The CausalHistorical Theory PHIL 2610 Philosophy of Language

The Causal-Historical Theory PHIL 2610 Philosophy of Language 1 st Term 2016

Classical Descriptivism

Representation Words/ thoughts have meanings. They are about things. Why do words, for example, represent the things that they do, instead of other things or nothing at all?

Classical Descriptivism For every name N, there is a description D that we associate with N such that: 1. If x satisfies D, then N refers to x. 2. If N refers to x, then x satisfies the description.

Classical Descriptivism We may say, following Russell: the name “Moses” can be defined by means of various descriptions. For example, as “the man who led the Israelites through the wilderness”, “the man who lived at that time and place and was then called ‘Moses’”, “the man who as a child was taken out of the Nile by Pharaoh's daughter” and so on.

Classical Descriptivism Moses: • Lead the Israelites out of Egypt • Parted Red Sea • Given 10 commandments by God

Classical Descriptivism This guy ü Lead the Israelites out of Egypt ü Parted Red Sea ü Given 10 commandments by God

Classical Descriptivism Moses refers

Classical Descriptivism This guy • Lead the Israelites out of Egypt • Parted Red Sea • Given 10 commandments by God

Classical Descriptivism Moses refers

Kripke against Descriptivism

Saul Kripke, 1940 • Published first completeness proof for modal logic at 18. • Highly influential in philosophy of language and mind. • Developed the causal-historical theory of meaning

Saul Kripke, 1940 Kripke’s account is developed in his Naming and Necessity. The background is that he’s arguing against views on which the meanings of names are descriptions or definitions.

Against Descriptivism Kripke argues that for any name N, there is no description D that we associate with N such that: 1. If x satisfies the description, N refers to x. 2. If N refers to x, then x must satisfy the description.

Ignorance & Error He argues against each claim as follows: Against #1: Arguments from ignorance. Sometimes lots of things satisfy the descriptions we associate with N, but only one is N. Against #2: Arguments from Error. Sometimes nothing satisfies the descriptions we associate with N (or some non-x does), but N still = x.

Ignorance: Feynman What people know: • He’s a physicist • He’s famous • He’s dead • He worked on quantum mechanics

Ignorance: Feynman But Bohr: üHe’s a physicist üHe’s famous üHe’s dead üHe worked on quantum mechanics

Ignorance: Feynman it’s not true that ‘Feynman’ means Bohr and it’s not true that it means nothing. How is that possible for the descriptivist?

Error: Einstein Who is Albert Einstein? What people believe: • Einstein discovered the speed of light.

Error: Einstein

Causation & Representation

The Mirror Universe

Secondary Qualities

Possibility of Massive Error

Coordination across Theories A related upshot is that two people with radically different theories can nevertheless be talking about the same thing, and hence be meaningfully disagreeing with one another.

The Causal-Historical Account

Kripke’s Picture “Someone, let’s say, a baby, is born; his parents call him by a certain name. They talk about him to their friends, other people meet him. Through various sorts of talk the name is spread from link to link as if by a chain…”

Kripke’s Picture “A speaker who is on the far end of this chain, who has heard about, say Richard Feynman, in the market place or elsewhere, may be referring to Richard Feynman even though he can’t remember from whom he first heard of Feynman or from whom he ever heard of Feynman. ”

Kripke’s Picture “A rough statement of a theory might be the following: An initial ‘baptism’ takes place. Here the object may be named by ostension, or the reference of the name may be fixed by a description…”

Kripke’s Picture “When the name is ‘passed from link to link’, the receiver of the name must, I think, intend when he learns it to use it with the same reference as the man from whom he heard it. ”

The Causal-Historical Theory Let’s call that baby ‘Feynman’ Feynman

The Causal-Historical Theory Let’s call that baby ‘Feynman’ Feynman Historical Chain of Transmission Feynman

The Causal-Historical Theory Feynman Denotation

No Connotations The causal-historical theory, unlike the other theories, does not use mental facts (idea, experience, criterion) to determine a referent. Denotations are determined by non-mental facts. * *Plus one intention for each link in the chain.

Natural Kind Terms

Natural Kinds Kripke and another philosopher Hilary Putnam wanted to generalize what was true of names to “natural kind terms” (a phrase introduced by Quine).

The Causal-Historical Theory Let’s call that thing a “tiger. ” TIGER

Ignorance: Water In Hilary Putnam’s classic “The Meaning of ‘Meaning’” he argues that “meaning just ain’t in the head. ” In particular, he presents his famous Twin Earth thought experiment, which is intended to show that what the word ‘water’ is true of is not determined by what we know or believe about water.

Twin Earth is a planet on the other side of the galaxy. In most ways, it is just like Earth, down to the smallest detail. You have a twin on Twin Earth who’s just like you, I have a twin who’s just like me, they’re sitting in a twin classroom, and my twin is giving a lecture just like this one to your twin. And so on and so forth.

Earth Twin Earth

Twin Earth There is however one difference between Earth and Twin Earth. On Earth, all the watery stuff is H 2 O. On Twin Earth, the watery stuff is composed of a complicated chemical compound we can abbreviate XYZ. H 2 O and XYZ look and behave exactly the same. They taste the same, they boil at the same temperatures at the same distance above sea level, their conductance is the same, etc.

Twin Earth Consider two twins, Arnold on Earth and Twin Arnold on Twin Earth. Neither knows any chemistry. What they know/ believe about the stuff they call ‘water’ is the same. Q: Would it be true for Arnold to call the stuff on Twin Earth ‘water’?

Twin Earth The intuition is supposed to be that, no, Arnold’s word ‘water’ is true of all an only H 2 O, whereas Twin Arnold’s word ‘water’ is true of all and only XYZ

The Moral The conclusion Kripke and Putnam draw from such cases is that we fix the referent of ‘water’ by a description like “the stuff around here in lakes and rivers and streams that falls from the sky and quenches thirst. ” But this description only fixes the referent. If you replaced all the H 2 O on Earth with XYZ, there wouldn’t be any more water here.

The Moral Kripke and Putnam’s idea is that we can latch on to a thing by its contingent (not essential) features, give it a name, and subsequently talk about it. It’s true nature is something we discover, not something we start with.

The Paradox of Inquiry

Meno’s Paradox (Slightly Revised) PREMISE 1: If you have a criterion for using a word, then you obviously don’t need to discover it (you already have it).

Meno’s Paradox (Slightly Revised) PREMISE 2: If you don’t have a criterion for using a word (and nobody else does), then you cannot discover it. JUSTIFICATION: Suppose nobody else knows that the ball going through the hoop counts as a basket. How could they discover this?

Meno’s Paradox (Slightly Revised) CONCLUSION: Philosophical inquiry is unnecessary. Either we already know, a criterion for what ‘knowledge’ applies to or we don’t. Either way, inquiry is either unnecessary or impossible.

Meno’s Paradox (Slightly Revised) SOCRATES’ / PLATO’S SOLUTION: We always already know the criteria, but this is knowledge from a previous life that we might now remember. Philosophy is remembering what we already know.

Kripke vs. the Paradox You don’t need a criterion for talking about (for example) tigers. Tigers are an objective, mindindependent class that don’t need to be grouped together by us. We can identify them by their contingent features and discover their essences subsequently.