Combining Philosophers

Ideas for Hermarchus, Robert Kirk and Alan Sidelle

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4 ideas

19. Language / A. Nature of Meaning / 5. Meaning as Verification
4999 For behaviourists language is just a special kind of behaviour [Kirk,R]
     Full Idea: Behaviourists regard the use of language as just a special kind of behaviour.
     From: Robert Kirk (Mind and Body [2003], §7.9)
     A reaction: This is not an intuitively obvious view of language. We behave, and then we talk about behaviour. Performative utterances (like promising) have an obvious behavioural aspect, as do violent threats, but not highly theoretical language (such as maths).
19. Language / B. Reference / 1. Reference theories
4995 Behaviourists doubt whether reference is a single type of relation [Kirk,R]
     Full Idea: To most behaviourists it seems misguided to expect there to be a single relation that connects referring expressions with their referents.
     From: Robert Kirk (Mind and Body [2003], §5.5)
     A reaction: You don't need to be a behaviourist to feel this doubt. Think about names of real people, names of fictional people, reference to misunderstood items, or imagined items, or reference in dreams, or to mathematical objects, or negations etc.
19. Language / B. Reference / 3. Direct Reference / b. Causal reference
15166 Causal reference seems to get directly at the object, thus leaving its nature open [Sidelle]
     Full Idea: The causal theory of reference appears to give us a way to get at an object while leaving it undetermined what its essence or necessary features might be.
     From: Alan Sidelle (Necessity, Essence and Individuation [1989], Ch.1)
     A reaction: This pinpoints why the direct/causal theory of reference seems to open the doors to scientific essentialism. Sidelle, of course, opposes the whole programme.
19. Language / B. Reference / 5. Speaker's Reference
15182 Because some entities overlap, reference must have analytic individuation principles [Sidelle]
     Full Idea: The phenomenon of overlapping entities requires that if our reference is to be determinate (as determinate as it is), then there must be analytic principles of individuation.
     From: Alan Sidelle (Necessity, Essence and Individuation [1989], Ch.5)
     A reaction: His point is that there is something inescapably conventional about the way in which our reference works. It isn't just some bald realist baptism.