Is Wittgenstein a Contextualist?

2010 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 150-167 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alberto Voltolini ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Family Resemblance ◽  
Linguistic Meaning ◽  
Truth Conditions

There is definitely a family resemblance between what contemporary contextualism maintains in philosophy of language and some of the claims about meaning put forward by the later Wittgenstein. Yet the main contextualist thesis, namely that linguistic meaning undermines truth-conditions, was not defended by Wittgenstein. If a claim in this regard can be retrieved in Wittgenstein despite his manifest antitheoretical attitude, it is instead that truth-conditions trivially supervene on linguistic meaning. There is, however, another Wittgensteinian claim that truly has a contextualist flavour, namely that linguistic meaning is itself wide-contextual. To be sure, this claim does not lead to the eliminativist/intentionalist conception of linguistic meaning that radical contextualists have recently developed. Rather, it goes together with a robust conception of linguistic meaning as intrinsically normative. Yet it may explain why Wittgenstein is taken to be a forerunner of contemporary contextualism.

Aboutness

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Yablo
Keyword(s):  
Subject Matter ◽  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Library Science ◽  
Philosophical Methodology ◽  
Major Advance ◽  
Truth Conditions ◽  
Ways Of Being ◽  
Made In

Aboutness has been studied from any number of angles. Brentano made it the defining feature of the mental. Phenomenologists try to pin down the aboutness features of particular mental states. Materialists sometimes claim to have grounded aboutness in natural regularities. Attempts have even been made, in library science and information theory, to operationalize the notion. However, it has played no real role in philosophical semantics, which is surprising. This is the first book to examine through a philosophical lens the role of subject matter in meaning. A long-standing tradition sees meaning as truth conditions, to be specified by listing the scenarios in which a sentence is true. Nothing is said about the principle of selection—about what in a scenario gets it onto the list. Subject matter is the missing link here. A sentence is true because of how matters stand where its subject matter is concerned. This book maintains that this is not just a feature of subject matter, but its essence. One indicates what a sentence is about by mapping out logical space according to its changing ways of being true or false. The notion of content that results—directed content—is brought to bear on a range of philosophical topics, including ontology, verisimilitude, knowledge, loose talk, assertive content, and philosophical methodology. The book represents a major advance in semantics and the philosophy of language.

Linguistic Pragmatism

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-40
Author(s):  
John Collins
Keyword(s):  
Essential Role ◽  
Linguistic Meaning ◽  
Truth Conditions ◽  
Linguistic Structure ◽  
What Is Said

This chapter articulates and defends linguistic pragmatism as a linguistic hypothesis that language alone underdetermines truth conditions (or what is said), and doesn’t even provide a variable licence for the truth conditions of an utterance in a context. Linguistic meaning is characterized, therefore, in terms of constraints upon what can be literally said with a linguistic structure, without the presumption that the linguistic properties of an utterance in a context will determine a content. The hypothesis is explained in terms of the resources language makes available to content, differentiated from related positions, and defended against numerous objections, especially those that argue for an essential role for minimal propositions in accounting for aspects of what is said.

Meaning in Gender Theory: Clarifying a Basic Problem from a Linguistic-Philosophical Perspective

Hypatia ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 48-68 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eva Waniek
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Basic Problem ◽  
Analytic Philosophy ◽  
Linguistic Meaning ◽  
Gottlob Frege ◽  
Gender Theory ◽  
Philosophical Perspective ◽  
Gender Research ◽  
Ferdinand De Saussure ◽  
Anglo American

The author investigates the notion of linguistic meaning in gender research. She approaches this basic problem by drawing upon two very different conceptions of language and meaning: (1) that of the logician Gottlob Frege and (2) that of the linguist Ferdinand de Saussure. Motivated by the controversial response the Anglo-American sex/gender debate received within the German context, the author focuses on the connection between this epistemological controversy among feminists and two discursive traditions of linguistic meaning (analytic philosophy and poststructuralism), to show how philosophy of language can contribute to current feminist debates.

A Statute's Meaning Need not be its Law

2018 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 455-479
Author(s):  
Jamie Blaker
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Recent Article ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Linguistic Meaning ◽  
Statutory Interpretation ◽  
The Law ◽  
The 1950S

There is a theory of statutory interpretation that is simple, elegant and well-subscribed. The theory is known as the meaning thesis, and it holds that the law of a statute consists in the ordinary linguistic meaning that is communicated by the statute's language. In a recent article Dale Smith has sought to discredit the meaning thesis. Here I will seek to discredit the thesis further, this time by drawing on the accomplishments of linguistics and the philosophy of language. In order for the meaning thesis to succeed, it must be demonstrated that the thesis is consistent with the established common law rules of interpretation. However, some of these rules appear to require that judges defy the plain linguistic meanings of statutes in limited circumstances. The meaning theorist's challenge, then, is to find some way to show that the established rules of interpretation do not truly cause judges to defy the language of statutes, despite appearances to the contrary. In this article, I will explain why the meaning theorist only has bad options in this regard. Of the available options, meaning theorists have settled for an argument that is premised on a flawed theory of how language communicates meaning. The theory of communication in question was proposed by H P Grice in the 1950s, but discredited by his contemporaries.

Berkeley’s Theory of Meaning

1975 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 191-206 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen K. Land
Keyword(s):  
General Theory ◽  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Fundamental Principle ◽  
Traditional View ◽  
Linguistic Meaning ◽  
General Terms ◽  
Theory Of Meaning ◽  
Human Understanding ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Contextual Meaning

Summary Recent scholars disagree over whether Berkeley’s theory of meaning constitutes a radical departure from Locke in the direction of current philosophy of language or offers no real alternative to the semantics of Locke’s Essay concerning Human Understanding. Berkeley agrees with Locke that linguistic meaning consists in the transmission of ideas from speaker to hearer by means of words, but he does not accept the Lockean account of this transmission. Specifically he departs from Locke at two fundamental points: he insists that ideas themselves have meanings and stand in need of interpretation, and he holds that the meanings of ideas may vary with the contexts in which they occur. To accommodate Berkeley’s principle of contextual meaning the account of communication must relate not individual ideas to individual words but strings of ideas to strings of words. Words and ideas, moreover, are not isomorphic as Locke implies they are: Berkeley indicates in particular the cases of general terms and names for spiritual substances, for neither of which Corresponding ideas can be discovered. To accommodate such cases within the general theory that meaning depends upon corresponding ideas an encoding process must be introduced into the account of the verbal transmission of ideas, a process whereby verbal structures including such terms as universals and names for spirits can be related to different ideational structures in which no such terms appear. The conclusion is that Berkeley accepts from Locke the fundamental principle that meaning depends upon corresponding ideas in the mind but that he holds this relation of correspondence to be much more complex than Locke allowed: in particular Berkeley introduces structural considerations by abandoning the traditional view that words and ideas correspond on a one-to-one basis, and he requires the mind to perform certain interpretative encoding procedures in translating between verbal and ideational structures.

On local bars and imported beer

2012 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 62-87
Author(s):  
Richard Vallée
Keyword(s):  
Large Family ◽  
Prima Facie ◽  
Linguistic Meaning ◽  
Semantic Role ◽  
Cognitive Significance ◽  
Truth Conditions ◽  
Truth Values ◽  
Context Sensitive ◽  
Complex Condition

“Imported” is a member of a large family of adjectives, including “enemy”, “domestic”, “local”, “exported”, “foreign”. Call these terms contextuals. Contextuals are prima facie context-sensitive expressions in that the same contextual sentence can have different truth-values, and hence different truth-conditions, from utterance to utterance. I use Perry’s multipropositionalist framework to get a new angle on contextuals. I explore the idea that the lexical linguistic meaning of contextual adjectives introduces two conditions to the cognitive significance of an utterance. These conditions contain a variable, y, that does not correspond to any lexical component in the sentence. This is the available tool for letting the speakers’ intentions, or what the speakers have in mind, play a semantic role. My view focuses on the complex condition that linguistic meaning (as type) sometimes semantically determines.

scholarly journals Forms of Life

2015 ◽  
pp. 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Hacker
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Philosophy Of Mathematics ◽  
Language Games ◽  
Truth Conditions ◽  
Philosophical Investigations ◽  
Form Of Life ◽  
Transformation Rules ◽  
Forms Of Life ◽  
A Minor ◽  
Varied History

The phrase ‘Lebensform’ (form of life) had a long and varied history prior to Wittgenstein’s use of it on a mere three occasions in the Philosophical Investigations. It is not a pivotal concept in Wittgenstein’s philosophy. But it is a minor signpost of a major reorientation of philosophy, philosophy of language and logic, and philosophy of mathematics that Wittgenstein instigated. For Wittgenstein sought to replace the conception of a language as a meaning calculus (Frege, Russell, the Tractatus) by an anthropological or ethnological conception. A language is not a class of sentences that can be formed from a set of axioms (definitions), formation and transformation rules and the meanings of which is given by their truth-conditions, but an open-ended series of interlocking language-games constituting a form of life or way of living (a culture). Wittgenstein’s uses of ‘Lebensform’ and its cognates, both in the Investigations and in his Nachlass are severally analysed, and various exegetical misinterpretations are clarified.

Locating meanings

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul M. Pietroski
Keyword(s):  
Linguistic Meaning ◽  
Natural Phenomenon ◽  
Truth Conditions ◽  
Lexical Items

This chapter characterizes meanings in terms of certain generative procedures. We can begin to locate the natural phenomenon of linguistic meaning by focusing on (Chomsky-style) examples of constrained homophony. Two or more lexical items can connect distinct meanings with the same pronunciation; and phrases like ‘ready to please’ are similarly homophonous. But as ‘eager to please’ and ‘easy to please’ illustrate, phrasal homophony is constrained. Such facts provide important clues about what meanings are, and how they can(not) be combined. The details provide reasons for identifying the languages that children naturally acquire with biologically implemented procedures, and not sets of expressions. There are English procedures; but English is not a thing that speakers share and use to communicate. In this context, some initial reasons are given for doubting that the relevant procedures generate sentences that have truth conditions.

Frege's Detour

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Perry
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Propositional Attitude ◽  
Propositional Attitudes ◽  
Truth Conditions ◽  
Cognitive States ◽  
Indirect Discourse ◽  
Attitude Reports ◽  
Sense And Reference ◽  
In Virtue Of ◽  
Indirect Reference

I argue that Frege’s treatment of propositional attitudes in “On Sense and Reference” put the philosophy of language on a detour. His doctrine of “indirect reference” reflected and reinforced the view that beliefs, desires, etc. consist in having relations to propositions. According to this doctrine expressions in embedded sentences in indirect discourse and propositional attitude reports do refer as they do when unembedded, but instead refer to their ordinary senses, so sentences refer to Thoughts, Frege’s version of what are now callled general or qualitative propositions. Davidson call this move abandoning “semantic innocence” which is the view that such embedded sentences work as they usually do. I agree with Davidson, that semantic innocence should not be abandonned. I argue that such cognitive states have truth-conditions in virtue of their causal and informational roles, which can be encoded in a variety of ways for different purposes, and provide a better explanation of the considerations that drove Frege to abandon innocence. I trace the problems I see to Frege’s abandonment of the framework of his early work, the Begriffsschrift. I argue that by adding the levels of senses and Thoughts to his Begriffsschriftframework, and retaining “circumstances” as the referents of sentences containing singular terms, Frege could have avoided the doctrine of indirect reference, and philosophy could have taken a different path.

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