Lexical Flexibility, Natural Language and Ontology
ing over these differences by indicating that the context somehow fi lls this gap is no answer at all. Worse yet, it commits one to a theory of meaning that is thereby incapable of addressing such questions. 30 C. A. Vogel, Lexical Flexibility, Natural Language, and Ontology for concepts, as a way of making them articulable. Call this the label theory of linguistic meaning.33 So long as the language I speak syntactically composes in a way commensurate with the structure of my thoughts, linguistic meaning would perfectly mirror conceptual content. On this proposal, the meanings of our expressions would hook up with the world via conceptual content, so long as conceptual content can be characterized externally. So, to the degree that our concepts align with the "fi ne structure" of the world, expressions of a natural language will likewise accord with the mind external objects of the world. But why should one insist that linguistic meaning is mediated by our conceptual system? For one, this answers the problem of intentionality at the level of language. But more importantly for the Realist, the desire here relates to naturalistic explanation. As we saw, a substantive source of contention in thinking about linguistic meaning as externalist relates to the aims of the scientifi c enterprise of linguistics. Facts about the acquisition and productivity of language in humans deserve explanation, and a theory of meaning ought to add to (or at least make possible) an explanation of these facts. As we saw in SS3.1 these considerations strongly suggest that the object of study for a naturalistic investigation of language is in the mind. As such, to the degree one thinks that language and thought are independent, a naturalistic inquiry into these matters will address the way in which these distinct mental faculties interact. There is no shortage of literature addressing the viability of naturalistic accounts of content.34 Whether or not naturalistic accounts of intentionality are viable is beyond the scope of this work, but the point I want to emphasize here is that the force of the arguments presented so far against externalism compel the externalist to adopt two contentious views: a labeling theory of linguistic meaning, and a naturalistic account of intentionality. I'll not take the time to illustrate the contentiousness of the latter,35 but the former position is worth analyzing, in part because so many philosophers seem to adopt this view without much defense. 33 Fodor (1975) seems to hold this view. Jackendoff (2002) explicitly adopts this position, though not by this name. Oddly enough he defends an internalist proposal for linguistic meaning on the basis that no naturalistic account of external mental content is plausible. 34 For a good survey see the introduction to Macdonald Papineau (2006) 35 This has been done by many, and better than I could hope to do here. See Jackendoff (2002) Loewer (1997) Boghossian (1991) Godfrey Smith (1989) and McGinn (1982) C. A. Vogel, Lexical Flexibility, Natural Language, and Ontology 31 5.2. Labeling Theory of Meaning The labeling theory of meaning views the relationship between words and concepts as one of labeling, whereby words are like labels for concepts. My use of 'cat' is just a way of tokening the CAT concept in my audience, whose content serves as the meaning of 'cat' in any expression that uses it, like 'The cat is on the mat' Linguistic meaning on this view is just conceptual content. Such a view (as indicated above) can still be meaningfully externalist, if the contents of our concepts are externalist. This labeling view is pervasive amongst philosophers. In fact, the view is often adopted as obvious, without much need to articulate that indeed adopting the view embodies a collection of commitments about the relationship between the human language faculty and the conceptual system. Burge (1975) is a paradigmatic example. In discussing the expansiveness of his famous 'arthritis' case, Burge writes: On the other hand, the [arthritis] thought experiment does appear to depend on the possibility of someone's having a propositional attitude despite an incomplete mastery of some notion in its content .Suppose a subject thinks falsely that all swans are white .that 'swan' means 'white swan' (Burge 1975: 83) (my emphasis)36 Burge treats the content of a concept, or notion, which plays an important role in determining the content of the propositional attitude someone might hold, as no different than the meaning of a natural language word: hence the notion SWAN has the same meaning as 'swan' In his book length critique of Burge's account of wide content Segal (2000) commits to this same theory about the relationship of words to concepts. Zowie and Twin Zowie both say "My engagement ring is studded with diamonds." Are the concepts expressed by their words "diamond" the same? (Segal, 2000, p. 6) Let w be the focal word Let c be the concept [the subject] expresses by w. (Segal 2000: 67) In more contemporary literature, Weber (2005) writes The meaning of the term "gene" has changed several times in the history of twentieth century genetics. If we distinguish between a term's sense and its reference, it is possible that the term's sense has changed, but not it's reference..I have examined both the reference potential and the reference connected with different historical versions of the gene concept. (my emphasis) (Weber 2005: 228) As a fi nal example, consider this passage from Clark Chalmers (1998) wherein they discuss an opponent's (possible) response to their thought experiment involving Otto, and his purported belief about the location of a museum: 36 Here Burge uses 'notion' as a way of talking about the content of a concept: "Talk of notions is roughly similar to talk of concepts in an informal sense"(Burge 1975: 83) 32 C. A. Vogel, Lexical Flexibility, Natural Language, and Ontology An opponent might put her foot down and insist that as she uses the term 'belief or perhaps even according to standard usage, Otto simply does not qualify as believing that the museum is on 53rd street. We do not intend to debate standard usage; our broader point is that the notion of belief.(my emphasis) (Clark Chalmers 1998: 14) Here the slide from the meanings of a linguistic expression 'belief (as evident in its "standard" usage) to the concept (or notion) of belief, is clear, blatant, and offered without explanation or defense. Linguistic meaning, on this often assumed view, is simply conceptual meaning. But this view has the following consequences: fi rst, the extension of our words must have the same extension as their underlying conceptual meanings, and second, the syntax of natural language must be mirrored in the composition of thought. Neither of these consequences seem well supported by the way natural language speakers treat the meanings of expressions. The fl exibility of natural language expressions speaks against the fi rst consequence. (19) The Hirshhorn Museum is bankrupt and it is a cylinder. If the extension of the concept HIRSHHORN MUSEUM is to capture the meanings that natural language users apply to the term 'HirshhornMuseum' then the extension of the concept better include both the concrete building that houses artworks, and the abstract institution that employs hundreds of people. As we've seen, many natural language expressions bear meanings that do not track the domain of objects in this way. Thus whatever thought corresponds to (19) and thereby stands as the meaning of (19) it must either treat 'Hirshhorn Museum' as labeling two distinct concepts, or have a content such that some (abstract) object (or some building) is both cylindrical and bankrupt. The former avenue belies the manifest relationship between the uses of the English term, and fails to account for the felt relatedness of these uses. The latter option has much more bizarre metaphysical commitments, since we have no other reason (other than a commitment to particular views about semantics) to postulate such an entity. Turning to the second consequence, if language mirrored the structure of thought, then thoughts should compose much the way expressions do. More strictly, the meanings of linguistic expressions and their underlying logical forms should mirror the structure of the concepts those forms express. The deep structural syntactic frames that make up interpretable expressions in a natural language must mirror the structure of their underlying concepts. In this vein, consider the following sentence: (32) Wilbur kicked Fred. Paying attention to the syntax of this construction, and adopting the labeling theory commitment, we ought to conclude that the KICK concept is dyadic. The word 'kicked' in the complete expression in (32) takes a subject and an object, and likewise we would expect the related concept C. A. Vogel, Lexical Flexibility, Natural Language, and Ontology 33 to take two elements to form a complete thought. Thus the thought expressed must make use of a concept like: