1: REJECTION OF THE TRACTARIAN CONCEPTION OF LANGUAGE AND ANALYSIS
• CHAPTER 2: RULE FOLLOWING AND THE PRIVATE LANGUAGE ARGUMENT
• PART TWO
• CHAPTER 3: RYLE'S DILEMMAS
• CHAPTER 4: RYLE'S CONCEPT OF MIND
• CHAPTER 5: STRAWSON'S PERFORMATIVE THEORY OF TRUTH
• CHAPTER 6: HARE'S PERFORMATIVE THEORY OF GOODNESS
• PART THREE
• CHAPTER 7: MALCOLM'S PARADIGM CASE ARGUMENT
• CHAPTER 8: AUSTIN'S SENSE AND SENSIBILIA
• PART FOUR
• CHAPTER 9: LANGUAGE USE AND THE LOGIC OF CONVERSATION
• PART FIVE
• CHAPTER 10: THE INDETERMINACY OF TRANSLATION
• CHAPTER 11: QUINE'S RADICAL SEMANTIC ELIMINATIVISM
• PART SIX
• CHAPTER 12: THEORIES OF TRUTH AS THEORIES OF MEANING
• CHAPTER 13: TRUTH, INTERPRETATION, AND THE ALLEGED UNINTELLIGIBILITY OF ALTERNATIVE CONCEPTUAL SCHEMES
• PART SEVEN
• CHAPTER 14: NAMES, ESSENCE, AND POSSIBILITY
• CHAPTER 15: THE NECESSARY APOSTERIORI
• CHAPTER 16: THE CONTINGENT APRIORI
• CHAPTER 17: NATURAL KIND TERMS AND THEORETICAL IDENTIFICATION STATEMENTS
• EPILOGUE