Philosophical Investigations 30:2 April 2007

ISSN 0190-0536

CRITICAL NOTICE

Meaning, Norms, and Use

Donald Davidson, Truth, Language, and History (Oxford University

Press, 2005). xx + 350, price £15.99.

Daniel Whiting, University of Reading

A central theme in the recently published collection of Donald David-

son’s essays Truth, Language, and History,1 is the appeal to notions such
as use, practice, rules, norms and convention in philosophical investi-
gations of language.2 Repeatedly the point and purpose of that appeal
is put under considerable pressure. In what follows, I shall argue that
Davidson has not succeeding in showing such notions to have no
significant place in accounts of linguistic phenomena.
Davidson rejects a widespread and seemingly intuitive conception
of language, according to which:
in learning a language, a person acquires the ability to operate in
accord with a precise and specifiable set of syntactic and semantic
rules; verbal communication depends on speaker and hearer sharing
such an ability, and it requires no more than this (p. 110; cf. pp. 90,
107).
His main contention is that this picture of language as incorporating
shared practices or rules has no real content or explanatory significance

1. D. Davidson Truth, Language, and History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).All
page references will be to this text unless otherwise specified.
2. Following Davidson, I shall use the terms “use,”“practice,”“rule,”“convention” and
“norms” somewhat interchangeably. While there are important differences between
these notions, they do not bear on what follows.

© 2007 The Author. Journal compilation © 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ,
UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
180 Philosophical Investigations
since the existence of such practices or rules is neither necessary nor
sufficient for linguistic communication.At points, it seems that what is
deemed problematic is specifically the idea that they are shared. He
denies, for example, that “following a rule, engaging in a practice, or
conforming to conventions” are essential to language “if these are taken
to imply such sharing” (p. 115). But more often, the actual target of his
criticisms is simply “the idea of obligation to the norm constituted by
the ‘accepted’ meanings of words” (p. 117), that “speaking and writing
are ‘rule-governed’ activities” (p. 152).Thus, he urges us to “give up the
attempt to explain how we communicate by appeal to convention” (p.
107). The tendency for Davidson to treat the two targets as one
perhaps results from an assumption that any such notion as practice (or
usage, norms, etc.) has a significance only insofar as it picks out
something communal. If, the assumption continues, such things are not
shared then there is no motivation for invoking them.
Davidson’s strategy for undermining the above picture of language
rests on the possibility and ubiquity of phenomena such as malaprop-
isms and Joycean invention.These introduce “expressions not covered
by prior learning, or familiar expressions which cannot be interpreted”
according to convention (pp. 94–95). Nevertheless, the “hearer has
no trouble understanding the speaker in the way the speaker intends”
(p. 90).
With this in view, Davidson outlines a model that aims to demon-
strate that one can adequately explain linguistic communication
without recourse to shared rules, conventions, practices and such.
A speaker comes to a conversation with a “prior theory” – she has
attached meanings to expressions in advance.What is actually utilised
in communication is a “passing theory” – the prior theory geared to
the occasion.The passing theory is adjusted and adapted in the light of
malapropisms and other innovations:
Every deviation from ordinary usage . . . is in the passing theory as
a feature of what the words mean on that occasion. Such meanings,
transient though they may be, are literal (p. 102).

Davidson labels this “first meaning”; it is a feature of expressions on a

particular occasion,of tokened words,not types.First meaning is so called
because it is what the speaker intends her audience to grasp first when
interpreting her words and via which other meanings (say, metaphori-
cal) are to be arrived at. Most important, first meaning is not “governed
by learned conventions or regularities” (pp. 91–93; cf. p. 173).
© 2007 The Author. Journal compilation © 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
 Daniel Whiting 181
The viability of this model of communication purportedly “under-
mines [the] commonly accepted account of linguistic competence and
communication” (p. 102).What is required is only that the interpreter
know what the speaker means by her words on that occasion and that the
latter make this suitably clear (p. 96). So, Davidson says:
what the interpreter and speaker share . . . is not learned and so is
not a language governed by rules or conventions known to speaker
and interpreter in advance; but what the speaker and interpreter
know in advance is not (necessarily) shared, and so is not a language
governed by shared rules or conventions (pp. 105–106).
We have, then, arrived at the conclusion that it is neither necessary nor
sufficient for linguistic communication that first meanings are fixed by
rules or usage. It is not necessary because one can communicate on the
basis of a passing theory that is not conventional, derived from a prior
theory that need not be shared.It is not sufficient because the possession
of a prior theory would not actually enable one to communicate even
if it was governed by usage, which it need not be. In summary, then,
Davidson contends that there is “no learnable common core of consis-
tent behaviour, no shared grammar or rules, no portable interpreting
machine set to grind out the meaning of an arbitrary utterance”(p.107).
What is noticeable is that it is not only the idea that words are
governed by rules or practice that is rejected by Davidson. Also
jettisoned is the very notion of linguistic meaning itself! First meaning
is a matter of what a speaker means by a word on a given occasion; it
is not the invariant meaning possessed by a type of linguistic expres-
sion. As Davidson admits:
for me the concept of “the meaning” of a word or sentence gives way
to the concepts of how a speaker intends his words to be understood,
and of how a hearer understands them (p. 121, my italics; cf. p. 170).
Given that he views the notion of linguistic meaning as standing or
falling together with those of rule, convention and use, Davidson
provides an indirect support for the idea that there is an essential
connection between the two.

II

Having outlined Davidson’s critique, I shall first question his claim that
linguistic communication does not require established meanings,
conventions or practices. He is certainly right that knowledge of rules
and the like is not sufficient for communication.All kinds of contextual
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182 Philosophical Investigations
factors enter into a determination, and so estimation, of what is said by
an utterance. But it is far less clear that such knowledge is not necessary.
Surely what one can mean or intend to communicate by a word is
constrained by what that word means. While “Sheer invention
is . . . possible” (p. 100), is it not parasitic upon established practice?
Davidson is alert to the issue of whether or not “what a speaker
means depends on the history of the uses to which the language has
been put in the past” (p. 143). And he concedes that one cannot just
mean whatever one chooses by an expression. Nevertheless, he insists
that what imposes the constraint is not usage but the intention to
communicate. One cannot intend the impossible, so one can only
mean something by a word if one believes that one’s audience will be
able to grasp one’s meaning (pp. 98, 144). It follows that one cannot
create meaning “ex nihilo” but only on the basis of a “stock of common
lore” (p. 157), which includes non-linguistic knowledge as well as
familiarity with the past applications of words (pp. 147, 152). Admit-
ting this, though, falls short of admitting a concept of linguistic
meaning as established and governed by shared practices and conven-
tions, which speakers abide by and are answerable to, and which
enables a successful communication.
There is, however, a deeper worry concerning not a person’s ability
to mean something by a word on an occasion but whether or not the
general notion of a person’s intending her words to be taken in a
particular way can be made sense of apart from the idea that words
have conventional meanings of which speakers are aware. No doubt
one can have certain proto- or primitive intentions prior to learning
a language. But it is not credible that one could have the ability to
intend to communicate by means of uttering an expression in advance
of the conceptual resources imparted by a common language. This is
effectively the criticism often made of Gricean theories of meaning –
that the psychological states it ascribes to speakers as explanatory of
linguistic meaning are themselves dependent on command of a lan-
guage, and hence on knowledge of meaning.
Davidson himself has famously argued that possessing genuine
psychological attitudes requires language.3 Accordingly, he distances
himself from Grice by claiming that his notion of intention is irreduc-

3. See Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation, new edition (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2001) essay 11 and Subjective, Intersubjective, Objective (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2001) essay 7.

© 2007 The Author. Journal compilation © 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

 Daniel Whiting 183
ibly semantic, an intention to communicate or be understood (p. 121,
n13).This fails, however, to address the issue. Just as one cannot create
meaning ex nihilo, so one cannot have intentions ex nihilo without
having mastered some discursive practices. Davidson effectively holds
that one could possess such intentions – however conceived – inde-
pendent of a command of language. But it is implausible that one could
have attitudes with such detailed contents as the intention to mean
deny by “refute” or to communicate that the lecturer denies the
accusation by uttering “the lectern refutes the accusation” without a
background grasp of established meanings.
Davidson might grant the above but claim that mastery of conven-
tional usage is not what is needed. The speaker need only have
previously attached meanings to various expressions and a reason to
think that others attach sufficiently similar meanings. Indeed, this is just
the notion of a “prior theory.” However, by Davidson’s own lights,
“attaching meanings to expressions” can only amount to intending to
communicate something by uttering them. Such intentions are them-
selves ultimately dependent on the speaker’s familiarity with an estab-
lished practice. So, it is necessary, if not sufficient, for linguistic
communication that certain expressions, if not all, possess established
meanings. And a plausible, if not compulsory, way to account for the
latter is to view words as rule governed and as having proper uses.

III

Even if Davidson were correct that the notion of shared or conven-

tional meanings is neither required nor adequate to explain linguistic
communication, it does not follow, as he suggests, that that notion has
no significant role (cp. p. 110). The move from the claim that words
being governed by rules or practices is not essential to linguistic
exchange to the claim that there is no content or importance to that
idea is a non sequitur.There is no obvious reason why the conception
of linguistic meaning as conventional usage should be hostage to
attempts to “explain” communication; its significance may be found
somewhere quite different from where Davidson looks for it.
As we have seen, Davidson denies that “we understand speakers by
appealing to, or applying, rules” (p. 325, my italics).That may be true,
but the notion of rules (or practice) may be needed when discussing
what is involved in understanding words or sentences as opposed to
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184 Philosophical Investigations
speakers. Correlatively, it may be required in elucidating what it is to
explain the meaning of an expression, or what is thereby explained. So,
for example, one might say that to know the meaning of a word is
to know the rules governing its use or that to give an expression’s
meaning is to convey the practice of employing it.The concern here
is not to defend such views but to point out that nothing Davidson
says contributes in any immediate way to undermining the signifi-
cance of these appeals to concepts such as usage or convention.
Of course, Davidson might argue that he has already shown that
there is no need for a notion of the meaning possessed by expressions
as opposed to what speakers intend by words on particular occasions.
However, what he has actually shown, if anything, is that there is no
necessity in appealing to it for the specific purpose of explaining how
communication succeeds. So first, Davidson has not ruled out the
weaker claim that it could possibly play a role in some such explana-
tions. Surely knowing the established meaning of a word-type is a
useful, even common, if not indispensable means of arriving at an
awareness of what a person says in uttering it.
Second, there may be contexts in which that notion has an impor-
tant role quite independent of explanations of how an audience knows
what a speaker is saying. For example, a paradigmatic context for
the notion of conventional meaning – and so arguably that of rule,
practice, or use – is that of linguistic instruction or correction.There,
one is surely interested not in an expression as meant or uttered on a
particular occasion but in the meaning of the expression itself. One might,
for example, ask a person what “perambulate” means. Indeed, it is
perfectly coherent to imagine a person saying “I don’t want to know
what you mean by it, but what it means.” And, arguably, that is to ask
how it should be used, or what rules govern its employment.
So it is at least possible that it is in these contexts, rather than in
explanations of communication, that the notion of meaning has its
home, and, moreover, that it is in elucidating such uses of the notion
that rules, conventions, practices and such are appealed to. Once again,
the aim is not to defend that view but to highlight that Davidson’s
critique leaves it untouched, that it does not have the generality he
sometimes suggests. Even if scenarios of instruction and correction are
ultimately a preparation for communication, which cannot simply be
assumed, this does not undermine the claim that in adequately
describing those scenarios, one requires concepts that include
meaning, convention, or practice.
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 Daniel Whiting 185
Davidson might grant the above but deny that when one asks for or
explains the meaning of a word, one has any more in mind than what
meaning a speaker would be likely to attach to that word or how it is
normally intended or has actually been employed in the past.The issue
becomes, then, whether or not a “thicker” notion of meaning is
needed, one given in terms of rule-governed or proper usage.That is,
one that views meaning as imposing some kind of normative con-
straint on actual use. Davidson denies that any such notion is called for
(or even coherent).Accordingly, in the next section, I shall look at how
he justifies that denial.

IV

Davidson argues against the now popular idea that there is an intrin-
sically normative notion of established meaning. Imagine that a person
does not talk as others do; it does not follow, he contends, that she is
unintelligible or not speaking a language. It is true that people typically
talk in similar ways and this facilitates communication, but, Davidson
pointedly asks, “what magic ingredient does holding oneself respon-
sible to the usual way of speaking add to the usual way of speaking?”
(p. 117) Viewing meaning as itself normative is, the suggestion goes,
superfluous (and no doubt obscure).
Davidson does not deny that sometimes one’s use of language is
corrected for the sake of interaction but that there is a “deeper notion”
of “correct usage” than that of conformity (pp. 90–91), that there
are “norms inherent in language itself ” over and above “regularities”
(p. 326). Any propriety to speak in a certain way can only be hypo-
thetical. If one wishes to communicate, one ought to speak as others do.
As Davidson says, “Any obligation we owe to conformity is contin-
gent on the desire to be understood” (p. 118).
First, one can challenge Davidson’s characterisation of the idea that
meaning is normative.The relevant obligation need not be conceived
as that in accordance with the use made of a word by others or with
past applications. Rather, the obligation may be to accord with what the
word means,4 which in turn might be unpacked as according with its

4. This is the formulation found in, for example, J. McDowell, Mind,Value, and Reality
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998) p. 221 and C.Wright, Rails to Infinity
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001) p. 9.

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186 Philosophical Investigations
proper usage. On this view, to know what a word means is not to know
how it has as a matter of fact been employed (after all, it may have been
applied wrongly or not at all); it is to know how it should be employed.
Likewise, to use a word incorrectly is not necessarily to use it in a way
that is at odds with one’s fellows, but to use it at odds with the rules
governing it. Davidson has, then, misrepresented his target.
Second, Davidson is wrong to claim that any respect in which one
ought to use a word in a certain way is contingent on wanting to be
understood. While no doubt one could mean deny by “refute,” it is a
mistake to use the English word “refute” as one would use “deny,”
given the meaning of the expressions, irrespective of any aim to com-
municate. Indeed, the desire to interact socially might actually require
that one use a word wrongly; that use remains wrong nonetheless. Of
course, one does not have to do what the conventions require, but that
is just to say that one can speak incorrectly; it does not show that there
are no norms in force.
Interestingly, Davidson does think that, as regards language, some
conception of a standard is required (p. 119). Although he denies that
this involves viewing words as rule governed, he admits that one needs
to be able to draw a distinction between correct and incorrect uses of
expressions. Further, he accepts that focusing on a person’s disposition
to apply a word does not provide this distinction. Dispositions have
“no normative force” (p. 138); whether a person is disposed to employ
an expression in a particular way is distinct from the matter of whether
or not she ought to.
Davidson’s positive proposal is that a social setting provides the
requisite standards. When a second speaker is present, one can judge
whether or not one’s dispositions to apply an expression to an object
tally with that other person’s. This “triangle” makes “room for the
concept of error (and hence of truth) in situations in which the
correlation of reactions that have been repeatedly shared can be seen
by the sharers to break down” (p. 141; cf. pp. 124, 160–161). Thus,
Davidson hopes to accommodate the distinction between correct and
incorrect applications of words without appealing to the idea of con-
ventional practice.
Unfortunately, Davidson’s triangulation model fails to provide the
requisite distinction.At most, that situation introduces the idea of one’s
verbal reactions according (or failing to) with those of one’s fellows,
but that is quite different from an idea of those reactions being correct
or incorrect. No matter how many speakers are introduced to the
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 Daniel Whiting 187
original pair, one only ever gets an account of how those people are
disposed to apply an expression, not of how they should or should not.
Increasing the quantity of reactions simply does not introduce an
appreciation of their quality. If individual dispositions lack normative
force, the same surely holds for collective dispositions.
Consider the issue as that of how one knows whether one’s verbal
behaviour is “going on as before, or deviating” (p. 124), i.e. following
a pattern. If there is a problem concerning an individual’s ability to
recognise whether or not her reaction is relevantly similar to those
previous, there is no advance in appealing to a social setting since the
problem will then be that of recognising whether or not her reaction
is relevantly similar to those of others. So Davidson’s suggestion as to
how a standard of correctness finds a foothold in linguistic activity is
unsuccessful.
The failure of Davidson’s own account does not “prove” that
meaning is a normative notion, still less that such a normativity is in
virtue of words being subject to a rule-governed usage. Nonetheless,
it does show that an alternative account is needed, and so that it
is worth reconsidering the appeal to such notions as practice or
convention.

Conclusion

I have considered various strands in Davidson’s critique of the idea

that language is constituted by rule-governed expressions, that words
have proper, established uses and argued that he has not shown such
ideas to have no significance or philosophical importance.5

Department of Philosophy
University of Reading
Whiteknights, Reading
RG6 6AA, UK
danieljwhiting@hotmail.com
d.j.whiting@reading.ac.uk

5. Thanks to the Arts and Humanities Research Council, whose funding made it
possible to write this paper.

© 2007 The Author. Journal compilation © 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.