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Directival Theory of Meaning pp 43–86Cite as

Troubles Ahead

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Part of the book series: Synthese Library ((SYLI,volume 409))

Abstract

In this chapter I look at the original DTM from a critical perspective. Firstly, I closely analyze the way directives produce meanings of words. Secondly, I look at the consequences of the holistic nature of the DTM. Next, I expand on the pragmatic aspect of the theory and try to imagine how the process of gathering directives should look like. In the following subsection I inspect the reasons and consequences of the non-referential status of the DTM. In Sect. 3.6 I discuss Alfred Tarski’s counterexample which discouraged Ajdukiewicz from developing the theory further. Section 3.7 brings to light some of the non-obvious assumptions on syntax which are present in the DTM. The chapter closes with the examination of the most problematic aspect of the original theory – the fact it was originally restricted only to “closed” and “connected” languages. I explain Ajdukiewicz’s reasons for this restriction and prepare ground for its elimination.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    As pointed out in Machery (2009), there are at least two significantly different traditions of understanding concepts: the first understands them as categorization devices, the second as building blocks of judgements. Given the role categorization plays in empirical directives, they should probably be understood as a combination of the two.

  2. 2.

    See Chap. 4 for a discussion on a similar problem in Sellars’ theory.

  3. 3.

    Note that, although we should not conflate these cases – the analyticity of sentences that figure in the directives and the analyticity of the whole directives – both of them are bad news for the theory as they both lead to the problem mentioned by Fodor and Lepore. It is just that we should consider them separately.

  4. 4.

    See Maynes (2012) for a critical discussion on this common view.

  5. 5.

    See Cappelen (2014) and Machery (2017) for a rundown of the arguments of both sides.

  6. 6.

    For thinking that the choice of logic could be dictated by empirical facts, Łukasiewicz was criticized by Ajdukiewicz, who believed it to be a practical decision.

  7. 7.

    Whether this explanation would have been acceptable from the ideological point of view of Marxist materialism is another question.

  8. 8.

    This was probably the influence of two traditions: the phenomenological tradition of Husserl and the positivist tradition of the Vienna Circle, especially Rudolf Carnap’s Logische Aufbau Der Welt (1928).

  9. 9.

    This is somewhat justified by the expression “data of experience” used in Ajdukiewicz (1935/1978).

  10. 10.

    A number of examples similar to this were suggested by John Perry (2001).

  11. 11.

    Davidson raises this point while discussing the problem of ascribing beliefs to animals, but his point is equally applicable to the DTM.

  12. 12.

    As opposed to the trivial sense in which we could just say that they differ because they are comprised of different letters.

  13. 13.

    As we pointed out in Sect. 3.4.3, he does say that meaning directives are analytic, but there is nothing to suggest that the same could be said about sentences covered by the directives.

  14. 14.

    It is hard not to notice that all of these considerations are very reminiscent of problems encountered in other theories, such as Quine’s theory of language (indeterminacy of translation) and Davidson’s theory of language (principle of charity). I discuss both connections at length in Chaps. 4 and 5.

  15. 15.

    To the point that he tried to reduce semantics to syntax, which was a valiant but probably futile effort. This is interesting to mention in the context of the DTM as it could be argued that Ajdukiewicz’s theory manages to do something very close to the unattainable Carnapian ideal by adding a dash of pragmatics to the mix.

  16. 16.

    The expression used in the Polish version of the paper is even more evocative, as it can be best translated as “dormant”.

  17. 17.

    The term was introduced in Carnap (1945) and discussed in detail in Carnap (1950b).

  18. 18.

    Which, admittedly, is nothing new in the philosophy of language, as Quine could easily have been accused of the same confusion.

  19. 19.

    Anticipating both Davidson’s conceptual themes and Wittgenstein’s world pictures, although, as pointed out by Giedymin, he could have been inspired by a single mention of “world pictures” found in Poincaré.

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  1. University of Lodz, IT University of Copenhagen, Lodz, Poland

    Paweł Grabarczyk

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Grabarczyk, P. (2019). Troubles Ahead. In: Directival Theory of Meaning. Synthese Library, vol 409. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18783-5_3

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