Abstract
In the philosophy of logic a distinction is often made between the theory of reference and the theory of meaning. 1 In this paper I shall suggest (inter alia) that this distinction, though not without substance, is profoundly misleading. The theory of reference is, I shall argue, the theory of meaning for certain simple types of language. The only entities needed in the so-called theory of meaning are, in many interesting cases and perhaps even in all cases, merely what is required in order for the expressions of our language to be able to refer in certain more complicated situations. Instead of the theory of reference and the theory of meaning we perhaps ought to speak in some cases of the theory of simple and of multiple reference, respectively. Quine has regretted that the term ‘semantics’, which etymologically ought to refer to the theory of meaning, has come to mean the theory of reference.1 I submit that this usage is happier than Quine thinks, and that large parts of the theory of meaning in reality are — or ought to be — but semantical theories for notions transcending the range of certain elementary types of concepts.
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References
See e.g. W. V. O. Quine, From a Logical Point of View, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1953 (2nd ed.: 1961), pp. 130–132.
For a simple recent argument of this sort (without a specific reference to first-order theories), see e.g. William P. Alston, Philosophy of Language, Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1964, p. 13. Cf. also Quine, op. cit. pp. 21–22.
In more general terms, it seems to me hopeless to try to develop a theory of sentential meaning which is not connected very closely with the idea of the information which the sentence can convey to us, or a theory of meaning for individual words which would not show how understanding them contributes to appreciating the information of the sentences in which they occur. There are of course many nuances in the actual use of words and sentences which are not directly explained by connecting meaning and information in this way, assuming that this can be done. However, there do not seem to be any obstacles in principle to explaining these nuances in terms of pragmatic, contextual, and other contingent pressures operating on a language-user. For remarks on this methodological situation, see my paper ‘Epistemic Logic and the Methods of Philosophical Analysis’, Australasian Journal of Philosophy 46 (1968) 37–51.
Donald Davidson, Truth and Meaning’, Synthese 17 (1967) 304–323. Also included in the present volume, p. 1.
See Quine, op. cit., pp. 32–37.
The main reason why the truth of these observations is not appreciated more widely seems to be the failure to consider realistically what the actual use of a first-order language (say for the purpose of conveying information to another person) would look like.
The basic problems as to what happens when this possibility is taken seriously are discussed in my paper, ‘Studies in the Logic of Existence and Necessity F, The Monist 50 (1966) 55–76.
This is certainly true of Frege. His very interest in oblique contexts seems to have been kindled by the realization that they cannot be handled by means of the ideas he had successfully applied to first-order logic.
The term seems to go back to Bertrand Russell, An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth, George Allen and Unwin, London, 1940.
An important qualification here is that for deep logical reasons one cannot usually distinguish effectively between what is ‘really’ a logically possible world and what merely ‘appears’ on the face of one’s language (or thinking) to be a possibility. This, in a sufficiently sharp analysis, is what destroys the pleasant invariance of propositional attitudes with respect to logical equivalence. Even though p and q are equivalent, i.e. even though the ‘real’ possibilities concerning the world that they admit and exclude are the same, I have studied this concept of an ‘apparent’ possibility and its consequences at some length elsewhere (especially in the second and third paper printed in Deskription, Analytizität und Existenz (ed. by Paul Weingartner), Pustet, Salzburg and Munich, 1966, in ‘Are Logical Truths Analytic?’, Philosophical Review 74 (1965) 178–203, in ‘Surface Information and Depth Information’, forthcoming in Information and Inference (ed. by K. J. J. Hintikka and P. Suppes), D. Reidel Publishing Co., Dordrecht, 1969), and in ‘Are Mathematical Truths Synthetic A Priori?’, Journal of Philosophy, 65 (198) 640–651. It is an extremely interesting concept to study and to codify. However, it is not directly relevant to the concerns of the present paper, and would in any case break its confines. Hence it will not be taken up here, except by way of this caveat.
There is a distinction here which is not particularly relevant to my concerns in the present paper but important enough to be noted in passing, especially as I have not made it clear in my earlier work. What precisely are the worlds ‘alternative to’ a given one, say µ? A moment’s reflection on the principles underlying my discussion will show, I trust, that they must be taken to be worlds compatible with a certain person’s having a definite propositional attitude in p, and not just compatible with the content of his attitude, for instance, compatible with someone’s knowing something in p and not just compatible with what he knows. I failed to spell this out in my Knowledge and Belief (Cornell Univ. Press, Ithaca, N.Y., 1962), as R. Chisholm in effect pointed out in his review article, ‘The Logic of Knowing’, Journal of Philosophy 60 (1963) 773–795.
As the reader will notice, I am misusing (in the interest of simplicity) my terminology systematically by speaking elliptically of ‘the person a’ etc. when ‘the person referred to by a* or some such thing is meant. I do not foresee any danger of confusion resulting from this, however.
E.g. Quine, op. cit., pp. 1–14, W.V.O. Quine, Word and Object, The MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., and John Wiley, New York and London, 1960, pp. 241–243. It is not quite clear from Quine’s exposition, however, precisely how much emphasis is to be put on the word ‘ontology’ in his criterion of ontological commitment. My discussion which focuses on this word may thus have to be taken as a qualification to Quine’s criterion rather than as outright criticism.
Quine, From a Logical Point of View, pp. 130–132.
For a discussion of the problems connected with the substitutivity principle, see my exchange with Føllesdal: Dagfinn Føllesdal, ‘Knowledge, Identity, and Existence’, Theoria 33(1967) 1–27; Jaakko Hintikka, ‘Existence and Identity in Epistemic Contexts’, ibid. 138–147.
See Quine, From a Logical Point of View, ch. 8; Word and Object, ch. 6; The Ways of Paradox and Other Essays, Random House, New York, 1966, chapters 13–15.
Some arguments to this effect were given in Knowledge and Belief (ref. 11 above), pp. 142–146. The only informed criticism of this criticism that I have seen has been presented by R. L. Sleigh, in a paper entitled ‘A Note on an Argument of Hintikka’s’, Philosophical Studies 18 (1967) 12–14. As I point out in my reply, ‘Partially Transparent Senses of Knowing’ (forthcoming), Sleigh’s argument turns on an ambiguity in my original formulation which is easily repaired. Neither the ambiguity nor its elimination provides any solace to the adherents of the view I have criticized, however.
One thing at which this old distinction aims is obviously the distinction (which I am about to explain) between statements about whoever or whatever meets a description and statements about the individual who in fact does so. For the distinction, cf. Jaakko Hintikka, ‘Individuals, Possible Worlds, and Epistemic Logic’, Nous 1 (1967) 32–62, especially 46–49, as well as ‘“Knowing Oneself” and Other Problems in Epistemic Logic’, Theoria 32 (1966) 1–13.
Cf. below (Section XII).
Cf. here my paper, ‘On the Logic of Perception’, forthcoming in Perception and Personal Identity (ed. by N. Care and R. Grimm), Case Western Reserve Univ. Press, Cleveland, 1969.
For temporal modalities, see e.g. A.N.Prior, Past, Present and Future, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1967. — I am not saying that our actual methods of cross-identification in the case of temporal modalities (i.e. on ordinary methods of re-identification) turn on continuity quite as exclusively as I am about to suggest. It suffices for my purposes to present an example of methods of cross-identification that allows both ‘branching’ and ‘merging’, and it seems to me at least conceivably that temporal modalities might under suitable circumstances create such a situation.
This is argued in ‘On the Logic of Perception’ (ref. 20 above).
Cf. e.g. R. Carnap, Meaning and Necessity, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1947 (2nd ed.: 1956), pp. 41, 180–181, and Section VI supra.
Cf. Gottlob Frege, ‘Über Sinn und Bedeutung’, Zeitschrift für Philosophie und philosophische Kritik 100 (1892) 25–50, especially p. 26, last few lines.
Cf. ‘On the Logic of Perception’ (ref. 20 above).
Views closely resembling some of those which I am putting forward here (and in some cases anticipating them) have been expressed by David Kaplan, Richard Montague, Dagfinn Føllesdal, Stig Kanger, Saul Kripke, and others. Here I am not trying to relate my own ideas to theirs. It is only fair, however, to emphasize my direct and indirect debts to these writers.
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Hintikka, J. (1969). Semantics for Propositional Attitudes. In: Davis, J.W., Hockney, D.J., Wilson, W.K. (eds) Philosophical Logic. Synthese Library, vol 20. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-9614-0_2
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