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On quoting the empty expression

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Abstract

Roy Sorensen has argued that a certain technical use of quotation marks to name the empty string supports a revised version of Davidson’s theory of quotation. I point out that Sorensen’s considerations provide no support for Davidson’s original theory, and I show that at best they support the revised Davidsonian theory only to the same extent that they support a simpler revised version of a Tarskian theory.

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Notes

  1. I use Sorensen’s numbering of sentences for convenience with citations.

  2. It is not unusual to use an expression with the intention of referring to the expression itself.

  3. In fact, in the way they are normally stated (including the way Sorensen states them—see above), the interiority and identity theories do not specify that they are talking about non-empty expressions, though I believe this is probably left implicit. An anonymous referee tells me, however, that he/she does not see any implicit restriction to expressions with characters in the principles that govern the use of quotation marks, and thus that the interiority and identity theories give the intended result about (3) even unrevised. The referee may be correct, but I incline toward the weaker claim, in part because it provides an explanation for (what I take to be) the ungrammaticality intuition concerning (3) and (3′).

  4. Gómez-Torrente (2001) argues that the interiority theory, once disentangled from the straw man “name” theory that Davidson attributed to Tarski, is superior to both the demonstrative and identity theories in many substantive respects.

References

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  1. Instituto de Investigaciones Filosóficas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, México, DF, 04510, Mexico

    Mario Gómez-Torrente

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  1. Mario Gómez-Torrente
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Correspondence to Mario Gómez-Torrente.

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Gómez-Torrente, M. On quoting the empty expression. Philos Stud 148, 439–443 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-009-9336-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-009-9336-3

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