Philosophy of Language

Philosophy of Language A–Z
Alessandra Tanesini
Alessandra Tanesini
PHILOSOPHY A–Z SERIES
GENERAL EDITOR: OLIVER LEAMAN
These thorough, authoritative yet concise alphabetical guides introduce the

central concepts of the various branches of philosophy. Written by established
philosophers, they cover both traditional and contemporary terminology.
Features
• Dedicated coverage of particular topics within philosophy
• Coverage of key terms and major figures
• Cross-references to related terms.
Alessandra Tanesini

The first glossary to cover the theories, debates, concepts, problems and
philosophers within the philosophy of language in one volume.
This essential reference tool, written in a language accessible to beginners and

non-specialists alike, provides concise and precise entries on all the relevant key
terms and issues. It includes extensive cross-references which indicate the contexts
of each entry, and can be used to deepen understanding of any given topic.
Philosophy of Language A–Z offers clear and thorough guidance on how to negotiate
the complexities of the philosophy of language.
Alessandra Tanesini is Reader in Philosophy at Cardiff University. Her publications

include Wittgenstein: A Feminist Introduction (Polity Press, 2004) and An Introduction to
Feminist Epistemologies (Blackwell, 1999).
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PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE A–Z
Volumes available in the Philosophy A–Z Series
Christian Philosophy A–Z, Daniel J. Hill and Randal D.

Rauser
Epistemology A–Z, Martijn Blaauw and Duncan Pritchard
Ethics A–Z, Jonathan A. Jacobs
Indian Philosophy A–Z, Christopher Bartley
Jewish Philosophy A–Z, Aaron W. Hughes
Philosophy of Religion A–Z, Patrick Quinn
Philosophy of Mind A–Z, Marina Rakova
Forthcoming volumes
Aesthetics A–Z, Fran Guter

Chinese Philosophy A–Z, Bo Mou
Feminist Philosophy A–Z, Nancy McHugh
Islamic Philosophy A–Z, Peter Groff
Philosophy of Science A–Z, Stathis Psillos
Political Philosophy A–Z, Jon Pike
Philosophy of
Language A–Z
Alessandra Tanesini
Edinburgh University Press

C Alessandra Tanesini, 2007
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Contents
Series Editor’s Preface vii

Introduction and Acknowledgements ix
Philosophy of Language A–Z 1

Bibliography 184
Series Editor’s Preface
Philosophy is not only expressed in language, but language is

often its main object of interest and enquiry. Not of course
language in the sense of grammar and style, which is more
the realm of linguistics and literary investigation. Language
as our medium for pursuing meaning, which in itself is the
repository of meaning, has constantly fascinated philosophers
with its ability both to enlighten and confuse. The issue of
how words mean things, an issue that seems on the face of it
so very simple, has in fact served to differentiate some of the
major philosophical schools, and continues to appear on the
battlefields of major theoretical controversies in philosophy.
One of the intriguing features of debates about language is
that they are generally conducted in terms of the very medium
under discussion.
In modern times the philosophy of language has become
rather technical in nature, and it is very helpful to have a
systematic list of explanations of many of the key concepts and
figures in the discipline. Alessandra Tanesini has provided such
a guide, and I am sure that readers of this volume will find her
route through the thicket of different theories and arguments
a useful one to follow. A solid grasp of some of the basic
positions in the philosophy of language is indispensable for a
grasp of philosophy as a whole, and this volume is designed
to go someway to fulfilling that role.
Oliver Leaman
Introduction and
Acknowledgements
This dictionary introduces readers to the main theories, prob-

lems, figures and arguments in the philosophy of language.
It aims for breadth of coverage, including over 490 entries
on every topic in the philosophy of language and on many
notions in the cognate areas of logic, philosophical logic and
the philosophy of mind. Entries are written in accessible, non-
technical vocabulary and made to be as concise as possible.
Each entry is cross-referenced to others that are related to it, so
that the reader can broaden his or her knowledge of the issues
and debates connected to a given problem or figure. Further,
entries are supplemented by brief further readings.
I would like to thank Alex Miller and Michael Lynch for
suggestions about which entries to include, and Michael Dur-
rant, Richard Gray and Oliver Leaman for useful comments
on earlier drafts. Staff at Edinburgh University Press were par-
ticularly helpful with all queries and have greatly facilitated
the writing of this work.
Cardiff, Wales
May 2006
A
A posteriori: The term applies primarily to knowledge that is
ultimately dependent on experience or observation, and is
thus dubbed ‘empirical’. The truths of natural science are
knowable in this way. Some of these truths, such as those
about subatomic particles, might be highly theoretical.
Nevertheless, they are knowable a posteriori because they
are based on evidence which is ultimately provided by the
senses. A posteriori falsehoods are those claims whose
falsity is ultimately known by means of experience or
observation. A posteriori truths are opposed to a priori
truths, which are not empirical. Until recently it was not
uncommon for philosophers to assume that the notion of
a posteriori or empirical truth was coextensive with those
of synthetic truth and of contingent truth. In other words,
they assumed that all and only the empirical truths were
contingent and also that all and only these were synthetic.
See Analytic; Kripke, Saul; Necessary
A priori: The term applies to what can be known by reflection

independently of experience. Arithmetical truths, such as
two plus two is four, are typically thought to be knowable
in this way. An a priori falsehood is a claim whose falsity
can be established by reflection alone, for example, that
4 PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE A–Z
two plus two is three. A priori truths are not empirical,

which is to say that they are not a posteriori. Until re-
cently it was not uncommon for philosophers to assume
that the notion of a priori truth was coextensive with
those of analytic truth, and of necessary truth. In other
words, they assumed that all and only the a priori truths
were necessary and also that all and only these were an-
alytic.
See Contingent; Kripke, Saul; Synthetic
Further reading: BonJour (1998), ch. 1
Abstract entity: An entity that exists outside space or time

and does not have any causal powers. If any such entities
exist, and philosophers disagree on this matter, numbers
could be a good example. An entity which is not abstract
is concrete. It is called a particular.
See Universal
Abstraction: (1) Early modern philosophers used the term to

refer to the process of neglecting or suppressing specific
details. Thus, we obtain the idea of a dog, any dog, by ab-
straction from the idea of a spaniel by neglecting specific
features pertaining to this breed but not shared by other
dogs. Thus, an abstract idea is a general idea which is
not fully detailed. This notion of abstraction has little in
common with contemporary conceptions of an abstract
entity. See Berkeley, George. (2) The term is also used to
name a principle, attributed to Frege, for the formulations
of definitions of a special sort. Consider, for example, all
the lines in the world and group together all of those that
are parallel to each other. By this process one obtains sev-
eral classes of lines, with each class including all and only
parallel lines. It is now possible to define the notion of
the direction of a line as that which is the same for all the
lines in each group. This is an abstractive definition of
PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE A–Z 5
direction. Frege was dissatisfied with it because the defi-

nition does not by itself tell us what to say about things
which intuitively we do not think as having a direction.
Acquisition argument: This is a challenge, put forward by

Dummett, to semantic realism. Semantic realism is the
view that to understand a sentence is to know the con-
ditions under which it is true (its truth conditions), and
that these conditions might be such that it is potentially
beyond us to detect whether or not they obtain (that
is, the truth conditions are evidence-, verification- or
recognition-transcendent). Dummett challenges the sup-
porter of semantic realism to explain how knowledge
of these evidence-transcendent conditions could possi-
bly have been acquired. Dummett agrees with the realist
that to understand a sentence is to know its truth con-
ditions. However, he claims that states of affairs whose
obtaining is by hypothesis undetectable could not have
played a role in our acquisition of such knowledge.
Thus, semantic realism must be false, and those sentences
we understand must have truth conditions that are not
evidence-transcendent. The argument is generally consid-
ered unsuccessful since the semantic realist can explain
our understanding of sentences whose truth conditions
are evidence-transcendent in terms of our understanding
of their constituent words and of their modes of combi-
nation.
See Communicability argument; Manifestation argu-
ment; Tacit knowledge; Verification transcendence
Further reading: Hale (1999)
Alethic: An adjective which means pertaining or concerning

truth (from the Greek word for truth, aletheia).
Ambiguity: A word or expression is ambiguous when it has

more then one meaning.
Analogy: An argument by analogy is one that relies on the

similarities with a known case to draw inferences about
an unknown one. Thus, it used to be claimed that we
know of the existence of other minds by means of an
analogy with our own. I know that in my case I behave
in certain ways because of my beliefs, desires and sensa-
tions. I observe that others behave in similar ways, and
I conclude, by analogy from my own case, that behind
their behaviour are mental states similar to my own. This
particular argument has severe shortcomings, including
the fact that it generalises to all persons on the basis of
one instance only.
Analysis: It is a means of clarifying a concept by breaking it up

into its conceptual components. Thus, for example, the
concept of bachelor can be analysed as unmarried man
of a marriageable age.
See Analysis, paradox of
Analysis, paradox of: The paradox has a long history having

perhaps originated with Plato. Suppose that a statement
of A is B offers an analysis, where A is the term to be
explained or analysed (analysandum) and B is what gives
the analysis (analysans). Either A and B are equivalent in
meaning or they are not. If they are equivalent in meaning,
then the analysis is trivial because it is not informative.
If they are not equivalent in meaning, then the analysis is
incorrect, because it does not tell us what the concept we
analyse means. Either way, conceptual analyses are either
trivial or wrong. A response to the paradox might be to
say that an analysis that goes beyond merely restating the
original meaning of the concept to be analysed need not
be incorrect. Instead, it can refine, and sharpen up, that
concept in ways that are informative.
Analytic: A statement, claim or sentence which is true (false)

in virtue only of the meanings of the expressions which
make it up. For instance, ‘bachelors are unmarried males
of a marriageable age’ is said to be an analytic truth. Syn-
thetic truths, whose truth depends also on how things
are, are opposed to analytic truths. Quine argued against
the analytic–synthetic distinction, claiming that no non-
circular definition of the notion of analyticity could
be provided. Until recently, it was not uncommon for
philosophers (including Quine himself) to assume that all
and only analytic truths were necessary, and also that all
and only analytic truths were knowable a priori.
Further reading: Miller (1998), ch. 4; Quine (1951)
Anaphora: The cross-referencing relation which can hold, for

example, between a noun and a pronoun. In the sen-
tence ‘Mary arrived late at the party, and she left early’,
the name ‘Mary’ is the anaphoric antecedent of the pro-
noun ‘she’ which cross-refers to it. Any expression that
stands in anaphoric relation to an antecedent is called an
‘anaphor’. Confusingly, the antecedent might come af-
ter its anaphor in a sentence. An example is: ‘When she
first crossed the line, Paula bowed to the audience’. Some
philosophers have claimed that expressions other than
pronouns can have anaphoric relations with antecedent
locutions.
See Pronoun; Prosentence
Anscombe, G. E. M. (1919–2001): Professor Anscombe was

a fellow of Somerville College, Oxford University and
Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Cambridge Univer-
sity. Her influential work in philosophy includes her book
Intention (1957) on action theory, and her papers on
the intentionality of sensation and on the first person.
Anscombe had been a student of Ludwig Wittgenstein,

and was one of his literary executors. She was the trans-
lator of Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations, and
the author of the highly influential An Introduction to
Wittgenstein’s Tractatus (1959).
Anti-realism: The label for a family of views opposed to re-

alism. Sometimes they are also referred to as non-realist.
There are many kinds of anti-realism which are best un-
derstood in terms of the realist assumptions they reject.
Anti-realists about an area of discourse, who deny the
existence of the alleged entities in that area, divide into
supporters of error-theory, who believe that all atomic
claims in that area of discourse are simply false, and sup-
porters of expressivism or non-cognitivism, who believe
that sentences in that area of discourse are not used to
make claims but simply to vent one’s attitudes or emo-
tions. Other anti-realists accept the existence of the al-
leged entities, but deny that these objects exist indepen-
dently of us. Dummett, for instance, opposes what he calls
semantic realism. He argues that sentences in any given
area of discourse should not be understood as being made
true or false by conditions that might be even in principle
undetectable by us, as the realist would have it. Instead,
these sentences depend, in some way to be specified, on
us for their truth. For instance, in arithmetic Dummett ar-
gues that truth cannot outstrip the possibility of finding a
proof. Response-dependence about an area of discourse
is another kind of anti-realism which takes the objects
in question to depend on us for their existence. Recently,
some philosophers have attempted to debunk the whole
realism/anti-realism debate and support quietism instead.
See Semantic anti-realism; Wright, Crispin
Further reading: Miller (2005)
Argument: (1) A piece of reasoning consisting of one or more

conclusions and some premises, which are statements pre-
sented as reasons for, evidence in favour of, the conclusion
or conclusions. Deductive arguments are those in which
the premises are intended to provide conclusive reasons
which guarantee the truth of the conclusion given the
truth of the premises. Inductive arguments are those in
which the premises provide evidence in favour of the con-
clusion. See Validity. (2) In mathematics and in logic the
inputs of functions and operations are called their argu-
ments, and the outputs are their values. For instance, in
‘2 + 3 = 5’, addition is the function, the arguments are 2
and 3, and the value is 5.
Argument from above: One of two arguments offered by

Quine in favour of the claim that translation is indeter-
minate. The other is known as the argument from below.
Indeterminacy of translation is the thesis that in many
instances there is no fact of the matter about which of
two competing (and mutually incompatible) translations
is correct. The argument from above relies on the idea that
scientific theories are under-determined by all the possi-
ble empirical evidence. This is the idea that theories which
are actually different might have exactly the same empir-
ical consequences, so that no empirical evidence could be
provided for favouring one over the other. Suppose we
want to translate into our language the scientific theory
of a scientist who belongs to a culture with whom we
have never been in touch and who speaks a language that
is totally new to us. In this instance we need to start the
translation from scratch. In these cases, Quine claims that
the translation of the theoretical claims in the foreigner’s
theory is under-determined by our translations of those
portions of its theory which are about observation. That
is to say, there will be more than one way of translating

these theoretical sentences, all of which are equally com-
patible with our translation of the foreigner’s observation
sentences, despite being mutually incompatible. Quine’s
claim here is not that translation is as under-determined
as scientific theories are. Rather, his claim is that even
when scientific under-determination is ignored, and one
has chosen one scientific theory (as the foreign scientist
has done), translation is still not determinate. Thus, the
indeterminacy of translation is meant to be additional to
the under-determination of scientific theories by all the
possible empirical evidence.
See Inscrutability of reference
Further reading: Miller (1998), ch. 4
Argument from below: One of two arguments offered by

Quine in favour of the claim that translation is indetermi-
nate. The other is known as the argument from above. In-
determinacy of translation is the thesis that in many cases
there is no fact of the matter about which of two compet-
ing (and mutually incompatible) translations is correct.
The argument relies on the idea of a radical translator
who needs to translate a novel language from scratch.
At the beginning the translator must rely exclusively on
the behaviour of native speakers. For Quine, the trans-
lator can only avail herself of facts about the stimulus
meaning of sentences of the native language. She can
only take into account the circumstances under which
natives would assent to sentences and the circumstances
under which they would dissent from them. Quine claims
that when all these facts are in, translation is still in-
determinate, because mutually incompatible translations
would be compatible with all the facts about stimulus
meaning. This is the argument from below, and Quine
substantiates it by example. Imagine that the natives
assent to ‘gavagai’ when a rabbit is in sight and dissent

from it when there is no rabbit. Both a translation of
the native sentence as ‘there is a rabbit’ and as ‘there
is an undetached rabbit part’ (i.e., a part of rabbit at-
tached to the whole rabbit), despite being incompatible,
are compatible with these facts about stimulus meaning.
We cannot get evidence for preferring one of the transla-
tions over the other by asking, while pointing first to one
part of a rabbit and then to another part of the same rab-
bit, whether this is ‘erat gavagai’ as that, because there is
no unique way of determining whether the native word
‘erat’ is best translated as ‘same’ or as ‘undetached part
of the same’. Translation is indeterminate because facts
about stimulus meaning, which are the only acceptable
facts, do not determine it. Evans has argued that indeter-
minacy is dissolved when the range of acceptable trans-
lations is restricted only to those which meet the further
constraint of compositionality. Any translation of a com-
plex expression must attribute to each of its semantic
parts the same meaning it attributes to that part when
used in combination with other semantic parts. Suppose
natives sometime also say ‘ugul gavagai’ and also sup-
pose that on the basis of previous natives’ utterances we
take ‘ugul’ to mean ‘white’. But now the indeterminacy
seems to disappear since ‘white rabbit’ and ‘white unde-
tached rabbit part’ have different stimulus meanings. The
presence of a black rabbit with a white foot would prompt
dissent to the first but not necessarily to the second. Quine
cannot reply by saying that ‘ugul’ could mean ‘part of a
white animal’ because (by compositionality) ‘ugul’ must
mean the same thing every time it is used. The problem
is that ‘white’ and ‘part of a white animal’ have different
stimulus meaning since the first, but not the second, ap-
plies to things that are not animals. Further, the problem
is not addressed by taking ‘ugul’ to mean ‘part of a white
thing’ because a white foot of a rabbit is also a thing.

Thus, ‘white’ and ‘part of a white thing’ differ with re-
gard to their stimulus-meanings since the first does not
apply to a black rabbit with a white ear, but the second
applies to one of its undetached parts.
See Inscrutability of reference
Further reading: Miller (1998), ch. 4; Evans (1996),
ch. 2; Quine (1960)
Ascription: Attribution. When philosophers talk about as-

criptions, they are often interested in the language used
to make the ascription, rather than exclusively in what is
ascribed.
Assertibility condition: The condition which, if satisfied, war-

rants or justifies the assertion of the statement. Thus, the
litmus paper’s turning red when immersed in a liquid is
a condition that warrants the assertion that this liquid is
acid. Supporters of semantic anti-realism have developed
accounts of meaning in terms of assertibility conditions.
Supporters of semantic realism, instead, have provided
theories of meaning in terms of truth conditions.
See Semantics, assertibility conditions; Superassertibil-
ity
Assertion: A speech act that consists in putting forward a

proposition as true. In order to be entitled to make the
assertion a speaker does not need to have a guarantee
that the assertion is true; some form of warrant or jus-
tification is sufficient. It is a matter of dispute among
philosophers whether in order to provide an account of
assertion we need to rely on a previously understood no-
tion of truth. The debate between semantic realism and
semantic anti-realism concerns whether the meaning of
declarative sentences is to be understood in terms of their
truth conditions or of their assertibility conditions.
Assertoric content: The fact stating content of statements.

Statements might also have additional meaning, but if it
does not contribute to determining which facts are stated
by the assertion, it is not part of its assertoric content.
See Assertoric force
Assertoric force: In order to make an assertion, a declarative

sentence must be uttered with assertoric force. In general,
force is that pragmatic component of meaning that makes
the difference as to whether the utterance is a question, a
command, an assertion, and so forth.
See Assertoric content
Asymmetric dependence: This is Fodor’s answer to the dis-

junction problem faced by indicator semantics. Imagine a
person who cannot tell by sight a rabbit from a hare. This
person learns about rabbits from books and by having a
pet rabbit as a child. Whenever this person is in the pres-
ence of a rabbit, she forms a mental state of kind R. This
same person, however, also forms a mental state of kind
R when she sees a hare in the field. Indicator semantics
appears to force us to say that the person has an either-
rabbit-or-hare representation. Intuitively, we want to say,
instead, that this person at times mistakenly applies her
representation of rabbits to hares. In other words, at times
she mistakes a hare for a rabbit. Fodor suggests a way of
patching indicator semantics so that it offers the right in-
tuitive response. He claims that R-mental states represent
rabbits rather than rabbits-or-hares because the causal re-
lation between hares and R-mental states is asymmetri-
cally dependent on the causal relation between rabbits
and R-mental states. Intuitively, the point is that one
applies R-mental states to hares because hares look like
rabbits but not the other way round (hence, the asym-
metry). If all hares were to be painted orange tomorrow,
so that they looked very different from rabbit, the per-

son would not form R-mental states in their presence. If,
instead, rabbits were painted so as to differentiate them
from hares, the person would continue to form R-mental
states in their presence.
Further reading: Crane (2003), ch. 5
Atomic sentence: A basic sentence which cannot be further

decomposed into even more basic sentences.
See Logical atomism
Attributive position: An adjective occurs in an attributive po-

sition when it modifies a noun or a noun-phrase. Thus,
‘white’ in ‘she was wearing white shoes’ occurs in attribu-
tive position. This use of adjective is contrasted to their
use in predicative positions when they are complements
of a verb. Thus, ‘white’ in ‘those lilies are white’ occurs
in a predicative position.
Austin, J. L. (1911–60): Austin worked at Oxford University

publishing only a small part of his work during his life-
time. Many of his books, including How to Do Things
with Words (1975), were published posthumously and
consist of his lecture notes as edited by his students.
Austin was one of the main proponents of ordinary lan-
guage philosophy; he focused his work on the many dif-
ferent uses to which words are ordinarily put. He is best
known for his account of performatives and more specif-
ically for his taxonomy of speech acts, which he classified
as locutionary, illocutionary and perlocutionary.
See Illocutionary act; Locutionary act; Perlocutionary
act
Ayer, A. J. (1910–89): Famous for introducing logical pos-

itivism to Britain, Ayer spent his academic career at
Oxford University and University College London. In his
book Language, Truth, and Logic (2nd edn. 1946) Ayer

argued that all meaningful propositions were either an-
alytic or verifiable. Ayer’s definition of verifiability was
subject to many refinements in order to combat the charge
that any statement whatsoever would satisfy the defini-
tion. In the philosophy of perception Ayer developed a
version of sense-data theory which was strongly criticised
by Austin.
See Verification principle
Further reading: McDonald (2005)
B
Bedeutung: Frege’s term for the feature of a linguistic expres-
sion which contributes to the determination of the truth
or falsity of the sentences in which it occurs. For him,
the Bedeutung of a proper name is the thing or person
it names. The Bedeutungen of sentences are one of two
truth-values: the true and the false. One-place functions
(which Frege calls ‘concepts’) from objects to truth-values
are the Bedeutungen of predicates with only one argu-
ment place (e.g. ‘. . . is red’); relations from more than
one object to a truth-value are the Bedeutungen of predi-
cates with more than one argument place (e.g., ‘. . . is west
of . . . ’). Frege’s Bedeutung has been variously translated
into English as reference, designation or meaning. It is
closely related to the contemporary notion of the seman-
tic value of an expression; that is, the contribution of that
expression to what determines the truth or falsity of the
sentences in which it occurs. Frege also distinguished the
reference of an expression from its Sinn (sense), which is
what determines the Bedeutung.
Further reading: McCulloch (1989), chs 1 and 5; Frege
(1892a)
Begriffsschrift See Concept-script
Behabitive: A term coined by Austin for a type of (illocu-

tionary) speech act which consists in the adoption of an
attitude towards the behaviour of others. Thanking some-
body by saying ‘Thank you’ is an example; apologising by
saying ‘Sorry’ is another. Austin acknowledges that this
is a rather miscellaneous category whose boundaries are
less than clear.
Further reading: Austin (1975)
Belief: Like desires, wants and hopes, beliefs are propositional

attitudes. That is, they are attitudes towards propositions.
Philosophers of language often think of beliefs as relations
between individuals and propositions. Since Frege, they
have also been aware of puzzles presented by sentences
that report on individuals’ propositional attitudes.
See De dicto attribution; De re attribution; Frege’s puz-
zles; Propositional attitude report
Berkeley, George (1685–1753): Born in Kilkenny, Ireland and

educated at Trinity College Dublin, Berkeley, Bishop of
Cloyne, was one of the earliest and most interesting sup-
porters of idealism. In his view, there exist only minds,
including God, and ideas in these minds. Berkeley denies
the existence of matter, but does not deny the existence of
ordinary objects such as tables and rocks. Instead, in his
view ordinary objects are collections of ideas. Some of his
arguments against materialism are of interest in the phi-
losophy of language. For instance, he argues that repre-
sentation is always a matter of resemblance or likeness; he
concludes that ideas can only represent other ideas since
only ideas are like other ideas. This conception of repre-
sentation is generally rejected by contemporary philoso-
phers. Berkeley also argued against the existence of ab-
stract ideas; that is to say, ideas lacking in some detail.
Thus in his view, for example, we do not possess a general

idea of a triangle. Since ideas are pictures in the mind, the
idea of a triangle must be triangular and therefore it must
be equilateral, or scalene, or isosceles. It must have at
least one and at most one of these features. Berkeley was
aware that this view generated complexities with regard
to his theory of linguistic meaning. Since the meaning of
the word ‘triangle’ is general, but the idea in the mind cor-
responding to it is specific, the meaning of the word can-
not be equated with the idea associated with it. Instead,
Berkeley argues that our dispositions and customs with
regard to the use of the word contribute to its meaning.
See Abstraction; Meaning, ideational theory of
Biconditional: A sentence or proposition of the form ‘P if and

only if Q’. The connective ‘if and only if’ is shortened
as ‘iff’. In logical notation the connective is represented
either as ‘≡’ or ‘↔’. Biconditionals are often used to state
necessary and sufficient conditions.
Bivalence: The law that states that every statement is either

true or false. Thus, the law states that there are only two
values and that each statement has at least and at most one
of them. This is why this law is called bivalence. Bivalence
should not be confused with excluded middle, according
to which for every statement either it or its negation is
true. Bivalence entails excluded middle, but the converse
is not true. Dummett has argued that unqualified support
for bivalence in a given area of discourse is a mark of
adopting a realist position with regard to that area of
discourse.
See Realism
Blackburn, Simon (1944–): A British, Cambridge-educated

philosopher who has held academic positions at Oxford,
Cambridge and the University of North Carolina. He is
the main proponent of a version of non-cognitivism which

he has dubbed quasi-realism.
Bound variable See Variable
Brain in a vat: A contemporary version of Descartes’ evil ge-

nius thought experiment due to Putnam. Putnam uses the
thought experiment to argue against scepticism (and in
favour of semantic externalism). Putman asks us to imag-
ine a brain in a vat of nutrients which is fed by a computer
nerve stimuli that are exactly like those human beings re-
ceive from the external world. In later reformulations of
the thought experiment, the brain is said to have always
been in the vat (ab initio brain in the vat). Putnam claims
that, despite some intuitions to the contrary, such a brain
could not have thoughts about trees and other ordinary
objects because it does not have the right kinds of causal
relations to them. Thus, Putnam’s conclusion is based on
the causal theory of reference and of mental represen-
tation to which he subscribed when he developed this
thought experiment. Supporters of internalism have dif-
ferent intuitions about the conceivability of this case.
Further reading: Putnam (1981)
Broad content: The content of psychological states which is

determined by their truth conditions. Thus, when a per-
son on Earth, Oscar, for example, has a belief which he
would express by means of the utterance that there is wa-
ter in the glass, he has a belief whose broad content is
characterised by the fact that it is true if and only if there
is water in the glass. However, when Twin Oscar on Twin
Earth has a belief which he would express by means of
an utterance of the words ‘there is water in the glass’, he
has a belief with a different broad content, since his belief
is true if and only if there is twater in the glass (because
twater is the odourless, colourless liquid people drink on

Twin Earth).
See Burge, Tyler; Content; Externalism; Narrow con-
tent
Burge, Tyler (1946–): At the time of writing a professor of

philosophy at the University of California, Los Angeles
(UCLA), Burge is one of the most prominent opponents
of individualism in the philosophy of mind. Instead, he
supports a version of externalism about mental content
according to which facts about the physical and social
environment external to a person contribute to the in-
dividuation of that person’s mental states, whose con-
tents are consequently broad. Whilst Putnam argued by
means of his Twin Earth example that the physical en-
vironment plays a role in the individuation of linguis-
tic and mental content, Burge’s arthritis example makes
a similar case for the importance of the social environ-
ment. Burge asks us to imagine a person Jane who utters
the words, ‘I have arthritis in my thigh’. Jane, in Burge’s
opinion, has a false belief since arthritis is a condition of
the joints and not of the thigh. However, since linguis-
tic meaning is conventional, Jane’s linguistic community
could have developed a different linguistic practice. The
word ‘arthritis’ could have been used to refer to a rheuma-
toid disease of the bones, and not just of joints. Let us
call it ‘tharthritis’. Thus, had the community developed
in that different manner, Jane’s utterance of the words ‘I
have arthritis in my thigh’ might have been saying some-
thing true since her words would have meant that she
has tharthritis in her thigh. In this instance, Jane’s words
would have expressed the true belief that she has tharthri-
tis in her thigh. The example illustrates that the meanings
of Jane’s words and the contents of her beliefs can vary
because of changes in the social environment, despite the
absence of any change in the intrinsic facts about Jane

herself.
See broad content; internalism; narrow content
C
Cambridge property: Those relational properties which
things can acquire or lose without themselves undergoing
any change. Thus, when Socrates died his wife acquired
the property of being his widow. Since these properties are
causally impotent, many philosophers do not take them
to be genuine properties at all.
Canonical notation: The translation of ordinary sentences

into a formal or semi-formal language that is intended
to make explicit the logical form of those sentences.
Carnap, Rudolf (1891–1970): A German philosopher of sci-

ence who was a member of the Vienna Circle and promi-
nent exponent of logical positivism. He moved to the
United States in 1935 because of his opposition to the
Nazi regime. In his early work The Logical Structure of
the World (1928), Carnap attempted the reduction of all
scientific terms to a purely phenomenalistic language. In
the 1940s and 1950s Carnap wrote several books and
articles which greatly contributed to the development of
formal semantics and modal logic.
Categorical predicate: A predicate that refers to a categorical

property. Categorical properties are distinguished from
the dispositional properties of things. For example, be-
ing soluble in water is a dispositional property of sugar,
while being rectangular is a categorical property of most
televisions. The notion of a categorical property is also
used to characterise properties that are not a matter of

degree. In this second meaning, being intelligent is not a
categorical property since it is possible to be more or less
intelligent, while having two eyes is a categorical property
since one either has them, or does not. The two meanings
of categorical are different and should not be conflated.
Categorical property See Categorical predicate
Category: There are many different notions of a category.

First, grammatical categories are those described in books
of grammar. They include: verbs, nouns, adverbs, and so
forth. Second, logical categories are deployed when de-
scribing the logical form of sentences. They include: sin-
gular terms, quantifiers and predicates as well as modal
operators. Third, some philosophers have developed the
idea of a semantic category where two words are said to
belong to the same category if and only if the substitution
of one for the other in a meaningful sentence results in
another sentence which is also meaningful.
Category mistake: An expression coined by Gilbert Ryle. If

after I were shown all the colleges’ buildings, I were to
ask, ‘Yes, but where is the university?’ I would be making
one such mistake. I would be treating the university as
if it were an additional physical object with a location
of its own. In general, to make a category mistake is to
attribute properties or predicates appropriate for things
of one kind to things of a different kind. Thus, asking of
a stone whether it is blind is also a category mistake.
Causal theory of reference: Introduced as an alternative to

the description theory of reference, this is the name given
to various views according to which an expression refers
to whatever is causally linked to it in a certain way. For
example, a proper name refers to the person it names.

Kripke argues that, in these cases, the name is first in-
troduced when the parents name the child, through the
ceremony of naming the child (a sort of baptism); the
name has its reference fixed by being causally linked to
the child. In this way the name is causally grounded in its
referent. Once the name is introduced, other people use
the name to refer to the same person as the initial bap-
tisers. This phenomenon is called reference borrowing.
These other speakers acquire the ability to use the name
so that it refers to the person it referred to at the baptising
ceremony by becoming part of a causal chain of speakers
which goes back to the initial baptisers. Besides proper
names of people and other particulars, the causal theory
of reference has also been adopted for natural kind terms
such as ‘water’, ‘giraffe’, ‘gold’, ‘tiger’. In these instances,
the reference of the term is first fixed when some speakers
come in causal contact with a sample of the natural kind
in question. Thus, the term ‘tiger’ is first introduced when
some individuals were presented with tigers, and it is in-
troduced to refer to all the objects that share the same na-
ture of the sample objects; that is, to all tigers. Subsequent
speakers borrow the reference from the initial dubbers of
the term. Thus formulated, the theory allows for the pos-
sibility that names and natural kind terms might have a
sense as well as a reference, and it is therefore not auto-
matically committed to a theory of direct reference (the
Millian view). The sense of a proper name, for example,
could be a definite description used in the baptising cer-
emony to fix the reference of the name so as to establish
the causal connection between the name and the person
named. Alternatively, in purely causal theories, the sense
could be the mode in which the causal link to the refer-
ent is secured. Evans has presented several objections to
the causal theory of reference. He points out that names
sometimes change their reference, whilst in this theory

reference change is impossible. He also notes that the the-
ory has difficulties in explaining the role of empty names
like ‘Father Christmas’, which lack a referent.
See Cluster theory of reference; Qua-problem; Refer-
ence; Rigid designator
Further reading: McCulloch (1989), chs 4 and 8;
Kripke (1980)
Charity, principle of: A principle to which, according to

Davidson, we appeal when interpreting the words of
other people. We apply charity to their pronouncements
by assuming that they hold beliefs that are mostly
true. Thus, we interpret other people’s words in a way
that maximises truth. Thus, if one says, ‘That saucepan
has a teflon coating’, and I see that the person is gesturing
towards a frying pan, I would normally take that person
to mean frying pan by ‘saucepan’. That is to say, I would
normally apply the principle of charity and take that
person to be saying something which is true.
See Humanity, principle of; Radical interpretation
Chomsky, Noam (1928–): Born in the USA, Chomsky is a

professor of linguistics at MIT. He is the most influen-
tial American linguist in the twentieth century as well as
being a prominent left-wing political activist. Chomsky
has revolutionised the science of linguistics by focusing
his attention on the study of the language faculty in hu-
man beings. Chomsky’s starting point is the observation
that linguistic competence is remarkably uniform among
human beings. He thinks that an excessive focus on lin-
guistic performance has obscured this important obser-
vation. Chomsky explains this uniformity by postulating
the existence of a language faculty in human beings which
is largely innate. Chomsky provides a variety of reasons in
favour of innatism. First, he deploys the so-called poverty

of stimulus argument. He claims that children could not
have acquired competence with regard to certain features
of languages simply on the basis of their experiences of
other speakers. Chomsky also notes that innatism pro-
vides the best explanation for the speed at which children
acquire linguistic competence, and the absence of certain
kinds of errors in young learners which one would ex-
pect if their learning operated on a trial-and-error basis
supplemented by feedback provided by competent speak-
ers. In the 1970s Chomsky postulated the development
of the language faculty from an initial innate state (uni-
versal grammar) to a more evolved state which is not
subject to further changes. Chomsky also made a distinc-
tion between two levels of representation. The first level
is a deep structure, known as generative grammar, com-
mon to all speakers independently of what language they
might speak. This grammar consists of explicitly statable
recursive rules for the generation of all the possible phrase
structures in a language. The surface structure, or trans-
formative grammar, is derived from the deep structure by
means of rules of transformation. In the 1980s Chomsky
abandoned parts of this framework and began to think of
universal grammar as a system of innate principles com-
mon to all speakers, combined with a certain numbers of
parameters. The learning of a specific natural language
would thus be understood largely as a matter of setting the
right parameters for that language. Crucially, Chomsky
does not believe that language–world relations play an
important role in the characterisation of the structure of
language.
Further reading: Chomsky (1995)
Cluster theory of reference: A more recent version, developed

by John Searle and Strawson, of the description theory
of reference. Instead of taking each name to abbreviate

one definite description, the cluster theory takes names to
abbreviate clusters of definite descriptions most of which,
but not necessarily all, are satisfied by the referent of
the name. The cluster theory can cope with some of the
arguments raised by Kripke against the description the-
ory of reference. More specifically, it can answer most of
Kripke’s non-modal arguments. Thus, the cluster theory
can acknowledge the fact that different people associate
different descriptions, provided they are part of the clus-
ter, with the same name. Similarly, it can explain why
people often associate more than one description with
a name. Further, since the referent of the name might
not satisfy all the descriptions that the name abbrevi-
ates, there is no single description in the cluster which
the referent of the name must satisfy. Further, by invok-
ing reference borrowing and a social division of linguistic
labour, the theory can explain how speakers can refer to
something even though the cluster of descriptions they
associate with the name either fails to identify the refer-
ent uniquely or is not even true of it. Supporters of the
theory can explain the phenomena appealed to by Kripke
in his modal argument by relying on the idea of the scope
of quantifiers.
Further reading: Devitt and Sterelny (1999), ch. 3.2;
McCulloch (1989)
Cognitive command: A notion introduced by Wright. Wright

is concerned with individuating among the areas of dis-
course which are minimally truth-apt, those that can be
realistically construed. One of the marks of discourse
about which realism can be maintained is that it ex-
hibits cognitive command. Roughly speaking a discourse
exhibits this feature if it is a priori true that any difference
of opinion in this area can only be satisfactorily explained
in terms of the cognitive shortcomings (including lack of

information or faulty reasoning) of at least one of the two
disagreeing parties.
See Cosmological role
Further reading: Wright (1992)
Cognitivism: To be a cognitivist about a given area of dis-

course is to hold that judgements made in that area pur-
port to express beliefs and describe facts, and as such can
be assessed as true or false. Cognitivism can take many
forms including error-theory, response-dependence and
realism. Cognitivism is opposed to non-cognitivism, ac-
cording to which judgements in a given area of discourse
do not express beliefs and do not describe facts.
Commissive: A term introduced by Austin to name a type of

(illocutionary) speech act by means of which the speaker
purports to place himself or herself under an obligation.
Promising is the paradigmatic example. Utterances of ‘I
promise’, ‘I will do it’, ‘I give you my word’, when used to
make a promise, are instances of commissive speech acts.
Common knowledge: A piece of knowledge such that each

agent in a group has that knowledge, and further each
agent in the group knows that each agent in the group
has that knowledge, and further each agent in the group
knows that each agent in the group knows that each agent
in that group has that knowledge, and so on ad infinitum.
The existence of common knowledge is often necessary
for co-ordinated activity in social interaction. We owe the
first explicit analysis of this notion to David Lewis in his
book Convention.
Further reading: Lewis (1986a)
Communicability argument: An argument deployed by

Dummett against views that identify linguistic meanings
with private mental states. Dummett argues that if lin-
guistic meanings were private, linguistic communication
would be impossible. However, since we do communicate
by means of language, linguistic meanings are not private
mental states.
See Acquisition argument; Manifestation argument
Competence, linguistic See Linguistic competence
Completeness: A formal system is said to be complete if every

valid argument can be proved within the system. A com-
plete system could be unsound if arguments that are not
valid are also provable in the system.
See Soundness
Compositionality: The principle of compositionality states

that the meaning of a sentence is dependent upon the
meanings of its semantic (or meaningful) parts and the
way in which these meanings are brought together. Thus,
the meaning of ‘Mary loves her sister’ depends on the
meanings of ‘Mary’, ‘loves’ and ‘her sister’ and on their
order in the sentence. Supporters of compositionality in-
voke it to explain the productivity and systematicity of
linguistic understanding. They claim that composition-
ality explains our ability to understand novel sentences
and that when we understand a complex expression we
tend also to understand others that are constituted by the
same parts in different orders. A theory of meaning for a
language is said to respect compositionality if it includes
only a finite number of axioms, and generates theorems
which specify the meanings of each sentence in that lan-
guage in a way that displays how these meanings depend
on the meanings of its parts.
See Language of thought; Semantics, truth-conditional
Concept: For Frege a concept is a one-place function from an

object to a truth-value (true or false), it is the reference
(Bedeutung) of a one-place predicate such as ‘. . . is red’ or
‘. . . is British’. In contemporary philosophy of mind and
language the notion has acquired a new meaning. On this
view to ascribe possession of a concept to an individual
is to ascribe a set of abilities to that individual. Thus to
have the concept of a horse one must be able to recognise
horses, know that they are animals, and so forth.
Concept-script (Begriffsschrift): The title of Frege’s first book

and the name of the formal logical language he developed
to express all conceptual contents. Frege offered an analy-
sis of sentences in terms of functions (designated by predi-
cates) and arguments (designated by names and other sin-
gular terms). Frege also developed the notion of a truth
function, which is a function that takes truth-values (the
true and the false) as arguments and yields truth-values as
values. Conjunction, disjunction and negation are exam-
ples of such functions. Probably most importantly of all,
Frege developed the notion of a quantifier. Thus, he made
it possible to express multiple generalities in logic for the
first time. Frege’s own notation for quantifiers and truth
function is not used by contemporary logicians. These ty-
pographical differences should not obscure the fact that
Frege’s logic is what we use now.
Further reading: Beaney (1996), ch. 2; McCulloch
(1989), ch. 1
Conditional: In ordinary language there are at least two kinds

of conditionals: indicative conditionals as exemplified by
the conditional ‘if Oswald didn’t kill Kennedy, someone
else did’, and subjunctive conditionals, such as ‘if Oswald
had not killed Kennedy, someone else would have’. Sub-
junctive conditionals with an antecedent which is either
known to be false or assumed to be false are called ‘coun-

terfactuals’. There is some disagreement about how to
classify some conditionals. Thus, some philosophers take
future conditionals such as ‘if Barcelona does not win the
championship in 2007, Chelsea will’ to be indicative; oth-
ers classify them with subjunctive conditionals. There is
also disagreement about how best to understand indica-
tive conditionals. Some philosophers think that indicative
conditionals are statements which have truth conditions.
Among these, some take the indicative conditional to be
the truth-functional material conditional familiar in logic.
Others argue that it is not a truth-functional sentential
connective. A different approach takes indicative condi-
tionals not to be the sort of thing that has truth conditions
at all, but to be an expression of conditional probabilities.
In other words, according to this approach when I say ‘if
I study, I will pass the exam’, I am not stating a condi-
tional fact, instead I am saying that the probability that I
will pass the exam is high on the supposition that I study.
See Conventional implicature
Further reading: Bennett (2003); Edgington (2001)
Connective, truth-functional See Truth-functional sentential

connective
Connotation: The connotation, or linguistic intension, of a

term is contrasted with its denotation. The denotation of
a term is its extension, namely, the collection of things it
stands for. The term ‘intension’ is used in more than one
way: either as what determines what falls in the extension
or as the function which assigns for each possible world
an extension to a term in that world.
Constative: Austin coined the expression to refer to descrip-

tive utterances or statements. An example would be an
utterance of the sentence ‘The cat is on the mat’. Consta-

tive utterances are contrasted by Austin with performa-
tive utterances, such as ‘I promise to give you a ticket’.
Content: The meaning of an utterance or of a mental state

such as a belief or a desire is its content. Some philoso-
phers distinguish between two kinds of content of men-
tal states: broad contents which are determined by the
truth conditions of the state, and narrow contents which
supervene on the internal states of the agent. Thus, for
instance, I and my doppelgänger on Twin Earth might be
in states with the same narrow contents. I believe that I
see a glass of the odourless clear liquid that fills the lakes,
etc., and so does she. But our states have different broad
contents since my belief is true if what I see is a glass of
water, while her belief is true if what she sees is a glass
of what she calls ‘water’, but has chemical composition
XYZ.
See Externalism; Internalism
Further reading: Braddon-Mitchell and Jackson (1996)
Context: The situation in which an utterance occurs. It often

determines the identity of the words involved; it also dis-
ambiguates the utterance. Thus, for example, the context
serves to determine whether by ‘bank’ a speaker means
money or river bank. In the case of indexical expressions
such as ‘I’, the context is necessary to determine the mean-
ing and reference of expressions even when there are no
ambiguities.
Context principle: A principle, first elaborated by Frege in The

Foundations of Arithmetic (1884), where he states that
‘it is only in the context of a sentence that a word has a
meaning’. Frege never restates the principle in any of his
later works, but it was adopted by Ludwig Wittgenstein
in both the Tractatus (1922) and Philosophical Investiga-

tions (1953). The basic idea behind the principle is that
the sense of a word is given by its role in the sentence in
which it occurs.
See Compositionality
Contingency: A proposition is contingent if and only if it is

true but could have been false. Thus, contingent truths
are contrasted with necessary truths.
See Modality; Necessity; Possibility
Convention: Language, it is generally agreed, is conventional

at least in the sense that the relation between language and
the reality it is about is arbitrary. Thus, the word ‘apple’
could have referred to pears; its reference to apples is a
matter of convention. More recently, some philosophers
also claim that language is conventional in the sense that
the meanings of words are under the speakers’ rational
control.
See Common knowledge; Language
Convention T: First devised by Alfred Tarski as a minimal

constraint (which he dubbed ‘criterion of material ad-
equacy’) on any theory of truth. He claimed that any
materially adequate account of the truth predicate in a
language must identify as the truth predicate in that lan-
guage a predicate which satisfies all instances of a schema,
which he called the T-schema. The schema is: S is True if
and only if p, where what replaces S is the name of a sen-
tence and what replaces p is a translation of that sentence
in the language in which the schema is formulated. For
example, the following are all instances of the T-schema:
‘La neve è bianca’ is true if and only if snow is white;
‘Snow is white’ is true if and only if snow is white. Thus,
in order for a theory of truth that takes the truth predicate
in English to be ‘is true’ to be materially adequate, it must

have as theorems all the instances of the T-schema such as
‘grass is green’ is true if and only if grass is green; ‘snow
is white’ is true if and only if snow is white; ‘London is
the capital of the UK’ is true if and only if London is the
capital of the UK; and so forth. Tarski postulated that the
expressions used to fill the places indicated by S and p in
the schema had already been assigned determinate mean-
ings. He, therefore, presupposed knowledge of meaning
in order to define truth.
See Semantics, truth-conditional; Truth, semantic
theory of
Further reading: Tarski (1944) and (1969)
Conventional implicature: A notion developed by Frank

Jackson in the context of his account of indicative con-
ditionals. In Jackson’s view indicative conditionals are
truth-functional material conditionals. Thus, he claims
that somebody who asserts an indicative conditional
makes the same assertion with the same truth conditions
as somebody who asserts the equivalent material condi-
tional. There are notorious problems with this view. For
instance, all material conditionals with false antecedents
are true. Thus, since I ate no waffles today, the follow-
ing absurd conditional ‘if I ate waffles today, you ate
one thousand eggs’ should be true if it were a mate-
rial conditional. Jackson solves the problem by saying
that although the conditional assertion is an assertion
of a material conditional, the assertion also has a con-
ventional implication. Besides asserting what it does, it
also implies, suggests or conveys something else. What
it implies is a matter of the conventions governing the
meaning of the word ‘if’, rather than, as with the case of
conversational implicature, a matter of the conversational
maxims governing communication. For Jackson asserting
a conditional of the form ‘if A then B’ implies that one

accords to B a high probability of being true, under the
supposition that A is true. Jackson coins a technical term
for this relationship. He writes that, in this instance, B
is robust with respect to A. Thus, the conventional im-
plicature of the word ‘if’ in every conditional is that the
consequent has a high probability of being true, given the
supposition that the antecedent is true. This implicature
is violated in conditionals such as ‘if I ate waffles today,
you ate one thousand eggs’ where the antecedent and the
consequent are unrelated. That is why these conditionals
seems absurd.
See conditional
Conversational implicature: Conversation is governed by

conversational maxims which require us, for example,
to be relevant and sincere. Often, we can communicate
something without explicitly saying it, by relying on the
other person’s knowledge of these maxims. What is thus
communicated is a conversational implicature. Thus, if
you are at my place, and I have stopped offering you
any drink sometime previously and I now say that I am
tired, you might conclude that I want you to leave. You
draw this conclusion by reasoning that if I say that I am
tired, then my tiredness must be relevant to the current
situation, and it would be relevant if I wanted you to
leave. Conversational implicatures are not created only
by following conversational maxims, but also by violat-
ing them, as is often done when one is being sarcastic.
Thus, I might say ‘that’s great’ in a context in which it is
clear that I intend you to see that I am implicating that
it is not great at all. The maxim requiring speakers not
to say what they believe to be false is, in this instance,
flouted on purpose.
See Grice, H. P.
Conversational maxim: Maxims or social norms that gov-

ern cooperative conversation. They include the follow-
ing: 1. be relevant; 2. do not say what you believe to
be false; 3. make your contribution as informative as re-
quired for the purposes of the current exchange; 4. be
brief; 5. do not say things for which you do not have
adequate evidence; 6. avoid ambiguity. These maxims
are all derived from the principal normative principle
of cooperative conversation, the Cooperative Principle,
which enjoins us to make our conversational contribu-
tion such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by
the accepted purpose or direction of the talk-exchange
in which we are engaged. The theory of conversational
maxims and implicature was first developed by H. P.
Grice.
See Conversational implicature
Copula: One of the roles played by the verb ‘to be’. Thus,
‘is’ is the copula in the sentence ‘Edinburgh is beautiful’.
Some philosophers like Frege take the copula to be part
of the predicate which is thus conceived as an incomplete
expression with a gap that can be filled by a subject. Other
philosophers take a proposition to be composed by two
names (one of a thing and the other of a property) con-
joined by the copula.
See Predication
Corner quotation: First devised by Quine and symbolised as

. . ., corner quotations express generalisations over quo-
tations. If p is a variable that ranges over sentences, p is
a variable that ranges over the results of applying quota-
tions marks to the sentences p ranges over. Thus, whilst p
is a place-holder for sentences (i.e., the cat is on the mat),
p is a place-holder for their quote names (i.e., ‘the cat
is on the mat’).
Cosmological role: A notion introduced by Wright. He is con-

cerned with individuating among the areas of discourse
which are minimally truth-apt those that can be realis-
tically construed. One of the marks of discourse about
which realism can be maintained is that it exhibits wide
cosmological role. A discourse, such as that of physics, ex-
hibits wide cosmological role because the putative facts
reported by its characteristic claims are invoked in expla-
nations of further facts of other kinds, besides facts about
our beliefs or other propositional attitudes.
See Cognitive command
Count term: For example, ‘dog’ or ‘tree’. These are known

as count or countable terms because it makes sense to
ask how many of these are present. We can count dogs
or trees and state how many of these we wish to talk
about. Count terms are contrasted with mass terms such
as ‘gold’ or ‘water’.
See Criterion of identity or identification; Individua-
tion; Natural kind term; Sortal
Counterfactual: A counter to fact conditional such as ‘if the

moon were made of cheese, radiation from the sun would
melt it’. Counterfactuals always have false antecedents;
this is what it means to say that they are counter to fact.
Intuitively, some counterfactuals are false, for example, ‘If
Napoleon had been Italian, he would have spoken Polish’.
Hence, counterfactuals cannot be material conditionals
which are true, whenever their antecedents are false. The
best-known semantics for counterfactuals has been de-
veloped in terms of possible worlds by Lewis. He claims
that a counterfactual such as ‘if the moon were made of
cheese, radiation from the sun would melt it’ is true if and
only if in any possible world in which the antecedent is
true (that is, the moon is made of cheese) and such that it
resembles the actual world as much as possible given the
truth of the antecedent (that is, it is a world in which the
moon is made of cheese but it is otherwise as close as pos-
sible to how things actually are), the consequent is also
true (that is, radiation from the sun melts the moon). This
interpretation treats any counterfactuals with impossible
antecedents as vacuously true.
See Semantics, possible worlds; Subjunctive condi-
tional
Further reading: Lewis (1973)
Counterpart: A notion introduced by Lewis in his modal re-
alist theory of possible worlds. For Lewis, each possible
world is a concrete universe, completely physically iso-
lated from any other possible world. For Lewis, entities
are world-bound; they each exist in only one world. How-
ever, entities have counterparts in other worlds. These
counterparts are entities existing in other worlds, but
which are similar to the entities of which they are coun-
terparts. The notion of being a counterpart is vague, since
it has borderline cases. In some worlds two separate enti-
ties could both be the most similar to an entity in another
world. In some worlds, it might be vague whether or not a
given entity has a counterpart at all. In Lewis’s view what
makes it true that Gordon Brown could have been the
prime minister of the UK in 2005 is the fact that there is a
possible world in which Gordon Brown’s counterpart is
the prime minister of the counterpart of the UK in 2005.
This view has often been met with what Lewis describes
as ‘the incredulous stare’.
See Modality; Semantics, possible world
Further reading: Divers (2002); Lewis (1986b)
Criterion of identity or identification: It provides the identity
conditions of some object or other. In other words, the
criterion of identity is what allows us to tell for any a

or b whether they are the same or different. It has been
pointed out that we cannot identify things in the absence
of a specification of the kind of thing to which they be-
long. Such specifications are offered by sortal concepts;
these concepts supply the criteria of identity for the in-
dividuals falling under them. Thus, the concept apple is
a sortal concept and it provides criteria for identifying
whether a and b are the same apple or different apples.
Mass concepts such as gold also provide identity criteria
since they permit the identification of the gold of which
a ring is made as the same (or different) gold as that of
which the bracelet was made. Thus, there exist identity
criteria for gold, although there are no criteria of individ-
uation for gold, since ‘gold’ is not a count term. There
are two forms identity criteria might take: one-level and
two-level. For example, the criterion for the identity of
sets in mathematics is a one-level criterion. It reads: for
any two sets X and Y, X is identical with Y if and only
if X and Y have the same members. What we have here
is a criterion of identity which permits us to tell in all
instances whether two sets are the same. It is one-level
because the criterion quantifies over the same things for
which it supplies a criterion of identity. The criterion of
identity supplied by Frege for the identity of directions
of lines is, instead, a two-level criterion. It reads: for any
two lines a and b, the direction of line a is identical to the
direction of line b if and only if lines a and b are parallel.
The criterion provides identity conditions for directions
by quantifying over lines (rather than their directions),
and is therefore a two-level criterion.
See Definition; Mass term; Relative identity
Further reading: Lowe (1999)
Criterion of material adequacy See Convention T

Davidson, Donald (1917–2003): Davidson was an American

philosopher, and student of Quine, whose views in the
philosophy of mind and language, and of action have
been profoundly influential. Davidson’s best-known con-
tributions to the philosophy of language are his theory
of meaning as a theory of truth, his notion of radical
interpretation, and his rejection of conceptual relativism
based on arguments against the existence of conceptual
schemes.
See Language; Malapropism; Metaphor; Parataxis; Se-
mantics, truth-conditional
Further reading: Malpas (2005)
De dicto attitude: The kind of attitude ascribed to an individ-

ual by means of a de dicto attribution.
De dicto attribution: When talking about people’s beliefs, de-

sires and other so-called propositional attitudes we can
adopt different ways of ascribing or attributing these atti-
tudes to them. Thus, for instance, we can ascribe to a per-
son, John, the belief that George Orwell is the author of
1984. This is an example of a de dicto ascription because
it relates the believer (in this case, John) to a dictum or
proposition (in this instance, the proposition that George
Orwell is the author of 1984). It must be observed that
the occurrence of singular terms in de dicto attributions is
opaque. If we substitute ‘Eric Blair’ (George Orwell’s real
name) for ‘George Orwell’ in the attribution above we
might obtain a false sentence. Since John might not know
Orwell’s real name, he might not believe that Eric Blair
is the author of 1984. De dicto attributions of this sort
are contrasted with de re attributions. Everybody agrees
that there are at least two different ways of attributing
attitudes, like belief and desire, to people. However, there

is disagreement as to whether these are two ways of talk-
ing about the same propositional attitudes, or whether de
dicto attributions are ascriptions of attitudes of a special
kind, and de re attributions are ascriptions of attitudes of
another kind.
See Opacity; Propositional attitude reports
Further reading: McKay and Nelson (2005)
De dicto belief: A belief attributed to an individual by means

of a de dicto attribution.
De dicto modality: Modality is about necessity and possibil-

ity. It is said to be de dicto when it concerns the modal
statuses of propositions. The propositions expressed by
the sentences ‘Necessarily a white wall is white’, ‘Possi-
bly, London is the capital of the UK’, are all examples of
de dicto modalities. The proposition expressed by ‘Nec-
essarily a white wall is white’ is true, because in every
possible world the proposition expressed by ‘a white wall
is white’ is true. Ordinary modal sentences in English are
often ambiguous, and can be interpreted as expressing
more than one proposition. Thus, for example, the sen-
tence ‘The teacher of Alexander the Great might not have
been the teacher of Alexander the Great’ can be read in
two ways. Read as expressing a de dicto modal proposi-
tion, the sentence is false, since it would mean that it is
possible that the proposition expressed by ‘The teacher of
Alexander the Great is not the teacher of Alexander the
Great’ is true. Read as expressing a de re modal proposi-
tion, the sentence is true because it would mean that it is
possible that the teacher of Alexander the Great (namely,
Aristotle) might not have been the teacher of Alexander
the Great.
See de re modality
Further reading: Plantinga (1974)
De re attitude: Their existence as a special kind of attitude is

matter of dispute. If they exist, they are ascribed to an
individual by means of de re attributions.
De re attribution: Some ascriptions of beliefs and desires ap-

pear to relate the person who has the attitude to a non-
propositional object. An example is the ascription ex-
pressed by saying ‘John believes of George Orwell that he
is the author of 1984’. Here, we do not seem to ascribe to
John an attitude towards a proposition. Instead, John’s
belief appears to consist in his attribution of the property
of being the author of 1984 to an entity (a res in Latin),
namely George Orwell. Because they are, or appear to
be, about things rather than propositions, these attitudes
are called de re (Latin for about a thing). The occurrence
of singular terms in de re attributions is transparent, be-
cause if we substitute ‘Eric Blair’ (George Orwell’s real
name) for ‘George Orwell’ in the attribution above, the
truth-value of the sentence expressing the attribution is
not changed. There is an ongoing debate as to whether de
re and de dicto attributions are merely two ways of talk-
ing about the same propositional attitudes which, despite
appearances to the contrary, always take propositional
objects or whether they refer to different kinds of atti-
tudes. If the latter, there would exist de dicto attitudes
that have propositional objects, and are attributed to in-
dividuals by means of de dicto attributions, and de re
attitudes, that have non-propositional objects, and are
ascribed to individuals by means of de re attributions.
See Extensionality; Propositional attitude reports
De re belief: Their existence as a distinct kind of belief is a

matter of dispute. Supporters of their existence argue that
de re attributions are ascriptions of a special kind of at-

titude, namely a de re attitude.
De re modality: Modality is about necessity and possibility.

It is said to be de re when it concerns the modal statuses
of the properties of things. For example, ‘the number 2 is
necessarily (or essentially) a prime number’; ‘Tony Blair
is contingently (or possibly) the Prime Minister of the UK
in 2006’ all express de re modalities. De re modality is
different from de dicto modality. The sentence express-
ing a de re necessity ‘a white wall is necessarily white’
is false, because the wall, which is white, might be of a
different colour. Ordinary modal sentences in English are
often ambiguous and amenable to both de re and de dicto
readings. Quine argued that the notion of de re modality
is incoherent. His argument was driven by strong oppo-
sition to essentialism (a commitment to essences), which
he thought was a consequence of taking de re modality
seriously.
De re sense: A sense (Sinn) or mode of presentation of an

object which cannot be entertained if the object does not
exist. Demonstratives have been thought to have such a
sense.
See Singular thought
De se attribution: These are ascriptions of beliefs and desires,

or other similar attitudes, which are about oneself. It is
has been argued by John Perry and others that at least
some of these attributions involve attitudes that do not
have propositional objects, but are to be distinguished
also from ordinary de re attitudes. Suppose I believe that
the person with the torn sack of sugar is making a mess
on the floor. I might subsequently discover that I am that
person. I now have a new belief that I am making a mess.

This is a de se attribution of what seems to be a de se atti-
tude because it is irreducibly about oneself, since it seems
impossible to capture the content of the belief without
using the indexical ‘I’. In order to begin to see why this
might be the case, one needs to compare my belief that
Alessandra Tanesini is making a mess, and my belief that
I am making a mess. These two might seem to have the
same content, and thus it would seem possible to explain
the object of the second belief as a proposition. However,
if we think of the content of the attitude as that to which
we refer in explaining actions, these two beliefs differ in
content. If I believe that I am making a mess, I will search
for my pack of sugar. If, instead, I believe that Alessandra
Tanesini is making a mess, I will do no such thing unless
I also believe that I am Alessandra Tanesini. But then, the
indexical has reappeared.
Further reading: Perry (1979)
Deconstruction See Derrida, Jacques
Definite description: An expression such as ‘the Queen of

England’, or ‘the capital of Wales’. Frege takes definite
descriptions to be names, and acknowledges that some
of them might fail to refer either because there is noth-
ing they stand for or because there is more than one such
thing. ‘The King of France’ is an example of the first kind
of failure, ‘the Chelsea player’ could be an example of
the second if the context fails to clarify who is the player
in question. Sentences including definite descriptions with
no reference are, for Frege, neither true nor false. In order
to avoid taking sentences containing definite descriptions
that fail to refer as lacking in truth-value, Russell treats
definite descriptions as quantified expressions. He sug-
gests that a sentence like ‘The King of France is bald’ is
to be read as ‘There is at least one thing and there is at

most one thing such that, that thing is the King of France
and that thing is bald’. That is, ‘(∃x)(∀y){[x is the King of
France & (if y is the King of France, then x = y)] & x is
bald}’. Russell also suggests that names such as ‘London’
are in fact definite descriptions in disguise and should be
treated in the same manner. Kripke has offered arguments
against these Russellian views. Kripke claims that names
are rigid designators and that definite descriptions are not
rigid. It must also be noted that, as Donnellan points out,
there are two uses of definite descriptions: attributive and
referential. In its attributive use the description refers to
the one thing that satisfies the description or otherwise
fails to refer. In their referential use definite descriptions
can succeed in referring even though nothing literally sat-
isfies the description. Thus, I can use the expression ‘the
man drinking champagne over there is the new president’
and succeed in referring to the given person even though,
unknown to me, what he is drinking is actually lemon-
ade.
See Quantifier
Further reading McCulloch (1989)
Definition: In dictionaries words are defined by means of locu-

tions that explicate the meaning of the definiendum (the
term to be defined). Philosophers have provided differ-
ent kinds of definitions for words and concepts. Explicit
definitions provide a meaning for a word or an expres-
sion in isolation. Thus, for example, unmarried man of a
marriageable age is an explicit definition of the concept of
bachelor. Contextual definitions account for the meaning
of a term by offering an expression which is necessarily
equivalent to it but does not belong to the same category
as the term to be defined. Thus, Frege relies on the nec-
essary equivalence between sentences about parallel lines
and about sameness of direction to offer a contextual

definition of the concept of the direction of line a. Frege
notes that ‘line a is parallel to line b’ is necessarily equiv-
alent to ‘the direction of line a is identical to the direction
of line b’, and he uses this fact to define ‘the direction
of line a’ as identical to ‘the direction of line b if and
only if a is parallel to b’. Early analytic philosophers such
as Russell and Moore take a philosophical definition to
provide an analysis of the term to be defined.
Deflationism: To take a deflationist approach to a certain kind

of talk is to deny that it refers to entities or properties with
a substantive metaphysical nature. Thus, for instance,
deflationists about truth-talk deny that the word ‘true’
refers to a property with a substantive nature. Deflation-
ists about fact-talk deny that the notion of a fact has any
metaphysical weight. Deflationists do not jettison the vo-
cabulary they deflate; instead, they often acknowledge
that it is very useful. Deflationists are, however, commit-
ted to denying that the talk they deflate can play any gen-
uine explanatory role of the kind which would require the
existence of the metaphysics they reject. The most popu-
lar form of deflationism is that which takes truth-talk as
its target.
See Truth, deflationary theories of
Deictic term See Indexical
Demonstrative: A linguistic category that includes the pro-

nouns ‘this’ and ‘that’. It also includes demonstrative
phrases such as ‘that woman’. Sentences containing
demonstratives and demonstrative phrases are used in
different contexts to refer to different things. For this
reason, most philosophers take demonstratives to be of
a kind with indexical terms such as ‘I’, ‘here’ and ‘now’,

and offer very similar accounts for both. The main differ-
ence between demonstratives and other indexicals lies in
the manner in which their reference in a given context is
determined. Demonstratives, such as ‘this’ and ‘that’, re-
quire something from the speaker, such as a gesture or at
least an intention, to have their reference fixed. If a person
says ‘that is big’ without pointing to anything or think-
ing of anything, he or she is not referring to anything by
their use of ‘that’. The reference of pure indexicals such
as ‘I’ or ‘today’ is, instead, fixed automatically without
any need for the speaker to point to or have an intention
directed toward anything.
See Dthat; Kaplan, David
Further reading: Braun (2001)
Demonstrative identification: There are, broadly speaking,

two ways of identifying objects so that they become avail-
able for thought. First, we can track and recognise objects
by being perceptually acquainted with them. That is, we
can identify (and re-identify) an object by seeing, touch-
ing or listening to it. These are all examples of demon-
strative identification of an object. Once the object has
been identified in any of these ways, it becomes possi-
ble to have thoughts about it. Second, we can identify an
object by means of a description that applies to that ob-
ject. This second way of making an object available for
thought is called ‘descriptive identification’. This termi-
nology was developed by Strawson, who modelled it on
Russell’s distinction between knowledge by acquaintance
and knowledge by description. The same terminology was
employed by Evans in a very influential discussion of these
topics.
See Demonstrative thought; Russell’s principle
Further reading: Evans (1982)
Demonstrative thought: A thought that has as a constituent

a demonstrative (typically perceptual) mode of presen-
tation of the object which the thought is about. Thus,
one utterance of the sentence ‘that [while pointing to
Red Rum] is a horse’ expresses a demonstrative thought
which involves a visual presentation of Red Rum. An ut-
terance of ‘that [while listening to Red Rum’s bray] is
a horse’ expresses a different thought about Red Rum
because it has as a constituent an aural presentation of
Red Rum. Occasionally, the expression ‘demonstrative
thought’ is used simply to refer to thoughts expressed by
sentences containing a demonstrative, independently of
any account one might wish to give of the nature of such
thoughts.
See Demonstrative identification; Descriptive thought;
Russell’s principle; Singular thought
Further reading: McCulloch (1989)
Denotation: Russell’s name for the mode of reference of defi-

nite descriptions. Thus, for example, the definite descrip-
tion, ‘the President of the US in 2005’ is said to denote
George W. Bush.
See Extension
Derrida, Jean-Jacques (1930–2004): Derrida was a controver-

sial French philosopher, father of deconstruction, whose
work has been mostly negatively received by Anglo-
American philosophers. Derrida’s early work was primar-
ily concerned with the structuralist tradition in linguistics
initiated by Saussure, and the phenomenological tradi-
tion initiated by Edmund Husserl. He then expanded
his critical work to include a variety of essays on many
philosophical and literary figures. In the course of this
work, Derrida developed a kind of methodology that has
been labelled ‘deconstruction’. Derrida tried to resist any
proceduralist reading of his methodology, but such read-

ings are hard to avoid. Deconstruction so understood
consists in searching for a binary opposition in a text,
where a binary opposition is treated in the text as ex-
haustive and mutually exclusive. The deconstructive ap-
proach proceeds by showing that the privileged term in
these oppositions actually presupposes the rejected or de-
spised term, so that the two opposing terms are shown
to be interdependent rather than mutually exclusive, and
the underprivileged term is shown to play a pivotal role
in a text that explicitly excludes or devalues it. A famous
example of deconstruction is Derrida’s treatment of the
opposition of writing and speech. Although any attempt
to extract ordinary philosophical theories from Derrida’s
books is probably bound to be out of step with the pur-
poses served by those works, Derrida does appear to have
some views about linguistic meaning. He appears to hold
with Davidson that all interpretation is radically indeter-
minate. Derrida’s starting point is the denial of intrinsic or
original intentionality. Instead, he takes meaningfulness
to be always a matter of extrinsic properties or relations.
Central to this thought is the notion of iterability. To say
that a sign is iterable is to say that it can be repeated, and
that its repetition consists in the production of another
tokening of the same type. New tokenings can differ in
some of their semantic properties from previous token-
ings, and still count as tokenings of the same type. The
meaning of the sign would be determined by the whole
chain of its tokens. However, since these chains of to-
kenings are never ending, meanings are never fully de-
terminate. This is an idea that Derrida expresses by say-
ing that meanings are never fully present, but are always
deferred.
See Différance
Further reading: Wheeler III (2000)
Description theory of reference: The view according to which

names are abbreviations of definite descriptions. These
descriptions provide the sense of the name and deter-
mine what the name refers to. The classical formula-
tion of the position was developed by Russell who takes
names such as ‘Aristotle’ to be abbreviations of a defi-
nite description such as ‘the teacher of Alexander’. Kripke
raised some serious objections against this view, and also
against a more sophisticated version of it known as the
cluster theory of reference. His modal argument states
that names cannot be abbreviations for (clusters of) def-
inite descriptions because names behave differently from
descriptions in modal contexts. ‘Necessarily, Elizabeth
II is the Queen of England’ is false. However, ‘Neces-
sarily, the Queen of England is the Queen of England’
is true. Kripke explains this modal phenomenon by ar-
guing that names are rigid designators, whilst descrip-
tions are not. Kripke also provides several non-modal
considerations which militate against the description the-
ory. First, since different people associate different de-
scriptions with the same name, the theory has the odd
consequence that the name has different meanings for
different persons. Second, the theory cannot cope with
the fact that people often associate more than one de-
scription with the same name. Third, many people can-
not provide a description which would uniquely iden-
tify the bearer of the name, but if the description is
meant to identify the bearer, it must single the bearer
out. Fourth, some people might provide a description
which is not even true of the bearer of the name. In
other words, people might still succeed in referring to
something or somebody even though they are confused
about what or who it is. Fifth, names cannot be com-
pletely eliminated in favour of descriptions. Many de-
scriptions contain names which can only be substituted
with descriptions which contain further names. Some of

these difficulties are not a problem for supporters of the
cluster theory.
See Causal theory of reference; Frege, Gottlob
Descriptive identification: One of two ways of identifying ob-

jects so that they become available for thought. The other
is demonstrative identification. In descriptive identifica-
tion we identify an object or person (say, Tiger Woods) in
terms of a description; normally, the sort of thing which
is expressible by a definite description that uniquely ap-
plies to that object or person (say, the winner of the 2005
Open at St. Andrews). Once the object is thus identified
we can have descriptive thoughts about it; such as the
thought that the winner of the 2005 Open at St. Andrews
is American.
See Evans, Gareth
Further reading: McCulloch (1989); Evans (1982)
Descriptive meaning: The factual meaning of an expression

or a sentence. It is often cashed out in terms of truth
conditions by saying that the descriptive meaning of a
sentence is given by the conditions that must obtain if the
sentence is to be true. Non-cognitivism about an area of
discourse (such as ethics) denies that indicative sentences
that belong to that area have descriptive or factual mean-
ings. Instead, their role would be to express some form
of non-cognitive attitude.
Descriptive thought: A thought that has as a constituent a

descriptive (typically expressible by means of a definite
description) mode of presentation of the object or ob-
jects which the thought is about. Thus, the sentence ‘The
Prime Minister of the UK in 2004 was a man’ expresses a
descriptive thought about, as it happens, Tony Blair. This
thought has as a constituent a descriptive presentation

which uniquely identifies Tony Blair as the sole individual
that fits the description of being in 2004 the Prime Min-
ister of the UK. Occasionally, the expression ‘descriptive
thought’ is used simply to refer to the thoughts expressed
by sentences containing a definite descriptions, indepen-
dently of any account one might wish to give of the nature
of such thoughts.
See Demonstrative thought; Descriptive identification
Designated truth-value: An expression used in logic to indi-

cate the truth-value or values which are preserved in valid
inferences. Thus, in classical logic the only designated
truth-value is the true. However, in logics that admit of
more than two truth-values, for example, a logic that ad-
mits the values true, false and indeterminate, there might
be more than one designated truth-value.
Différance: A notion coined by the French philosopher

Jacques Derrida. The odd typography purports to point
to a difference with a difference in spelling which is in-
audible in the French pronunciation. Différance is a nec-
essary condition for the possibility of ordinary difference.
Derrida’s notion is greatly indebted to Plato’s discussion
of difference in the context of the problem of universals.
Derrida’s notion is intended to address the same problem
in the context of the relation between one universal type
and the many tokens which instantiate it.
See Predication
Direct reference: Usually understood as the view, allegedly

first formulated by John Stuart Mill, that the meaning
of a name is the object it refers to. That is, according to
this position, there is no meaning or sense that mediates
between the name and its bearer. Instead, the name
directly refers to the object, and its doing so constitutes

the whole contribution of the name to the meanings of the
sentences in which it occurs. This view, which has recently
been revived due to the problems faced by the description
theory of reference, has some highly implausible conse-
quences. For instance, its supporters must deny that the
sentence ‘Mark Twain is an author’ differs in meaning
from the sentence ‘Samuel Clemens is an author’. In their
view since ‘Mark Twain’ and ‘Samuel Clemens’ are two
names for the same person, these two sentences have the
same meaning. The theory of direct reference must be dis-
tinguished from the causal theory of reference. Even sup-
porters of a purely causal version of the latter could admit
that names have senses or modes of presentation as well
as referents, although these modes of presentation would
have to be causal and not descriptive. Recently, Kaplan
has suggested that, besides names, demonstratives (such
as ‘this’ and ‘that’) and indexicals (such as ‘here’, ‘now’)
also might have direct reference. Kaplan’s definition of di-
rect reference, however, is slightly different from the one
provided in this entry.
See Frege’s puzzle; Reference; Sense; Structured propo-
sition
Further reading: Salmon (2005)
Disjunction problem: A difficulty for various forms of indi-

cator semantics. According to this view, a kind of men-
tal state represents a certain kind of thing if and only if
that kind of mental state is reliably causally connected to
things of that kind. But suppose that whenever one per-
son is in the presence of rabbits she forms a mental state
of a given kind. This same kind of state, call it R-state,
is also had by that person when she reads about rabbits
in books. However, this person is not very good at telling
hares from rabbits just by looking at them. As a result,
her R-mental states are also reliably causally correlated

with hares. Intuitively, we want to say that this person
sometimes mistakes a hare for a rabbit. She forms a men-
tal representation of a rabbit when she is in the presence
of a hare. But indicator semantics would commit one to
saying that this person has mental states that represent the
disjunction: either rabbit or hare. This problem is related
to general difficulties for indicator semantics raised by the
idea of misrepresentation. Jerry Fodor’s theory of asym-
metric dependence was developed as an answer to this
problem. Other supporters of indicator semantics attempt
to address this issue by relying on the idea of teleological
function. This approach is known as teleosemantics.
Disposition: Examples of dispositions are solubility, mag-

netism, fragility. For example, glass is fragile; it has a
disposition to break. This is to say that if glass were to
be struck, it would break. Thus, minimally to attribute a
dispositional property to a thing is to say that some condi-
tionals hold true of that thing. More generally, something
has a disposition to do something G if and only if were it
to be put in some specific conditions, it would do G. Those
who think that there is not much more than this to dispo-
sitions subscribe to a conditional analysis of dispositions.
Others provide more metaphysically weighty accounts of
dispositions as causal powers. These powers would ex-
plain why the entities that have them behave as they do.
Everybody agrees that entities have dispositional prop-
erties even when these are not manifested. Thus, glass is
fragile even when it is not broken, and sugar would be
soluble in water even if there were no water on earth to
dissolve it.
See Categorical predicate
Dispositionalism: Supporters of this view argue, contra

Kripke’s meaning scepticism, that facts about semantic
meanings can be explained in terms of dispositional facts
about language use. A crude dispositional account of
meaning that equates meaning with actual dispositions to
use the relevant expressions is clearly doomed to failure.
The idea that somebody might be systematically disposed
to make mistakes when they use a given expression makes
sense; so the meaning of an expression is not determined
by the speakers’ actual dispositions to use that expression.
If it were so determined, the idea that speakers can make
systematic mistakes would have to be unintelligible, while
in fact it is perfectly intelligible. A more sophisticated
version of dispositionalism sees meaning as determined
by facts about how speakers in ideal conditions would be
disposed to use the expression. According to this account
we should ignore facts about how speakers are disposed
to use the expression in less than ideal conditions. This
kind of sophisticated dispositionalist can make sense of
systematic error, but faces the difficult problem of specify-
ing in a non-question-begging way what conditions count
as ideal or optimal. It has been suggested that one way of
meeting this objection is by the adoption of the Ramsey–
Lewis style of reductive explanation. Fodor’s account
of meaning in terms of asymmetric dependence has also
being taken by some as a dispositionalist reply to Kripke’s
sceptic.
See Ramsey sentence; Rule-following
Disquotation: A device that cancels out the effect of the quo-

tation marks.
See Truth, disquotational theory of
Domain: In logic and semantics this is the collection of things

or abstract entities over which the operators and quan-
tifiers range and which constitute the input of functions.
For instance, the quantifiers of ordinary logic are unre-
stricted, which means that they range over everything
whatsoever. This is to say that anything at all is included
in the domain. Similarly, the domain of possible world
semantics is the collection or set of all possible worlds.
Modal operators range over that domain.
See Interpretation
Donnellan, Keith (1931–): He is Professor Emeritus of Philos-

ophy at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).
Donnellan is credited with making the distinction be-
tween referential and attributive uses of definite descrip-
tions.
Dthat: A new word, coined by Kaplan, which is stipulated

to function as a true demonstrative. A demonstrative is a
word whose reference varies according to the context of
utterance. The reference of the demonstrative in context
is partly determined by a demonstration, which could be a
gesture of pointing to one thing, or a sort of inner pointing
(an intention directed towards one thing).
See Indexical
Dummett, Michael (1925–): A British philosopher who

spent his teaching career at Oxford University. He is best
known for his work on the philosophy of Frege. Dummett
reads Frege as, among other things, a philosopher of
language who developed a semantics based on the two
notions of sense and reference (Bedeutung). Famously,
Dummett also argued that the whole debate between
realism and anti-realism is best understood in semantic
rather than metaphysical terms. For Dummett, a realist
about a certain area of discourse – e.g., the past – claims

that sentences in that area are true only when conditions,
whose obtaining might not be even in principle verifiable,
hold. Thus, a realist about the past will say that the
sentence ‘Caesar sneezed 10 minutes before crossing
the Rubicon’ is true if and only if he did sneeze at that
point, even though there is now no available evidence,
and there will never be any evidence, as to whether
or not this situation obtained. The anti-realist about a
given area of discourse claims, instead, that sentences
in that area are true when some conditions, whose
obtaining does not outstrip or transcend verification,
hold. Dummett developed two arguments, known as the
acquisition argument and the manifestation argument,
against realism. In recent years, Wright has refined some
of Dummett’s insights about the nature of the debate
between realism and anti-realism. Dummett has also
written extensively on causality and on the philosophy of
mathematics.
See Communicability argument; Verification transcen-
dence
Further reading: Weiss (2002)
E
E-type pronoun: One kind of anaphoric use of pronouns. An
example is ‘it’ in ‘John picked something up. It was rot-
ten and yellow’. E-type pronouns can be substituted by
a noun-phrase constructed from the context, in this in-
stance ‘The thing picked up by John’.
See Anaphora
Ellipsis: An expression is said to be elliptical when some parts

of it have been intentionally omitted.
Elucidation (Erläuterung): Some recent interpreters of Frege

and Wittgenstein, such as James Conant, have taken this
notion to have a quasi-technical meaning. They claim that
elucidation is akin to a clarification of logically primitive
notions that cannot be defined. The process of elucidation
is meant to involve the employment of nonsense sentences
such as ‘Concepts are predicative expression’, which de-
spite appearances to the contrary for Frege fails to say
anything about concepts.
Emotive utterances: Utterances whose purpose is to express

emotions and solicit the same emotions in others. Sup-
porters of emotivism in ethics take talk about morality to
be of this nature.
Emotivism: The view, held by Ayer among others, that moral

judgements serve only to express emotions or sentiments
of approval or disapproval. They do not express beliefs
and are not capable of being either true or false. Ac-
cording to this view, for example, to say that murder
is wrong is tantamount to expressing one’s disapproval
of murder which could be equally expressed by saying,
‘Boo! Murder’.
See Expressivism; Frege–Geach problem; Non-
cognitivism
Further reading: Ayer (1946)
Empiricism: Early modern empiricists, like Locke, claimed all

knowledge is ultimately derived from experience. They
also denied the existence of any innate ideas or princi-
ples. More recently supporters of logical positivism claim
that, with the exception of a priori truths and falsehoods,
the only sentences that are meaningful are those capa-
ble of being empirically verified or falsified. The term is
sometimes used also to refer to the weaker thesis that
experience is an indispensable source of knowledge.
Entailment: Arguably the central notion in logic. A proposi-

tion or propositions is said to entail some other or others
when the latter proposition or propositions follow nec-
essarily from the former proposition or group thereof.
Thus, for example, the propositions all mammals have
lungs and whales are mammals entail the proposition
whales have lungs. There is no agreement about which
among different formal relations provides the correct un-
derstanding of the ordinary notion of entailment. Using
the language of possible worlds, A entails B is interpreted
as saying that B is true in all possible worlds in which A
is true.
Enthymeme: An argument in which one or more premises are

left implicit.
Equivalence class: A class of individuals related by an equiv-

alence relation. Thus, for example, all the human beings
in the world can be partitioned into equivalence classes
based on their individual income, so that all the individu-
als in each class have the same income as that of all other
individuals in that same class. In this case, the individual
members of each class are equivalent to each other with
respect to income level.
Equivalence relation: A relation such as having the same mass

as, the same income as, or the same number of mem-
bers as, which is reflexive (it holds between an object
and itself), symmetrical (if it holds between an object a
and another object b, it also holds between b and a) and
transitive (if it holds between a and b, and between b and
c, it also holds between a and c). Thus, having the same
income as is an equivalence relation because any person
has the same income as himself or herself. Further, if a
person – let us call him ‘Bob’ – has the same income as
another – say, Jane – then the second person, i.e., Jane,
has the same income as the first, namely Bob. Finally, if

Bob has the same income as Jane, and Jane has the same
income as Jake, then Bob has the same income as Jake. By
contrast, being taller than is not an equivalence relation
because it is not symmetrical since if Bob is taller than
Jane, it does not follow that Jane is taller than Bob (quite
the contrary). Identity is an equivalence relation.
See Equivalence class; Relative identity
Equivocation: A fallacy of reasoning that arises when a term

or a phrase is used with two or more different meanings.
Error-theory: A position about the status of a whole area of

discourse. It is the view that the atomic statements in that
area aim to describe facts, but, since these facts do not
obtain, all these statements are false. The first theory of
this kind was developed by Mackie, who held that all
the atomic ethical statements are false because there are
no ethical facts. More recently, Field has argued that all
atomic statements of arithmetic are false because they
aim to describe facts about numbers, and numbers do
not exist.
See Cognitivism
Further reading: Miller (2005); Field (1980); Mackie
(1977)
Eternal sentence: A sentence whose truth-value remains fixed

at all times and for every speaker, such as ‘copper oxide
is green’. Eternal sentences are contrasted with occasion
sentences such as ‘that is copper oxide’ whose truth-value
can change depending on the occasion of utterance.
Evans, Gareth (1946–80): Despite his early death, Evans,

first a student and subsequently a lecturer at Oxford
University, made several important contributions to the
philosophy of language. In his posthumously published

book Varieties of Reference (1982) Evans made several
important contributions to the theory of reference. He
exposed some problems for a crude causal theory and
put forward a defence for mixed theories that recognised
the importance of both descriptive and demonstrative
modes of identification. In the same book Evans devel-
oped analyses of the notions of singular thought and of
non-conceptual content.
See Argument from below; Russell’s principle
Evidence transcendence See Verification transcendence
Excluded middle, law of: The law that states that for each
proposition either that proposition or its negation is
true. It is symbolised by the schema: A ∨ ¬ A. This law
should not be confused with bivalence, which states
that every proposition is either true or false. There are
logical systems in which excluded middle holds because
any sentence of the form A ∨ ¬ A is a theorem and yet
bivalence fails because the system admits of sentences
which are neither true nor false. Excluded middle holds
because the negations of these sentences are true.
See Bivalence
Exercitive: A term coined by Austin for a type of (illocution-

ary) speech act which consists in the exercise of power
or assertion of influence. The sacking of an employee by
uttering the words ‘You are fired’, the adjournment of
the meeting by uttering ‘the meeting is adjourned’ are all
exercitives. Austin includes orders and commands in this
broader category.
Expositive: A term coined by Austin for a type of (illocution-

ary) speech act which consists in the clarifying of reasons
and the conducting of arguments. Thus, the concession of

a point by saying ‘I see’ or ‘Oh, yes’, and the introduction
of a quotation by saying ‘Quote’, are expositives.
Expressivism: A family of views according to which judge-

ments about a given area of discourse do not purport to
describe facts, but aim instead to express something, typi-
cally an emotion or a feeling of approval and disapproval.
Expressivist accounts have been developed especially for
discourse about morals and aesthetics.
See Emotivism; Frege–Geach problem; Non-cogn-
itivism
Further reading: Miller (2003), chs 3–5
Extension: What a word stands for. Thus, the extension of a

singular term is its referent; the extension of a predicate
is the collection of things to which it applies; and the
extension of a sentence is its truth-value. The extension
of a word is contrasted with its intension.
Extensional context: A linguistic context within which ex-

pressions with the same extension can be substituted for
each other without a change to the truth-value of the
whole sentence (salva veritate). For example, ‘London is
a busy city’ is an extensional context since the substitu-
tion of ‘the capital of the UK’ for ‘London’ does not alter
the truth-value of the whole. Notoriously, some parts of
natural languages do not seem extensional. The evening
star is the planet Venus, and yet it might be true that John
believes that Venus is a planet, and false that John believes
that the evening star is a planet.
See Frege’s puzzles; Propositional attitude reports
Externalism: A view primarily about the individuation of

properties, according to which whether an individual has
a property of a given kind depends at least in part on facts

which are external to the individual in question. In the
philosophy of mind and language externalism is a view
about what individuates mental and linguistic contents.
Externalists argue that facts about the environment exter-
nal to the subject contribute to the determination of the
contents of that subject’s mental states and to the mean-
ings of the subject’s utterances. The classical arguments in
favour of externalism are Putnam’s Twin Earth example
and Burge’s arthritis example. Critics of these arguments
have either denied the intuitions Putnam and Burge rely
on, or alternatively have argued that each mental state
has two kinds of content. Externalism would be true of
one kind of content, broad content, and false of the other,
narrow content. Thus, when the earthling and his twin
have thoughts which they would express by uttering the
words ‘there is water in the glass’, their thoughts have
a common narrow content which can be characterised
by saying that they think that the glass contains some
of the odourless, colourless stuff that fills the lakes. But
they also have different broad contents since the earthling
has a thought which is true if and only if there is water
in the glass and the twin has a thought which is true if
and only if there is twater in the glass. Some externalists
think of psychological states as internal states of the sub-
ject whose individuation conditions lay partly outside the
subject. They would thus be analogous to states such as
being sunburnt which is a state of the skin that is partly
individuated in terms of what lies outside the skin, since
being caused by the sun is what makes a sunburn what it
is. Others, strong externalists, claim that the psychologi-
cal states themselves partly lie outside the subject whose
states they are.
See Internalism
F
Fact: Some philosophers deflate this notion. In their view a
fact is just a shadow of a true claim. Thus, they might say
that to call something a fact is nothing more than say-
ing that we claim something to be true when we state it.
Other philosophers give ontological weight to the notion
of a fact. These philosophers insist that only some true
assertions are genuinely factual, while others, despite be-
ing truth-apt, fall short of stating an objective fact. Some
philosophers go even further and invoke a metaphysically
heavy-duty notion of fact to explain the idea of a truth-
maker.
See Deflationism; Truth aptness
Fallacy: A fallacious argument is one that is not valid. If the ar-

gument is deductive, then it might lead from true premises
to a false conclusion. If it is inductive, the premises do not
offer sufficient evidence in favour of the truth of the con-
clusion.
See Validity
Falsity: The opposite of truth. In classical logic it is expressed

by the non-designated truth-value: false.
See Designated truth-value
Family-resemblance: A notion introduced by Wittgenstein
in the Philosophical Investigations (1953) to explain
concepts such as that of (game). Wittgenstein points out
that there are no features that all and only games have in
common. What makes all games instances of the con-
cept is a looser set of relations which holds between
various examples of games. Thus, basketball and soc-
cer are related by being ball games involving more than
one team, the use of a ball connects these games with
tennis but also with children’s games involving bouncing

a ball against a wall. Score-keeping links soccer to bridge,
and the use of cards connects bridge to patience games
with cards. Thus, in the same way in which members
of a family do not necessarily share the same features,
there will be features shared among some of them and
other features some of those might share with yet other
members.
Fictionalism: A view that can be held about different areas of

discourse, such as morality or folk psychology. The cen-
tral tenet of the view is that its supporters take atomic
sentences belonging to an area of discourse to be liter-
ally and systematically false. Thus, fictionalism is a kind
of error-theory. However, supporters of fictionalism also
hold that these false claims play a useful role, and that
therefore this kind of discourse should be preserved de-
spite its falsity.
‘Fido’-Fido principle: The principle followed by theories of

meaning that treat all linguistic expressions as if they were
names. A name like ‘Fido’ gets its meaning by referring to
an individual, namely Fido. A supporter of the principle
would treat general words like ‘dog’ or ‘triangle’ as names
for the universals dog-eity or triangularity, thought as ab-
stract individuals. The expression ‘“Fido”-Fido Principle’
was coined by Gilbert Ryle.
Force: This notion was first introduced by Frege as one of

three ingredients of meaning as ordinarily understood.
The other two are sense and tone. Force is the pragmatic
component that makes an utterance of a sentence an in-
stance of an assertion or a question or a command, and
so forth.
Further reading: Dummett (1981)
Free variable See Variable
Frege, Gottlob (1848–1925): Frege was a mathematician who

spent his whole academic career at the University of Jena.
Relatively unknown in his lifetime, his work has had an
enormous influence on contemporary analytic philosophy
of language and of mathematics. He is also widely held as
the founder of contemporary formal logic, arguably, his
most important contribution not just to philosophy but to
all areas of knowledge. Frege employs the mathematical
notions of function and argument to develop a language
of logic which he called ‘concept-script’ (Begriffsschrift).
Predicates stand for functions which take objects as argu-
ments and yield truth-values (truth or falsity) as their val-
ues. Proper names stand for objects. Frege also develops
the notion of a truth function such as ‘and’ or ‘not’ which
takes truth-values as arguments and yields truth-values as
values. For instance, ‘and’ generates a truth when it con-
joins two truths, and generates a falsehood in all other
cases. Before Frege, logicians had no means to deal with
sentences, including multiple generalities such as ‘every-
body loves somebody’. Using the language of functions
and objects, Frege developed the notion of a universal
quantifier which allowed him to express such generali-
ties. In mathematics Frege offered a definition of number
and developed a logicist programme aimed at reducing
all arithmetical truths to logical truths. The programme
has faced enormous difficulties because of the discov-
ery of paradoxes, known as set-theoretical paradoxes,
affecting the commonsensical notion of a class or col-
lection of items. Frege’s most important contributions to
contemporary philosophy of language are his distinctions
between concept and object, and between sense and ref-
erence. Concepts are a kind of function, those with only
one argument, and objects are their arguments. Concepts
are the referents of predicates, and objects are the refer-

ents of proper names. Both proper names and predicates
also have, besides their referents, senses. These senses are
the constituents of the thoughts which are expressed by
the sentences of which names and predicates are parts.
See Frege’s puzzles
Further reading: Dummett (1981); Frege (1892a and
1892b)
Frege–Geach problem: A problem for all forms of non-

cognitivism. The problem as it affects emotivism was first
discussed by Geach, who attributed its development to
Frege. Supporters of emotivism hold that to state that
murder is wrong is equivalent to evincing one’s feeling of
disapproval of murder by uttering ‘Boo! murder’. Geach
points out that in moral discourse not all uses of sen-
tences, such as ‘murder is wrong’, are free-standing; some
uses are embedded in more complex constructions. An
example is: ‘If murder is wrong, then genocide is also
wrong’. The emotivist owes an account of these uses.
He cannot claim that in this example one is also merely
evincing one’s disapproval of murder because we use con-
ditional sentences such as these without committing our-
selves to endorsing their antecedents. Thus, if I say, ‘If
John comes home today, I will bake a cake’, I am not
claiming that John is coming home today. Similarly, the
emotivist cannot plausibly say that by saying ‘If murder
is wrong, then genocide is also wrong’ I am expressing
my disapproval of murder. The emotivist does not merely
face the problem of providing some account of these em-
bedded uses of moral discourse, the account also needs to
be such that the apparent validity of inferences involving
moral discourse is respected. For instance, the inference
from (1) murder is wrong and (2) if murder is wrong,
then genocide is also wrong, to (C) genocide is wrong
seems perfectly valid. However, it can be valid only if it

involves no equivocation. Hence, the meaning of ‘murder
is wrong’ in (1) and (2) must be the same. But now the
problem for the emotivist appears insurmountable, since
he cannot give for the expression ‘murder is wrong’ as it
appears in (2) the kind of emotivist account he wanted
to give for its free-standing use in (1), and yet he also
needs to attribute to the expression the same meaning in
both cases. All other forms of non-cognitivism face what
is structurally the same problem.
See Quasi-realism
Further reading: Miller (2003), chs 3–5; Blackburn
(1984) ch. 6.2
Frege’s puzzles: First formulated in Gottlob Frege’s seminal

article ‘On Sense and Meaning’ (1892a), the first puzzle
concerns identity statements and constitutes the primary
focus of the article. The second puzzle concerns propo-
sitional attitude reports and is only briefly addressed in
Frege’s article. Frege notes that identity statements such
as ‘the evening star is the evening star’ and ‘the morning
star is the evening star’ have different cognitive signifi-
cance. In order to ascertain the truth of the first we do
not need to look at the sky, but the second expresses a
substantial astronomical discovery. Frege’s early account
of language could not explain the difference between
these identity statements because it focused exclusively
on the truth-value of sentences and the contributions
that the names and predicates in those sentences made to
the determination of those truth-values. In other words,
Frege’s exclusive concern was with what in contemporary
parlance is called the ‘semantic value’ of an expression.
If we focus only on semantic values there is no differ-
ence between the two identity statements. The statements
themselves have the same semantic value, namely, truth.
The first is true, because Venus (which is the semantic

value of ‘the evening star’) is identical with Venus (i.e.,
is the semantic value of ‘the evening star’). The second is
true, because Venus (which is the semantic value of ‘the
morning star’) is identical with Venus (i.e., is the semantic
value of ‘the evening star’). Thus, there is no difference
between the two statements with regard to their seman-
tic values or those of their parts. In order to explain the
difference between the two statements Frege introduces
the notion of the sense or mode of presentation associated
with an expression. The names ‘the morning star’ and ‘the
evening star’ refer to the same object, but have different
senses. They present the object differently, because they
present it respectively as the last star to disappear in the
morning and as the first to appear in the evening. Hence,
for Frege the two identity statements have different
senses because they include names with different senses.
Frege calls the sense of a sentence, the thought expressed
by the sentence. Thus, the two sentences used in the state-
ments above are said by Frege to differ in cognitive signifi-
cance because they express different thoughts. Frege used
the same distinction between sense and reference to solve
a puzzle concerning propositional attitude reports. He
noted that a sentence like ‘John believes that the evening
star is the evening star’ could be true and yet the sentence
‘John believes that the morning star is the evening star’
be false. Frege took examples like this one to show that
the that-clauses in sentences such as these two contribute
something other than their truth-value to the truth-value
of the whole sentence in which they figure. They cannot
contribute their truth-values because those are the same,
and yet the truth-values of the sentences which differ only
with respect to these clauses are different. Frege proposed
as a solution to the puzzle that in these contexts the that-
clauses have indirect reference, and this reference is their
ordinary sense. Thus, the contributions made by these

clauses to the overall truth or falsity of the sentences in
which they appear are the different thoughts expressed by
the clauses. Consequently, since these thoughts differ, it is
no surprise that the truth-values of the complex sentences
are also different. Both puzzles are still widely discussed,
and many different solutions are being proposed.
See Direct reference; Intensional context; Propositional
attitude reports; Thought
Further reading: Frege (1892a).
Function: There are at least two distinct notions of function

currently in use among philosophers: (1) a mathematical
or logical function is an operation that takes arguments
as its inputs and produces values as outputs. For instance,
in ‘2 + 3 = 5’, addition is the function, the arguments are
2 and 3, and the value is 5; (2) a biological function is
the purpose of a biological entity. For instance, pumping
blood is the function of the heart, because this is what the
heart is designed to do. This use of the teleological notion
of design should be ultimately understood in evolutionary
non-teleological terms.
See teleosemantics
G
Game See Language-game
Gavagai: This expression figures in Quine’s arguments for the

indeterminacy of translation. ‘Gavagai’ is an expression
used by some imaginary natives whose language Quine
imagines we need to translate from scratch. The natives
use the expression when a rabbit is present. Quine points
out that the expression can equally be translated as ‘there
is a rabbit’ or ‘there is an undetached rabbit part’ among

other things.
See Stimulus meaning
Geach, Peter T. (1916–): A British philosopher who was for

many years professor of philosophy at the University of
Leeds. He has made numerous contributions to philo-
sophical logic, the philosophy of language and the philos-
ophy of religion. He is famous for his work on medieval
and Aristotelian logic, for his theory of relative identity
and for his work on the theory of reference.
See Frege–Geach problem; Predicable
Gedanke See Thought
Generality: ‘Woman’, ‘apple’, ‘water’ are all general terms.

What is characteristic of them is their role in predication.
Unlike singular terms, general terms can appear in the
predicative position prefixed by the copula.
See Mass term; Natural kind term; Sortal
Further reading: Quine (1960), ch. 3.
Generative grammar: A notion developed by Chomsky to in-

dicate the recursive, context-free rules that govern the
deep structure of the language faculty and generate all
phrase structures.
Grammar: A notion more commonly used by linguists rather

than philosophers. Chomsky in particular has argued for
the existence of a universal grammar, a generative gram-
mar and a transformational grammar.
Grasping a thought: For Frege, thoughts are abstract en-

tities; they are what contemporary philosophers mean
by ‘propositions’. Hence, thoughts are not psychological
entities. Frege never explained satisfactorily how we are

capable of having knowledge of thoughts, but he used the
expression ‘grasping a thought’ to convey the idea that
thoughts as propositions exist even when they have never
been thought or grasped by any human being.
See Platonism
Grice, H. P. (1913–88): Grice began his career at Oxford

University but moved to Berkeley, California in the late
1960s. He is the founder of psychological approaches to
the theory of linguistic meaning. His work has been ex-
tremely influential in bringing about a shift of focus away
from language towards thought as the primary bearer
of meaning. Grice himself attempts to reduce linguistic
meaning (which he identifies as a kind of non-natural
meaning) to speaker meaning. He also analyses what a
speaker means by his or her words on one occasion of
utterance in terms of the speaker’s communicative inten-
tion. Since Grice sees language primarily as a means to
communicate one’s thoughts to others, he also develops
an account of what is conveyed in conversation by impli-
cation without being explicitly stated. He calls this phe-
nomenon ‘conversational implicature’ and provides a the-
ory of it in terms of conversational maxims governing all
conversations.
See Meaning, communicative intention theory of; Nat-
ural meaning; Perlocutionary intention
H
Hermeneutics: The term is now used to refer to a specific ap-
proach to the study of the interpretation of texts, although
the etymology of the term refers to interpretation in
general. Among the founders of the hermeneutical
approach to reading and interpretation are Friedrich

Schleiermacher and Wilhelm Dilthey. One of the tenets
of the approach is the idea that the parts and the whole
of a text stand in a special relation of co-dependence. The
meaning of each part of the text depends on the meaning
of the whole and the meaning of the whole depends on
each part. As a result interpretation involves hermeneutic
circles requiring the reader to go back and forth between
the whole and its parts.
Further reading: Ramberg and Gjesdal (2005)
Holism: A family of views according to which whether some-

thing has a given property is a matter of its relations to
other items. Thus, if meanings are holistically individu-
ated, the meaning of an expression depends on the mean-
ings of other expressions. The opposite of holism is some-
times called atomism.
Further reading: Peacocke (1999)
Homonymy: The relation that holds between two different

words that just happen to be written in the same way.
Thus, for instance ‘bank’ as in river bank and ‘bank’ as
in money bank are homonyms in English. The fact that
they have distinct etymologies shows that what we have
here are two distinct words rather than an ambiguous
word with more than one meaning.
Homophonic translation: The preferred approach to a trans-

lation or interpretation of the utterances of other speakers
of our language. Their words are taken at face value, and
interpreted to mean what the same words mean for the
interpreter.
See Indeterminacy of translation; Radical interpreta-
tion
Humanity, principle of: It is preferred by some philosophers

to the principle of charity. It states that when interpreting
others we should attribute to them the thoughts we would
have if we were in their circumstances, which is to say
if we had had their upbringing, possessed their sensory
apparatus and lived through their life.
Hyperintensionality: (1) Linguists use the term to indicate

contexts in which expressions with the same intensions
are not intersubstitutable salva veritate. An example is
provided by belief and other propositional attitude con-
texts, where, for instance, ‘John believes all triangles
have three angles’ might be true but, due to John’s igno-
rance, ‘John believes all triangles have three sides’ is false.
(2) The term is also used to refer to theories that take
propositions to be basic entities, which are not reducible
to constructions out of possible worlds.
See structured proposition
Hypostatisation: Also known as reification, hypostatisation

is the fallacy of treating something which is not a thing
or an object as if it were one. For example, a person that
thinks of justice as an abstract entity which is named by
the word ‘justice’ would be guilty of this fallacy.
I
Icon: In semiotics, an icon is a sign that represents by resem-
bling what it is a sign for. A picture is an example of an
icon. The terminology was introduced by Peirce.
Idealisation: The process of abstraction from actual limita-

tions in order to consider ideal conditions. Thus, for
example, supporters of sophisticated dispositionalism
abstract from actual dispositions to use a word in order

to focus on dispositions in ideal or optimal conditions.
Identity: The equivalence relation that each thing has with

itself and nothing else. It is the smallest equivalence rela-
tion, since if a is identical with b, then a and b also stand
in all other equivalence relations. Thus, identity secures
indiscernibility because if a is identical to b, then a has a
property if and only if b also has it. Identity so understood
is an absolute equivalence relation, because whenever it
holds between a and b there cannot be another equiva-
lence relation which does not hold between that a and
b. Not all philosophers believe that ordinary languages
have the resources to express absolute identity. In partic-
ular, Geach has argued in favour of relative identity. In
his view, every claim that x is identical with y is an incom-
plete expression which functions as a shorthand for the
claim that x is the same A as y, where A is a sortal term.
See Leibniz’s law
Identity conditions: The conditions that constitute a criterion

of identity or identification for a given thing.
Idiolect: A language spoken by a single person or a single

group.
Iff: Shorthand for the biconditional sentential connective if

and only if.
Illocutionary act: is defined by Austin as an act of saying

something (locutionary act) with a certain force, such as
the force of a question or a command. Warning is an ex-
ample of an illocutionary speech act. Under appropriate
circumstances one can perform such an act, for instance,
by uttering the sentence ‘There is a dog in the house’.
Apologising, promising, questioning, replying, disagree-

ing, announcing a verdict, declaring a meeting open are
all examples of illocutionary speech acts. Austin believed
that we get an illocutionary act when force is added to a
locutionary act. What this adding might amount to is not
clear. If I say, ‘I warn you that things are going to change’,
I perform a warning. But, in this instance, the content of
the words I utter determines their force as well, so nothing
is added to the mere saying to get something with the force
of a warning. Critics of Austin, however, might be wrong
to say that there is no difference between the performance
of a locutionary (rhetic) act, which is merely the saying
of something taking it to have a meaning, and the perfor-
mance of an illocutionary act. Arguably, one could utter
words with meaning, as when we find ourselves for no
particular reason voicing a sentence that comes to mind,
without thereby performing an illocutionary act of any
sort. Austin divided illocutionary acts into five categories:
behabitives (like apologising), commissives (like promis-
ing), exercitives (like ordering), expositives (like making
a point or explaining a reason) and verdictives (like issu-
ing a judgement).
See Perlocutionary act
Imperatives: An imperative sentence is a command.
Implication: The expression is sometimes used to refer to the

logical relation that holds between P and Q when it is not
possible for P to be true and Q false. It is often represented
thus: P → Q. Outside logic, the term is sometimes used
to indicate contents that are suggested by an expression
without being part of its meaning.
Implicature See Conversational implicature; Conventional

implicature
Impredicativity: A definition or characterisation of a set or

collection is said to be impredicative if it makes a reference
to a totality to which that set belongs. The admission of
impredicative definitions has been taken by some as the
main cause of paradoxes in set theory.
Indeterminacy of translation: A thesis proposed by Quine ac-

cording to which in many instances there is no fact of
the matter about which among competing translations
of foreign sentences is correct. Thus, the thesis is tanta-
mount to meaning irrealism or scepticism, the view that
there are no meaning facts. Quine provides two argu-
ments for the thesis. The first, known as the argument
from below, relies on the idea that incompatible transla-
tions would equally account for all the evidence based on
natives’ behaviour which would be available to a person
engaged in radical translation, which is to say a transla-
tion from scratch. In his argument Quine uses the example
of natives’ utterances of ‘gavagai’, which he claims could
equally be translated as ‘there is a rabbit’, ‘there is an
undetached rabbit part’, ‘there is an instance of rabbit-
hood’. The reason why these incompatible translations
are all compatible with the natives’ behaviour is that they
appear to have the same stimulus meaning since when-
ever a rabbit is present, so is an undetached rabbit part,
and so is an instance of rabbithood, and vice versa. The
second argument, known as the argument from above,
relies on the idea that once all the facts about physics
have been fixed, the facts about translation are still under-
determined. However, since, for Quine, physical facts are
all the facts there are, if physics does not determine the
facts about translation, then there are no further facts
that need to be determined.
Further reading: Miller (1998), ch. 4; Hookway
(1987); Quine (1960)
Index: In semiotics, an index is a sign that represents what it

stands for by being connected to it by means of a non-
semantic relation. A photograph is an example of an in-
dex since it is causally connected to what it stands for.
The terminology was introduced by Peirce, but it is not
very well defined.
Indexical: A linguistic category, including so-called pure in-

dexicals such as ‘I’, ‘today’ and ‘tomorrow’, true demon-
stratives such as ‘this’, ‘that’, ‘he’ and ‘she’, and other
indexicals such as ‘here’ and ‘now’. It also includes com-
plex demonstratives such as ‘that flower’ or ‘this dog’.
Sometimes all expressions whose reference shifts from
utterance to utterance are labelled ‘indexicals’. Hence,
some philosophers have also argued that the category
extends further to include all words that indicate tense,
modal words such as ‘possibly’, some adjectives such as
‘big’ which are context-sensitive (what counts as big when
talking of a mouse is different from what counts as big
when talking of an elephant), and even, for a few philoso-
phers, all vague expressions, like the predicate ‘bald’. True
demonstratives such as ‘he’ have their reference in a con-
text determined in part by extra-linguistic factors. Thus,
if ‘he’ is used demonstratively in an utterance of ‘he is
a spy’, the speaker must point to somebody or at least
intend a particular person, when uttering the sentence, if
the pronoun is to have a reference. The pronoun ‘I’, on
the other hand, is a pure indexical. It always refers to the
speaker himself or herself; no gestures or intention need
to be supplied in order to secure a reference. It should be
noted that words like ‘she’ have both demonstrative and
non-demonstrative uses. For example, in the sentence
‘Mary bought a new house; she was very happy’, the
pronoun is not used demonstratively, but anaphorically.
Philosophers have so far not being very successful in
explaining how the same word can have these different

functions. Most philosophical accounts of indexicals at-
tempt to respect the intuition that, for instance, when
Bob says ‘I am British’ and Mary says ‘I am British’, there
is a sense in which they both say the same thing, and
another sense in which what they say is different. They
say the same thing in the sense that they utter the same
words with the same unambiguous linguistic meaning.
But, what Bob says is true if and only if Bob is British,
and what Mary says is true if and only if Mary is British.
Kaplan has developed the most influential view of indexi-
cals which respects this intuition. He argues that the con-
tent of a sentence like ‘I am British’ changes relative to a
context, so the content of ‘I am British’ when Bob says it
is different from its content in the context of Mary utter-
ing it. What remains unaltered in the two contexts is the
linguistic meaning of the sentence which Kaplan calls its
‘character’.
See Anaphora; Dthat
Indicator semantics: This view proposes that we understand

the notion of representation as a refinement or devel-
opment of the notion of indication. Something indicates
something else if and only if there is a constant connec-
tion, typically causal, between the two. Thus, lightning in-
dicates thunder because whenever there is lightning there
is thunder. This notion of indication cannot be equivalent
to representation since errors in representation, but not
in indication, are possible. Fred Dretske, a supporter of
this approach, proposes that representation is understood
in terms of having the function of indication. A mental
state might have the function of indicating ice-cream, but,
since misfunction is possible, it might sometimes be mis-
takenly formed in the presence of sorbet. Dretske explains
the notion of having the function of indicating something
in etiological terms. A mental state R has the function of

indicating something S if, when the organism first formed
R-mental states, they were recruited as part of the organ-
ism’s system for indicating S.
See Teleosemantics
Further reading: Neander (2004); Crane (2003), ch. 5
Indirect speech: A report of an utterance without using a di-

rect quotation, for example, ‘Galileo said in Italian that
the earth moves’.
See Parataxis
Indiscernibility of identicals See Leibniz’s law
Individual: The referent of a singular term, typically either a

particular (i.e., a specific concrete thing or person) or an
abstract entity, such as, perhaps, an individual number, 2,
for instance.
Individualism See Internalism
Individuation: A principle or criterion of individuation com-

bines a criterion of identity or identification, which states
the conditions under which a is the same or different from
b, together with a principle of unity that permits to single
out a and b as countable items. Thus, ‘apple’ (which is a
count term and a sortal) supplies a criterion of individua-
tion for apples because it provides what we need in order
to be able to count apples, and thus to answer questions
such as ‘How many apples are in the bag?’ Mass terms
provide criteria of identity but not of individuation, since
we can identify that this gold is the same as the gold that,
say, made up a ring, but gold is not the sort of thing that
can be counted.
Infelicity: Some speech acts such as orders, promises, and so

forth, are not capable of being either true or false. They
can, however, suffer from infelicity when the necessary
conditions for the successful performance of an act are
not met. Thus, for instance, an utterance of ‘I hereby
pronounce you husband and wife’ performed by a per-
son lacking in the necessary authority do not constitute a
valid declaration of marriage; such an utterance therefore
suffers from an infelicity.
Inference: A move from some premises to a conclusion. The

inference is deductive if the truth of the premises estab-
lishes the truth of the conclusion. It is inductive if the
premises offer reasons in support of the conclusion. In an
inference to the best explanation, the conclusion is offered
as the best explanation for the truth of the premises.
Inferentialism See Semantics, inferentialist
Infinite regress arguments: Infinite regresses are typically con-

sidered vicious in philosophy, so any argument which
shows that a view leads to an infinite regress is a
powerful objection to that theory. For an example,
see Wittgenstein’s argument against thinking that rule-
following is a matter of providing an interpretation.
Information: There are both formal and informal senses of

this notion. Informally, information covers both natural
and non-natural meaning. In this sense, both the rings
on a tree trunk and words convey information. There are
many formal notions of information which do not have
much in common. Fred Dretske has provided an account
of information in terms of the notion of indication used
in indicator semantics.
Inscrutability of reference: A thesis developed by Quine which

is closely related to his views about indeterminacy of
translation. Quine argues that in many cases there is no
fact of the matter about which of several, mutually incom-
patible, translations of a foreign sentence is correct. Thus,
for example, it would be equally correct to translate ‘gav-
agai’ as either ‘there is a rabbit’ or ‘there is an undetached
rabbit part’. Hence, the reference of ‘gavagai’ is indeter-
minate, since there is no fact of the matter whether this
expression refers to rabbits, to undetached rabbit parts
or to instances of rabbithood. Further, Quine claims that
radical translation begins at home. Thus, if there is no fact
of the matter about which, between mutually incompati-
ble interpretations, assigns the correct reference to foreign
expressions, there is also no fact of the matter about the
reference of expressions in our native language since it is
just a language like any other.
Further reading: Quine (1969), ch. 2
Intension: The term ‘intension’ is used in more than one way.

It is sometimes thought as determining the extension of
the term. In this sense, intension is similar to Frege’s no-
tion of sense. Technically, it is defined as a function that
assigns for each possible world an extension to a term in
that world.
See Connotation
Intensional context: A context is intensional if co-extensional

terms are not inter-substitutable salva veritate. Exam-
ples of such contexts are modal contexts, contexts of di-
rect quotation and intentional contexts involving propo-
sitional attitude reports. Thus, even though ‘Mark Twain’
and ‘Samuel Clemens’ refer to the same person, ‘John be-
lieves that Mark Twain was a great writer’ might be true,
while ‘John believes that Samuel Clemens was a great

writer’ is false.
See De dicto attributions
Intention: There is a variety of philosophical accounts of the

notion of intention. Most philosophers take intention to
be a state of mind which is often involved in future-
directed practical reasoning and which, when properly
related to an action, makes it appropriate to call that ac-
tion intentional.
Intentionality: The feature of mental states in virtue of which

they are about something. What they are about is called
‘the intentional object’ of the state. Such objects may not
exist. Thus, Pegasus can be the intentional object of a
thought which is about it, despite the fact that Pegasus it-
self does not exist. For this reason, many philosophers do
not think of mental states as involving genuine relations
to their intentional objects.
Internal realism: A position which was adopted by Putnam

in the 1980s. The position is not entirely clear but it is
opposed to metaphysical realism. It is the view that there
is no fixed totality of mind-independent objects, but that
questions about the number and kind of objects that ex-
ist can only be answered relative to a theory. Putnam
also links it to the view that there is more than one true
description of the world, and that truth is some sort ide-
alised epistemic warrant.
See Permutation argument; Truth, epistemic theories of
Internalism: A view primarily about the individuation of

properties, according to which whether an individual has
a property of a given kind depends exclusively on facts
which are internal to the individual in question. In the

philosophy of mind and language internalism is a view
about what individuates linguistic and mental contents.
Internalists argue that only facts which are internal to the
subject can contribute to the determination of the con-
tents of that subject’s mental states and to the meanings of
the subject’s utterances. Supporters of the view offer var-
ious considerations in its support. They suggest that the
contents of our own thoughts must be determined solely
by what goes on inside our head because if they were
not, it would be impossible for each one of us to know
by means of introspection alone, as we surely do, what
it is that one is thinking. They also point out that we can
conceive of a brain in a vat, fed neural stimuli by a com-
puter, having many thoughts and beliefs about all sorts of
things, even though they have never really encountered
any of them. Hence, if such cases are genuinely conceiv-
able, externalism must be wrong. Externalists in reply
simply deny the conceivability of the brain in a vat exam-
ple. Their response to the first objection is more complex.
They acknowledge that there is a sense in which we do not
have privileged access to the contents of our thoughts. But
they point out that in another sense we have such access
as is demonstrated by our ability to express our thoughts
by means of words without need for empirical evidence
or further observations. In the Twin Earth thought
experiment both Oscar and Twin Oscar know by means
of introspection alone that they have thoughts which
they would express by means of the words ‘that’s water’,
what Oscar does not know, and could not know by
introspection, is that his thought is about H2 O. The same
considerations apply to his twin, and his thought about
XYZ.
See Broad content; Content; Narrow content
Interpretant: A term coined by Peirce to refer to any item that

mediates the relation between a representation and the
object it stands for. In the case of signs, the interpretant
is a mental state.
See Semiotics
Interpretation: (1) Informally, an interpretation is an assign-

ment of meanings to expressions of a language. (2) In for-
mal semantics the notion of interpretation has a technical
sense first developed by Tarski. In this sense, an interpre-
tation for a language consists in specifying a non-empty
set as the domain of discourse or interpretation, and as-
signing a reference to all primitive, non-logical vocabu-
lary. Thus, each constant will have one object assigned to
it as its reference, each monadic (one-place) predicate will
have a class of things assigned to it as its extension, each
dyadic (two-place) relation will have a class of ordered
pairs, and so forth. In this manner, it becomes possible to
determine relative to the interpretation whether any given
sentence of the language is true or false. Logical truths are
sentences which turn out to be true in all interpretations.
Interrogative: An interrogative sentence is a question.
Irrealism See Meaning irrealism
Is: There are three distinct uses to which the verb ‘to be’ is put
in English and some other languages. Each has a different
logical function and is translated differently in logic. To
confuse them is to risk equivocation. These uses are: (1)
Existence, as in ‘God is’. In these cases ‘is’ means exists
and it is translated into logic using the existential quanti-
fier. Thus, (∃x) (Gx). (2) Identity, as in ‘Eric Blair is George
Orwell’. In these cases ‘is’ means is identical; it is trans-
lated into logic using the identity symbol. Thus, a = b.
(3) Predication, as in ‘London is pretty’. In these cases,

‘is’ functions as the copula which in logic is absorbed into
the symbol for the predicate. Thus, Pa.
Isomorphism: Two models or theories are said to be isomor-

phic, to have the same structure, if and only if the elements
of one can be put into a one-to-one correlation with the
elements of the other. This is to say, that for each element
of the one theory there is exactly one element of the other
that corresponds to it, and vice versa.
Judgement: Judgement is the mental equivalent of assertion.

To judge that P (say, that the Moon is the Earth’s only
satellite) is to assent to P, or to take P to be true. The
notion plays a crucial role in Immanuel Kant, who was
one the first philosophers to stress the primacy of the
propositional over the subsentential.
Judgement-dependence See Response-dependence
K
Kaplan, David (1933–): An American philosopher, at the time
of writing teaching at the University of California, Los
Angeles. He has developed the most influential theory
of meaning for indexicals. Kaplan takes the reference of
demonstratives to be fixed partly by means of a demon-
stration which is a gesture or an intention directed to-
wards an object or a person accompanying an utter-
ance which includes a demonstrative. Kaplan makes a
distinction between the content and the character of sen-

tences which include indexicals. These sentences have
contents with respect to contexts. Thus, the same sentence
has different contents in different contexts, and two dif-
ferent sentences might have the same content in different
contexts. For instance, if Bob says ‘I am British’ and Mary
says ‘I am British’, the contents of their utterances are dif-
ferent, even though they use the same sentence. What Bob
says is true if and only if Bob is British and what Mary
says is true if and only if Mary is British. Further if, while
pointing to Mary, Bob says ‘she is British’ the content of
this utterance is the same as what Mary has said, even
though Bob has used a different sentence to express that
content. Kaplan takes the contents of sentences relative
to contexts to be propositions which can have individuals
as constituents. Propositions like these are called ‘singular
propositions’. The character of a sentence, on the other
hand, can be identified with its linguistic meaning. The
character of a sentence does not vary with the context.
Instead, it is a function which yields the content of the
sentence, given the context as argument. For Kaplan, in-
dexicals are rigid designators; once their reference has
been fixed, they refer to the same one thing in all possible
worlds in which that one thing exists. If I say ‘today is
sunny’, what I say would have been false if today were
not sunny. In other words, whether my claim is true or
false in a hypothetical situation is determined by whether
in that situation this very same day is a sunny one. What
the weather might be like on any other day is irrelevant,
even though, of course, during one of these other days
I might also say ‘today is sunny’. Kaplan further claims
that indexicals have direct reference. In other words, he
holds that their contribution to the content of the sen-
tence is their referent, the actual thing that they refer to.
This is why Kaplan holds that the contents of sentences
including indexicals are singular propositions. Kaplan’s

theory of direct reference is not quite Millian because he
accepts that indexicals have characters which contribute
to the character of the sentences in which they appear.
Thus, the character of ‘I’ is a function which for each
context yields as value the speaker in that context. The
character is similar to what could be called the sense of
the indexical.
See Dthat; Sense
Knowing-how: Practical knowledge such as knowing how to

ride a bicycle or how to build a nuclear reactor. Some
philosophers argue that practical knowledge can be ex-
plained in terms of propositional knowledge (knowing-
that).
Knowing-that: Propositional knowledge which is expressed

using a that-clause. For example, knowing that 2 + 2 =
4, that water is H2 O, that London is a city are all ex-
amples of propositional knowledge. It is still a matter
of dispute whether practical knowledge or knowing-how
can be explained in terms of propositional knowledge.
Kripke, Saul (1940–): A contemporary American philosopher

who has made ground-breaking contributions to the phi-
losophy of language, to metaphysics and to logic. In
the philosophy of language, Kripke introduced the no-
tion of a rigid designator. He developed some powerful
arguments against the description theory of reference,
and formulated one of the first versions of the causal
theory of reference. In metaphysics he revived the for-
tunes of essentialism. Kripke argued that both individu-
als and natural kinds have some of their properties nec-
essarily. These arguments lead Kripke to conclude that
there are many a posteriori truths which are necessarily
true. One such truth is, for example, ‘water is H2 O’. The
view that there is a form of necessity which is not log-
ical or conceptual was quite revolutionary at the time.
Kripke’s contribution to logic is also quite momentous
since he was the first to develop a possible world se-
mantics for modal logic. Further, in his book Wittgen-
stein on Rules and Private Language (1982), Kripke
provided a powerful sceptical argument in favour of
meaning irrealism based on Wittgenstein’s rule-following
considerations.
See A posteriori; A priori; Meaning scepticism; Modal-
ity; Reference borrowing; Semantics, possible world
L
Language: Philosophers have provided many different ac-
counts of what languages might be. Some think of lan-
guages as structured by formal logical relations; others
prefer accounts based on the idea of speech acts. Few
would deny their existence. Davidson, however, has de-
nied the existence of languages if these are understood as
governed by conventions that determine the connections
between words and what they might mean.
Language acquisition: Several philosophers have made claims

about what kind of features language must have for it
to be learnable by creatures, like us, with finite abilities.
Fodor has used these considerations to argue for a lan-
guage of thought, Dummett to argue against semantic
realism, and Davidson to argue for a recursive theory of
meaning.
See Acquisition argument; Semantics, truth-cond-
itional
Language game: A term coined by Wittgenstein in Philosoph-

ical Investigations (1953). It is intended to convey an
analogy between language use and games. It is used to
designate either fragments of actual linguistic practice or
imaginary primitive ways of using words. In either case,
lessons are learnt about our actual language use by the
study of these language games.
Language of thought: A view in the philosophy of mind de-

veloped by Jerry Fodor. In his view, human cognition in-
volves mental representations which are structured like
sentences in a language. In favour of this claim Fodor
argues that thought, like language, is productive because
we are able to think novel thoughts we had never enter-
tained before, and systematic because the meaning of a
whole thought depends in a systematic manner on the
meanings of its parts. For Fodor, the mental processing
of representations, like the computations of symbols per-
formed by a computer, is only sensitive to the syntactical
structure, and not the meanings, of the representations
processed.
Further reading: Braddon-Mitchell and Jackson
(1996), ch. 10
Langue See Saussure, Ferdinand de
Leibniz’s law: The principle that states that if a and b are

identical, then they have the same properties (i.e., are in-
discernible). It is also known as the principle of the indis-
cernibility of identicals. It is not to be confused with its
converse which would state that if two things have the
same properties, they are identical.
Lewis, David (1941–2001): One of the most influential North

American philosophers of the twentieth century, Lewis
held positions at the University of California, Los Ange-

les and at Princeton University. He visited Australia often,
and has left an important mark on the philosophical scene
in that country. Lewis’s most important contributions to
the philosophy of language are his semantics for counter-
factuals, his modal realist account of possible worlds, as
well as his innovative account of the notion of convention.
He also produced ground-breaking work in metaphysics,
epistemology and the philosophy of mind.
See common knowledge
Liar paradox: The standard formulation of the paradox in-

volves the self-referential sentence ‘This sentence is false’.
Suppose this sentence is true, then what it says is true.
Thus, since it says that it is false, it is false. Suppose, then,
that the sentence is false. Thus, what it says is false. It says
that it is false. Thus, it is false that it is false. Therefore,
it must be true. In conclusion, if we suppose that the
sentence is true, it follows that it must be false. But if we
suppose that it is false, it has to be true. A way out of the
paradox might be sought by arguing that the sentence is
neither true nor false. This approach does not solve all
the paradoxes in the liar family. In particular, it offers no
way out of the strengthened liar paradox concerning the
sentence ‘this sentence is not true’. If the sentence is sup-
posed to be true, it is not true. If the sentence is supposed
to be not true (either false or neither true nor false), then,
since it is not true that it is not true, it turns out to be
true.
Linguistic competence: The body of tacit or implicit knowl-

edge in virtue of having which speakers are capable of
speaking the language. It should be distinguished from
linguistic performance.
See Chomsky, Noam
Linguistic meaning: The meaning of an expression such as a

sentence. Linguistic meaning is often distinguished from
speaker meaning, which is roughly what a speaker in-
tends to convey by means of an utterance on a specific
occasion. The two easily come apart, for instance, when
the sentence meaning alone does not determine what the
sentence is about, when the speaker uses sarcasm or when
she uses the wrong word. Thus, I might say the words
‘this is nice derangement of flowers’ meaning that it is a
nice arrangement of flowers. My words mean that this is
nice derangement of flowers; this is their linguistic mean-
ing. On that occasion, however, what I mean by them,
the speaker meaning, is that this is a nice arrangement of
flowers.
See Non-natural meaning
Linguistic performance: Facts about speakers’ actual linguis-

tic behaviour. Linguistic performance is to be distin-
guished from linguistic competence.
See Chomsky, Noam
Linguistic turn: This is said to be a feature of twentieth-

century philosophy, characterised by the fact that philoso-
phers instead of using language to talk about other things,
such as ethics or ontology, have turned their focus on lan-
guage itself. Thus, for example, disputes between realists
and anti-realists about any given topic are often framed
not directly in terms of the existence of facts of a given
kind, but in terms of various features of the language used
to talk about the topic at issue.
See Anti-realism; Cognitivism; Meaning-scepticism;
Non-cognitivism; Semantic realism
Literal meaning: Philosophical theories of meaning tend to be

concerned with this kind of meaning. It is contrasted with
metaphorical meanings or the kinds of meaning conveyed

by means of a variety of attitudes such as irony or sar-
casm.
See Metaphor
Locke, John (1632–1704): A prominent early modern British

empiricist, Locke made extensive contributions to the phi-
losophy of mind and to political philosophy; he was a
political activist and one of the founding fathers of lib-
eralism. He proposed a view of language in which the
meaning of a linguistic expression is the mental idea that
the speaker intends to express when uttering the words.
This suggestion has many problems; for example, it pre-
supposes the notion of intention. It also must be sup-
plemented with an explanation of how ideas have their
meanings. If the suggestion is that ideas are images of
what they are ideas of, it is hard to picture what the idea
of ‘and’, the idea of ‘splendidly’, would be like. In any
case the suggestion cannot work. Suppose that the idea
of red is a red idea in the mind. Unless one already knows
what red is like so that one knows that the mental pic-
ture is red, the mere presence of the red item in the mind
could not count as thinking about red. It should be noted
that word meaning rather than sentence meaning is the
focus of Locke’s theory. He did not seem to think about
sentences as something other than a mere list of words.
See Meaning, ideational theory of
Locutionary act: A kind of speech act defined by J. L. Austin

as the act of saying something. Austin further classifies
locutionary acts into three nested categories. At the low-
est level are phonetic acts, which consist in the utterance
of noises. The noises uttered by very small children are
examples of such acts. At the next level are phatic acts,
which are utterances of words. For example, to practise
the pronunciation of foreign words is to perform acts of

this second kind. The highest level is occupied by rhethic
acts, which consist in the utterances of words and sen-
tences as meaning something. Thus, my utterance of the
sentence ‘the cat is on the mat’ could be an example of
a rhetic act. Every performance of a rhetic act, the ut-
tering of words with meaning, is also a performance of
a phatic act, the uttering of words, and of a phonetic
act, the uttering of noises. It is clearly not possible to ut-
ter words with meaning without uttering words, and if
‘noises’ is understood broadly to include both scribbles
and bodily gestures, it is also not possible to utter words
without making noises. The converses, instead, do not
hold. So rhetic acts presuppose phatic acts which in turn
presuppose phonetic acts, but not vice versa. These three
categories can be thought of as strata which build on one
another to produce a complete locutionary act.
See Illocutionary act; Perlocutionary act
Logic: Frege once defined logic as the study of the laws of

thought. It is not the study of how people think, but the
study of how they ought to think. In contemporary par-
lance logic so understood is the study of valid inference.
Frege has also proposed a different account of logic as the
study of the most general truths, namely logical truths.
Besides these two different conceptions, a third concep-
tion of logic as the study of the properties of a variety of
formal languages is also currently a common currency.
Logical atomism: A view endorsed by both Russell in ‘The

Philosophy of Logical Atomism’ (1918) and Wittgenstein
in the Tractatus (1922), it states that all complex propo-
sitional sentences can be analysed in terms of atomic
sentences which are made true by atomic facts. More
specifically, according to this view every complex sentence
can be uniquely analysed as a logical (in Wittgenstein’s

case, truth-functional) construction of atomic sentences.
Russell’s and Wittgenstein’s versions of the position dif-
fered with regard to their understanding of atomic sen-
tences and facts. For Russell atomic sentences predicate a
simple property or relation of one or more simple particu-
lars, and atomic facts consist of simple particulars having
simple properties or relations. For Wittgenstein, atomic
sentences are concatenations of names of simple objects,
and atomic facts are combinations of these same objects.
The view has now been largely abandoned.
See Analysis
Further reading: Anscombe (1959)
Logical category See Category
Logical empiricism See Logical positivism
Logical form: The logical form of a sentence is its logical struc-

ture. It is that in virtue of which the sentence can play the
role it does in valid patterns of inference. Thus, because
‘John is tall and blond’ follows from ‘John is tall’ and
‘John is blond’, but ‘Somebody is tall and blond’ does not
follow from ‘Somebody is tall’ and ‘Somebody is blond’,
it follows that ‘John is tall’ and ‘Somebody is tall’ have
different logical forms.
See Predicate; Quantifier; Singular term
Logical positivism: A position first developed by the members

of the Vienna Circle, such as Carnap, at the beginning of
the twentieth century. They adopted a kind of empiricism,
and argued that a posteriori sentences were meaningful
only if verifiable. Thus, they rejected the whole of ethics
and metaphysics as meaningless. Logical positivists de-
veloped a verificationist theory of meaning according to
which the meaning of a sentence is given by its method

of verification. However, all the attempts to spell out a
satisfactory version of this verification principle ended
up in failure. Logical positivists also subscribed to a con-
ventionalist account of necessity and the a priori. In their
view all necessary truths were tautologies. They were true
simply in virtue of the conventional meanings of their
constituent words, and said nothing substantive about
reality.
See Ayer, A. J.; Meaning, verification theory of
Logically proper name: A singular term whose significance de-

pends on the existence of its reference. Logically proper
names are thus said to be object-invoking or object-
involving since unless the object they purport to refer to
exists, the sentences in which the name occurs fail to be
either true or false. Logically proper names are sometimes
called ‘Russellian singular terms’.
M
Malapropism: A misuse of words, such as ‘a nice derangement
of epitaphs’, which involves a mistake concerning words
that resemble one another. Davidson takes our ability to
understand what the utterer of a malapropism meant as
evidence that linguistic understanding does not rely on
a previous tacit knowledge of rules governing the use of
linguistic expressions.
Manifestation argument: This is a challenge, put forward

by Dummett, to semantic realism. Semantic realism is
the view that to understand a sentence is to know
the conditions under which it is true (its truth condi-
tions), and that these conditions might be such that it is
potentially beyond us to detect whether or not they obtain

(that is, the truth conditions are evidence- or verification-
transcendent). Dummett argues that what we know when
we understand a sentence must manifest itself in our
use of language. That is to say, to understand a sen-
tence is to have certain practical abilities that we exer-
cise in speaking and listening. But, Dummett continues,
if to understand a sentence consisted in knowing some
verification-transcendent truth conditions, as the seman-
tic realist claims, there would be no actual practical abili-
ties that could count as manifesting that knowledge. This
is because we are not able to detect or recognise evidence-
transcendent truth conditions. Hence, our knowledge of
them could not be manifested in our ability to recognise
them when they obtain. Critics have argued that Dum-
mett’s conception of what counts as a manifestation of a
piece of knowledge is too narrow.
See Acquisition argument; Communicability argument;
Verification transcendence
Further reading: Hale (1999)
Mass term: A term which, like ‘water’, ‘platinum’ or ‘furni-

ture’, refers to a non-countable kind. It is because it makes
no sense to ask how many of them there are that fur-
niture, water and gold are mass terms. Typically, mass
terms have the semantic property of referring cumula-
tively: the sum of any two parts of it is also a part of it.
Thus, the sum of any two parts of water that are water is
also water. It does not follow, however, that any part of
the mass kind is referred to. Thus, oxygen molecules are
parts of water which are not water, and there are parts of
furniture which are not in themselves furniture.
See Count term; Matter term; Natural kind term; Sortal
Material adequacy, criterion of See Convention T

Material conditional: The truth functional sentential connec-

tive represented in formal logic by the horseshoe (‘⊃’).
Its meaning is given by a truth-table which shows that
‘P ⊃ Q’ is false only when P is true and Q is false, and is
true in all other cases. The material conditional is often
translated into English as ‘if . . . then . . . ’. However, it is
a matter of philosophical controversy whether ordinary
indicative conditionals in English are best understood as
material conditionals.
McDowell, John (1942–): A British, Oxford-educated philo-

sopher, at the time of writing holding a position at Pitts-
burgh University. His contributions to the philosophy of
language include his work on singular thoughts and on
the identity theory of truth, as well as his work on themes
in Wittgenstein’s philosophy, especially the so-called rule-
following considerations.
See Truth, identity theory
Meaning, theories of: A theory of meaning for a language

is a theory that attributes to each expression in the lan-
guage its literal meaning. Such a theory would spell out
what is known by speakers who understand the expres-
sions (i.e., their linguistic competence). Philosophers have
adopted numerous approaches. It should be noted that
many current philosophical theories of meaning do not
presuppose a commitment to the existence of things called
‘meanings’. As a matter of fact most contemporary theo-
rists of meaning deny that there are such entities. In their
opinion, knowing the meaning of a sentence is not the
same as knowing an object. Rather, it consists in hav-
ing a complex set of abilities which are manifested in
the appropriate use of the sentence in question. Philo-
sophical theories of meaning can be grouped under the
following headings: the ideational theory (Locke’s view
that meanings are ideas in the head); the picture theory

(the early Wittgenstein’s view that sentences are pictures
of facts with which they share a form); the use theory (the
later Wittgenstein’s view that to ask after the meaning of
an expression often is to ask about its use); psychological
or communicative-intention theories (Grice’s programme
to reduce the meanings of sentences to the intentions of
speakers uttering them via a notion of speaker meaning);
truth-conditional semantics (including Frege’s account of
how the truth-values of sentences depend on the refer-
ence or denotation of their meaningful parts, Davidson’s
theory of meaning as a theory of truth, and more recent
versions of possible world semantics); inferentialist se-
mantics which identifies meaning with inferential role;
verification and assertibility theories (including the logi-
cal positivists’ view that the meaning of a sentence is given
by its method of verification, and Dummett’s account in
terms of the conditions in which one is warranted in as-
serting the sentence in question).
See Logical positivism; Meaning, communicative-
intention theory of; Meaning, ideational theory of; Mean-
ing, picture theory of; Meaning, use theory of; Meaning,
verification theory of; Molecularity; Semantics, assertibil-
ity condition; Semantics, inferentialist; Semantics, truth-
conditional
Meaning, communicative-intention theory of: In these theo-

ries linguistic meaning is ultimately reduced to the com-
municative intentions of speakers; that is, to psychology.
The founder of this approach in the 1950s was Grice, who
attempted to reduce linguistic meaning to speaker mean-
ing, and who offered an analysis of speaker meaning in
terms of communicative intention. The speaker’s com-
municative intention which determines what the speaker
means is (a) the intention to induce an effect, typically a
belief, in the audience, (b) the intention that the first in-
tention is recognised by the audience, and (c) the intention
that the audience’s recognition plays a role in the expla-
nation of why the effect was produced. Grice also argued
that the linguistic meaning of a sentence is explained in
terms of what speakers regularly or conventionally use
utterances of that sentence to mean (their speaker mean-
ing). There are several problems for this account. First, it
cannot easily attribute a meaning to sentences that have
never been uttered. Second, it cannot easily explain the
compositionality of meaning; i.e., the fact that the mean-
ing of the constituent parts determines the meaning of the
sentential whole.
See Non-natural meaning
Meaning, ideational theory of: The view held by some early

modern philosophers, like Locke, that the meanings of
words are ideas in the mind. The view in itself would
only postpone the problem of explaining meaning. Some
of the same philosophers held that ideas have meanings by
being pictures that resemble what they are about. There
are many problems with this view. First, some ideas con-
cern abstract notions for which no picture is forthcoming.
Second, ideas cannot resemble in all respects what they
are about. For instance, objects have weight and mass
but ideas do not. The view requires that ideas resemble
in all respects what they represent. Finally, and more se-
riously, as Wittgenstein has argued, merely having ideas
in the mind cannot be what understanding the meaning
of language is about. If I do not know what ‘red’ means
or red is, it will not help to have colour samples, one of
which is red, since I would not know which one is red.
Similarly, just having coloured ideas in the mind does not
furnish the word ‘red’ with a meaning unless I already

know which is red, and therefore what ‘red’ means.
See Berkeley, George
Meaning, picture theory of: The theory of meaning which

is generally attributed to Wittgenstein in the Tractatus
(1922). According to the theory, sentences represent facts
in virtue of sharing the same pictorial form with them.
Thus, sentences are not really different from diagrams or
other pictorial representations of facts. Wittgenstein also
argues that any attempt to state his theory was bound to
end up in nonsense.
See Saying/showing
Further reading: Anscombe (1959)
Meaning, use theory of: The view, wrongly attributed to

Wittgenstein, that the meaning of an expression is deter-
mined by its use. The view has contemporary supporters
who subscribe to various sophisticated versions of dispo-
sitionalism. Arguably Grice’s theory of linguistic meaning
is also a kind of use theory.
See Meaning, communicative-intention theory of
Meaning, verification theory of: The view endorsed by the

supporters of logical positivism, and also by Quine, that
the meaning of an a posteriori sentence is given by its
method of verification. For example, the sentence ‘Feux
is a black cat’ has a meaning which is given by the
kind of observation which would be required to verify
it conclusively. Logical Positivists relied on this theory to
rule out sentences of metaphysics, theology or ethics as
lacking any factual meaning.
See Verification principle
Meaning fact: A fact which constitutes a sentence meaning

what it does. Meaning facts are also called semantic facts.
Supporters of meaning irrealism do not believe in the ex-
istence of any such facts.
Meaning irrealism: The view that there are no distinctive facts

about meaning. Thus, supporters of the view would say
that there is no fact of the matter about what any sen-
tence means. A semantic irrealist does not hold that all
sentences are meaningless, since if that were true, it would
be a fact about them. Instead, a supporter of the view
holds that there is no special realm of meanings and other
semantic properties which is described by those sentences
which are about other sentences and appear to attribute
meanings to them. Thus, the sentence ‘ “la neve è bianca”
means that snow is white’ does not state a semantic fact
(that is, its meaning that snow is white) about the Italian
sentence ‘la neve è bianca’. Instead, it might be used to
convey how the Italian sentence is usually translated into
English, although a different translation could be equally
compatible with the facts. This view has been adopted,
for different reasons and using different arguments, by
Kripke and Quine.
See Indeterminacy of translation; Meaning scepticism
Meaning scepticism: There are two versions of scepticism

about meaning. The first was developed by Quine as part
of his argument for the indeterminacy of translation. The
second was developed by Kripke in his book Wittgen-
stein on Rules and Private Language (1982). In this book
Kripke provides a sceptical argument for the claim that
there is no fact of the matter about what any sentence
means. Kripke claims to find the root of this paradox-
ical conclusion in Wittgenstein’s rule-following consid-
erations. Kripke’s argument proceeds by considering all
the candidate facts which might determine the meaning

of various expressions, and showing that they fail to do
the job. Having considered all plausible candidates and
shown that they fail in the task, Kripke concludes that
there are no facts that constitute the meaning of any ex-
pression. Kripke uses an example concerning the sign +.
Imagine that a person has never previously performed ad-
ditions with numbers larger than 56, he is then presented
with ‘68 + 57 = ?’ and answers ‘125’. It would seem that
two kinds of facts make his answer correct: the arith-
metical fact that 125 is the sum of 57 plus 68, and the
semantic fact that he means addition by +. Kripke raises
sceptical questions about the existence of this second kind
of fact; he does not take issue with mathematical facts.
He challenges us to provide a fact that determines that
in the past that person meant addition by + rather than
quaddition, where quaddition is like addition for num-
bers smaller than or equal to 56 but gives ‘5’ as a result
of being applied to numbers larger than 56. He shows that
we cannot answer by citing facts about the person’s past
behaviour, about general rules, about the images or oc-
current thoughts in that person’s head, or even facts about
the person’s dispositions to use that sign. Kripke has two
objections against the proposal that equates facts about
meaning with dispositions to use the sign. First, he claims
that dispositions are finite. Second, he claims that mean-
ing is normative. Facts about the meaning of an expres-
sion are facts about how the expression ought to be used,
but facts about dispositions only tell us how it would be
used. Kripke’s sceptical paradox concludes that there are
no facts about meanings, and consequently all sentences
about what other expressions mean are neither true nor
false. His sceptical solution rescues talk of meaning. Al-
though when we talk about meanings we do not describe
any facts, this kind of talk is not pointless since it can
help when teaching the language to newcomers. Further

although such sentences do not have truth conditions be-
cause they do not state any facts, they have assertibility
conditions, that is to say conditions under which their
assertion is warranted. Critics have objected that Kripke
appears to suggest that there are facts about such assert-
ibility conditions, but such facts would seem to be the
kind of facts about meanings that are said not to exist.
See Dispositionalism; Meaning irrealism
Further reading: Miller (1998), chs 5 and 6
Meinong, Alexius (1853–1920): An Austrian philosopher,

and a student of Brentano, who taught at the Univer-
sity of Graz. He is famous for believing that there are ob-
jects like Pegasus that, although they fail to instantiate the
property of existence, have nevertheless other properties.
He adopted this counterintuitive position as a solution of
some puzzles about intentionality. In his view the idea
that there are some non-existent objects explains why
thoughts about Pegasus, for instance, are about some-
thing even though Pegasus does not exist. Russell’s the-
ory of definite descriptions is intended as a solution of
this puzzle that does not make reference to non-existent
objects.
Mentalese See Language of thought
Mention: A term is mentioned, as opposed to used, when

the term itself is the topic of discussion. Thus, the term
‘Milan’ is used in the sentence ‘Milan is a city in Italy’
but mentioned in the sentence ‘ “Milan” has five letters’.
In order to mention a term, we normally use its name.
See Use; Use–mention distinction
Meta-language: This is contrasted in logic with the object lan-

guage. Whilst the object language is the logical language
in use, the meta-language is the language used to talk

about the object language. The distinction between ob-
ject and meta-language was introduced in order to avoid
the paradoxes generated by permitting the existence of
self-referential sentences such as the Liar sentences.
See Liar paradox
Metaphor: ‘The Spirit of God moved upon the face of the wa-
ters’ is an example of a metaphor. Some philosophers have
argued that metaphors have metaphorical (as opposed to
literal) meanings and express metaphorical truths. David-
son has denied these claims. For him, metaphors only
have literal meanings, and are literally true or false. What
is distinctive about metaphors, for Davidson, is not their
meaning but their use. Their point is to cause us to notice
something but not by stating what that something is.
Further reading: Moran (1999); Davidson (1991),
ch. 17
Minimalism: To take a minimalist attitude towards an area

of discourse is to believe that that kind of talk refers only
to merely formal properties with no metaphysical nature
or hidden structure. The best-known form of minimalism
is minimalism about truth, a view first developed by Paul
Horwich.
See Truth, minimalist theory of
Missing-explanation argument: An argument developed by

Mark Johnston to show that our ordinary concepts
of secondary qualities are not response-dependent con-
cepts. Consider, for example, the concept of redness.
We think that statements of the form ‘x looks red
(or more precisely: x is disposed to look red to stan-
dard observers in standard conditions) because it is red’
can be perfectly good, true empirical explanations. Yet,
Johnston claims these statements would be trivial, and
good explanations would go missing, if the concept of

redness were a response-dependent concept. If the con-
cept of red were response-dependent, to be told that some-
thing is disposed to look red to standard observers in stan-
dard conditions because it is red would be tantamount
to being told that something is disposed to look red to
standard observers in standard conditions because it is
disposed to look red to standard observers in standard
conditions. This is not informative. Peter Menzies and
Philip Pettit defend response-dependent accounts against
this argument. They argue that the good explanations, in-
voked by Johnston, explain why something is manifesting
a disposition (and so looks red) in terms of its possession
of that disposition (is red).
See Response-dependence; Secondary qualities
Modal operator: These are operators such as ‘necessarily’ and

‘possibly’.
See Modality
Modality: There are four main cases of modality: neces-

sity, impossibility, possibility and contingency. There
also are different kinds of modality: alethic modality
(concerned with what must or can be true), epistemic
or doxastic (concerned with certainty and uncertainty
in belief) and deontic (concerned with permissions and
obligations).
See De dicto modality; De re modality
Model: A model for a theory is an interpretation (in the tech-

nical sense of the term) that assigns the value true to all
the sentences in the theory.
Modus ponens: This is a deductively valid form of argument

with the structure: If P, then Q; P. Therefore, Q. An
example is given by the following argument: If John runs

regularly, he will improve his level of fitness. John runs
regularly. Hence, he will improve his level of fitness.
See Validity
Modus tollens: This is a deductively valid form of argument

with the structure: If P, then Q. Not Q. Therefore, not P.
An example is given by the following argument: If you
strike the match it will light. The match is not lit. There-
fore, you did not strike the match.
See Validity
Molecularity: In Dummett’s view adequate theories of mean-

ing must be based on a molecular view of language. They
must give explanatory priority to the grasping of indi-
vidual concepts or of the meanings of sub-sentential ex-
pressions over the grasping of the language as a whole.
Dummett contrasts this molecular view with holism.
Mood: A surface grammatical feature of verbs indicating

whether the sentence seems to serve a fact-stating purpose
(indicative) or expresses a counter-to-fact consideration
(subjunctive). ‘Went’ is a verb in the indicative mood;
‘would be rich’ is one in the subjective.
Moore, G. E. (1873–1958): A British philosopher and one of

the fathers of analytic philosophy, Moore’s main contri-
butions to the philosophy of language consist in his ac-
count of the notion of analysis and his discussion of the
naturalistic fallacy involved in deriving an ought from an
is.
See Normativity of meaning; Rule-following
Morpheme See phoneme

N
Name: In ordinary parlance names are contrasted with verbs
and adjectives. They include expressions such as ‘Lon-
don’, ‘Tony Blair’, ‘gold’, ‘tiger’, ‘woman,’ and so forth.
These terms can play different logical roles in different
contexts and thus are said to belong to different logical
categories in different contexts of use. Thus, ‘woman’ is
a logical subject in ‘woman is the equal of man’, but the
same word (orthographically understood) is a predicate
in ‘Margaret Thatcher is a woman’. Similarly ‘Vienna’ is
a singular term in ‘Vienna is the capital of Austria’ but
functions rather differently in ‘Trieste is no Vienna’ where
it is intended to convey the idea that Trieste is not a so-
phisticated metropolis. For this reason, philosophers do
not think of ‘name’ as a useful category, instead they use
logical categories such as singular term and predicate and
assign different uses of names, as ordinarily understood,
to different categories.
See Category; Predicable
Naming: The act by means of which objects are assigned a

name. Kripke in his causal theory of reference has devel-
oped the idea that a kind of baptism plays an important
role in fixing the reference of singular terms and natural
kind terms.
Narrow content: A notion of content that is contrasted with

broad content. It is a matter of dispute whether narrow
contents exist. Supporters of externalism deny that they
do. Supporters of narrow contents, known as internal-
ists or individualists, have provided different accounts of
what they might be. A standard definition states that the
narrow content of a psychological state is that content of
the state that is individuated exclusively in terms of the
intrinsic properties of that state. The notion of an intrinsic

property used here is that adopted by Lewis according to
which any property that must be shared by duplicates is
intrinsic. Thus, by analogy, being a magnet would count
as an intrinsic property of some objects according to this
definition, since if one thing is a magnet, then its exact
duplicate is also a magnet. Thus, the property is intrin-
sic despite the fact that being a magnet is a dispositional
property since what makes a magnet what it is a matter
of its power to attract iron and steel.
See Internalism; Twin Earth
Further reading: Brown (2002)
Natural kind term: These are names for natural kinds. They
include mass terms such as ‘gold’ and ‘water’ and count
terms such as ‘tiger’ and ‘tulip’. Kripke argues that the
reference of these terms must be understood in terms of a
causal theory of reference according to which these terms
are not abbreviations for descriptions formulated in terms
of the observable properties of samples belonging to those
kinds. Instead, the reference is fixed through original con-
tacts with samples of these kinds which are identified by
their chemical compositions or biological natures. For re-
alists the distinctions between natural kinds cut nature at
its joints.
Natural meaning: A label used by Grice to refer to those uses

of the verb ‘to mean’ in which it expresses a natural (or
non-conventional) relation. The sentences ‘Those clouds
mean rain’ and ‘The current budget deficit means that
income tax will have to be raised’ are examples of uses
of ‘means’ to express natural meaning. Grice contrasts
this notion of meaning with the notion of non-natural
meaning, which is attributed to language and to other
conventional signs.
Necessary condition: Any condition which is necessary for the

obtaining of something else. Thus, for example, being a
human being is a necessary condition for being a woman.
That is, in order to be a woman it is necessary that one is a
human being. Necessary conditions, however, might not
be sufficient. Thus, it is not sufficient to be a human being
to be a woman, since some human beings are men. Suf-
ficient and necessary conditions are expressed by means
of conditionals. Thus, we can state that being a human is
necessary for being a woman, by saying: something is a
woman only if it is a human being.
See Sufficient condition
Necessity: There is more than one kind of necessity. Epistemic

necessity expresses lack of uncertainty. Alethic necessity is
instead concerned with necessary truths. A proposition is
said to be necessarily true if and only if it cannot be false.
This idea is often reformulated in terms of possible world
semantics. Thus understood, a necessary truth is true in
all possible worlds. It is a matter of dispute whether there
is more than one kind of alethic necessity. Some necessi-
ties are broadly logical or conceptual, and their denial is a
contradiction. However, following Kripke, some philoso-
phers have argued for the existence of a special kind of
metaphysical necessity exemplified by claims such as that
water is H2 O. What makes these necessities special is that
their negations are not contradictions, and their truth is
only discoverable a posteriori.
See De dicto modality; De re modality; Possibility
Further reading: Kripke (1980); Plantinga (1974)
Negation: When discussed by analytic philosophers, nega-

tion is conceived as a truth-functional sentential connec-
tive expressed by ‘not’. In classical logic, the negation of
a true proposition is false, and the negation of a false
proposition is true. In some other logics, the negation of

a true proposition is not true. However, in these logics to
be ‘not true’ is not the same as being false.
Nominalism: The view that denies the existence of universals.
Non-cognitivism: To be a non-cognitivist about a given area

of discourse is to hold that judgements made in that area
do not express beliefs and do not purport to describe
facts. Expressivism, emotivism and quasi-realism are all
species of non-cognitivism. Non-cognitivism is opposed
to cognitivism.
See Frege–Geach problem
Non-extensional context See Intensional context
Non-natural meaning: A label used by Grice to refer to those

uses of the verb ‘to mean’ in which it expresses a non-
natural (or conventional) relation. In Britain as a matter
of convention, double yellow lines painted by the side of
the road mean that parking is not permitted there. Sim-
ilarly, it is a matter of convention that in English ‘red’
means red rather than yellow. These are all examples
of non-natural meaning. Grice contrasts this notion of
meaning with the notion of natural meaning, which is
attributed to natural signs.
Normativity of meaning: Meaning seems to be a normative

notion, since to use a term in accordance with its meaning
is to use it correctly or to use it as it ought to be used.
Some philosophers, typically supporters of dispositional-
ism, argue that meaning can be reduced to non-normative
notions. In particular, they argue that facts about mean-
ing are reducible to some combination of facts about how
we are disposed to use linguistic expressions. Others deny

these claims and argue that the normativity of meaning
is irreducible.
See Meaning scepticism
Noun See Name
Noun-phrase: A phrase, headed by a pronoun, a demonstra-

tive or a noun, that functions like a name, such as ‘that
woman in the corner’.
O
Object: For Frege an object is the referent of a proper name or
singular term. Thus, in the sentence ‘London is the capital
of the UK’, ‘London’ is a singular term whose referent is
the city of London.
See Concept
Object-language: The language that is being talked about, as

opposed to the meta-language which is the language used
to talk about the object language.
See Meta-language
Objectual quantification: The dominant interpretation of the

quantifiers. Thus understood, the sentence ‘something is
red’, for example, is true if and only if there is at least one
object which is red. And the sentence ‘everything is red’
is true if and only if every object is red. The quantifiers,
given this objectual interpretation, are seen as second-
order functions which take predicates (i.e., first-order
functions) as their arguments and yield truth-values (true
or false) as their values. For instance, the sentence ‘ev-
erything is red’ is paraphrased as ‘For anything x, x is
red’, where ‘For anything x, x . . . ’ is the universal quan-

tifier and ‘. . . is red’ is its argument. We can now refor-
mulate the initial point about the interpretation of these
quantifiers in the language of formal semantics. Existen-
tial sentences like ‘something is red’ are true if an only
if there is at least one object which satisfies the relevant
first-order function (in our example ‘. . . is red’). Universal
sentences like ‘everything is red’ are true if and only if ev-
ery object satisfies the relevant first-order function. Given
the objectual interpretation, quantified sentences cannot
be equivalent to sentences that are not quantified, since
there might be objects for which we have no name. No
sentence without quantifiers could be construed as being
about the nameless, but since quantified sentences cover
these cases also, the two cannot be equivalent.
See Quantification; Substitutional quantification
Observation sentence: A sentence used to report an observa-

tion such as ‘this flower is red’. Observation sentences are
contrasted with theoretical sentences. Observation sen-
tences can be verified by means of observations, while
theoretical sentences can only be verified indirectly by
means of the verification of those observation sentences
they entail.
See Logical positivism
Occasion sentence See eternal sentence
Ontological commitment: Theories have ontological commit-

ments to the existence of some entities. The entities a the-
ory is committed to are those which have to exist if the
theory is to be true. Quine has argued that we do not
look at the names in a theory to find out the theory’s
ontological commitments. Instead, in his view a theory
is committed only to those entities which must be in the
universe of discourse for the quantified sentences in the

theory to be true.
See Interpretation; Quantifier
Further reading: Quine (1948)
Opacity: A construction that changes a position which

would be available for substitution salva veritate of co-
referential terms into one that is not so available. Thus,
for example, ‘Mary believes that . . . ’ is an opaque con-
struction. In the sentence ‘Cicero was a Roman orator’,
the name ‘Cicero’ can be substituted with ‘Tully’ (another
name of the same man) without changing the truth-value
of the sentence. However, if Mary does not know that
Cicero was also called Tully, the sentence ‘Mary believes
that Cicero was a Roman orator’ might be true, whilst the
sentence ‘Mary believes that Tully was a Roman orator’
is false. A construction that is not opaque is transparent.
Opaqueness is not the same as non-extensionality, since
the modal construction ‘it is necessary that . . . ’ is not ex-
tensional, but it is transparent.
Open sentence: An open sentence is not a genuine sentence;

rather it is the result of substituting in a sentence a variable
for a singular term. Thus, ‘X is the capital of Wales’ is the
open sentence obtained by substituting the variable X for
the name ‘Cardiff’ in the sentence ‘Cardiff is the capital
of Wales’.
Open texture: The term was introduced by Friedrich Wais-

mann to refer to a phenomenon which he took to be
common to most linguistic expressions. In his view, the
application of our empirical concepts is only partially de-
fined. For example, our definition of the concept of a cat
leaves it open whether a creature capable of speech but
that is like a cat in other respects is a cat. This lack of
precision in our concepts is not thought by Waismann to

be a problem, since any concept can be made more precise
if the need arises.
Operator: A functional expression such as a quantifier or an

expression of modality or tense.
Operator shift fallacy: A fallacy in reasoning involving an

incorrect shift in the scope of an operator such as a quan-
tifier or a modal operator. Examples of such fallacious
thinking are concluding that a white wall is necessarily
white from the premise that necessarily a white wall is
white, or concluding that somebody must be the mother
of everybody from the premise that everybody has some-
body as his or her mother.
Oratio obliqua See Indirect speech
Ordinary language philosophy: An approach to philosophy,

popular in Britain in the 1950s, which focused on the var-
ious ways in which words are used. Austin, a proponent
of the approach, engaged in complex taxonomies of the
ordinary uses of words. The approach is characterised by
a distaste for metaphysics and for formal approaches to
language.
Ostension: The gesture of pointing or indicating. Wittgenstein

has argued that the referent of a term cannot be fixed by
ostension alone. He quipped that when somebody points
to the moon, the fool looks at the finger. More seriously,
if I utter the sentence ‘I call that “Morning Glory”’ and
I point in the direction of a steamship, the pointing and
my utterance alone do not determine that the ship, rather
than, say, its burning furnace, is what ‘Morning Glory’
refers to. What is also needed is the use of a sortal as in
‘I call that ship “Morning Glory”’.
P
Paradigm case argument: A form of argument much in
use among supporters of ordinary language philosophy,
which concludes from the fact that there are paradigmatic
uses of an expression of a concept to the conclusion that
there are instances that satisfy the concept. Thus, for in-
stance, Antony Flew argued for the existence of free will
on the basis of the fact that there are actions which are
paradigmatic cases for the use of the word ‘free’. This
form of argumentation, together with the kind of phi-
losophy that sustained it, is not generally practised these
days.
Paradox: We have a paradox whenever by means of seem-
ingly valid reasoning we move from true premises to a
false conclusion. There are various kinds of paradoxes.
In mathematics, Russell’s paradox concerning the class
of all classes that are not members of themselves forced
the rejection of naı̈ve class theory. In the philosophy of
language a variety of paradoxes has proved recalcitrant
to any attempted solution. These include the liar paradox
and the sorites paradox.
Paraphrase: As used by philosophers, paraphrase serves the

purposes of explication and logical simplification. Thus,
the paraphrase of an expression should convey the same
meaning as the paraphrased expression but have a less
misleading logical structure, wear its ontological com-
mitments on its sleeve and serve as an explication for the
paraphrased expression.
Parataxis: A grammatical construction that involves no sub-

ordinate clauses. Davidson has offered a paratactic in-
terpretation of indirect speech, which normally would
seem to involve subordinate clauses. In his view, the sen-

tence ‘Galileo said that the earth moves’ is understood
as composed of two self-standing sentences: ‘Galileo said
that’ where ‘that’ functions as a demonstrative; and ‘the
earth moves’, where this second sentence provides the
reference for the demonstrative in the first. The result is
that the initial complex utterance has the significance of
‘an utterance of Galileo said-the-same-as this: the earth
moves’. The approach offers a neat solution to the second
of Frege’s puzzles.
Further reading: Davidson (1991), ch. 7
Parole See Saussure, Ferdinand de
Particular: A concrete specific thing or person; London,

Mount Everest, David Beckham are all examples of par-
ticulars. Thus, particulars are those individuals which are
not abstract.
See Abstract entity; Individual
Peirce, Charles Sanders (1839–1914): He was one of the

founders of American pragmatism and of semiotics (the
science of signs). Peirce’s main contribution to logic is
his formulation of the distinction between three kinds of
inference: deductive, inductive and abductive (inference
to the best explanation). He also developed an extensive
categorisation of different kinds of signs including the
distinction between icon, index and symbol. Finally, he
also provided one of the first explicit characterisations of
the type–token distinction.
Performance, linguistic See Linguistic performance
Performative: Austin coined the term to refer to utterances

which are not truth-evaluable, and are examples of ways
of doing things by means of words. For instance, in the

context of a wedding, ‘I do’ can be a performative ut-
terance, since in saying it one is thereby getting married.
Perfomatives are contrasted with constative utterances.
See Speech act
Perlocutionary act: A term coined by Austin for acts that con-

sist in the production of certain effects in one’s audience
by one’s utterance. For example, annoying somebody by
talking non-stop is an example of a perlocutionary act.
Surprising, frightening, startling a person by one’s utter-
ances are also examples of this category.
See Illocutionary act; Locutionary act; Speech act
Perlocutionary intention: The intention of a speaker to bring

about an effect in his or her audience by means of an
utterance. Typically, the effect is to make the audience do
something or believe something.
See Grice, H. P.; Speaker meaning
Permutation argument: An argument formulated by Putnam

against metaphysical realism. The argument is sometimes
also called ‘Putnam’s model-theoretic argument’. There
is more than one version of the argument. Metaphysical
realism is the view that the world consists of a fixed num-
ber of mind-independent objects, that there is only one
true description of the way the world is and that truth
is correspondence to reality. As a result, supporters of
metaphysical realism are committed to the claim that a
scientific theory, which is by human standards epistemi-
cally ideal, might none the less be false. Putnam’s argu-
ment against the view depends on showing that language
cannot stand in the kind of determinate referential rela-
tion to reality which the view requires. Putnam’s basic
idea is that there is always more than one interpretation
that assigns all the correct truth conditions to the sen-

tences constituting our complete theory of reality. In other
words, we can permutate or change the universe of dis-
course of the theory, and thus change the assignments of
reference to the names and predicates used in the theory
without changing the truth-values at each possible world
for the sentences in the theory. Thus, reference cannot be
fixed in the way required by metaphysical realism. Ear-
lier versions of the argument relied on model-theoretical
results known as Löwenheim-Skolem theorems to argue
that any theory that has an interpretation which makes
all the sentences in the theory come out as true (i.e., a
model) also has other models with domains that have
a different number of things in it. Thus, again, the ref-
erential relations between names, predicates, things and
their collections cannot be uniquely determined. Critics
have pointed out that Putnam’s is not a knock-out ar-
gument, it is more a challenge to the metaphysical real-
ist to provide an account of what determines referential
relations.
See Inscrutability of reference; Internal realism
Further reading: Hale and Wright (1999); Putnam
(1981)
Phenomenalism: The view that statements about ordinary ob-

jects can be analysed without remainder into statements
about actual and possible perceptions. It is also some-
times stated as the view that ordinary objects are logical
constructions of our sense data. This view does not have
many current supporters, but it was once championed by
Carnap and also Ayer. It is a very radical form of empiri-
cism.
Phoneme: Basic unit of sounds that compose words (mor-

phemes).
Platitude: A trivial truth. Common-sense functional defini-

tions of concepts usually begin by stating a number of
platitudes that are part of the common understanding of
the concept. The concept is not empty if and only if there
is one kind of thing that plays all the roles listed by the
platitudes. Thus, for instance, belief might be thought as
whatever together with desire provides reasons for ac-
tion, and provides reasons for other beliefs, and can be
justified by perception, and so forth. Beliefs exist if and
only if there is one kind of state that plays all of these
roles.
Platonism: A view that is committed to the existence of mind-

independent entities which are not spatiotemporally lo-
cated and are knowable by some sort of non-perceptual
intuition.
See Grasping a thought
Possibility: There is more than one kind of possibility. Epis-

temic possibility expresses uncertainty. Thus, when I say
that the postman might have delivered the parcel, what
I mean is that as far as I know it is possible that he has.
Alethic possibility concerns instead what is possibly true,
which is to say true in some possible world. Thus, when
I assert that I might not have been born in Italy, I do not
express doubt about my place of birth; I am expressing
the fact that I could have been born elsewhere.
See Necessity
Possible world: The notion of a possible world has been in-

troduced in philosophy to provide a semantics for modal
discourse, which is to say discourse that is concerned with
necessity and possibility. A possible world is a complete
way in which things might have been. Thus, when I think
that I could have won the lottery, what I am thinking

is that there is a possible world in which I have won
the lottery. There is a debate among philosophers about
the nature of possible worlds. Several take them as de-
scriptions, complete stories about how the whole universe
might have been. Others take them to be abstract entities
of some sort. A minority follows Lewis in believing that
they are real universes, like the one in which we live. Each
of these universes is completely isolated from the others.
See Counterpart; De dicto modality; De re modality
Further reading: Divers (2002)
Possible world semantics: Possible worlds have been used to

develop a semantics for modal sentences about necessity
and possibility and counterfactuals. Thus, a necessary
proposition is true if and only if it is true in all possi-
ble worlds; a possibility is true if and only if it is true in
some possible world. While counterfactuals are thought
to be true if at the closest possible world in which the
antecedent is true, the consequent is also true. Counter-
factuals with impossible antecedents, which are false at
all possible worlds, are true by default.
Further reading: Lewis (1986b)
Postulate: It is either an assumption or, in mathematics, a ba-

sic principle such as an axiom.
Pragmatics: There are different views of what this area of

study involves. Some understand it as the study of those
features of language which are not covered in semantics,
the study of syntax and phonology. An alternative view
is to take pragmatics as the study of those properties
of linguistic expressions which the expressions have in
virtue of their context broadly construed. Some philoso-
phers, who oppose formal semantics, argue that linguistic
expressions have their meaning in virtue of their contexts.

These philosophers thus argue that pragmatics rather
than semantics offers the materials for a satisfactory ac-
count of meaning.
Further reading: Travis (1999)
Pragmatism: A North American school of thought first de-

veloped by Peirce and William James in the nineteenth
century which rejects abstraction in favour of practical
utility. They reject views that have no practical conse-
quence or distinctions that make no difference in prac-
tice. Pragmatists are well known for supporting a view
according to which truth is what works. In contempo-
rary philosophy, Rorty is the most prominent advocate
of pragmatism.
Further reading: Murphy (1990)
Predicable: An expression that produces a proposition about

something when attached to another expression that
stands for that thing. Thus, ‘woman’ is a predicable be-
cause by attaching it to the expression ‘Queen Elizabeth
II’, which refers to Queen Elizabeth II, we form the propo-
sition ‘Queen Elizabeth II is a woman’ which is about
that same individual. In this proposition, the predicable
‘woman’ plays the role of predicate. But, predicables do
not always play the role of predicates in propositions in
which they appear. ‘Woman is the equal of man’ is an
example. This piece of terminology was introduced by
Geach.
Predicate: The logical category of expressions used to at-

tribute properties and relations to things. The extension
of a predicate is the class of things (or of ordered pairs
or triplets and so forth) that fall under it. Hence, the ex-
tension of the predicate ‘is red’ is the class of red things,
while the extension of the relation ‘is the capital of’ is the
class of ordered pairs whose first member is a capital city
and whose second member is the related country.
See Concept; Interpretation
Predication: The problem of predication is also known as the

problem of the unity of the proposition. A sentence or a
proposition is not a list of names, it has a kind of unity.
If, in the sentence ‘Tony Blair is British’, we think of the
subject as a name for a particular and the general term
as a name for a universal, we need to explain how the
two are connected. It will not help to say that they are re-
lated by the relation of instantiation because this answer
only gives rise to a further question about the connection
between Tony Blair, Britishness and instantiation. Frege
claimed that the unity is given by the fact that the pred-
icate is not a name for a universal. Instead, its reference
is a concept which is meant to be unsaturated by nature.
More recently, some philosophers have rescued the idea
that the predicate names a universal and located the un-
saturatedness which unifies the proposition in the copula.
Presupposition: This notion has two senses: one logical, the

other pragmatic. The logical notion is used to refer to a
sentence or statement whose truth is a necessary condi-
tion for another statement to have a truth-value. Thus,
the sentence ‘The mayor of Newport is a woman’ pre-
supposes the sentence ‘Newport has a mayor’. The prag-
matic notion refers to a feature of speakers whose presup-
positions are the propositions they believe constitute the
background information in their current conversations.
Further reading: Stalnaker (1974); Strawson (1949)
Primary quality: A perceptible property of things such as

shape, size and weight which is not a matter of a relation
between the thing and the perceiver. Primary qualities are

contrasted with secondary qualities, like colour, which
are typically thought to be so dependent.
See Secondary quality
Private language: A logically private language would be a lan-

guage that only one person could speak and no one else
could either learn or understand. It is thus different from
a solitary language, which is the language of only one
person, but which could at least in principle be under-
stood or learnt by others. Wittgenstein’s private language
argument is intended to show that private languages are
impossible.
Private language argument: In the Philosophical Investiga-

tions (1953) Wittgenstein argues that private languages
are impossible. A logically private language would be a
language that only one person could speak and no one
else could either learn or understand. Wittgenstein asks
us to imagine a person developing a language to name her
inner sensations. Thus, when the person has a sensation,
she coins a name for sensations of that kind. Let us say
that the name is ‘S’. This language would be private; no
one else could learn it, because they could not know what
‘S’ stands for since they have no way of individuating the
kind of sensation which corresponds to it. The solitary
speaker of the language, instead, is meant to be able by
introspection alone to tell when she experiences the same
sensation again and reapply the name ‘S’ to it. However,
Wittgenstein points out, this would be an illusion. The
problem is not that the agent might misremember what
the sensation is like, and therefore make mistakes when
applying the name ‘S’. The problem is rather that what
makes two sensations instances of the same kind is sim-
ply the agent’s saying so. Consequently, the very idea that
the subject could be wrong as to whether the name ‘S’

applies to a sensation is incoherent. But if mistakes are
impossible, there is no difference between thinking that
an application is correct and the application being cor-
rect. However, Wittgenstein claims, if the idea of using
the name incorrectly makes no sense here, the idea of us-
ing it correctly makes no sense either. Consequently, what
we have here is not a genuine name, not a real language.
See Rule-following
Further reading: Hacker (1993)
Productivity: A feature which is often attributed to linguistic

understanding.
See Compositionality; Language of thought
Projectivism: The view that we project onto the external

world some features which are in fact inner to the agent.
Thus, for David Hume we project necessary connections
onto the world, even though the world includes only regu-
larities or constant conjunctions. A projectivist, however,
does not need to hold that all our beliefs about the rele-
vant area of discourse are false. Instead, he might adopt
quasi-realism, defend the utility and correctness of the
sort of talk under scrutiny, and explain why it seems to
state facts when in reality it expresses attitudes.
Pronoun: An expression like ‘he’ or ‘it’ or ‘I’. These have two

kinds of uses: (1) as demonstratives or indexicals; and
(2) as expressions standing in cross-referencing (or
anaphoric) relation to nouns. There are three kinds of
anaphoric uses of pronouns: the so-called lazy use, as
in ‘When John came for dinner, he brought a bottle of
wine’; the e-type use, as in: ‘Someone picked up the glass.
He made a toast’; and, finally, the quantificational use,
such as ‘For every number there is a number which is
greater than it’. The first kind of use is called lazy be-
cause in these instances the name could be substituted for
the cross-referencing pronoun; not so in the other two
cases. In the e-type, however, the pronoun can be substi-
tuted with a noun-phrase constructed from the context.
Thus, in the example above we can substitute ‘the per-
son who picked up the glass’ for the pronoun ‘he’. In the
quantificational case, which is so called because the an-
tecedent of the anaphor is an expression that functions
as a quantifier, it is not possible to substitute a name or
a noun-phrase for the pronoun.
See Anaphora
Proper name See Singular term
Proposition: Propositions are what sentences express. The

same sentence can in different contexts express different
propositions. For instance, the sentence ‘I am hungry’ ex-
presses different propositions when it is uttered by dif-
ferent people at different times. Thus, if Tony Blair says
it, it expresses the proposition that Tony Blair is hungry
at that time. If, instead, George W. Bush says it, the sen-
tence expresses the proposition that George W. Bush is
hungry at that time. Propositions are also generally taken
to be the primary bearers of truth and falsity. Sentences
would be true or false only in the derivative sense of ex-
pressing a true or false proposition. Some philosophers
do not take talk of propositions very seriously. They use
it for convenience’s sake, but do not really believe that
there exist entities called ‘propositions’. Other philoso-
phers believe in their existence. Some take propositions as
sets of possible worlds. Thus, the proposition expressed
by the sentence ‘George W. Bush is the US President
in 2006’ is the set of possible worlds in which George
W. Bush is the US President in 2006. A problem for this
view of propositions is that it discriminates them very

coarsely. It is a counterintuitive consequence of the view
that all tautologies, such as ‘all triangles have three sides,’
and ‘all squares have four sides’, express the same propo-
sition, since they are both true in every possible world.
In order to avoid this problem, some philosophers have
suggested that propositions are instead structured enti-
ties which typically have things, properties and relations
among their components. These are called ‘structured
propositions’.
See Singular proposition; Truth-bearer
Further reading: McGrath (2006)
Propositional attitude: A psychological relation, such as in-

tending, believing, desiring, knowing, wanting, knowing,
discovering, and so forth, which is usually understood as
a two-place relation between a person and a proposition.
Belief, for example, would be a relation of believing that
holds between a person (the believer) and a proposition,
which is what is believed.
See propositional attitude reports
Propositional attitude reports: Sentences used to attribute a

propositional attitude to a person. Thus, ‘John believes
that Mark Twain is Samuel Clemens’ is a propositional
attitude report, since it is used to report that John has
the propositional attitude of belief toward the proposi-
tion which is expressed by the sentence ‘Mark Twain is
Samuel Clemens’. These reports give rise to one of Frege’s
puzzles.
Prosentence: Supporters of the prosentential theory of truth

take expressions such as ‘that is true’ and ‘it is true’ to
be prosentences. Prosentences are standardly considered
semantically atomic; their parts are not thought to be

independently meaningful. This point can be made by
writing the prosentence thus: ‘that-is-true’. Prosentences
relate to tokens of sentences in the same way in which
pronouns relate to tokens of nouns. This relation, which
is called anaphora, is one of cross-referencing.
See Truth, prosentential theory of
Psychologism: A view of the nature of logic which Frege ve-

hemently opposed. According to this view, logic is the
branch of psychology concerned with describing patterns
of inference used by human beings in reasoning.
Putnam, Hilary (1926–): At the time of writing Emeritus Pro-

fessor of Philosophy at Harvard University, Putnam has
made numerous contributions to the philosophy of lan-
guage. Before the 1980s he developed his celebrated Twin
Earth and brain in a vat thought experiments in favour of
semantic externalism. At that time he was a supporter of
the causal theory of reference and a metaphysical realist.
In the 1980s he abandoned these views. He formulated
his well-known permutation argument, and developed
a position he called internal realism. In his later years
Putnam’s views have become more sympathetic to prag-
matism.
Qua-problem: A problem for a purely causal theory of ref-

erence. According to this view names would be initially
introduced into the language by baptisers who first per-
ceive the object so named. These people are not meant
to associate any description with the name. Instead, they
are assumed to succeed in referring to the object, and
name it, merely in virtue of being causally related to it.

But at any one time there are many different things the
baptisers are equally causally related to. Suppose they ut-
ter the noise ‘gatto’ when in the presence of a cat. They
could be naming that particular cat, they could be intro-
ducing the general name ‘cat’, they could be introducing
the general name ‘feline’, they could even be introduc-
ing the general term ‘tail’ or ‘whisker’. Nothing could
determine whether they are referring to the cat qua-cat
or qua-feline, since when one perceives a cat one also
perceives a feline. What this problem shows is that in
order to be able to name something, it is not enough to
point to it and utter a word. Reference can be fixed only if
we associate a description or a general term (sortal) with
the newly introduced name. We succeed in referring to
the particular cat if we use the description ‘that cat’ when
introducing the cat’s name.
Quantification: It concerns the use of quantifiers. These are

expressions of generality; they are the means to talk about
a collection of things. ‘All’, ‘any’, ‘every’, ‘there is’, ‘most’,
‘many’, ‘few’, ‘at most one’ are all examples of quantifiers
in English. The two main quantifiers used in logic are
the universal and the existential quantifier, which can be
translated respectively as ‘every’ and ‘some’.
See Quantifying-in
Quantifier: First introduced by Frege, quantifiers are used to

express general sentences in logic. There are two main
quantifiers: the universal (symbolised as (x) or (∀x)) and
the existential (symbolised as (∃x)). Either of the two can
be defined in terms of the other, together with negation.
The universal quantifier is used to translate expressions
such as ‘all’, ‘every’ and ‘any’, the existential quantifier
to translate expressions like ‘some’ and ‘there is’, ‘there
are’, ‘exist’. Quantification can be unrestricted, when the

quantifiers are intended to range over everything there
is. It can also be taken to be restricted where the quan-
tifier is taken to range over part of what there is, i.e., a
class of things. Some philosophers have argued that nat-
ural languages have expressions such as ‘some flowers’,
‘all animals’, ‘someone’ which are best read as restricted
quantifiers ranging respectively over flowers, animals and
people. However, since most philosophers believe that all
restricted quantification can be paraphrased away using
the unrestricted quantifiers, they use unrestricted quantifi-
cation to translate sentences from natural languages. An
exception is Geach, whose support of a notion of relative
identity has as a consequence the irreducibility of re-
stricted to unrestricted quantification. Unrestricted quan-
tifiers have been interpreted in two ways. The first substi-
tutional interpretation, which is largely discredited, takes
a sentence like ‘Something is tall’ to be true if and only if
there is a name, say ‘John’, which can be substituted in the
argument place of the predicate ‘. . . is tall’, to yield a true
subject–predicate sentence such as ‘John is tall’. The sec-
ond dominant interpretation of the quantifiers is called
objectual. Thus understood the sentence ‘Something is
tall’ is true if and only if there is at least one object which
is tall.
See Objectual quantification; Substitutional quantifica-
tion; Variable
Quantifying-in: In some sentences involving quantifiers, the

quantifier is said to be quantifying-in to a context. These
are non-extensional contexts such as modal contexts
(about possibility and necessity) or doxastic contexts
(about belief). Thus, for example, the sentence ‘Every-
thing red could have been blue’ can be paraphrased ‘For
any object, if it is red, then it is possible that it is blue’. In
this example, we have a modal context (it is possible that

it is blue) which includes a pronoun which cross-refers to
a quantified expression (‘everything’) outside the modal
context. The quantifier, which is outside, is therefore said
to be quantifying inside the context. In formal logical lan-
guages we express this point by saying that there is in the
non-extensional context a variable which is bound by a
quantifier that is outside that context.
See Anaphora
Quasi-realism: A form of anti-realism. In the realm of moral

discourse this view has been developed by Blackburn. He
holds, with the supporters of expressivism, that the main
purpose of moral discourse is to express emotions and
attitudes. It is not to make statements. The quasi-realist,
however, acknowledges that ordinary moral discourse
seems to be used to make claims which are true or false
rather than being merely a way of conveying approval
or disapproval. The quasi-realist intends to explain this
phenomenon. He wants to show that moral discourse can
seem to involve making claims about moral reality when,
as a matter of fact, it provides a sophisticated way of
expressing approval and disapproval. One of the greatest
challenges for a quasi-realist is to provide a satisfactory
answer to the Frege–Geach problem.
See Non-cognitivism
Further reading: Blackburn (1993)
Quietism: The approach taken by those philosophers who

aim to deflate metaphysical controversies, especially the
debate between realism and anti-realism. Typically, qui-
etists are happy to use the same vocabulary as realists.
Thus, they will assert that entities such as stars would ex-
ist even though we had never been around, and that state-
ments are true when they correspond to reality. However,
quietists also add that they can make these assertions

without thereby committing themselves to the substan-
tive metaphysics of realism.
Quine, W. V. O. (1908–2000): A very influential American

philosopher, Quine spent most of his academic life at
Harvard University. He made several ground-breaking
contributions to the philosophy of language. He is par-
ticularly well known for his debunking of the analytic–
synthetic distinction for his arguments in favour of the in-
determinacy of translation, and his scepticism about de re
modality.
Further reading: Quine (1951), (1960) and (1969)
Quotation: It involves the use of quotes to mention a word

or expression.
See Disquotation; Quote name; Use–mention distinc-
tion
Quote name: The name of a word, an expression or a sentence

obtained by putting that word, expression or sentence
within quotes. ‘Rome’, ‘Tony Blair’, ‘snow is white’ are
all quote names. ‘Rome’ names the name, not the city.
Thus, it is true to say that ‘Rome’ has four letters, and
that ‘snow is white’ is composed of three words.
See Use–mention distinction
R
Radical interpretation: A notion introduced by Davidson
which bears a close relation to Quine’s radical transla-
tion. The radical interpreter provides an interpretation of
the sentences uttered by other speakers without presup-
posing that they mean the same things by their words as
the interpreter means by hers. The problem faced by the
interpreter is that belief and meaning are interdependent.

She cannot figure out what a person might mean by his
words unless she knows what he believes, and she has
no other access to his beliefs besides his verbal reports
of what they are. The interpreter succeeds in providing
an interpretation by deploying the principle of charity.
She assumes that the individuals she interprets mostly
hold beliefs which are true. That is, she takes belief to
be constant, to be something she shares with those she
interprets. The interpreter can presuppose that most of
her beliefs and most of the beliefs held by the people she
interprets are true because omniscient interpreters, whose
beliefs are true, would also assume that they share most
of their beliefs with the individuals whose speech they in-
terpret.
See Humanity, principle of
Further reading: Davidson (1991), ch. 9
Radical translation: An idea introduced by Quine in the con-

text of his arguments in favour of the indeterminacy of
translation. Quine imagines an anthropologist encounter-
ing a group of people, who had been completely isolated
up to that point. The anthropologist attempts to translate
the native language from scratch, relying at the beginning
exclusively on prompting the natives in various circum-
stances with expressions of their language to see whether
they assent or not. So, the anthropologist might try out the
expression ‘gavagai’ with the natives both when rabbits
are present and when they are not, in order to see whether
‘gavagai’ means rabbit. Quine points out that even if na-
tives only and always assent to ‘gavagai’ in the presence
of rabbits, ‘gavagai’ might mean undetached rabbit part
rather than rabbit.
See Argument from above; Argument from below;
Stimulus-meaning
Further reading: Quine (1960)
Ramsey sentences: These are existentially quantified sen-

tences. They are the result of a method developed by F. P.
Ramsey for producing explicit definitions while avoiding
circularity. Thus, for instance, suppose that the definition
of a state makes reference to other states whose defini-
tions make reference to the first. In such an instance we
would have a case of circularity. This can be avoided by
substituting all the names for the other states in one’s def-
inition with variables which are bound by the existential
quantifier. For example, suppose one wishes to provide
a definition of a mental state such as the desire to have
a beer (let us call it M1 ). The definition will make a ref-
erence to other mental states. Thus, John is in state M1
(desires a beer) if and only if John is in state M2 (believes
a beer is present) and in state M3 (believes that he can
reach the beer), . . . , and in state Mi . The Ramsey sen-
tence for this definition is: John is in state M1 (desires a
beer) if and only if there is an x2 , there is an x3 , . . . and
there is an xi , such that John has x2 and John has x3 and,
. . . . John has xi , and (x2 , x3 , . . . xi ) are mental states. In
logical notation this Ramsey sentence reads as follows:
(∃x2 ) (∃x3 ) . . . (∃ xi ) [John has x2 and John has x3 and
. . . John has xi , and M (x2 , x3 , . . . , xi ).
Realism: A realist about a given area of discourse believes that

talk about objects and properties in that area of discourse
can be true because those objects and properties have
objective, mind-independent existence. A scientific realist
is typically also committed to the view that the objects of
current scientific theories exists independently of us and
actually have most of the properties we take them to have.
See Anti-realism
Further reading: Devitt (1991)
Recognition transcendence See Verification transcendence

Reference: The reference of an expression is what it stands

for. Thus, the reference of a proper name or a definite
description is the thing named or designated. Hence, the
reference of ‘the Queen of England in 2004’ is a person,
Elizabeth II. Frege uses the expression Bedeutung, which
has been variously translated into English as reference,
designation or meaning to indicate that for which a lin-
guistic expression stands. Currently, two different theo-
ries of reference are widely debated: the description or
cluster theory and the causal theory. According to the
first, the reference of a name is secured by means of a de-
scription which uniquely identifies the referent. Accord-
ing to the second, the reference is secured by a causal link
to the thing referred to.
See Causal theory of reference; Description theory
of reference; Inscrutability of reference; Semantic value;
Sense
Reference borrowing: This occurs when speakers use their

words in order to borrow their references from the uses
of those words made by other, generally more compe-
tent, speakers. Thus, even somebody who knows almost
nothing about Kurt Gödel can use the name ‘Gödel’ and
succeed in referring to him. In this instance, the speaker
when using the name defers to the authority of others
in order to have the reference fixed. Supporters of the
cluster theory of reference rely on this phenomenon to
explain how we can use names to refer to their bearers,
even though we do not associate an individuating cluster
of descriptions to each name. Supporters of the causal
theory of reference also use the notion of reference bor-
rowing in order to explain the dependence of uses of a
name by later speakers on the use made by initial dub-
bers of the names. Supporters of the causal view explain
reference borrowing in terms of a causal chain.
Reflexivity: The relation a thing has with itself.

See Equivalence relation
Regimentation: It involves translating a piece of ordinary lan-

guage into the canonical notation of a formal language,
thus allowing the logical form of the piece of language
under consideration to be made explicit.
Relation: There are different sorts: ‘. . . is a brother of . . . ’

is an expression for a two-place (dyadic) relation; ‘. . .
gives . . . to . . . ’ is an expression for a triadic relation. Re-
lations can have any number of places. It is generally
thought that in order for the relation to exist, its re-
lata (the things it relates) must also exist. Some make
exception for intentional relations such as believing or
thinking, since it is possible to think about what does not
exist. Others rely on the same facts to conclude that talk
of thinking and believing does not express a genuine re-
lation to what is believed or thought about.
See Intentionality
Relative identity: A notion that has been defended by Geach,

who puts forward two distinct theses on this topic. First,
he argues that it is not possible for any language to express
the standard absolute notion of identity. Instead, he states
that any claim that a is identical with b is in fact a short-
hand for the claim that a is the same F as b where F
is a sortal, such as ‘apple’ or ‘gold’. For Geach relative
identity cannot be explained in terms of absolute identity.
In his opinion the claim that a is the same F as b cannot
be understood as saying that a is F and b is F, and a
is identical with b. Second, Geach also claims that it is
perfectly possible for a and b to be the same F, but also to
be different Gs. Geach offers a variety of arguments for
the truth of this second thesis, some of which presuppose
the notion of a sortal, but some that do not.
See Quantifier; Sortal

Further reading: Noonan (1999)
Representation: Words and pictures are representations be-

cause they represent something. Arguably, thoughts are
also representations. There are different kinds of repre-
sentations. Thus pictures, for example, represent by re-
sembling that of which they are a picture. Linguistic rep-
resentations do not resemble what they represent, instead
they depend on conventions. Thus, it is in virtue of a
convention that the English word ‘cat’ represents cats.
Some philosophers attempt to explain these conventions
in terms of associations between words and ideas in the
mind. Thus, the word ‘cat’ would represent cats, because
it is associated with the mental idea of a cat. Philosophers
who adopt this approach take the notion of mental rep-
resentation to be basic.
See Indicator semantics; Teleosemantics
Response-dependence: Intuitively, a property is said to be

judgement- or response-dependent if and only if having
that property is a matter of the judgements or responses
issued by suitable subjects in suitable conditions. Thus,
response-dependent properties do not exist independently
of subjects’ responses or judgements. For example, one
might hold that red is a response-dependent property, and
claim that being red is simply a matter of looking red to
standard observers in standard conditions. As a matter of
contrast one might claim that being square is response-
independent because it is not true that to be square is
nothing over and above being judged to be square by
suitable subjects in suitable conditions. These intuitive
notions have been made precise by Wright by means of the
idea of provisional equations. Wright uses these equations
to clarify the notion of a judgement-dependent predicate.
The equation for the predicate ‘red’ would state that un-
der ideal conditions, the predicate ‘ . . . is red’ co-varies
with the predicate ‘a suitable subject S judges . . . to be
red’. In other words, in those conditions, whenever some-
thing is red, S would judge it to be red, and vice versa. The
mere existence of a co-variation between being red and
being judged to be red does not settle whether the sub-
jects’ judgements infallibly track mind-independent red,
or – on the contrary – the judgements themselves con-
stitute what being red is. For this reason, Wright claims
that a predicate is judgement-dependent if and only if
its provisional equation satisfies four conditions. (1) The
a-prioricity condition requires that the equation must be
true a priori. (2) The substantiality condition requires that
the ideal conditions are not specified in a trivial way. (3)
The independence condition requires that it must be pos-
sible in each case to ascertain whether the ideal conditions
obtain independently of the truth of any attributions of
the predicate whose status as response-dependent is un-
der consideration. (4) The extremal condition requires
that there is no better account for why the covariance
presented by the provisional equation obtains than the
hypothesis that the judgements in question determine the
extension of the relevant predicate rather than merely re-
flect its pre-determined extension.
See Missing-explanation argument
Further reading: Wright (1992), Appendix to ch. 3
Restricted quantification See Quantification
Rigid designator: An expression that refers to the same en-

tity in all possible worlds in which that entity exists,
and has no reference otherwise. Proper names such as
‘Tony Blair’, ‘London’, ‘Ben Nevis’ are often considered
examples of rigid designators. They are contrasted with
non-rigid designators of which many common definite de-

scriptions are examples. Thus, ‘the Prime Minister of the
UK in 2006’ is not rigid because it could have referred to
Gordon Brown. ‘Gordon Brown’ would instead be rigid
because it always refers to him or to nothing if he did not
exist. Some definite descriptions, however, are rigid. ‘The
sum of 2 + 2’ is a rigid definite description since it refers
to the number 4 in all possible circumstances. ‘The actual
winner of the Tour de France in 2004’ is also rigid since it
refers to Lance Armstrong in all possible worlds in which
he exists. Kripke makes a distinction between de jure and
de facto rigid designators. The first are those designators
that are stipulated to refer to a single object, Kripke thinks
proper names are like this. De facto rigid designators, on
the other hand, are those definite descriptions which re-
fer only to one thing because in every possible world the
same thing is the one thing which satisfies the descrip-
tion.
See Causal theory of reference; Cluster theory of ref-
erence; Description theory of reference; Direct reference;
Reference
Further reading: Kripke (1980)
Rigidifying expression: An expression which, when used to

qualify a non-rigid designator such as a definite descrip-
tion, transforms it into a rigid one. ‘Actual’ is one such
rigidifying expression. For example, ‘the President of the
United States in 2005’ refers to George Bush, but it could
have referred to somebody else had the outcome of the
2004 presidential elections been different. On the other
hand, ‘the actual President of the United States in 2005’ is
a rigid designator, if Bush is the actual President in 2005,
nobody else could be the actual President in 2005.
Rigidity: The semantic property of being a rigid designator.

Rorty, Richard (1931–): He is an American philosopher who

has held posts at Princeton University and at the Uni-
versity of Virginia. In Philosophy and the Mirror of Na-
ture (1980) Rorty argued that philosophy since the early
modern period has been mired by a picture of the mind
as containing representations that mirror reality. Rorty
describes himself as a supporter of pragmatism; he also
defends deflationism about truth. He has written many
articles on topics ranging from politics and deconstruc-
tion, to Davidson’s views on truth and epistemology.
Rule: A norm which is usually taken to be codified by means

of an explicit formulation. Lewis Carroll offered a neat
argument why not all norms can take the form of ex-
plicitly formulated rules. Consider the following argu-
ment, which has the form of modus ponens: 1. If today is
Sunday, tomorrow is Monday; 2. Today is Sunday. There-
fore, 3. tomorrow is Monday. Carroll wants us to imagine
somebody who accepts 1 and 2 but rejects 3. One might
try to convince this person by stating the following rule:
4. If ‘if P then Q’ and ‘P’ are true, then ‘Q’ is also true.
The interlocutor, however, can accept 4 as well as 1 and
2, and still reject 3, and the addition of further rules to
the premises will be of no help in getting him to accept the
conclusion. What is required is the acceptance of a rule
or norm of inference which cannot itself take the form of
a premise of the argument.
Rule-following: This issue was first discussed by Wittgen-

stein in the Philosophical Investigations (1953) and sub-
sequently revived by Kripke inWittgenstein on Rules and
Private Language (1982). Wittgenstein made several im-
portant remarks about rules and connected these to his
private language argument. First, Wittgenstein points out
that following or obeying a rule is different from acting in
a way that accords with it. He also notes that to think that
one is following a rule is not the same as following it, and

that the two notions should not be allowed to collapse
into one other. Finally, Wittgenstein shows that when try-
ing to elucidate the idea of following or obeying a rule
we are tempted by two equally unsatisfactory accounts.
The first account would explain rule-following in terms of
offering an interpretation of the rule. The account fails,
as Wittgenstein shows, because it generates an infinite
regress. In order to interpret the rule, we need an inter-
pretation of how to interpret the interpretation, and a
further interpretation to interpret that interpretation, and
so forth ad infinitum. The second account attempts to ex-
plain rule-following in terms of regularities of behaviour.
This account also fails because it cannot ground the dis-
tinction between behaviour that accords with the rule and
behaviour that follows it. Any account in terms of regu-
larity might explain what the person will do but not what
it ought to do, and it is the second normative notion that
is required by any satisfactory account of rule-following.
See Dispositionalism; Meaning scepticism; Normativ-
ity of meaning
Further reading: McDowell (1998), ch. 11
Russell, Bertrand (1872–1970): A British philosopher and

committed pacifist, Russell was educated at Cambridge
University where he subsequently lectured. His main con-
tributions to the philosophy of language are his account
of definite descriptions, his version of the correspondence
theory of truth, and some features of his account of
thought that has inspired others to develop the notion of
Russellian thoughts. He is perhaps most famous for his
contributions to mathematical logic, and in particular for
his formulation of the paradox of the class whose mem-
bers are all the classes which do not have themselves as
a member, and for his solution to this paradox by means
of his theory of types.
Russell’s principle: The principle attributed by Evans to

Russell according to which ‘in order to be thinking about
an object . . . one must know which object it is one is think-
ing about’. For Evans, Russell took his principle to imply
that one must be able to distinguish that object from all
other objects.
Russellian proposition See Singular proposition
Russellian singular term See Logically proper name
Russellian thought: A thought is said to be Russellian if and

only if it has, as one of its constituents, the object it
is about. Thus, Russellian thoughts would be a kind
of singular or object-involving thought since their exis-
tence depends on the existence of the objects the thoughts
purport to be about. These thoughts are called ‘Russel-
lian’ because sentences used to express their contents in-
volve what Evans has labelled a ‘Russellian singular term’,
namely a logically proper name which is a singular term
whose meaning depends on it having a reference. There is
disagreement even among supporters of the existence of
singular thoughts as to whether Russell’s account of their
constituents is correct.
See Demonstrative thought; Descriptive thought; sin-
gular proposition
S
Salva veritate: A Latin expression meaning ‘saving the
truth’. Two expression are said to be intersubstitutable
salva veritate when one can be substituted for the other
in the context of a given sentence without changing the

truth or falsity of that sentence.
See Extensional context
Satisfaction: A notion developed by Tarski as part of his the-

ory of truth.
See truth, semantic theory of
Satisfaction condition See Truth, semantic theory of
Saussure, Ferdinand de (1857–1913): A Swiss linguist, the

forefather of structuralism, who famously held that the
meaning (signified) of a word (signifier) is determined by
the relations between that word and other parts of lan-
guage, rather than by connections to extra-linguistic real-
ity. There are two kinds of intra-linguistic relations: syn-
tagmatic and paradigmatic. Syntagmatic relations hold
between a word and other words with which it can be
conjoined in a syntactically correct string (syntagm). For
instance, ‘a’ and ‘dog’ can form the syntagm ‘a dog’ and
thus are syntagmatically related. Paradigmatic relations
hold between words which can be inter-substituted in
strings without damaging their syntactical correctness.
For instance, ‘dog’ and ‘cat’ are thus related. He also drew
a distinction between a rule-governed abstract linguistic
system (langue) and its manifestation in the behaviour of
actual speakers of the language (parole). This distinction
bears significant similarities to Chomsky’s distinction be-
tween linguistic competence and linguistic performance.
Saussure’s most influential work, the Cours de linguis-
tique générale (1916), was published after his death and
consists mainly of amalgamated lecture notes taken by
his students.
Further reading: Devitt and Sterelny (1999), ch. 13.
Saying/showing: A distinction that plays an important

role in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus (1922). In that book
Wittgenstein appears to claim that there are features of

reality and of language that show themselves but cannot
be said. Any attempt to put them into words is destined
to end up as nonsense.
See Elucidation; Meaning, picture theory of
Scepticism about meaning See Meaning scepticism
Scope: Functions, operators and quantifiers when used in

complex expressions have a scope which is the part of
the expression to which they apply. Thus, in (5 + 3) − 4,
the whole expression is within the scope of the subtrac-
tion, whilst addition has a narrower scope which is in-
dicated by the brackets. Similarly, in the sentence ‘Not
everybody smokes’, the negation has a wider scope than
the universal quantifier.
Secondary quality: A perceptible property of things, like

colour or texture, which is in some sense relative to a
perceiver. John Locke thought of secondary qualities as
powers or dispositions of things to cause in us a certain
experience. More recently, secondary qualities have been
thought to be response-dependent. Thus, the property of
being red is defined in terms of looking read to standard
perceivers in standard circumstances.
See Primary quality; Response-dependence
Sellars, Wilfrid (1912–89): He was an American philoso-

pher who held posts at the University of Minnesota and
the University of Pittsburgh. His most significant con-
tribution to philosophy has been his sustained attack
on the myth of the given. Sellars provided an account
of meaning in terms of functional classification and for
this reason he has been seen as one of the forefathers of
inferentialism.
Semantic anti-realism: A view first formulated by Dummett

in terms of its opposition to semantic realism. A seman-
tic anti-realist about any given area of discourse claims
that sentences in that area of discourse should not be seen
as being made true or false by verification-transcendent
truth conditions, which is to say conditions whose ob-
taining or failure to obtain might be undetectable by us.
Dummett has provided several arguments against seman-
tic realism and in support of anti-realism. These include
the acquisition argument and the manifestation argu-
ment.
Semantic ascent: A common move in recent analytic philoso-

phy. It involves an ascent to language. It is a shift away
from using certain terms to talk about the terms them-
selves. Thus, semantic ascent is involved when disputes
about ethics, for example, are reformulated as disputes
about the function and truth conditions of ethical dis-
course.
Semantic externalism See Externalism
Semantic irrealism See Meaning irrealism
Semantic naturalism: The view that semantic properties such

as meaning are instantiated in virtue of the instantiation
of natural properties expressible in the vocabulary of the
natural sciences. Supporters of the view believe that se-
mantic properties are therefore ultimately explainable in
naturalistic terms. They might, for example, attempt to
explain them in terms of the causal relations between bits
of reality and mental states.
See Indicator semantics
Semantic realism: A supporter of semantic realism about a

given area of discourse holds that sentences in that area
of discourse have verification-transcendent truth condi-
tions; that is to say, truth conditions whose obtaining can
outstrip our ability to recognise or verify them. Semantic
realism is opposed by supporters of semantic anti-realism.
Dummett’s acquisition argument and manifestation argu-
ment are intended as global arguments against semantic
realism.
Semantic value: The semantic value of an expression, a name,

predicate or sentence, is the contribution that expression
makes to the determination of the truth or falsity of the
(possibly complex) sentences of which that expression is
a part. Thus, for example, the semantic value of a name
is the thing named, that of a sentence is its truth-value
(true or false). The semantic value of a predicate has been
thought by Frege to be a concept, a property or a relation;
others have taken it to be its extension.
See Bedeutung; Reference
Semantics: In recent years semantics has come to mean the

study of formal theories of meaning rather than simply
the study of the semantic (world-language) properties
of some expression. Paradigmatically, a formal seman-
tics for a fragment of a natural language consists first in
assignments of semantic values to various subsentential
portions of the language, such as objects to names and
extensions to predicates, and truth functions to various
operators. Second, the semantic theory provides interpre-
tations for complex sentences relative to a time, possible
worlds and index. The notion of an index is crucial to
the interpretation of sentences including indexical terms,
whose reference is not fixed independently of a context.
See pragmatics
Semantics, assertibility conditions: It is Dummett who first

elaborated an account of meaning in terms of the assert-
ibility conditions associated with statements or sentences.
Roughly speaking, the meaning of a statement is what is
known by the person who understands it. Dummett con-
tends that what that person would have knowledge of is
the conditions that warrant asserting that statement; in
other words, its assertibility conditions.
See Assertibility conditions; Meaning, theories of
Further reading: Dummett (1996), chs 1–6; Wright
(1993)
Semantics, conceptual role: A theory that explains the con-

tents of mental states in terms of their conceptual con-
nections to other mental states. More specifically, the
contents thus attributed to mental states are a matter of
the conceptual roles played by those states in the whole
economy of mental states. Conceptual roles are often ex-
plained inferentially in terms of the roles played by the
states in reasoning, their connections to perceptual inputs
and behavioural outputs. The content thus attributed typ-
ically is understood as a narrow content.
See Semantics, inferentialist
Semantics, inferentialist: A theory that explains the meaning

of a sentence or utterance in terms of its inferential con-
nections. Thus, the meaning of ‘Leo is a mammal’ is un-
derstood in terms of its entailing ‘Leo is an animal’, being
incompatible with ‘Leo is a plant’, and being entailed by
‘Leo is a lion’. This is a version of meaning holism be-
cause the meaning of each sentence is determined by its
connections to the meanings of other sentences.
Semantics, possible-world: First elaborated by Kripke, poss-

ible-world semantics provides a way of assigning truth
conditions to, and understanding the logical relations
between, sentences expressing counterfactuals or involv-

ing various modalities. Thus, for instance, necessary
truths are interpreted as being true in all possible worlds.
Further reading: Divers (2002)
Semantics, situational: A formal semantics that deploys the

notion of a situation which is a partial representation of
the universe.
Further reading: Barwise and Perry (1983)
Semantics, truth-conditional: Includes all formal theories of

the meanings of linguistic sentences or utterances in terms
of their truth conditions. The basic idea is that if a person
knows that the Italian sentence ‘la neve è bianca’ is true
if and only if snow is white, one knows what that sen-
tence means. Davidson developed this idea in detail. He
argued that any adequate formal theory of meaning for a
natural language such as English or Italian should gener-
ate T-sentences for each sentence of the target language
as theorems. Thus, an adequate theory of meaning for
Italian formulated in English should have as theorems,
T-sentences such ‘“la neve è bianca” is true if and only
if snow is white’, ‘“l’erba è verde” is true if and only
if grass is green’, and so forth for each sentence in the
language. It has been objected that Davidson’s adequacy
requirement is too lax. It would seem possible to have a
theory which generates T-sentences which are all true but
which, intuitively, do not seem to capture the meanings of
the relevant sentences. Thus, for example, the following
T-sentences are all true: ‘“la neve è bianca” is true if and
only if snow is white’; ‘“la neve è bianca” is true if and
only if snow is white and 2 + 2 = 4’; ‘“la neve è bianca”
is true if and only if grass is green’. Yet they cannot all
be giving the meaning of the Italian sentence. These dif-
ferent sentences are all true because any sentence of the
form ‘P if and only if Q’ is true provided P and Q are

both true or both false. In this instance the biconditional
T-sentences are equivalent because it is true that snow
is white, that grass is green, and that snow is white and
2 + 2 = 4. Davidson has replied to this objection by argu-
ing that in his view the T-sentences must be generated by
a recursive theory. As a result it generates T-sentences in
which parts of sentences such as the noun ‘neve’ (‘snow’)
make the same contribution to the meanings of the sen-
tences in which it occurs. Thus the theory respects the
principle of the compositionality of language, and rules
out the two rogue T-sentences above. Davidson also ar-
gues that a theory of meaning as a theory of truth is an
empirical theory, evidence for which must be found when
engaged in the project of radical interpretation.
See Convention T
Further reading: Davidson (1991), chs 1–5
Semiology See Semiotics
Semiotics: The most general science of signs was called ‘se-

meiotic’ by Peirce. For Peirce, signs are one kind of rep-
resentation, namely those whose interpretant is a mental
cognition. Contemporary semiotics is best seen as a de-
velopment of Saussure’s linguistics rather than Peirce’s
semeiotics.
Sense (Sinn): A notion introduced by Frege to solve a puzzle

about identity statements. He offered several, not exactly
equivalent, accounts of the notion of sense. About proper
names he writes that the sense is the mode of presentation
of the thing named. For Frege, all kinds of expressions
have a sense as well as a reference. Thus, more gener-
ally, he characterises the sense of an expression as what
determines the reference of that expression. Further, the
sense of an expression is identified as that expression’s

contribution to the cognitive content of the sentences of
which the expression is a part. Thus, Frege writes that
the sense of a sentence is a thought, and that such sense
determines the reference of the sentence, which is its truth-
value (the true or the false). For Frege, expressions might
have a sense without a reference. An example is provided
by names such as ‘Pegasus’. Since Pegasus does not exist,
this name lacks a referent. However, sentences in which
the name occurs still have content, they express thoughts,
although they lack a truth-value. Hence, the name must
have a sense which contributes to these thoughts. If the
sense of a proper name is understood as the mode of pre-
sentation of the thing named, it is hard to see, as Evans
pointed out, how names could have a sense while lacking
a reference. If a thing does not exist, there could not be a
mode of presentation of that thing either.
See Frege’s puzzles; Semantic value
Further reading: Frege (1892a)
Sentence: A complex linguistic expression typically consti-

tuted by, at least, either a singular term and a predicate or
a quantified expression and a verb. It is the smallest unit
of speech by means of which it is possible to perform a
speech act.
Sentence meaning See Linguistic meaning; Word meaning
Sign See Semiotics
Signified: The meaning of a linguistic expression.

See Saussure, Ferdinand de
Signifier: Any word or linguistic expression.

See Saussure, Ferdinand de
Singular proposition: A singular proposition is a proposition

whose identity is a function of the object it concerns, so
that the proposition exists only if the object does. In its
simplest Russellian version a singular proposition has an
actual object as a constituent. The proposition would thus
be about that object in virtue of having it as one of its
constituents. It is a matter of dispute, over and beyond
the dispute of whether propositions exist, whether there
are any singular propositions. Those who believe in their
existence take them to be expressed by sentences such as
‘Mount Everest is over 8,000 metres high’, ‘Tony Blair is
a man’, and ‘He [while pointing to Bob] is British’. They
contrast these propositions with those expressed by sen-
tences such ‘Whales are mammals’, which are about a
class of things rather than a particular one, and sentences
such as ‘The Prime Minister of the UK in 2004 was a man’
which express propositions about particulars, but where
the particular is singled out by means of a description.
The sentence ‘Tony Blair is a man’ is true in any actual
or counterfactual situation if and only if in that situation
Tony Blair exists and he is a man. The sentence ‘The Prime
Minister of the UK in 2004 was a man’ is true in any actual
or counterfactual situation if and only if in that situation
the UK had one and only one Prime Minister in 2004 and
that person, whoever it might be, was a man. So the two
sentences can plausibly be said to express different propo-
sitions, and the proposition expressed by the second is not
about the same person in all possible circumstances, and
thus cannot be said to involve one specific person.
See Indexical; Rigid designator; Sense; Singular
thought; Structured proposition; Thought
Further reading: Fitch (2002)
Singular term: An expression that refers to one object and is

translated into logic as a constant. Kripke takes ordinary
names like ‘London’ or ‘David Beckham’ as singular

terms. Russell, instead, thought of them as abbreviations
of definite descriptions, which are in his view quantified
expressions.
Singular thought: A thought which is object-involving in the

sense that the thought’s existence depends on the exis-
tence of the object it is about. Thus, for example, the
sentence ‘That [while pointing to Fido] is a dog’ could
be said to express a singular thought about Fido. The
thought would exist only if Fido exists, so that if one
were hallucinating Fido’s existence, and uttered the words
‘That is a dog’, these words would express no thought at
all. The view that at least some thoughts are singular is
not universally accepted. There is also a certain amount
of variation in the terminology used by those discussing
these topics. Thus, the expression ‘singular proposition’ is
sometimes used interchangeably with ‘singular thought’
since in their Fregean conception thoughts, which are the
senses of declarative sentences, are basically the same as
propositions. Also, it is not uncommon to see singular
thoughts referred to as Russellian thoughts, although not
all supporters of singular thoughts agree with Russell in
taking the object itself to be a constituent of the thought.
Finally, a few have used the expression ‘singular thought’
simply to mean the thought expressed by a proposition
containing a singular term.
See Demonstrative thought; Descriptive thought; Rus-
sell’s principle
Sinn See Sense
Sorites paradox: Also known as the heap paradox. It was first

formulated by Eubulides of Miletus a contemporary of
Aristotle (circa 350 BCE). It is obvious that one grain

of sand is not a heap, and it seems true that adding one
grain to something which is not a heap does not turn it
into a heap. However, by repeated applications of this
principle we are led paradoxically to conclude that even
one million grains of sand do not make a heap. The same
paradoxical results can be obtained when thinking about
subtracting one grain of sand from a heap; we are forced
to conclude that even one grain of sand alone is a heap.
The root of this paradox is the vagueness of the term
heap.
Sortal: A term like apple or book which supplies a criterion

of identity or identification for the individuals that fall
under it. It is a matter of dispute whether mass terms
count as sortals or if only count terms are to be included.
Mass terms do supply criteria of identification, but do
not supply criteria of individuation, and that is why some
philosophers do not consider them to be sortals.
Soundness: This notion has two separate senses: (1) In the

first sense, it is arguments that are said to be sound or
unsound. An argument is sound if and only if it is valid
and has true premises. So all sound arguments are valid,
but not all valid arguments are sound, because some valid
arguments have at least some false premises. (2) In the sec-
ond sense, it is formal systems that are said to be sound
or unsound. A formal system is sound if and only if only
valid arguments are provable in it. Otherwise, the for-
mal system is unsound. A formal system, however, can be
sound without being complete. That is to say, there might
be valid arguments for which no proof can be provided
in the system.
See Completeness; Validity
Speaker meaning: A notion used by Grice to refer to what a

speaker means by his or her words in a specific utterance,
which is to say what the speaker intends to convey by
means of the utterance. On many occasions the speaker
meaning and the linguistic meaning of the expression used
can be quite different. For instance, I may sarcastically
utter the words ‘that’s great’ to mean quite the opposite.
Also, out of ignorance or due to a temporary lapse, I may
use a word to mean something when its linguistic mean-
ing is quite different. Grice analyses speaker meaning in
terms of the speaker’s intention to produce a certain ef-
fect in his or her audience by his or her utterance, her
intention that the first intention is recognised by the au-
dience, and that this recognition plays a role in the ex-
planation of why the effect was produced. Typically, the
effect that the speaker intends to produce in the audi-
ence is coming to believe something, or doing something.
Thus, for example, by uttering the words ‘The book be-
longs to John’ I mean that the book in question belongs
to John if and only if in uttering those words I intend
to produce in my audience the belief that the book be-
longs to John, I also intend my audience to recognise that
that is my intention in making that utterance, and finally
I intend that the audience’s recognition of my intention
plays a part in the explanation of why they produce the
belief in question. Grice did not assume that speakers are
conscious of these complex intentions. Instead, he took
these intentions to be tacit. There are, however, coun-
terexamples to this account of speaker meaning. For in-
stance, John Searle proposes the case of an American cap-
tured by Italian soldiers during the Second World War
who tries to pass off as a German by uttering aloud in
German a line of poetry from Goethe in which the poet
asks the audience whether they know the land where the
lemon blooms. By his utterance, the American intends
the Italians to believe he is German, he intends them to

recognise his intention and this recognition plays a part in
the explanation why they come to believe he is German.
Yet, arguably, he does not mean by his words that he is
German.
See Meaning, communicative-intention theory of; Nat-
ural meaning; Non-natural meaning
Speech act: Warning, apologising, baptising, sentencing, or-

dering, quoting and asserting are among the things that
can be done with words. These are all called speech acts.
‘Speech’ is here understood in a broad sense to cover ev-
ery employment of language, including writing and sign-
ing (in sign language). Similarly, talk of uttering words
and sentences is intended also to cover cases in which
the words or sentences are either signed or written down.
There is no simple one-to-one correlation between speech
acts and sentences. The same sentence, like ‘the gate is
open’, can be used to make a statement or issue a warn-
ing, and these are speech acts of different kinds. Similarly,
the same speech act can be performed by uttering differ-
ent sentences. For instance, it is possible to make an apol-
ogy either by saying ‘I apologise’ or ‘I am sorry’. Austin
classified speech acts into locutionary, illocutionary and
perlocutionary.
See Illocutionary acts; Locutionary act; Perlocutionary
act
Statement: This notion is closely related to that of assertion. It

is notoriously ambiguous. Sometimes ‘statement’ is used
to mean what is stated or asserted, typically a proposi-
tional content expressed by an indicative sentence. On
other occasions, ‘statement’ is used to refer to the speech
act itself. Thus, when two people say the same thing, they
have in the first sense of the term made the same state-
ment, but in the second sense what we have are two dif-
ferent statements with the same content.
Stimulus-meaning: A notion introduced by Quine. The

stimulus-meaning of an expression is the ordered pair
consisting first of all of the sensory stimulations that
prompt native speakers to assent to an expression, and
second of the sensory stimulations that prompt native
dissent from the expression. Hence, for example, the
stimulus-meaning of ‘there is a blue flower here’ con-
sists of an order pair whose first member is the sensory
stimulations as of a blue flower, and whose second mem-
ber is sensory stimulations as of a yellow flower, or a
rabbit, or a person, and so forth. For Quine, while the
notion of stimulus-meaning is scientifically respectable,
the notion of meaning is not. Further, for Quine since
meaning is not determinate by stimulus-meaning, it is
indeterminate. Hence, Quine is a supporter of meaning
irrealism.
See Indeterminacy of translation; Inscrutability of ref-
erence
Strawson, P. F. (1919–2006): A British philosopher at Oxford

University, Strawson is perhaps best known for his work
on Kant and descriptive metaphysics. He was a supporter
of ordinary language philosophy, and developed an alter-
native to Russell’s account of definite descriptions based
on the notion of a logical presupposition. For Strawson,
an assertion of the King of France is bald is neither true
nor false since it presupposes (but does not state) falsely
that there is one King of France.
Further reading: Strawson (1950)
Strengthened liar paradox See Liar paradox

Structuralism: This label covers a broad range of views in

anthropology and continental philosophy as well as lin-
guistics. It originates in Saussure’s account of language in
terms of its internal relations. Saussure offered a view of
language as a formal structure which can be understood
in terms of relations between elements in the structure,
without any need to establish referential relations be-
tween the structure and anything outside. Structuralists
apply this methodological approach to all meaningful
practices, institutions, rituals and systems.
Structured proposition: According to this view, propositions

are complex entities that have parts. Supporters of the
view trace its lineage to Russell. There are different ver-
sions of the view, but typically its supporters argue that
the parts of a structured proposition are the semantic
values of words or phrases occurring in the sentence ex-
pressing the proposition. Thus, for example, the struc-
tured proposition expressed by the sentence ‘John shakes
Fred’s hand’ has as parts John, Fred’s hand and the rela-
tion of shaking. If propositions are structured, the propo-
sitions expressed respectively by the sentences ‘all trian-
gles have three sides’ and ‘all squares have four sides’
are different because, among other things, one has the
property of being a triangle as one of its parts and the
other does not. Hence, this account avoids one of the
problems besetting the view that propositions are sets of
possible worlds, since it is capable of explaining how log-
ically equivalent sentences (i.e., sentences which are true
at exactly the same possible world) can nevertheless ex-
press different propositions. Supporters of direct refer-
ence have used the notion of a structured proposition to
characterise a directly referential expression as one that
only contributes its referent to the structured proposition
expressed by the sentence of which it is a part.
Subject: This term has two distinct meanings: (1) In some in-
stances it is used as a synonym of ‘agent’. (2) Elsewhere
it indicates a distinct grammatical category. The subject
in a sentence is the expression which refers to the object
or objects the sentence is about.
Subjunctive conditional: Conditionals such as ‘If the presi-

dent were to reduce the level of taxation, the country
would be bankrupt in no time at all’. All of these con-
ditionals have the auxiliary verb ‘would’ in the conse-
quent. Some of these conditionals involve an antecedent
which is known or conceded to be false. These are known
as counterfactuals. Subjective conditionals are contrasted
with indicative conditionals.
Substantival term: An expression introduced by Geach as a

label for those general terms for which ‘the same’ gives a
criterion of identity. Thus, ‘cat’ is a substantival term be-
cause the expression ‘the same cat’ supplies a criterion of
identity. Names like ‘red thing’ are not substantival. ‘The
same red thing’ supplies no criterion of identity. Imagine
I have a red jumper, it is unclear how many red things I
have. Is one of its sleeves a red thing? Is the thread used
to stitch it another?
See Relative identity
Substitutional quantification: One of two interpretations of

the quantifiers. According to this interpretation, a sen-
tence like ‘something is red’ is true if and only if there is
a name, say ‘John’, which can be substituted in the ar-
gument place of the predicate ‘. . . is red’, to yield a true
subject – predicate sentence such as ‘John is red’. A uni-
versally quantified sentence such as ‘everything is red’ is
true if and only if for each and every name the sentence
that results by substituting that name in the argument

place of the predicate ‘. . . is red’ yields a true sentence.
Hence, quantified sentences are treated as shorthand for
long (perhaps infinitely so) sentences without quantifiers.
The sentence ‘everything is red’ is interpreted as short-
hand for the sentence ‘a is red, and b is red, . . . , and n
is red, . . . ’ where ‘a’, ‘b’, ‘n’, and so forth are the names
of each thing there is. The sentence ‘something is red’ is
taken as shorthand for the sentence ‘either a is red, or b is
red, . . . , or n is red, . . . ’. This interpretation of the quan-
tifiers is largely discredited because of the problem of the
nameless. There are more things than there are names for
them, so there are bound to be things without a name.
The long sentences without quantifiers cannot refer to
them; hence, they are not about everything. The quan-
tified sentences, on the other hand, are meant to cover
these nameless things as well.
See Objectual quantification; Quantification
Sufficient condition: Any condition which is sufficient for the

obtaining of something else. Thus, for example, being a
woman is a sufficient condition for being a human being.
That is, in order to be human it is enough or sufficient that
one is a woman. Sufficient conditions, however, might not
be necessary. Thus, it is not necessary to be a woman in
order to be a human being since men are also human
beings. Sufficient and necessary conditions are expressed
by means of conditionals. Thus, we can state that being
a woman is sufficient for being a human by saying: if
something is a woman, then it is a human being.
See Necessary condition
Superassertibility: A statement is said to be superassertible if

and only if it is warranted, and its warrant would survive
no matter how closely we scrutinise its pedigree and how
much further information we acquire. Thus, superassert-

ibility is a stable property because a statement that has it
cannot lose it. The notion was developed by Wright as a
plausible candidate for a notion of truth as an epistemic
notion.
See Truth, epistemic theories of
Further reading: Wright(1992), ch. 2
Supervaluation: A valuation is an assignment of a truth-value

to a sentence or of an extension to a predicate. A su-
pervaluation is a quantification over valuations. Thus, a
supervaluation is the assignment of truth (or super-truth)
to a sentence if and only if the sentence is true in all val-
uations, false (or super-false) if and only if the sentence
is false in all valuations, and neither true nor false in all
other cases.
Further reading: Williamson (1996), ch. 5
Supervenience: There are various notions of supervenience

(weak, strong, global and local), but the basic idea is that
some facts or properties supervene on other facts or prop-
erties (base) if and only if there cannot be any difference
in the supervenient facts unless there is a difference in
the base facts. Thus, if moral facts are supervenient upon
physical facts, two acts could not differ morally, unless
there is also some physical difference in the surrounding
circumstances.
Symbol: In semiotics, a symbol is a sign that represents what

it stands for by being connected to it by means of a con-
ventional relation. Words are the paradigmatic example
of symbols.
Syncategorema: A term used by medieval logicians to refer

to expressions that have no meaning by themselves but
only acquire a meaning when they are linked to other

expressions.
Synonymy: Two expressions are synonymous if and only if

they have the same meaning. Quine has argued in ‘Two
Dogmas of Empiricism’ (1951) that both this notion and
the notion of an analytic statement stand on an unsound
footing. These days few would adopt Quine’s stark posi-
tion.
Syntax: Contrasted with semantics and pragmatics, syntax

concerns the formal and grammatical features of linguis-
tic structures.
Synthetic: A statement, claim or sentence which is true (false)

partly in virtue of how things are. For instance, ‘there is
a cat on the mat’ is, if true, a synthetic truth. Synthetic
truths are opposed to analytic truths whose truth depends
only on the meanings of the words. Until recently, it was
not uncommon for philosophers to assume that all and
only analytic truths were necessary, and also that all and
only analytic truths were knowable a priori.
See Synthetic a priori
Synthetic a priori : Claims, statements or sentences which are

true or false not merely in virtue of the meanings of the
words, and yet are knowable a priori. Kant believed in the
existence of such claims partly because he had a very nar-
row understanding of the notion of an analytic truth. The
notion, or something like it, has been revived by Kripke.
In his view the statement ‘S is a metre long’, where S
names the standard metre, is a contingent truth which
is knowable a priori. It is contingent truth because that
very object S might not have been one metre in length,
and yet since it is the standard metre, we do not need to

measure it to know its length. Kripke’s notion of the syn-
thetic a priori is significantly different from what Kant
had in mind.
See Contingency
Systematically misleading expressions: In his paper ‘System-

atically Misleading Expressions’ (1932) Gilbert Ryle ar-
gued that many ordinary linguistic expressions are sys-
tematically misleading about their logical form. Thus the
expression ‘the thought of going to hospital’ misleadingly
appears to refer to an object when it is appears in the sen-
tence ‘Jones hates the thought of going to hospital’. Mis-
leading formulations can be substituted by paraphrases
of the original sentence that are not equally liable to mis-
lead.
Systematicity: A feature which is often attributed to linguistic

understanding.
See Compositionality; Language of thought
T
T-schema: The schema first used by Alfred Tarski to formu-
late his convention T. The schema is: S is True in language
L if and only if p. There are different accounts of what
can be put in place of the place-holders S and p depend-
ing on whether the schema is thought to apply directly to
sentences of a language or propositions. If sentences, then
the place of p is to be occupied by a sentence, and that
of S by a structural description or a quote name of that
sentence. If propositions, what replaces S is the name of
the proposition that is expressed by the sentence that re-
places p. The following are instances of T-schemes: ‘La
neve è bianca’ is True in Italian if and only if snow is

white; ‘Snow is white’ is True in English if and only if
snow is white; or given the second account: The propo-
sition that snow is white is True if and only if snow is
white. Tarski claimed that any materially adequate theory
of truth should have all the instances of the T-schema as
theorems. This schema has also been used by Davidson
to develop a theory of meaning as a theory of truth.
See Semantics, truth-conditional; Truth, semantic the-
ory of
T-sentence: Instances of the T-schema.

See Convention T
Tacit knowledge: Some philosophers, such as Dummett, have

invoked this notion to explain the relation that holds be-
tween competent speakers of a language and a theory
of meaning, consisting of axioms and theorems for that
language. Speakers are said to know these axioms and
theorems, although their knowledge of them is tacit be-
cause they might not be able to formulate them or even
recognise them as axioms or theorems when presented
with them. Evans has argued that such knowledge that
speakers are credited with cannot be taken as a genuine
propositional attitude because it does not interact in the
appropriate way with other propositional attitudes held
by speakers. Instead, Evans proposed a dispositional ac-
count.
See Semantics, truth-conditional
Tarski, Alfred (1901–83): A Polish logician whose permanent

contribution to philosophy is his formal definition of the
semantic concept of truth.
See Truth, Semantic theory of
Tautology: A logical truth in propositional logic, such as

either Cardiff is in Wales or Cardiff is not in Wales. This
sentence can be symbolised in propositional logic as ‘P or
not-P’ which is a logical truth because it is true no matter
what is actually the case in the world.
Teleosemantics: One kind of reductive naturalistic account of

the semantics of mental representations. Reductive natu-
ralistic accounts aim to explain the meanings of mental
states by showing that they are nothing over and above
some combination of non-normative states or properties
of the organism which can be accounted for in scientific
terms. The basic idea behind the teleosemantic approach
is to explain the content of some of the most basic mental
states, typically the most basic desires for food, water or
shelter in terms of biological functions. Supporters of the
view claim that at least some mental states have biologi-
cal purposes (teleology), which consist in bringing about
situations that enhance the survival of the organism. They
also claim that these situations give the contents or mean-
ings of these mental states. Thus, the state whose biologi-
cal function is to bring about that one has water is under-
stood as a desire whose content is that one wants water.
This approach has some distinctive advantages over some
of its rivals because arguably it avoids both the misrep-
resentation problem, since it allows for the possibility of
error and the disjunction problem. It does, however, face
some serious difficulties. First, its supporters need to of-
fer a different kind of account of the contents of more
sophisticated desires that appear to have no evolutionary
purpose, such as the desire to buy a Prada bag. Typically,
they will account for these sophisticated desires by build-
ing on the content of basic desires. Second, the theory
rules out the possibility of minds that have not evolved;
yet it seems to be possible, albeit extremely unlikely, that
a mind might emerge suddenly by chance. Third, sup-

porters of the view need to provide substantial evidence
for their claim that the contents of desires are explained
in terms of the biological purposes of the desires them-
selves. This claim requires evidence in support because it
goes beyond stating only that at least some of our desires
have evolutionary origins, or even that some desires have
evolutionary purposes, since it states that these alleged
purposes explain the contents of the desires.
See Indicator semantics
Further reading: Neander (2004)
Tense: Tensed expressions such as the verbs ‘was’ or ‘will

laugh’ are used to indicate time. There are structural par-
allels between the logic of tense and that of modality.
There are also similarities between tensed sentences and
sentences containing indexicals.
See De se attribution
Further reading: Galton (2003)
Term: A subsentential expression. Before modern logic was

developed it was thought of as the primary logical unit.
Tertium non datur, principle of: The logical principle that

there is no third truth-value besides truth and falsity.
Some systems of logic reject this principle and have other
truth-values, such as indeterminate or neither true nor
false.
See Excluded middle, law of
Thought: For Frege, a thought is the objective content that

we grasp when thinking. Thoughts, in Frege’s view, are
not psychological entities since they exist independently
of our ability to think them. Further, thoughts are public
so that different individuals can literally have the same
thought, rather than having thoughts which are only

exactly alike. Thus, for Frege a thought is a proposition.
A thought, so understood, is the sense of a declarative
sentence and has as its constituents the senses, or modes
of presentation, of the logical parts of that sentence. An
alternative to Frege’s theory can be found in Russell’s
work. Russell takes at least some propositions, with
which Fregean thoughts have been identified, to have
objects and properties (rather than their modes of presen-
tation) as their constituents. These are known as singular
propositions. It has been argued by John McDowell
that it is possible to wed a Fregean theory of thought as
having modes of presentation as its constituents with the
view that some thoughts are singular or object-involving.
McDowell claims that some senses or modes of presenta-
tion (Fregean thought-constituents) are object involving
since the singular terms, whose senses they are, have no
semantic value if the objects they purport to refer to do
not exist. He thus rejects the idea that these singular terms
could have genuine senses when they lack a referent.
See Descriptive thought; Demonstrative thought;
Russellian thought; Singular thought
Token: The type–token distinction was introduced by Peirce.

It is a distinction between sorts of things (types) and their
instances (tokens). The sentence ‘The cat is on the mat’
consists of six word tokens and five word types (because
it includes two tokens of the type ‘the’).
Tone: A term attributed to Frege by Dummett used to refer to

any feature of the meaning of an expression that makes
no difference to the truth or falsity of the sentences in
which it occurs. Thus, the difference between ‘dead’ and
‘deceased’ or between ‘sweat’ and ‘perspiration’ are dif-
ferences in tone only. Tone, sense and force are the three
ingredients of meaning as ordinarily understood.
Transformative grammar: It consists of rules of transforma-

tion which transform the product of the generative gram-
mar into sentences with the surface structure of language.
See Chomsky, Noam
Translation: This issue has been discussed by Quine, who ar-

gued that it is indeterminate.
See Indeterminacy of translation; Radical translation
Truth: There is a vast array of different philosophical theories

of truth: robust theories which take truth to be a property
with a substantive metaphysical nature, and deflationary
or minimalist views which either deny that truth is a prop-
erty or take it to have no substantive nature.
See Truth, deflationary theories of; Truth, robust theo-
ries of
Further reading: Alston (1996); Kirkham (1992)
Truth, as what works: Classical pragmatists defined truth as

what is good in the way of belief. In their view, the truth
of a belief is a matter of its practical utility on the whole
and in the long run. In other words, they think that ‘true’
is the label we use for beliefs that, on the whole and in
the long run, work to get us what we want. Critics point
out that it is not inconceivable that some beliefs might
be useful and yet false. They might also add that it is the
truth of a belief that might explain its utility, and not, as
classical pragmatists would have it, the other way round.
See Pragmatism; Truth, epistemic theories of
Further reading: Kirkham (1992), chs 3.2 and 3.3
Truth, coherence theory of: The view that truth is a matter

of coherence. It is one of the oldest theories of truth go-
ing back at least to the nineteenth-century neo-Hegelian
philosopher F. H. Bradley. According to this view, truth
is primarily a property of a whole system of beliefs or
claims. Individual beliefs (claims) are said to be true only

in so far as they belong to a system which is true. The
system is true if and only if the beliefs (claims) it includes
cohere with one another. This notion of coherence is not
easy to spell out. At the very least it requires consistency,
since a system that includes contradictions is not coher-
ent. But consistency alone is not enough. It is usually sup-
plemented with ideas of mutual support, comprehensive-
ness, explanatory power, and so forth. Thus, a system
of beliefs (claims) is said to be true if and only if it con-
tains no contradictions, it has great power of explanation,
it is comprehensive, the beliefs contained in it mutually
support each other to a high degree, and so forth. Since
the notions of mutual support and of explanatory power
are epistemic concepts, the coherence theory belongs to
the family of the epistemic theories of truth. A persistent
objection to this theory consists in the fact that we can
always conceive of a system of beliefs (claims) that pos-
sesses all these good epistemic features, but is nevertheless
false. If such a system is genuinely conceivable truth can-
not be the same as these good epistemic features, because
something can have these features but lack truth.
See Truth, epistemic theories of; Truth, robust theories
of
Further reading: Kirkham (1992), chs 3.5 and 7.4
Truth, correspondence theory of: The view that truth is a mat-

ter of a relation of correspondence between sentences, ut-
terances, beliefs, or propositions and reality. Thus, this is
not an epistemic theory of truth. It is the oldest theory of
truth which was arguably endorsed by Aristotle with his
claim that ‘to say that that which is, is, and that which is
not is not, is true’. There are several versions of the cor-
respondence relation which is intended to explain truth:
correlation and congruence are the two most common.
The first takes correspondence to be a relation involving

exclusively whole sentences, claims, beliefs or proposi-
tions and whole facts or states of affairs. Aristotle’s claim
might be an expression of this view. The second takes cor-
respondence to involve also relations between the parts of
sentences, claims, beliefs or propositions and the parts of
the facts or states of affairs which are said to correspond
to them. This is the view put forward by Russell. The
correspondence theory of truth has intuitive appeal. Its
main problems lie with providing a detailed specification
of the notions of fact or state of affairs and of correspon-
dence so as to make fully clear what it means to say that
something corresponds to the facts.
See Truth, identity theory of; Truth, robust theories of
Further reading: Kirkham (1992), ch. 4
Truth, deflationary theories of: A family of theories of truth

including the redundancy theory, the disquotational the-
ory and the prosententional theory. These theories deny
that ‘true’ refers to a substantive property. Some of these
theories also include the claim that, despite contrary ap-
pearances, ‘is true’ is not a predicate. Arguably, minimal-
ism about truth, which is committed to treating truth as
a merely formal property, belongs at least in spirit to the
deflationist family.
See Deflationism; Minimalism; Truth, disquotational
theory of; truth, minimalist theory of; Truth, prosenten-
tial theory of; Truth, redundancy theory of; Warranted
assertibility
Further reading: Stoljar (1997); Kirkham (1992) ch.
10;
Truth, disquotational theory of: Supporters of this view claim

‘is true’ is a disquotational device. Thus, for example,
A. ‘snow is white’ is true
has the same content as

B. snow is white
since the sole function of ‘. . . is true’ is to cancel out
the effect of the quotation marks.
See Disquotation; Truth, deflationary theories of
Truth, epistemic theories of: These are robust theories that

identify truth with a property which is, at least in part,
epistemic. Epistemic properties are those that concern
justification, warrant, evidence or knowledge. Many dif-
ferent theories belong to this family, including coheren-
tism, verificationism and pragmatism. Epistemic theories
of truth are typically associated with various forms of
anti-realism.
See Truth, as what works; Truth, coherence theory of;
Truth, verificationist theory of
Further reading: Alston (1996), ch. 7
Truth, identity theory: The view that the contents of thoughts

are identical with the facts that make them true.
Further reading: Hornsby (2001)
Truth, minimalist theory of: The view developed by Paul Hor-

wich that involves thinking of truth as a merely formal
property with no hidden structure. Consequently, the
minimalist theory of truth consists of nothing more than
a list of all the (uncontroversial) instances of the equiva-
lence or T-schema: it is true that p if and only if p. In other
words, the theory would consist of a list which includes:
it is true that snow is white if and only if snow is white;
it is true that London is in England if and only if London
is in England; and so on and so forth.
See Deflationism; Minimalism; Truth, deflationary the-
ories of
Truth, prosentential theory of: A theory of truth which de-

nies that the expression ‘. . . is true’ is a predicate, and
consequently also denies that truth is a property. Instead,
supporters of the view claim that in all its uses ‘true’ ap-
pears as a syncategorematic fragment of a prosentence
such as ‘that is true’ or ‘it is true’. The advantage of this
theory over other versions of deflationism is its ability to
cope with sentences such as ‘everything the pope says is
true’ which the prosententialist analyses as ‘for anything
that can be said, if the pope said it, it is true’. The theory
cannot be applied to uses of the noun ‘truth’.
See Anaphora; prosentence; Truth, deflationary theo-
ries of
Truth, redundancy theories of: All those theories that take

the expression ‘true’ to be redundant. Earlier versions
took ‘true’ to be force redundant, they stated that to
say that p is true is equivalent to asserting p, for any
sentence p. These theories fail because, as Frege pointed
out, they cannot explain embedded uses of ‘true’. For
example, in the conditional ‘If it is true that today is
Wednesday, tomorrow is Thursday’, the sentence ‘today
is Wednesday’ which is said to be true, is not asserted.
Later versions of this approach took ‘true’ to be content-
redundant; they stated that the content or meaning of
‘it is true that p’ is the same as the content of ‘p’ for
any sentence p. The disquotational theory of truth is
an example of a content-redundant theory of truth. All
redundancy theories are examples of a deflationist ap-
proach to truth since they take truth to be metaphysically
unimportant.
See Truth, deflationary theories of; Truth, disquota-
tional theory of
Truth, robust theories of: A theory of truth is robust when it

takes truth to be a property which has a substantial na-
ture. Robust theories of truth are opposed to deflationary
accounts that deny that ‘true’ stands for any property at
all, and to minimalist accounts which hold that truth is
a mere formal property with no nature or hidden struc-
ture. Robust theories of truth include accounts of truth
as correspondence, as coherence or theories that identify
truth with a suitable epistemic property.
See Truth, as what works; Truth, coherence theory of;
Truth, correspondence theory of; Truth, deflationary the-
ories of; Truth, verificationist theory of
Truth, semantic theory of: This theory was developed by

Tarski during the first half the twentieth century. Tarski
takes truth to be a semantic concept which is to be de-
fined in terms of another semantic concept: satisfaction.
For Tarski any correct theory of truth will have to meet
a criterion of material adequacy which is known as con-
vention T. A theory of truth in L is materially adequate
if and only if the theory entails for each sentence p of the
language, the corresponding T-sentence: S is True-in-L if
and only if p (where S is the name of p). If the language
only had a finite number of sentences, the conjunction
of the corresponding T-sentences would provide an ade-
quate theory of the truth predicate in that language. For
languages with an infinite number of sentences recursive
rules are necessary. However, one cannot directly offer
a recursive theory of truth because some sentences, like
‘Something is white’, which are not atomic, have con-
stituents that are not sentences. Instead, they are obtained
from the open sentences and quantifiers. These compo-
nents are not sentences and therefore do not have a truth-
value. Tarski uses the notion of satisfaction of an open
sentence or a sentence by a sequence of objects in order
to define truth. The intuitive idea of satisfaction is sim-

ple: the open sentence ‘x1 is in England’ is satisfied by a
sequence of objects that has London in its first place, if
and only if London is in England. Open sentences are sat-
isfied by some sequence and not others, but if a sentence
is satisfied by a sequence, it is satisfied by all sequences,
and if it is not satisfied by a sequence, it is satisfied by no
sequence. Hence, Tarski defines truth as satisfaction by
all sequences.
Further reading: Kirkham (1992), ch. 5; Tarski (1944)
and (1969)
Truth, verificationist theory of: It is the view that truth is a

matter of verification. The main idea behind this posi-
tion is that there is a close connection between the evi-
dence available for a claim and its truth, such that truth
cannot in principle outstrip verification. This idea can be
fleshed out thus: to say that a sentence is true is to say that
there is a warrant to assert it. This view was first devel-
oped by Dummett. It constitutes one of the main planks
of the kind of anti-realism he has articulated in several
articles.
See Acquisition argument; Manifestation argument;
Verification transcendence
Further Reading: Alston (1996), ch. 4; Kirkham
(1992), ch. 8
Truth aptness: Sentences in an area of discourse such as ethics

or aesthetics are said to be truth apt if and only if they
can be assessed for their truth or falsity. Some support-
ers of non-cognitivism about a given area of discourse
deny that sentences in that area are truth apt, so that in
their view nothing either true or false can be said in that
area.
Truth-bearer: It is what is said to be true or false. More specif-

ically, it is the object of which the property truth is pred-
icated. Philosophers disagree about the nature of these
objects. Some argue that propositions are the primary
truth-bearers, and that sentences or statements are said
to be true only in so far as they express true propositions.
Others, who think that propositions are dubious entities,
prefer to take the truth-bearers to be linguistic entities
such as utterances.
See truth-maker
Truth condition: The condition which must be satisfied for

the sentence or utterance, whose truth condition it is, to
be true. For instance, the truth condition of the sentence
‘snow is white’ is snow’s being white.
See semantics, truth-conditional
Truth function: A function which takes truth-values as its ar-

guments and yields truth-values as its values. Negation,
disjunction, conjunction, the material conditional and the
material biconditional are the best-known examples of
truth-functions.
See Conditional
Truth-functional sentential connective: A part of speech, such

as ‘and’, ‘or’, ‘not’ and ‘if . . . then . . . ’ which connects sen-
tences. It is said to be truth-functional because the truth
or falsity of the resultant composite sentence is a func-
tion of, or completely determined by, the truth-values of
the component sentences. Thus, for instance, the com-
posite sentence ‘Edinburgh is in Scotland and Cardiff is
in Wales’ is true because both its component sentences are
true. The meaning of a truth-functional sentential connec-
tive is given by its associated truth-table.
See Truth function
Truth-maker: What makes a truth true. Thus, for instance, the

truth-maker of a sentence (say, ‘Pussy, the cat, is on the
mat’), or of one of its an utterances, or of the proposition
it expresses is something – a fact (that Pussy is on the mat)
or a thing (Pussy) – which makes that sentence, utterance
or proposition true. Not everybody agrees that every truth
requires a truth-maker. Rather, this is a view held only by
some of those philosophers who believe that truth is a
metaphysical property with an interesting nature.
See Truth, robust theories of; Truth-bearer
Further reading: Armstrong (2004)
Truth-table: A table which provides all the possible com-

binations of the truth-values taken by complex truth-
functional sentences given the values assigned to their
atomic sentential constituents. For instance, a truth-table
shows that the conjunction of the sentences ‘it is raining’
and ‘it is windy’ is true when it is both raining and windy,
and false in all other cases. Thus:
It is raining It is windy It is raining
and it is windy
T T T
T F F
F T F
F F F
Truth-tables are used to illustrate the meaning of truth-
functional sentential connectives. They also offer an ef-
fective method for testing the validity of arguments in
propositional (sentential) logic.
See Wittgenstein, Ludwig
Truth-value: The value yielded by a function like a predicate

or like a truth function for a given argument or argu-
ments. Classically, there are only two truth-values: the
true and the false. More recently, non-classical logicians

have explored other types of truth-value such as both true
and false, neither true nor false, and indeterminate.
Truth-valueless sentence: A sentence is said to be truth-

valueless if it lacks a truth value. Strawson introduced
this idea when he argued that sentences whose subject
fails to denote (e.g., Pegasus is a winged horse) can only
be used to make pseudo-statements which lack a truth-
value.
Twin Earth: The term is now used to refer to a family of

thought experiments the first of which was formulated
by Hilary Putnam. Putnam used the thought experi-
ment to defend the slogan that meanings are not in the
head. This is the view, now known as semantic exter-
nalism, which proposes that physical and environmen-
tal factors external to a speaker contribute to the in-
dividuation of the meanings of her utterances. In his
thought experiment, Putnam asks us to imagine a far-
away planet, which he calls Twin Earth, that is an ex-
act duplicate of Earth with the exception that on Twin
Earth what fills the lakes, and is the odourless colour-
less liquid drunk by the inhabitants of the planet, has
the chemical composition XYZ and not H2 O. Inhabi-
tants of Twin Earth use the word ‘water’ when talking
about this stuff. Putnam asks us to imagine an earthling,
Oscar, and his doppelgänger on Twin Earth, Twin Os-
car, both living in 1750. Oscar points to the contents of
a glass and utters the words ‘That’s water’. Twin Os-
car also points to the contents of a glass and utters the
words ‘That’s water’. Since they live in 1750 when chem-
istry had not been developed, neither has any knowl-
edge of the chemical composition of the stuff they point
to. Putnam’s intuition is that the stuff on Twin Earth is
not water, it is something else, let us dub it ‘twater’. He

also thinks that both Oscar and Twin Oscar say some-
thing true by means of their utterances. Therefore, he
concludes that their words have different meanings. Os-
car’s word ‘water’ is an English word that refers to water,
namely H2 O. Twin Oscar’s word ‘water’ is a word in Twin
English that refers to twater, namely XYZ. But now, since
Oscar and Twin Oscar are exactly alike, what gives their
words different meanings must be not a matter of what
goes on in their heads, but the result of differences (al-
though these are undetectable by them) in their physical
environments.
See Broad content; Content; Individualism
Type See Token
U
Understanding: Contemporary philosophers tend to assim-
ilate understanding, especially linguistic understanding
with knowledge. Thus, they provide accounts of what
speakers must know in order to count as understanding
the language.
See Tacit knowledge
Universal: The existence of universals is a matter of dispute.

If they exist, they are those abstract entities which are the
referents of general terms such as ‘red’ or ‘apple’. There
are two versions of realism about universals. Some be-
lieve universals to transcend particulars and to be capable
of existing uninstantiated. Thus, the universal could exist
even though no particular instance or example of it would
exist. Others believe that universals only exist when
instantiated in particulars. Supporters of nominalism

deny the existence of universals.
See Abstract entity
Universal grammar: First defined by Chomsky as the initial

stage of the language faculty, he later characterises it as a
set of innate universal principles combined with parame-
ters whose settings vary from language to language.
Universe of discourse See Domain
Univocal meaning: Said of an expression when it is used with

only one meaning.
Unrestricted quantification See Quantification
Use: Wittgenstein famously remarked in the Philosophical In-

vestigations (1953) that for the most part when we ask
about the meaning of a term we are seeking instructions
about how to use it. Subsequently, some philosophers
have interpreted this remark to indicate that facts about
meaning can be reduced to facts about use. Others dis-
agree because they think that meaning is irreducibly nor-
mative. That is, they argue that the meaning of a term
determines how it ought to be used (its correct use) rather
than how it is used (its actual use).
See Berkeley, George; Dispositionalism; Meaning, use
theory of; Normativity of meaning
Use–mention distinction: In the sentence, ‘Cardiff is the capi-

tal of Wales’, the words ‘Cardiff’ and ‘is’ are used. In the
sentences ‘“Cardiff” has seven letters’ and ‘“Is” is a verb’
those words are mentioned. Thus, to mention a word or
expression is to talk about the word or expression itself,
rather than to use the word or expression to talk about
something else. In standard English quotations are typ-

ically used to indicate that an expression is mentioned
rather than used. The distinction between use and men-
tion is not always mutually exclusive. At times expres-
sions are both used and mentioned simultaneously. Con-
sider, for example, the following: Davidson writes that
in lectures the introduction of quotation ‘was accompa-
nied by a stern sermon on the sin of confusing the use
and mention of expressions’. In this sentence the words
within the quotation marks are mentioned since they are
presented as Davidson’s words, but they are also used
since the whole sentence is not about those words them-
selves but what they convey.
Utterance: It consists in the writing or speaking of a sentence

or an expression by one individual at a specific time. What
is uttered in an utterance is a token of a word, expression
or sentence type. Some philosophers, who are not keen
on propositions, take utterances to be the primary truth-
bearers.
V
Vagueness: A term is said to be vague if its range of appli-
cation has borderline cases. Thus, for instance ‘bald’ is
vague since there are individuals who are neither clearly
bald nor clearly not bald. The phenomenon of vagueness
is complicated by the existence of higher-order vague-
ness. We have higher-order vagueness when the demar-
cation of borderline cases is also vague. Thus, we do not
just have borderline cases of application, we have also
instances where it is a borderline case whether the case
is a borderline case. There are competing philosophical
accounts of vagueness. Some see vagueness as a feature
of reality itself; others take it to be a feature of language

or a consequence of human ignorance.
Further reading: Williamson (1996)
Validity: An argument is said to be valid if and only if its

premises offer the right kind of support for its conclu-
sion. The most common notion of validity is deductive
validity, which is the validity of a deductive argument.
There are two definitions of this latter notion. An argu-
ment is deductively valid if and only if it is not possible
for the conclusion to be false when all the premises are
true. Alternatively, an argument is deductively valid if and
only if it is necessarily the case that if all the premises are
true, the conclusion is also true. In classical logic these
definitions are equivalent.
Value: In mathematics and in logic the output of a function.

For example, the value of the addition function for the
arguments 2 and 3 is 5.
Value-range (Werthverläufe): A technical term used by Frege

to refer to the extension of a function. A concept is for
Frege a one-place function from objects to truth-values.
Thus, for instance, the concept of being a cat is a function
that yields the values true or false for each object in the
universe. Its extension is the class of all things for which
the function takes the value true. In other words, its ex-
tension is the class that has as a member each and every
cat. Frege’s value-range for this concept is identical to
this class. It is understood in terms of the range of values,
true or false, associated by the function with each object
in the universe. But, for Frege, all sorts of functions, not
only concepts, have value-ranges that give their extension.
Different functions can have the same value-range or ex-
tensions. Thus, the mathematical functions x2 − 4x and
x (x − 4) have the same value-range, because they yield

the same course of values for each argument. Similarly
the concepts of being a trilateral closed figure and being a
triangular closed figure have the same extension because
any closed figure with three sides has three angles, and
vice versa.
Variable: In logic, variables are place-holders. They offer a

convenient means of representing gaps in sentences or
arguments which can be filled by a name or a sentence.
Thus, in ‘x runs’, ‘x’ is variable for which a name ‘John’,
for instance, can be substituted. In predicate logic, the oc-
currences of variables are distinguished between free and
bound. A bound occurrence of a variable is one that is
associated with a quantifier. For example, in logic, ‘ev-
erything has a mass’ is rendered ‘for everything x, x has
a mass’. The variable ‘x’ is in this instance bound by the
quantifier everything. The occurrence of ‘x’ in ‘x runs’,
on the other hand, is free because it is not bound by a
quantifier. Sentences do not have free variables as com-
ponents.
Verdictive: A term coined by Austin for a type of (illocution-

ary) speech act which consists in the giving of a verdict
or the exercising of judgement. The acquittal of a defen-
dant by a jury by uttering the words ‘Not guilty’ is the
paradigmatic example of a verdictive.
Verification condition: The verification conditions of a state-

ment are the conditions under which it would be verified.
Thus, the existence of a black swan is the condition that
verifies the statement that some swans are black. Logi-
cal positivists have developed accounts of the meaning of
statements in terms of their verification conditions.
See Logical positivism; Meaning, verification theory of
Verification principle: The principle according to which the

meaning of any a posteriori sentence or statement is
given by its method of verification. The principle was
first formulated in terms of conclusive verification, so
that only statements that could actually be conclusively
verified were thought to be meaningful. The statement
that Boston is in Massachusetts would have a mean-
ing, according to this view because the observation that
Boston is in Massachusetts conclusively verifies it. There
are, however, many other statements which would fail
to have a meaning in accordance with this formulation
of the principle. Some of these seem legitimate scientific
statements. They include all universal statements since
these could always be falsified by a future observation,
and are therefore never conclusively verified. They also
include statements about any part of the universe which
in practice or in principle is not accessible to observation.
Ayer has attempted to provide weaker formulations of
the principle which would treat statements such as these
as meaningful. He took statements to be meaningful if
they could be weakly verified, which is to say if there are
possible observations which would render the truth of
the statement probable. Unfortunately, this formulation,
once made more precise, allows for far too many state-
ments to count as meaningful. Critics of the view often
complain that any statement of the verification princi-
ple fails by its own lights to be meaningful since there
are no possible observations which would make its truth
probable. Supporters might reply that the principle is not
intended as a factual statement.
See Logical positivism; Meaning, verification theory of
Verification transcendence: The truth conditions of a propo-

sition are said to transcend verification if and only if even
in ideal conditions we are not in a position to tell whether

they obtain or not. For Dummett this account of the truth
conditions of sentences in a given area of discourse is a
trademark of semantic realism.
Further reading: Miller (1998), ch. 9.3
Verificationism See Meaning, verification theory of
W
Warranted assertibility: A sentence has this property when
one is entitled to its assertion. Wright has argued that
supporters of deflationism about truth are committed to
the identification of truth with warranted assertibility. He
also claims that such an identification is mistaken. He
concludes that deflationism is untenable.
See Superassertibility
Further reading: Wright (1992), ch. 1
Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1889–1951): Born in Austria,

Wittgenstein spent most of his life in Britain. He was
educated at Cambridge where he studied with Russell.
He soon held teaching positions at Cambridge, where
he taught the next generation of British philosophers.
Wittgenstein had an uneasy relation with philosophy
and with Cambridge. He volunteered to fight for Austria
in the First World War, and subsequently he abandoned
academia to be become a school teacher and then
a gardener. He returned to Cambridge in 1929 and
lectured in the 1930s, before volunteering as a medical
orderly in Newcastle during the Second World War. He
finally resigned from Cambridge in 1947. Wittgenstein’s
contribution to philosophy is immense. In his early
work the Tractatus (1922) he developed the idea of
truth-tables as well as the picture theory of meaning. In

the Philosophical Investigations (1953) he formulated
the private language argument, his rule-following con-
siderations discussed the relation of meaning to use, and
developed the vocabulary of language games and family
resemblances.
See Meaning, picture theory of; Ostension; Saying-
showing
Further reading: Kenny (1975)
Word: The individuation of word-types is much harder than

it might appear at first sight. Take the sentence ‘British
left waffles on Falkland Islands’. This sentence is open to
two interpretations. In one of them ‘waffles’ functions as
a verb, in the other as a name. If we were to translate
the sentence into logic we would use different symbols
for ‘waffles’ depending on whether it is a verb or a name.
There are many examples of this phenomenon (known
as homonymy) which indicate that we cannot rely on
orthography (or phonetics) alone to individuate words,
that is to recognise for any two signs whether they are
tokens of the same or of different words.
Word meaning: Many philosophers, following Frege’s con-

text principle, argue that sentential meaning is primary
in any philosophical account of meaning. The meanings
of words, according to this view, are derivative; it is a
matter of the contributions made by the words to the
meanings of the sentences in which they can occur. On
the other hand, the compositionality of language suggests
that the meaning of a sentence is determined by the mean-
ings of its constituent words together with facts about the
sentence’s structure. This position suggests that word
meaning is primary and sentence meaning is derivative.
Wright, Crispin (1942–): A British philosopher who is at the

time of writing working at the University of St. Andrews
and at Columbia University. He is well known for his re-
vival of Frege’s logicism in arithmetic, for his refinement
of Dummettian semantic anti-realism and for his elabo-
ration of the notion of response-dependence.
Z
Zeugmas: This is a figure of speech in which one word which
qualifies other words in the sentence is used with two dif-
ferent senses. Gilbert Ryle’s famous example of a zeugma
is: ‘She came home in a sedan chair and a flood of tears’.
The use of ‘in’ in that sentence is zeugmatic because it does
two jobs: it indicates what she travelled in, and the emo-
tional state she was in. These are different senses of ‘in’.
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Philosophy of Language A–Z

These thorough, authoritative yet concise alphabetical guides introduce the

Philosophy of Language A–Z

This essential reference tool, written in a language accessible to beginners and

Alessandra Tanesini is Reader in Philosophy at Cardiff University. Her publications

Cover design: River Design, Edinburgh

Edinburgh University Press

Christian Philosophy A–Z, Daniel J. Hill and Randal D.

Aesthetics A–Z, Fran Guter

Edinburgh University Press

Edinburgh University Press Ltd

Typeset in 10.5/13 Sabon

A CIP record for this book is

ISBN 978 0 7486 2228 3 (hardback)

The right of Alessandra Tanesini

Published with the support of the Edinburgh University

Series Editor’s Preface vii

Philosophy of Language A–Z 1

Philosophy is not only expressed in language, but language is

This dictionary introduces readers to the main theories, prob-

A priori: The term applies to what can be known by reflection

two plus two is three. A priori truths are not empirical,

Abstract entity: An entity that exists outside space or time

Abstraction: (1) Early modern philosophers used the term to

direction. Frege was dissatisfied with it because the defi-

Acquisition argument: This is a challenge, put forward by

Alethic: An adjective which means pertaining or concerning

Ambiguity: A word or expression is ambiguous when it has

Analogy: An argument by analogy is one that relies on the

Analysis: It is a means of clarifying a concept by breaking it up

Analysis, paradox of: The paradox has a long history having

Analytic: A statement, claim or sentence which is true (false)

Anaphora: The cross-referencing relation which can hold, for

Anscombe, G. E. M. (1919–2001): Professor Anscombe was

Anscombe had been a student of Ludwig Wittgenstein,

Anti-realism: The label for a family of views opposed to re-

Argument: (1) A piece of reasoning consisting of one or more

Argument from above: One of two arguments offered by

is to say, there will be more than one way of translating

Argument from below: One of two arguments offered by

assent to ‘gavagai’ when a rabbit is in sight and dissent

thing’ because a white foot of a rabbit is also a thing.

Ascription: Attribution. When philosophers talk about as-

Assertibility condition: The condition which, if satisfied, war-

Assertion: A speech act that consists in putting forward a

Assertoric content: The fact stating content of statements.

Assertoric force: In order to make an assertion, a declarative

Asymmetric dependence: This is Fodor’s answer to the dis-

so that they looked very different from rabbit, the per-

Atomic sentence: A basic sentence which cannot be further

Attributive position: An adjective occurs in an attributive po-

Austin, J. L. (1911–60): Austin worked at Oxford University

Ayer, A. J. (1910–89): Famous for introducing logical pos-

book Language, Truth, and Logic (2nd edn. 1946) Ayer

Begriffsschrift See Concept-script

Behabitive: A term coined by Austin for a type of (illocu-

Belief: Like desires, wants and hopes, beliefs are propositional

Berkeley, George (1685–1753): Born in Kilkenny, Ireland and

Thus in his view, for example, we do not possess a general

Biconditional: A sentence or proposition of the form ‘P if and

Bivalence: The law that states that every statement is either

Blackburn, Simon (1944–): A British, Cambridge-educated

the main proponent of a version of non-cognitivism which