Which, if any, semantic properties would the utterances of a
community of language users have, even if we assumed that the language users had no internal semantic states? My answer will come in multiple
posts. Note that by 'semantic properties' I mean things like reference, truth,
aboutness, and usability-in-an-inference. I will ultimately argue, with a
couple of caveats, that their expressions would have a full suite of semantic
properties.
In this, the first post in the series, I summarize, defend,
and clarify the Standard View of the relationship between the semantic
properties of internal states and public linguistic expressions. I'd be interested in comments, as these are ideas I'm slowly developing, and injections of criticism at this early juncture would be most welcome.
The Standard View
Since the welcome demise of behaviorism and interpretivism,
the Standard View of the relationship between language and thought is that the
meaning of public linguistic expressions is parasitic on the content of
representational states in the mind of the speaker (e.g., Searle, Churchlands,
Fodor; Robert Brandom is a notable contemporary exception). That is, the semantic
properties of public linguistic expressions are inherited from the semantic
properties of the internal vehicles of content. If a public linguistic
expression were not
generated, in the right way, by internal vehicles with semantic properties,
that statement would be no more intrinsically meaningful than the shape 'Snow
is white' that was accidentally carved into the sand by an ant looking for
food.
Note that the Standard View isn't necessarily internalist.
It is a theory of how one vehicle relates to another, and how their
corresponding contents relate to one another. It does not imply that the
contents of those internal vehicles are fixed solely by events in the brain.
Let's consider four possible arguments for the Standard View.
One silly argument would be that for any system with meaningful states, those
meanings must derive from some other meaningful states. This argument invites a
regress, but it is something like what the interpretivists hold. Thankfully,
the focus in philosophy of mind has shifted to providing an account of semantic
properties that doesn't advert to other semantic properties. This is the essential
project of naturalizing cognition, or trying to "bake a mental cake using
only physical yeast and flour" (Dretske, Knowledge and the Flow of Information, xi).
It could be argued that the meaning of linguistic
expressions is derivative because they are public. That is, the first argument is
really an abortive attempt to claim that publicly observable items, if
meaningful, must derive their meaning from some other unobserved source of
intrinsic semantic properties. This argument, as stated, is just another straw
man. Nobody wants to make the incredible claim that the vehicles that carry
semantic contents cannot be directly observable (for instance, this would make
the vehicles depend on technology we use to extend our observation base).
Perhaps this argument could be construed as a poorly articulated version of the
following (third) argument for the Standard View.
A third, and more interesting, argument for the Standard View
is that the semantic properties of all representational states derive from the semantic
properties of conscious states. Perhaps conscious contents are the only type of nonderived content (as argued by Uriah
Kriegel in The
Primacy of Narrow Content). From this perspective, since internal brain states are the vehicle of
consciousness, the Standard View seems reasonable: the intrinsic contents of
conscious states percolate forth into certain public expressions. I will have
more to say about this view in a later post.
The fourth, mainstream, argument for the Standard View is that
it is the best psychological theory of the relationship between the semantic
properties of thoughts and linguistic
expressions. That is, the Standard View is a (contingently) true theory of how
we happen to operate. There are multiple lines of evidence which can be marshaled,
of which I'll mention two. For one, we can express our thoughts more or less accurately.
We often say things like "I said X, but Y would more accurately reflect my
thinking". We also often disambiguate what we say by clarifying our
thoughts (e.g., "When I said I went to the bank I meant the bank of the
river"). Second, neuropsychological
patients show quite specific patterns of semantic deficits (e.g., the inability
to comprehend or generate claims about animals). Conversely, someone with
paralyzed vocal chords could still have the intention of speaking, a
semantically rich mental life that they unfortunately can't express (and if
they knew sign language or could write they would be able to do so).
I take the fourth suite of arguments to be fairly
compelling, so people are right to endorse the Standard View. But note that the
Standard View, then, can't be that it is necessy that public
linguistic expressions have semantic properties in virtue of the semantic
properties of internal states. Rather, this is a contingent fact about human
communications systems. This fact of contingency will become much more
important in future posts.
