Week Two Questions
In the context of introducing various forms of pragmatist challenges to
the classic semantic program, you appear to be quite sympathetic to such
critical observations against the classic concept of meaning as made by
Quine and later Wittgenstein. According to you, Quine pointed out that the
holistic character of the inference prevents us from specifying the
distinctive set of use of a particular word that is necessary and
sufficient for attaching a specific meaning to it (p. 4). (As I understand
it, this is the pragmatist's expression of the denial of
analytic/synthetic distinction.) Also you mentions Wittgenstein's thought
experiments concerning the essentially dynamic character of linguistic
practice, which involves a change in some essential aspect of the usage of
a given word; the change seems natural, understandable (for most of us),
but awkward for any attempt of systematic explanation (p. 6). (As I
understand it, you seem to address this issue again from a different angle
in the chapter three of BSD.)
Having said these, however, you espouse "semantic pragmatism" rather than
semantic nihilism, and thereby you still seem to admit of talking about
meaning in the philosophical context (pp. 8-9). Then, I have two
interrelated questions concerning this point:
(1) In your semantic pragmatism, is it still possible to talk about the
identity of the meanings associated with two different expressions, or the
same expression used by two different persons?
(2) Can we hope that there is some nice semantic pragmatist apparatus to
articulate the dynamics of a word meaning, in other words, the change and
the continuity of the word's meaning through the time?
Shuhei Shimamura
It seems to me there are a few different conceptions of “practice” at work
in Ch. 1 – the sorts of practices which are “pragmatically projected” into
one another in Wittgenstein’s work, which may or may not be the same as the
sort of practice involved in Sellars’s discussion of “looking-ø” and
“being-ø”, and the sort of practice (ability) involved in the state-table
laughing Santa automaton. One difference might be in the role the social
realm plays in Wittgenstein’s conception of a practice, which seems
entirely lacking for the laughing santa. Are we to take the latter,
*thin*sense of practice-as-ability as the key one for this book? If
so, will that be the same conception of practice as the one in *MIE*?
William Eck
I would like to better understand how the meaning-use relation discussed in BSD is
able to merge analytic semantic systematization with a pragmatic theory of meaning.
Particularly I would like to understand in more detail how the project of BSD comes
to terms with Wittgenstein's skepticism of systematization (since Wittgenstein, in
his emphasis on the dynamic nature of linguistic practice, explicitly rejects the
privileging of declarative sentences as a form according to which we can analyze
other forms of expression). The project in BSD, and more clearly in MIE, seems to
rely on such privileging of assertion due to a certain view of linguistic practice
as a kind of doing. This seems to be the case in Brandom's discussion of the meaning
use relation PV-necessity where the use of a certain vocabulary requires engagement
in a specified practice or use of ability. A paradigm case being a declarative
sentence which requires the act of assertion. The theory of meaning articulated here
seems to require that the practice of assertion be primary(since it is from our
undertaking of a commitment that we can then derive inferential consequences).
Laura Davis
Brandom claims that the pragmatically mediated semantic relation (PMSR)
rests “alongside” the traditional semantic relations, which include
definability, translatability, reducibility, supervenience etc. This seems
to suggest that PMSR cannot be given, without significant loss, in terms of
some traditional semantic relation, or some admixture thereof. I imagine
that the loss would involve denying practices their rightful place as the
cornerstone of semantics. However, it might be possible to understand the
deployment of vocabulary V' as supervening on a set of practices P. All
that that would be required is are PV-supervenince relations, with added
constraints about what can count as an admissible specification of P, e.g.,
constraints that exclude the vocabulary of physics and V' itself, but
include perhaps normative vocabulary. I am not yet sure the result would be
so much a semantic theory, as opposed to a metaphysical one; but assuming
the former, the envisioned result would solely use PV-supervenince
relations, and as such would make practices the cornerstone of semantics
without PMSR. I set this out as a mere possibility; of course, since PMSR
is a theoretical term, its merits should be wholly assessed in terms of its
theoretical cash-value, of which I am currently ignorant. So my tentative
question is: how is it that PMSR can resist reduction to the traditional
semantic relations?
Shivam Patel
I have two questions this week: The first concerns the content of
*BSD*chapter 1 and the second concerns notation that appears within
the chapter.
(1) I am interested in how we should conceive of a vocabulary [V'] when it
serves as a pragmatic metavocabulary for a base vocabulary [V] (i.e., when
a vocabulary [V'] is VP-suff. to specify a set of practices-or-abilities
PV-suff. for the deployment of a base vocabulary [V]). My question is
this: Are there any general and/or minimal requirements on how
expressively rich a pragmatic metavocabulary [V'] must be? Can we, for
example, correctly call a vocabulary [V'] a pragmatic metavocabulary for a
base vocabulary [V] if vocabulary [V'] is entirely composed of names for
the various practices-or-abilities PV-suff. to deploy a base vocabulary [V]?
I mean vocabulary in a semantic sense, not merely
syntactic, such that it possible to mean something by deploying (at least)
the base vocabulary.
(2) A number of us first years were wondering what the small 's'-shaped
scare quotes on p.6 mean. Internet searches are of no avail, as we're not
sure what to call these quote-marks. Could you explain briefly in class
how and why they are used?
Chuck Goldhaber
My question about this week's reading is straightforward and so perhaps
rather elementary. Nonetheless:
At the end of section 3, there is diagramed a complex MUR which you call a
"retraction". What does "retraction" mean, and what does the description
"retraction of 1 through Res2" mean (i.e. can one paraphrase the relation
in regular English)? What is the substantive philosophical difference
between the retraction of 1 through Res2 in figure 1.5 and the Res1: VV
1,2,3 in figure 1.2? i.e. Why do we need to understand the "semantic
relation [Sellars] claims holds between phenomenal and objective
vocabulary *as the retraction* of a constellation of more basic
meaning-use relations" in order to understand Sellars's arguments against
empiricism? Why is it not enough to understand it as the VV-necessity
that is shown in figure 1.2?
Laura Tomlinson