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Jerrold J. Katz
The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 78, No. 4. (Apr., 1981), pp. 203-233.
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LITERAL MEANING; A N D LOGIC:AL THEORY 203
I N "Literal ~ e a n i n g , "John
' Searle claims to refute theview that
sentences of a natural language have a meaning independent of
the social contexts in which their utterances occur. T h e present
paper is a reply on behalf of this view. In the first section, I show that
the issue is not a parochial dispute within a narrow area of the philos-
ophy of language, of interest only to specialists in the area, but is at
the heart of a wide range of important philosophical problems, those
on which the recent linguistic turn in philosophy has properly taken
a grammatical perspective. In the second section, I reply to Searle's
criticisms of the view.
I
Philosophers who take the position that contextually independent
sentence meaning exists have a reason for thinking that literal sen-
tence meaning does not depend on contextual factors, namely that
such meaning can be accounted for purely grammatically as a com-
positional function of the meanings of component words and syntac-
tic structure. This reason has at times been challenged by philos-
ophers and linguists, but these challenges turn out on close examina-
tion to bear only on dispensible aspects of the way compositionality
has been formulated and so to be easily met. Searle's criticisms, how-'
ever, d o not constitute another of these indirect challenges; they at-
tack the idea of context-free meaning directly.
But Searle's attack is itself strangely context-free. One could hardly
guess from Searle's discussion that the issue has broad philosophical
* T h e author wants to thank Ned Block for helpful discussions of a n earlier draft.
' Erkrnntnts, X I I I , 2 (July 1978): 207-224; reprinted in Searle's Expresston and Mean-
ing (New York: Cambridge, 1979),pp. 117-136. Parenthetical page references to Searle
will be to this article, unless otherwise noted, with the Erkenntnis numbering.
' F o r example, Donald Davidson in making the crucial step in motivating his pro-
gram, the step from a 'means that' form of analysis to a ' s is T if and only if p' form,
claims that the step is warranted as the only way he knows to deal with the difficulty
that "we cannot account for even as much as the truth conditions of [belief sentences
and others containing intensional contexts] o n the basis of what we know of the mean-
ings of words in them." See his "Truth a n d Meaning," in J. F. Rosenberg and C .
Travis, eds., Readings i n the P h i l o s o p h y of Language (Englelvood Cliffs, N.J.:
Prentice-Hall, 1971), p p . 433-435. Davidson says this without argument, presumably
relying o n Benson Mates, "Synonymity," in L. Linsky, ed., Senlnntics and the Philos-
opliy of Lnnguage (ITrbana: ITni\.. of Illinois Pless, l9.52), p p . 111-138. Noarn
<:homsL\ also uses a {zrriant of Al:rtes's a~.gurnentto rnoti\.atc his Extcnded Standard
Theor!; sec hir "Deep Struc-ture. Surface Struc ture, and Scn1:rntic Interpretation" in
S t u d r r . ~o n Senzar11rc.srn ( ; e ? ~ e r n t ~Gr ~mer n n ~ n r( T h r Hague: hlouton, l972), p p . 87 8.
T h e standard intrnrionalist rejoinder in Alonzo C:hurch. "Intensional Isomorphism
and Identity of Belief," Philosophical Studies, \., 5 (October 1954): 65-73, though o n
the right track, ir not sufficient. Sre m ) discursions in Semnritic. Theory (New York:
Harper & Rolv. 1972). pp. 263-280, hereafter S T , and in "C:homaky o n Meaning," Lnn-
gunge, 1.1.1, 1 (hlarch 1980): 29-32.
204 THE JOI.Rh'AL OF PHILOSOPHY
obvious that the speaker will d o the act that fulfills the promise in the
normal course of events. Another rule, again on a par, says that the
promisee wants the speaker to fulfill the promise. These conditions
can be shown not to bea part of thegrammar of 'promise', but merely
aspects of contexts that speakers normally take into consideration i n
their use of language. Note that such conditions, in contrast to the
obligation and future-act conditions, need not be satisfied in straight-
forward literal uses of 'promise'. Typically, pledges and oaths (which
are promises) are given when it is obvious that the speaker will do the
act(s)-e.g., honest Abe's oath-and a promise can be made when the
last thing in the world that the promisee wants is to see it fulfilled-
e.g., a student promises to finish a three-hundred-page paper by the
end of the semester, so that the professor can read it over the vacation
(PSIF 34-36, 150-152).
If these considerations are right, Searle's speech act theory can be
divided u p in this way and its rules parceled out, on the one hand, to a
theory of the grammatical structure of the languageand, on theother,
to a theory of how speakers use sentences in different contexts. Given
such a challenge to the speech act tradition and to Searle's own theory
in particular, it is clear why Searle would be bothered about the pros-
pect of sentences having a purely compositional meaning. Such a
prospect underlies the dismemberment of Searle's treatment of mean-
ing and speech acts.
\Vhy should other philosophers bother about the issue? There is the
trivial answer that a large number of philosophers accept something
like Searle's treatment of meaning and speech acts. But there are
deeper reasons for interest in the issue, reasons which apply more
generally.
Underlying speech act theory is the assumption that meaning is
use, that the explanation of the meaning of a word is fundamentally
like a n explanation of how we make the proper moves i n games or
social practices. T h i s assumption has been adopted, i n one form or
another, by a large and influential number of philosophers in con-
temporary Anglo-American philosophy, including Wittgenstein,
Ryle, Strawson, and Dummett, and it has been exploited by them in
areas as diverse as the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of
mathematics.
T o take one recent illustration, Michael Dummett uses the equa-
tion of meaning with use to ground his constructivist philosophy of
mat he ma tic^.^ T h e use theory provides the general semantic under-
'''I\'~ttgensrein's Philosophy of IIathematics," P111lotophzcnl R e i ' ~ r i u ,I . X I I I I , 3
(July 19.59):324-348; reprinted in Trlitl~ond O f l ~ eErlzgmos
r (Ckmbridgc, IIass.: H a r -
~ a r d 19781.
,
pinnings Dummett requires to argue, i n particular, that the meaning
of a mathematical theorem is
. . . the conditions under xvhich Ice regard ourse1x.e~as justified in as-
serting [the theorem], that is, the circumstances in which xve are in pos-
session of a proof (325).
T h i s verificationism comes directly out of a feature common to a wide
range of use theories, namely, the notion that assertion is governed by
a rule requiring that the speaker have sufficient evidence or reasbns to
make the a ~ s e r t i o n\Vithout
.~ the general semantic basis provided by
the use theory, Dummett's constructivism would be in the unfortu-
nate position of having to treat the meaning of mathematical sen-
tences a n d the meaning of grammatically indistinguishable everyday
sentences in a gratuitously dissimilar manner.' No wonder, then, that
Dummett claims that nothing short of a use theory would satisfy the
philosophical demands on a theory of meaning.8
It is one thing to have philosophical applications fall out of a the-
ory of meaning independently justified on appropriate linguistic
grounds, another to begin with desired philosophical applications
a n d reason backwards to the necessary character of a theory of mean-
ing. T h e danger i n the latter course, which I think Dummett takes, is
that the theory chosen because it fits the philosophical desiderata may
fail to be a n adequate theory, o n linguistic grounds. One ought to
begin without philosophical desiderata and ask what a scientific the-
ory of meaning must do i n order to say what meaning is, and then hav-
ing arrived a t a n answer, go on to see whether the linguistically suc-
cessful theory will serve any of our philosophical purposes.
I have argued ( S T , 1-10f) that when one takes this approach, the
o or example, Srarle says that the preparatory r ~ i l efor assertion is that the
speaker has exidrncr (reasons, crc.) for the truth of the assertion (Sppprh art,^, 64);
a n d H. P . (;rice ["I.ogic a n d Conversation," in P . Cole a n d J . L. hlorgan, rds., S.i.,7-
tau orzd Semnntzcs 3 (New Yolk: Academic PI-r,s, 197.5), 11. 461 introduces the "su-
permaxim" under the categol-y q ~ ~ n l z"Tr) t ~ : to rnake your cont~-ibutiono n e that i,
true," a n d , mol-r specificall), "Do not sa) what you belie\e to he fal,r" and "Do not
sa) that for ~ v h i c hyou lack adequate evidence."
7 ~ a u Benacerraf,
l "Mathematical T r u t h , " this j o r ~ s . ~L ~ . ,, 19 (Nov. 8, 1973):
.XX
661-677.
"\\'hat Is a Theory of Meaning?", i n ,Wind and L a n g u a g e (New York: Oxfol-d,
1975), p p . 100/l. Dummett WI-ites,"Any theor) of meaning which was not, o r did not
irnmediatel) lield, a throryof understanding, would not s;tti,f\ the pul-pose for which,
philosophically, we require a theory of meaning. For I ha\,e argued that a theory of
meaning is requil-rd to make the workitlg, of 1;111guagro p e n to \ielv. T o knolv a 1;111-
guage is to he ahlr to rmplo! a language." See also his sequel, "\\'hat Is ;I Theory of
Mezining (111," in C;. Evans a n d J. AlcDo1cc.11, cds., T r u t h and " d e o n ~ r ~(New
g York:
Oxford, 19761, p p . 67-137.
LITERAL XIEANING A N D LOGICAL. THEORY 207
criterion for a n adequate theory of meaning is that it answer the
specific questions that the general question "What is meaning?"
breaks down into, such as "What is sameness of meaning (synon-
ymy)?", "What is multiplicity of meaning (ambiguity)?", "What is
the difference between meaningfulness and meaninglessness (se-
mantic deviance)?", "What is redundancy of meaning?", and
"What is truth by virtue of meaning (analyticity)?" T h e linguistic
criteria for a theory of meaning, then, are simply that it explain the
component notions in the pretheoretical notion of sentence meaning
in a way that is confirmed comprehensively by predictions about
the synonymy, ambiguity, meaningfulness, meaninglessness, re-
dundancy, analyticity, and other semantic properties and relations
of sentences, and that it be the simplest such theory forming part of
the over-all grammar of the language.9
O n Dummett's approach, asking that a theory of meaning first
meet certain philosophical desiderata-specifically, yield a theory of
understanding in his sense-has the effect of pushing the boundaries
of semantics beyond language into matters of everyday manners and
morals, psychology and sociology, and so on. O n the approach out-
lined above, however, one obtains far tighter boundaries for the do-
main of meaning. Instead of a theory of meaning having to account
for understanding, it becomes a theory of the meanings understood.
All aspects of manners, morals, psychology, etc. required to explain
understanding and use now fall outside the domain of semantics.
T h e principal consequence of this in the present connection is that
constructivism is deprived of a defensible semantic basis. T h e criteria
for a theory of meaning on our approach exclude from the factors
relevant to the meaning of a sentence any condition that a speaker
have sufficient evidence or reason to assert anything, just as a related
distinction between matters of language and matters of linguistic be-
old wine and women" to "Sam likes old women," any more than we
blame a wrong turn on the fork in the road. We can reject Frege's doc-
trine and program of constructing a logically perfect language, and
in their place we can put Wittgenstein's doctrine that natural lan-
guages need no subliming and our own program of constructing a
scientific theory of compositional sentence meaning. Therefore, a
kind of conceptual notation may be developed as the representation
system for meaning in such a theory. But the notation would be em-
ployed not to reform or perfect a natural language, only to state the
compositional meaning of sentences just as it is in the language.
Now, since the meaning of performative sentences has special fea-
tures and since such a notation has to state them just as they are in the
language, an adequate notation has to represent both the semantic
connections between performative and constative sentences, e.g.,
those discussed above in connection with (a)-(c), and the logical fea-
tures of performative sentences, such as the analyticity of (6):
(6) If I promise to help others, then I undertake an obligation
to help them.
and the validity of the argument (7):
(7) I promise to help others.
. I undertake an obligation to help them.
Accordingly, we are here, too, required to reject accounts of logical
form in the tradition descended from Frege and Russell, which re-
stricts logical form to structures determined exclusively by the limited
vocabulary of logical particles and thereby precludes structures de-
termined by the vocabulary of performative verbs and other grammat-
ical devices for expressing performativeness.'6 In place of this ac-
count, we must put an account that takes all meaningful words in a
natural language to contribute to the logical form of its sentences.
One such account is that for which I have argued over the years in my
attempt to defend theanalytic/syntheticdistinction. If my arguments
in that connection are sound, ordinary nouns and adjectives like
'bachelor' and 'unmarried' belong to the logical vocabulary of the
language. In the present connection, acceptance of ordinary nouns
and adjectives as logical vocabulary constitutes the thin edge of the
wedge. Acceptance of these as logical vocabulary involves the accept-
16
I have arguedextensively elsewhere for the elimination of the standarddistinction
between logical and extralogical vocabulary. See, for example, "Where Things Now
Stand with the Analytic-Synthetic Distinction," Synthese, xxvrr~,3 (November 1974):
283-319.
ance of analytic sentences like "If John is a bachelor, then John is
unmarried," and it is then a short step to analyticities based o n verbs
a n d other grammatical structures, such as "If John convinced Jane
that she should bet, then Jane came to believe that she should bet,"
and finally, to analyticities like (6)which turn on performative verbs.
Such a solution is set out in Propositional Structure and Illocu-
tionary Force. It consists of two innovations. One is a stock of new
logical forms to supplement standard quantification theory. These
enable theories of natural languages to represent the logical form of
sentences as a function of the meanings of performative verbs, other
illocutionary-force-indicating devices, as well as ordinary nouns, ad-
jectives, and the logical particles. Thus, they enable us both to draw
the distinction between constative and performative sentences and to
describe their underlying semantic connections at the lexical level.
T h e other innovation is a more abstract conception of logical \,slid-
ity. Such a revision in the methatheory of logic is required in order to
account for valid arguments like ( 7 ) ,in which the propositions do not
bear truth values. Since the conclusion in an argument like (7) fol-
lows from the premise deductively, but since the standard model-
theoretic account of 'follows from' in terms of preservation of truth is
too narrow to cover these cases, we require a more abstract notion of
validity, which does not presuppose that the components of valid
arguments are statements, i.e., are true or false. Our new concep-
tion of validity is general enough to be applicable to arguments in-
volving performative sentences as well as arguments consisting
solely of constatives (PSIF, 222-242).
This solution is preferable because it does not force performatives
into a n uncongenial constative mold or ignore their logical features;
moreover, it does not sacrifice theory, formalization, or faithfulness to
the facts of natural language. But the innovations on which the solu-
tion rests depends on the existence of context-free sentence meaning.
Hence, the possibility of a better solution to the problem raised by
M'ittgenstein's and Austin's criticisms also depends on the existence
of context-free sentence meaning.
I1
M'ittgenstein's and Austin's assumptions about the study of language
set the character of subsequent thinking about speech acts within the
ordinary language tradition. T h e principal assumption was that ex-
plaining the meaning of a n expression is explaining its use, giving
general rules for its use. Accordingly, the study of performative as-
pects of natural language in this tradition is a study of acts, linguistic
behavior. In contrast, my solution to the problem that M'ittgenstein
and Austin raised makes a sharp competence/performance distinc-
LITERAL MEANING AND LOGICAL THEORY 215
I9There have been some unnecessary confusions about this notion which can be
cleared u p here. T h e notion, adapted from the anonymous-letter situation that Jerry
Fodor and I introduced in our "The Structure of a Semantic Theory ," Language, XXXIX
(1963): 170-210, is also formulatedasan idealization. It was definedas a context whose
features provideno relevant information forchoosingacompositional meaningas the
utterancemeaningdifferent from thecompositional meaningof the sentence used. T h e
notion of a null context generalizes the anonymous-letter situation in the form of an
idealizedcontext containingno basis fora departure from sentence-meaning, in which
semantic competence fully determines utterance meaning. Thus, Harnish's criticism
in "Meaning and Speech Acts," Lingua, I L (1979): 349-350, is based on a confusion.
Harnish says that my conditions for performativeness "cannot be satisfied in the null
context because in such acontext there is nothing but the sentence itself" (350). This is
an unwarranted construal of my term 'null'. 'Null' was used to mean not void, but
merely lacking in information on which to base a departure from sentence-meaning.
Harnish's criticism is like saying that the conditions for Salviati's test of Galilee's hy-
pothesis about free-falling bodies cannot be satisfied because in a n idealized experi-
ment there is n o surface for a ball to roll down.
218 THE JOL'RN.ALOF PHILOSOPHY
of the matter, "The cat is on the mat" is simply false in the case at
hand; the cat is not on the mat if there is n o up-and-down orientation.
Searle, though he doesn't consider this response, would, I suspect,
reject it because he takes falsehood to depend on orientation. I take it
that he thinks that truth consists in the cat's position being over the
mat, so that the bottom of a rightside-up cat touches the top of the
mat, and falsehood consists in the cat's position being under the mat
so that the bottom of the mat touches the bottom of an upside-down
cat (or in some other similar setup). Since I have some sympathy for
this conception of falsehood, I have no inclination to press the afore-
mentioned criticism. Rather, I wish to challenge the supposition that
these examples undermine the thesis that sentences have a composi-
tional meaning independent of context. As Searle puts it:
These examples are designed to cast doubt on the following thesis: Every
unambiguous sentence, such as "The cat is on the mat" has a literal
meaning which determines for every context whether or not an utterance
of that sentence in that context is literally true or false (2i4).
The danger in failing to tie criticism down to a real position is the
risk that the criticism will refute a straw man and leave the real posi-
tion unscathed. This is exactly what happens in the case of Searle's
criticisms. His examples cast doubt on a straw man, but miss entirely
the position on which "the literal meaning of a sentence is the mean-
ing that it has in the 'zero context' or the 'null context' " (207). Some-
how this position becomes changed so that it is vulnerable to the
c o ~ n t e r e x a m ~ l eTsh.e~change
~ is to tack on to the principal claim of
the position the further claim that the compositional meaning of a
sentence must determine "for every context whether or not an utter-
ance of that sentence in that context is literally trueor false." Since the
real position denies this further claim, Searle's arguments are of the
form -(P clr (2) hence -P.
One of the main ideas underlying my position is that composi-
tional meanings do not, in all instances, determine whether or not the
use of a sentence is literally true or false (PSIF, 88-96, and ST,
127-150). Contrary to Russell's meaning-as-reference conception, on
which a meaningful, well-formed constative sentence is ipso facto
true or false, on my conception, meaning is sharply distinguished
from reference, and meaningfulness depends exclusively on intra-
sentential sense relations (i.e.,selectional restrictions). I have argued
'*I think that, by not stickingclosely to the real position, Searle fails toseecertain of
its features and in their place reads in claims that it is natural to make on his own use
theory. We will see further examples of this interpolation below.
220 THE JOI'RNAL. OF PHIL.OSOPHY
does not require him to specify that the hamburger not be encased in
lucite, etc. but only to use 'hamburger' nonfiguratively (more o n
this below) and in accord with the obvious expectations of all con-
cerned. T h e supporter of absolutely context-free sentence meaning
does not deny that background assumptions reflecting such expecta-
tions and other contextual information shape the meaning of sen-
tence uses i n actual speech; such shaping is an essential part of the
notion of a non-null context. T h e supporter denies only that such
background assumptions are relevant to the meaning of sentences i n
the language. Only if Searle is conflating what the language user's
utterance of a sentence means in speech with the quite distinct matter
of what the sentence used means in the language could he think that
such examples cast doubt o n the notion of a n absolutely context-free
sentence meaning. Searle's phraseology in the above quote, viz.,
"what I meant in my literal utterance of the sentence" (italics mine) is
a dead give-away.
Searle's mistake is particularly clear in his claim that
. . . it is hard to see how the sentence [(8)]could have quite the sameobe-
dience conditions if these institutions [restaurants, money, etc.] did not
exist (215).
If the connection between existence and truth conditions, obedience
conditions, etc., were as tight as Searle supposes, the entire corpus of
modern science fiction, fairy tales, utopian literature, and comic
books would become linguistically problematic. Sentences like
"Let's try and create a classless, purely egalitarian society!" would be
paradoxical, and sentences like "I'd like to have T o m Swift's or
anyone's televisionphone" would change their meaning (fulfillment
conditions) with technological progress.
In a more recent paper, Searle reformulates this line of argument on
the basis of new example^.^' Searle claims that "it is hard to see how
we can hold both . . . that the literal meaning of a sentence is the
meaning that it has in the 'null context' " and "that the meaning of a
sentence determines the truth conditions of that sentence" (BM, 223).
His reason is that in (10) and (11):
(10) Bill cut the grass
(11) Sally cut the cake
. . . one and the same semantic content, expressed by the word 'cut', oc-
curs in each sentence; and yet it seems to makea different contribution to
the truth conditions of the sentence in each case (223).
27
"The Backgrounds of Meaning," in Searle, F. Kiefer, and M. Bierwisch, eds.,
Speech Act Theory and Pragmatics (Boston: Reidel, 1980),pp. 221-232. Hereafter, BM.
LITERAL MEANING AND LOGICAL THEORY 223
Why does Searle think the semantic content of 'cut' makes different
contributions to the truth conditions of (lo) and (1l ) ?Because, as he
puts it,
T h e sort of thing that constitutes cutting thegrass is quitedifferent from,
e.g., the sort of thing that constitutes cutting a cake. One way to see this is
to imagine what constitutes obeying the order to cut something. If some-
one tells me to cut the grass and I rush o u t and stab it with a knife, or if I
am ordered to cut the cake and I run over it with a lawn mower, in each
case I will have failed to obey the order. That is not what the speaker
meant by his literal and serious utterance of the sentence (223, italics
mine).
Again, the same dead give-away phraseology. True enough, the
speaker's intentions rule out running over the cake with a lawn
mower, just as Searle's intentions in ordering the hamburger rule out
encasement in lucite, but what counts as obeying particular orders
cannot be supposed to reflect directly the meaning of the sentences
that the speakers used to issue the orders-unless, of course, one as-
sumes to begin with that meaning is use. T h e fact is that I can cut a
cake with a lawn mower if I feed it into the blades cleverly enough.
T h e person who gave the order may be displeased with the unor-
thodox way I cut the cake, but cannot say I didn't cut it (there may be
no way to tell your cake-knife-cut pieces from my lawn mower-cut
pieces except for the bits of grass). Stabbing is not cutting (i.e., "Her
hat pin as a small blade so that she can stab and then cut an assail-
ant"), but one can cut grass with, say, a cake knife-again, an unor-
thodox way, but still a way. Thus, Searle is simply wrong that the se-
mantic content of 'cut' makes a different contribution in (10)and (11):
specification of the way the cutting is done is not part of the meaning
or truth conditions of (10) and ( I 1)-any more than specifying knife
and fork, chopsticks, fingers, etc, is part of the meaning or truth con-
ditions of "I ate some vegetables." T h e semantic contribution of 'cut'
to (10) and (11) is the same, namely, the concept of dividing some-
thing (the pieces of grass in the one case and the cake in the other)
with a sharp-edged i n ~ t r u m e n t . ~ ~
28
Searle considers three possible replies: 'cut' is ambiguous; like a variable function
i n mathematics; and vague (BM, 224/5). My view of the semantic contribution of 'cut'
is different from all three. I agree with Searle that 'cut' occurs unambiguously in the
sentences (10) a n d (1 1). I d o not think that 'cut' is like a variable function i n the sense
"the word 'cut' has different interpretations i n 1-5 . . . determined by the different ar-
guments-grass, hair, cake, skin and cloth" (BM, 224). I think it has, throughout, the
one sense mentioned i n the text, but that, as with compositionality in general, w h o a n d
what performs the action expressed i n the verband what it is performed o n derive from
the meanings of subjects and objects. [ T h u s the fact that in (10) theaction is performed
o n the individual grass plants, but the success is specified in terms of effect o n the area
224 THE. JOL'KNALOF PHILOSOPHY
for which they collectively constitute ground cover is a consequence of the meaning of
theobject "grass."] Finally, I seenoreason tosay that 'cut'isvague, but Iagree with the
third reply's emphasis o n the divergence of what a speaker means in a certain context
from what the sentencemeans i n the language. Searle's objections to this reply seem to
me without force. T h e first simply ignores the fact that all theories of compositionality
employ selectional restrictions to weed out anomalous combinations of senses. A sen-
tence like "Max cut the sun" (BM, 225) is semantically anomalous because the selec-
tional restriction o n the object of 'cut' requires that there bea solid object for the opera-
tion to be performedon. (Note that,accordingly, there is noreason tosay that "Samcut
the coffee" is anomalous, since the object can refer toa cubeof frozen coffee; it is hard to
see why Searle thinks there isany problem about "Bill cut the mountain.") Thesecond
objection rests o n the language/language use confusion. So what if "cut the cake" lit-
erally applies to the use of a lawnmower to produce cake slices? Such applications are
only "crazy misunderstandings" if someone takes them to be the proper way to inter-
pret the speaker in context, which in o u r view is another matter. T h e third objection is
irrelevant. T h e view being criticized does not claim that, i n actual performance, the
speaker always follows a strict ordering from sentence meaning to speaker's utterance
meaning. N o doubt the speaker sometimes short-cuts the process. But even if we did
make this claim, Searle gives n o reason to show that it is implausible.
LITERAL MEANING AND LOGIC.4L THEORY 225
mantic competence' is incapable of supporting such a "rescue opera-
tion,'' and it is also true that Searle has been working with this notion
all along. But the move in question is an appeal to the technical sense.
This notion, as we have shown, is quite capable of confounding
Searle's arguments, and it is not a notion that he can claim to have
been working with all along.29
Searle's "performancization" of semantic competence, like Dum-
mett's, results from reasoning backwards from his philosophical de-
siderata to a conception of what meaning must be. Searle says:
There are certain jobs that we want the notion of meaning t o d o for us; it
connects in all sorts of systematic ways with our theory of language and
with our pretheoretical beliefs about language. Meaning is tied to our
notions of truth conditions, entailment, inconsistency, understanding,
and a host of other semantic and mental notions (220).
T h e equivocation noted in the last paragraph now pops u p in a new
place. Meaning, of course, is "tied to," "connects with," understand-
ing and other mental notions. But this is an extremely loose way of
speaking. Its looseness allows Searle to conflate two quite different
ways in which meaning might be related to understanding and other
mental phenomena, one reflecting the ordinary sense of semantic
competence and the other reflecting the technical sense. T h e relation
in the former is that a wide range of performance variables involved in
understanding are part of meaning, the relation in the latter is that
meaning is one of the variables determining performance. T h e con-
flation makes it seem as if only a use theory can account for the ob-
vious relations between meaning and psychological phenomena. But
accounting for such relations does not require that meaning be taken
as a potpourri of use factors. These relations can be accounted for, on
our notion of compositional sentence meaning, simply by taking se-
mantic competence (in the technical sense) to be one of the inputs to
the psychological performance me~hanism.~'
As far as the relation of meaning to other semantic notions like
truth conditions, analyticity, semantic entailment, synopymy, ambi-
guity, antonymy, and so on are concerned, there is hardly a need to go
beyond a purely grammatical notion of meaning. As we said above,
the theory of compositional sentence meaning is set u p precisely to
account for such semantic properties and relations in terms of their
29
Searle's equivocation o n 'semantic competence' is nothing new. See PSIF, p.
28/9, for a discussion of a n earlier instance.
30
For further discussion concerning the role of this input i n the operation of the
mechanism in the case of reference, see "The Neoclassical Theory of Reference," pp.
110-122.
226 THE' JOITKN.\L OF PHII.OSOPH\
the meaning of 'add'. Hence, Searle himself suggests the proper reply
in saying
. . . one might reply. . . that these assumptions are in a sense part of the
meaning of the sentence (219).
Calling them "background assumptions" is, of course, illegitimate
from the viewpoint of supporters of context-free compositional sen-
tence meaning, since the concept of addition is a matter not of the
background context but of grammatical structure.
In "Literal Meaning," Searle makes no rebuttal. He supposes that
conceding cases like (13) is not damaging to his position because his
earlier cat-in-outer-space examples show that "the notion of abso-
lutely context free literal meaning does not have general application
to sentences" (220).T h i s supposition, as we have seen, is an error, be-
cause the standard language/language use distinction renders all
these examples harmless. Thus, rather than claim that mathematical
examples are exceptions (or perhaps contain miniscule, undetectable
amounts of contextual assumptions in their interpretation), there is
nothing to prevent us from taking the general view that all sentences
have a compositionally fixed literal meaning and all utterances a con-
textually fixed literal or figurative meaning (usually different from
the meaning of the sentence the speaker used).
In "The Background of Meaning," Searle attempts a rebuttal (BM,
229-230). He says that
. . . there is nothing in the content of the representations that, so to
speak, forces us to accept only one set of moves to the exclusion of all
others. The representations are not self-guaranteeing (BM, 230).
If 'forces' has reference to the applications that language users make
of sentences, what Searle says is true. A language user is under n o
compulsion to use words in conformity to their grammatical mean-
ing. O n this construal of 'forces', Humpty Dumpty is right: we, not
the words, are master. But, although what Searle says is true, his re-
mark, on this construal, is irrelevant to the issue. As we have already
noted, the supporter of compositional meaning does not claim that
meaning determines use in this strong sense. O n the other hand, if
'forces' has reference to the grammatical structure of sentences, Searle
is making the relevant claim that there is no compositional meaning
in sentences to provide a semantic standard specifying the grammati-
cal point from which language users may depart. But now Searle is
wrong. Alice is right: 'glory' does not mean "a nice knock-down ar-
gument." Moreover, Searle's remark begs the question of whether
sentences like (13) have a compositional meaning in which the con-
LITERAL MEANING AND LOGICAL THEORY 229
32
Searle'sdiscussion (BM,230/l)of "Snow is white"adds nothing to thecontroversy.
His new example is merely a variant on Hilary Putnam's original set of examples in "Is
Semantics Possible?" Metaphilosophy, I , 3 (July 1970): 212-218. Searle seems com-
pletely unaware of the problems that have been raised about such examples in the re-
sponse to Putnam, for example, "The Neoclassical Theory of Reference" and earlier
studies such as "Logic and Language: An Examination of Recent Criticisms of Inten-
sionalism" and my ".A Proper Theory of Names," Ph~losophicalStudies,x x x ~1, (Jan-
uary 1977): 1-80.
230 THE JOL.KNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
saying
33
"Meaning," Phzlosophzcnl Reulew, LXI I , 3 (July 1957): 37'7-388
LITERAL MEANING AND LOGICAL THEORY 23 1
choice between these different conceptions of meaning, Searle's claim
that "meaning is always a derived form of intentionality" begs it.34
Searle was closer to the truth when, a number of years ago, he op-
posed intention and convention:
Meaning is more than a matter of intention, it is also at least sometimes a
matter of convention (Speech Acts, 45).
His target at that time was Grice's original formulation of the perlo-
cutionary notion of meaning. Searle introduced a clever counterex-
ample to show that Grice's claim that non-natural meaning is
"always a derived form of intentionality" does not account for the
meaning of sentences determined in their grammatical structure,
Searle's example was that of an American soldier in the Second World
War who addresses his Italian captors with an utterance of (15):
(15) Kennst du das Land wo die Zitronen bliihen?
which is the one sentence heremembers from high school German, in
order to make them think he is German. Searle's point against Grice
is that (15) does not mean 'I am a German soldier' ("Ich bin ein
deutscher Soldat" means that) but rather "KnoweSt thou the land
where the lemon trees bloom?" Thus, Grice's claim about meaning
makes the false prediction that the American soldier's utterance
means "I am a German soldier," since this is what the Italians cor-
rectly recognized as his intention to have them recognize as his com-
munication, but it is not the meaning of the soldier's utterance of the
sentence ( 15).
Since Searle now takes the same view as Grice, he is open to the
same counterexample. He has to make the same false prediction, be-
cause his theory of meaning, like Grice's, makes meaning solely a
matter of intentionality and leaves no place for an independent no-
tion of meaning based on grammatical structure in sentences. Searle
has to predict that the utterance means "I am a German soldier" when
clearly this is not what it means, but just something that the Italians
infer from the fact that a soldier is speaking in German. The simple
truth about the example is that an American soldier gets his captors to
believe he is German by an utterance that means "Knowest thou the
14
T h e dependence o n background assumptions is eliminated without dire conse-
quences. Even though the direct connection Searle has i n mind is broken, the relation
of competence to performance involves a n indirect connection between the absolute
context-free literal meanings of sentences o n theone hand and, o n theother, the inten-
tions and belief structures behind their use a n d , hence, the literal utterance meanings
their use produces. O n this connection, the intentional and other psychological ele-
ments to which meanings are related in n o way undermine the independence of com-
positional meaning from context.
232 THE J O ~ R N A L
O E PHILOSOPHY
land where the lemon trees bloom?", but the utterance can mean
this only by virtue of its being a use of a sentence with this com-
positional meaning.
It is hardly credible that the conventions that pair the German sen-
tence (15)with the meaning "Knowest thou the land where the lemon
trees bloom?" depend on background assumptions common to con-
texts such as the situation of the American soldier i n Searle's ex-
ample, the high school German class that he attended, various cir-
cumstances where sentimental German poetry is read, etc. There
are n o background assumptions common to such contexts that can
explain the literal meaning of (15) and its utterances. Moreover, it
seems quite straightforward that the literal meaning of (15) and its
utterances is to be accounted for compositionally as a function of
the meanings of the German words 'kennst', 'du', etc., their posi-
tions in the sentence, and its interrogative form. Hence, talk about
intentions and background assumptions expressing information
about context is idle, and, accordingly, it is to be excluded by Oc-
cam's razor from a scientific account of meaning in natural
language.
I11
I have dealt at length with Searle's arguments, first, because they are
the only explicit defense in the literature of the central semantic as-
sumptions of the Wittgensteinian/Austinian approach to performa-
tiveness which comes to grips with a more serious challenge to these
assumptions than the artificial-language approach, and, second, be-
cause they are, from my experience, an accurate expression of what
ordinary language philosophers and many outside this tradition take
to be knock-down arguments against the notion of context-free sen-
tence meaning.
Wittgenstein thought that his critique of Frege's and Russell's the-
ories of meaning and logical form had eliminated all competing the-
ories, leaving only one or another form of the use theory. Supposing
Wittgenstein to be correct, and further that the principal grounds on
which such competition was eliminated is, as the quotes from the
Philosophical Inuestigations above suggest, that other theories do
not account for the full range and diversity of what natural languages
have the potential to do, the obvious moral is that the exclusion of use
from "conceptual notation" theories is precisely their mistake.
Hence, from the perspective of Wittgenstein's trenchant critique of
Frege and Russell, the use conception of meaning appears a great phil-
osophical breakthrough. Philosophizing about natural language
need n o longer be hamstrung by a primitive picture of language that
reflects only a small part of what enables natural languages to func-
LITERAL MEANING A N D LOGICAL THEORY 233