Week 2 Notes

THE PROBLEM OF MEANING

Some strings of words are meaningful some are not. (gibberish

sentences)

How do we say that we know the meaning of a sentence?

MEANING FACTS

For a meaning theory to be explanatory, it has to account for as

many meaning facts as possible.

- meaningfulness: what makes a certain expression or group of

expressions meaningful?
- synonymy: how do two different expressions mean the same?
- ambiguity: how does an expression contain multiple senses? (I
saw a man with a binocular)
- hyponymy: inclusion of the sense of one linguistic item into the
meaning of another.

The sense of cow includes the following: 1. bovine 2. animal 3.

female (e.g. the sense of animal is included in the sense of cow)

Hyponymy is an example of asymmetric entailment:

It is a dog entails it is an animal (x ⊨ y)

It is an animal does not entail it is a dog. (y ⊭ x)

- entailment: In logic, it is the relationship between sets of

sentences. It is defined in necessary truth conditions.
If A is true, B is necessarily true.

e.g.Tim stole a car entails Tim stole something and Tim did
something.
Sally picked up flowers and Sally put the flowers in a vase
entails Sally picked up flowers.

ENTITY THEORIES
Entity theories take entities to correspond to meanings.

THE REFERENTIAL THEORY OF MEANING (RTM)

The meaning of a symbol is what it denotes in the real world (its

referent).

Write down explanations for the following meaning facts from the
perspective of RTM
Meaningfulness: ?
Synonymy: ?
Ambiguity: ?
Objections against RTM

1. Not every word denotes a thing in the real world

Examples?
a. Names for non-existent things-Empty names: Unicorn, vampire,
pegasus, Santa, phoenix.
b. Function words: maybe, for, conjunctions like and , or, nor,
c. Determiners: a, an, the
d. Some nouns do not denote a certain substance: dint, sake, on
behalf of

2. RTM postulates that a sentence is a list of words.

what is wrong with that? Examples for refutation?

3. Co-referring terms are not often synonymous.

The morning star = Venus

The evening star = Venus
The morning star is the evening star. (synthetic identity
statement)

The pope = Francis

Atatürk is the founder of Turkish Republic. (synthetic identity

statement)
The first president of Turkey is the founder of the Turkish
Republic.
The first president of Turkey means the first president of Turkey
and the founder of Turkey means the founder of Turkey.
The meanings of linguistic expressions have a connection to their
referents but its not enough to explain what they mean.

x is x (analytic statement): Analytic statements are true by

definition
x is y (synthetic statement): Synthetic statements are true by
discovery.

If RTM is true, all identity statements must be in the form of

analytic statements, but there are also synthetic identity
statements.
The fact that synthetic identity statements exist makes the RTM
fail.

Cicero is an amazing writer (He wrote De Re Publica)

Tully is a dull writer (He wrote Topica)

Cicero = Tully (in the real world)

A person might have read De Re Publica and Topica knowing that one
is written by Cicero and the other by Tully, but without
knowing that they are the same person. The reader finds one
amazing and the other one dull.
The referent for these expressions is the same in reality, but the
meaning of these two proper names
(Cicero and Tully) is not the same for the person in question.

4. The present king of France is bald

Apparent reference to non-existents (definite descriptions)

5. There is more to meaning than reference

Frege's distinction between reference (Bedeutung) and sense (Sinn)

The morning star

The evening star

Can RTM work at least with singular terms?

Proper names
Singular pronouns
Definite descriptions

Bertrand Russell rejected the RTM, and showed that RTM does not
work with definite descriptions.

He drew on Gottlob Frege's work and pointed out 4 puzzles with

sentences containing
definite descriptions.

1. Apparent reference to non-existents

The present king of France is bald.

2. The problem of negative existentials

The present king of France does not exist.

3. The puzzle of identity

The current president of the USA is Biden.

4. The problem of substitutivity

Gözde believes that....
The author of My Name is Red is amazing.
The author of Snow is not skilled.

Frege's distinctions:

Sinn: sense
Bedeutung: reference