Is linguistic meaning to be accounted for independently of the states of mind of language users, or can it only be explained in terms of them? If the latter, what account of the mental states in question avoids circularity? In this book Brian Loar offers a subtle and comprehensive theory that both preserves the natural priority of the mind in explanations of meaning, and gives an independent characterisation of its features. the nature of meaning and its relation to (...) the mind is probably the area of paramount concern among philosophers. The theory presented here, by its reach and substance and the thoroughness and sophistication of its development, makes a major contribution to the debate. (shrink)

John Searle's Speech Acts made a highly original contribution to work in the philosophy of language. Expression and Meaning is a direct successor, concerned to develop and refine the account presented in Searle's earlier work, and to extend its application to other modes of discourse such as metaphor, fiction, reference, and indirect speech arts. Searle also presents a rational taxonomy of types of speech acts and explores the relation between the meanings of sentences and the contexts of their utterance. The (...) book points forward to a larger theme implicit in these problems - the basis certain features of speech have in the intentionality of mind, and even more generally, the relation of the philosophy of language to the philosophy of mind. (shrink)

Frege and quine notwithstanding, Some singular terms in belief contexts have normal reference but do not admit truth-Preserving substitution of co-Referential terms. The conditions of a sentence's being true of a sequence of referents may be partially determined by its singular terms; substitution may change those conditions, While preserving genuine reference. On one reading, 'n believes that f is g' is true iff n believes of the f that it is the f and is g.

Two naturalistic explications of propositional attitudes and their contents are distinguished: the language of thought based theory, on which beliefs are relations to sentences in the language of thought; and the propositional attitude based theory, on which beliefs are functional states of a functional system that does not imply a language of thought, although consistent with it. The latter theory depends on interpersonally ascribable conceptual roles; if these are not available, the language of thought theory has the advantage. But the (...) propositional attitude based theory explains intentionality and conceptual structure as well as the language of thought based theory, and it has two further advantages. First, it does not make the existence of beliefs and desires depend on the language of thought hypothesis. Secondly, its employment of interpersonally ascribable conceptual roles permits a theory of truth conditions to meet certain desiderata, such as a social basis for truth conditions, and a realist conception of truth. (shrink)

Two naturalistic explications of propositional attitudes and their contents are distinguished: the language of thought based theory, on which beliefs are relations to sentences in the language of thought; and the propositional attitude based theory, on which beliefs are functional states of a functional system that does not imply a language of thought, although consistent with it. The latter theory depends on interpersonally ascribable conceptual roles; if these are not available, the language of thought theory has the advantage. But the (...) propositional attitude based theory explains intentionality and conceptual structure as well as the language of thought based theory, and it has two further advantages. First, it does not make the existence of beliefs and desires depend on the language of thought hypothesis. Secondly, its employment of interpersonally ascribable conceptual roles permits a theory of truth conditions to meet certain desiderata, such as a social basis for truth conditions, and a realist conception of truth. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Gottlob Frege Bertrand Russell H.P. Grice Donald Davidson Truth theories of meaning Use Theories of Meaning Thinking in Language Two‐level Theories of Reference The Social Construction of Meaning Kripke's Wittgenstein.

One of the most important problems of modern philosophy concerns the place of subjectivity in a purely physical universe. Brian Loar was a major contributor to the discussion of this problem for over four decades. This volume brings together his most important and influential essays in the philosophy of language and of mind.

In what follows, I argue that the disturbing effect of the explanatory gap arises from an illusion, an implicit expectation that all “direct grasps of the essence” of a property are achieved by a homogeneous concept-forming faculty. But there is no such faculty. The truth is that our concepts form a mixed bag, drawing on experiential states, verbal conceptions, theoretical conceptual roles, and other concept-making factors. It should not be too surprising then if some pairs of concepts, even when they (...) directly capture the same essence, are not conceptually convertible. That would place conceptual—psychological—limits on explanation. (shrink)

In what follows, I argue that the disturbing effect of the explanatory gap arises from an illusion, an implicit expectation that all “direct grasps of the essence” of a property are achieved by a homogeneous concept-forming faculty. But there is no such faculty. The truth is that our concepts form a mixed bag, drawing on experiential states, verbal conceptions, theoretical conceptual roles, and other concept-making factors. It should not be too surprising then if some pairs of concepts, even when they (...) directly capture the same essence, are not conceptually convertible. That would place conceptual—psychological—limits on explanation. (shrink)

David Chalmers’s book is impressive in many ways. I admire the great skill, incisiveness and breadth of vision with which he conducts his argument. Many of his controversial theses and intuitions I find congenial. Unfortunately I do not believe the book’s central thesis, namely, that facts about consciousness are not physical facts. Much of the book is devoted either to establishing this, or to considering how things stand in the light of it. Let me quote a passage in which Chalmers’s (...) thesis is stated. (shrink)

David Chalmers’s book is impressive in many ways. I admire the great skill, incisiveness and breadth of vision with which he conducts his argument. Many of his controversial theses and intuitions I find congenial. Unfortunately I do not believe the book’s central thesis, namely, that facts about consciousness are not physical facts. Much of the book is devoted either to establishing this, or to considering how things stand in the light of it. Let me quote a passage in which Chalmers’s (...) thesis is stated. (shrink)

Loar's project is to reduce the semantic and the psychological to the physical by reducing the semantic to the psychological and the psychological to the physical. More specifically, he attempts to show that: all semantic concepts can be adequately explicated in terms of propositional attitudes; propositional attitude ascriptions can be adequately explicated without appeal to semantic concepts or intensional concepts of any sort; and propositional attitude-ascriptions can be adequately explicated so that a system could satisfy them solely in virtue (...) of its physical properties. is to be accomplished for public natural language semantic concepts via a Gricean-Schifferian communicative-intention-based semantics; while additional provisos of intention-based semantics are in order should natural languages prove to be what we think in. and are to be accomplished via a functional theory of the content of propositional attitudes. Subtleties aside, the idea is that propositional attitudes are second-order functional states whose first-order realizations are physical states; while public natural language sentences are conventional devices for making known communicative-intentions. (shrink)

In "the semantics of singular terms," brian loar described and criticized a "causal" theory of reference and offered a new "description" theory. It is argued that the particular causal theory described is not to be found in the papers by donnellan and kripke cited as evidence for it, And is a straw man. Further "prima facie", Loar's new description theory fails to meet kripke's noncircularity condition. Should loar attempt to meet it, His theory is likely to (...) run foul of kripke's usual "arguments from ignorance and error" against description theories. (shrink)

Brian Loar argues that we can account for the conceptual independence of coextensive terms purely psychologically, by appealing to conceptual rather than semantic differences between concepts, and that this leaves room for assuming that phenomenal and physical concepts can be coextensive on a posteriori grounds despite the fact that both sorts of concepts refer directly . I argue that Loar does not remove the mystery of the coextensiveness of those concepts because he does not offer any explanation (...) of why they should be coextensive. Secondly, I argue that even if we grant that phenomenal and physical concepts can be coextensive on a posteriori grounds, we are committed to holding that there are two different and essential modes of presentation of phenomenal properties, the physical and the phenomenal, and that this precludes us from seeing phenomenal properties as essentially physical in an unrelativized sense. (shrink)