A Partially Descriptive Theory

A partially descriptive name n is semantically associated with both a descriptive property PD and a referent o. The referent o is determined in part by having the property PD and in part by the same nondescriptive mechanisms that determine the reference of ordinary nondescriptive names – for example, by a historical chain of transmission leading back to o. The semantic content of n includes both o and D. The proposition expressed by a sentence n is F is the same as that expressed by the sentence [the x: Dx & x = y] Fx, relative to an assignment of o to ‘y’. This proposition is true at a world w iff o has the properties expressed by D and F at w. To believe this proposition is to believe of o that it has both properties.

-- Scott Soames, Beyond Rigidity (p.88)

Soames' Competence Conditions for Proper Names

In order to be a competent user of a name n of an object o, two things are required. (i) One must have acquired a referential intention that determines o as the referent of n. Two ways in which this may be done are by picking up n from others who used it as a name of o, and intending use n to refer to the same thing they did, or by being independently acquainted with o and introducing n as a name for o. (ii)One must realize that to assertively utter n is F is to say of the referent, o, of n that it "is F."

--Scott Soames, Beyond Rigidity (p. 65)

Somes on Anti-descriptivist Arguments

(1) Semantic Arguments -- "[These] show the referent of a proper name n, as used by speaker s, is not linguistically determined to be the denotation of any description, or set of descriptions associated with n by s."

(2) Epistemic Arguments -- "[These] show that what is known or believed by someone who knows or believes that which is expressed by a sentence s containing a proper name n is different from what is known or believed by someone who knows or believes that which is expressed by a sentence which results from substituting a description for n in s."

(3) Modal Arguments -- "These are intended to show that sentences containing names typically have different truth conditions than corresponding sentences containing descriptions, in the sense that sentences of these two types are typically true in different possible states of affairs."

--Scott Soames, Beyond Rigidity (p.19)

Natural Kinds and Proper Names

I've been thinking a lot lately about how the term 'God' is used in the Bible and in natural language. Take the following occurrences of 'God' in the Bible:

(1) And God saw that it was good.

Clearly (1) 'God' is used to refer to a specific being. It seems as if the occurrence of 'God' in (1) could not be a natural kind but functions similar to the following:

(2) Tiger hunts by using stealth.

What if we changed (2) to the following and made it into a definite description:

(2') The tiger hunts by using stealth.

Now let's (1) into a definite description.

(1') And The God saw that it was good.

Something seems strange about (1') almost as if we are using it to pick out a particular unique being. However, the term 'God' seems to function similarly to 'tiger' in both examples.

Let's see if we can find an occurrence of 'God' as a natural kind.

(3) Who is like you, O Lord, among the gods?

Here specifically (3) is addressing YHWH and it seems to pick out YHWH as one among many gods. However, the speaker is claiming that YHWH is unique among the other gods. Yet, 'gods' is functioning as a natural kind. Similar to the following locution. Let's say that we're talking to Shere Khan and expressing to him is incomparable worth to other tigers.

(4) Who is like you, O Shere Khan, among the tigers?

So clearly 'god' can be used as a natural kind such as 'tiger'. Perhaps the difference between 'God' and other natural kinds is that we often use 'God' as a subject term the same way that we would use a proper name.

My initial intuitions about this are that 'God' is semantically a natural kind term, however, we do use it pragmatically as a proper name or a disguised definite description.

'God', A Prioricity, and Definite Descriptions

The claim that is generally agreed upon is that a = a, is a priori. However, that then means that a = b should also be a priori. So let's examine the following identity claims:

(1) God = The Triune God.

(2) Yahweh = The Triune God.

(3) Yahweh = God.

Of the three claims above, it seems that (3) is probably a priori, perhaps (2), but definitely not (1). Is this because the term 'God' is a description or predicate? Not to reject any of the above identity claims, rather to examine whether a competent language user would know the truth-value of the identity statements a priori.

Davidson on Demonstratives; Stern on Metaphor

One of Josef Stern's main arguments is as follows:

(1) If metaphors cannot be semantic then there are two other options (i) Davidson's view of metaphor, and (ii) pragmatic view of metaphor
(2) The pragmatic view of metaphor does not work,
(3) Hence, Davidson's view of metaphor is the only viable option.
(4) Davidson's theory of demonstratives are context-dependent semantics.
(5) If Davidson has context-dependent semantics for demonstratives, then if metaphor is sufficiently similar to Davidsonian Demonstratives, then metaphor is a semantic feature of language.
(6) Metaphors are sufficiently similar to Davidsonian Demonstratives.

So what is a context-dependent semantic rule? Indexicals and demonstratives are the most commonly used examples. Take the following utterance by Bill Clinton on June 15, 2007:

(7) I am the President of the United States.

Presumably (7) is false. Suppose George W. Bush were to utter the following on June 15, 2007:

(8) I am the President of the United States.

This is a true utterance. Both (7) and (8) have the exact same linguistic and syntactic structure, the only difference is who utters them. Indexicals such as 'I' always refer to the speaker, in that sense indexicals are context-dependent. Similarly to demonstratives such as 'that'.

(9) That is a baseball field.

Depending upon whether 'that' is actually a baseball field will determine the truth-value for (9).

According to Stern the same is true for metaphor. There are semantic rules that constrain the meaning of metaphor. Stern's claim is that metaphor follow some of the semantics of anaphora, that is, metaphor does not depend solely upon speaker meaning.

Ch. 2 sec. 4 Metaphorical/Literal Dependence II: Davidson on Referential Definite Descriptions, Malapropisms, and Metaphor

Metaphor, for Davidson, is like referential definite descriptions. For referential definite descriptions Davidson believes that we can use something, i.e. a sentence, that is literally false to say something true. Keith Donnellan's example is that of reference to a man at a cocktail party. Bert is talking to Ernie about the man in the corner drinking a martini. However, contrary to what Bert utters, the man in the corner is actually drinking water. So the definite description, 'the man in the corner drinking a martini' is actually false, because it is the man in the corner drinking water. Bert does not know all the facts about the man, however, according to Davidson, he does say something true with the false utterance of the definite description. We use sentences for metaphor that are false.

Malapropisms are different from metaphor in that their first literal meaning undergoes a change and then means something different. Yogi Berra once thanked the crowd at Yankee Stadium on Yogi Berra Day "for making this day necessary", when what Berra really meant was possible.

Ch. 2 sec. 3 Metaphorical/Literal Dependence: Davidson's Causal Explanation

Davidson views metaphor as similar to jokes and pictures. Take a joke, if we break down the individual words in a joke, the lexical meanings of the words themselves are not funny, yet the joke as a whole is funny. Metaphors make us see likenesses; the individual words, the constituents of the metaphor don't cause us to see likenesses but the metaphor as a whole does. That is, a metaphor is the totality of the utterance. However metaphors depend upon the ordinary (i.e. lexical) meanings of the words. That is, the utterance of a metaphor is created by the words used to compose the utterance. This creates a problem for Davidson, if the individual words make a metaphor, but the individual words themselves aren't metaphor, then how can metaphor depend upon the words. It seems as if Davidson is committing the fallacy of division. He admits that words have no metaphorical meaning, yet metaphor depends upon the meaning of words.

For Davidson the literal meaning of a sentence is its truth-conditions. Take the following sentence:

(1) Juliet is the sun.

The words keep their literal meaning but the sentence cannot pace Davidson because we don't know what it would mean for the truth of (1) to obtain. In other words, what would it mean for (1) to be literally true. Perhaps it is a category mistake to claim that a person is the sun, or it may be choice negation that (1) is false. We don't know what the world would have to be like in order for (1) to obtain. Davidson may just claim that the sentence is meaningful but false. For Christians this seems to present a problem take the following sentence:

(2) Jesus is the Lamb of God.

This appears to be a biblical metaphor that we would want to claim is true. Perhaps this is reason enough for the Christian to reject the Davidsonian view of metaphor. So for Davidson (2) is literally meaningful and merely false.

Since Davidson claims that it isn't the literal meaning of the sentence that gives rise to metaphor but only the words then changing the word order in a metaphor should not affect the metaphor. For instance:

(3) Man is wolf.

(4) Wolf is man.

According to Davidson (3) and (4) are the same metaphor because they both have the same words. So Davidson rejects that syntactic rules and the structure of the sentence contributes anything to metaphor.

Josef Stern claims that if we take Davidson's claim "the metaphorical depends upon the literal" to mean that the metaphorical use of a sentence depends on its literal meaning, then: (i) the literal meanings of the individual words so used to carry part of the explanatory burden; (ii) the literal truth-conditions of the sentence uttered play no explanatory role; but (iii) certain syntactic or logical-formal properties of the sentence do contribute to or constrain the metaphorical use.

Ch 2 sec. 2 If Literal Meaning, Why Not Metaphorical Meaning?

For Davidson a theory of language is a theory of use with its purpose being to facilitate communication. Communication occurs when a speaker S's utterances are correctly understood by the interpreter I. So if I understands what S intends to say, then communication, i.e. understanding of a language has taken place. Davidson rejects the concept of language, if language is what philosophers and linguists have claimed that language is. For Davidson, language is shared understanding of utterances. So S and I both bring their own a priori understanding and in the process of communication are able to share their presuppositions with each other. This is what language is for Davidson.

It seems problematic for Davidson to have a concept of language having a literal meaning, since he rejects the notion of semantics as traditionally construed. The traditional concept of semantics is the notion that there are some rules and lexical meanings of words that are finite or fixed. That is, there are some parameters set based upon semantic rules that do not allow for there to be an infinite amount of meanings for a given utterance. Instead Davidson appeals to primary intentions and secondary intentions.

Davidson has two kinds of context-dependence, presemantic and postsemantic. Presemantic context-dependence is assigning a meaning or interpretation to sounds or words. That is the sound of i, could be 'I', 'eye, or 'aye'. Similarly for read, or lead. We use context to determine the meaning of the sounds or words. Postsemantic context-dependency is how an utterance is used, are we warning someone, promise, deceive, threaten, etc. The first meaning of an utterance for Davidson it possesses this meaning during all its uses. Metaphors are both presemantically context-dependent and postsemantically context-dependent. That is, metaphors are not autonomous of its secondary intention, and thus metaphor cannot be meaning.

Davidson things that metaphors are used to present a likeness between two objects. Yet, there is an argument against viewing metaphor as taking a likeness.
(1) Suppose metaphors are truth-valued.
(2) Romeo's utterance u of 'Juliet is the sun' is true if and only if Juliet is P, where P is a feature u makes us notice in virtue of which Juliet resembles the sun.
(3) P cannot be the meaning of u.
(4) Therefore, metaphorical meaning cannot be truth-conditions or propositional content.

However, metaphorical meaning can be something other than the two options ruled out in (4).

Chapter 2 Meaning and Use sec. 1

In chapter 2 Josef Stern lays out Donald Davidson's position and arguments for metaphor. Stern's claim is that Davidson's theory of metaphor is the greatest threat to a semantic theory of metaphor, so if Stern can show that Davidson's approach to metaphor fails, we can then begin the argument for the semantic theory of metaphor.

According to Davidson metaphors mean what the words mean in their most literal sense. So the utterance

(1) Juliet is the sun.

is false. This is due to the fact that the words understood literally are false. Davidson is not concerned with what a speaker is saying, asserting, or trying to convey. Furthermore, Davidson rejects speaker meaning, i.e. pragmatics, as a way that metaphors receive their meaning.

Davidson claims that metaphors have no meaning due to the two following reasons: (i) it is not a feature of the word that the word has prior to and independent of the context of use, (ii) unlike literal meaning that explains why all utterances of one sentence have the same truth-conditions, there are no analogous cross-contextual regularities to explain for metaphor: Each metaphorical utterance in its context appears to express a different feature from every other one. So we need a way to have a semantic meaning for metaphors that meet the conditions of (i) & (ii).

Review: Metaphor in Context, by Josef Stern

I am going to begin a blogging series over Josef Stern's book, Metaphor in Context. I don't know how many posts it will last, but I think it will be more than one post for certain. This is a very rich and in-depth book that deserves careful attention to detail and I hope by reading it carefully and precisely that I will gain much information in both the philosophy of metaphor and the philosophy of language.

Not much longer

In 8 days the spring semester will be over.

Finally, I will be able to read more of what I want to read.

A Long Hiatus

Well, I'm back to blogging, although don't expect my next post for another three weeks. (However, I may post between now and then...)

I will post this summer on my studying for comps, first up on the list, blogging through the divine attributes.

Cheers