V. APPENDIX: SOME POSSIBLE CONSEQUENCES

draft of a book 

 

 

 

V

 

 APPENDIX: SOME POSSIBLE CONSEQUENCES

 

 

The issues to be addressed in this appendix concern possible consequences of our internalist-neodescriptivist account of the semantic function of proper names to other terms of our language. The proper name is a singular term. In the logic of our language, we can clearly distinguish between singular and general terms. Singular terms are those by which we identify only one object, distinguishing it from a plurality of others, while general terms are those that can be applied to more than one object of reference, allowing us “to say one over many” (Plato). Singular terms are typically of three kinds: indexicals, definite descriptions, and proper names.

   Theories of proper names had always consequences to the ways we understand the mechanisms of reference of other terms. Hence, it is to expect that the adoption of a meta-descriptive theory of proper names will have consequences to our analysis of them. In what follows, I will not have space to develop any orderly or detailed explanation of these consequences. Anyway, I think I am allowed to launch some suggestions for later consideration. After all, philosophy is “working in progress” by definition.

 

1

We begin by taking into consideration the case of definite descriptions. By definite description, I do not understand referential, but attributive ones. Referential definite descriptions are those that are used indexically, to call attention to a person or thing, irrespective of their content (e.g., ‘the man there drinking a martini…’ pointing out to a man holding a glass of water), while attributive definite descriptions are those used to assert something about whatever or whoever fits the proper meaning of that description (like ‘the man with the iron mask…’, referring to a prisoner forced to use an iron mask). (See Donnellan 1966: sec. III)

   There are also the two conflicting influential analyzes of attributive definite descriptions, which vary particularly with the way they treat statements in which attributive descriptions have subjects that are empty. The first was suggested by P.F. Strawson (1950). For him a statement like

 

(a)   The present king of France is wise,

 

is faulty in meaning, lacking a truth-value, since to be true or false it must presuppose the truth of the existential statement (b) “There is a present king of France”, which is false (1952: 185). The alternative way of analysis was much earlier given by Russell’s theory of descriptions (1905; 1916: Ch. XVI). He would analyze a sentence like (a) as the conjunction of three sentences: (i) there is at least one king of France, (ii) there is at most one king of France, and (iii) he is wise. Using ∃ as the operator of existence, F for the predicate ‘…king of France’, and ‘W’ for the predicate ‘…is wise,’ Russell would symbolize (a) as ∃x [Fx & (y) (Fy → y = x) & Wx]. Since ∃x (Fx) is false, the whole set of conjunctions is made false and, consequently, (a) and likely sentences must be false.

   Russell’s view was strongly defended by Stephen Neale (1990), though the issue remains controversial. Although we are unable to see sentence (a) as false, other sentences of the kind, like: (b) “The present king of France is an old man suffering from dementia”, (c) “The present king of France decided to forbidden tourists to visit the Versailles’ Palace” seem to be false, while (d) “The present king of France is sitting in that chair” seen to be false, while (e) “The present king of France is not wise because there is no present king of France” seems to be true.

   The most usual answer in defense of the Russellian analysis is pragmatic (Sainsbury 1979: 120-121; Blackburn 1984: 309-310; see also Russell 1957). According to it, we are used to say that a statement is false when the subject applies but not the predicate. Thus, the statement “The Earth is flat” is immediately seen as false. But in empty statements like “The king of France is wise”, the predicate cannot apply only because the subject term does not apply, which causes confusion. But, from a logical point of view, it seems more reasonable to conclude that in the same way as a sentence is false when the predicate cannot be applied to the object referred to by the subject, it will also be false when it cannot be applied because the subject term cannot be applied. After all, what counts is if the predicate applies or not, and not the reason involved. Maybe this could explain why statements (b) to (e) are intuitively seen as having truth-values: their predicates have more “semantic weight” than the predicate ‘…is wise’ in the statement (a), which lead us to focuse our attention on the non-applicability of the predicates presented in the other statements.

   Another influential objection made by Strawson against the Russellian analysis concerns the problem of unicity (1950: 332). A statement like “The round table is covered with books” receives the Russellian paraphrasis (a) “There is precisely one (at least one and no more than one) table, and it is covered with books”. Since there are many round tables full of books in the world, Russell’s analysis seems to be wrong. The best strategy to solve this problem consists in contextually limiting the domain of quantifiers (Cf. Ostertag 1998). Thus, in statement (a) the domain of the quantifier can be restricted to the objects found in the visiting room of apartment 408 of the Villagio di Milano… Calling a domain D, the predication included in the definite description F (ex: ‘…a round table’), and the additional predication G (ex: ‘…is covered with books) we can analyze the description (a) as having the form:

 

There is precisely one x belonging to the domain D, so that x is F, and for any y belonging to D, if y is F then y = x, and x is G.”

 

I know of no very convincing objection against this kind of answer.

 

Stop==========

 

   Although I sympathize with the Russellian analysis, here is not the place to attempt a sustained defense of his view. My only aim here is to show that the meta-descriptive view can be presented in a Russellian form, as it was already shown in the main text. Indeed, a natural way of extending this idea to attributive definite descriptions would be to say that they must be analyzed as expressing IR-descriptions (derived from MDR_F) able to refer to their object of reference – a description that, as much as it expresses the core meaning of a proper name, should here express the proper meaning of the attributive definite description. Assuming this, the Russellian analysis can be understood as a way of decomposing essential aspects of an IR-description and affirming its effective application. This can be shown, insofar as we reinterpret the conditions (i), (ii), and (iii) as saying that the ascription rule of the predicate ‘…king of France’, when effectively applied to precisely one object of reference, is transformed into an IR-description. Calling A = ‘…satisfies (in a whole with B) the property of being a present king of France’ (the characterizing description), B = ‘…satisfies (in a whole with A) the ??? properties’ (the localizing description), S = ‘the satisfaction of A… ˅ B… is sufficient’, P = ‘(Ax ˅ Bx) satisfies … better than any other…’ (condition of predominance), and W = ‘…is wise’, the empty statement “The present king of France is wise” can be symbolized as:

 

∃x [(Ax ˅ Bx) & Sx & (y) ((Ay ˅ By) & Sy & Pyz → y = x) & Wx]

 

This means that the same kind of Russellian analysis we gave to “Aristotle had to leave Athens” can be applied to “The present king of France is wise”.

   What about a definite description clearly associated with the proper name? For instance, (a) “The author of the Nicomachean Ethics had to leave Athens”. It seems plausible to think that we are speaking about precisely one x, who was the author of The Nicomachean Ethics, who was Aristotle, and who needed to leave Athens. This is contextually implicit. However, I think that Kripke equivocally treats (a) as containing an autonomous description by supposing that in all counterfactual situations (in all possible worlds) we should abstract the information that it was Aristotle the person who almost certainly wrote that book. In this case, the description (a) should rather be presented as having the form of the following identification rule: ‘There is one only person x who sufficiently and predominantly satisfies the characterizing description of being the author of the Nicomachean Ethics and/other have satisfied some unknown localizing description, and this x needed to leave Athens’. This would be a one-foot autonomous identification rule, which needs to be analyzed in the same way as a proper name, as we have considered by analyzing the autonomous definite description ‘the 52^nd Regiment of Fot’. However, it is equivocal to treat (a) as if it were an autonomous description since it is loosely associated with the proper name ‘Aristotle’ and its identification rule (see III, sec. 11, 12).

 

2

Now, I would like to consider some consequences for the indexicals, which can be defined as those singular terms that allow us to identify different particulars through the different utterances in which they appear. Examples of indexicals are demonstrative pronouns like ‘that’ and ‘those,’ possessive pronouns like ‘mine,’ ‘yours,’ personal pronouns like ‘I’, ‘you’, ‘he’, ‘she’, ‘they,’ adverbs like ‘now,’ ‘tomorrow’… They are epistemologically relevant because it seems that through them the language, so to speak, touches the world.

    Indexicals have admittedly two kinds of meanings: the lexical function (also called ‘character’ and ‘role’) and the semantic content. The lexical function is something that does not change with the change of utterances. Because of this we can easily define them, at least in their standard uses, understanding by standard uses those that are the most common and originating. Here are some examples:

 

1. The demonstrative ‘that’ has the lexical function of indicating a material object physically near to the speaker (often accompanied with an ostensive gesture).

2. The personal pronoun ‘I’ has the lexical function of indicating who is uttering in the moment of the utterance.

3. The adverb ‘here’ has the lexical function of indicating the place of the utterance.

4. The adverb ‘now’ has the lexical function of indicating the time of the utterance.

5. The adverb ‘tomorrow’ has the lexical function of indicating the day after utterance.

 

Indexicals also have secondary, non-standard uses. Consider, for instance, the automatic answer recorded on a telephone. When you call, it says: “I am not here now, please leave your message after the signal”. In this case, the indexicals ‘I’, ‘here’, and ‘now’, have displaced functions: the personal pronoum ‘I’ refers to the person who engraved the message days ago, not to someone speaking in the moment he or she is speaking; the ‘here’ and the ‘now’ refer respectively to the present place and time, not the place and moment the message was recorded. Because of such imprevisible cases it is important to distinguish standard uses from the secondary ones. Without this, no workable definition of lexical function would be possible.

   The question concerning the nature of the semantic content is much more difficult. According to some externalist theorists, the semantic content of an indexical is the same as what Frege would call its reference (Bedeutung), while the lexical function would be what Frege would call its sense (Sinn) (Kaplan 1989: 520).

   Here things seem to go wrong. After all, the semantic content of the indexical seems to be what Frege would call its sense, since the sense is the way the object is presented to us[1], which by changing produces changes in the proposition (i.e., the Fregean thought), for instance, as an aspect of the referent, like the Moon presented as a Last Quarter instead of full Moon, or as the context of the referent, like the Morning Star instead of the Evening Star, while the lexical function is only a linguistic mark common to all indexicals of a certain kind in their standard uses, consequently unable to gain the full particularizing function of a Fregean sense. We can compare the lexical function of an indexical rather with the standard function of a definite description of being a nominal complex connoting a reference, or with a proper name’s function of referring to one only object and distinguishing it from a multiplicity of other objects.

   The change in view suggested here leads us to reconsider Frege’s short analysis of indexicals. According to him, an indexical utterance has as its sense a proposition (a thought (Gedanke), in Frege’s nomenclature), which will be atemporally true or false, since part of its expression is what we could call its evaluative context (its truth-makers). Consider Frege’s example:

 

(1)   This tree is covered with green leaves.

 

According to Frege, in this case, “the time of the utterance is part of the expression of the thought” (Frege 1918, 66). That is, for him contextual elements like the time in the evaluative context of the indexical utterance (and, we could also add, the place), along with things like the gest of pointing, are non-linguistic parts of the complete sentence expressing the indexical proposition. A consequence of this is that the proposition expressed by (1) cannot be true in May and false in January, since in January the time will be a different one and so also the proposition or thought. This is a deeply interesting idea, since it generalizes the concept of proposition, making indexical propositions on a par with those propositions expressed by eternal sentences – those that are fixedly true or false.

   It is important to notice that differently from Frege, we do not need to see the proposition as an abstract (platonic) state of affairs. Once we accept Donald Williams’ radical trope ontology, a proposition must be seen as something like a set or class of tropical mental contents precisely similar one another, or, as I prefer, as any chosen mental tropical thought-content or any other chosen tropical thought-content precisely similar with the first one (Ch. III, sec. 2). Moreover, if we accept Wittgenstein’s relativistic semantic verificationism (Ch. II, sec. 4), then the proposition must be the same as the verifying rule of a declarative sentence, not as the strawman that positivist philosophers and their heirs have analyzed and later rejected, but as his discoverer, Wittgenstein, through his examples, has originally suggested (Costa 2018: Ch. V). The equivalences would be then the following: proposition (thought-content) = cognitive sense of the sentence = verifiability rule.

   Having this in mind, we can figure out how we could replace the utterance (1) by an eternal sentence, a sentence containing the Fregean thought expressed by (1), with a truth-value independent of the context of its utterance. My suggestion is the following:

 

(2)   The speaker S in the moment T points to the place L and says that this is a tree covered with green leaves (or: …and says: “This tree is covered with green leaves”), while place L in fact contains a tree covered with green leaves.

 

I claim that sentence (2) is an eternal sentence since it has frozen the contextual dependence of the indexicals that appear in it. It contains more than (1), obviously. But it also contains (1) as a that-sentence that belongs to the eternal sentence (2) and does not depend on the indexically given circumstances anymore. In accordance with Frege’s analysis of subordinate clauses refer to their own senses or propositions (thoughts). This means that, although (1) contains the indexicals ‘there’, ‘this’ and the verb ‘to be’ in the present of the indicative, these terms appear in (2) either within a subordinate clause referring in their own senses, or (under comas) as what we today would call as a semantic-metalinguistic sentence, in which these indexicals would also refer internally to senses belomging to the proposition to which they belong. (See Frege 1892: 37 f.) Moreover, the truth-pretension of (2) also demands the truth of (1): this pretension is satisfied insofar as (1) should be made true by the final clause of (2), according to which place L in fact contains a tree covered with green leaves.

   The same paraphrase suggested above can be applied against John Perry’s very influential objections against Frege’s view of indexical sentences (1977; 1979). Although I do not have space to object against Perry’s multiple counterexamples, I can rebut the best known (1979: 3). He recalls that once, while shopping in a supermarket, he noticed a sugar trail on the floor. His thought was (3) “Someone is making a mess”. Then he decided to follow the trail looking for the responsible person. After steering his shopping cart through a maze of supermarket shelves, he came back to the place he was before, only to notice that the sugar was leaking from his own shopping cart. His thought changed then from (3) to (4):

 

(4) I am making a mess.

 

By thinking (4) he immediately changed his behavior. The thought or utterance of (4), Perry argues, cannot be substituted by any utterance that eschiews the indexical ‘I’ building something like an eternal sentence. If he replaces ‘I’ by ‘Perry’, this cannot be made in all contexts, since Perry could, for instance, be suffering from dementia, having forgotten that his name is Perry… The indexical utterance cannot be replaced by a sentence that preserves its truth-value in any context. Hence, he concludes, the indexical cannot be replaced by any contextually independent eternal sentence. The indexial is essential.

   However, sentence (4) is fully replaceable by an eternal sentence since it can be treated in the same way as we have treated Frege’s example (1). This means that sentence (4) can be paraphrased through the following eternal sentence:

 

5. At 10 a.m. on March 26, 1968, in the confectionary supplies section of the Fleuty supermarket, in the city of Berkeley, Perry notices a sugar trail stretching outward from his shopping cart and thinks that he is making a mess (or: … and thinks: “I am making a mess”) and in fact he is making a mess by letting a sugar trail from his cart.

 

Sentence (5) contains (4). Although containing the pronouns ‘he’ or ‘I’, (5) is an eternal sentence, since according to Frege’s semantics the pronoun ‘he’ is referring to its own sense and, alternatively, the ‘I’ can be seen as only exposed in a semantic metalanguage, the direct relations with their original indexical contexts being suppressed. Other counterexamples given by Perry can be paraphrased in a similar way. Even the truth-claim of (4) is preserved in (5) since a match between the indexical proposition and the fact is linguistically confirmed.

   There are some objections that could be made against the suggested paraphrase. The first one is that the content of (5), although containing the content of (4), gives back much more than what is contained in (4): it is very probable that Perry didn’t know that he was in the confectionary supplies of the Fleuty supermarket at 10 a.m. on March 26, 1968... However, what is so bad with this? One can even answer that this kind of paraphrase is part of our common dialogical speech, for instance, when someone tells the story of Perry’s amusing behavior in the confectionery supplies of the Fleuty supermarket. Even Perry, if sufficiently informed, would tend to agree that the additional information is complementary to (4) and that the truth of (5) implies the truth of (4).

   A further objection would be that (5) does not give back Perry’s personal phenomenal experience when he thinks or utters sentence (4). The answer to this would be that the personal phenomenal experience is private and does not belong to the public language, the only that really matters, due to its communicative function.[2]

 

3

A further point concerns Tugendhat’s (and Dummett’s) thesis that singular terms must have identification rules. If it is so, then, considering that indexicals are singular terms, they should also have identification rules. Moreover, if they have identification rules, we can ask if they have localizing and characterizing conditions in a way like what we have found in proper names and autonomous definite descriptions. I think that the answer must be in the affirmative.[3]

   The reasons are too obvious. Suppose that I enter in a bakery, see a salt bread stuffed with goat cheese and tomatoes under the glass, point to it, and ask: “Could you please give me that?” The seller takes it, packs it, and sells me the bread I have pointed. Of course, as I pointed to the bread, I have created an identification rule for that object. The seller, on her side, recognizes the same object and identifies it by its place and characteristics in a way that was alike to the way I have identified it. She used the same identification rule. Localizing and characterizing conditions belong to that identification rule. They could be expressed by a definite description: “The salt bread stuffed with goat cheese and tomatoes that was found on place L and time T”. They belong conjunctively since could be not so easy to distinguish that bread from others of the same kind.

   This simple example shows something about the indexical ‘that’, namely, that it must be completed by the time and location of the referent, together with at least one identifying tropical property. It can also be that I decide to bring the bread to my home and put it in the refrigerator so that the career of the bread also belongs to my identifying rule. The demonstrative ‘that’ is replacing an identification rule that can be expressed by a definite description. This shows us something about the genesis of definite descriptions: they arise when we decide to fix the indexicals linguistically to communicate the same reference without the need of showing the object of reference to the hearer, as I have made to the seller, or each time I intend to refer to it. Indexicals allow us to identify a referent within some interpersonal context. But only definite description allow us to refer to the object even when this object is not given in the ego-centred space. It gives to the singular term what we could call constancy, though this constancy is inflexible. Only proper names will give us constancy with flexibility.

 

4

We can now go further to the case of general terms, which can be defined as those that can be applied to an undetermined number of objects, allowing us to say, “the same of many” (Plato). This is the case of natural species terms like ‘gold’, ‘planet’, ‘tiger’, the case of mass terms like ‘water’ and ‘air’, and the case of artifact terms like ‘chair’ and ‘house’. There is no systematic classification of general terms. However, I think it is possible to suggest a classification symmetrical to that of singular terms. Thus, instead of indexicals, descriptions, and proper names, we would have three classes of general terms, which we could call: (a) indexicators, (b) descriptivators, and (c) nominators. Before giving a rationale for these distinctions, I will explain them separatedly.

   Indexicators are the simplest general terms; they must be introduced by means of indexicals in a way that does not allow further analyze in our natural language.[4] This is the case of terms like red, hot, hard, round, and square. These terms can be further analyzed when they are used in additional domains of language, but not with the meanings they have in the natural language in which they were originally introduced. Consider, for instance, the word ‘red’. This term can be analyzed in the language of physics, as designating electromagnetic wavelengths that range between 630 and 740 nm. But the language of physics is an elaboration upon natural language that goes far beyond it. The same can be said about a term like ‘round’, which can be defined in the more refined language of geometry as what is limited by a circular perimeter. However, these languages are inevitably appended to the original language about colors and forms. In their original natural language meanings, these words have gained their sense by means of a kind of acquaintance, a term introduced by Bertrand Russell. As he observed, a blind man cannot learn the meaning of the word ‘red’, at least not in that original sense. Accepting this, I am of course not agreeing with Russell’s metaphysics of logical atomism, according to which the meaning of ‘red’ is a sense-datum (1994: 194-5, 201-2).[5] What I wish to defend is that the original meaning of ‘red’ must be given by an ascription rule relating physically given tropes of red with the word ‘red’. This ascription rule must be learned through positive and negative examples, in interpersonal acts of pointing, allowing the possibility of reapplication, and by this means of error and interpersonal correction. This is how we learn the ascription rule for a word like ‘red’ in the form of a tacit public convention. According to this reading, the ascription rule of a general term of the form of an indexicator must be its cognitive meaning, its semantic content.

   Indexicators can also be understood in their application to individuals, like in the sentence “This couch is red”, when the speaker points to tropes of redness belonging to the couch. In this case, the ascription rule should associate some remembered representation of red with what the person is observing in her ego-centered space. But it can also be understood as a non-realist kind of universal. When I say, “Red is a color”, what I intend to say, according to Donald Williams, is that the universal consisting in the class of all precisely similar tropes of red belongs to the class of all precisely similar tropes of color.[6]

   We consider now the descriptivators. They are general terms analog with definite descriptions, though with classificatory instead of identifying function. They are descriptive general terms provided with semantic complexity, able to be analyzed, whose learning isn’t directly dependent on any acquaintance. They easily take the form of an indefinite description. For instance: ‘a dowry hunter.’ This expression can be predicated to more than one object, for instance, to David Sebastian, and to Zsa Zsa Gabor. Descriptivators are linguistically more stable than indexicators, since they do not depend directly on acquaintance: we do not need an indexical situation to learn what is a dowry hunter.

   There are, finally, the nominators, also called general names. Their symbolic expression is not descriptive, but they do not need to be learned in indexical situations like indexicators, even if this might be the case. They should be analyzed in a way that retains similarities with the way we have analyzed proper names; their meanings do not come from their syntactic articulation. They can be natural species terms like ‘tiger’, mass terms like ‘water’, artifact terms like ‘chair’, social terms like ‘professor’, cultural terms like ‘art’… Although these terms have often seen semantically simple, they are in fact abbreviations of differently structured clusters of indefinite descriptions expressing a complex ascription rule. Take, for instance, the nominator ‘cathedral’; its meaning can be given by the indefinite description ‘a church that contains the cathedra of a bishop, thus serving as the central church of a diocese, conference or episcopate’. Here we have a descriptivator term; and it is easy to guess (though difficult to prove) that if we analyze further and further the elements of this indefinite description, we could end up speaking of indexicators.

   We can justify the distinction under three kinds of general terms as analogous to the distinction under three kinds of singular terms appealing to a genetic progression. From a descriptivist viewpoint, it seems very plausible to think that the use of indexicals necessary precedes the generation of descriptions, which in some way necessarily precede the generation of proper names. Through the indexicals, we are presented to the objects for the first time. But the content of indexicals must be attached to the spatiotemporal situation in which they are used, which means they are not permanent (e.g., “Who is that tourist in the group?”). They only gain the property of permanence insofar as they are made context-independent by explicitly taking the form of definite descriptions (e.g., “Who is the tourist with an Australian hat in the group?”). Finally, they gain flexibility because of their independence from this or that definite description only when they take the form of a proper name (e.g., “John is [he tourist with the Australian hat] in the group”). My proposal is that a similar genetic progression can be found justifying the emergence of general terms. The semantic contents of indexicators are contextually and interpersonally given, differing from indexicals by their applicability to many without change in content. They lack permanence and flexibility since they are limited by ego-centrated contexts of use. The semantic content of descriptivators gains permanence; they can be applied to the same tropes in the independence of the context of use. Finally, the semantic content of nominators not only has permanence but also flexibility, since, as we will still see, it can be replaced by a variety of indefinite descriptions. Furthermore, we can speculate whether both, singular and general terms, do not have a common, undifferentiated origin, later restricting the first to individuals only, and allowing to the second application to tropical properties. Consider, for instance, the alarm call of birds. They mean the same as “here” (an indexical) and “danger” (a general term), though without distinction between subject and predicate. I think that these undifferentiated terms were also what Ernst Tugendhat had in mind with his concept of quasi-predicate (Quasiprädikate). As he wrote:

 

Probably one can say that the expressions of characterization that babies in the first stages of their language learning have this form of application. The baby learns to say “uau-uau” by seeing a dog, “mama” by seeing the mother when the perception-model of the mother appears… (1976: 208)[7]

 

These undifferentiated terms work like singular terms because they do distinguish something from all others, but they also work like general terms because they can be applied in the same sense to a multiplicity of referents.

 

5

It is particularly interesting to consider the case of nominators, since, like proper names, they are as a rule only apparently simple. Consider, for instance, the artifact term ‘chair’. This term can be analyzed as an abbreviation, as it is shown by the following definition:

 

‘Chair’ (Df.): a non-vehicular seat with a backrest designed for use by only one person at a time.

 

A chair must be non-vehicular, since its similes in cars, trains, and planes, are called seats and not chairs. Moreover, to be a chair, a seat needs to have a backrest because without this it is only a seat. It must also have a designer since something that only by chance has the form of a chair (like a chair esculpted by the nature on the rooks) cannot be a chair. And it must be made to be used by only one person at a time since if it were not so, a coach would be a chair. The above given indefinite description exposes the criterial rule for the application of the word word ‘chair’, which constitutes the semantic content of this general term. The word ‘chair’ is only an abbreviation of this definiens. It is a practical abbreviation without much flexibility. Beyond this, there are symptoms helping us to identify chairs, like the fact that most chairs have four legs, many have armrests, some are cushioned, etc. This is the simplest case of a nominator, where the word is the abbreviation of an only complex indefinite description.[8]

   Cases of natural species are more complicated. Consider, for example, the concept word ‘gold’. It can be described as a yellow, dense, malleable, ductile metal with the dispositional property of being dissolved by aqua regia (a mixture of nitric and hydrochloric acids). John Locke would choose such properties as constituting what he called the ‘nominal essence’ of the metal. But more fundamental is the fact that gold is the chemical element with atomic number 79 in the periodic table (a transition metal with 79 protons, 118 neutrons, and 79 electrons). One could ask if the ‘real essence’ (Locke) of gold were only the property of having atomic number 79, without taking for granted any superficial property. Would (if it were possible) gas with the superficial properties of hydrogen, but with atomic number 79, be called ‘gold’? I guess not, since it would interfere with our concept of another element, namely, hydrogen, which has the atomic number 1.

   Some natural species concepts have nothing to do with microstructural essences, at least in the ways they have been used until now. This is the case of the biological concept of species (the genetic layout is not taken as a definitory element of a species). A better example is the concept of religion – a candidate for what Wittgenstein called family resemblance (Familienähnlichkeit).[9] The philosopher P. W. Alston (1964: Ch. 6) proposed the following descriptive model of criterial conditions for the attribution of a religion:

 

1.    Belief in supernatural beings (gods)

2.    Religious feelings (reverence, adoration, sense of mystery, and guilt)

3.    A moral code sanctioned by God or the gods

4.    Preaches and other forms of communication with God or the gods.

5.    A distinction between the sacred and profane; ritual acts related to sacred objects.

6.    A wide organization of personal and social life based on such characteristics.

7.    A cosmovision: an explanation of the world and the place of man in it.

 

Alston observes that catholicism, Judaism, and Islamism, satisfy paradigmatically all these conditions.[10] Protestantism, however, attenuates rituals concerning sacred objects, while the Quakers reject them, concentrating on the mistic experience. The Hinayana Budhism, he notes, ignores supernatural beings, emphasising a moral and spiritual discipline that aims vanishing of desires.

   We can go further, asking what should be said about Comte’s religion of humanity, which divinizes the human society, having devotional figures like Shakespeare and Clotilde de Vaux? What about immanent views of the divine, like Spinoza’s and Einstein’s religiose attitude towards the universe? What about social organizations like the Rosicrucians, the radical political groups, or the mathematical mysticism of the Pythagorean philosophers? My proposal is that to get more clarity about all these cases, we should add a higher-order condition, measuring the indefinite descriptions presented in Alston’s model. Here is what we could call the ascription rule for the concept word ‘religion’:

 

RA-‘religion’:

We use the word ‘religion’ to refer to a tropical complex property x belonging to the genus of socio-cultural practices

Iff

(i)    x satisfies at least one or two of the 7 first-order description-rules.

(ii)  x satisfies them in sufficient degree.

(iii) x satisfies them more than any competing socio-cultural practice.

 

 If we accept this ascription rule, we will include Comte’s religion of humanity under the concept of religion, since it satisfies 2, 4, 5, 6, and 7 in varying degrees. We would have doubts concerning Spinoza’s and Einstein’s religions since they satisfy only condition 2 entirely, but they barely satisfy conditions 5, 6, and 7. Rosacruses, radical political groups, and pythagorean mysticism would satisfy sufficiently several basic descriptions, but they would not satisfy the condition (iii) of the ascription rule since it applies less to other social-cultural practices that are respectively ‘secret organization’, ‘radical politic groups’, and ‘philosophy’.

   Finally, it is interesting to note that this kind of ascription rule is often explicitly used in science. Examples are the criterial conditions for the diagnosis of Asperger’s syndrome in neurology (Gillberg 2002: Chap. 2), and the revised forms of Jones’ criterion for the diagnosis of rheumatic fever in internal medicine (Jones 1944).

 

6

A more complex and maybe the most discussed general term in the recent analytic philosophy is that of water. From a descriptivist point of view, the conceptual content or semantic-cognitive meaning of the concept word ‘water’ has historically evolved. Since the stone age, humans have had this concept. It always was the transparent, colorless, and tasteless liquid that filled the rivers, lakes, and oceans, fell in the form of rain, quenched the thirst, served to wash, and put out the fire. Around 1750, still before the birth of modern chemistry, one could also add to these properties those of being a liquid able to cause roast, to conduct electric energy, and indispensable to life. These were easily describable dispositional properties.

   A descriptivist would say that at least some central properties of this bunch, like (in a pure state) being transparent and tasteless… and the dispositional properties of quenching the thirst and putting out the fire would be essential constituents of the meaning of the word ‘water’. But from 1780 to 1830 there was a revolution. In 1781 Lavoisieur burned hydrogen and oxygen, obtaining water, and in 1786 he achieved the reverse procedure. In 1801 Nicholson and Carlisle obtained the same results through electrolysis. In 1811 Avogadro concluded that the composition of water where HO_1/2. And in 1821 Berzelius corrected that result concluding that the chemical structure of water would be H₂O.[11]

   Some would argue that these discoveries put an end to descriptivism: the essence of water is H₂O, and here must reside its real meaning. However, this argument would only impress the naïve descriptivist. A more sophisticated descriptivist would see it as the result of prejudice, answering that a description does not need to be restricted to what one sees with nacked eyes; the word ‘description’ has a much broader use, allowing its application to what is invisible, like the microstructures only seen by means of a microscope. As Avrum Stroll noted (1998: 71), all good modern dictionaries include, along with superficial properties like being a transparent liquid… also the chemical structure of H₂O, along with other chemical properties like the percentage of hydrogen and oxygen by weight.

   My suggestion is that the modern descriptivist should not reject the chemical properties in the case of water but incorporate them into the descriptions expressing the meaning. From his perspective, in its present meaning the word ‘water’ should have a superficial and a deep nucleus of meaning. The superficial nucleus of meaning is the popular meaning, already known in 1750, including superficial dispositional properties. The deep nucleus of meaning would be the scientific meaning, which could be summarized by the formula H₂O, but well-considered, should include what privileged users, namely, the chemists, know of this compound (e.g. 2H₂ + O₂ = 2H₂O), together with the inferential relations between the superficial and the deep nuclei of meaning (e.g. the high superficial tension caused by cohesive interaction between molecules).[12] Now, how could the ascription rule for the concept of water be exposed? My tentative suggestion is that in its most wide sense the concept of water could be exposed by means of the following ascription rule:

 

     AR-‘water’:

The general term ‘water’ refers to tropical properties belonging to the genus of an inorganic compound in any sample x (any sample identifiable through singular terms)

iff

(i)              x satisfies the characterizing rules constitutive of its popular nucleous of meaning and/other satisfies the characterizing rules constitutive of the scientific nucleus of meaning

(ii)            in a measure in the whole sufficient,

(iii)          more than any other inorganic compound.

 

This ascription rule for the concept word ‘water’ in the widest sense is to some extent like the MIR_F for proper names. However, it differs from the last one by the fact that condition (iii) does not restrict the application of the rule to a particular sample x. Moreover, the disjunction lets room for a substance that lacks either the popular or the scientific nucleus of meaning, following in this way our intuitions. Indeed, it seems that if we could have a cup of a watery liquid with all superficial properties of water, but different microphysical properties, for instance, with molecules building some complex formula that could be abbreviated as XYZ instead of H₂O, we could still call it water. On the other hand, it seems that if we had a liquid with no other superficial property of water, but with the deep property of being constituted by H₂O, we could still call it water.

   It seems appropriate to add here a pragmatic consideration. By speaking of water, we can have in mind the satisfaction of superficial and/or deep properties, according to what could be called the context of interests involved. Imagine a scientific context of students who know some chemistry and are dealing with an experiment with electrolysis in the laboratory. In this context, what counts is the scientific nucleus of meaning of the compound, not the popular meaning since they are interested in using electricity to split water into oxygen and hydrogen. The word ‘water’ is used here essentially in the sense of ‘oxid of hydrogen’, which is the chemical name of water, and this is what they contextually emphazise as the meaning of the word. Suppose on the other hand, that the context is of plain fishermen in a remote island, who are interested in digging a pit to have water to drink and washing. In this case, the context of interest will elevate the value of the superficial properties of water since it is of no interest whatever chemical structure the acquose liquid has, insofar as it fully satisfies their expectations (we can even imagine that they have no idea of the chemical constitution of water). What they mean with water is simply the acquose liquid essential for life. What we mean with the word ‘water’ can remain general, satisfying AR-water, but can also oscillate from the side of ‘oxid of hydrogen’ or ‘acquose liquid’ according to the context.

   The considerations made above enable us to deal with a dilemma that old descriptivists like A. J. Ayer (1983: 270) and causalists like Kripke (1980: 128-9) and Putnam (1975: 215-271) have left unsolved. Let us suppose the two following imaginary situations (Costa 2014: 87):

 

(i)              A sample is found that has all the superficial characteristics of water: it is transparent, odorless, insipid, quenches the thirst, sustains life, puts out the fire, etc. However, it has been discovered that this liquid is not compounded by H₂O, but by XYZ.

(ii)            A sample is found that has no superficial characteristic of water. It is black like pitch, does not quenches the thirst, does not put out fire… but (very surprisingly!) has the chemical composition of H₂O.

 

The question is: which substance is really water: (i) or (ii)? Old style descriptivists like Ayer would say that (i) must be water and not (ii), since which defines water is for them only the superficial properties, not its chemical composition. Causal-referentialists like Kripke and Putnam would say that (ii) must still be water, but not (i), since only (ii) has the essential property of water, which is of being a compound with the microstructure of H₂O. This is a dilemma because both alternatives seem to have some appeal.

   The assumption of AR-‘water’, along with our pragmatic considerations, brings a solution to the dilemma. Both (i) and (ii) are, in the wide sense of the word, samples of water. We can call the first water-XYZ and the second water-H₂O. Moreover, in a scientific context of interest one can insist that the XYZ liquid is not water, understanding by water the same as oxide of hydrogen or H₂O, while in a popular context of interests one can insist that the XYZ is water, insofar as it still has all its superficial properties, including those satisfying our needs.

   Another application of the proposed descriptivist analysis of the meaning of water concerns the epistemological status of the statement “Water is H₂O”. According to such philosophers as Kripke and Putnam, this is a necessary a posteriori statement, since it was gained through the experience, but it is also necessary since for them the rigid designator ‘water’ picks out the same natural kind as the rigid designator ‘H₂O’ in all possible worlds… Avrum Stroll has noted something interesting about that statement (1998: 73): the ‘is’ in “Water is H₂O” is not the ‘is’ of identity, as Kripke suggested, but the ‘is’ of constitution. “Water is H₂O” does not mean “Water = H₂O”, but “Water is made of H₂O”. This is true, but it seems still possible to save the identity by changing the identity sentence for: “Water is the same as amounts of H₂O molecules”.

   The difficulty often found in Kripke’s necessary a posteriori is that what is necessarily true is what is true in all possible worlds, and it seems that what is true in all possible worlds must be known a priori (Stalnaker 1976). It seems that even if we arrived at a posteriori to some truth, it would be accepted as being a priori as soon as we see that it is true in all possible worlds.

   Now, it is interesting to consider the statement “Water is H₂O” under the light of our suggested analysis of the meaning of H₂O since it allows an explanation that circumvents the problem posed above. Accordingly, there must be three possible meanings of “Water is H₂O” (and also for “Water is made of H₂O”):

 

(i)              If by ‘water’ we mean AR-‘water’ the statement must be contingent a posteriori since the disjunction included in AR-‘water’ allows the empirical possibility that water is not the same (or made of) of H₂O, but even so, remainning water, insofar as it still satisfies the superficial properties of being an aqueous liquid. In this general sense, the liquid would remain water even if it had the composition of XYZ.

(ii)            However, in a scientific context of interests in which ‘water’ means ‘oxide of hydrogen’ the statement “Water is H₂O” would be a necessary a priori statement, since it is seen as the same as “Hydrogen oxide = H₂O”.

(iii)          On the other hand, within a popular context of interests, ‘water’ will mean ‘aqueous liquid’ independently of the chemical composition, which means that the statement “Water is H2O” will be, again, contingent a posteriori.

 

After this analysis, the pressure for the acceptance of the necessary a posteriori disappears, at least regarding the statement “Water is H2O”. Defenders of the necessary a priori are here only confusing the a priori necessity of (ii) with the a posteriori character of (i) and (iii).

 

7

The above exposed internalist understanding of the meaning of ‘water’ is obviously opposed to Putnam’s well-known externalist view, according to which “meanings just ain’t in the head” (1975: 227; 1988: 28). Here we must dwell with his famous Twin-Earth though-experiment. He imagines that in some place of the cosmos there is a Twin-Earth in all its details identical to ours, with one exception: the transparent, tasteless, odorless liquid that quenches the thirst, puts out the fire, falls in the form of rain, fulls the rivers and oceans… has a complex chemical structure that can be abbreviated as XYZ, which has nothing to do with H₂O. Then a person called Oscar in 1750, on the Earth looks at the rain and says: “There is water”. At the same time, in the Twin-Earth the Twin-Oscar does the same. He looks at the rain and says: “There is water”. Since in 1750 the chemical structure of water was still not discovered, all that Oscar and Twin-Oscar can have in their heads when they say, “There is water” is that they are looking at the same transparent, tasteless, odorless liquid called ‘water’. However, as the chemistry has some time later discovered, what Oscar has meant by pointing to the rain was the liquid with the microstructure H₂O, while Twin-Oscar has meant a liquid with the microstructure XYZ. Since for Putnam the essence of water lies in its microstructure, XYZ cannot be really water (he calls XYZ ‘twin-water’). Consequently, Oscar and Twin-Oscar have meant – have signified – different things with the word ‘water’, although they had the same contents in their heads (the same idea of a transparent, tasteless, odorless liquid…) Putnam’s conclusion is that if they have the same thing in their heads, but what they mean are different things with different extensional meanings, them the meaning of ‘water’ cannot be in their heads! It must be something external to their heads, as the amounts of liquid with the same structure of what they are pointing. The meaning of ‘water’ must be external to our heads, which can be generalized to other terms. It was not needed much time until someone came to the conclusion that even our minds must be outside our heads since the locus of the meaning is the mind (McDowell 1992).

   There is an ongoing controversy about the correctness of Putnam’s externalism (see Pessin & Goldberg 1996). I would like to add here a short but, in my view, fatal counterargument. It has two steps. The first concerns the ambiguity of the word ‘mean’ used by him. The word ‘mean’ means ‘meaning’ (“What do you mean with the word ‘ulotrichous’?”), but also means ‘what one is pointing to’ (“I mean that chair and not this table”). It is easy to confuse the second with the first use of the word, concluding that the Oscars really mean (in the sense of ‘meaning’) different things, when they are in fact only pointing to different kinds of things, since the meaning they are giving to the word ‘water’ is in 1750 really the same. (Even the cause of their cognition they would identify with the aqueous liquid they are seeing). However, what this consideration applied to the thought experiment shows is that when Putnam says that in 1750 Oscar and Twin-Oscar have meant two different things with the word ‘water’, he:

 

induces us to tacitly use Oscar and Twin-Oscar as indexical instruments for what we ourselves presently mean (in the sense of ‘meaning’) with the word ‘water’ in each case. It is obvious that we, with our present knowledge of the chemistry of water, mean by ‘water’ something with the composition of H₂O when we consider what Oscar is pointing to, and, having in mind what Putnam has told us, we mean by ‘water’ XYZ (whatever it is), when we consider what Twin-Oscar is pointing to. Since our mental states are obviously different when we think H₂O and XYZ, Putnam’s thought experiment fails.

 

 What remains different are the references and the extensions of these two compounds, which always were and will be external. This is the kind of linguistic sorcery that asks for careful linguistic Wittgensteinian therapy.[13]

   Putnam has also developed externalist arguments to defend that the meaning can be in society. In the first argument he supposes that aluminum and molybdenum can only be distinguished by metallurgists and that the Twin-Earth is full of molybdenum, a rare metal on Earth. Moreover, he supposes that the inhabitants of the Twin-Earth call molybdenum aluminum, and aluminum molybdenum. In this case, the word ‘aluminum’ said by Oscar will have an extension that is different from ‘aluminum’ said by Twin-Oscar. But since they are not metallurgists, they have the same psychological states. Hence, once again “the psychological state (the meaning) of the speaker does not determine the extension of the word” (1975: 226).

   In his second example, Putnam considers the difference between an olm and a beech tree (1975: 226-227). Most of us do not know how to distinguish olms from beechs in a forest. Even so, we can use these words knowing that they have different extensions, that elms are not beeches, and vice-versa. Hence, what we intend to say with these words, the meanings that we attribute to them, are different, even if the difference is not in our heads. Putnam notes that all that we know is that an olm is a tree that is different from a beach, and vice-versa, but since this difference is totally symmetrical, the representations cannot be distinguished one from the other (1991: 29). We need the linguistic social corpus to distinguish them for us.

   His conclusion from these examples is that “Only the sociolinguistic state of the collective linguistic corpus” to which the speaker belongs will be able to fix its extension (1975: 228). Meaning is not only external but also social: “reference is socially fixed and not determined by conditions or objects in individual brains/minds” (1991: 25).

   Concerning these last views, we have already said enough as we made an internalist interpretation of the linguistic division of work applied to proper names in the chapter III (sec. 9) of this book. So, I will only answer the last two examples of Putnam against internalism.

   Concerning the first one, all we need to do is to generalize what we said about insufficient versus self-sufficient references, and the two success criteria of insufficient reference (SCBs), from singular to general terms. A fisherman who says that a whale is the biggest ocean fish, gives a wrong definition of a whale, since it is a mammal. However, what he means already satisfies the conditions of convergence and linguistic competence, enough not only to the insertion of the word in the discourse, by an enhanced mechanism of reference borrowing, but also even to his identification of whales by sight. However, if a child thinks that ‘whale’ is the name of a mountain in the Appalachians, when in fact there is no such mountain, the child will fail to satisfy the condition of convergence, being unable to insert the word in the discourse in a tolerable way. In the same way, we already know that aluminum and molybdenum are metals and that they are different, and this is already, regarding the contexts, sufficient to the insertion of these words referentially in the discourse assuming an enhanced mechanism of reference borrowing. The meanings here will only be differentiated by the privileged users, namely, by the metallurgists.

   Concerning the second example, the answer is that there is more in what we believe when we distinguish ‘olm’ from ‘beech’. If someone asks us about the difference between these two trees, we will answer that we suppose that these terms refer to different kinds of trees, though we concede that we are not sure. But what leads us to this hypothesis? I think, a good reason would be that these words are in fact not new to us, we have in our lives heard from one and from the other separately, in different circumstances, which lead us to make this hypothesis. Hence, we have minimally two information: (i) olms and beeches are kinds of trees; (ii) we suspect that they are different kinds of trees. Information (i) already allows us to insert these words convergently into the discourse: we know that an olm cannot be made of molybdenum, for instance. Information (ii) makes us suspect that they are different kinds of trees. And this is all we need as a starting point. Nevertheless, we can also be misled! It is plenty possible that olms and beeches are different names of the same kind of tree, in the same way as ‘calendula’ and ‘marigold’ are in fact the same kind of plant, though possibly do not appear to be. Putnam mistakenly takes a plausible internal bet for an externalist form of social knowledge.

 

8

Another attempt to show that thoughts are outside our heads comes from Tyler Burge. Following John Searle, I change the example a bit to make it clearer. Imagine that Bill, living in community A, searches for a doctor complaining that he has arthritis in his thigh. The doctor explains to him that arthritis cannot occur in the thigh, since it is an inflammation in the joints. Forgetting this conversation, Bill travels to a distant region of the country, where there is a community B, where it is usual to use the word ‘arthritis’ for pain in the thigh. This time the doctor confirms his condition. According to Burge, such a story shows that the content of thought cannot be in the mind since Bill has uttered the same sentence and thought the same thing in the two different contexts with opposite truth-values. Since the truth-value bearer is usually considered the content of thought, the change in the truth-value shows that the contents of thought should be different and, therefore, should not be in Bill’s mind.

   The internalist answer is that what Bill has in mind by thinking he has arthritis in his hips is more than that. As Searle wrote: “the presupposition of commonality of linguistic usage is a general background assumption, something that is prior to explicit beliefs and thoughts” (2004: 185). In other words, Bill is also in his mind assuming that his use of the word ‘arthritis’ is the same as the use of this word by the community of speakers surrounding him. This explains why in the first utterance his statement is true and in the second false. Together with this assumption, the first of Bill’s utterances can be unpacked as follows:

 

(1)   I believe that I have arthritis in the thigh, assuming that the word ‘arthritis’ is used by the surrounding linguistic community A as causing pain in the tight.

 

While the same utterance of Bill in the distant region of the country can be unpacked as having the form:

 

(2)   I believe that I have arthritis in the thigh, assuming that the word ‘arthritis’ is used by the surrounding linguistic community B as causing pain in the tight.

 

 

Now, the assumption is false in the utterance (1), and true in the utterance (2), which does not mind, since the full statements (1) and (2) are already different, the first referring to the community A and the second referring to the community B. They have different truth-values simply because their full contents of thought are different. And there is nothing external in this.

   An externalist could react arguing that the semantic content of the indexical is already external so that the A and B remit to ‘the actual surrounding linguistic community’, which belongs to an external broad content. But the internalist could counter answering that this move is in no way granted. She could internalize the concept of broad content, suggesting that the internal indexical assumption is what we use to call the broad content, while the also internal thought-content that Bill has arthritis in the tight is what we use to call the narrow content.

 

9

Descriptivism implies internalism. So, I will finish these sketches rebutting two imaginative examples of David Kaplan in defense of externalism.

Considering the first example and removing some rhetoric ornaments, imagine that a person, say, Jim, points to someone on the street who seems to be Charles. Since Jim knows that Charles moved out to Princeton, he says:

 

1*. He moved out to Princeton.

 

What Jim does not know is that the person on the street is his friend Paul, disguised as Charles. Since Paul didn’t move to Princeton, the proposition is false. However, thinks Kaplan (1989: IX), if the proposition were mere cognitive content, it should be true, since the belief Jim has is that Charles moved to Princeton. Hence, the semantic content involved must be in the world outside in what he calls a structured proposition, and not in the belief-content.

   The answer is that what authorizes Jim to state that he (the person Jim is pointing there) moved out to Princeton is a previous visual (false) identification of Charles. Hence, the statement (1*) is the result of an instantly reasoning, which could be stated as follows:

 

1. That person there is Charles.

2. Charles moved to Princeton.

3. He (that person there) moved to Princeton.

 

This makes clear that the statement (1*) does not involve in its semantic content the view that Charles went to Princeton. Statement (1*) = (3), which is only the result of reasoning from two other beliefs from Jim where (1) is false and (2) is true, which makes (3) false. This shows that Jim’s belief that Charles moved to Princeton has nothing to do with the falsity of (3), which is perceived by some other person.

   The second argument concerns two identical twins: Castor and Pollux (1989: 531-2). They are monitored to have the same cognitive-psychologic states. In a certain moment, both say:

 

My brother was born before me.

 

Since Pollux was born before, Castor says something true, while Pollux says something false. According to Kaplan, since the cognitive states are the same, the difference in the belief-contents must be in the world outside, that is, in the structured proposition.

   This argument only works if we take Putnam’s externalist arguments seriously. If not, the idea that Castor and Pollux are having identical mental states but meaning different things turns to be gratuitous. After all, through the expression ‘my brother’ Castor must have in mind Pollux and Pollux Castor, and with the word ‘me’, each one has in mind himself. Only the grammatical meaning of the two sentences is the same, and this meaning is not enough to constitute a proposition or a content of thought.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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[1] This translation fares better than the literal ‘the referent’s way of given’ (die Art des Gegebenseins des Bezeichneten) (Frege 1892: 26) since it preserves the intentional aspect of the concept of Sinn. Max Textor suggested ‘a mode of purported representation’ to warrant the sense of empty names (2011: 134).

[2] For a detailed discussion, see Costa 2014: Ch. IV.

[3] What I will say can be related to Burks 1949 and Kaplan 1978.

[4] The argument that follows is influenced by Wittgenstein’s considerations about the interpersonal character of language, and the idea that there are different “regions” of language (“languages”), different “practices” or “language-games” in which the same expression is used, with different but kindred meanings, easily leading the philosopher to confusion. (See Wittgenstein 1984b, part I, 1984a; see also Costa 2018: 115-153)

[5] Indexicators are subrogates of what Russell called logical proper names. However, differently from Russell, I do not see their meanings as their references, but as rules linking the references with the terms, which means they can be also incorrectly learned and used, and statements using them can be false for this reason.

[6] Or, as I have suggested (to avoid problems with the term ‘class’), what I intend to say is that any arbitrarily chosen trope of red or any other trope of red precisely similar to the first one is also any arbitrarily chosen trope of color or any other trope of color precisely similar to the first chosen trope of color.

 

[7] The line of thought that leads him was, however, a different one. For him, the characteristic of such words is that the situations of their application and of their explanation are the same (1976: 208-209).

[8] Cognitive psychologists, beginning with Eleanor Rosh, noted the importance of the degrees of similarity of an exemplar from prototypic cases when the intention is to make conceptual categorization (Rosh 1973; 1999). We identify more easily what concept we should apply to an object insofar as we find it as having more features in common with the stereotypic case (for instance: we identify a falcon as a bird much easier than a penguin, since the penguins have fewer features similar with stereotypes of birds, and we identify a chair in the dinner room more easily than a rocking chair or a throne.) This seems well-justified regarding performance and the process of learning. But it would be confusing the attempt to maintain the prototype theory without preserving the possibility of definitional tacit conventions, since, without the criteria offered by them, we can be lost in finding the right similarity features and their limits regarding the stereotypic cases. Any concept is in one or the other aspect be like any other (a needle can be sseen as in some way like the Eiffel Tower), and in the end, only definitional tacit conventions can adequately rescue their vague limits. Otherwise, how to justify the intuitive adequacy of the above definition of a chair, which includes rocking chairs, beach chairs, thrones, electric chairs… It seems that a prototype does not do much more than exemplify a case in which most or all definitory criteria and auxiliary symptoms are satisfied.

[9] Interpreters noticed that Wittgenstein proposed this concept influenced by his reading of William James’ Book, The Varieties of Religious Experience (Pitcher 1964: 218).

[10] They are what Rosh would call prototypical cases.

[11] The history is more complicated; for a short account see Philip Ball (2001: Chap. 5).

[12] I think that this scratches the link between descriptivists and inferentialist views of meaning (for the latter, see Brandon 2000)

[13] Metaphysical philosophy tends to ostracize the therapeutic one, although Wittgenstein was aware that both are dialectically interdependent. As he wrote: “The problems arising through the misinterpretation of our language have a character of deepness. They are deep disquietudes; they are so deeply rooted in us as the forms of our language, and their significance is so great as the importance of our language”. (1984b sec. 111).