Category: Language, Philosophy of

Assertion Again

The enigmatic William of Woking e-mails from London:

Hardly a week passes by without my pondering over your objection to my position on assertion.  Would it help us if I try to clarify my position again?  And it would help me, if you clarified what your position is. My position is:

1. The semantics of a sentence is compositional, i.e. a sentence has a meaning, and the meaning has parts. (The semantic composition doesn't necessarily have to correspond to the verbal composition, although it often will).
 
This principle of the compositionality of meaning seems intuitively clear and unproblematic.  The meaning of a semantic whole is a function of  (is uniquely determined by) the meanings of its semantic parts. So far, so good.

2. There is a component of the meaning of the sentence which corresponds to assertion. By this, I mean that without this component, we no longer have a sentence, and by means of this anyone who grasps or understands this component will be correctly taken to be stating what is capable of truth and falsity.

By a sentence you mean a declarative sentence.  Such sentences are either true or false.  You speak of a component of meaning that corresponds to assertion, a component without which a sentence would not be a sentence.  This I don't understand.  Which  component of 'Tom is tall' corresponds to assertion?  It can't be 'Tom' or 'tall.'  And it can't be 'is' because 'is' is a syntactic, not a semantic, component. 

You may also be conflating the question of what makes a sentence assertible and the question of what makes a sentence a sentence as a opposed to a set, sum, or list of its parts.  E.g, what distinguishes the sentence 'Tom runs' (which is either true or false) from the list: Tom, runs (which is neither true nor false)?

If I am given 'Tom is tall' and 'Is Tom tall?' I will classify the first as declarative (indicative) and the second as interrogative.  The difference in grammatical mood is indicated by word order and presence/absence of the question mark.  But there is no one component in 'Tom is tall' that makes it indicative.  So I honestly don't know what you are claiming by (2).

Which of these do you disagree with? Which of them needs further clarification? I suspect you don't agree, for reasons you have given before, namely that the very same sentence can be uttered without the speaker being understood to be stating something true or false (e.g. if the speaker winks, or visibly crosses their fingers, or utters the sentence in an explicitly arch or ironic way).

Right.  I made the point that one can utter an indicative sentence and not make an assertion.   Suppose Johnny is picking his nose in public, and Mommy says to Johnny, 'We don't do that.' Mommy utters an indicative sentence, and yet does not make an assertion; she issues a command.  An assertion is either true or false, a command is neither.  If Johnny is a smartass, he might continue picking his nose while saying to his mother, 'You didn't tell me to cease and desist from rhinotillexomania, you merely stated that people like us don't generally engage in it.'  You could call that the smartass exploitation of the difference between sentence meaning and speaker's meaning.

I conclude that what makes a sentence indicative and what makes it an assertion are two different things.  Indicativity pertains to a sentence-type by itself apart from its tokening by a speaker.  Assertion, however, is a speech act and belongs to pragmatics.  Furthermore, I do not see that the indicativity of a sentence is signaled by some one separable component of it.  Which proper part of 'Tom runs' makes it indcative?  No proper part. 

A second example.  'Obama sucks' is an indicative sentence.  But a tokening of this sentence type will not typically express a proposition or convey an assertion; it will typically be used to express dislike or contempt.  So again, whatever it is that make a sentence indicative is different from whatever it is that makes it an assertion.

You have also objected that assertion 'is an act', but I have never clearly understood this objection. I agree that uttering a sentence is an act. But semantics i.e. meaning cannot exist without signs, which are physical and tangible tokens for the thoughts and concepts we want to express. Nor can we express our thoughts (which are personal and subjective events) without the signs. So even if assertion is an act (of producing sign-tokens), that is not inconsistent with what I am claiming. What you need to show is that no physical or verbal or written sign corresponds to assertion. (If that is your objection, but I don't really understand it, as I say).

My point was that assertion is a speech act that belongs within pragmatics, not semantics or syntactics.  Perhaps you will grant me that.  What you are looking for, apparently, is a part of a sentence that makes it an assertion.  But whether or not a sentence is an assertion depends on how it is used in a concrete situation.

Assertion and Grammatical Mood

Assertion has both a pragmatic and a semantic aspect. First and foremost, assertion is a speech act. As such, assertion or asserting is a different type of speech act from commanding, asking a question, or expressing a wish. But if we consider the language system in abstraction from the uses to which it is put by speakers, we can distinguish among different types of sentence. We can distinguish among the grammatical moods: indicative or declarative, imperative, interrogative, and optative, among others. The mood distinctions belong on the side of semantics, on the side of linguistic meaning. Linguistic meaning is the meaning a sentence type has in virtue of the conventions of the language system to which it belongs.  Speech acts, however, involve the tokening of sentence types.

So on the pragmatic side we have the distinctions among speech acts, and on the semantic side, the distinctions among moods. One question that arises is whether the speech acts map neatly onto the moods. When I make an assertion, must I use an indicative sentence? Or can I make an assertion using a non-indicative sentence? And can I utter an indicative sentence and not make an assertion? Can I make assertions using interrogative sentences?  Can I make assertions using imperative sentences?  Can one ask a question using an optative sentence?  Here are five  theses that seem true. Examples follow.

Pure Indexicals Versus Demonstratives

Suppose you like Italian cold cuts and cheeses, but you are not en rapport with the names: prosciutto, mortadella, capicola, salami, provolone, ricotta. So you are reduced to pointing when you belly up to the deli counter: 'I would like a pound of this, finely sliced.'

Your use of 'this' must be accompanied by a gesture, a demonstration; your use of 'I,' however, need not be. There is no need to point to oneself when one utters the first-person singular pronoun. One can, of course, but I don't advise it. (And if you point, point to your chest, not to your groin — though it stands to reason that if the chest or the shirt on one's chest can go proxy for the self, why not the groin or the codpiece?) 'This' and 'that' are demonstratives; 'I,' 'here,' and 'now' are pure indexicals. They are pure in that there is no need for demonstration or ostension.  This much I learned from David Kaplan.

But now I notice a difference between the pure indexicals 'I' and 'now.' One can point to oneself — or at least to one's body — when uttering 'I' but one cannot point to a time or an occupant of a time (an event) when one utters 'now.' Something pointable, ostensible, can go proxy for a self, but nothing pointable can go proxy for a time. Time, you are an elusive bitch; would that I could seize you and stop you. (Verweile doch, du bist so schön.) 'Here' appears midway between 'I' and 'now': one can point to a place by pointing to its occupant. 'I am here' he said, with his right index finger pointing to his chest and his left index finger pointing to his feet.

The Aporetics of Reference to Past Individuals

'Ocham' responds: 

You say "Although Caesar no longer exists, he did exist, and so it is reasonable to take 'Caesar' as having a referent. " It would be correct to say that the proper name 'Caesar' *had* a referent. But does it *have* a referent? If it has (present tense) a referent, then there is a relation:

refers('Caesar', Caesar)

between the word and *something*. And if we accept that a *something* has to be an existing thing, we have the paradox that Caesar does not exist, but that 'Caesar' refers to *something*, and so he does exist after all.

The medievals were more conscious of this paradox because they were before Einstein. After Einstein, we have this sense that things that existed in the past are in some sense still existing, because time is a dimension of space, and because everything in space exists. So we don't see the problem of the referent of 'Caesar' in the way we see a problem with the referent of 'Zeus'.

I tend to side with the medievals. Einstein gives us no philosophical justification for the view that things do not *change* over time, which includes a change from existing to not existing. And if the referent of a proper name may cease to exist through being corrupted, how is it that a semantic relation can still exist between the name (which admittedly still exists) and the referent (which doesn't)?

This is an excellent objection and it shows that what I said is far from self-evident. The problem may be set forth as an aporetic triad:

1.  Reference is a relation that presupposes the existence of its relata.

2.  There is reference to past individuals.

3.  Presentism: The present alone exists; past and future items do not exist.

The limbs of this triad cannot all be true.  The conjunction of (1) and (2) entails the negation of (3).  The conjunction of (1) and (3) entails the negation of (2).  And the conjunction of  (2) and (3) entails the negation of (1). 

The triad is interesting because each of its limbs has a strong claim on our acceptance.  And yet they cannot all be true.  To solve the problem one must reject one of the limbs.  But which one?  It seems to me that (2) is the least rejectable of the three.  Surely we do refer to past individuals using proper names.  Boston's Scollay Square no longer exists.  But I nonetheless refer to it when I say 'My father visited Scollay Square while on shore leave during WWII.'  I should think that 'Scollay Square' is just as referential as 'Harvard Square.'  Since (2) is the most datanic of the three limbs, it is the least rejectable.  This leaves (1) and (2). 

One could reject (1) by maintaining that reference is a relation that presupposes the existence or the having existed of its relata.  Or one could reject (3) by adopting a B-theoryof time according to which past, present, and future items all enjoy tenseless existence.  Neither of these solutions is without difficulty.

Still More on Alienans Constructions

Our old friend 'Ocham' writes:

I read your discussion of 'alienans' with interest. It is another of those interesting words (like 'inexistence') that look as though it comes from scholastic philosophy, but apparently doesn't. I use my Latin site searcher  in cases of doubt – this analyses texts of specific writers and periods. None of the great scholastic writers, not even so late a one as Suarez, use the term in this sense – indeed they hardly use it at all. They did use the term 'deminuens' in a very similar context. From the Scotus I am currently busy with:

Et sic potest concedi quod Caesar non est homo vivus, sed mortuus; et quod mortuum illo modo non deminuit ab homine, nec infert non-hominem. (And so it can be conceded that Caesar is not a living man, but dead; and that being ‘dead’ in this way does not take away from ‘man’, nor imply [that Caesar is] a non-man).

The context is the question whether 'Caesar is a man' is true or false. Scotus thinks it is true. Simon of Faversham says it is false. Roger Bacon, rather like Gareth Evans and the modern direct referentialists, think it has no truth value at all. (" ‘Caesar is Caesar’ signifies nothing… nor is it a proposition nor does it signify either what is true or false, because the whole ‘statement’ does not signify because of one or two parts that do not signify"). Note the appeal to the Fregean idea of compositionality here – the meaning of the whole is determined by the meaning of its parts. If one or more parts are meaningless, so is the whole.

Bacon's view was rightly derided by his contemporaries in Oxford and Paris.

I learned about alienans adjectives from Barry Miller who I believe borrowed the terminology from Peter Geach.  From which writers Geach got the term I don't know.  An interesting question is whether 'dead' in 'Caesar is a dead man' is an alienans adjective as I have explained this term in the post linked to above.  Clearly, artificial leather is not leather.  So 'artificial' in this context is alienans.  And if so-and-so is the alleged assailant, it does not follow that he is the assailant.  So 'alleged' in this context is alienans.  Is a dead man a man?  Although it is not so clear, I am inclined to say that a dead man is a man in agreement with Scotus.

I am also inclined to agree with Scotus that 'Caesar is a man' is true.  Although Caesar no longer exists, he did exist, and so it is reasonable to take 'Caesar' as having a referent.  (Once referential, always referential.) It is not like 'Pegasus.'  There was an individual, Caesar, but there is no individual, Pegasus.  'Pegasus' has sense but no referent.  Furthermore, Caesar's having died did not remove him from the class of men.  A dead man is a man. (I grant that this is not obvious.) Simon of Faversham, I take it, thinks the sentence false because he thinks a dead man is not a man.  Ths is not obviously wrong. 

As for Bacon's view, it sounds crazy, a piece of wildly revisionary philosophy of language.  Of course, 'Caesar is a man' has a truth-value!  And this, even if we say that 'Caesar' lacks a referent.  For whether or not it has a referent it has a sense.  What exactly did those Medieval dudes mean by 'signify'?  Were they riding roughshod over Frege's Sinn/Bedeutung distinction — to put it anachronistically?

So I agree with 'Ocham' that Bacon's view was rightly derided.

 

Seldom Seen Slim on ‘Tautologies’ That Ain’t

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Seldom Seen Slim in a characteristic back-to-the-camera pose evaluates the shooting skills of the man we call 'Doc' (in allusion to Doc Holliday).  Slim writes:

Whilst I'm mulling over your thoughts on souls and salvation, here's a trifle you might agree with.

You write "There are many examples of the use of tautological sentences to express non-tautological propositions."


Indeed, my favorite ordinary language example is the use of the double identity "a=a and b=b"   to assert that a and b are quite different (in some salient respect under discussion), and to imply that the listener is rashly ignoring this obvious fact!

 
"Why did she do that?"  Men are men and women are women. 

"The hell they are!" does not reject the identities, but the salient difference.

An exercise I used to give to my (brighter) logic students was to formalize what "men are men and women are women" is trying to assert in the Predicate Calculus.
……………
 
 'Men are men and women are women,' which appears to be a conjunction of two tautologies and thus a tautology, is, however,  typically used to express the non-tautological proposition that men and women are different as Slim suggests. The idea is not that each man is numerically different from each woman, but that there are properties had by men, but not by women, which render men and women  qualitatively different.  So perhaps we can symbolize the intended non-tautological proposition as follows using second-order predicate logic:
 
There is a property P such that for every x and every y, if x is a man, then x has P, and if y is a woman, then y does not have P.  Symbolically:
 
(EP)(x)(y)[(Mx –>Px) &  (Wy –>~Px)]
 
where 'E' is the existential quantifier, 'x' and 'y' are individual variables, 'M' and 'W' are predicate constants, 'P' is a predicate variable, '&' is the sign for truth-functional conjunction, and '–>' denotes the material or Philonian conditional.
 
But on second thought, this doesn't seem right.  For when we say that men are men and women women, we do not mean that there is one particular property that all men have and all women lack that renders them qualitatively different; what we we mean is that there are some properties which render them different, allowing that these could be different properties for different men and women.  To illustrate:  consider a universe consisting of  just two men and two women: Al, Bill, Carla, and Diana.  The property of having lousy social skills might be had by both Al and Bill and lacked by both Carla and Diana.  But it might also be that there are two properties, the property of being ornery and the property of being highly unemotional such that Al is highly unemotional but not ornery and Bill is ornery but not highly unemotional while neither of the ladies has either.  In that case there would be no one propery that distinguishes the men from the women.
 
So let's try:
 
(x)(y)[(Mx & Wy –> (EP) (Px & ~Py)] 

 
What say you, Slim?

 
 

More on Alienans Adjectives: Relative Truth and Derived Intentionality

I am sitting by a pond with a child. The child says, "Look, there are  three ducks." I say, "No, there are two ducks, one female, the other  male, and a decoy."

The point is that a decoy duck is not a duck, but a piece of wood  shaped and painted to appear (to a duck) like a duck so as to entice  ducks into range of the hunters' shotguns. Since a decoy duck is not a duck, 'decoy' in 'decoy duck' does not function in the way 'male' and   'female' function in 'male duck' and 'female duck,' respectively. A   male duck is a duck and a female duck is a duck. But a decoy duck is not a duck.

'Decoy' is an alienans adjective unlike 'male' and 'female' which are specifying adjectives. 'Decoy' shifts or alienates the sense of 'duck' rather than adding a specification to it. The same goes for 'roasted' in 'We are having roasted duck for dinner.' A roasted duck is not a  duck but the cooked carcass of a duck. Getting hungry?

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A Quiz on Alienans Adjectives

First read study the post Alienans Adjectives.  Then take the quiz.  Answers below the fold.  Classify the adjectives in the following examples as either specifying (S), alienans (A), or neither (N).  Much of course depends on the context in which the phrase is used.  So imagine a plausible and common context.

1. Deciduous tree. 2. Alleged assailant. 3. Imaginary friend. 4. Material implication. 5. Contemptible leftist. 6. Infrared radiation. 7. Hypothetical medium of the transmission of electromagnetic signals. 8. Postal service. 9. Imaginary number.  10. Male chauvinist. 

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Alienans Adjectives

A reader inquires:

I find your blog interesting and educational.  A while ago you mentioned that there is a term for an adjective which is used not to specify a particular sort of the noun which it modifies, but rather a thing which does not meet the definition of that noun.  (I've likely somewhat mangled the description of this term in trying to recall it.)  For example 'polished leather' and 'red leather' are kinds of leather, but 'artificial leather' refers to things which aren't leather at all.  I have tried to find the post that talked about this but I forgot what the topic was when you mentioned it.  Can you please tell me the name for this?

'Artificial' in 'artificial leather' functions as an alienans adjective.  It 'alienates' the sense of the noun it modifies.  In the case of specifying adjectives,  an FG is a G, where F is an adjective and G a noun. Thus a nagging wife is a wife, a female duck is a duck, cow's leather  is leather, and a contingent truth is a truth. But if 'F' is alienans,   then either an FG is not a G, or it does not follow from x's being an  FG that x is a G. For example, your former wife is not your wife, a   decoy duck is not a duck, artificial leather is not leather, and a   relative truth is not a truth. Is an apparent heart attack a heart   attack? It may or may not be. One cannot validly move  from 'Jones had an apparent heart attack' to 'Jones had a heart attack.' So 'apparent' in  'apparent heart attack' is alienans.

Note that I was careful to say 'artificial' in 'artificial leather' is an alienans adjective.  For it does not function as such in every context.  'Artificial' in 'artificial insemination' is not alienans: you are just as inseminated if it has come about artificially or naturally.

Two more examples of alienans adjectives that I borrow from Peter Geach: 'forged' in 'forged banknote' and 'putative in 'putative father.'  If x is a forged banknote it does not follow that x is a banknote.  And if x is the putative father of y, it does not follow that x is the father of y. Here is an example I got from the late Australian philosopher Barry Miller:  'negative' in 'negative growth.'  If my stock portfolio is experiencing negative growth,  then it is precisely not experiencing growth.

Of course, I am not suggesting that every adjective (as employed in some definite context) can be classified as either specifying or alienans.  Consider the way 'mean-spirited' functions in 'mean-spirited Republican.'  In most contexts, the implication is not that some Republicans are mean-spirited and some are not; the implication is that all are.  To be a Republican is just to be mean-spirited.  Is there a name for that sort of adjective?  I don't know.  But there ought to be, and if I ever work out a general theory of adjectives, I'll give it one.

Now consider 'Muslim terrorist.'  A politically correct idiot might take offense at this phrase  as implying that all Muslims are terrorists or even that all and only Muslims are terrorists.  But no intelligent person would take it this way.  If I say that Hasan is a Muslim terrorist , then the plain meaning to anyone with his head screwed on properly is that Hasan is a Muslim and a terrorist, which obviously does not imply that all Muslims are terrorists. 

When Is a Tautology Not a Tautology?

My Aunt T. was married to a gruff and taciturn Irishman who rejoiced under the name of 'Morris.' Thinking to engage Uncle Mo in conversation during one of my infrequent visits to the Big Apple, and knowing that Morris drove a beer truck, I once made some comment about the superiority of German over American beer. Uncle Mo, not to be seduced  into the bracing waters of dialectic, replied, "Beer is beer." End of conversation.

But the beginning of an interesting line of thought. A tautology is a logical truth. To be precise, a tautology is a logical truth within the propositional calculus. (Every tautology is a logical truth, but not every logical truth is a tautology.  The logical truths of the predicate calculus are not tautologies, strictly speaking.)

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A Modal Fallacy to Avoid: Confusing the Necessity of the Consequence with the Necessity of the Consequent

No one anywhere can utter 'I am talking now' without saying something true. Indeed, that is necessarily the case: it doesn't just happen to be the case. Letting T = 'I am talking now,' we can write

1. Necessarily, for any speaker S, if S utters T, then T is true.

But it would be a mistake to infer

2. For any speaker S, if S utters T, then T is necessarily true.

The same goes for 'I exist now.' It cannot be tokened, in language or thought, without it being the case that a truth is expressed; but it does not follow that the one who tokens it necessarily exists. Its negation, 'I do not exist now,' cannot be tokened in language or thought without it being the case that a falsehood is expressed; but it does not follow that the nonexistence of the one who tokens it is impossible.

A Sense/Reference Objection to the Irreducibility of Phenomenally Conscious States

I agree with Thomas Nagel, John Searle, and others that conscious experiences are irreducible to physical states. I have endorsed the idea that felt pain, phenomenal pain, pain as experienced or lived through (er-lebt), the pain that hurts, has a subjective mode of existence, a "first-person ontology" in Searle's phrase. If this is right, then phenomenally conscious states cannot be reduced to physical states with their objective mode of existence and third-person ontology. As a consequence, an exclusively third-person approach to mind is bound to leave something out. But there is an objection to irreducibility that needs to be considered, an objection that exploits Frege's distinction between sense and reference.

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The Metaphysics 101 Argument for Propositions

In his SEP entry on propositions, Matthew McGrath presents what he calls the 'Metaphysics 101' argument for propositions. Rather than quote him, I will put the argument in my own more detailed way.

1. With respect to any occurrent (as opposed to dispositional) belief, there is a distinction between the mental act of believing and the content believed. Since believing is 'intentional' as philosophers use this term, i.e., necessarily object-directed, there cannot be an act of believing that is not directed upon some object or content. To believe is to believe something, that the door has been left ajar, for example. Nevertheless, the believing and the believed are distinct.

Pavel Tichý on Whether ‘God’ is the Name of an Individual

This post is the third in a series on Pavel Tichý's "Existence and God" (J. Phil., August 1979, 403-420). So far I have sketched his theory of existence, made a couple of objections, and refuted his argument for it. I now turn to section II of his article (pp. 410-412) in which he discusses Descartes' Meditation Five ontological argument. But in this post I will address only the preliminaries to the discussion of Descartes. Tichý writes,

We have seen that 'Jimmy Carter' and 'the U. S. president' are terms of completely different typological categories: 'Jimmy Carter' denotes an individual, and 'the U. S. president' denotes something for an individual to be, an individual-office. Which of the two categories does the term 'God' belong to? It would be patently implausible to construe it as belonging to the former category. If 'God' were simply the name of an individual, it would be a purely contingent matter whether God is benevolent or not; for any individual is conceivably malicious. But of course the notion of a malevolent God is absurd. If so, however, God cannot be an individual; God is bound to be rather something for an individual to be, and benevolence must be part of what it takes for someone to be it. In other words, 'God' must stand for an individual office, and benevolence must be one of the requisites that make up the essence of that office.

It is only because 'God' denotes an individual-office that we can sensibly ask whether God exists. To ask, Does God exist? is not to ask whether something is true regarding a definite individual; for which individual would it be? It is rather to ask whether, of all the individuals there are, one has what it takes to be God. It is to ask, in other words, whether the divine office is occupied. (410-411)

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