A Defense of Derangement

1994 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-118 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul M. Pietroski
Keyword(s):  
Good Argument ◽  
Natural Languages ◽  
Theories Of Truth ◽  
Decisive Reason ◽  
Theories Of Meaning ◽  
Meaning Theories

In a recent paper, Bar-On and Risjord (henceforth, ‘B&R’) contend that Davidson provides no good argument for his (in)famous claim that ‘there is no such thing as a language.’ And according to B&R, if Davidson had established his ‘no language’ thesis, he would thereby have provided a decisive reason for abandoning the project he has long advocated — viz., that of trying to provide theories of meaning for natural languages by providing recursive theories of truth for such languages. For he would have shown that there are no languages to provide truth (or meaning) theories of. Davidson thus seems to be in the odd position of arguing badly for a claim that would undermine his own work.

Truth or understanding

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul M. Pietroski
Keyword(s):  
Truth Conditions ◽  
Theories Of Truth ◽  
The Core ◽  
Core Components ◽  
Theories Of Meaning ◽  
Meaning Theories

This chapter and the next argue against the idea that children acquire languages whose sentences have compositionally determined truth conditions. The chapter begins by discussing Davidson’s bold conjecture: the languages that children naturally acquire support Tarski-style theories of truth, which can serve as the core components of meaning theories for the languages in question. The argument is that even if there are plausible theories of truth for these languages, formulating them as plausible theories of meaning requires assumptions about truth that are extremely implausible. Sentences like ‘My favorite sentence is not true’, which happens to be my favorite sentence, illustrate this point. But the point is not merely that “Liar Sentences” are troublesome, it is that theories of truth and theories of meaning have different subject matters.

Reprise

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul M. Pietroski
Keyword(s):  
Modern Logic ◽  
Theories Of Truth ◽  
Theories Of Meaning

This chapter summarizes the main themes. Humans naturally acquire generative procedures that connect meanings with pronunciations. These meanings are neither concepts nor extensions. Meanings are composable instructions for how to access and assemble concepts of a special sort. In particular, phrasal meanings are instructions for how to build monadic (i.e., predicative) concepts that are massively conjunctive. Theories of meaning should not be confused with theories of truth. Lexicalization is a process of introducing concepts that can be combined via simple operations whose inputs must be monadic or dyadic. In theorizing about meanings, we can and should eschew much of the powerful typology and combinatorial operations that the founders of modern logic introduced for very different purposes.

Taylor on Meaning-Theories and Theories of Meaning

Mind ◽  
1984 ◽  
Vol XCIII (369) ◽  
pp. 85-90
Author(s):  
MARTIN DAVIES
Keyword(s):  
Theories Of Meaning ◽  
Meaning Theories

The Putnamian Argument (the Argument from the Rejection of Global Skepticism) [also, (O) The Argument from Reference, and (K) The Argument from the Confluence of Proper Function and Reliability]

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Evan Fales
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Realism ◽  
Proper Function ◽  
Paradigm Shifts ◽  
Theories Of Truth ◽  
Internal Realism ◽  
Causal Theories ◽  
Theories Of Meaning

A familiar story about reference that developed in the 1970s appeared to offer a light at the end of the tunnel of positivist theories of meaning. Coherence theories of truth and justification, paradigm shifts, and incommensurability stalked the land. Causal theories of reference (Kripke 1980) promised to change all that and restore scientific realism. But another dialectic took hold that led to what Putnam called internal realism. This chapter aims to rescue Putnam from internal realism, and to breathe new life into real realism. It also aims to rescue science from Plantinga’s argument N (and arguments O and K). That will allow an answer to perhaps the strongest link in the chain of arguments that Naturalism is epistemically self-defeating. The chapter offers a diagnosis of the central difficulty that appears to wreak havoc with the realist aspirations of causal theories of reference. Finally, a cure is offered for that malady.

Revenge, II

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keith Simmons
Keyword(s):  
Classical Logic ◽  
Singularity Theory ◽  
Natural Languages ◽  
Theories Of Truth ◽  
The Impact

Chapter 9 begins by examining the impact of revenge paradoxes on contextual theories of truth, including those of Parsons, Burge, Barwise and Etchemendy, and Glanzberg. These theories are hierarchical, and so are subject to revenge paradoxes that, roughly speaking, quantify over all levels. But the singularity theory is not hierarchical, and so is not subject to this kind of revenge. This chapter argues that a use of ‘true’ (or ‘denotes’ or ‘extension’) in a given context applies everywhere except to its singularities, and what escapes its reach is captured by other uses of ‘true’ in other contexts. Moreover, any use of ‘true’ applies even to the truths of the singularity theory, since these theoretical truths are not identified as singularities. The chapter concludes that the singularity theory is not compromised by revenge paradoxes, and respects Tarski’s intuition that natural languages are universal, while preserving classical logic and semantics.

scholarly journals Compositionality in Davidson’s Early Work

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Pagin
Keyword(s):  
General Theory ◽  
Natural Language ◽  
Finite Number ◽  
Compositional Semantics ◽  
Natural Languages ◽  
Theories Of Meaning ◽  
Language Meaning

Davidson’s 1965 paper, “Theories of Meaning and Learnable Languages”, has (at least almost) invariably been interpreted, by others and by myself, as arguing that natural languages must have a compositional semantics, or at least a systematic semantics, that can be finitely specified. However, in his reply to me in the Żegleń volume, Davidson denies that compositionality is in any need of an argument. How does this add up? In this paper I consider Davidson’s first three meaning theoretic papers from this perspective. I conclude that Davidson was right in his reply to me that he never took compositionality, or systematic semantics, to be in need of justification. What Davidson had been concerned with, clearly in the 1965 paper and in “Truth and Meaning” from 1967, and to some extent in his Carnap critique from 1963, is (i) that we need a general theory of natural language meaning, (ii) that such a theory should not be in conflict with the learnability of a language, and (iii) that such a theory bring out should how knowledge of a finite number of features of a language suffices for the understanding of all the sentences of that language.

Tourism in a Semantic Mirror: Retheorizing Tourism from the Linguistic Turn

2021 ◽  
pp. 004728752110194
Author(s):  
Kun Lai ◽  
Xiang (Robert) Li
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Semantic Space ◽  
Linguistic Turn ◽  
Theories Of Meaning ◽  
Meaning Theories ◽  
Core Part

Although scholars have sought to theorize tourism from important philosophical turns (e.g., epistemological/antirational/postmodern/practice), one influential turn (viz. linguistic) has not received much attention. This study attempts to fill this gap by retheorizing tourism from the linguistic turn. We introduced major theories of meaning (a core part of the linguistic turn) from the philosophy literature, on the basis of which we constructed a new semantic space of “tourism” where multiple semantic dimensions (defined by particular types of meaning theories) coexist and possess different semantic veins (determined by a subtheory of meaning) consisting of numerous semantic dots (i.e., actual understandings of tourism). This prescriptive space captures the image of tourism in a semantic mirror, encompassing tourism ontologies in a semantic/linguistic realm. This space also offers solutions to four problems in prior tourism theorization. By innovatively linking tourism and philosophy of language, this study has expanded the options in addressing the question “What is tourism?”

Formal Semantics

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey C. King
Keyword(s):  
Programming Languages ◽  
Predicate Logic ◽  
Formal Semantics ◽  
Linguistic Meaning ◽  
Symbolic Logic ◽  
Natural Languages ◽  
First Order ◽  
Artificial Languages ◽  
Naturally Occurring ◽  
Theories Of Meaning

Semantics is the discipline that studies linguistic meaning generally, and the qualification ‘formal’ indicates something about the sorts of techniques used in investigating linguistic meaning. More specifically, formal semantics is the discipline that employs techniques from symbolic logic, mathematics, and mathematical logic to produce precisely characterized theories of meaning for natural languages (i.e. naturally occurring languages such as English, Urdu, etc.) or artificial languages (i.e. first-order predicate logic, computer programming languages etc.). Formal semantics as we know it first arose in the twentieth century. It was made possible by certain developments in logic during that period. This article chronicles those developments and how they led to the development of formal semantics.

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