Benhabib recasts the Derridean idea of `iteration' in democratic terms. While adhering to the original idea that both the fundamental terms of political consociation and the identity of the people itself is `radically' open, Benhabib argues that deliberative norms do and should frame the process of reiteration. For the deliberative democrat, the democratic constitution is not a would-be barrier to iterability (which we are told cannot be contained anyway); it is rather a communicative or discursive space in which the hitherto (...) suppressed or not yet present voice of other people finds its way and expands the terms of meaning giving and hence reason giving. The democratic constitution enables iteration; it is one side of a dialectic that relies upon, balances and, in some sense, makes the most of people power. Immigrants, in the final analysis, are the latest group to proclaim their presence in the sphere of constitutional interpretation, and thereby recalibrate the interpretive frame. And when they make their presence known in this way they have truly become a part of the `people'. When, however, they make their presence known in ways that undermine constitutional self-understanding, instead of engaging it, they are `not us'. Benhabib is hesitant to add this last bit, as she is hesitant to admit how much the constitutional identity of a people `rift with otherness' is reliant upon the historical referent and the generative/steering power of the right sort of constitutional court. (shrink)

According to the 'axiom of existence', Adopted in this article, Terms which do not denote existent entities do not denote at all. 'past entities', 'future entities', 'possible entities', 'fictional entities', Etc. Do not exist. The class of denoting terms has, Therefore, A changing membership. 'nixon' denotes now, But will fail to denote one hundred years from now. The same is true for terms indicating properties (e.G., '... Is a missile'). A theory of meaning and truth is developed on the (...) basis of this axiom. A denotationless term may still be meaningful. 'x' means, In english, 'the entity which ...' where the dots stand for a certain conjunction of open sentences known to speakers of english in various degrees, Found in reference books of authority, Etc. A statement can be true through either correspondence or analyticity. Thus 'nixon is the u.S. President' is (now) true in both ways. 'socrates was a philosopher', '2+2=4', And 'hamlet killed polonius' are only analytically true. 'polonius killed hamlet' is false. (shrink)

Wayne Davis presents a highly original approach to the foundations of semantics, showing how the so-called "expression" theory of meaning can handle names and other problematic cases of nondescriptive meaning. The fact that thoughts have parts ("ideas" or "concepts") is fundamental: Davis argues that like other unstructured words, names mean what they do because they are conventionally used to express atomic or basic ideas. In the process he shows that many pillars of contemporary philosophical semantics, from twin earth (...) arguments to the necessity of identity, are unfounded. (shrink)

This article responds to a case-based argument by Mark Richard that rule of reference is not essential to meaning. It objects that the argument requires shifting between understanding the relevant term in the case, ‘marriage,’ as a determinable, in order to support one premise, and a determinate, in order to support another. On no univocal interpretation can both premises be made true.

This volume presents a selection of the most important writings in the debate on the nature of meaning and reference which started one hundred years ago with Frege's classic essay "On Sense and Reference." Contributors include Bertrand Russell, P.F. Strawson, W.V. Quine, Donald Davidson, John McDowell, Michael Dummett, Hilary Putnam, Saul Kripke, David Wiggins, and Gareth Evans. The aim of this series is to bring together important recent writings in major areas of philosophical inquiry, selected from a (...) wide variety of sources, mostly periodicals, which may not be conveniently available to the university student or the general reader. (shrink)

UNCLEAR as it is, the traditional doctrine that the notion "meaning" possesses the extension/intension ambiguity has certain typical consequences. The doctrine that the meaning of a term is a concept carried the implication that mean- ings are mental entities. Frege, however, rebelled against this "psy- chologism." Feeling that meanings are public property-that the same meaning can be "grasped" by more than one person and by persons at different times-he identified concepts (and hence "intensions" or meanings) with abstract (...) entities rather than mental entities. However, "grasping" these abstract entities was still an individual psychological act. None of these philosophers doubted that understanding a word (knowing its intension) was just a matter of being in a certain psychological state (somewhat in the way in which knowing how to factor numbers in one's head is just a mat- ter of being in a certain very complex psychological state). (shrink)

According to Jerry Fodor, meaningful expressions denoting no actual entity, like „unicom", do not constitute an exception to his project of semantic naturalization based on the notion of asymmetrical dependence between causal relations. But Fodor does not give any principled reason in order to show that, say, a non-unicom caused "unicom"-token means UNICORN, as he on the contrary does regarding a non-X caused "X"-token for any existing X. Nevertheless, his claim that one such expression has a mere denotational meaning (...) can be accounted for, though in a non-naturalistic way. Suffice it that one appeals to the weak Meinongianism contained in the thesis that one can directly refer to possible entities by means of suitable fixing reference description. (shrink)

Historicism -- Time -- Interpretation -- Representation -- Reference -- Truth -- Meaning -- Presence -- Experience (I) -- Experience (II) -- Subjectivity -- Politics.

This article is a modern socratic dialogue between socrates and theaetetus presented in the "ordinary language." the discussion centers on self-Referring statements and their meaning. (staff).

This volume, comprising Supplementary v.23 (1997) of the Canadian Journal of Philosophy, presents eight new essays by contemporary philosophers of language. It covers skepticism about meaning and reference, vagueness, rigid designation, de re belief, pronominal anaphora, Quinean objections to quanti.

This article introduces three arguments that share a single conclusion: that a comprehensive science of language cannot describe relations of semantic reference, i.e. word–world relations. Spelling this out, if there is to be a genuine science of linguistic meaning, then a theory of meaning cannot involve assigning external, real-world, objects to names, nor sets of external objects to predicates, nor truth values to sentences. Most of the article tries to explain and defend this broad conclusion. The article (...) also presents, in a very limited way, a positive alternative to external-referent semantics for expressions. This alternative has two parts: first, that the meanings of words and sentences are mental instructions, not external things; second, that it is people who refer by using words and sentences, and word/sentence meanings play but a partial role in allowing speakers to talk about the world. (shrink)

In a recent article entitled “Tensed Sentences and Free Repeatability” (The Philosophical Review,” 1973), Stephen E. Braude puts forward the following argument: (a) Nonsimultaneous replicas of tensed sentences have the same sense; (b) therefore, tensed sentences are not translatable into tenseless sentences. I point out that the plausibility of (a) depends on which theory of meaning is true. If the rules of use theory of meaning is true, then (a) is true, but if either the content or (...) class='Hi'>reference theory of meaning is true, (a) is questionable. I also point out that some philosophers, such as Nelson Goodman and W. V. O. Quine, who deny (b) in order to make philosophical claims about the status of temporal becoming and perspicuous languages, do not state whether the equivalence of tensed and tenseless sentences is an equivalence of rules of use, content, or reference. Braude has shown that a rules of use version of (b) is true, but not that a content or reference version of (b) is true. (shrink)

This paper argues that a certain type of self-referential sentence falsifies the widespread assumption that a declarative sentence's meaning is identical to its truth condition. It then argues that this problem cannot be assimilated to certain other problems that the assumption in question is independently known to face.

Algunos nombres usados en nuestro lenguaje no se aplican efectivamente a nada ni nadie si son tomados de forma literal, pues carecen de referente. En términos searleanos, su significatividad no depende que puedan dar cuenta o no de ejemplares en el mundo; su significatividad se "mide" en el uso de ellos en tal o cual discurso, en medio de explicaciones o caracterizaciones forjadas por reglas, pues hablar un lenguaje es tomar parte activa en una conducta compleja gobernada por reglas. Este (...) artículo sustenta cómo en la filosofía de Searle la significatividad de los discursos, entre ellos los de la ciencia o los de la ficción, se logra en la emisión de actos ilocucionarios que hacen posible la invención de mundos cargados de significados, aun cuando estos carezcan de referencia directa. Some names in our language are not indeed applied to anything or nobody if they are taken literally, because they lack their referent. According to Searle, names´ significance does not depend on how they can give account or not of world samples; their significance "is measured" in the use of them in this or that speech, amid explanations or characterizations forged by rules, because to speak a language it is to take active part in a complex rule-governed behavior. This article supports how in the philosophy of Searle meaningfulness of speeches, including those of science or fiction, is achieved in the issuance of illocutionary acts that make possible the invention of worlds full of meanings, even when they lack direct referent. (shrink)

Most linguists and philosophers will tell you that whatever meaning is, it determines the reference of names, the satisfaction conditions of nouns and verbs, the truth conditions of sentences; in linguist speak, meaning determines semantic value. So a change in semantic value implies a change in meaning. So the semantic value a meaning determines is essential to that meaning: holding contributions from context constant, if two words have different semantic values they cannot mean the (...) same thing. If this is correct, then in a fairly straightforward sense reference is essential to meaning. In this paper I argue that reference is not essential to meaning by giving an example in which groups in different circumstances use a phrase with the same meaning but a different reference. (shrink)

I argue that a certain initially appealing Fregean conception of our shared semantic competence in our shared language cannot be made good. In particular, I show that we must reject two fundamental Fregean principles‐what I call Frege's Adequacy Condition and what I call Frege's Cognitive Constraint on Reference Determination. Frege's adequacy condition says that in an adequate semantic theory, sentence meanings must have the same fineness of grain as attitude contents. The Cognitive Constraint on Reference Determination says that (...) in an adequate semantic theory mechanisms of reference determination will fix routes of epistemic access to referents and will mediate one‐sided recognition judgments about referents. I argue against Frege's adequacy condition that if meanings are sliced as finely as it requires there will be too many meanings to go around. I argue against the cognitive constraint on reference determination that even in an adequate theory of reference, mechanisms of reference determination must be sharply distinguished from routes of epistemic access. If so, we have little reason to expect an adequate theory of reference determination to directly illuminate Frege's cognitive puzzles or be sufficient to explain the basis of our one‐sided recognition judgments. (shrink)

To Aristotle, spoken words are symbols, not of objects in the world, but of our mental experiences related to these objects. Presently there are two major strands of interpretation of Aristotle’s concept of the linguistic sign. First, there is the structuralist account offered by Coseriu (Geschichte der Sprachphilosophie. Von den Anfängen bis Rousseau, 2003 [1969], pp. 65–108) whose interpretation is reminiscent of the Saussurean sign concept. A second interpretation, offered by Lieb (in: Geckeler (Ed.) Logos Semantikos: Studia Linguistica in Honorem (...) Eugenio Coseriu 1921–1981, 1981) and Weidemann (in: Schmitter (Ed.) Geschichte der Sprachtheorie 2. Sprachtheorien der abendländischen Antike, 1991), says that Aristotle’s concept of the linguistic sign is similar to the one presented in Ogden and Richard’s (The meaning of meaning: A study of the influence of language upon thought and of the science of symbolism, 1970 [1923]) semiotic triangle. This paper starts off with an introductory outline of the so-called phýsei-thései discussion which started during presocratic times and culminated in Plato’s Cratylus. Aristotle’s concept of the linguistic sign is to be regarded as a solution to the stalemate position reached in the Cratylus. Next, a discussion is offered of both Coseriu’s and Lieb’s analysis. We submit that Aristotle’s concept of the linguistic sign shows features of both Saussure’s and Ogden and Richards’s sign concept but that it does not exclusively predict one of the two. We argue that Aristotle’s concept of the linguistic sign is based on three different relations which together evince his teleological as well empiricist point of view: one internal (symbolic) relation and two external relations, i.e. a likeness relation and a relation katà synthéken. (shrink)

The bases for the author's semantic theory include a study of the historical development of word meanings, links in developmental processes, and the various explanations of the facts of a language. The book includes discussions of the function of language, the definition of verbal meaning, and the production and comprehension of speech.

The problem of universals, at least in its modern form, often begins from questions which seem, in principle, decidable by the sorts of experimental procedures carried on in descriptive semantics, or in applied linguistics. These are questions about the role which pronouns, common nouns, adjectives etc. play in natural languages. But these apparently scientific questions are interpreted by philosophers in ways which give rise to metaphysical conundrums ? to problems which arc not in principle decidable. The paper traces some of (...) the factors which impel philosophers to interpret these questions in the way they do. The author's thesis is that questions about the roles which linguistic expressions play are often interpreted as questions about the meaning of these words, and these, in turn, are thought to be questions asking for the identification of differing sorts of objects in the universe (e. g., particulars, universals). The author attempts to show in detail why such interpretations of ordinary questions are improper. (shrink)

The Transparent Intensional Logic explicates the meaning of a linguistic expression as a construction. The construction is a hyperintensional entity. It is characterised as instructions for a „calculation“ of a concrete value. In the terminology of Pavel Tichy a linguistic expression denotes its meaning , which construes the signification of the expression. If the signification is an intension, we can call it a reference of the expression. In several semantic conceptions the question of the denotation and of (...) the reference are not treated equally. The terminological chaos can be resolved in a specific way thanks to „fine-grained“ character of the logical analysis offered by TIL. (shrink)

This paper explores the possibility of resisting meaning scepticism – the thesis that there are many alternative incompatible assignments of reference to each of our terms - by appealing to the idea that the nature of reference is to maximize knowledge. If the reference relation is a knowledge maximizing-relation, then some candidate referents are privileged among the others - i.e., those referents we are in a position to know about – and a positive reason against (...) class='Hi'>meaning scepticism is thus individuated. A knowledge-maximizing principle on the nature of reference was proposed by Williamson in a recent paper (Williamson 2005). According to Williamson, such a principle would count as a defeasible reason for thinking that most of our beliefs tend to be true. My paper reverses Williamson’s dialectic, and argues that reference is knowledge-maximizing from the premise that most of our beliefs tend to be true. (shrink)

A volume of studies in philosophical logic by a group of younger philosophers in the UK. There is a core of problems in the theory of meaning which have been accorded a central importance by philosophers, logicians and theoretical linguists, and which have stimulated some of the most powerful and original work in these subjects. The contributors to the volume have a common interest in these topics, insist on their continuing and fundamental importance, and offer here a distinctive and (...) original contribution to them. (shrink)

As a product of natural selection, pain behavior must serve an adaptive function for the species beyond the accurate portrayal of the pain experience. Pain behavior does not simply refer to the pain experience, but promotes survival of the species in various and complex ways. This means that there is no purely respondent or operant pain behavior found in nature.

This paper is a contribution to the historical roots of the analytical tradition. As Michael Dummett points out in his Origins of Analytic Philosophy, many tendencies in Central European thought contributed to the early development of analytic philosophy. Dummett himself concentrates on just one aspect of this historical complex, namely on the relationship between the theories of meaning and reference developed by Frege and by Husserl in the years around the turn of the century. It is to this (...) specific issue that the present essay is devoted, though we attempt a more sympathetic reading of Husserl's views on these matters than is to be found in Dummett’s work. Topics covered include Husserl’s theory of intentionality, his view of meanings as types or essences of mental acts, of the relation between meaning and expression, of states of affairs, and of indexicality. (shrink)

In "representing and intervening", Ian hacking argues that on a fregean semantics of scientific theory, Incommensurability between competing theories threatens, In the strong sense of precluding their being about the same entities; whereas no such threat arises on putnam's account. On fregean principles, Hacking's argument would however at best support a much weaker claim. In any case, The pivot of his argument is the completely unfounded assumption that the fregean is commited to semantical holism.

To Aristotle, spoken words are symbols, not of objects in the world, but of our mental experiences related to these objects. Presently there are two major strands of interpretation of Aristotle’s concept of the linguistic sign. First, there is the structuralist account offered by Coseriu (Geschichte der Sprachphilosophie. Von den Anfängen bis Rousseau, 2003 [1969], pp. 65–108) whose interpretation is reminiscent of the Saussurean sign concept. A second interpretation, offered by Lieb (in: Geckeler (Ed.) Logos Semantikos: Studia Linguistica in Honorem (...) Eugenio Coseriu 1921–1981, 1981) and Weidemann (in: Schmitter (Ed.) Geschichte der Sprachtheorie 2. Sprachtheorien der abendländischen Antike, 1991), says that Aristotle’s concept of the linguistic sign is similar to the one presented in Ogden and Richard’s (The meaning of meaning: A study of the influence of language upon thought and of the science of symbolism, 1970 [1923]) semiotic triangle. This paper starts off with an introductory outline of the so-called phýsei-thései discussion which started during presocratic times and culminated in Plato’s Cratylus. Aristotle’s concept of the linguistic sign is to be regarded as a solution to the stalemate position reached in the Cratylus. Next, a discussion is offered of both Coseriu’s and Lieb’s analysis. We submit that Aristotle’s concept of the linguistic sign shows features of both Saussure’s and Ogden and Richards’s sign concept but that it does not exclusively predict one of the two. We argue that Aristotle’s concept of the linguistic sign is based on three different relations which together evince his teleological as well empiricist point of view: one internal (symbolic) relation and two external relations, i.e. a likeness relation and a relation katà synthéken. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to present an interpretation of Shepherd’s account of our most fundamental cognitive powers, most especially the faculty that Shepherd calls perception, which she claims is a unity of contributions from the understanding and the senses. I find that Shepherd is what we would nowadays call a meaning holist: she holds that the meaning of any natural-kind term is constituted by its place in a system of definitions, which system specifies the causal roles (...) of the objects its terms name. Such an account of meaning raises questions about the contact that such a system of definitions, or conceptual scheme, makes with the world. The natural place to seek answers to these questions is in Shepherd’s account of perception, which I argue Shepherd takes to be our most fundamental cognitive faculty. Our cognitive lives begin with perceptions, representations of objects as the cause of those very perceptions of them. With this interpretation in hand, I draw a contrast between it and Boyle’s and Lolordo’s recent work on Shepherd’s theory of meaning. I argue that for Shepherd truths about the causal powers of objects are analytic, and that the relevant empirical questions answered by science concern whether our conceptual scheme accurately represents the world. Finally, I provide additional support for this interpretation by showing that it comports with Shepherd’s criticism of her philosophical opponents, Berkeley, Hume, and Reid. (shrink)

Reference is a basic feature of human language. A much debated question in the scholarship on animal communication and language evolution is whether traces of the human capacity for reference can be found in animals too. Do animals refer to things with their signals in the manner that humans do? Or is reference something that is unique to human communication? Answers to these questions have shifted significantly over the years and remain contentious. In this paper, I start (...) by reconstructing and critically analysing three influential discussions of the ways in which animal signals refer: the theory of functional reference (Marler, Evans and Hauser, 1992), Wheeler and Fischer (2012)’s meaning attribution framework, and Scarantino (2013)’s revised definition of functional reference. I show that functional reference, both in its traditional and revised version, as well as the meaning attribution framework, fail to adequately characterise animal reference as an evolutionary precursor of linguistic reference. This is because they all overlook at least some aspects of the psychology of signal production. Nonetheless, drawing on Crockford et al. (2012, 2017), I show that we can plausibly interpret chimpanzees’ alert hoos as a case of intentional, human-like animal reference. (shrink)

Jizang sets forth a hermeneutical theory of “one name, infinite meanings” that proposes four types of interpretation of word meaning to the effect that a nominal word X means X, non-X, the negation of X, and all things whatsoever. In this article, I offer an analysis of the theory, with a view to elucidating Jizang's thought on meaning and reference and considering its contemporary significance. The theory, I argue, may best be viewed as an expedient means for (...) telling us how to use words provisionally without any definite understanding of their referents. (shrink)

The distinguished philosopher of language, Francois Recanati, has proposed a wide-ranging truth-conditional model of pragmatics. In this collection, various aspects of his theories are addressed by distinguished contributors, and are then commented on or answered by Recanati himself. This allows the reader to be drawn into the central debate within philosophy of language and cognitive science as to what kind of pragmatics system is needed.