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Full Idea
Grice wants to explain linguistic meaning in terms of the content of propositional attitudes, Dummett has championed the view that propositional attitudes must be explained by linguistic meaning, while Davidson says they must be explained together.
Gist of Idea
Explain meaning by propositional attitudes, or vice versa, or together?
Source
Alexander Miller (Philosophy of Language [1998], 6.1)
Book Ref
Miller,Alexander: 'Philosophy of Language' [UCL Press 1998], p.178
A Reaction
A useful map. My intuition says propositional attitudes come first, for evolutionary reasons. We are animals first, and speakers second. Thought precedes language. A highly social animal flourishes if it can communicate.
| 7306 | If the only property of a name was its reference, we couldn't explain bearerless names [Miller,A] |
| 7315 | 'Jones is a married bachelor' does not have the logical form of a contradiction [Miller,A] |
| 7322 | Constitutive scepticism is about facts, and epistemological scepticism about our ability to know them [Miller,A] |
| 7323 | If truth is deflationary, sentence truth-conditions just need good declarative syntax [Miller,A] |
| 7324 | Explain meaning by propositional attitudes, or vice versa, or together? [Miller,A] |
| 7325 | Dispositions say what we will do, not what we ought to do, so can't explain normativity [Miller,A] |
| 7328 | The principle of charity is holistic, saying we must hold most of someone's system of beliefs to be true [Miller,A] |
| 7329 | Maybe we should interpret speakers as intelligible, rather than speaking truth [Miller,A] |
| 7333 | The Frege-Geach problem is that I can discuss the wrongness of murder without disapproval [Miller,A] |