Philosophy of Language

Since I'm a new-comer to the study of the philosophy of language, I'll try to elucidate the classifications and conflicts within the field not only to help those interested in the subject but to help myself understand the material as well. As Wittgenstein made the point in the Tractatus, only those ideas in the mind that are intelligible (logically conceivable) have meaning. By writing out the doctrines of the major schools with in the philosophy of language, I can connote meaning to my ideas about the subject and therefore impart value upon those ideas. The major divide in the area appears to be truth-conditional theories of meaning (Frege, Russell, Tarski, logical positivists) versus use theories of meaning (Wittgenstein, Quine, and Speech-Act Theorists).

(1) Referential Theory of Meaning (J.S. Mill): Mill made the distinction between denotation, or reference (subject; extension), and connotation, or the implication of an attribute to an object (predicate; intension). This school believed that the meaning of sentences relied on the referent (subject) of the sentence, or the denoted (referred) object that corresponds to the sentence in the real world. If one knows what an object in the real world 'is,' then one can know the meaning of sentences about that object. For instance, if I know what the Lincoln Memorial is, then I can understand the meaning of the sentence: The Lincoln Memorial sits in Washington D.C. The obvious difficulty in such an approach is that it's hard to account for non-existent referents. Although Pegasus doesn't exist, I can still understand the meaning of sentences about (intension of) it. This theory also has difficulty coping with the idea that identity statements can be meaningful in the sense that they provide more information than otherwise. For instance, the referential theory would maintain that the sentence "the evening star is the morning star" is valueless in terms of knowledge, but someone may know that one refers to Venus without knowing that the other one does. Thus, one will have gained knowledge if one knows that the other referent (extension) refers to the same object; one will now know they're both co-referents to Venus.

(2) Connotative Theory of Meaning (Gottleb Frege): Frege made the distinction between sense (intension) and reference (extension), which appears to correspond to the distinction between connotation and denotation. Yet instead of finding meaning within referents (denotation), one should rather find meaning within predicates (intention; attributes of objects; descriptive content of subjects). Objects, therefore, are nothing more than bundles of descriptions, akin to Hume's idea of the self. We understand the meaning of sentences, as well as objects, by knowing what the predicates (attributes or properties) mean. Russell, moreover, accounted for negative existential quantifiers by saying that the sense of the sentence's logical formulation makes it understandable. For instance, the sentence "the present king of France is bald" is understandable because we know the predicate, "is bald," and so we can attach it to a subject if it existed. The objection to this theory is that proper names, objects or subjects, rarely have fixed descriptions or properties. A tree may have leaves in spring but not necessarily in winter, for example. Kripke and Putnam responded by introducing the idea of rigid designators, which allowed the descriptive content of objects (referents) to change without changing the referent. The tree referred to in the example is the same tree referred to in every possible world, so to say.

(3) Picture Theory of Language and Language Games (Wittgenstein): Wittgenstein supposed that in order for a sentence to be meaningful, (1) senses must be attached to objects and (2) forms of propositions must correspond to (resemble) facts in the world. In other words, one must be able to logically conceive of what a sentence says in order for it to be meaningful. The later Wittgenstein supposed that language's purpose was to lead to actions, and that denotation, connotation, picture theory were all meant to get people to do things. He also introduced the famous private language argument, which supposed that Descartes's idea that one can appeal to private experiences and thus create a private language was impossible.

(4) Verificationist Theory of Meaning (logical positivists): Logical positivists seized on the analytic/synthetic distinction to establish their idea of meaning. The test for whether a sentence has meaning is whether it is analytically true, or true by virtue of the meaning of the terms in a sentence, or synthetic, or verifiable through observational experience. This conception of meaning was anti-metaphysical (Gary Becker mentioned in his blog that metaphysics are those things not verifiable). The positivists are considered naturalists, which means they reduce everything as explainable by observation in the natural world. Morality can be explained by neurology, for instance. The sentence God exists outside of space and time is meaningless. It's not analytically true since the concept of God as omnipotent, omnipresent, and benevolent necessarily makes Him exist outside space-time (in fact, it seems he his omnipresence should make him exist within it). It's neither synthetically true since the proposition isn't verifiable since experience presupposes (as Kant would say) the a priori concepts--categories--of space-time.

The objections to this theory lie in the fact that the theory itself is meaningless by its own standards since its neither analytically nor synthetically true--it's self-refuting. Another difficulty is its ability to impart meaning on general laws of nature since experience doesn't confirm laws, but only does not falsify them--according to Karl Popper. The final difficulty is that it has trouble imparting meaning to counter-factual propositions since they aren't analytically nor synthetically true, yet they seem to be meaningful and understandable.

(5) Tarski's Theory of Truth (Alfred Tarski): Tarski believed that the meaning of sentences rested in its syntax, or sentence as well as logical structure, as opposed to semantics or meaning of the object or predicate (reference or sense). Propositions must correspond to facts in the world to be true. Tarski also introduced the distinction between metalanguage and object language. The former is a language used to analyze the object language. The object language "snow is white" can be analyzed in the metalanguage "snow is true iff snow is white."

(6) Semantic Holism (W.V.O. Quine): The meaning of sentences must be understood in terms of the speaker's and hearer's holistic experience rather than particular experiences emphasized by the logical positivists. He thus sought to destroy the analytic-synthetic distinction. Quine also introduced the idea of "radical translation," or the idea that users acquire understanding of the meaning of a language's signs by understanding co-referents and common assent among users. He also introduced the idea of "indeterminacy of translation," or the idea that demonstratives (signs given meaning in context by sign-giver) and indexicals (signs that change meaning in different contexts) are ultimately uncertain since interpreters can only acquire meaning of signs through observable behavior of the sign-giver or through common usage. Though this doesn't mean that some interpretations of signs aren't better than others.

(7) Speech-Act Theory (Paul Grice and J.L. Austin): Speech-Act Theorists focused on pragmatics (context-dependency of meaning) more so than the other theories. They believed that language can be expressed (locution) in four ways. (1) Illocutionary acts are speech-acts meant to lead the hearer to recognize the speaker's intention; for example through promises since the one who promises promises in the first place to let the promised recognize that he intends to perform some action in the future. (2) Perlocutionary acts were meant for persuasion and consisted in the idea that the speaker intends the hearer to perform some action or change or preserve a belief. (3) Utterance acts are the act of speaking or writing, while (4) propositional acts are acts were a speaker attributes an object within properties, or qualities.

Speech-Act Theorists also posited the idea of "conventional implicatures," or the alteration of meaning by subtle changes in the context of utterance or form of utterance; common understanding of what these alterations imply is necessary to understand the meaning of the altered sentence. And lastly, they established a criteria by which communication is possible, which is called the cooperative principle. In order for communication to be possible, the content of utterance must satisfy the constraints of (1) quality (the speaker must believe the content of utterance), (2) quantity (the speaker must be relatively efficient with word use), (3) relevance, and (4) manner (be perspicuous, or sharp; avoid obscurity and ambiguity).