Abstract
The chapter consists of two main parts. The first one can be seen as a counterpart to Chap. 3 in which the original directival theory was compared to classic theories of language. In the current chapter I compare the nDTM to three contemporary functional role semantics: Ned Block’s conceptual role semantics, Robert Brandom’s inferential role semantics and Jaroslav Peregrin’s rule theory of language. Analogously to the role of Chap. 3, this comparison helps me to embellish some of the unique features of the nDTM and position the theory on the contemporary philosophical map. In the second part of this chapter I return to the list of eighteen desiderata introduced in Chap. 2 and evaluate the nDTM by looking at which of these desiderata does the new theory fulfill.
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Notes
- 1.
In a sense that it is not relativized to the studied language. Of course, it can help us see whether the sentences are true in our language because it can provide us with translations into our language.
- 2.
This is obvious in terms of the sheer number of desiderata the nDTM fulfils. It is nonetheless important to remember that it fails to fulfil Desideratum 5, which could be seen as crucial for Block’s project.
- 3.
Brandom also defines a third possible version of inferentialism, i.e. hyperinferentialism, which is the claim that being embedded in the inferences understood in the narrow sense, that is, only language-to-language transitions, is a necessary and sufficient condition of being meaningful (Brandom 2000, p. 28).
- 4.
It seems to me that the common way of using this notion refers to the first of these senses.
- 5.
Just as the parrot recognizes that crying “red” in the vicinity of red objects is something it will be praised for.
- 6.
Of course, Brandom’s scorekeepers do not track points, but rather speakers’ commitments and entitlements; therefore, they should probably be called “bookkeepers”, but the game analogy is an important part of his account.
- 7.
Of course, whether it is really successful remains to be decided as it depends on how many tasks of traditional theories of meaning the nDTM is to fulfil. I discuss this issue in the last section of this chapter.
- 8.
This is where the social nature of the nDTM manifests itself once again – we should not think of our example as a “cat’s language”; it is, after all, a simple language functioning in the smallest community possible: the cat and its interlocutor.
- 9.
Peregrin is definitely too optimistic when he says that chess is not mysterious in this respect. As can be seen in the literature devoted to the problem of rules in game studies, the question of rules in games is far from obvious.
- 10.
This idea is very nicely expressed in the cybermedia model proposed by Espen Aarseth and Gordon Calleja (2015).
- 11.
On a side note, I would go as far as to say that the same goes for games. This is seen especially in the case of video games. It is possible to describe football on a functional level such that digital versions of football played in a virtual space are treated as “the same game”.
- 12.
This rough idea has been developed further in Grabarczyk and Zawidzki (2018).
- 13.
Although Ajdukiewicz dedicates a significant part of his 1931 paper to a discussion of the notion of “speaking a language”, and of what it means for the user to use the expression properly.
- 14.
Some readers could object that this result is problematic. What if the user builds proper sentences and follows directives without any intention to do so? I believe this to be more of a reduction of the notion of “intention” than a problem for the nDTM.
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Grabarczyk, P. (2019). The nDTM Among Contemporaries. In: Directival Theory of Meaning. Synthese Library, vol 409. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18783-5_7
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