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Some Remarks on “Language-Created Entities”

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Abstract

Some entities, such as fictional characters, propositions, properties, events and numbers are prima facie promising candidates for owing their existence to our linguistic and conceptual practices. However, it is notoriously hard to pin down just what sets such allegedly “language-created” entities apart from ordinary entities. The present paper considers some of the features that are supposed to distinguish between entities of the two kinds and argues that, on an independently plausible account of what it takes to individuate objects, the criteria let in more than friends of the strategy might be happy with.

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Notes

  1. For instance, Amie Thomasson has identified various different ways in which the strategy allows us to see entities as language-created (Thomasson 2001). Thomas Hofweber has argued that the characteristic uses of referring expressions that Schiffer and others take to be responsible for the “creation” of entities serve a different communicative function so that the strategy fails (Hofweber 2007). Luca Moretti defends Schiffer’s strategy and provides a general account of the features of the entities constructed by linguistic practices (Moretti 2008).

  2. Moretti briefly discusses this question (Moretti 2008) but, to my mind, ends up being too optimistic on behalf of the constructivist.

  3. Crawford Elder has recently criticized this strategy of rendering linguistic constructivism compatible with the platitude that if properties exist at all, they existed before humans started engaging in any linguistic practices and they would have existed even if no language-using creatures ever had (Elder 2006). Elsewhere, I have developed an account that allows the linguistic constructivist to resist Elder’s criticism (Einheuser 2006).

  4. Schiffer is quoting from Johnston (1988).

  5. See Hofweber (2007) and Moretti (2008) for detailed discussion of such inferences and their role in generating language-created entities.

  6. A sortal concept, expressed by a sortal term, is a concept that conveys both criteria of application and criteria of identity governing the objects that fall under it. The Stanford Encyclopedia entry on sortals (Grandy 2007) provides an informative overview.

  7. See Jonathan Lowe’s recent defense of this view against a series of objections in his Lowe (2007).

  8. Again, see Lowe (2007) for a defense of this sort of claim.

  9. Amie Thomasson, in Thomasson (2007), has made a convincing case for why we need to conceive of our terms as associated with sortal concepts, though she talks of criteria of application and co-application rather than of sortals.

  10. Amie Thomasson makes a similar point when she says that such entities are “relatively minimal” (Thomasson 2001). She argues that the inferences in question are analytic, but she combines this view with a robust realism about the material objects referred to Thomasson (2007).

References

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  1. Department of Philosophy, Duke University, 201 West Duke Building, Durham, NC, 27708, USA

    Iris Einheuser

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  1. Iris Einheuser
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Einheuser, I. Some Remarks on “Language-Created Entities”. Acta Anal 24, 185–192 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12136-009-0052-6

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