Abstract

The dissertation considers four philosophical aspects of the theory of linguistic competence. Chapter 1 is concerned with issues in the philosophy of language. I argue that the Chomskyan perspective on linguistic competence, in which speakers have tacit knowledge of syntactic theories, ought to be widened to include the idea that speakers have tacit knowledge of truth conditional semantic theories. In Chapter 2, I consider some relevant issues in the philosophy of mind. I argue that tacit knowledge differs fundamentally from what I call the full propositional attitudes, in failing to satisfy three constraints constitutive of the full propositional attitudes. That implies, I argue, that attributions of tacit knowledge figure in a kind of explanation that is not a rationalizing explanation. Chapter 3 is concerned with the philosophy of psychology. I make explicit the explanatory role of tacit knowledge in linguistic explanation and consider objections to the idea that it can play such a role. I derive, as well, some of the general properties of tacit knowledge from its explanatory role. In Chapter 4, I consider the metaphysics and the epistemology of language. I argue that tacit knowledge plays a fundamental role in explaining how speakers can come to know linguistic facts under the conditions under which they actually do come to know them