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Sense and Nonsense
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2020
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“What kind of psychological theory could relate our use of words to sets of possible worlds?” So queries a recent author, but the question is rhetorical, the insinuation being that any analysis or explanation of semantical notions in terms of possible worlds will involve an account that won't square with a naturalistic view of language acquisition or use. Such feelings are widespread; my purpose here is to argue that they are unjustified.
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- Copyright © The Authors 1979
References
1 Friedman, Michael, “Review of Hilary Putnam's Philosophical Papers,” Philosophical Review 86 (1977), pp. 554.Google Scholar It is nearly a dogma in some quarters that senses don't make (naturalistic) sense, and the view that various intensional notions are incompatible with naturalism, physicalism or some other scientifically respectable outlook is, I think, sufficiently common to require no detailed documentation.
2 For an interesting discussion see Benacerraf's, Paul “Mathematical Truth,” Journal of Philosophy 80 (1973) 661-79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
3 I shall begin with rather simple concepts like red and bachelor; those like red I'll call observational, for, despite its many problems, this notion serves well enough to mark out the relevant examples for present purposes. More complicated cases are taken up below.
4 See Wittgenstein's, Ludwig Philosophical Investigations (New York: Macmillan, 1953), 80.Google Scholar The strategy is in general use and accounts for the high incidence of science-fiction-like examples in recent philosophy.
5 I shall here deal only with declarative sentences. The treatment of other sorts of sentences will doubtless require such notions as fullfillment conditions, compliance conditions and the like. And even for simple declarative sentences Tarksi-style projection rules are likely to be insufficient. Much work has gone into augmenting such rules, however, and the results for many sorts of constructions seem satisfactory, for example those employed in stating truthconditions for sentences involving the alethic modalities. Finally, the semantic account will apply only to sentences in a canonical form; these will need to be linked to sentences of everyday English by transformation rules.
6 Much of the empirical research on concept formation employs subjects who have already mastered a natural language and is concerned with the criteria they employ for grouping objects, the sorts of hypotheses they form about rather articifial concepts, how they test such hypotheses, and so on. It thus has little to do with the formation and use of natural concepts, although the latter are beginning to attract the attention of a number of psychologists. For surveys of recent research on concept formation and use see Neimark, E.D. and Santa, J.L., “Thinking and Concept Attainment,” Annual Review of Psychology 26 (1975), pp. 173–205CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Erickson, J.R. and Jones, M.R., “Thinking,” Annual Review of Psychology 26 (1978), pp. 61–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
7 Carnap, Rudolf, “Meaning and Synonymy in Natural Languages,” Appendix D of Meaning and Necessity [M & N] Chicago: University Press, 1956.Google Scholar
8 Despite the case against individual concepts, many of the putative virtues of senses noted on page two hold for them. Several caveats are in order here, however. It should be noted that if names and some predicates have no descriptive content, the account of propositions sketched above must be complicated somewhat. Also, senses as construed here are not finely enough individuated to alone handle all problems involving propositional attitudes or meaning, for any logically, or otherwise necessarily equivalent sentences will express the same proposition. There is nothing in our approach, however, that stands in the way of our individuating propositions more finely, say be adopting a strategy along the lines suggested by Carnap's notion of intensional isomorphism (see e.g. M & N section 14) or Church's synonymous isomorphism. Since our present task is to examine senses from a naturalistic point of view, I'll not pursue this task here.