{"id":8000,"date":"2014-04-24T14:58:36","date_gmt":"2014-04-24T14:58:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2014\/04\/24\/types-tokens-and-logical-form\/"},"modified":"2014-04-24T14:58:36","modified_gmt":"2014-04-24T14:58:36","slug":"types-tokens-and-logical-form","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2014\/04\/24\/types-tokens-and-logical-form\/","title":{"rendered":"Types, Tokens, and Logical Form"},"content":{"rendered":"

Black text by London Ed; my comments in blue.<\/span><\/p>\n

Consider:<\/span><\/p>\n

This parcel of land on the Thames is a bank.<\/span>
A bank contains money.<\/span>
*This parcel of land on the Thames contains money.<\/span><\/p>\n

The two tokens of \u2018bank\u2019 are tokens of the same type, if I understand you correctly. So does the Thames argument above instantiate the following valid form?<\/span><\/p>\n

This is an F<\/span>
Every F is G<\/span>
This F is G<\/span><\/p>\n

Let's start with a Moorean fact:  the argument is bad!  But why<\/em> is it bad?  (Now we begin to philosophize.) Is it because one of the premises is false?  Or because the reasoning is incorrect?  That distinction, the one between truth\/falsity of propositions and correctness\/incorrectness of reasoning, would also seem to be Moorean, or damned near.<\/span><\/p>\n

There are two approaches.  One is to say that the Thames argument is valid because it it instantiates the valid form depicted, but that it is nevertheless unsound because the first premise is false.  The other approach is to say that the argument involves an equivocation on 'bank' such that the argument falls afoul of quaternio terminorum<\/em>, which is of course a formal fallacy.  Thus on the second approach, the argument is invalid (because it instantiates an invalid form), but both premises are true.<\/span><\/p>\n

Either way, the Thames argument is unsound.  On the first approach it is unsound because it sports a false premise; on the second, because it has an invalid form.<\/span><\/p>\n

'Unsound' is a terminus technicus<\/em>; a term of the logician's art.  'Bad' is from ordinary language.  But if we are talking about deductive arguments, the former term is a very close exegesis or exfoliation if you will of the Joe Sixpack word.<\/span><\/p>\n

You seem to hold that if we substitute concrete tokens of the same type, then the resulting argument instantiates the form. And you also hold that to be a token of the same type means having the same spelling, and no more than that<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s the \u2018and no more than that\u2019 that I am having a problem with. I hold, and this is hardly an extreme or unorthodox position, that identically-spelled tokens can have (and often do have) different meanings, because meaning is a matter of convention. Sameness of spelling is never enough.<\/span><\/p>\n

This forces me to think hard.  We enter deep and troubled waters below the Moorean surface.  Suppose Poindexter's (weak!) password at the money bank is kzw9*.  Now consider this array:<\/span><\/p>\n

kzw9*<\/span>
kzw9*<\/span>
kzw9*<\/span><\/p>\n

How many passwords?  One or three?  A simple solution to this puzzle is to say that there are three tokens of the same type.  (Note that a password need not be a word, though it can be ('password' is one dumbassed password): the above passwords are not words of any natural language.)  The type in question here is not a word-type: it has no linguistic meaning.  No token of this type has sense or reference.<\/span><\/p>\n

It is like a key that unlocks a door.  A token of a key-type has neither sense nor reference.  it is just a little piece of metal that fits into the lock, etc.  It has no semantic properties. Its properties are geometrical, metallurgical, and the like.<\/span><\/p>\n

Now a word-token has a physical side, a body if you will.  Thus 'bank' — that particular string of marks — has geometrical properties, color, etc.  But it is not a word in virtue of being a physical item.  It is a word only when animated by sense.  Perhaps we could say that the sense is the soul of the word whose body is the physical sign.<\/span><\/p>\n

So we need to distinguish two types.  There is the physical type a token of which is the string of marks, 'bank.'  And there is the word-type a token of which is the word, 'bank.' <\/span><\/p>\n

Now I can answer Ed.  He wrote,<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

You seem to hold that if we substitute concrete tokens of the same type, then the resulting argument instantiates the form. And you also hold that to be a token of the same type means having the same spelling, and no more than that<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

That is not my view. For two words to be tokens of the same word<\/em>-type it does not suffice that they have the same spelling.  In fact, it is not even necessary: 'tire' and 'tyre' are (arguably) tokens of the same English word-type even though they are spelled differently. <\/span><\/p>\n

Spelling pertains to the physical side of a word. For two tokens to be of the same word-type they must be animated by the same meaning. <\/span><\/p>\n

Returning to the Thames argument, it is clear that there are two tokens of the 'bank' string-of-marks type.  But whether there are two tokens of the same word-type or not depends on what the speaker intended. <\/span><\/p>\n

We cannot extract the logical form of an argument be examining its physical features.  We have to understand what the constituent sentences mean, and to understand what they mean, we have to understand what their constituent terms mean.<\/span><\/p>\n

Meaning cannot be reduced to anything physical or to anything merely syntactical.  Meaning brings mind into the picture.  No mind, no meaning.  This is why I insist that linguistic reference cannot be understood unless we understand what underlies it, mental reference, i.e., intentionality. <\/span><\/p>\n

\nRelated articles<\/legend>\n
\n
\"\"<\/a>Abbreviations, Place-Holders, and Logical Form<\/a><\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a>On Philosophical Denials of the Obvious<\/a><\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a>Validity and Semantics: Will the Real Frodo Baggins Please Stand Up?<\/a><\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a>On the Enforcing and Permitting of Coreferentiality by Argument-Forms<\/a><\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a>Comments on London Ed's "Towards a Positive Theory"<\/a><\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a>The Stromboli Puzzle Revisited<\/a><\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a>Against Ostrich Nominalism<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/fieldset>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Black text by London Ed; my comments in blue. Consider: This parcel of land on the Thames is a bank. A bank contains money. *This parcel of land on the Thames contains money. The two tokens of \u2018bank\u2019 are tokens of the same type, if I understand you correctly. So does the Thames argument above … Continue reading “Types, Tokens, and Logical Form”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8000","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8000","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8000"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8000\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8000"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8000"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8000"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}