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Our Knowledge and Our Language1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Robert X. Ware
Robert X. Ware*
Affiliation:
University of Calgary
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Extract

I am not sure how confident we can be about our knowledge of the meaning of a sentence, but I am sure that we should be much less confident than we often are about the meaning of a word or non-sentential expression. This paper is an attempt to whittle away our confidence about word-meaning, and it is to this end that I investigate the meaning of the word ‘know'. But the point of the investigation is to show that it is not enough to investigate just the meaning of a word. We must investigate the syntax as well, something that philosophers have often ignored. A theory of meaning must be closely tied to a theory of syntax, and for one to be acceptable the other must be acceptable as well. A theory of language must be an integrated theory, and hypotheses about syntax and meaning stand or fall together.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 3 , Issue 2 , December 1973 , pp. 153 - 168
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1973

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Footnotes

1

This work was done with the aid of a Canada Council Grant and a lot of help from my friends. It was presented at both the University of Chicago and the University of Calgary. I wish to thank the people at those universities for their critical comments.

References

2 Ryle, Gilbert The Concept of Mind (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1949), p. 29.Google Scholar

3 Ibid., p. 29.

4 Cf. Ibid., p. 59.

5 Woozley, A. D. ‘Knowing and Not Knowing’, Proc. of the Aristotelian Society, 53 (1952-53)Google Scholar as reprinted in Griffiths, A. P. ed., Knowledge and Belief (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967), p. 86.Google Scholar

6 Cf. Lemmon, E. J. ‘If I Know, Do I Know That I Know?’ in Stroll, A. ed., Epistemology (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), pp. 54–57.Google Scholar

7 Cf. Ryle, Gilbert ‘Knowing How and Knowing That’, Proc. of the Aristotelian Society, 46 (1945-46), p. 14Google Scholar for a discussion of a distinction between learning how and learning that.

8 For a discussion of these rules with different details, see Rosenbaum, Peter S. The Grammar of English Predicate Complement Constructions (Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press, 1967), pp. 6Google Scholar and 14-23; and Burt, Marina K. From Deep to Surface Structure (New York: Harper & Row, 1971), pp. 118–135.Google Scholar

9 It is because we can speak of knowing how to shave ourselves that I would disagree with some remarks by Don Brown, with which in many ways I am sympathetic. He argues that the subject of the embedded sentence is unspecified, but this would not explain the reflexivization and is unnecessary anyway. I also think that his imperative marker in the embedded sentence is not motivated and does not deal with the difference between knowing how one can do something and knowing how. one should do something. For these reasons, I do not see the distinction that he draws between the English use and the standard use, which are said to produce an ambiguity of ‘know how to V’. These matters are discussed in his interesting article: D. G. Brown, ‘Knowing How and Knowing That, What’ in O. P. Wood and G. Pitcher, eds., Ryle (London: Macmillan, 1970), pp. 213–248.

10 Cf. Lemmon, op. cit., p. 59 and fn. 9, p. 81.

11 Ibid., pp. 58–59.

12 Cf. Woozley, op. cit., p. 90 and D. G. Brown, op. cit.

13 Cf. Chomsky, Noam ‘Linguistics in Philosophy’ in Hook, S. ed., Language and Philosophy (New York: New York University Press, 1969), p. 87Google Scholar where a similar view is presented.

14 This example was provided by Gilbert Ryle.

15 Cf. Lemmon, op. cit., p. 60, who does maintain this.

16 Jerry Katz helped me with this issue.

17 Fodor, J. A. ‘The Appeal to Tacit Knowledge in Psychological Explanation’, The Journal of Philosophy 65 (1968): 633.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

18 Cf. Ryle, ‘Knowing How and Knowing That’, p. 13.

19 Cf. Ryle, Concept of Mind, p. 59.

20 Chomsky, op. cit., p. 86.

21 Ryle, Gilbert ‘Use, Usage and Meaning’, Proc. of the Aristotelian Society, supp. vol. 35 (1961), p. 224.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

22 Cf. Ryle, ‘Use, Usage and Meaning’ and Chomsky, Noam ‘Knowledge of Language’, Times Literary Supplement, No. 3507 (May 15, 1969), p. 524.Google Scholar