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| 7755 | Singular terms refer, using proper names, definite descriptions, singular personal pronouns, demonstratives, etc. |
| Full Idea: The paradigmatic referring devices are singular terms, denoting particular items. In English these include proper names, definite descriptions, singular personal pronouns, demonstrative pronouns, and a few others. | |||
| From: William Lycan (Philosophy of Language [2000], Ch. 1) | |||
| A reaction: This list provides the agenda for twentieth century philosophy of language, since this is the point where language is supposed to hook onto the world. |
| 7768 | The truth conditions theory sees meaning as representation |
| Full Idea: The truth conditions theory sees meaning as representation. | |||
| From: William Lycan (Philosophy of Language [2000], Ch. 9) | |||
| A reaction: This suggests a nice connection to Fodor's account of intentional thinking. The whole package sounds right to me (though the representations need not be 'symbolic', or in mentalese). |
| 7766 | Meaning must be known before we can consider verification |
| Full Idea: How could we know whether a sentence is verifiable unless we already knew what it says? | |||
| From: William Lycan (Philosophy of Language [2000], Ch. 8) | |||
| A reaction: This strikes me as a devastating objection to verificationism. Lycan suggests that you can formulate a preliminary meaning, without accepting true meaningfulness. Maybe verification just concerns truth, and not meaning. |
| 7763 | It is hard to state a rule of use for a proper name |
| Full Idea: Proper names pose a problem for the "use" theorist. Try stating a rule of use for the name 'William G. Lycan'. | |||
| From: William Lycan (Philosophy of Language [2000], Ch. 6) | |||
| A reaction: Presumably it is normally used in connection with a particular human being, and is typically the subject of a grammatical sentence. Any piece of language could also be used to, say, attract someone's attention. |
| 7764 | Could I successfully use an expression, without actually understanding it? |
| Full Idea: Could I not know the use of an expression and fall in with it, mechanically, but without understanding it? | |||
| From: William Lycan (Philosophy of Language [2000], Ch. 6) | |||
| A reaction: In a foreign country, you might successfully recite a long complex sentence, without understanding a single word. This doesn't doom the 'use' theory, but it means that quite a lot of detail needs to be filled in. |
| 7770 | Truth conditions will come out the same for sentences with 'renate' or 'cordate' |
| Full Idea: A Davidsonian truth theory will not be able to distinguish the meaning of a sentence containing 'renate' from that of one containing 'cordate'. | |||
| From: William Lycan (Philosophy of Language [2000], Ch. 9) | |||
| A reaction: One might achieve the distinction by referring to truth conditions in possible worlds, if there are possible worlds where some cordates are not renate. See Idea 7773. |
| 7773 | A sentence's truth conditions is the set of possible worlds in which the sentence is true |
| Full Idea: A sentence's truth conditions can be taken to be the set of possible worlds in which the sentence is true. | |||
| From: William Lycan (Philosophy of Language [2000], Ch.10) | |||
| A reaction: Presumably the meaning can't be complete possible worlds, so this must be a supplement to the normal truth conditions view proposed by Davidson. It particularly addresses the problem seen in Idea 7770. |
| 7774 | Possible worlds explain aspects of meaning neatly - entailment, for example, is the subset relation |
| Full Idea: The possible worlds construal affords an elegant algebra of meaning by way of set theory: e.g. entailment between sentences is just the subset relation - S1 entails S2 if S2 is true in any world in which S1 is true. | |||
| From: William Lycan (Philosophy of Language [2000], Ch.10) | |||
| A reaction: We might want to separate the meanings of sentences from their entailments (though Brandom links them, see Idea 7765). |