Truth and Words
By Gary Ebbs
* Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
* Number Of Pages: 330
* Publication Date: 2009-06-01
* ISBN-10 / ASIN: 0199557934
* ISBN-13 / EAN: 9780199557936
Product Description:
To clarify and facilitate our inquiries we need to define a disquotational truth predicate that we are directly licensed to apply not only to our own sentences as we use them now, but also to other speakers' sentences and our own sentences as we used them in the past. The conventional wisdom is that there can be no such truth predicate. For it appears that the only instances of the disquotational pattern that we are directly licensed to accept are those that define "is true" for our own sentences as we use them now. Gary Ebbs shows that this appearance is illusory. He constructs an account of words that licenses us to rely not only on formal (spelling-based) identifications of our own words, but also on our non-deliberative practical identifications of other speakers' words and of our own words as we used them in the past. To overturn the conventional wisdom about disquotational truth, Ebbs argues, we need only combine this account of words with our disquotational definitions of truth for sentences as we use them now. The result radically transforms our understanding of truth and related topics, including anti-individualism, self-knowledge, and the intersubjectivity of logic.
Preface
This book is an attempt to fuse together two apparently independent
ideas?the idea that truth and satisfaction are disquotational and the idea
that unless we see good reason in a given context for not doing so, we
are entitled to trust the non-deliberative identifications of sentences and
words on which we rely when we take ourselves to agree or disagree with
others, to learn from what they say, or to express a new discovery. It is
not my first attempt to link these ideas. In Rule-Following and Realism (Ebbs
1997), I recommended that we describe what it is to share a language
from our perspective as participants in actual linguistic interactions with
other speakers, and proposed that we take such descriptions to license us
to apply our disquotational definitions of truth and satisfaction directly to
other speakersˇ words and to our own words as we used them in the past.
I still think this proposal points in the right direction. But I now think it
does not go far enough. If we wish to describe our linguistic practices in
a way that fits with a disquotational account of truth and satisfaction, we
need a more radical approach.
My approach in this book is shaped at every step by the assumption that
we desire to clarify and facilitate our inquiries by regimenting our sentences
and formulating logical generalizations. Given this assumption, I ask, ˉˉDo
we need a truth predicate?ˇˇ and ˉˉIf so, what sort of truth predicate do we
need?ˇˇ I answer these questions in a way that clarifies the non-deliberative
identifications of words on which we rely when we take ourselves to
agree or disagree with others, to learn from what they say, or to express
a new discovery. I explain how to resist our tendency to think of words
as individuated by their spellings or pronunciations together with facts
about how speakers use them, and show how to construct an alternative
conception of words that fits with the non-deliberative identifications of
words on which we rely in our inquiries. I propose that we combine
this alternative conception of words with our disquotational definitions of
truth for sentences as we now use them. The result radically transforms
our understanding of truth and related topics, including anti-individualism,
self-knowledge, and the intersubjectivity of logic.
viii 敲桥歉枪谴嵌歉
During the planning and writing of this book I was fortunate to receive
excellent advice and criticism from many friends and colleagues. When I
started planning the book in 1998, Tom Ricketts warned me, in a tone of
voice that he reserves for his most urgent and provocative philosophical
remarks, ˉˉThere will have to be regimentation.ˇˇ I knew he was right, but
it took me years to figure out exactly how to fit regimentation into my
account (see Chapters 1 and 3). Also in 1998, Hilary Putnam convinced
me that Tarskiˇs definitions of ˉtruth-in-Lˇ for sentences individuated orthographically
(as strings of letters and spaces) are at best incomplete because
they leave us in the dark about the relationship between those definitions
and our ordinary non-deliberative applications of truth to other speakersˇ
utterances. Yet another central part of the book started coming into
focus in 1997 and 1998 when I first formulated various versions of my
gold?platinum thought experiment (see Chapter 6). Conversations with
Adrian Cussins, Brian Loar, Tom Ricketts, Mark Wilson, and George
Wilson were especially helpful to me at that stage, but I also learned a great
deal from discussions at Arizona State University, Florida State University,
Grinnell College, UC-San Diego, UC-Irvine, University of Illinois
at Urbana-Champaign, and Smith College, where I presented papers that
feature the gold?platinum thought experiment. In my 2000 Central APA
symposium paper ˉˉDenotation and Discoveryˇˇ, I further developed my
view of sameness of satisfaction across time. Mark Wilson was the commentator
for that paper; his comments prompted me to clarify how my view
applies to natural kind terms found in texts written centuries ago. Starting
around 2003, I had several helpful conversations with Henry Jackman,
whose temporal externalism is in some ways similar to my view of sameness
of satisfaction across time, but in other ways fundamentally different from
it (see Chapter 8). In my 2004 Eastern APA symposium paper ˉˉTruth
and Wordsˇˇ, I first presented an alternative to the standard conception
of words. This time Steven Gross was the commentator; he urged me to
clarify my pragmatic grounds for thinking that a disquotational definition
of ˉtrue-in-Lˇ is satisfactory only if it implies that we are directly licensed
to apply ˉtrue-in-Lˇ to other speakersˇ sentences and our own sentences
as we used them in the past. Steven later sent me references to a number
of articles that I found very helpful when I wrote Chapter 4. From 2003
to 2006, I participated in a reading group on linguistics and philosophy of
language with Peter Lasersohn and Lenny Clapp. In bi-weekly discussions
敲桥歉枪谴嵌歉 ix
with Peter and Lenny I learned a great deal about recent work in formal
semantics, and gradually developed my current view (see Chapter 1) that
much of this work can be detached from the controversial explanatory
ambitions of its various authors and pressed into service as part of a pragmatic
account of regimentation. In the spring semesters of 2005 and 2007,
I presented drafts of the book in seminars at the University of Illinois
at Urbana-Champaign and Indiana University, respectively; the graduate
students in these seminars raised many challenging criticisms that helped me
to clarify my arguments. In the final stages of the writing I received excellent
criticisms and advice from Katy Abramson, Imogen Dickie, Michael
Glanzberg, Steven Gross, David Hills, Henry Jackman, John MacFarlane,
Joan Wiener, and two anonymous readers for Oxford University Press.
Many others also raised objections or gave me advice that helped me to
write this book, including Ben Bayer, Stephen Biggs, Susan Blake, Bill
Brewer, Kyle Broom, Jessica Brown, Nancy Cartwright, Hugh Chandler,
Yajun Chen, Lenny Clapp, Jim Conant, Mike Dunn, Daniel Estrada,
Anthony Everett, Kit Fine, David Finkelstein, Brie Gertler, Sandy Goldberg,
Warren Goldfarb, Robert Gooding-Williams, Tara Gilligan, Richard
Heck, Jon Jarrett, Darryl Jung, Mark Kaplan, John Koethe, Scott Kimbrough,
Phil Kitcher, Phil Kremer, Michael Kremer, Wolfgang K?unne,
Mark Lance, Peter Lasersohn, Michael Liston, Adam Leite, Brian Loar,
Pen Maddy, Ruth Barcan Marcus, Patricia Marino, Mohan Matten, Tim
McCarthy, David McCarty, Art Melnick, Tom Meyer, Nathalie Morasch,
Michael Morgan, Erica Neely, Charles Parsons, Terry Parsons, Oliver
Pooley, Michael Resnick, Sam Rickless, Bill Robinson, Joseph Rouse,
Dick Schacht, Fred Schmitt, Peter Schwartz, David Shwayder, Sanford
Shieh, Barry Smith, Tom Stoneham, Tadeusz Szubka, Alessandra Tanesini,
William Taschek, Kevin Toh, Charles Travis, Steve Wagner, and Chuang
Ye. Warm thanks to all.
Most of the material in Chapter 5 was previously published under the
title ˉˉLearning from Othersˇˇ (Ebbs 2002a), and Chapter 6 draws heavily
from my papers ˉˉThe Very Idea of Sameness of Extension across Timeˇˇ
(Ebbs 2000) and ˉˉDenotation and Discoveryˇˇ (Ebbs 2003). I thank the
editors and publishers of these articles for their permission to include large
parts of them in this book.
I received a fellowship at the Center for Advanced Studies at the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) to write a first draft
x 敲桥歉枪谴嵌歉
of this book (2001?2), several travel grants from UIUC that made it
possible for me to present some of the central arguments in this book
at other institutions, two grants from the Freeman Fellowship Exchange
Program to present some of these arguments at universities in China (2002,
2004), and funding from the British Academy that covered the costs of my
attendance at Tom Stonehamˇs workshops on sameness of extension across
time (2004, 2005). I am grateful to these institutions and programmes for
their support.
I thank Peter Momtchiloff for his early interest in this project and his
patience while I worked on it.
Above all, I thank my wife, Martha, for her unfailing support and
understanding throughout this long project.
Gary Ebbs
Bloomington, Indiana
23 September 2008
Contents
Introduction 1
莃. Regimentation 14
1.1. Regimentation as Linguistic Policy 14
1.2. Ambiguity 17
1.3. Is Regimentation Possible? 20
1.4. Vagueness 22
1.5. Quantifier Domains, Tense, and Time 25
1.6. Descriptions and Proper Names 27
1.7. Pronouns and Demonstratives 30
1.8. Why Ordinary Language is Indispensable 32
1.9. Limitations of First-Order Logic 33
莄. The Tarski?Quine Thesis 40
2.1. The Indispensability Argument 40
2.2. Why Generalize on Valid Sentences? 48
2.3. Three Attempts to Generalize on Sentences without
Using a Truth Predicate 52
2.4. Horwichˇs Minimal Theory 58
2.5. A Naive Theory of Why it is Epistemically Reasonable for
us to Accept T-Sentences 63
2.6. Surrogate T-Sentences and Explication 65
2.7. Tarskiˇs Convention T 67
2.8. ˉTrue-in-Lˇ Defined in Terms of Satisfaction 70
2.9. How (Tr) Satisfies Convention T and Enables us to
Derive ST-Sentences 72
2.10. Schematic Definitions of ˉTrue-in-Lˇ Rejected 74
2.11. Adopting the Tarski?Quine Thesis 78
2.12. Two Objections 79
xii 嵌锹橇乔歉橇乔瞧
莇. The Intersubjectivity Constraint 82
3.1. A Preliminary Formulation of the Intersubjectivity
Constraint 82
3.2. Practical Identifications of Words (PIWs) 84
3.3. Practical Judgements of Sameness of Satisfaction (PJSSs) 87
3.4. Agreement and Disagreement 90
3.5. Learning from Others 93
3.6. Discoveries 94
3.7. A Reformulation of the Intersubjectivity Constraint 95
3.8. Trust without Trustworthiness? 97
3.9. A Quinean Objection: PJSSs are not Factual 98
3.10. Realism as Integral to the Semantics of the Predicate
ˉTrueˇ 102
莈. How to Think about Words 105
4.1. Is the Tarski?Quine Thesis Incompatible with the
Intersubjectivity Constraint? 105
4.2. Use versus Mention (Transparent Use) 106
4.3. The Orthographic Conception of Words 107
4.4. Explanatory Use (Ex-Use) 108
4.5. The Token-and-Ex-Use Model of Words 112
4.6. Types and Tokens 114
4.7. Kaplanˇs Common Currency Conception of Words 120
4.8. The Context Principle and the PJSS-Based Conception of
Words 127
4.9. How to Satisfy the Intersubjectivity Constraint without
Rejecting the Tarski?Quine Thesis 133
4.10. Preliminary Objections and Replies 140
莊. Learning from Others, Interpretation, and Charity 144
5.1. Is the Intersubjectivity Constraint Compatible with the
Negation of the Tarski?Quine Thesis? 144
5.2. Language Ex-Use and Interpretation 145
5.3. A Case in which One Person Learns from Another 148
5.4. Two Conditionals 151
嵌锹橇乔歉橇乔瞧 xiii
5.5. Strategy 153
5.6. What is Davidsonˇs Principle of Charity? 154
5.7. Davidsonˇs Framework for Evaluating (3) and (4) 158
5.8. Why the Conjunction of (3) and (4) Violates Davidsonˇs
Principle of Charity 160
5.9. My Conclusion Drawn, Generalized, and Explained 165
5.10. Is the Principle of Charity Optional? 169
5.11. An Alternative to Davidsonˇs Principle of Charity 171
5.12. Frontiers of Translation 174
5.13. The Method behind these Conclusions 177
莋. A Puzzle about Sameness of Satisfaction across Time 179
6.1. An Intuition about Sameness of Satisfaction across Time 179
6.2. Methodological Analyticity 182
6.3. Causal-Historical Theories 186
6.4. A Thought Experiment 191
6.5. The Standard Conception of the Options for the Thought
Experiment 194
6.6. A Preview of why Options (1) and (2) are Unacceptable 196
6.7. A Dilemma for the Causal-Historical Theory 197
6.8. Dispositions 201
6.9. Epistemic Possibilities and Primary Intensions 204
6.10. Problems with Primary Intensions 208
6.11. Implicit Conceptions 213
莌. Sense and Partial Extension 217
7.1. Option (3) 217
7.2. Dummett on Sameness of Satisfaction across Time 218
7.3. Dummett on Sense and Implicit Knowledge 220
7.4. Why Dummettˇs Constraints Rule out Options (1) and (2) 225
7.5. Dummettˇs Version of Option (3) 228
7.6. Two Problems for Dummettˇs Version of Option (3) 230
7.7. Field on Partial Extension 236
7.8. A Field-Style Argument against Options (1) and (2) 238
7.9. A Field-Style Defence of Option (3) 240
7.10. A Problem for the Field-Style Defence of Option (3) 241
xiv 嵌锹橇乔歉橇乔瞧
莍. The Puzzle Diagnosed and Dissolved 247
8.1. The Puzzle Reviewed 247
8.2. The First Gold?Platinum Thought Experiment and the
Context Principle 249
8.3. The Second Gold?Platinum Thought Experiment 252
8.4. The Thesis that the Extension of a PJSS-Based Word
Type is Determined by Facts about the Ex-Uses of Some
of its Tokens 257
8.5. George Wilsonˇs Riverdale Olympics Case 260
8.6. Henry Jackmanˇs Temporal Externalism 264
8.7. Counterfactuals about the Past and the Third
Gold?Platinum Thought Experiment 269
8.8. Temporal Externalism and Relative Truth 276
8.9. Immanent Realism 286
莏. Applications and Consequences 288
9.1. Introduction 288
9.2. A Deflationary Alternative to the Causal Theory of
Reference: Predicates 289
9.3. A Deflationary Alternative to the Causal Theory of
Reference: Proper Names 291
9.4. What is Minimal Self-Knowledge? 294
9.5. Minimal Self-Knowledge as Second Order 295
9.6. Basic Self-Knowledge and Containment 297
9.7. Minimal Self-Knowledge as First Order 303
9.8. Minimal Self-Knowledge as Practical Knowledge 306
9.9. The Division of Epistemic Labour 308
9.10. Judging Minimal Linguistic Competence across Time 311
9.11. Anti-Individualism, Externalism, and Linguistic
Communities 313
9.12. Truth and Logic 316
References 320
Index 331 |
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