Abstract

In De Interpretatione, Aristotle gives a brief account of the relations which obtain between the minds of speakers, the words they speak, and the things in the world they speak about. The words, Aristotle claims, signify thoughts in the mind; these thoughts, in turn, are likenesses of the things in the world spoken about. Against a prevailing view, I argue that the thoughts which play the crucial role in Aristotle's account of linguistic signification are not correct grasps of the essences of the objects they resemble; rather, they constitute what Aristotle calls "empeiria" or experience. ;Having discussed Aristotle's general theory of signs in chapter one, I turn, in chapter two to linguistic signification. This chapter describes the "strongly cognitive" interpretation of Aristotle's semantic theory, according to which words signify thoughts which themselves grasp the essences of the objects they resemble. I argue in chapter three that this interpretation ought to be rejected, on pain of rendering the semantic theory inconsistent with Aristotle's dialectical method. Attention to Aristotle's dialectical discussions reveals that he allows for signification even in the absence of the grasps of essence emphasized by the SC interpretation. ;In chapter four, I defend in more detail my alternative to the SC theory. The thoughts which play the crucial role in Aristotle's semantic theory are the kinds of beliefs which constitute experience. Some of these beliefs correctly posit, while others correctly presuppose that a number of perceived and remembered particulars belong to a certain kind. They fall short, however, of correctly grasping the nature of the relevant kind. Despite this epistemic shortcoming, the empeiria-beliefs make signification of the kind possible. ;Finally, I argue in chapter five that elements of my interpretation of Aristotle's semantic theory are useful for coming to terms with Aristotle's defense of the Principle of Noncontradiction in Metaphysics IV 4. A necessary condition for denying PNC, signifying something definite, is a sufficient condition for seeing that such a denial is mistaken