Talk previously given at the XXXII International Wittgenstein Symposium, International Ludwig Wittgenstein Institute, Kirchberg am Wechsel, August 12, 2009 1 The Argument From Normativity Against Dispositional Analyses Of Meaning Andrea Guardo A number of philosophers maintain that dispositional analyses of meaning1 cannot work simply because meaning is normative2. Both the validity of the argument and the truth of its premise have been widely questioned3. In my opinion, the limited popularity of this "argument from normativity" is due to the fact that its proponents have not clarified enough either what it means to say that meaning is normative, or what are the consequences of this claim, or what supports it. In what follows, I will try to throw some light on each of these points. Well, what does it mean to say that meaning is normative? It should be clear that it means something stronger than: (1) A sentence has a meaning only if its utterances can be divided (at least in principle, approximately and for the most part) into correct and incorrect (both here and in what follows, by "sentence" I mean declarative sentence; in order to deal with non-declarative sentences, some minor adjustments are enough; moreover, most of what I maintain can be easily adapted to the case of subsentential expressions). After all, (1) is rather uncontroversial (Dretske – not exactly a supporter of the normativity of meaning – practically states it explicitly4). Some may think that it means the same as: 1 Such as those of Fred I. Dretske, Knowledge and the Flow of Information, Oxford, Blackwell, 1981, Jerry A. Fodor, A Theory of Content, II: the Theory, in Jerry A. Fodor, A Theory of Content and Other Essays, Cambridge-London, MIT Press, 1990 and John Heil, C. B. Martin, Rules and Powers, in Philosophical Perspectives, vol. XII, 1998, pp. 283-312. 2 See, e. g., Simon Blackburn, The Individual Strikes Back, in Synthese, vol. LVIII, 1984, pp. 281-301, Saul A. Kripke, Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language – An Elementary Exposition (1981), Oxford, Blackwell, 1982 and John McDowell, Wittgenstein on Following a Rule, in Synthese, vol. LVIII, 1984, pp. 325-363. 3 You can see, on the one hand, Paul A. Boghossian, The Rule-Following Considerations, in Mind, vol. XCVIII, 1989, pp. 507-549 and, on the other hand, Paul A. Boghossian, Is Meaning Normative?, in Christian Nimtz, Ansgar Beckermann, Philosophie und/als Wissenschaft – Hauptvorträge und Kolloquiumsbeiträge zu GAP.5, Paderborn, Mentis, 2005 and Rules and Powers, cit. 4 Knowledge and the Flow of Information, cit., part III, chapter 8, p. 190. In Volker A. Munz, Klaus Puhl, Joseph Wang, Language and World – Papers of the XXXII International Wittgenstein Symposium, Kirchberg am Wechsel, Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society, 2009 2 (2) A sentence has a meaning only if there are correctness criteria for its use, that is: only if there is a rule for its use. Both Blackburn and Boghossian seem to conflate (2) with (1)5, but, in fact, (2) is stronger than (1). I could grant that if the utterances of, say, "There's glory for you!" could not be divided (not even in principle, approximately and for the most part) into correct and incorrect, "There's glory for you!" would have no meaning and still stress that in order to label one of these utterances "correct" or "incorrect", no correctness criterion for the use of the corresponding sentence is needed: for example, I could maintain that all that is needed is that the speaker attaches to the utterance in question a thought and that a thought is something that, by its very nature, can be labelled "correct" or "incorrect" (alternatively, I could tell some story about notions like those of causal relation and communicative intention, or I could maintain, like Humpty Dumpty, that all that is needed is that the speaker chooses what that occurrence means6). Of course, nothing prevents the friend of (2) from acknowledging that a full-blooded analysis of the concept of meaning calls for some "mentalistic" concept (after all, in order to follow a rule, you have to be a person, that is: a thing with a mind); but instead of saying that for a sentence to have a meaning is for it to be used to convey a thought, the friend of (2) will likely say that it is because a sentence has a meaning that it can be used to convey a thought7 (this is to say that the expression of thought depends on language, not that thought itself does, nor that the concept of thought depends on that of language8). No doubt, (2) links meaning to something more than mere regular behaviour (such as that of a well-trained parrot), but, in spite of what Davidson seems to have thought9, this is not to say that it links meaning to explicitly stated rules; (2) links meaning to rule-following, and even if rule-following is something more than mere regular behaviour, this is not to say that one can follow only explicitly 5 The Individual Strikes Back, cit., p. 281 and The Rule-Following Considerations, cit., I, part V (The "Rule-Following" Considerations?), § 8, p. 517. 6 Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There (1871), chapter VI, p. 213, in Lewis Carroll, The Annotated Alice – The Definitive Edition, New York-London, Norton & Company, 2000. 7 See Wilfrid Sellars, Language as Thought and as Communication, § X, p. 523, in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, vol. XXIX, 1969, pp. 506-527. 8 For this latter idea, see Peter Geach, Mental Acts – Their Content and Their Objects (1957), London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1971, §§ 17-25 and Wilfrid Sellars, Mental Events, in Philosophical Studies, vol. XXXIX, 1981, pp. 325-345. 9 Donald Davidson, The Second Person, in Midwest Studies in Philosophy, vol. XVII, 1992, pp. 255-267. Talk previously given at the XXXII International Wittgenstein Symposium, International Ludwig Wittgenstein Institute, Kirchberg am Wechsel, August 12, 2009 3 stated rules10. In a certain sense, (2) only says that a sentence has a meaning only if it has a character11 (without saying anything about the meaning of utterances and without saying exactly what the nature of the relation between the character of a sentence and its meaning is), and this claim seems to follow straightforwardly from the link meaning-communication: that of meaning is a theoretical concept, and its aim is that of explaining communicative phenomena (entertaining a conversation, obeying an order, reviewing your notes for the talk, etc...); hence, it is a conceptual truth that a sentence has a meaning only if it can be used to communicate; but a sentence can be used to communicate only if it has a character, or so it seems. Be that as it may, also (2) is rather uncontroversial (even though Grice maintained that it links meaning and value12, Fodor – like Dretske, not exactly a supporter of the normativity of meaning – seems to endorse it without hesitation, albeit only implicitly13). Therefore, it should be clear that saying that meaning is normative means, once again, something stronger. As far as I can see, the following hint is on the right track: (3) A sentence has a meaning only if there are correctness criteria for its use, and something can determine these criteria only if it can motivate the use that a speaker makes of the sentence. That (3) is strong enough can be seen from the fact that it allows us to build the following argument: First premise: dispositional analyses of meaning maintain that what determines the correctness criteria for the use of a sentence is a set of dispositions; different analyses deem relevant different sets, but they all agree that the relevant set must count, among its elements, also some unmanifested dispositions. Second premise: something can determine these criteria only if it can motivate the use that a speaker makes of the sentence. First lemma: something can determine these criteria only if speakers can have noninferential knowledge of it. 10 See Wilfrid Sellars, Some Reflections on Language Games (1954), parts I (Introductory) and II (Pattern Governed and Rule Obeying Behaviour), in Philosophy of Science, vol. XXI, 1954, pp. 204-228. 11 See David Kaplan, Demonstratives – An Essay on the Semantics, Logic, Metaphysics, and Epistemology of Demonstratives and Other Indexicals, § VI. (ii), p. 505, in Joseph Almog, John Perry, Howard Wettstein, Themes from Kaplan, New York-Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1989. 12 Paul Grice, Meaning Revisited (1982), § III, in Paul Grice, Studies in the Way of Words, Cambridge-London, Harvard University Press, 1989. 13 A Theory of Content, II, cit. In Volker A. Munz, Klaus Puhl, Joseph Wang, Language and World – Papers of the XXXII International Wittgenstein Symposium, Kirchberg am Wechsel, Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society, 2009 4 Second lemma: dispositional analyses of meaning are committed to the view that speakers can have non-inferential knowledge of unmanifested dispositions. Third premise: speakers cannot have non-inferential knowledge of unmanifested dispositions. Conclusion: dispositional analyses of meaning cannot work. Namely, what seems to be a valid version of the argument from normativity (it is worth noting that this version of the argument is somewhat related to Wright's "epistemological argument"14). The derivation of the conclusion and that of the second lemma are trivial, while that of the first lemma is warranted by what seems to be a truism concerning the epistemology of motivations (some may be inclined to see this truism as an hidden premise and the argument as an enthymeme; for present purposes, nothing of importance hinges on this point). Therefore, I believe there is little point in questioning the validity of the argument. But what about the truth of its premises? I do not see a dispositionalist questioning the first one. And the third one seems to rest on a sound argument; even if we restrict our consideration to the speakers' own past dispositions, it seems clear that (in the sense of "can" relevant here) speakers cannot have non-inferential knowledge of unmanifested dispositions. Philosophers sympathetic to Sellars' conception of observational knowledge15 may suggest that (roughly speaking) in order to non-inferentially know that at a certain time I had a certain disposition, it is sufficient to noninferentially know that at that time my brain was in a state that, together with a certain stimulus, causes a certain response; however, as a matter of fact, speakers do not keep track of their own past brain history. Philosophers sympathetic to Ryle's conception of dispositions16 may suggest that (roughly speaking) in order to non-inferentially know that at a certain time I had a certain disposition, it is sufficient to non-inferentially know that at that time I underwent a certain stimulus, to which I gave a certain response; however, it is apparent that such a strategy would not be able to supply non-inferential knowledge of unmanifested dispositions. We are left with the second premise, which is what (3) adds to (2). 14 See, e. g., Crispin Wright, Wittgenstein's Rule-Following Considerations and the Central Project of Theoretical Linguistics (1989), § I, pp. 175-176, in Crispin Wright, Rails to Infinity – Essays on Themes from Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations, Cambridge-London, Harvard University Press, 2001, but also Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (1953), Oxford, Blackwell, 1953, part I, § 153. 15 See, e. g., Wilfrid Sellars, Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind (1956), CambridgeLondon, Harvard University Press, 1997, VIII. 16 See Gilbert Ryle, The Concept of Mind (1949), Chicago, The University Of Chicago Press, 2000. Talk previously given at the XXXII International Wittgenstein Symposium, International Ludwig Wittgenstein Institute, Kirchberg am Wechsel, August 12, 2009 5 Therefore, the question is: given that (2) is rather uncontroversial, what supports (3)? In my opinion, the answer is: the very same evidence that supports (2). If (2) is rightly understood, what (3) "adds" to it is in fact something that is already implicit in (2) itself. As I said before, (2) links meaning to rule-following, and rule-following must be distinguished from both mere regular behaviour and following a rule explicitly stated. If we identify rule-following with mere regular behaviour, the "theory" of the meaning of utterances that fits (2) best (an utterance has a meaning only if the speaker follows a rule in performing it) forces us to the cumbersome conclusion that the utterances performed by a well-trained parrot have a meaning (note that as applied to utterances, "meaning" means content17); if, on the other hand, we identify rule-following with following a rule explicitly stated, (2) leads us to an infinite regress, or to a vicious circle18. So much for what "rule-following" does not mean; we can now turn to what it does mean. Martin and Heil give the following characterization: An agent who follows a rule acts on the rule, his action is based on or motivated by a commitment to the rule19. But what does it mean that the agent's action is motivated by a commitment to the rule? For present purposes, we can focus on those cases in which the agent's action is a speaker's utterance and the rule is a rule for the use of the corresponding sentence. For the sake of simplicity, we can then focus on the case of an utterance of the one-word sentence "Carmine!", which can be conceived of as an answer to a question about the colour of a certain object (I assume that the character of this sentence is identical with that of its sole subsentential component – the word "carmine"). Finally, it is useful to formulate a possible rule for the use of the word "carmine"; here is something that a dispositionalist should appreciate: an application of "carmine" is correct if and only if it is in accordance with the relevant set of dispositions. And so, the question is: what does it mean that my utterance of "Carmine!" is motivated by a commitment to this rule? Well, saying that this utterance is motivated by a commitment to this rule is saying that it is motivated by "the relevant set of dispositions". But these dispositions are, according to the dispositionalist, what determines the correctness criteria for the 17 See Demonstratives, cit., § XIV. 18 See The Second Person, cit., as well as Some Reflections on Language Games, cit., part I. 19 Rules and Powers, cit., § 1, p. 284. In Volker A. Munz, Klaus Puhl, Joseph Wang, Language and World – Papers of the XXXII International Wittgenstein Symposium, Kirchberg am Wechsel, Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society, 2009 6 use of "carmine". As soon as we try to clarify the concept of rule-following, we are forced to acknowledge that it is a conceptual truth that something can determine the correctness criteria for the use of a sentence only if it can motivate the use that a speaker makes of the sentence; it is in this sense that what (3) "adds" to (2) is in fact something that is already implicit in (2) itself. Well, I have sketched what I believe is a valid version of the argument from normativity. I have also tried to show that it rests on plausible assumptions. I do not want to leave you with the misleading impression that I believe that dispositional concepts should play no role in an account of the concept of meaning. I do not believe that. Still, I do not think that such an account can be reduced to a dispositional analysis of meaning. Talk previously given at the XXXII International Wittgenstein Symposium, International Ludwig Wittgenstein Institute, Kirchberg am Wechsel, August 12, 2009 7 References Blackburn, Simon, The Individual Strikes Back, in Synthese, vol. LVIII, 1984, pp. 281-301. Boghossian, Paul A., Is Meaning Normative?, in Christian Nimtz, Ansgar Beckermann, Philosophie und/als Wissenschaft – Hauptvorträge und Kolloquiumsbeiträge zu GAP.5, Paderborn, Mentis, 2005. - ----------, The Rule-Following Considerations, in Mind, vol. XCVIII, 1989, pp. 507-549. Carroll, Lewis, Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There (1871), in Lewis Carroll, The Annotated Alice – The Definitive Edition, New York-London, Norton & Company, 2000. Davidson, Donald, The Second Person, in Midwest Studies in Philosophy, vol. XVII, 1992, pp. 255-267. Dretske, Fred I., Knowledge and the Flow of Information, Oxford, Blackwell, 1981. Fodor, Jerry A., A Theory of Content, II: the Theory, in Jerry A. Fodor, A Theory of Content and Other Essays, Cambridge-London, MIT Press, 1990. Geach, Peter, Mental Acts – Their Content and Their Objects (1957), London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1971. Grice, Paul, Meaning Revisited (1982), in Paul Grice, Studies in the Way of Words, Cambridge-London, Harvard University Press, 1989. Heil, John; Martin, C. B., Rules and Powers, in Philosophical Perspectives, vol. XII, 1998, pp. 283-312. Kaplan, David, Demonstratives – An Essay on the Semantics, Logic, Metaphysics, and Epistemology of Demonstratives and Other Indexicals, in Joseph Almog, John Perry, Howard Wettstein, Themes from Kaplan, New York-Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1989. Kripke, Saul, Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language – An Elementary Exposition (1981), Oxford, Blackwell, 1982. McDowell, John, Wittgenstein on Following a Rule, in Synthese, vol. LVIII, 1984, pp. 325363. Ryle, Gilbert, The Concept of Mind (1949), Chicago, The University Of Chicago Press, 2000. In Volker A. Munz, Klaus Puhl, Joseph Wang, Language and World – Papers of the XXXII International Wittgenstein Symposium, Kirchberg am Wechsel, Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society, 2009 8 Sellars, Wilfrid, Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind (1956), Cambridge-London, Harvard University Press, 1997. - -------, Language as Thought and as Communication, in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, vol. XXIX, 1969, pp. 506-527. - -------, Mental Events, in Philosophical Studies, vol. XXXIX, 1981, pp. 325-345. - -------, Some Reflections on Language Games, in Philosophy of Science, vol. XXI, 1954, pp. 204-228. Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Philosophische Untersuchungen (1953), English translation Philosophical Investigations, Oxford, Blackwell, 1953. Wright, Crispin, Wittgenstein's Rule-Following Considerations and the Central Project of Theoretical Linguistics (1989), in Crispin Wright, Rails to Infinity – Essays on Themes from Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations, Cambridge-London, Harvard University Press, 2001.