Philosophy of Language Seminar 1: Sense and Reference Henry Taylor j.h.taylor.1@bham.ac.uk

Philosophy of Language Core textbook: William Lycan Philosophy of Language: A contemporary introduction Many of the papers are available online, but if you want to buy an anthology, buy: Readings in the Philosophy of Language. Edited by Peter Ludlow (MIT Press).

Why study philosophy of language? 1) Language is one of the most important features of the world. It allows societies to function. It can produce immense harm: cause whole nations to go to war, propagate hatred of a particular group, etc. Many believe that it is what separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom. It is intimately bound up with other philosophically important faculties: thought, belief, knowledge.

Why study philosophy of language? 2) Its place in the history of philosophy, and contemporary philosophy. By the mid 19th century, many were becoming disillusioned with the way philosophy was going.

Why study philosophy of language? Specifically, many were upset with the ‘German Idealist’ tradition. They followed and reacted to Kant, and included Hegel, Fichte, Schelling. Many considered this to be a woefully misguided tradition: making philosophy hideously obscure, arcane and mired in unclarity, cross talking, and a lack of rigour.

In 1879, Gottlob Frege published the Begriffsschift. This was a work that set out a system of logic similar to what we still use today. Frege began to use this system to help understand language.

Why study philosophy of language? Many (Russell, Moore) saw this system as a way to save philosophy from what they felt it had become. This movement caused a split in philosophy: between the ‘analytic’ and ‘continental’ schools, which still very much exists today. Analytic philosophers pride themselves on rigour, clarity, care and precision. This grew out of Frege and his followers’ work on language and logic.

Why study philosophy of language? So, many of the ideas we will look at in this course are the very foundational ideas of the whole of analytic philosophy. The texts we will be looking at: ‘on sense and reference’, ‘on denoting’, ‘Naming and Necessity’, ‘Two dogmas of empiricism’, ‘meaning and reference’, ‘individualism and the mental’ are the most important texts in the history of analytic philosophy.

Why study philosophy of language? In studying philosophy, you will be expected to know a lot of this stuff. You need to understand philosophy of language to understand contemporary philosophy.

A brief look ahead We will be looking at these classic texts and ideas. Topics: Meaning. How we talk about non-existent things. How words relate to the world. How meanings relate to the society we live in.

A brief look ahead hate speech Pornography

A brief look ahead We’re also going to look at the interface of philosophy and linguistics, and philosophy and psychology. Noam Chomsky: Language acquisition in infancy Language as what separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom. Universal Grammar

The course We will have a mini-lecture (including question/answer sessions). Then we will have discussion for the second half. Each week will have one or two set readings, which must be done for the discussion.

Frege’s Puzzle Start with a question: How do names get their meaning? Simple answer: They mean whatever they refer to, whatever they ‘pick out’. So ‘Julius Caesar’ just means the man himself: Julius Caesar. The meaning of the name is given by its referent. This view is associated with John Stuart Mill.

Terminology The referent of a name is what the name ‘picks out’. So the referent of the name ’Noam Chomsky’ is the man himself: Chomsky.

Frege’s Puzzle Some names are different but pick out (refer to) the same thing. Co-referential names. Examples: ’The morning star’ and ‘The evening star’ ‘Mark Twain’ and ‘Samuel Clemens’ ‘Eric Blair’ and ‘George Orwell’

Frege’s Puzzle Take ‘the morning star’ and ’the evening star’. Both of them refer to the same thing (the planet Venus).

Frege’s Puzzle Consider two claims: 1) The morning star is the morning star 2) The morning star is the evening star. Both are true.

Frege’s Puzzle 1) Both names refer to the same thing. 2) So, if the meaning of a name just is its reference, then the two statements should both mean the same thing. 3) Clearly, they do not mean the same thing.

Frege’s Puzzle Why think that they clearly mean different things? ‘a=a and a=b are sentences of obviously different cognitive significance: “a=a” is valid a priori… whereas sentences of the form “a=b” often contain very valuable extensions of our knowledge” He’s saying the names ‘a’ and ‘b’ must mean different things because some statements of their sameness are a priori (true just by the meanings of the words) whilst others require empirical discovery.

Frege’s Puzzle Another reason to think they don’t mean the same thing: ‘Anita knows that George Orwell wrote 1984’ might be true, but ‘Anita knows that Eric Blair wrote 1984’ might be false. So ‘George Orwell’ must mean something different from ‘Eric Blair’. So we have two reasons to think they mean different things.

Frege’s Puzzle 1) Both names refer to the same thing. 2) So, if the meaning of a name just is its reference, then the two statements should both mean the same thing. 3) Clearly, they do not mean the same thing. 4) Therefore, the meaning of a name is not just its reference. Questions/comments?

Frege’s Puzzle Frege accepted this argument: the meaning of a name is not just its referent. His solution to the puzzles: the two names have the same referent (bedeutung) but they differ in sense (sinn).

Sense and reference Sense (Sinn): It captures the cognitive significance of the name. Cognitive significance? That’s like how the name functions in the beliefs of people who use the name. For example, ‘Eric Blair’ and ‘George Orwell’ might mean different things to a speaker. Someone might think that ’George Orwell is the guy who wrote 1984.’ And they might think ‘Eric Blair is the guy born in 1903, who was a policeman in Burma, whose great grandfather was Charles Blair’

Sense and reference This is a difference in sense: in what the language user associates with the thing that the name refers to. Same with morning star: ‘It’s the star that appears in the morning’ And the evening star: ‘It’s the star that appears in the evening’ Again, different senses.

Sense and reference ‘Eric Blair’ and ‘George Orwell’ both pick out the same thing: they have the same referent. ‘The morning star’ and ’the evening star’ are the same. Same reference, different senses.

Sense and reference Frege’s view: sense and reference both contribute to the meaning of a name. So if words differ in their sense, then they differ in meaning. That explains Frege’s puzzles.

Questions?

Sense and reference How do sense and reference interact? Sense determines reference. So suppose someone uses the name ‘George Orwell’ and associates it with the sense ‘the guy who wrote 1984.’ Then that sense picks out whoever it is that wrote 1984. Suppose that she also uses the name ‘Eric Blair’, and associates it with the sense ‘the guy born in 1903, who was a policeman in Burma, whose great grandfather was Charles Blair’ Then that sense picks out whoever it is that did all that.

Sense and reference As it happens, the guy who wrote 1984 is the guy who was born in 1903, who was a policeman in Burma, whose great grandfather was Charles Blair. Both senses pick out the same thing: that’s why they have the same reference.

Sense and reference So names can have the same reference, but differ in sense. They can also differ in both sense and reference: ‘The evening star’ and ‘George Orwell’ And they can be the same in sense and reference: ‘George Orwell’ and ‘George Orwell’ But they can’t be the same in sense and different in reference. WHY?

Sense and reference So far, senses do two things: 1) Explain the cognitive significance of a name. 2) Fix the name’s reference.

Questions/comments about this theory

Sense and reference Senses are public. Different people can share the same sense. Whilst one person can use the name ‘George Orwell’ and associate the sense ‘the guy who wrote 1984’ with it, someone else could use the name ‘George Orwell’ and associate the very same sense with it.

Sense and reference

Sense and reference The public nature of senses is important. It means that two speakers can use a name and both share the same sense and reference with it. So, on this view, the meanings of words are public things. This goes some way toward explaining how meanings can be shared, and how communication is possible.

Sense and reference So now senses do three things: 1) Explain the cognitive significance of a name 2) Explain how reference is fixed 3) Explain the public nature of meanings. They do one more thing….

Sense and reference Frege also tried to explain how words combine to form whole thoughts (Gedanke). The name ‘George Orwell’ is only a constituent of a whole thought, like ‘George Orwell was the greatest novelist of the 20th century’. Put simply, language is combinatorial: you can combine different words in an infinity of different ways.

Sense and reference So, you have names like ‘George Orwell’, which combine to make sentences like ‘George Orwell is the greatest novelist of the 20th century’. Frege thinks that the senses of the individual words in the sentence gives the sentence as a whole its own sense. This sense he calls the thought, (Gedanke).

Sense and reference So thoughts are the senses of whole sentences. Remember that senses determine reference. What is the reference of ‘George Orwell is the greatest novelist of the 20th century’? Ideas?

Sense and reference The thought refers to the truth (if it’s true) or the false (if it’s false). So ‘The Eiffel Tower is in Paris’ is a sentence that expresses a thought that refers to the truth. ‘The Eiffel Tower is in Rome’ is a sentence that expresses a thought that refers to the false.

Sense and reference: summary Need to keep track of all the moving pieces: 1) Names 2) Senses (Sinn) 3) Reference (Bedeutung) 4) Sentences 5) Thoughts (Gedanke) 6) Truth and Falsity.

Sense and reference So now senses do four things: 1) Explain the cognitive significance of a name 2) Explain how reference is fixed 3) Explain the public nature of meanings. 4) Explain how words combine to form whole thoughts.

Discussion 1) What do we think of Frege’s puzzles? Can a ‘meaning is reference’ theorist get round them? 2) What exactly are senses? Do you feel like you have a good grasp of them? 3) What do you make of the idea that senses are public? 4) What do you think of Frege’s theory as a whole?