Abstract
A new kind of defense of the Millian theory of names is given, which explains intuitive counter-examples as depending on pragmatic effects of the relevant sentences, by direct application of Grice’s and Sperber and Wilson’s Relevance Theory and uncontroversial assumptions. I begin by arguing that synonyms are always intersubstitutable, despite Mates’ considerations, and then apply the method to names. Then, a fairly large sample of cases concerning names are dealt with in related ways. It is argued that the method, as applied to the various cases, satisfies the criterion of success: that for every sentence in context, it is a counter-example to Millianism to the extent that it has pragmatic effects (matching speakers’ intuitions).
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Notes
Or, if you will, “∃x(x = a & S(x)) iff S(a).” I owe an anonymous referee at Philosophical Studies for suggestions concerning the formulation.
Some may wish to make an exception to (M) for quote-contexts. I find this confused, however, since names do not occur in these contexts, any more than the noun “cat” occurs in “cattle.” What occurs in quote-names of an expression, rather, is a token sequence of letters that belongs to a type-sequence some of whose tokens are tokens of that expression. Had the name “Cicero” occurred in the quote-name “‘Cicero’,” the referent of the latter would have depended on the referent of the former, but clearly does not. Those in doubt may read in an exception to (M), however.
The idea is primarily associated with Salmon (1986, Ch. 6; 1989, III) and Soames (2002, Chs. 3–4, 7–8). Soames’s account of names in propositional attitude contexts appeals mainly to a principle stating that “[a]n assertive utterance in a context C of a propositional attitude ascription, α believes that Fn, containing an ordinary proper name n, results in the assertion of the proposition (semantically) expressed by α believes that F[the x: (Dx & x = n)] in C if (i) it is part of the common background information shared by speakers and hearers in C that the name n is associated by them with the description the x: (Dx & x = n), and as a result of this, an assertive utterance of Fn in C would result in an assertion of the proposition (semantically) expressed by F[the x: (Dx & x = n)] in C; and (ii) the common background information shared by speakers and hearers in C is such that given it, conversational participants in C will readily assume that if the speaker’s assertive utterance is true in the context, then the proposition (semantically) expressed by α believes that F[the x: (Dx & = n)] is true; moreover, each knows this about the other.” (2002, 221 ff.). This is meant to explain intuitions of substitution failures. However, we are not really told when a simple utterance of “Fn” results in an assertion of a descriptively enhanced proposition. Note, first, that there is a de re-de dicto ambiguity of definite descriptions in attitude contexts. On a de re reading, the principle is obviously true (the descriptions are assumed to be known to fit the referent), but unhelpful, since on this interpretation, the attributed belief is simply the singular belief. So we must stick to the de dicto reading. Now, if the descriptively enhanced proposition is asserted whenever the participants of conversation associate the corresponding description with the name, then the principle is definitely too strong. But even if there were an account of when such a proposition is asserted, it does not seem to help with cases where all participants of the conversation associate the same descriptions with two names. We associate the same descriptions with “Cicero” and “Tully,” but nevertheless have counter-Millian intuitions with regard to these names. For instance, we take “Tom believes that Cicero is Tully” to ascribe a non-trivial belief. In this case, one cannot appeal our beliefs about “Tom’s” relations to these names (cf. Soames 2002, 212 ff.), because “Tom” functions here as a “dummy name,” and not one for some particular person. Soames’s account has also been criticized by Kroon (2004), McKinsey (2005), Richard (2006), Sider and Braun (2006) and Caplan (in press) [see also Soames (2005a, b; 2006)]. Prior to Salmon, the idea that pragmatics may help defend Millianism has been vented by Urmson (1968), Tye (1978, p. 224), McKay (1981, 294 ff.), Sainsbury (1983, 12 ff.) and Barwise and Perry (1983). More recently, Saul has given an account, which follows Salmon in taking “believe” to be a three-place predicate with a place for terms picking out guises of beliefs. She takes the relevant pragmatic principle to be the Maxim of Quantity, requiring that speakers be as informative as required (Saul 1998, 383 ff.). Further, on her view, sentences of the form “x believes that p” carry a generalized implicature to the effect that x believes the proposition that p under a guise similar to the sentence “p.” Saul thinks that the implicature is created because “we often require some sort of information about how the belief is held” (1998, p. 384). She here follows Berg’s very brief pragmatic defense (Saul 1988, p. 358). But implicatures are of course created by violations of maxims. But it is difficult to see how the violation is supposed to occur, since the relevant belief sentences always have a complement clause, which, on Saul’s view, is supposed to identify the implicature. In any case, such general accounts do not seem capable of explaining why sentences with names in belief-contexts typically do not carry metalinguistic implicatures [cf. (12) below]. Saul (2002) has now abandoned this idea. Salmon (1989, III) properly identifies a case of maxim violation, namely, where the utterance is “literally false.” However, we will see that there are counter-Millian intuitions also where sentences are semantically true. Salmon also does not explain positively which proposition is implicated and how.
There is also a common but confused idea that propositions are truth-conditions. First, it seems that indeed all conditions are propositions, for we say, for instance, that a condition for x is that p. If “that”-clauses always refer to propositions, then this follows. But surely, a proposition can also have truth-conditions. This only means that there are conditions under which it is true. There are thus semantic truth-conditions and pragmatic ones. In my view, the habitual idea that semantics somehow has more to do with truth than pragmatics is unfounded. Whatever one wishes to single out as essential to semantics (e.g., context-invariance) can be said without mention of truth, and whatever one takes to single out pragmatics can be said with it.
Exceptions are special cases as when one is speaking merely to delay some event, etc. (Sperber & Wilson 1986, p. 161).
Possibly with the exception of a seminar on Millianism, but this does not seem true either. I sense rather strongly that I am saying something false when uttering “If Lois Believes Superman can fly, she must believe Clark Kent can fly.”
It might seem more appropriate to say, “Lois believes that the person named by ‘Superman’ is superhuman....” But the ambiguity of definite descriptions in propositional attitude contexts makes this ambiguous in a crucial and harmful way. The controversy surrounding the semantics of descriptions also make them less suitable here. What is important is that (L) is clearly true (in the fiction) and unambiguous.
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Båve, A. A pragmatic defense of Millianism. Philos Stud 138, 271–289 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-006-9037-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-006-9037-0