Online research in philosophy

Spencer’s heritage, while almost a forgotten chapter in the history of biology, lives on in psychology and the philosophy of mind. I particularly discuss externalist views of meaning, on which meaning crucially depends on a notion of reference, and ask whether reference should be thought of as cause or effect. Is the meaning of a word explained by what it refers to, or should we say that what we use a word to refer to is explained by what concept it expresses? I argue for the latter view, which I call ‘Darwinian’, and against the former, ‘Spencerian’ one, assuming conceptual structures in humans to be an instance of adaptive structures, and adaptive relations to an environment to be the effect rather than the cause of evolutionary novelties. I conclude with the deficiency – both empirically and methodologically – of a functionalist study of human concepts and the languages they are embedded in, as it would be undertaken in a paradigm that identifies meaning with reference or that gives reference an explanatory role to play for what concepts we have.

There is widespread misuse of the word "mystical." Even religious scholars do not use the word precisely. In common parlance its meaning is so loose that the word has lost its power to communicate anything intelligible. The popular books..

What property does a word have which enables us, when we hear an appropriately produced string of words, to come to an understanding of what is being said? A natural response is to claim that a word has a meaning, and that what we understand is in part composed from the meanings of the words used. But the attempt to handle meanings directly is problematic, and various speculations point in an alternative direction. I describe one such alternative.

The question whether semantics is a normative discipline can be formulated as a question about the meaning of the word “means”. If I assert, “The word ‘gatto’ in Italian means cat,” what have I done? The naturalist about meaning claims that I have asserted that a certain natural relation obtains between Italian speakers’ tokens of “gatto” and cats. Or at least, I have asserted something about the way Italian speakers use the word “gatto”, which way presumably has something to do with cats. The normativist claims, on the contrary, that what I have said is that in speaking Italian one ought to use the word “gatto” in a certain way, which way has something to do with cats. What I have done is endorse a certain proposal about how to use the word, which, if accepted, will have normative force.

A word can have multiple meanings and the referent of a word is not fixed independently of the context. Yet, might it be possible to have a feasible theory of meaning and reference such that a word expresses not only its conventional, literal meaning or referent, but also what is literally meant by its opposite word, and even the negation of its conventional meaning? Further, can we stretch the meaning of a word without limit, such that it means each and everything in the world? Startling as this may be, it is basically what is proposed by Jizang 吉藏 (Chi-tsang; 549-623 CE), the main philosophical exponent of the Sanlun 三論 school of Chinese Buddhism, in his hermeneutical theory of “one name, infinite meanings,” in which one name (ming 名), or one nominal word, is said to bear infinite meanings (yi 義). The theory serves for Jizang as a hermeneutical means for construing Buddhist doctrinal terms to suggest the coincidence of his thought with what he takes to be the real intention behind the Mahayana Buddhist scriptures. It proposes four types of interpretation of word meaning to disclose in a sequence the comprehensive meaning of a nominal word. They are the conventional interpretation (隨名釋), the codependent interpretation (因緣釋), the Way-revealing interpretation (顯道釋), and the nonhindrance interpretation (無方釋). With the four interpretations, a nominal word X means X, non-X, the negation of X or the Way that is not X, and all things whatsoever. The word, then, amounts to have infinite meanings. The present paper seeks to offer an analysis of the theory for elucidating Jizang’s thought on meaning and reference and considering the contemporary significance of the theory. For our purposes, I first sketch certain aspects of Jizang’s philosophy of non-acquisition and discuss his thought concerning the notion of provisional expression. It is pointed out that for Jizang, a root cause of human suffering lies in a definite understanding of things that views the referent of a word as determinate in nature and determinable by the word. Then, I explicate in turn the four types of interpretation. The theory construes the referential function of a word in such a way that once one recognizes that the word has multiple meanings and has comprehended those meanings, one discerns its provisional character and is unlikely to have a definite understanding of its referent. The thing x as expressed by the word X is not a determinate X. Thus, words are to be valued for their intrinsically provisional character. Towards the end of the paper, I attempt to evaluate the theory from within the context of the Buddhist community and beyond the context. It is claimed that the theory may best be viewed as an expedient means for telling us how to use words provisionally without any definite understanding of their referents.

Reflections on Meaning refines Paul Horwich’s use theory of meaning. Horwich holds that the meaning of a word is constituted by the non-semantic property that best explains a certain law. For a given word, the law to be explained governs that word’s use by specifying the “acceptance conditions” of a privileged class of sentences containing the word (26). Horwich devotes considerable energy to details in Reflections on Meaning, and focuses on especially pressing problems for his use theory of meaning. As a result the book’s topics run the gamut, and the connections between its chapters are not always strong. Rather than try to provide a synoptic overview, I’ll discuss three areas where it seems further clarification and detail could be fruitful: the distinction between semantic and non-semantic properties, context sensitivity, and compositionality.

This volume is a collection of original contributions from outstanding scholars in linguistics, philosophy and computational linguistics exploring the relation between word meaning and human linguistic creativity. The papers present different aspects surrounding the question of what is word meaning, a problem that has been the center of heated debate in all those disciplines that directly or indirectly are concerned with the study of language and of human cognition. The discussions are centered around the newly emerging view of the mental lexicon, as outlined in the Generative Lexicon theory (Pustejovsky, 1995), which proposes a unified model for defining word meaning. The individual contributors present their evidence for a generative approach as well as critical perspectives, which provides for a volume where word meaning is not viewed only from a particular angle or from a particular concern, but from a wide variety of topics, each introduced and explained by the editors.

Word meaning confronts us, as acutely as anything in syntax, with what Chomsky has called Plato’s problem.1 We know far more about the meaning of almost any word than we could have learned just from our exposure to uses of it. Communication would be unbearably laborious if we did not share with other speakers the ability to generalize the meanings of words in the right ways. As Fodor (1981) notes in arguing for the innateness of lexical semantics, the most we might plausibly have learned about meaning of the verb paint is that it means something like “to cover with paint”. Even if we have only seen this done with a brush, we have no hesitation in applying the verb correctly to novel techniques of painting, such as rolling, spraying, or dipping. But when a vat of paint explodes in a paint factory, covering everyone with paint, or when Vel´.

I suggest that Tim Bayne's use of the term ‘inclusion’ to describe the model of the Incarnation found in Morris and Swinburne may have misled him. The experiences of the Word do not include those of Jesus in the way that mine include my experiences as a teenager; but He is aware, in the case of Jesus, that ‘these experiences are mine’, which is not true of His awareness of the experiences of other people. Again, Bayne rejects the idea that what differentiates the experiences of Jesus from those of the Word is that they differ in kind, on the grounds that they are integrated so as to be co-conscious in the divine consciousness; but this is only true if we think in terms of ‘inclusion’. Nor are any false beliefs held by Jesus part of the beliefs of the Word. Furthermore (although this is not related to ‘inclusion’) while a single soul may be sufficient to unite experiences, it need not be necessary; some other factor may (and I think does) unite the human and divine experiences of Christ.

The meaning of words, according to Wittgenstein, is grounded in their use – in the ways they are used. This does not mean only that in order to know the meaning of a word we should look at its use; it is not only a practical recommendation for the linguist or the learner. It is rather a philosophical thesis about the very notion of meaning, according to which use is what constitutes meaning, and about what the very ascription of meaning to a word amounts to. This position calls for a deep investigation of the notion of use – an investigation that preoccupied Wittgenstein throughout his career: What is the notion of use involved here and in what concepts should it be conceived? What are its constituents and what is its extension? How is a word connected with a particular kind of use that constitutes its meaning? What is the nature of the knowledge and the human capacity that are involved in understanding a word and knowing its use?