This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Notes
The principal lines of analysis adopted by the group I have in mind owe their origin to the epistemological genius of Gustav Bergmann, at whose hands they have received one of their clearest formulations. In particular, see his articles “Logical Positivism” and “Semantics” inHistory of Philosophical Systems, Vergilius Ferm, editor, which the Philosophical Library, New York, will publish in the spring of 1950. The peculiarities of my own position were presented in my unpublished, but rather widely circulated doctoral dissertation, summer 1947, under the direction of Professor Bergmann.
Gesammalte Aufsatze, 1926–1936 (Vienna: Gerold, 1938).
Inquiry into Meaning and Truth (New York: W. W. Norton, 1940), p. 6.
The whole school of Cambridge analysts have based their dialectical procedure on the admission of the “fact of communication.” It is not chance that the outstanding proponents prefer to carry out their “philosophic therapy” in conversation. One need only look at the writings of G. E. Moore, John Wisdom, Max Black, and O. K. Bouwsma to show the tremendous emphasis placed on the common-sense acceptance of communication.
Such a set of axioms may be found, for example, in Alfred Tarski's “Fundamentale Begriffe der Methodologie der deduktiven Wissenschaften. I,”Monatshefte für Mathematik und Physik, 37:361–404. Several recent publications of Karl Popper also adopt this procedure for the development of logic.
The problem is more difficult than this. “I” may say ‘red’ when a “red” somewhat is not a part of my immediately given—e.g., when I rememberred. In this case, my use of the word ‘red’ is more nearly like the ‘red’ I have as a part of verbal consciousness when “he” says ‘red.’ And further, as I see it, this whole discussion should be built around logical particulars, or names, and not around universal words. An exposition of these subtleties, however, is prohibitively long for this paper.
For the discussion of such a relation see Tarski's “Der Wahrheits Begriff in den formalisierten Sprachen,”Studia Philosophica (Lemberg, 1935) 1:261–405.
On the significance of distinguishing “my language” from “your language” see Julius Weinberg,Examination of Logical Positivism (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1936), chap. 7, especially pp. 202ff. It seems to me that Weinberg is the one philosopher who has seen and stated clearly the necessary hurdles that an adequate positivistic account of language must surmount. To my knowledge, Weinberg has never attempted to answer the questions he raises.
Max Black, in his article “Linguistic Method in Philosophy,”Philosophy and Phenomenundological Research, 8:635–49 (June 1948), has stated clearly the difficulties that beset the skeptic who wishes to discuss the “fact of communication.” In discussing the position C. I. Lewis holds inMind and the World Order, Black summarizes the situation by saying that “words such as ‘green’ and ‘yellow’ ... are constants for the speaker who uses them, but mere variables to his hearers” (pp. 636–37). And further on he says, “On Lewis's showing, we ought to find every utterance of every speaker as baffling as Jabberwocky” (p. 637). In his presumedreductio ad absurdum of this position, Black makes ample use of the common-sense appeal to the “fact of communication” as noted in footnote 4.
Obviously, I am speaking in analogy with Wittgenstein's apt phrase, “the grammar of the color predicates.”
Russell, for example, worries about it,op. cit., p. 47.
Cf. footnote 6. The whole discussion of the designative character of Pr would have to be clarified further. I, personally, am convinced that designation is needed only for the basic particulars of a language (as I have tried to prove in my paper “Universality and Particularity in Empirical Languages”). However, the analysis of communication in this paper does not depend on an adoption of this nominalistic thesis. Therefore, I have carrried out the present discussion for a language that does contain undefined descriptive predicates and relations. It should also be noted that in a sentence such as a des α both a and α are parts of the language in which this sentence occurs, although α is not a “linguistic element” as here defined providing a is, as stated, the name of a nonverbal element.
Cf. footnote 9.
There is a certain similarity, at this point, with the “structural theory of communication” held by early logical positivism. Cf. Herbert Feigl, “Logical Analysis of the Psychophysical Problems,”Philosophy of Science, 1:433ff (October 1934). However, there is one point of difference that I believe to be fundamental. I have not maintained that structural features of the world may be communicated in opposition to the qualia or content of our experiences, but, rather, that it is in terms of isomorphisms of structure that “communication” is to be defined.
Russell to the contrary,op. cit., p. 27passim, the psychological fact that the human organism is triggered in a similar fashion by a wide variety of sounds (e.g., the tonal and inflectional variants of the word “dog”) is not a basis for the philosophical solution of the problem of universals. This very complex question is closely related to footnote 12; see the paper mentioned there.
To avoid complexities, I have omitted discussing cases where two relations “fulfill the same set of axioms” (e.g.,precedence andleft of). Such a difficulty will automatically be resolved if the set of axioms does, in truth, separate the relations in question. If the axioms do not separate the two empirical relations, then these axioms do not, a fortiori, define the relation. If no set of axioms could separate the two relations, it would be meaningless, on my epistemological view, to speak of “two relations.” An exception to the last statement might be the case where the whole empirical system was self-dual. This complex situation would need further examination.
Cf. Tarski's “The Semantic Conception of Truth,”Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 4:341–75 (March 1944).
As does Morris in “Foundations of the Theory of Signs,”International Encyclopedia of Unified Science, vol. 1, no. 2.
Bergmann, in “A Positivistic Metaphysics of Consciousness,”Mind, n.s., 54:193–226 (July 1945), suggests that the study of the syntax of the basic predicates of mentation is the task of pure pragmatics; W. S. Sellars, in “Pure Pragmatics and Epistemology;”Philosophy of Science, 14:181–202 (July 1947), emphasizes that the task of pure pragmatics center around the analysis of “conformation rules” and the predicates of validification. I am not clear about the measure of agreement or disagreement among these three definitions of pure pragmatics.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Storer, T. On communication. Philos Stud 1, 33–40 (1950). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02216986
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02216986