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The Trouble with Meanings*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 June 2010

N. L. Wilson
N. L. Wilson
Affiliation:
Duke University
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Extract

The doctrine I have in mind is the theory of intensional meanings, the theory according to which unitary descriptive expressions (and some complex ones) have not only extensions, but intensions as well. According to this theory, found in fullest flower in Carnap's Meaning and Necessity, individual expressions, one-place predicates and sentences, have corresponding to them individual concepts, properties and propositions respectively, these latter being the intensions, or, meanings, or, logical contents, of the expressions in question. In the first part of this paper I shall attempt to show that the whole theory of intensional entities represents not just an ontological extravagance, but a fairly clear absurdity. In the second I shall sketch briefly an alternative semantical method and in the third shall attempt to exploit this method for the clarification of a couple of puzzles.

Type
Articles
Information
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 3 , Issue 1 , June 1964 , pp. 52 - 64
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1964

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References

1 On p. 12, n. 13 of “The Logic of Sense and Denotation,” in Henle, Kallen and Langer, eds., Structure, Method and Meaning. This paper, incidentally, is, to my knowledge, at once the most sophisticated and most thorough treatment of the theory of “meaning” there is. I am not, however, convinced that it is successful. In particular, I suspect that the second of the two putative theorems given mid-page 21 is false, and I do not see what repairs could be made.

2 “Notes on Existence and Necessity,” Journal of Philosophy, vol. 40 (1943), pp. 113–27, reprinted in Linsky.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 This has been called (was it by Ryle?) the “Phaedo”-Phaedo Principle.

4 In The Concept of Language, Toronto, 1959, and in “Substances without Substrata,” Rev. of Metaphysics, vol. 12 (1959), pp. 521–39.Google Scholar

5 These examples are offered in honour of Locke's heroic—and instructive—struggles with them in Part III of the Essay.

6 See Putnam, Hilary, “The Analytic and the Synthetic,” in Feigl, and Maxwell, , eds., Scientific Explanation, Space, and Time, Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Vol. III, p. 378.Google Scholar

7 In the case of ‘man’ my Webster's Collegiate Dictionary lets me down, since it waffles away with unhelpful synonyms.

8 “Necessity and Criteria,” Journal of Philosophy, vol. 59 (1962), pp. 647–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9 Or this example from a student's paper: “Poincaré was an unusually great man in that he was both a distinguished mathematician and a distinguished statesman.”