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Meaning-as-Use and Meaning-as-Correspondence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 February 2009

Panayot Butchvarov
Panayot Butchvarov
Affiliation:
Syracuse University, New York
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Extract

The purpose of this article is to examine two major arguments in favour of the philosophical thesis that the meaning of an expression is its use, and not its referent or what it corresponds to. A second philosophical thesis which is closely related to the first is that the study of the ordinary, “actual” uses of certain expressions is not of purely linguistic interest but in fact is a way, probably the only proper way, of solving the problems of traditional philosophy; in the sequel to the present article, we shall examine one major argument in favour of this second thesis. Both theses occupy a place of central importance in the dominant movement in contemporary British philosophy, to which we shall refer as “the philosophy of ordinary language”. Together they seem to constitute the basis of the most characteristic claim of this movement: that traditional philosophic discourse is logically improper and that philosophy is a legitimate cognitive discipline only if it is concerned with “the spatial and temporal phenomenon of language” by describing “the actual use of language”. Both theses are necessary for the justifi cation of this more general claim.

Type
Articles
Information
Philosophy , Volume 35 , Issue 135 , October 1960 , pp. 314 - 325
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1960

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References

page 314 note 1 To appear in a future issue of this Journal.

page 314 note 2 It is perhaps unnecessary to repeat here the frequent warning that “the philosophy of ordinary language” is not really a movement but rather a broad area of agreement in contemporary philosophy. This warning is pro bably more effective as a way of bringing out some differences between the philosophy of ordinary language and the older movement of logical positivism than it is when designed to point out a peculiarity of the philosophy of ordinary language which is not shared by most movements or schools in the history of philosophy.

page 314 note 3 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Philosophical Investigations (Oxford, 1953), paragraphs 108, 124. Henceforth, all numbers between parentheses refer to the numbered paragraphs of Part I of this work.Google Scholar

page 315 note 1 And this reply of the traditional philosopher need not imply the absurd position that all expressions in language have referents or that a meaningful expression (in the sense of meaning as correspondence) must always have a referent. The traditional philosopher may assert that many expressions are quite justifiably used in language without their having referents; for (1) language is an activity with many purposes, some of which may well be achieved by the use of expressions which have no meaning (as correspondence), and (2) purely informative language may need expressions which do not refer to anything but merely serve to connect meaningful expressions. And he may assert that one need not always have the referent of an expression in mind if this expression is to be meaningful when it is being used; it is sufficient that he be able to observe or imagine this referent in order to verify the meaning-fulness of the expression. On this point, H. H. Price's discussion in Chapter XI, especially pp. 355–358, of his Thinking and Experience, is highly relevant.

page 319 note 1 In. this sense, the rules of meaning-as-correspondence would be sub jective (and therefore would be no rules at all) not merely because the refer ents of words may be private, as some critics of Wittgenstein often suppose. Even if the referents are public objects, the rules of the meaning of their referends are private and subjective because the relation of reference or correspondence is private.

page 321 note 1 For one account of such an act of remembering see H. H. Price's Thinking and Experience.

page 322 note 1 Strawson, P. F., “On Referring”, Essays in Conceptual Analysis, ed. Flew, Antony, New York, 1956. p. 35.Google Scholar

page 322 note 2 Hence the misleading character of the analogy between linguistic expres sions and instruments, although even the latter cannot be said to imply in any obvious sense the rules of their use or their proper functions.

page 324 note 1 Cf. 382.

page 324 note 2 Cf. 243.