Katz 1993_The Metaphysics of Meaning.pdf

7/25/2019 Katz 1993_The Metaphysics of Meaning.pdf

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/katz-1993the-metaphysics-of-meaningpdf 1/8

Dr. Enrique Villanueva, Ridgeview Publishing Company and Wiley are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and

extend access to Philosophical Issues.

http://www.jstor.org

Dr Enrique Villanueva

Ridgeview Publishing Company

Précis of "The Metaphysics of Meaning"Author(s): Jerrold J. KatzSource: Philosophical Issues, Vol. 4, Naturalism and Normativity (1993), pp. 128-134Published by: Ridgeview Publishing CompanyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1522833Accessed: 25-01-2016 09:11 UTC

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/ info/about/policies/terms.jsp

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of contentin a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship.For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

This content downloaded from 89.206.117.177 on Mon, 25 Jan 2016 09:11:07 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/

http://www.jstor.org/publisher/rpc

http://www.jstor.org/stable/1522833

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp






http://www.jstor.org/stable/1522833

http://www.jstor.org/publisher/rpc

http://www.jstor.org/



U~~1

~~~~1

PHILOSOPHICAL

ISSUES,

4

Naturalismand

Normativity,

1993

Precis of The Metaphysics of

Meaning*

Jerrold J.

Katz

Naturalism

says

that

everything

which exists is a

spatio-temporal

object

belonging

to the vast causal

realm we

call nature . For

the

naturalist,

faith in

the

progress

of

science is faith

that

natural

science

can,

in

principle,

explain

everything.

Naturalism dominates

philoso-

phy today in much the way linguistic philosophy dominated it earlier

in the

century.

Titles

containing

naturalized ,

naturalizing ,

and

naturalistic

appear

today

with

much the same

frequency

that

titles

containing language , grammar ,

and

meaning

appeared

during

the

heyday

of

linguistic philosophy.

Naturalism's

hegemony

rests on

arguments

that are

widely

seen as

compelling.

The first

aim

of The

Metaphysics

of

Meaning

(hence-

forth

MM )

is to

show

that

those

arguments

in fact have

no

force.

The book's second aim is to formulate a direct argument against

naturalism.

This

double

challenge

is

on behalf of realism

(Platon-

ism),

the

position

that

there

are

non-natural,

abstract

objects

(i.e.,

objects

having

no

spatio-temporal

location or

causal

relations).

All

of the natural realm is

real,

but

the natural

realm is not all of

reality.

*Cambridge,

Massachusetts: The

MIT

Press,

1990.






11.

PRECIS

OF THE

METAPHYSICS

OF MEANING

One of the

philosophical

arguments

on which the

hegemony

of

nat-

uralism

rests is

Wittgenstein's;

the

other

is

Quine's.

The

arguments

are

different, reflecting

differences

in

what

each

philosopher

took

bad

-i.e.,

non-naturalist-

philosophy

to be and

also

differences

in

what each took

good

-i.e.,

naturalist-

philosophy

to

be.

Wittgen-

stein's

position

is a critical form

of naturalism.

It sees

bad

philos-

ophy

-which includes

the

mainstream

of

traditional

philosophy-

as nonsense

arising

from

misuses

of

language

which

put

us

in

the

grip

of

a

metaphysical

picture

of

reality.

Good

philosophy,

on his

position,

is a certain

practice

of

assembling

reminders which

put

the

linguistically

errant

philosopher

back

on

the

right

track.

In

con-

trast,

Quine's

position

is a scientistic form of naturalism. Traditional

philosophy

is a

mixture

of

good

and

bad

explanation.

The bad is

pseudo-science

or anachronistic

science like

an

explanation

invok-

ing

Homer's

gods;

the

good

is

self-reflective natural

science,

meta-

natural-science.

Wittgenstein

and

Quine

are the two

most influential

philosophers

in

twentieth

century

Anglo-American philosophy;

their

arguments

for naturalism are

generally

considered

major

contributions

to

phi-

losophy, an assessment I share. But, as the history of

philosophy

makes

clear,

the

stature of

philosophers

and

the

importance

of

their

contribution are

compatible

with

a

failure

to

establish their

principal

philosophical

claims.

Wittgenstein

and

Quine,

in

my

view,

belong

to a

venerable tradition

going

back at least to

Plato.

Both of their

arguments

for

naturalism have

to undermine

all

sub-

stantive intensionalist

theories of

meaning.1

If one

survives,

it

can

provide

the

grounds

for

anti-naturalism. Given

a

non-naturalist

interpretation of such a theory, anti-naturalists can argue contra

Wittgenstein

that

philosophical

statements are

meaningful

expres-

sions

of

metaphysical

truths

about

reality

and can

defend an

ex-

planatory

and

constructive

philosophy

against

his

descriptive

and

therapeutic

one.

Anti-naturalists can

argue

contra

Quine

that

there

are

properties, relations,

and

propositions,

that

there is an

ana-

lytic/synthetic

distinction,

and

that

there are

necessary

a

priori

1Intensionalist

theories hold that

expressions

of

natural

language

have

sense

as well as

reference,

that

senses

are

entities

of some

sort,

and that

they

are the

objects

of

study

in

a

theory

of

meaning

for

natural

language.

Quine's

naturalism

is

compatible

with

psychologized

meanings

that

could

be

reduced

to

biology,

but

Quine

sees his

argument

for

naturalism

as

showing

that even

such a basis

for

intensional semantics

is

mistaken,

since

the

argument,

if

good,

would

show

that

there is

no

objective

notion of

meaning

to

serve

as

a

candidate for

neuro-

psychological

reduction.

129






130

JERROLD

. KATZ

truths over

and above

the

contingent

a

posteriori

truths of

natu-

ral

science.

MM

claims

that the reach of

Wittgenstein's

and

Quine's arguments

exceeds

their

grasp.

Neither

could eliminate

all intensionalist

theo-

ries

because,

instead

of

being

framed on

the basis of a

conception

of

the entire

range

of such

theories,

each

argument

was tailored to

refute

the

particular

versions of

intensionalism

with which its author

was

most familiar.

Wittgenstein's

criticisms

were

principally

directed at

the

Fregean

position

and his own Tractatus

position.

Quine's

were

directed

at the semantics

of

Frege

and

Carnap.

Both anti-inten-

sionalist

arguments

were thus

designed

to undercut the versions

of

semantics within the

Fregean

tradition.

Fregean

semantics

defines sense

as

the

determiner

of

reference and

explicates

concepts

of the

theory

of

sense

(like

proposition,

syn-

onymy,

and

analyticity)

on the

basis

of

concepts

in

the

theory

of

reference.

Fregean

semantics has so

dominated

intensionalist think-

ing

that intensionalists

and

extensionalists

alike have

automatically

equated

intensionalism

with

Fregean

intensionalism.

Since

Fregean

semantics

was

correctly

criticized

by

Wittgenstein,

Quine,

and

their

followers, if there were no intensionalism outside the Fregean tra-

dition,

there would be no

tenable intensionalism.

But MM

argues

there is

a version of

intensionalism outside

that tradition and

thus

an

intensionalism

not

refuted

by

Wittgenstein's

and

Quine's

arguments.

Hence,

in

overlooking

such an

intensionalism,

intensionalists

and ex-

tensionalists

have

overestimated

the force

of

philosophical

arguments

for naturalism.

The roots

of

non-Fregean

intensionalism

go

at least as far

back as

the inchoate theory of meaning found in Descartes, Locke, and Kant.

But

that

theory

could not be

recognized

as an alternative to

Fregean

intensionalism until it was

developed

far

more than

it had been

at

the hands

of such

traditional

philosophers.

What was

required

was

a

framework

which

made

possible

a

purely

linguistic

explication

of

its notion

of

sense,

in

contrast to

Frege's logical

explication

of

sense.

An

appropriate

framework

was created in the

generative

revolution

in

linguistics.

The

principal

idea of

generative grammar

was that

a

grammar, a theory of the grammatical structure of the sentences of

a

natural

language,

can

be a

formal deductive

system

like

logical

and

mathematical

systems.

Sentencehood

corresponds

to theoremhood:

the

theorems of

an

optimal

grammar

of a

language

L

are all

and

only

the sentences

of

L

and the

derivations

represent

the

grammatical

structure of sentences.

Further,

the

grammatical

notions,

like 'well-

formed

sentence',

'declarative

sentence',

'subject-of',

etc.,

can

be

taken

as metatheoretic

concepts,

defined

on the basis of

sentence






11.

PRECIS

OF THE METAPHYSICS

F MEANING

derivations,

with

a

metatheory

construed as

a

theory

of

language

in

general.2

Given

the

generative framework,

it was

possible

to model

a

concep-

tion of

semantics

on its

conception

of

syntax

and

phonology.

Syntax

was conceived

of as that

aspect

of the

grammatical

structure of sen-

tences

which is

responsible

for

sentences

having

syntactic properties

and relations

like

being

well-formed,

declarative

or

interrogative,

having

coordinate

or

subordinate

structure,

etc. The

analogous

con-

ception

of

sense is embodied

in

the definition

of sense

(D).

(D)

The sense

of an

expression

is

that

aspect

of

its structure which

is responsible for its sense properties and relations, e.g., having

a sense

(meaningfulness),

sameness of sense

(synonymy),

mul-

tiplicity

of sense

(ambiguity),

repetition

of sense

(redundancy),

and

opposition

of sense

(antonymy).

Given

(D),

the sense structure of

sentences

could be

described on

the basis

of

formal semantic

representations,

in

analogy

to

formal

syntactic

representations:

ambiguity,

meaningfulness, synonymy,

antonymy,

and other notions

in

the

theory

of

meaning

could be

defined metatheoretically in terms of semantic derivations.

It

is

not

immediately

apparent

how

philosophically

radical a

step

it is

to

adopt

(D)

as the

definition

of

sense.

In

defining

the

concept

of

sense as

it

does and not

in

terms

of the

concept

of

reference,

(D)

fundamentally

changes

our entire

conception

of

sense semantics. In

contrast to

Frege's

semantics,

there is now a

sharp

distinction

be-

tween sense and

reference,

and sense

structure

forms an

autonomous

domain within

grammatical

structure. One

consequence

is

that

the

question of the relation between sense and reference now falls outside

the

theory

of sense. The

issue of

what to

say

about the controver-

sial

Fregean

principle

that

sense

determines reference

-whether it

should be

retained,

modified,

or

dropped entirely-

belongs

to

the

theory

of reference.

Another

consequence

is that

there

is no

longer

pressure

to

explicate

notions in

the

theory

of sense like

proposition,

synonymy,

and

analyticity

within

the

theory

of

reference.

Instead

of

explicating

them in

terms of

Frege's

plant

in

the

seed notion

of

logical containment, they

can now

be

explicated

in

terms of

the

beams in

the house

notion of

containment

that

Frege,

with his

logicist

program

in

mind,

criticized as

too unfruitful .

2Chomsky's

(Knowledge

of

Language,

Praeger

Publishers,

New

York,

1986)

recent

explicit

psychological

gloss

on

the notion of

language

does

not

materially

effect this

account,

though

it

raises

questions

about the

coherence of his

overall

position.

See Katz and

Postal,

Realism vs.

Conceptualism

in

Linguistics ,

Linguistics

and

Philosophy, 1991,

pp.

531-552.

131






132

JERROLD.

KATZ

MM

(pp.

66-130)

embodies

this

conception

of

sense semantics

in

an

approach

it calls

the

proto-theory .

The

proto-theory

enables

us to frame a new intensionalism which

offers

intensionalists a

way

out

of

Wittgenstein's

and

Quine's

arguments

against

Fregean

inten-

sionalism.

With this

intensionalism

in

hand,

MM

sets out to

see

whether

Wittgenstein's

and

Quine's

arguments

are broad

enough

to

refute intensionalist

theories

generally.

Chapters

2,

3,

and 4

use the

new intensionalism

to test

Wittgenstein's arguments

in

the first two

hundred

and

twenty

odd sections of the

Philosophical

Investigations

(henceforth

PI ).

I

conclude that

none

of those

arguments

refute

the

new

intensionalism.

Many

of

Wittgenstein's

most influental ar-

guments

(e.g.,

the

arguments against

subliming

the

language)

do not

apply

to the

new intensionalism.

Those

that do

apply

are too

tailored

to

Fregean

and Tractarian intensionalism to be effective

against

the

new

intensionalism.

Even

Wittgenstein's

and

Kripke's

celebrated ar-

guments

about

rule

following

fail in

this

case.

(I

will

say

something

about

how the new

intensionalism

escapes

those

arguments

in

my

replies

to

Boghossian

and

Zemach.)

Chapter

5

uses the new

intensionalism

to

test

Quine's

anti-inten-

sionalist arguments. Again, the results are negative. One of the two

principal

arguments

in

Quine's

Two

Dogmas

of

Empiricism

(1953,

pp.

20-46)

is

directed at the

Carnap's

meaning

postulate

approach.

That

argument

does

not

apply

to the new

intensionalism,

since it

does

not involve a

logical

explication

of

analyticity

like

Carnap's.

The other

principal

argument,

that a

linguistic

explication

of

syn-

onymy

is

viciously

circular,

does

apply,

but rests

on

the

unwarranted

assumption

that the

acceptability

of

a

linguistic

concept depends

on

the existence of a substitution procedure which operationally defines

it in

terms

of

concepts

outside its

family.

Quine

easily

establishes

the conditional

(C)

by

showing

that

any

attempt

to

provide

such

procedures

for

synonymy

is

circular.

(C)

If

substitution

procedures

are

the

proper

basis for

explaining

concepts

in

linguistics,

then

the

concepts

in

the

theory

of

mean-

ing

cannot be

made

objective

sense

of.

However, he has no grounds for detaching the consequent. Quine

(1953,

p.

56)

supposed

that

Bloomfieldian

linguistics

vouchsafed sub-

stitution

procedures

as the

proper

form of definition for

linguistic

concepts,

but such

assurance

lost all

value

once the

generative

rev-

olution liberalized the

explanation

of

linguistic

concepts.

There

is

nothing

circular

about

defining

the members

of a

family

of

linguistic

concepts

with

respect

to one

another in the

metatheory

of

genera-

tive

grammars.

Such

meta-theoretic

definitions,

typical

of

logistic






11.

PRECIS

OF THE METAPHYSICS

OF MEANING

systems

in other

sciences,

reveal the interconnections

among

the

con-

cepts.

Without

grounds

for

detaching

the

consequent

of

(C),

Quine

has no

argument against

the

theory

of

meaning.

Chapter

5

argues

that,

without such an

argument,

Quine

cannot

show that translation

is

indeterminate.

Quine's

case

for

indetermi-

nacy

rests

on the claim that there

are

no

linguistically

neutral

mean-

ings,

which,

in

turn,

is

unsupported

without

an

argument

against

a

linguistic

explication

of

synonymy.

This

point

will be discussed

fur-

ther

in

my

reply

to

Roger

Gibson.

Chapter

6

argues

that the

principal

anti-intensionalist

arguments

over

the

last

three

decades,

especially

those

of

Davidson, Lewis,

and

Putnam,

depend

on

Quine's

arguments against

intensionalism,

so

that there

is a domino

effect,

in

which the fall of

Quine's

arguments

topples

them as

well.

Chapter

7 sets out MM's

direct criticism of

philosophical

argu-

ments for naturalism.

It

tries to

show

that

such

arguments

commit

a

fallacy

in

the

spirit

of

Moore's naturalistic

fallacy.

It

has been

noted that Moore's

open

question

argument wrongly

treats

natural-

istic

definitions

(e.g.,

the

good

is what is

pleasurable)

as

linguistic

claims rather than claims about reality. To avoid that problem, MM

proposes

a

new notion

of

'naturalistic

fallacy' by

substituting

theo-

retical

definitions for lexical

definitions and

relocating

the source

of

the

fallacy

from the

naturalists' use of words to the naturalists'

use

of

explanatory conceptions

for

theoretical

purposes.

As

a

result,

the

new

fallacy

involves,

not a

violation

of

lexicographical

constraints

on

dictionaries,

but

a

violation of

methodological

constraints on

theories

(explanatory

power,

simplicity,

etc.).

A philosophical argument for a naturalistic account of a discipline

purports

to

show that the

best theories in the

discipline

are

theories

of

natural

objects.3

This

conclusion

is not based on an a

posteriori

knowledge

of what

the best

theories

in

the

discipline

actually

are,

but on a

priori

reasons for

thinking

that the best must

be

theories of

natural

objects.

Thus,

such a

philosophical

argument

for

naturalism

commits

a naturalistic

fallacy

in

the

new

sense

if

there

can be

cases

in

which the

best

scientific

theory

of

the

discipline

conflicts with

the

optimal theories of the relevant natural objects.

3In

MM

(pp. 236-239),

I called the

position

involving

such an

argument philo-

sophical

naturalism . I

contrasted it

with what I called

scientific

naturalism ,

which is a

specific

claim

within one or

another

discipline

stemming

from

a com-

mitment

on the

part

of

theories in

the

discipline

to

objects

which

the theories

themselves

characterize as

natural

objects.

I

argued

that there is

no

way

to

bootstrap

from

scientific

naturalism

to

philosophical

naturalism,

since

theories

in

mathematics

and

logic

do not

characterize their

objects

as

natural

objects.

133






134 JERROLD

J.

KATZ

One

such

case

might

go

as follows.

Say

that

it is

empirically

estab-

lished

that the

linguistic

rules in

our

heads take

the form of a finite

list of sentential

structures so

large

that

it

contains

every producible

sentence. Since

linguistic

naturalists

suppose

that the best

grammar

is

a

theory

about

the

speaker's

mental/neurological

states,

they

will

have to

adopt

a finite

grammar

and

predict

that there

is a

largest

En-

glish

sentence,

namely,

the one

represented by

the

longest

sentence

on

the list. But since

the

grammatical

evidence

in

the

hypothetical

circumstances

is ex

hypothesi

the same as

it is

in

actual

grammar

construction

where

linguists

project

an

infinity

of sentences

(based

on the recursiveness

of

conjunction,

modification,

embedding,

etc.),

the best

grammar

will be

infinite,

too. Since

it

projects

an

infinity

of

sentences,

the best

theory

of the

language

predicts

that there is

no

largest

sentence

and is

inconsistent

with the

optimal

theory

of

the

linguistic

reality

inside

our heads.

Chapter

8 looks at some of the

consequences

of a

successful

critique

of

naturalism.

One is

that

philosophy

is back

where

it was

before the

linguistic

turn raised false

hopes

for

linguistic

solutions

to

philosoph-

ical

problems.

The

linguistic

turn was

to a

large

extent a natural-

istic turn, motivated by dissatisfaction with philosophical progress

compared

to

progress

in

the natural

sciences.

Twentieth

century

naturalists saw

the

weakness of Kant's reform

of

metaphysics,

of

Husserlian

phenomenology,

and of other

metaphysical

philosophy

practiced

along

traditional

a

priori

lines to be

the semantic under-

pinnings

of their notion of

synthetic

a

priori

knowledge. Wittgen-

stein and

Quine

both

sought

to

exploit

that

weakness to

eliminate

other dualisms of the

philosophical

and the

natural.

If

MM's cri-

tique of naturalism is successful, the most recent challenges to the

autonomy

of

philosophy

have

been met.

This content downloaded from 89.206.117.177 on Mon, 25 Jan 2016 09:11:07 UTCAll bj JSTOR T d C di i



Documents

Katz 1993_The Metaphysics of Meaning.pdf