Abstract
This chapter is devoted to the analysis of Dewey’s philosophy of language, which is central for the understanding of the semantic account of inquiry I formulate in Chaps. 3 and 4. It also strengthens and refines the conclusions reached in Chap. 1, thus providing a more fine-grained analysis of the structure of life-behaviors. Dewey’s theory of inquiry is grounded in the distinction that Dewey draws between signs and symbols, and between significance and meaning. I locate the difference between significance and meaning in the kind of response that signs and symbols solicit, and, in so doing, I explore the relevance of Dewey’s semantic externalism and anti-representationalism.
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Notes
- 1.
Among the contributions to that symposium see, in particular, Johnson (2014) and Dreon (2014). To my knowledge, the first attempt to shed light on Dewey’s philosophy of language is Mesthene (1959). Quite important – and I will deal with it at length in the following pages – is Black (1962). In recent times, a more balanced reconstruction of Dewey’s views on language has been advanced by Pratt (1997) and Midtgarden (2008). See also Ryan (2011), chapter 6. A very interesting approach is Boersema (2008), which purports to show the contribution of pragmatism to contemporary analytic philosophy of language. On this issue, see also Fesmire (2014, 110–112).
- 2.
I do not want to dwell into this issue here, since a detailed discussion of this point will lead us astray, but it is worth reminding that Dewey draws the conceptual couple meaning/existence from Bradley – in particular, from his Principles of Logic. Dewey’s early article Knowledge as Idealization shows rather clearly why Dewey found that distinction so useful. Indeed, that distinction enabled him to understand knowledge in terms of the processes of thought through which brute facts of sensation were transformed into elements endowed with meanings. As Dewey puts it, in order to understand “the aspect of meaning or significance” one has to turn his attention to the “content of the idea as opposed to its existence” (EW1, 177). Leaving aside the historiographical technicalities, my concern is to point out that conceptual couple existence/meaning is a theoretical tool that originates in Dewey’s early philosophy, and is then preserved and employed – at least, this is how I read Dewey’s philosophical development regarding this issue – until he fully realizes the importance of the function of language for the process of meaning-constitution. I have analyzed Dewey’s terminological debt to Bradley in Gronda (2012, 86–101).
- 3.
Since in the present chapter I will deal almost exclusively with meaning in this latter sense, I prefer to make the reading more manageable without introducing unnecessary notations. So, though in the following pages I will also use meaning in the standard, non-Deweyan sense, I have decided not to employ a specific expression to mark this usage of the word, in the belief that it should be clear from the context when the term is used in this way.
- 4.
For a lucid analysis of this predicament, see Johnson (2014).
- 5.
See, on this point, (Pratt 1997, 855).
- 6.
- 7.
I could have decided to analyze the other criticism advanced by Black, and the conclusion would have been the same. In any case, I will tackle Black’s reductionist criticism below, in Sect. 2.4.
- 8.
A word of caution is in order here. With the formula “primacy and unity of linguistic behavior” I do not want to convey the idea that linguistic behavior should be treated as something monolithic. It is clear that linguistic behavior is internally diversified, and covers the totality of human transactions with the world. Rather, the idea of primacy of linguistic behavior purports to highlight the fact that linguistic behavior is to be understood as a whole, and that, taken as a whole, it has a substantial and explanatory primacy over its components. In this sense, the notion of linguistic behavior is structurally identical to that of experience – see above Sect. 1.3.
- 9.
On this topic, please see Winther (2014).
- 10.
For the sake of completeness, it has to be reminded that there is another argument that Dewey offers in support of his refusal of adopting the strong distinction between words and sentences advocated by logical positivists. Since this argument has an exclusively historical interest, I limit myself to outline its main points here. Dewey’s starting point is the acknowledgment that the distinction between meanings of the words and syntactical relations – though perfectly legitimate in itself – is often used to support the much less uncontroversial one between form and matter. The latter distinction is controversial not in the sense that no distinction between form and matter should be admitted – Dewey is clearly not an eliminativist about that conceptual couple. As he writes, “there is no question that logical theory must distinguish between form and matter”. However, “the necessity for the distinction does not decide whether they are or are not independent of each other”; in particular, it does not decide “[w]hether they are or are not, for example, intrinsically related to each other in logical subject-matter and distinguishable only in theoretical analysis” (LW12, 285). The problem is, therefore, not that of denying the theoretical legitimacy of that distinction, but rather that of understanding in which terms it should be accounted for. The issue at stake is what counts as a good philosophical explanation.
- 11.
It is likely that we are reminded here of the famous Wittgensteinian analysis of the very same distinction in Philosophical Investigation. “But what about this: is the call “Slab!” in example (2) a sentence or a word? a If a word, surely it has not the same meaning as the likesounding word of our ordinary language, for in §2 it is a call. But if a sentence, it is surely not the elliptical sentence “Slab!” of our language. – As far as the first question goes, you can call “Slab!” a word and also a sentence; perhaps it could aptly be called a ‘degenerate sentence’ (as one speaks of a degenerate hyperbola); in fact it is our ‘elliptical’sentence. a But that is surely only a shortened form of the sentence “Bring me a slab”, and there is no such sentence in example (2). But why shouldn’t I conversely have called the sentence “Bring me a slab” a lengthening of the sentence “Slab!”? a Because anyone who calls out “Slab!” really means “Bring me a slab”. a But how do you do this: how do you mean that while saying “Slab!”? Do you say the unshortened sentence to yourself? And why should I translate the call “Slab!” into a different expression in order to say —9— what someone means by it? And if they mean the same thing, why shouldn’t I say, “When he says ‘Slab!’ he means ‘Slab!’ ”? Again, why shouldn’t you be able to mean “Slab!”, if you can mean “Bring me the slab!”? – But when I call out “Slab!”, then what I want is that he should bring me a slab! — Certainly, but does ‘wanting this’ consist in thinking in some form or other a different sentence from the one you utter?” (Wittgenstein 2009, §19).
- 12.
This trait of Dewey’s thought has usually been either misrepresented or neglected by his critics. So, for instance, it has often been argued that Dewey’s pragmatist account of inquiry amounts to a wholesale rejection of any form of correspondentism in favor of some sort of anything-goes approach to truth and knowledge. I think this is not correct: I believe that Dewey would be ready to admit that when everything is in order – as it is in the case when language is used for the purposes of communication – language actually refers to objects in the world, and true beliefs correspond to state of affairs. Dewey’s point – at least, as I read him – is that these experiences are not amenable to logical investigation. Nor should they be analyzed from an epistemological perspective. They are complex forms of linguistic behavior, characterized by their own intrinsic normativity. These linguistic behaviors can be profitably investigated from various points of view, but are philosophically rather uninteresting. True, it is important to provide a philosophical account of how it is possible that facts and ideas, things and concepts, come to have the same content. One of the main goals of his Logic is precisely that of providing an account of this “correspondence”. But that is a genetic and temporal account which purports to shed light on a distinctive feature of that particular life-behavior that Dewey labels “inquiry”. It cannot be extended indefinitely to other types of life-behavior.
- 13.
It is worth remarking that Dewey does not challenge the theoretical legitimacy of these three different approaches to the study of language. His position is much more nuanced, and has to do with the risk of a metaphysical hypostatization of distinctions made for a definite explanatory purpose. See, on this specific issue, what he writes in the unpublished manuscript What is to be a Linguistic Sign or Name (1945): “[w]hen due precautions are taken, it is possible to distinguish three aspects of Naming – being Named in such a way as to render each capable of specialized treatment. The result is (a) study of things established as sings, whether popularly or scientifically, apart from what they name – apart, that is, from what the are as signs […]. (b) It is obviously possible to study what is designated or ‘signified’, apart from specific study of signs as such. When this selective emphasis is converted into systematic (or ‘philosophic’) discussion it results in theories which imply that ‘Objects’ are one independent matter, something else – thoughts,. or speakers or whatever, another, and names a third intervening thing. (c) Process of application involved in the inclusive behavioral operations may be selected for special study” (LW16, 308–309).
- 14.
Incidentally, this is one of the ways in which Dewey formulates the anti-representationalist insight that, in the case of linguistic sign, representation is not the key explanatory notion. But there is something more in Dewey’s argument: he seems to imply that semantic representationalism is intrinsically connected to an unsatisfactory theory of language which relies on some metaphilosophically troublesome assumptions. I will repeatedly come back to this point in this chapter.
- 15.
I use the expression ‘semantic importance’ to refer to the fact that something acts as a sign for an agent within a specific course of action. As will be clear, I use importance instead of other, more perspicuous terms such as meaning and significance because the latter are technical terms in Dewey’s philosophy. It is Dewey himself who suggests this terminological choice: “importance is the generic term; significance and meaning are the specific ways in which the issue of importance has to be dealt with” (LW16, 331).
- 16.
In Experience and Nature the same insight is formulated in terms of the notion of experience. Dewey’s argument runs as follows: “Some consequences of the interaction of things concern us; the consequences are not merely physical; they enter finally into human action and destiny. Fire burns and the burning is of moment. It enters experience; it is fascinating to watch swirling flames; it is important to avoid its dangers and to utilize its beneficial potencies. When we name an event, calling it fire, we speak proleptically; we do not name an immediate event; that is impossible. We employ a term of discourse; we invoke a meaning, namely, the potential consequences of the existence. The ultimate meaning of the noise made by the traffic officer is the total consequent system of social behavior, in which individuals are subjected, by means of noise, to social coordination; its proximate meaning is a coordination of the movements of persons and vehicles in the neighborhood and directly affected. Similarly the ultimate meaning, or essence, denominated fire, is the consequences of certain natural events within the scheme of human activities, in the experience of social intercourse, the hearth and domestic altar, shared comfort, working of metals, rapid transit, and other such affairs” (LW1, 149–150).
- 17.
Recall that the representative capacity of smoke, taken as natural sign of fire, “is highly restricted, for it exists only under limited conditions” (LW12, 58). Dewey’s point is that the behavior which relies on the relation of significance has an instrumental character, in a twofold sense: (1) in the sense that the use of a certain element as sign of something else is instrumental to the realization of a certain goal which is causally connected to the first element of the chain, the one which is under our present control; (2) in the sense that the proper function of a sign is that of being used instrumentally, in a concrete course of activity, in light of what is expected to follow from it.
- 18.
Dewey is explicit on this point: “[p]rimarily meaning is intent and intent is not personal in a private and exclusive sense. A proposes the consummatory possession of the flower through the medium or means of B’s action; B proposes to cooperate or act adversely in the fulfillment of A’s proposal. Secondarily, meaning is the acquisition of significance by things in their status in making possible and fulfilling shared cooperation. In the first place, it is the motion and sounds of A which have meaning, or are signs. Similarly the movements of B, while they immediate to him, are signs to A of B’s cooperation or refusal. But secondarily the thing pointed out by A to B gains meaning. It ceases to be just what it brutely is at the moment, and is responded to in its potentiality, as a means to remoter consequences” (LW1, 142).
- 19.
Here is what Dewey writes in this regard: “Reference to concord of consequences as the determinant of the meaning of any sound used as a medium of communication shows that there is no such thing as a mere word or mere symbol. The physical existence that is the vehicle of meaning may as a particular be called mere; the recitation of a number of such sounds or the stringing together of such marks may be called mere language. But in fact there is no word in the first case and no language in the second. The activities that occur and the consequences that result which are not determined by meaning, are, by description, only physical. A sound or mark of any physical existence is a part of language only in virtue of its operational force; that is, as it functions as a means of evoking different activities performed by different persons so as to produce consequences that are shared by all the participants in the conjoint undertaking” (LW12, 53).
- 20.
On this point, see Gronda and Turbanti (2017).
- 21.
Actually, there are reasons to believe that Dewey’s position is more complex than I have so far indicated. In Experience and Nature he sometimes distinguishes between cognitive and esthetic or literary meanings – see, for instance, (LW1, 245). In some other cases, he explicitly restricts his operational analysis to intellectual meanings only. See, for instance, the following passage: “[i]n responding to things not in their immediate qualities but for the sake of ulterior results, immediate qualities are dimmed, while those features which are signs, indices of something else, are distinguished. A thing is more significantly what it makes possible than what it immediately is. The very conception of cognitive meaning, intellectual significance, is that things in their immediacy are subordinated to what they portend and give evidence of. An intellectual sign denotes that a thing is not taken immediately but is referred to something that may come in consequence of it. Intellectual meanings may themselves be appropriated, enjoyed and appreciated; but the character of intellectual meaning is instrumental” (LW1, 105). These remarks seem, therefore, to pave the way for a more careful and nuanced reading of Dewey’s theory of concepts, according to which what can be formulated in operational terms does not exhaust the entire meaning of the concept, but only its cognitive or intellectual import.
- 22.
A third difference may be added, which concerns the scope of the operationalist account of concepts. While Eddington and Bridgman are concerned exclusively with the meaning of scientific concepts, pragmatists – and Dewey in particular – believe that the operationalist account can be extended to hold for any type of concepts.
- 23.
This statement may look surprising since Dewey’s philosophy of science is usually taken to be a paradigmatic form of instrumentalism. As I will argue in Chap. 5, such an interpretation is mistaken.
- 24.
A remark is in order here. As any holistic approach, Dewey’s theory of concepts blurs the clear-cut distinction between semantics and epistemology. However, Dewey’s version is not, strictly speaking, epistemic. It seems clear from what has been said that he does not endorse the view that the meaning of a concept consists in the webs of beliefs had by the agent when using that concept – or the corresponding word. As will be shown in the next chapter, Dewey strongly rejects the language of belief as he considers it ingrained in a now completely untenable subjectivist epistemology. In any case, the point that Dewey wants to make has nothing to do with what an agent happens to believe; rather, it concerns the totality of the objective consequences of her experimental activities.
- 25.
- 26.
An even stronger reading might be advanced, to the effect that the articulated meaning provides the necessary conditions for the mastery of the implicit meaning. I will not discuss this position because it is clearly untenable from a Deweyan perspective.
- 27.
For instance, in his Psychology Dewey accepts the strong expressivist reading. See, for instance, the following two passages, drawn from Chapter 8 of that book. In the context of his analysis of the function of thinking, Dewey firstly writes: “[j]udgment […] stands in a twofold relation to conception. In one aspect, its analytic, it is based on the concept and develops it; in the other, its synthetic, it returns into the concept and enriches it, by connecting some new element with it. Reasoning […] stands in a like relation to judgment, and therefore to conception. It is based on judgment, for it takes two or more judgments, that is, affirmations of relations, and analyzes them to discover the common or identical relation which unites them. And it expresses this in the form of a new judgment” (EW2, 199–200). And then he concludes: “[p]hilosophy […] is, therefore, no new kind of knowledge, but is the conscious development of what is unconsciously at the hear of all knowledge – the presence of unity in variety” (EW2, 202). I do not want to enter in detail here into the problem of understanding Dewey’s early philosophy. Suffice it to note that Dewey quite clearly endorsed what I call the strong conception of articulation in his early texts, which he then decided to abandon in his later works.
- 28.
A remark is needed here in order to avoid confusion. The point at stake is not simply that the strong expressivist account of articulation is explanatory idle; the problem is, rather, that it purports to introduce a strong semantic relation between meanings which should make some difference as to our accessibility to them; in so doing, it ends up arguing that it should be possible to solve epistemic problems through and by semantic considerations. Even within a holist framework, such a view is so problematic as to be untenable.
- 29.
And simultaneously, from that moment on, water – this particular glass of water that I am currently holding – signifies the potentiality to dissolve a certain amount of salt, and not only the potentiality to quench the thirst. The intrinsic relation existing between significance and meaning should always be borne in mind: in conformity with the thesis of the semantic identity of concept and object, the enhancement of the significance of the object goes hand in hand with the enhancement of the meaning and inferential power of the corresponding concept.
- 30.
For the sake of completeness, I quote here the whole passage in which Dewey deals with the process of semantic articulation of the concept of water. The quotation is drawn from Chapter 6 of The Quest for Certainty, significantly entitled The Play of Ideas. “What is wanted is to indicate that once the idea of possible operations, indicated by symbols and performed only by means of symbols, is discovered, the road is opened to operations of ever increasing definiteness and comprehensiveness. Any group of symbolic operations suggests further operations that may be performed. Technical symbols are framed with precisely this end in view. They have three traits that distinguish them from casual terms and ideas. They are selected with a view to designating unambiguously one mode of interaction and one only. They are linked up with symbols of other operations forming a system such that transition is possible with the utmost economy of energy from one to another. And the aim is that these transitions may occur as far as possible in any direction, 1. ‘Water’ for example suggests an indefinite number of acts; seeing, tasting, drinking, washing, without specification of one in preference to another. It also marks off water from other colourless liquids only in a vague way. 2. At the same time, it is restricted; it does not connect the liquid with solid and gaseous forms, and still less does it indicate operations which link the production of water to other things into which its constituents, oxygen and hydrogen, enter. It is isolated instead of being a transitive concept. 3. The chemical conception, symbolized by H2O, not only meets these two requirements which “water” fails to meet, but oxygen and hydrogen are in turn connected with the whole system of chemical elements and specified combinations among them in a systematic way. Starting from the elements and the relation defined in H2O one can, so to speak, travel through all the whole scope and range of complex and varied phenomena. Thus the scientific conception carries thought and action away from qualities which are finalities as they are found in direct perception and use, to the mode of production of these qualities, and it performs this task in a way which links this mode of generation to a multitude of other” (LW4, 126–127).
- 31.
“How, for example, should the water of direct and familiar acquaintance (as distinct from H2O of the scientific frame) be described save as that which quenches thirst, cleanses the body and soiled articles, in which one swims, which may drown us, which supports boats, which as rain furthers growth of crops, which in contemporary community life runs machinery, including locomotives, etc.?” (LW16, 245). For an analysis of this passage, see Gautier (2017).
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Gronda, R. (2020). Language. In: Dewey's Philosophy of Science. Synthese Library, vol 421. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37562-1_2
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