Just a quick observation. I think that a telling analogy can be drawn between the measurement problem in quantum mechanics (QM) and the liar paradox. This aside is just meant to draw out those intuitions.
The liar paradox amounts to more or less the following statement. ‘This sentence is false.’ You know the drill. If the sentence is true, then it must be false (for it asserts its own falsity). And if the sentence is false, then it must be true (for the negation of its falsity is its truth). In light of this (and to avoid infinitely ‘looping’ through the truth-values of the sentence), we say that we cannot ascribe any truth-value to the sentence at all, dub it a paradox, and call it a day.
Another account of the measurement problem can be found here. Nevertheless, here’s the gist. The dynamic equations of motion (DEM) (the third axiom of QM) are thought to certainly determine the states and motions of all particles (all states and motions are calculable [via the Schroedinger equation]). By DEM, if we measure the color of a hard electron, the measurement outcome should be in a superposition of being both black and white. But this isn’t actually what happens (and is where the fifth axiom of QM comes in). The measurement outcome is always either definitely black or definitely white (with each result have a probability of exactly .5). (Somehow measurement ‘disrupts’ the outcome, collapsing the superpositional state into just one of its terms.)
Say our goal is to identify what ‘the liar paradox’ would look like in a physical, rather than linguistic, system. Superposition seems like a good candidate. When the hard electron is going through the color box, it is in a superposition of being both black and white. But we only really understand what superposition means in a negative sense. An electron in a superposition of being black and white is not black, nor is it white, and it is not definitely both black and white, but nor can it be neither — and what that means, we don’t really know (so we introduce the term, ‘superposition’). In one sense, it seems that, prior to the measurement outcome, a color-property simply cannot even be predicated of the electron. With regard to its color, literally nothing can be said. (Until it emerges from the device, but this isn’t as relevant.)
And this starts to look like a liar paradox. We refuse to ascribe a truth-value to ‘this sentence is false,’ in the same way we refuse to ascribe a color-property to the hard electron going through the color box.
DEM says that the result of a measurement is superposition, but the collapse postulate predicts a probalistic outcome of .5 for black. (And how could you ever even see a superposition?) Suppose the outcome is black. When you measure a second hard electron, the outcome will necessarily be white. And when you measure a third, the outcome will be black.1 This sounds like saying: suppose ‘this sentence is false’ is true. Evaluate the truth-value of the sentence again; it must be false. And on the next evaluation, it must be true.
The difference between the two is that, empirically, measurements must have outcomes, while the liar paradox doesn’t demand a truth-value in the same way — we can reserve our judgment.
- We’re fudging a bit here, but bear with me. ↩
We talk about many things that do not exist. Dragons, unicorns, perhaps the modern maritime megalopolis of Atlantis, and so on. More practically, we may posit and discuss theoretical scientific entities — entities whose existence we have no evidence for apart from their theoretical or explanatory virtue. For instance, we can talk of the inclement weather as a result of Zeus’s wrath. A set of non-existent entities is empty. Consider the set of all dragons and count its elements. 0. Same for unicorns and modern maritime megalopoleis. That is, they are all equivalent to the null set.
Still, we want to be able to make nontrivial assertions about non-existent entities. We should be able to say things about them, for instance, “Kronos was a titan.” Suppose someone said “No Kronos was a titan”. On a certain level this seems contradictory. But on the following logical construal, we can make sense of it.
Take the proposition, (1) “all dragons are green”. Because the set of dragons is just the null set, this proposition is trivially true. For we express it as, . Which is to say: for all x, if x is a dragon, then x is green. Because no x is a dragon, the antecedent of the conditional, “if x is a dragon”, is always false. Therefore, the whole conditional is always true; so “all dragons are green” is true.
Now take the proposition (2) “no dragon is green”. (1) and (2), prima facie, are contradictory. But (2) turns out to be true, also. We express (2) as, . Or: it is not the case that there exists an x which is both a dragon and green. Because there does not exist a dragon, (2) will always be true.
But the logical representation isn’t exactly faithful to the assertive content of the linguistic utterances (1) and (2). Existence, or lackthereof, is not explicitly asserted in (1) or (2). This becomes apparent when we translate the logical sentences back into natural language. “” translates back into, “there does not exist an object such that it is both a dragon and green.” And “” translates back into, “for all objects, if that object is a dragon then it is also green.” These seem a little bit different than their counterparts in (1) and (2).
A different approach. Prima facie it seems that “no dragon” and “all dragons” denote the same object, namely the null set. And the predicates are the same. So we are supposed to admit that the sentences are saying the same thing. But it seems contrary to intuition to say that these sentences “say the same thing” for lack of a better word. They denote the same thing insofar as their subjects and predicates denote the same things.
Here’s the thought we are addressing. The set of all dragons is empty. So, prima facie, “no dragon” and “all dragons” refer to the same set (the empty set). So when we predicate “is green” to both “no dragon” or “all dragons” we are referring to the same thing, and consequently the predicate must be true of both.
But “no dragon” and “all dragons” do not denote the same set. “Dragons” denotes the (empty) set of dragons. But quantifiers do not operate on the set they are attached to (e.g. “no” [or “all”] does not qualify the subject “dragons”). Instead, quantifiers modify the denotation of the predicate; in this case, “is green”. “No” means that “is green” is not true of anything in the salient set (this case, dragons). “All” means that “is green” is true of everything in the set. So (1) says, “the predicate, ‘is green’, is true of every individual in the set of dragons”. And (2) says, “the predicate, ‘is green’, is true of no individual in the set of dragons. So the conjunction of (1) and (2) says “the predicate, ‘is green’, true of both all the elements and none of the elements in the set of dragons”. And this is more than just apparently contradictory, it is actually contradictory, for nothing, regardless of its existential status, can be both .
“All” and “No” do not modify the set of dragons. If they did, then there is no contradiction between (1) and (2) because the same predicate, “is green”, is applying to all the same elements. But “all” and “no” modify predicates, not sets. Consequently, in the conjunction of (1) and (2) “is green” and “is not green” are applied to all the same elements, and therein lies the contradiction.
What is the truth-value of the following statement?
(1) “The present king of France is bald.”
The State of Play
In this post I will explain why this kind of sentence does have a truth-value. This is a preliminary response in that I have not read any literature specific to this question. Rather, a while ago the question was posed to me, and it hasn’t been until now that I have taken the time to give it any real consideration.
Trivially, the sentence, “the present king of France is bald” cannot be true. This is because, as we are all well aware in the 21st century, France has no king. Consequently the sentence cannot be true, for it is true if and only if there is a present king of France who is in fact bald. And so we are left with two options. Either the sentence is false or the sentence lacks any truth-value whatsoever.
It is potentially illuminating to consider another, slightly different sentence, for comparison. Assume that that there does not exist an escalator in South College.
(2) “John is on the escalator in South College.”
Now ask yourself, is (2) true, false, or neither? Like (1), (2), trivially, cannot be true, for (2) is true if and only if John is in fact on the escalator in South College, which is impossible as the escalator in South College does not exist. So again we are left with two options. Either (2) is false or else it lacks a truth-value whatsoever.
If your intuitions are anything like mine, you will suspect that (1) lacks a truth-value (and so is not false), while (2) is, in fact, a false statement. We will see if this is so.
On Subjects and Predicates
Before we begin, it is useful to analyze and characterize the relevant subjects and predicates, how they work, and how they relate to each other.
In (1), there is a subject, “the present king of France”, and a predicate, “is bald”. And in (2), there is a subject, “John”, and a predicate, “is on the escalator in South College”. Typically a subject is some kind of individual (or object). A predicate should be thought of as a set, not an object. The predicate, “is bald”, denotes the set of all objects that are bald. So when we say that “the present king of France is bald”, we are asserting that the object denoted by the determinative-phrase, “the present king of France”, is an element of the set of all bald things. Predicates, like “is on the escalator in South College”, may consist in determinative-phrases, such as, “the escalator in South College”. This does not change their status as predicates, for a legitimate set is still defined for which any object may be tested or assessed for membership.
A Closer Look at John and the King of France
As another preliminary matter, we should make explicit the truth-conditions for both (1) and (2).
(1T) “The present king of France is bald” is true iff the present king of France is bald.
(2T) “John is on the escalator in South College” is true iff John is on the escalator in South College.
The present king of France cannot be bald, for there does not exist a referent for “the present king of France”. And John cannot be on the escalator in South College, for that escalator does not exist. Does it follow from this that (1) is false? Certainly not immediately. For if (1) is false, then its negation must be true. The negation of (1), and its corresponding truth-condition, is:
(-1T) “It is not the case that the present king of France is bald” is true iff the present king of France is not bald.
[For the sake of continuity, we include the negation and corresponding truth-condition of (2), as well:]
(-2T) “It is not the case that John is on the escalator in South College” is true iff John is not on the escalator in South College.
Now we ask, is (-1) true? Assuming that (1) is false, it is logically necessary that (-1) is true. But here we run into the same quagmire as (1). It cannot be the case that the present king of France is not bald, because there is no present king of France to which the predicate can be applied. So (-1) is either false or lacks a truth-value. But if (-1) is false, then (1) must we true — and (1) we know to be false. (-1) and (1) cannot both be false, for this flouts the law of noncontradiction. And neither one can be true. This strongly suggests that both (-1) and (1) lack truth-values.
And again for continuity, is (-2) true? Because there exists no escalator in South College, the set defined by “is on the escalator in South College” will necessarily have no actual elements. So John cannot be a member of that set. Consequently, it is true that John is not a member of that set. So (-2) has a truth-value, namely True. Therefore it is logically necessary that (2) is false. Though this is consistent with our initial intuitions, it suggests a nontrivial difference between sentences of kind (1) and sentences of kind (2). We may consider these differences later.
Consideration of Logical Form
But let’s take a closer look at the logical form of (1).
(1L) There exists an x such that x is the present king of France and x is bald. Or .
And its negation:
(-1L) It is not the case that there exists an x such that x is the present king of France and x is bald. Or, .
Now we ask, is (-1L) true? Well it is true that there does not exist an object that is both bald and the present king of France. And this seems to be exactly what (-1L) says. So intuitively, (-1L) is true. But then it is logically necessary that (1L) be false.
And now we’re in a real pickle. On our first level of analysis we found that a sentence like (1) must lack truth-value. But on our logical level of analysis, we find that sentences like (1) must have a truth-value (namely, False). We cannot have it both ways. And since the disjunction of both analyses exhausts the realm of possibilities, one of the two must be right.
Note we could also express (1) with a universal:
For all x, if x is the present king of France, then x is bald. Or,
And on this rendition, (1) is actually vacuously true! No x is the present king of France, therefore it all x is -Fx which means that the antecedent of the material conditional is always false and so the entire conditional is always true.
We will have something to say about this.
Picking up the Pieces
There must be a difference between (1) and (1L). This difference is in what I will refer to as “the assertive content” of the statements (1) and (1L). Here is the literal translation of 1L:
(3) Something is the present king of France and bald.
And this is a far cry from (1), “the present king of France is bald”. Why? Statement (3) consists in a subject, “something”, and is ascribed a predicate that is the conjunction of two sets, namely the set of present kings of France and the set of all bald things. But (1) consists in a subject, “the present king of France”, and a single predicate, “is bald”. Consequently, these two statements differ in assertive content. (3) asserts the existence of an object which is an element of both the aforementioned sets. (1) does not explicitly assert the existence of a present king of France, rather what is explicitly asserted is just that the present king of France is an element of the set of all bald things. The existence of the present king of France is presupposed (and, consequently, not asserted).
What does it mean to presuppose the subject? Existence is not a predicate. Predicates stand for the properties of subjects, and no subject has the property of existence. A subject either exists or it does not, but its existential status is not a property of the subject qua the definition of the subject. For instance, we can define God as omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent. But we cannot include in our specification that God, in addition to having the properties of the three O’s, also exists. Defining God to have the property of existence does not make it such that God exists. This is because, in ascribing properties (or predicates) to a subject, we must presuppose the existence of that subject. In order to ascribe the three O’s to God, I must presuppose the existence of God. So the ascription of predicates to entities of dubious existence amounts to something like a conditional statement: If so-and-so were to exist, then it would have such-and-such properties. And this especially highlights the fact existence is not a predicate, for consider: If so-and-so were to exist, then it would have the property of existence. And this is a tautology.
Because no such object exists, contrary to (3)’s explicit assertion, we intuitively found it false. Because the existence of the present king of France is not explicitly asserted in (1), there was no explicit phrase which could entail the falsity of (1) (for  seems to presuppose a present king of France prior to ’s assertion). (1) and (3) differ in assertive content, this difference accounts for our differing intuitions. But this raises a new question. Are we to interpret (1) in the manner of (3)? That is, if Donald Trump, in conversation with you, said “the present king of France is bald”, should you think you had been told something false or should you think that Trump has said something that is simply neither true nor false?
This question acknowledges our conclusion that the truth-value, or lackthereof, of statements like (1) is determined by the particular level of analysis we bring to bear. But it raises a pragmatic point, on what level of analysis do we interpret the utterances of others in our day-to-day conversations?
The Pragmatic Point
This section marks a departure from our original question. It seems we are headed toward some contemporary debates in pragmatics and the theory of meaning. It is not my intention to wade through any of these arguments. Instead, I will sketch out why I think that, if someone were to assert (1) in conversation, they would assert something false, rather than something sans-truth-value. The following is primarily influenced by John Perry’s theory of meaning. (A theory which I think has many virtues. Though my own views are unsettled.)
Interpreting meaning in conversation is significantly distinct from assessing the meaning (that is truth-conditions [or truth-value, depending on who you ask]) of a statement in isolation. This distinction stems from the interaction of two fields, viz. semantics and pragmatics. Semantics aims to understand the truth-functional structure of language — that is, how each lexical item (or word) in a sentence directly contributes to the meaning of a sentence by way of truth-functional application. Pragmatics, on the other hand, seeks to understand language (and meaning) insofar as a language is a way of doing things with words. Conversation is an activity, not a rigid exercise in isolated truth-functional application. In conversation we try to do things like change each others’ beliefs, get somebody to do something (like pass you the salt), or share information. And when we share information, we do so with the understanding that our interlocutor has a unique set of pre-existing beliefs, modes of presentation, and ways of thinking about the world (that is, the relations between his or her concepts). In light of this, meaning in pragmatics will be more dynamic than meaning in semantics.
In conversation (the domain of pragmatics), we do not interpret only the explicit, assertive content of another person’s utterance. We are sensitive to myriad background and contextual factors in determining speaker-meaning. For example, you exit the airport in the Basque country. A man approaches you and utters the sound “/ninaizdjon/”. He means something by his sounds, but before we can assess the meaning or truth-conditions we need some more information. Suppose I think that the man is speaking English. In that case, I take him to have said “Nina is John”. This is a puzzling statement — it is not often that a person two names, let alone both a feminine and a masculine name. Perhaps we were wrong to think that the man was speaking English. Suppose we had some understanding of the Basque language. When the man says, “/ninaizdjon/”, and I interpret him as speaking Basque, then I will take the man to have said, “Ni naiz John” (which, in English, is “I am John”). Conversation doesn’t enjoy the luxuries of print; in print we can easily determine the language and parse sounds (for they are, more or less, already parsed for us on the page), but in conversation we are subjected to a constant stream of phonemes and so must bring some background, interpretive theory to make sense of an otherwise disorienting stream of sound.
This demonstrates our sensitivity to background conditions and contextual factors. When we place the “is speaking English”-background condition on the man’s utterance, we end up with a sentence that is true if and only if “Nina” and “John” co-refer. But when we place the “is speaking Basque”-background condition on the man’s utterance, we end up with a sentence that is true if an only if the man is named ‘John’. Nothing in the isolated sound “/ninaizdjon/” can help us determine which of the two aforementioned background conditions is salient/relevant/appropriate/what-have-you. We cannot determine the meaning without making this choice; context may affect meaning just as much as isolated semantics. Here is another example. Suppose that some time ago, Quine said “Cicero wrote beautiful prose”. The utterance, “Quine said that Tully wrote beautiful prose”, will true if and only if, as a background condition, Quine believes that “Cicero” and “Tully” co-refer to the same object. For if he did not have this belief, then we would be misattributing a Tully-belief to Quine when Quine has only Cicero-beliefs. If we were attuned only to the explicit content of an utterance, we would miss out on or be mistaken about the actual meaning of another person’s utterance. We would incorrectly assess the truth of the utterance “Quine said that Tully wrote beautiful prose”.
An utterance like (1) presupposes the existence of the subject which takes on a predicate. But in ordinary conversation, that presupposition places a background truth-condition on the utterance. The background truth-conditions of an utterance directly contribute to the judgment of the truth-value of that utterance. So (1) is subject to the following truth conditions.
The explicit (1T): “The present king of France is bald” is true iff the present king of France is bald.
The background: AND iff there exists a present king of France (or, alternatively, there exists an individual uniquely denoted by the determinative-phrase “the present king of France”).
AND iff (1) is a sentence in English
(1) is true iff both the explicit and the background are true. Because the existential-background truth-condition is not satisfied, (1) is not satisfied, and so (1) must be false.
To reiterate, one last time, the findings of this post: In an isolated context a sentence like (1) will not have a truth-value. But language is used in varying contexts, and in its use, there must be some additional background truth-conditions which are not explicitly contained in the assertive content of the sentence. An example of such a background condition will be the existence of the presupposed subject, the present king of France. I hope that my response to our initial question doesn’t come across as a sort of “Well, it does and it doesn’t”. I am more inclined toward pragmatic accounts of meaning rather than semantic; so to be unequivocal: if Trump says, “the present king of France is bald”, he would be asserting something false.
As a sort of post-script, I would like to note that when I began writing this, I intended to argue that sentences like (1) have no truth-values. When I almost finished, I changed my mind and came to the here-written conclusions.
I should also note that there are conversational contexts where one could say, “the present king of France is bald” without necessitating the existential-background truth-condition. If I am in a conversation with Trump, and we have both already acknowledged the fact that there is no present king of France, then later in our conversation, when Trump says “the present king of France is bald”, I will know that he does not mean to assert or imply the existence of the present king of France. (This is because I know that he knows there the present king doesn’t exist, and so will not mean to say as much.) In light of this, one possible interpretation of Trump might be, “if there were a king of France in the present day, he would be bald”. (Perhaps Trump is making a point about the dangers of contemporary aristocratic French diet, or perhaps he means to say that the genetic line of French kings is prone to premature baldness.)
In this post I will explain Davidson’s analysis of sentences containing indirect discourse and how we ought to treat their logical form. This will pay close attention to the role of samesaying with an utterance. The analysis here will reveal how sentences containing indirect discourse are a type of performative utterance. Bringing these observations to bear, we will explain how and when we can substitute co-referring terms in that-clauses on Davidson’s account. Finally, we will assess the adequacy of Davidson’s analysis by considering the similarity between samesaying and sense and reference, in order to show that Davidson’s prima facie anti-intensionalist stance is, in fact, intensional; and discuss how Davidson might reply.
The problem with sentences containing indirect discourse is that surface grammar does not adequately account for their meaning. In “Scott said that Venus is an inferior planet”, we can substitute “is an inferior planet” for “is identical with Venus or Mercury” and not affect the truth of the sentence (for the former is co-extensive with the latter) (204). But intuitively, this seems illegitimate because it no longer seems to represent what it is that Scott said, and so the meaning of the whole sentence has changed (204). An adequate theory of meaning for utterances with that-clauses will specify how the meaning of the utterance depends upon the meanings of its finite component elements and syntactic structure (205) (so that we can construct a finite set of truth-conditions). And the theory must also explain when the substitution of co-referring terms in a that-clause is permissible.
For Davidson, a sentence containing indirect discourse involves (1) an utterance referring to a speaker S in a context, (2) an utterance conveying the content of a that-clause, (3) an utterance of S with the same content of (2). I say, “Galileo said that the earth moves”. S is Galileo in context, and “the earth moves” conveys the content of an utterance of Galileo’s. What Davidson wants to bring out here is that there is some judgment of synonymy between (2) and (3).
Such synonymy is what Davidson calls samesaying. Samesaying is when you use words of the same “import here and now” as someone else used them “then and there” (210). So in indirect discourse, when I say “Galileo said that the earth moves”, I am trying to represent Galileo and I as samesayers by attributing an expression to him (“the earth moves”) that is the same in purport to what he said – that is, synonymous, or has precisely the same content. This is the key to appropriate substitution of co-referring terms, discussed later.
In light of our new notion of samesaying, how should we think about the logical form of utterances containing indirect discourse? Suppose Galileo uttered, “eppur si muove”, and I say that “the earth moves”. Then Galileo and I are samesayers, for our words are of the same import relative to our respective contexts – but this is not to say that it has been asserted that we are samesayers, just that it is so. Because we are samesayers, there must exist an utterance asserting that Galileo and I are samesayers. The logical form of such an utterance is: ∃x(Galileo’s utterance x and my utterance y make us samesayers) (210). So I can attribute any utterance x to Galileo, provided that an utterance of mine y, corresponds to x (is the same in import as x) (210). So consider (210):
(1) The earth moves.
(2) ∃x(Galileo’s utterance x and my last utterance make us samesayers). Note that ‘y’ has been substituted for my last utterance, namely “the earth moves”.
If we abbreviate the second line, we get:
(1) The earth moves.
(3) Galileo said that.
How does it get abbreviated this way? “That” is a demonstrative singular term which refers to an utterance, viz. the utterance of Galileo’s such that it samesays with my last utterance, (1).
So how does this inform the logical form of an utterance containing indirect discourse? Such utterances consist in (a) an expression referring to a speaker (e.g. “Galileo”), (b) the two-place predicate “said”, and (c) a demonstrative “that”, referring to an utterance of the referent of (a) which samesays with the content of the that-clause (e.g. “the earth moves). So it should be analyzed and recognized as two semantically distinct sentences, viz. “Galileo said that” and “the earth moves” (212). From the logical form and the semantic distinctness of clauses of utterance with indirect discourse, it follows that these kinds of utterances are performatives.
A performative is an expression which introduces an utterance in a particular kind of way.. For example, “this is a joke: knock-knock…”. The “this is a joke” functions to introduce the following utterance, “knock-knock…”, as (importantly) something other than just an assertion, viz. that it is a joke (and perhaps not to be taken seriously) (211). Intuitively, “Galileo said that” and “the earth moves” looks like an introducing clause and an introduced clause (211). “Galileo said that” is the performative part of the utterance (211); it’s point is to announce a further utterance in a particular way. In this case, it introduces my further utterance as one that conveys the content of another’s utterance (Galileo’s), and must function as such. This is to say that I announce my utterance of “the earth moves” as an action which samesays with an utterance of Galileo’s. Notice that performative utterances have truth-values. Suppose I said, “Galileo said that Obama is Kenyan”; this must be false, as clearly Galileo said no such thing. Likewise, if I said, “this is a joke: Trump won the Republican Primary”, then I said something false, for Trump’s victory is a fact and not a joke (or at least not a funny joke). So in both cases the entire performative utterance is false.
Now that we have explained samesaying, the logical form of an utterance containing indirect discourse, and why utterances of indirect discourse are performatives, we now have the resources to explain legitimate substitution of co-referring terms in a that-clause. Consider the utterance “Quine said that Cicero wrote beautiful prose”. This expression (a) refers to a speaker (Quine), (b) has a two-place ‘said’ relation, and (c) ‘that’ refers to an utterance of Quine’s. We divide the sentence into “Quine said that” and “Cicero wrote beautiful prose”. “Cicero” and “Tully” are co-referring terms; would substituting “Cicero” for “Tully” be a legitimate substitution? So consider “Quine said that” and “Tully wrote beautiful prose”. “Quine said that” announces the following utterance, “Tully wrote beautiful prose” in such a way that the entire performative utterance is true iff “Tully wrote beautiful prose” samesays with an utterance of Quine’s. So we need to look at the conditions under which “Cicero wrote beautiful prose” (which we assume is what Quine actually said) and “Tully wrote beautiful prose” samesay. They samesay iff the “Tully” in our substitution is used with the same import as “Cicero” in Quine’s utterance. But to know if they have the same import, we will have to know something about Quine. Namely, we will have to know whether Quine believes that “Cicero” and “Tully” co-refer to the Roman orator or not, when he made his utterance. Suppose he did believe that “Cicero” and “Tully” co-refer. Then, for him, “Tully” will have all the import of “Cicero”, and consequently “Tully wrote beautiful prose” and “Cicero wrote beautiful prose” will samesay and our substitution will be legitimate. But suppose he did not believe that “Cicero” and “Tully” co-referred. Rather, the only “Tully” he knows is a delinquent undergraduate. So for Quine, “Cicero” and “Tully” cannot have the same import when he uses them. Consequently, our substitution of “Tully” for “Quine” is illegitimate, for if you asked Quine if he had said that “Tully wrote beautiful prose” he would deny it (for no delinquent undergraduate writes beautiful prose). This is how Davidson would characterize the substitution of co-referring terms in a that-clause. If the substitution preserves the import (of Quine’s utterance) – samesays – then the substitution is successful. But if the substitution does not samesay, then the substitution is not successful (for if the substitution does not samesay with the speaker’s utterance, then it falsely attributes an expression to the speaker).
But Davidson’s account is not immune to criticism. His notion of samesaying is particularly suspect. If we take samesaying to be “using words the same in import ‘here and now’ as his ‘then and there’”, then this just sounds like a matter of using some combination of words with the same sense and reference as words spoken by the attributed speaker. It is not as though import could be the semantic value of an expression, for that’s just a truth-value. Nor could import mean the corresponding extension, for then we would not have said anything about the problem of substitution of co-referring terms. So it seems most natural to think of import as sense or mode of presentation. But if this is so, then this creates a problem for Davidson. Sense is a Fregean notion, and is the “thought” grasped in virtue of hearing the utterance. “Tully” and “Cicero” are two different ways of thinking about the same individual, and consequently one could believe that “Cicero wrote beautiful prose and Tully did not”. That is, the words may be of different import. But if import just is sense, then Davidson’s account cannot be successful. This is because Davidson is committed to Tarski’s truth criterion: the meaning of the utterance depends upon the meanings of its finite component elements and syntactic structure. “Cicero” and “Tully” denote the same individual, so they must mean the same thing. But if they mean the same thing, then I could not believe that “Cicero wrote beautiful prose and Tully did not”. But if I could believe that “Cicero wrote beautiful prose and Tully did not”, then I must have different ways of thinking about “Tully” and “Cicero” – that is, the expressions must differ in their senses. Consequently, what determines the legitimacy of samesaying between expressions is the manner in which each expression is thought of. And this violates Tarski’s truth criterion because manner of thought is not truth-functional notion, so Davidson’s account cannot be successful.
In light of this, Davidson might respond by offering a more robust characterization of “import”. Take “import” to be the truth-conditions of an utterance and reconsider “eppur si muove” and “the earth moves”. Each is true iff the earth moves; intuitively they have the same import. Now consider “Cicero wrote beautiful prose” and “Tully wrote beautiful prose”. The former is true iff Cicero wrote beautiful prose; the latter is true iff Tully wrote beautiful prose. So substitution of “Tully” for “Cicero” is illegitimate. In this way, Davidson preserves his account without invoking sense, and so conforms to Tarski’s truth criterion. Samesaying relies on identity between the concrete – truth-conditions – not some abstract, like mode of presentation.
But this is not an effective reply. For if we intend to samesay with an utterance of Quine’s, then we will need to know what Quine took the truth-conditions of his utterance to be. But we cannot always know what the speaker to whom we’re attributing an utterance takes the truth-conditions of his utterance to be. So we cannot always know when it is legitimate to substitute co-referring terms because we do not know if we will preserve identity of truth-conditions of the attributee’s utterance. So we cannot determine whether our performative utterance is true or false. For me to truly assert that “Quine said that Tully wrote beautiful prose”, I must know that Quine believed that “Tully” and “Cicero” co-refer for our utterances to samesay. While it will often be the case that we know what the truth-conditions of the speaker’s (to whom utterance is attributed) utterance are, this is not always so (as suggested by Tully the delinquent undergraduate).
It seems that we want a way to attribute utterances to speakers when we do not have sufficiently reliable knowledge of the contents of their beliefs. One way of accomplishing this might be to revise samesaying such that when there is not reliable knowledge of the content of the speaker to whom the utterance is attributed’s beliefs, then samesaying will instead be: when my utterance conveys the same content to the hearer as the attributed-speaker’s utterance conveyed to himself. On this view, it is legitimate for me to substitute “Tully” for “Cicero”, even if Quine did not believe that they co-referred, because to the hearer, the utterance just means the same thing as “Cicero wrote beautiful prose”. And now the hearer knows something true about Quine, namely that he thought that Cicero wrote beautiful prose. He is just ignorant of the fact that Quine does not believe that “Tully” and “Cicero” co-refer.
But I think that this move starts to veer off-track. The notion of samesaying begins to looks more broad, less clear, and more context dependent.
Martinich, Aloysius, and David Sosa. The Philosophy of Language. New York: Oxford UP, 2013. Print.
“Semantic composition is functional application” – the Conjecture.
In an extensional theory of linguistic meaning, there are only three kinds of things: individuals, functions, and truth-values. The meaning of a sentence is determined by the individual meanings of each of its words as well as its syntactic structure. A simple example:
There is “Jack”, an individual, and there is “drinks”, a function. Drinks is a function which takes a single argument (in this case, “Jack”), and maps it to a truth-value. The meaning, then, is a truth-condition: “Jack drinks” is true iff Jack drinks = T. Suppose Jack does in fact drink. Then we plug in “Jack” into the function “(x) drinks”, and the output will be the truth-value, T. Suppose instead that Jack’s been sober almost two months. The function “(x) drinks” will map “Jack” onto the truth-value, F. (Probably.) More formally:
[Jack](Let F be that function f such that For All x in domain, f(x) = T if and only if x drinks, otherwise f(x)=F.) = T
As sentences grow in complexity, it can be difficult to keep track the syntactic structure – that is, exactly which component of the sentence is an argument for whatever other function in the sentence. It can be useful to see an example of a sentence broken up into its constituents.
The cowboy on the cliff rides hard into the west.
([The [cowboy]] [[on] [the [cliff]]) ([[rides] [hard]] [[into] [the [west.]]])
Note that the only individuals in this sentence are “cowboy”, “cliff”, and “west”. This means that rest of the words are functions.