Abstract
This paper is concerned with the semantics-pragmatics dispute. It is common to distinguish the “semantic” properties of an utterance from its “pragmatic” properties, and what is “said” from what is “meant”. What is the basis for putting something on one side rather than the other of these distinctions? Such questions are usually settled largely by appeals to intuitions. The paper rejects this approach arguing that we need a theoretical basis for these distinctions. This is to be found by noting that languages are representational systems that scientists attribute to species to explain their communicative behaviors. We then have a powerful theoretical interest in distinguishing, (a), the representational properties of an utterance that arise simply from the speaker’s exploitation of a linguistic system from, (b), any other properties that may constitute the speaker’s “message”. I call the former properties “semantic”, the latter, “pragmatic”. The semantic ones are constituted by properties arising from linguistic conventions, disambiguations, and reference fixings. Devitt foreshadows an argument in a forthcoming book, Overlooking conventions: the trouble with linguistic pragmatism, that many of the striking examples produced by linguistic pragmatists exemplify semantic rather than pragmatic properties. This argument counts against the popular pragmatist theses of “semantic underdetermination” and “truth-conditional pragmatics”. It is very much in the spirit of the tradition that pragmatists reject.
(Perspectives on Pragmatics and Philosophy.
A. Capone, F. Lo Piparo, andM. Carapezza, eds. Springer.
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Notes
- 1.
The term, and the related term “linguistic pragmatist”, are loose but convenient. In using these terms I do not mean to suggest, of course, that those in the movement agree about everything.
- 2.
I have earlier placed quite a bit of trust in ordinary ascriptions of saying that: “So it is likely that, at least, we ought to ascribe to tokens that are thought and uttered the properties that we do ascribe and hence that those properties are meanings” (1996: 71). I acknowledged the apparent folk distinction between saying that and meaning that but did not make much of it (p. 59 n.).
- 3.
Some prefer to say that the reference is determined by what the speaker “intends to refer to”. This can be just a harmless difference but it may not be. Having x in mind in using the term simply requires that the part of the thought that causes that use refers to x. In contrast, for a speaker literally to intend to refer to x, given that intentions are propositional attitudes, seems to require that she entertain a proposition containing the concept of reference. So she can’t refer without thinking about reference! This would be far too intellectualized a picture of referring. Uttering and referring are intentional actions, of course, but it seems better to avoid talking of intentions when describing them.
- 4.
- 5.
- 6.
- 7.
- 8.
The sense of “data” here is the same as in “primary linguistic data”. So the data provided by competence are linguistic expressions (and the experiences of using them) not any observational reports about those expressions.
- 9.
- 10.
Elsewhere (2013a) I argue that linguistic pragmatism has two other methodological flaws: confusing the metaphysics of meaning with the epistemology of interpretation; and accepting Modified Occam’s Razor. I think (forthcoming) that these flaws have been significant in causing the mistaken thesis of “semantic underdetermination”.
- 11.
And it is worth noting that sometimes we are confident that an animal has a language because we have taught it one; think of some dolphins and primates that have been taught surprisingly complex languages.
- 12.
- 13.
Language is used for purposes other than communication: to muse, to make notes, to try out a line for a poem, and so on. Communication is the most striking use of language but, contrary to “intention-based semantics”, it is not essential to language. What is essential to (human) language is the expression of thought.
- 14.
- 15.
Some philosophers and linguists, impressed by the great difference between a human language and the representational systems of other animals, resist calling those systems “languages”. I can see no theoretical point to this resistance. In any case, the point is merely verbal.
- 16.
I say “largely” because I do not reject the Chomskian view that some syntax is innate. The qualification should be taken as read in future.
- 17.
In stark contrast, Chomsky thinks that the “regularities in usage” needed for linguistic conventions “are few and scattered” (1996: 47; see also 1980: 81–83). Furthermore, such conventions as there are do not have “any interesting bearing on the theory of meaning or knowledge of language” (1996: 48). I think these views are very mistaken (2006b: 178–89; see also 2006c: 581–2, 598–605; 2008a: 217–229).
- 18.
Stephen Laurence (1996, 1998) rejects “convention-based semantics” largely on the basis of criticisms of Lewis’ account of conventions in general and of linguistic conventions in particular. These criticisms are partly of the highly intellectualized nature of Lewis’ account. I sympathize with those criticisms. I reject the rest (2006b: 180).
- 19.
- 20.
‘Saturation’ is Recanati’s neat term for what is similarly demanded by a human language (2004: 7).
- 21.
Multiplicity could, in principle, arise from multiple innate rules for a symbol but, so far as I know, there is no example of this in nature.
- 22.
This needs qualification because what is said using a sub-sentential is sometimes only a fragment of a proposition (forthcoming).
- 23.
A speaker might intend to convey more than one message. I am simplifying by setting this possibility aside.
- 24.
I am ignoring, for convenience, the distinction between sayings that are statings or assertions and sayings that are mere rehearsings. It is convenient to ignore this because whether the saying is a stating or a rehearsing, its language-exploiting content is the same.
- 25.
Of course, it would not be the case that a certain proposition was said by an utterance, any more than it would be the case that a certain proposition was meant by it, were it not for the fact that the speaker intentionally produced that utterance. So we might ordinarily say that the speaker “meant” both propositions. But this ordinary way of speaking does not provide a theoretical motivation for treating the distinct items, what is said and the message, as parts of the one “meaning”. (There is a subtle issue about the relation of the intentional act of uttering to what is said; see Devitt 2013c: note 15 and accompanying text).
- 26.
My (2013c) is a detailed discussion of Bach’s position on the semantics-pragmatics issue. I argue that his notion of “what is said” is not theoretically motivated and that his methodology for deciding what counts as “semantic” (in his sense) is faulty, which has the conservative effect of keeping out new meanings.
- 27.
Salmon is used to hearing this response and is not impressed: “‘It’s all just terminology’ is the last refuge of the speech-act centered conception” (2005: 327). Kepa Korta and John Perry’s view (2007: 98–99) that “something has gone awry” in Cappelen and Lepore’s account of “semantic minimalism” (2005: 143–145) seems to rest simply on an insistence that ‘semantics’ be used narrowly.
- 28.
Stephen Neale’s “theory of interpretation” seems to cover both processes and products (Neale 2004: 71–90).
- 29.
This is presumably related somehow to the confusion of the metaphysics of meaning with the epistemology of interpretation that I discuss elsewhere (2013a).
- 30.
See Pagin and Pelletier (2007: 35) for a nice statement of this sort of view.
- 31.
And to explain some non-communicative uses of language; see note 14.
- 32.
As Manuel García-Carpintero says: “the semantics/pragmatics divide is in my view ultimately about which meaning-properties are constitutive of natural languages and which are not” (2005: 43).
- 33.
- 34.
In my view, Felipe Amaral (2008) has driven the final nail into the coffin of the received Russellian view of descriptions with his discussion of “Kripke’s Test”.
- 35.
- 36.
Truth-conditional pragmatics has a further problem, I argue (2013b): it cannot explain how the conventionally constituted property of a sentence in an utterance constrains a truth conditional content without determining one; nor how the property could allow indefinitely many truth conditions.
- 37.
The first version of this paper, under the title, “Pragmatics versus Semantics”, was delivered at an International Conference, “Meaning”, University of Erfurt (Germany), in September 2009. Later versions, sometimes under the title “Linguistic Pragmatism”, were delivered at many universities. I am grateful for comments at these talks.
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Devitt, M. (2013). What Makes a Property “Semantic”?. In: Capone, A., Lo Piparo, F., Carapezza, M. (eds) Perspectives on Pragmatics and Philosophy. Perspectives in Pragmatics, Philosophy & Psychology, vol 1. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-01011-3_4
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