Draft – comments welcome “Rules of Use” Indrek Reiland

Introduction In the middle of the 20th century it was a common idea in philosophy of language that for a linguistic expression to be meaningful is for it to be governed by a rule that determines the conditions in which it is permissibly usable. In other words, it was widely believed that meanings are to be thought of in terms of use-conditions.1 For example, here’s Peter Strawson in his “On Referring” (my emphasis): The meaning of an expression cannot be identified with the object it is used, on a particular occasion, to refer to. The meaning of a sentence cannot be identified with the assertion it is used, on a particular occasion, to make. For to talk about the meaning of an expression or sentence is not to talk about its use on a particular occasion, but about the rules, habits, conventions governing its correct use, on all occasions, to refer or to assert. (Strawson 1950: 328).2

However, neither Strawson nor others went past such general remarks in explaining how meaningfulness could be a matter of being governed by a rule of use. This led other philosophers to view the idea as vague and mysterious. Even worse, in the 1960’s and 1970’s it took two seemingly fatal blows. On the one hand, and largely due to Michael Dummett’s work, it came to be seen as inconsistent with “truth-conditional semantics” (Dummett 1978, 1991, 1993). This led most philosophers to view it as too radical to be taken seriously. On the other hand, and largely due to Peter Geach’s and John Searle’s work, it came to be seen as subject to the so-called FregeGeach problem with compositionality (Geach 1960, 1965, Searle 1962). This led most

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For example, it was believed that meanings are expressions’ properties of having use-conditions or perhaps simply use-conditions. 2

It’s clear that the view is inspired by Ludwig Wittgenstein’s later work (Wittgenstein 1953). See also the quotes from papers published in the 1950’s in the beginning of William Alston’s paper “Meaning and Use” (Alston 1963).

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philosophers to view it furthermore as obviously problematic. Consequently it fell out of fashion and was largely ignored for a while. In 1980’s and 1990’s the idea that meaningfulness is a matter of being governed by a rule of use reappeared. For example, here are David Kaplan in “Demonstratives”, John Perry in “Meaning and Reference”, and Scott Soames in Beyond Rigidity (my emphasis): Among the pure indexicals are ‘I’, ‘now’, ‘here’ (in one sense), ‘tomorrow’ and others. The linguistic rules which govern their use fully determine the referent for each context. … The linguistic rules which govern the use of the true demonstratives ‘that’, ‘he’, etc. are not sufficient to determine their referent in all contexts of use. (Kaplan 1989a: 490-491)

Meaning, as I shall use the term, is a property of expressions—that is of types rather than tokens or utterances. Meaning is what is fixed by the conventions for the use of expressions that we learn when we learn a language. … To repeat, as I use the terms, meaning is what the rules of language associate with simple and complex expressions.... (Perry 1997)

[D]ifferent indexicals typically have different meanings in the sense of being associated with different rules governing their use that must be grasped by the competent users of the language (Soames 2002: 103).

However, despite saying things like the above, Kaplan, Perry, and Soames didn’t go past such general remarks either, but continued doing descriptive semantics in terms of what they thought of as formal substitutes like characters, functions from contexts thought of as n-tuples to contents. Again, this led other philosophers to view the idea as vague and mysterious. For example, here’s a quote from Jason Stanley’s survey article “Philosophy of Language in the Twentieth Century” that we can take as emblematic of such an attitude (my emphasis): Whereas the notion of a rule of use is vague and mystical, Kaplan’s notion of the character of an expression is not only clear, but set theoretically explicable in terms of fundamental semantic notions. (Stanley 2008)

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And since Kaplan, Perry, and Soames did descriptive semantics in terms of characters, other philosophers soon forgot that they had talked about rules at all. This has led to the sense that the idea is not really worth thinking further about since we can do everything we need in terms of characters. Consequently, it has again fallen out of fashion and is currently mostly ignored.3 Thus, as things stand, we have a once common idea that has had a lasting appeal, but which has been presented to us only in the form of general remarks and is therefore viewed as vague and mysterious. Even worse, it is thought to be subject to two old problems and not really worth thinking further about. My aim in this paper is therefore to go past the general remarks of Strawson, Kaplan, Perry, and Soames in explaining how meaningfulness could be a matter of being governed by a rule of use, thereby showing that the idea is neither vague nor mysterious. Furthermore, I also want to show that it’s not subject to the two old problems, and to argue that it is promising. I will proceed as follows. I’ll start by taking the idea, presenting it as a view about the nature of meaningfulness, the Rules view, and explaining why it has had a lasting appeal and is continually attractive (sections 1-2). I’ll then show that the view is entirely consistent with “truth-conditional semantics” and hence isn’t radical at all, and that it isn’t by itself subject to the Frege-Geach problem and hence isn’t obviously problematic (sections 3-4). Finally, I’ll argue that it is promising because it can explain why doing descriptive semantics in terms of characters works in the first place, and because it enables us to provide a descriptive semantics for expressions which we can’t give one for in terms of characters (section 5-6).

1. Meaningfulness and Rules of Use

Some strings of linguistic symbols are meaningful or have a meaning in a language whereas others are not. For example, the expression ‘Bertrand is British’ has a meaning in English while the mere string of symbols ‘*#&’ does not. Furthermore, some expressions have multiple meanings or are ambiguous and some expressions have the same meaning as others or are synonymous with them. For example, ‘Bertrand went to the bank’ has multiple meanings in English and ‘Bertrand is a doctor’ has the same meaning as ‘Bertrand is a physician’. This raises

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Notable exceptions are William Alston’s, David Kaplan’s and Mark Schroeder’s discussions of it in Alston 1999, Kaplan MS, Schroeder 2008a, 2008b.

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the following natural question: what is it for a linguistic expression to be meaningful or have a meaning in a language?4 Let’s say a bit more about what we have in mind when we’re talking about expression’s meaning in a language. An expression’s meaning in a language is what competent speakers have a grasp of. For example, the meaning of ‘Bertrand is British’ in English is what competent speakers of English have a grasp of. Furthermore, an expression’s meaning is what makes it possible for competent speakers to use that expression to speak that language and perform locutionary speech acts like saying something or telling someone to do something.5 For example, the meaning of ‘Bertrand is British’ is what makes it possible for competent speakers to use that expression to speak English and say that Bertrand is British. Thus, the above question about the nature of meaningfulness is a question about what it is for expressions to have the features that competent speakers have a grasp of and what makes it possible for competent speakers to use the expression to speak a language and perform locutionary speech acts. Our idea that meaningfulness is a matter of being governed by a rule of use is best viewed as an embryonic answer to the above question about the nature of meaningfulness. To understand how meaningfulness could be a matter of being governed by a rule of use we need to focus on the fact that games like chess and languages like English are similar in the following respect. Intuitively, both are constituted by a set of intrinsically inert symbols that have somehow acquired some “significance”. For example, chess is at least partly constituted by the inert symbols – the pieces of the game – that have somehow acquired what we could call their “roles”. Similarly, English is at least partly constituted by inert symbols – the expressions of the language – that have somehow acquired meanings.6 However, now notice that in the case of games like 4

This question is comparable, but importantly different from the question what it is for a mental state to have content. For a linguistic expression to have a meaning is not the same as for a mental state to have content. First, linguistic expressions have their meanings contingently and in a particular language unlike mental states that are individuated by their contents and thus have them necessarily (a sentence can have several meanings and perhaps even different meanings in different languages whereas a judgment with a different content is a different judgment). Second, it’s plausible that some linguistic expressions have meanings, but have “semantic contents” only relative to contexts (‘I’), whereas some have meanings, but no contents at all (interjections like ‘Ouch!’). 5

I’m relying here on Austin’s distinction between locutionary speech acts like saying something or telling someone to do something vs. illocutionary speech acts like claiming, predicting, requesting, ordering etc. (Austin 1962, for discussion and defense see Forguson 1973, Recanati 1987). 6

Above, we’ve thought of games as sets of pieces together with their roles just as David Lewis thought of languages as sets of strings of symbols together with their meanings (Lewis 1975). Of course, since intuitively most games and languages don’t cease to exist when one piece changes its role or when one expression changes its meaning, it’s

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chess it’s commonplace to think that they wouldn’t exist and playing them wouldn’t be possible if their rules weren’t in place. Thus, it is commonly said that they are at least partly constituted by their rules.7 And the way the rules are thought to constitute the games is by giving the inert symbols, the pieces, their roles. The basic thought behind our idea as an answer to the question about the nature of meaningfulness is that, similarly to games like chess, languages like English wouldn’t exist and speaking them wouldn’t be possible if their rules weren’t in place. It can therefore be said that they are also at least partly constituted by their rules. And the way the rules can be thought to do this is by giving the inert symbols, the expressions, their meanings. How do rules give pieces their roles and expressions their meanings? Well, rules of chess tell us when it is permissible to move pieces: they specify the conditions in which it is permissible, according to those rules, for a player to move pieces. Similarly, rules of use can be taken to tell us when it is permissible to use expressions: they specify the conditions in which it is permissible, according to those rules, for a speaker to use the expressions. This means that we can take the rules of games like chess and rules of languages like English as having something like the following form (where ‘s’ ranges over speakers and players, ‘e’ over pieces and expressions, and ‘Y’ over conditions): s (e is permissibly movable/usable by s iff Y) s (s may move/use e iff Y)

perhaps more natural to think of both games and languages as evolving entities that are at each moment fully constituted by such “Lewisian” games and languages or such game- and language-stages, but that could at the next moment be fully constituted by a different one. It is then the “Lewisian” games or languages or the game- and language-stages that are fully constituted by the sets of inert symbols with their roles and meanings. Nevertheless, the basic assumption that games and languages are at least partly constituted by sets of inert symbols together with their roles or meanings remains intact. 7

It might be that rules governing the movings of chess pieces don’t fully constitute the game of chess, but just chess (Bierman 1972, Schwyzer 1969). This is because the same rules could also constitute other practices involving chess. For example, consider the imaginary rite of chess which is performed not with the aim of checkmating your opponent to win, but rather to determine the will of gods. What distinguishes a game from the rite is something further. Since this is not important for our purposes, I will mostly disregard this complication. For further discussion see Marmor 2009.

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Thus, what the rules give pieces and expressions are their moving- and use-conditions. And on this view, roles and meanings can be identified simply with the moving- and use-conditions. Let’s call this the Rules view.8 In order to see why the identification of meanings with use-conditions is plausible let’s try to find an example of what a rule governing the use of a particular expression might look like. In doing this I propose we start with the simplest cases. These might not be the cases most people are interested in or have talked about. Most people in contemporary philosophy of language have been interested in the representational side of language and therefore the paradigmatic cases people have been interested in have been atomic declarative sentences like ‘Bertrand is British’ and ‘Gottlob is German’ (and even then the question whether the declarative mood makes a special contribution as compared to the other moods has been largely neglected). However, atomic declarative sentences like ‘Bertrand is British’ aren’t really all that simple because they’re composed out of other meaningful expressions and they have a mood. Rather, following Paul Grice’s lead, the simplest cases seem to be interjections or interjective sentences like ‘Ouch!’ (Grice 1989b: 124). They are meaningful, but aren’t composed out of other meaningful expressions (for discussion see Recanati 1987: 241). And, unlike names and other sub-sentential expressions, they’re paradigmatically used to perform speech acts on their own which means that we can easily get intuitive evidence about what they’re semantically for – what their meanings enable us to do with them such that we couldn’t do those things if they weren’t meaningful.9 Thus, I propose we start with them. 8

I say a lot more about rules in Reiland MS(a), MS(b). However, it is useful here to answer a common worry. In the case of games like chess it’s entirely possible that its rules tell us that performing some action A is permissible in conditions Y whereas performing A in Y is intuitively impermissible all things considered. For example, consider a game with the aim of killing the most people and with the rule that one can shoot a person if he crosses an intersection from left to right and is male or crosses from right to left and is female. Although the rules say that shooting people in these conditions is permissible, surely shooting people on these conditions is impermissible all things considered. Similar situations arise with rules of language. For example, a rule of use of a language could tell us that some expression is permissibly usable in Y whereas given considerations of etiquette, morality etc. its use is impermissible in any conditions. How to account for this? I think that the right thing to say is that the rules invoke permissibility in an unrestricted sense and that they can be in force even while the verdicts delivered by them about particular cases are false when what it says is trumped by other considerations. There is nothing especially puzzling about this because such cases will arise as soon as we think that there are any conflicting rules (Johnston 2014). Given that my aims in this paper are to answer the three main objections I won’t say more about this here (for further discussion see Reiland MS(a)). 9

Notice that I’m talking about interjections like ‘Ouch!’ which are a type of sentence, and not about expressive words like ‘ouch’ which could perhaps also used as a part of larger constructions. For example, consider ‘damn’ which occurs in an interjection in ‘Damn!’, but can also occur as part of phrases like in ‘that damn philosopher’.

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Let’s look then at interjections like ‘Ouch!’. Suppose, as has been suggested by David Kaplan, that interjections like ‘Ouch!’ are semantically for expressing mental events like pain, somehow indicating or providing evidence of the fact that one is undergoing them without saying that one is (Kaplan MS). Then, given his view, we should take interjections like ‘Ouch!’ to be permissibly usable just in case the speaker is undergoing those mental events. Thus, on his view, something like the following rule can be taken to be the rule governing the use of ‘Ouch!’ in English:

(1)

s (‘Ouch!’ is permissibly usable by s iff s is in pain)

Now we can see why the identification of meanings with properties of having use-conditions or use-conditions is plausible. Suppose that (1) is the rule governing the use of ‘Ouch!’ in English. Then, if you grasp this rule, for example, either by explicitly knowing it or just knowing how to act in accordance with it, and if you know that your audience grasps it, then you can express your pain to that audience by using ‘Ouch!’ with its meaning. This is because if you do this your audience can assume that you’re in pain and thereby get the required information. This shows how grasp of such rules can do what grasp of meaning intuitively does: facilitate communication. And this makes the identification of meanings with use-conditions plausible. Now, the Rules view is in the first instance a view about the nature of meaningfulness. However, it can also help us answer certain other questions in philosophy of language. For example, a lot of philosophers of language are interested in what is called descriptive semantics, the enterprise of developing a framework for describing or formally representing facts about the meanings of expressions of natural languages and about how they compositionally interact with each other to generate the meanings of more complex expressions. It should be evident that to do this is not to answer the question about the nature of meaningfulness. That question is a metaphysical question about the essence of meaningfulness. In contrast, descriptive semantics revolves around a methodological question about how to best capture the information we need to capture. Nevertheless, the Rules view gives us a straightforward answer to this question as well. If for an expression to be meaningful is for it to have use-conditions then most direct way to describe or formally represent facts about the meanings of expressions is just to state the use-

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conditions. That is, the most direct way to describe the meanings of expressions is to give a useconditional semantics for these expressions.10 A lot of philosophers are also interested in what is called foundational semantics, the enterprise of articulating the causal, historical, psychological, or social facts that make it the case that a particular expression has the meaning that it does and not another one. Again, it should be evident that to do this is not to answer the question about the nature of meaningfulness either. That question is a metaphysical question about the essence of meaningfulness. However, this question is a different sort of metaphysical question, one about what sorts of facts ground facts about the actual meanings of expressions. Nevertheless, the Rules view helps us make progress on this question as well. If for an expression to be meaningful is for there to be a rule governing its use, then the question what makes it the case that it has the meaning that it does amounts to the question what makes it the case that there’s a particular rule governing it, rather than another one. Finally, some philosophers are also interested in the question what it is for a speaker to understand an expression or be semantically competent with it. In other words, what is it for a speaker to grasp the expression’s meaning or to know how to use it in accordance with its meaning? Again, it should be evident that this question is not equivalent to the question about the nature of meaningfulness either. That question is a metaphysical question about the essence of meaningfulness of expressions. However, this question is a different sort of metaphysical question, one about the essence of the speaker’s semantic competence. Nevertheless, the Rules view gives us a straightforward answer to this question as well. If for an expression to be meaningful is for there to be a rule governing its use, then for a speaker to understand that expression is for him to grasp the rule or to know how to act in accordance with it. Of course, this leads to the further question what is it for someone to grasp a rule or know how to act in accordance with it. But this isn’t special to language, but a more general question that everybody who thinks that there are rules has to face.

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As I’m using these terms, the Rules view is a view about the nature of meaningfulness whereas a use-conditional semantics for a language is, like any semantics, a description of the meanings of its expressions, in this case, by stating their use-conditions. It is important to understand that the Rules view is by itself consistent with lots of different type of semantic theories as long as we understand the descriptions they give as giving us some information about use-conditions. We’ll come back to this in sections 3 and 5.

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2. Rules of Use and Unity

Having developed the idea that meaningfulness is a matter of being governed by a rule of use into the Rules view, let me now explain why it has had a lasting appeal and why it is continually attractive. To understand this, it is useful to start by looking at what people who have talked about the view were worried about and why it appealed to them. For example, if we look at the above quote from Strawson and the quotes from Kaplan and Soames, it is clear that they were worried about how to think of the meanings of indexicals like ‘I’, and demonstratives like ‘this’. Other people who have talked about our idea have been further worried about how to think of the meanings of moods (Stenius 1967). The reason why these philosophers were worried about these types of expressions is because they seem to falsify a lot of standard ideas about the nature of meaningfulness. And the reason why something like the Rules view appealed to them is that these expressions seem to fit very well with it. In order to see why indexicals, demonstratives, and moods falsify a lot of standard ideas about the nature of meaningfulness, but fit very well with our idea let’s think briefly about the nature of properties such as meaningfulness. For anything to have a property is for it to have something in common with other things that have that property. Thus, for expressions to be meaningful is for each of them to have something in common with other expressions that are meaningful. This is the thing in virtue of the possession of which they count as being meaningful. Let’s call this common feature X. However, for different expressions to have different meanings is for each of them to have something that it doesn’t have common with other expressions. This is the thing in virtue of the possession of which they count as having different meanings. Let’s call this differing feature Y. The question what it is for an expression to be meaningful can now be broken down into the question what is the nature of the common element, X, and the question what is the nature of the differing elements, Y’s. Different views can be thought of as giving different answers to the question about the nature of X and the nature of Y-s. To take a really simple example, take the toy view that for any expression to have a meaning just is for it to have truth-conditions.11 On

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I don’t think anybody has ever actually held this toy view. Rather, people like Davidson thought that one can describe the meanings of certain expressions satisfactorily by stating their truth-conditions (Davidson 1967).

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this view what it is for ‘Bertrand is British’ and ‘Gottlob is German’ to have a meaning can be captured with the following statements: 

‘Bertrand is British’ is true iff Bertrand is British



‘Gottlob is German’ is true iff Gottlob is German

And we can see that the common element X is embodied in the schema ‘‘_’ is true iff _’, whereas the differing element Y is a different truth-condition. This way of approaching the question establishes a strong condition of adequacy on acceptable answers to the question about the nature of meaningfulness which we can call the Unity Constraint. Namely, that any view of meaningfulness has to tell us what the nature of the common element X is and the nature of the differing elements Y’s are which is adequate for all the different types of expressions of natural language. Thus, it has to find an X which is the same not only in the case of names, predicates, and declarative sentences, but also in the case of indexicals and demonstratives, interrogative sentences, imperative sentences, and interjections and other similar phenomena. In general, it has to find an X which is the same in the case of all the different kinds of words, phrases, and sentences in natural language. If a view fails to do this then it makes meaningfulness a disjunctive property. And surely, such a view is unacceptable or at least in need of very serious justification. It is comparable to a view on which being red, being blue etc. are not ways of being colored, but rather on which to be colored just is to be red or blue etc. where there is no underlying unity to what is it to be red and what is it to be blue. Surely, we’d need very strong reasons to take such a disjunctive view of being colored seriously. Similarly then, for a disjunctive view of meaningfulness. Now we can see why indexicals, demonstratives, and moods falsify a lot of standard ideas about the nature of meaningfulness, but fit very well with our idea. Consider for example the aforementioned toy view on which to have a meaning is to have truth-conditions. On this view the common element Y is embodied in the schema‘‘_’ is true iff _’. It’s clear that this can’t be the common element in case of sub-sentential expressions like the name ‘Bertrand’, and predicate ‘is British’ because they don’t have truth-conditions. And this means that this toy view fails to satisfy the Unity Constraint. Now, one could try to supplement the toy view with the view that what it is for subsentential expression like ‘Bertrand’, and predicates ‘is British’ to 10

have meaning is for them to contribute something to the truth-conditions of the sentences in which they occur.12 However, even this supplemented toy view doesn’t give us a common element that is adequate for indexicals like ‘I’, demonstratives like ‘this’, interrogative and imperative sentences, and interjections like ‘Ouch!’.13 This means that this supplemented toy view also fails to satisfy the Unity Constraint. Thus, indexicals and demonstratives and mood falsify this idea about the nature of meaningfulness. In contrast, consider the Rules view. On this view the common element X is embodied in the schema‘‘_’ is permissibly usable by s iff _’. And there’s no obstacle to this being the common element in the case of sub-sentential expressions, indexicals and demonstratives, interrogative and imperative sentences, and interjections. After all, all of these expressions could have use-conditions. And this is the primary reason why something like the Rules view appealed to people like Strawson, Kaplan, Perry, and Soames, and why it is continually attractive. 3. First Worry: Inconsistent with “Truth-Conditional Semantics”? As I noted above, in the 1960’s and 70’s, largely due to Dummett’s endorsement of it, the idea that meaningfulness is a matter of being governed by a rule of use came to be seen as inconsistent with “truth-conditional semantics” (Dummett 1978, 1991, 1993). This led most philosophers of language to view it as too radical to be taken seriously. In this section I will show that, quite to the contrary, the Rules view is entirely consistent with “truth-conditional semantics” and hence not radical at all in this respect. Let’s start by getting clear about what’s at issue. Obviously, the Rules view is inconsistent with a view about meaningfulness on which it is taken to be just a matter of having truth-conditions. However, this isn’t worrisome because, as we saw above, this toy view is

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It seems to me that taken as views about the nature of meaningfulness such views are problematic. Although we can describe the meanings of subsentential expressions in terms of what they contribute to the meanings of sentences in which they occur, surely they have meanings of their own, some properties in virtue of which they do the contributing. And it is the nature of these properties that we’re interested in when we’re asking about the nature of meaningfulness, not just what they contribute. 13

Can’t the view be supplemented to deal with indexicals by talking about contribution to truth-conditions relative to a context? However, notice that expressions don’t have meanings relative to a context, but only reference or semantic content. Their meanings are what enable them to have reference or semantic content relative to a context (Kaplan 1989a). And, it’s the nature of these things that we’re interested in.

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implausible anyway.14 Rather, what would be worrisome is if the view would be inconsistent with what is known as “truth-conditional semantics”. Whereas the view that meaningfulness is matter of having truth-conditions is a view about meaningfulness, “truth-conditional semantics” as it’s standardly thought of is a family of semantic frameworks which describe facts about meanings of declarative sentences by assigning them truth-conditions, sets of truth-supporting circumstances, or structured propositions. If the Rules view would be inconsistent with this dominant family of semantic frameworks then it would perhaps indeed be too radical to be taken seriously. But why would one think that the Rules view is inconsistent with “truth-conditional semantics” in the first place? To understand this, we need to know a bit more about Dummett’s work. Dummett questioned and rejected Donald Davidson’s view that to understand an expression is to know its truth-conditions (or to know the contribution it makes to the truthconditions of the expression it is a part of) (Dummett 1993, Davidson 1967). However, his arguments actually target any view on which understanding an expression has something to do with having a grip on its truth-conditions.15 And the only alternative he saw was a view on which to understand an expression is to know its use-conditions. This is how the Rules view became associated with a rejection of “truth-conditional” semantics. And this generated the impression that these two things are inconsistent. Now, it’s not my aim here to discuss or rebut Dummett’s arguments. All I want to do is to show that the Rules view is entirely consistent with “truth-conditional semantics”. According to “truth-conditional semantics” the meaning of a declarative sentence can be described by associating it with a truth-condition, a set of truth-supporting circumstances, or a proposition, something which has truth-conditions, as follows (Cr = a circumstance like a possible worldstate or a situation):

(i)

‘Bertrand is British’ is true iff Bertrand is British

(ii)

‘Bertrand is British’ is true at Cr iff Bertrand is British at Cr

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Again, as I noted above, people like Davidson didn’t hold this view, but rather thought that one can describe the meanings of certain expressions satisfactorily by stating their truth-conditions (Davidson 1967). 15

For a brief sketch of both the so-called acquisition and manifestation argument see Miller 2010.

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(iii)

‘Bertrand is British’ semantically expresses 16

In order to understand this better and simplify the discussion let’s briefly consider a plausible picture how (i)-(iii) are related. On a plausible view, sentences are true or false only in some language L, not true or false simpliciter. For example, ‘Bertrand is British’ is true in English, but not in German. What explains this? Plausibly, the fact that it semantically expresses the proposition that Bertrand is British in English, and because this proposition itself is true simpliciter. However, this means that what sentences really have are truth in L conditions and not truth-conditions simpliciter. Similarly, what they really have are truth at Cr in L conditions and not truth at Cr conditions. And what it is for them to have these conditions is for them to semantically express propositions which have truth-conditions and truth at Cr conditions. Thus (iii) contains any information contained in (i) and (ii). Now, according to the Rules view, the meaning of a declarative sentence is most straightforwardly described by stating the rule governing its use or associating it with a usecondition by filling in the gap below: ‘s (‘Bertrand is British’ is permissibly usable by s iff _____________ ) The reason why doing this is entirely consistent with “truth-conditional semantics” is because it allows for hypotheses about the meanings of declarative sentences on which the gap above is filled with a use-condition that involves a proposition in a way that allows us to derive (iii) (and thus also (i) and (ii)). There are several different such hypotheses that allow us to derive (iii). Here are three natural ones that have been toyed with by people who have talked about the Rules view (I beg you to not evaluate these hypotheses for their independent plausibility at the moment, but just focus on the fact that they allow us to derive (iii). I’ll propose further hypotheses in the next section):

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I’ll henceforth assume that propositions are structured, consist of objects and properties, and can be represented by formal structures like . Nothing substantial hangs on this in the sense that if some other view of propositions turns out to be the correct, then it can just be substituted in. For defense and discussion of views consistent with these assumptions see King 2007, Soames 2010b, 2012, 2014.

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(2) s (‘Bertrand is British’ is permissibly usable by s iff is true) (Stenius 1967: 268) (3) s (‘Bertrand is British’ is permissibly usable by s iff s believes ) (Schroeder 2008a, 2008b) (4) s (‘Bertrand is British’ is permissibly usable by s iff s knows )

Even though these constitute three different hypotheses about what the use-conditions of declarative sentences are, they all involve a proposition. And proponents of all of these views can maintain that their view enables us to derive (iii) by claiming that what it is for ‘Bertrand is British’ to semantically express is for it to have a use-condition that involves this proposition’s being true, or being believed or known. This should be enough to show that the Rules view is entirely consistent with “truthconditional semantics” and hence not radical at all. It should be clear from the above that it allows for hypotheses about the meanings of declarative sentences which are consistent with it. Of course, it also allows for hypotheses which are inconsistent with it. This is why Dummett focused on it as an alternative to “truth-conditional semantics”. But this doesn’t discredit it at all. Rather it is a testament to its versatility in capturing different possible views in descriptive semantics.

4. Second Worry: Subject to the Frege-Geach Problem? As I noted above, in the 1960’s and 70’s, largely due to Geach’s and Searle’s arguments the idea that meaningfulness is a matter of being governed by a rule of use came to be seen as subject to the so-called Frege-Geach problem with compositionality (Geach 1960, 1965, Searle 1962). This led most philosophers of language to view it as obviously problematic. In this section I will show that, quite to the contrary, the Rules view isn’t subject to the Frege-Geach problem and thus isn’t obviously problematic. Why would one think that the Rules view is subject to the Frege-Geach problem? To understand this, we need to know a bit more about the sorts of doctrines it was associated with in 14

the 1950’s and why they are subject to the Frege-Geach problem. For starters, take Strawson’s idea that ‘true’ is not a regular predicate which is semantically for ascribing the property of being true, but rather a device for endorsement (Strawson 1949). On this view, when you use the sentence ‘That Bertrand is British is true’ you’re not saying that the proposition has a property, but rather endorsing it. Or take Hare’s idea that ‘good’ is not a regular predicate which is semantically for ascribing the property of being good, but rather a device for commending (Hare 1952). On this view, when you say that ‘Bertrand is good’ you’re not saying that he has a property, but rather commending him. These views are inconsistent with any view on which the meanings of those expressions have something to do with their contribution to truth-conditions. And, like Dummett, the only alternative people like Strawson and Hare saw to such views was a view on which their meanings have to do with use-conditions. This is how the Rules view became associated with such non-cognitivist and non-factualist doctrines as Strawson’s and Hare’s. In order to get clear about why the above views are subject to the Frege-Geach problem we have to pay attention to a particular feature of the Rules view. Notice that using a complex expression with its customary non-idiomatic meaning requires using all of its parts with their meanings. For example, to use ‘Bertrand is British’ with its standard, compositional meaning is to use ‘Bertrand’, ‘is’, and ‘British’ with their meanings. And now think of the fact that on the Rules view to use any expression permissibly one must be in its use-condition. This means that to use a complex expression with its non-idiomatic meaning and permissibly one must be in its use-conditions and the use-conditions of each of its parts. For example, to use ‘Bertrand is British’ with its standard meaning and permissibly one must be in its use-conditions and the useconditions of ‘Bertrand’, ‘is’, and ‘British’. 17 Geach exploited the above feature of the Rules view to argue that all non-cognitivist and non-factualist views are subject to the following so-called Frege-Geach problem. Take the atomic sentence ‘Bertrand is good’. On Hare’s view its use-conditions are that the speaker has to be commending Bertrand. However, now take the complex sentence ‘It is not the case that Bertrand is good’. On the Rules view, to use it permissibly one must use, ‘Bertrand is good’ 17

Of course, to use a complex expression that has an idiomatic meaning with this idiomatic meaning is not to use all of its parts with their meanings. If ‘Bertrand is British’ had an idiomatic meaning that would make it possible to use it to say that Gottlob is German, then to use it with this idiomatic meaning would not be to use ‘Bertrand’, ‘is’, and ‘British’ with their meanings.

15

permissibly. However, it’s clear that the use-conditions of ‘It is not the case that Bertrand is good’ can’t involve the speaker’s commending Bertrand. Thus, non-cognitivists and nonfactualists at least seem to have a problem with accounting for compositionality of meaning: they attribute meanings to expressions that seem like they couldn’t be the meanings of the same expressions when they occur as parts of certain more complex expressions.18 To reiterate, in the 1950’s the Rules view became associated with such non-cognitivist and non-factualist doctrines as Strawson’s and Hare’s. And since these views are subject to the Frege-Geach problem, this generated the impression that the view itself is subject to the problem. But this is misleading. The view itself is not subject to the problem because there’s nothing about it that commits us to or even invites the non-factualist doctrines. It is entirely consistent with the view that ‘true’ is a regular predicate which is semantically for ascribing the property of being true and ‘good’ is one which is semantically for ascribing the property of being good. However, there is another, deeper reason why the Rules view has been thought to be subject to the Frege-Geach problem. Namely, that several natural hypotheses about the meanings of declarative sentences that have been toyed with people who have talked about the Rules view are subject to the problem. For example, consider the three hypotheses about the use-conditions of declarative sentences from the previous section: (2) s (‘Bertrand is British’ is permissibly usable by s iff is true) (3) s (‘Bertrand is British’ is permissibly usable by s iff s believes ) (4) s (‘Bertrand is British’ is permissibly usable by s iff s knows ) It should be easy to see that all of these hypotheses are subject to the Frege-Geach problem. Take the complex sentence ‘It is not the case that Bertrand is British’. On the Rules view, to use it permissibly one must use, ‘Bertrand is British’ permissibly. However, it’s clear that the use-

18

For further discussion of the problem see Schroeder 2009

.

16

conditions of ‘It is not the case that Bertrand is British’ can’t involve its being true that Bertrand is British or the speaker’s believing or knowing this.19 Thus, in order to show conclusively that the Rules view by itself isn’t subject to the Frege-Geach problem, we have to show that it allows for hypotheses about the meanings of declarative sentences that aren’t subject to the problem. One way to do this is to present a hypothesis that appeals to the non-committal notion of proposition’s being entertained. Wayne Davis, Scott Soames, Uriah Kriegel and others have recently argued that to entertain a proposition is to perform a non-committal and forceless act of just having it in mind (Davis 2003, Kriegel 2013, Soames 2010b, 2012, 2014). Here then is a new hypothesis about the meanings of declarative sentences: (5) s (‘Bertrand is British’ is permissibly usable by s iff s entertains ) It should be easy to see that this hypothesis isn’t subject to the Frege-Geach problem. Take the complex sentence ‘It is not the case that Bertrand is British’. There’s no reason why its useconditions couldn’t include entertaining the proposition that Bertrand is British. Quite to the contrary, Soames has recently proposed a view of entertaining on which this will explicitly be the case. On his view to entertain propositions is to perform certain mental acts. For example, to entertain the proposition that Bertrand is British is to think of Bertrand, think of the property of being British and predicate the property of Bertrand. Furthermore, to entertain the complex proposition that it is not the case that p is to entertain the proposition that p and predicate the property of being not the case of it.20 But then we can take the use-conditions of ‘It is not the case that Bertrand is British’ to be the following:

19

Peter Hanks’ recent work can be seen as involve the view that the rules involve judging (Hanks 2007, 2011, 2013). However, he thinks that the right thing to do is not to try to avoid the Frege-Geach problem, but to solve it. Be that as it may, my aim here is just to show that the Rules view itself is not subject to the problem. 20

Similarly, on his view, to entertain the proposition that p and q is to entertain the proposition that p, entertain the proposition that q, and to predicate the property of being jointly true of them or perhaps to perform the separate act of conjoining them. Similarly, to entertain the proposition that p or q is to entertain the proposition that p, entertain the proposition that q, and to predicate the property of being disjointly true of them or perhaps to perform the separate act of disjoining them. (Soames 2010b)

17

(6) s (‘It is not the case that Bertrand is British’ is permissibly usable by s iff s entertains and s predicates being not the case of it (= s entertains <, being not the case>) And this shows clearly how the use-conditions of ‘It is not the case that Bertrand is British’ can include entertaining the proposition that Bertrand is British. We’ve now seen that the Rules view isn’t subject to the Frege-Geach problem because it allows for hypotheses about the meanings of declarative sentences that aren’t subject to the problem.21 And our hypothesis is still consistent with “truth-conditional semantics” in that it enables us to derive (iii) by claiming that what it is for ‘Bertrand is British’ to semantically express is for it to have a use-condition that involves this proposition’s being entertained. This should be enough to show that the Rules view isn’t subject to the Frege-Geach problem and thus isn’t obviously problematic. Of course, this doesn’t guarantee that some other, similar problem with compositionality doesn’t arise. To show that, we would need to give a fullblown compositional semantics in terms of use-conditions that would match the scope of what we have in terms of truth-conditions like, for example, Irene Heim’s and Angelika Kratzer’s 21

The above hypothesis dovetails nicely with the Content View of mood on which everything about mood is explained by a specific type of content (propositions, questions, properties). However, there are other, perhaps more plausible hypotheses about declarative sentences that can be stated in terms of use-conditions and that aren’t subject to the Frege-Geach problem. For example, consider the Force View of mood on which at least some things about mood are explained by the non-content-affecting contribution made by a mood marker. On such a view we can take the use-conditions for declaratives to require entertaining + something forceful like believing. For example, here’s one such hypothesis: (7) s (‘Bertrand is British’ is permissibly usable by s iff s entertains and s believes ) Since on the most viable version of the Force View all composition happens at the level of entertaining before the mood marker makes its contribution, the use-conditions of ‘It is not the case that Bertrand is British’ can be taken to be the following: (8) s (‘It is not the case that Bertrand is British’ is permissibly usable by s iff s entertains and s predicates being not the case of it (= s entertains <, being not the case>), and s believes <, being not the case>) It should be easy to see that this hypothesis isn’t subject to the Frege-Geach problem either. For further discussion, see Reiland 2014.

18

Semantics in Generative Grammar (Heim & Kratzer 1998). Unfortunately, since my focus here is primarily on defending the view against misunderstandings, I won’t have the space to get into this.22

5. Rules of Use and Descriptive Semantics: Characters As I noted above in the 1980’s and 1990’s the idea that meaningfulness is a matter of being governed by a rule of use reappeared. However, I also noted that since the philosophers who talked about it continued doing descriptive semantics in terms characters, other philosophers soon forgot that they had talked about rules at all. This led to the sense that the idea is not really worth thinking further about. In this section and the next I’ll argue that, quite to the contrary, the Rules view is promising because it can explain why doing descriptive semantics in terms of characters works in the first place, and because it enables us to provide a descriptive semantics for expressions we can’t give one for in terms of characters. Let me start by explaining how doing descriptive semantics in terms of characters works. Kaplan thought that the meanings of expressions can be formally represented by characters, functions from contexts thought of as n-tuples of parameters to things called “semantic contents”. For example, take the name ‘Bertrand’. Assuming Millianism, it can only be used to talk about a single person, Bertrand. On this view its meaning can therefore be formally represented by a character which takes as its input contexts consisting of at least a possible speaker of the context ca, location of the context cl, a time of the context ct, and the world-state of the context cw, and yields as its output Bertrand. Using [[ ]] for an expression’s character and <,> for a context we can represent this formally as follows:

(i)

[[‘Bertrand’]] = Bertrand

22

Here’s one illustration of how to deal with compositionality at a sub-sentential level. First, consider again Soames’s view that to entertain the proposition that Bertrand is British is to think of Bertrand, think of the property of being British, and predicate the property of Bertrand. The idea then is that since the sentence ‘Bertrand is British’ has as its use-conditions the entertaining of the proposition that Bertrand is British, names like ‘Bertrand’ have as their use-conditions acts of thinking of objects and predicates like ‘is British’ have as their use-conditions acts of thinking of properties, and syntax adds the requirement that the property is to be predicated of the object. For further discussion and a demonstration how to interpret Heim&Kratzer in terms of use-conditions see Reiland 2014.

19

Notice that the character of ‘Bertrand’ is thus a constant function in yielding as its output Bertrand no matter which context it takes as its input. However, take now the indexicals ‘I’, ‘here’, and ‘now’. They can be used to talk about different things by different users, at different locations and times, although they can’t be used to talk about different things at the speaker’s discretion, or about different things by using the expression more than once in a sentence (Braun 1996: 145-146, Kaplan 1989a: 490-491). On the classic Kaplanian view their meanings can therefore be formally represented by characters which take as their inputs contexts consisting of at least a possible speaker of the context ca, location of the context cl, a time of the context ct, and the world-state of the context cw, and yield as their outputs ca, cl, and ct, respectively (Kaplan 1989a). Formally: (ii)

[[‘I’]] = ca

(iii)

[[‘here’]] = cl

(iv)

[[‘now’]] = ct

Notice that the characters of ‘I’, ‘here’, and ‘now’ are thus non-constant functions in yielding as their outputs different things depending on which context they take as inputs. Of course, to fully understand the above formal representations, we also need an interpretation of what it is for something to be the speaker of the context, the location of the context, the time of the context, and the world-state of the context. On the classic Kaplanian view the speaker of the context is the user of the expression. The location of the context is a location that contains wherever the speaker of the context is. The time of the context is a stretch of time that contains the stretch over which the speaker of the context uses the expression.23 And the world-state of the context is the world-state the speaker is in. Thus, if we put the formal framework and the interpretation together we arrive at a view on which ‘I’ always refers to whoever is the user of the sentence, ‘here’ always refers to some location that contains whoever

23

Although Kaplan himself wasn’t explicit about this, something like this is required for the view to be plausible at all. For discussion, see Burge 1974: 216- 217, Recanati 2001. In Recanati’s opinion this should already push us towards alternative accounts of ‘here’ and ‘now’ on which they are synonymous to ‘at this place’ and ‘at this time’ and thus are like demonstratives in their descriptive semantics. I tend to agree.

20

the user of the sentence is, and ‘now’ always refers to some time that includes the stretch of time over which the user uses the expression.24 Now, Kaplan thought that meaningfulness has to do with rules of use and that useconditions can be formally represented by characters. However, most contemporary philosophers of language do not mention this connection and seem to think that the character-based framework exists in a void or is somehow self-sufficient. This is puzzling. How can we be sure that descriptions in terms of characters provide us with any information about the meanings of expressions unless we know how they’re related to an answer to the question what it is for an expression to be meaningful? After all, characters are just functions that take n-tuples of parameters as inputs and yield things called “semantic contents” as their outputs. And even if you think we can be relatively confident that descriptions in terms of characters do provide us with some information about the meanings of at least some types of expressions, without an interpretation of what that function represents, what a context is etc., we don’t know why this is. Here’s where we can go back to the Rules view. If we can show how descriptions in terms of characters are related to descriptions in terms of rules of use, then we get an explanation of why doing descriptive semantics in terms of characters works in the first place. Let me therefore show how to translate characters into rules of use, and explain what we do when we take a rule of use and represent it as a character. Now, all we need to do to give the above characters in terms of rules of use is to use variables in our rules and make what the variable stands for explicit. Thus, take any character of the form: [[‘e’]] = cx. Translate it like this: s (‘e’ is permissibly usable by s iff s thinks of cx). Finally, take the favoured interpretation of cx and make what it stands for explicit. For example, instead of ‘ca’ we can use a variable ranging over speakers, ‘s’, and state the rule governing ‘I’ as follows: (2) s (‘I’ is permissibly usable by s iff s thinks of s in a de se way)

24

This is where the alternative views differ. For example, on one alternative view the time of the context ct is not a stretch of time including the time during which the speaker uses the sentence, but rather a stretch of time including the time at which the use is “taken in” by the audience (Cohen 2013, Sidelle 1991). On another view it’s the time at which the speaker intends the use to be “taken in” by the audience (Predelli 1998). On a yet another view it’s the time at which an idealized audience can expect the use to be “taken in” (Romdenh-Romluc 2002). For further discussion and an overview see Cohen&Michaelson 2012, Reiland 2014.

21

Similarly, instead of ‘cl’ and ‘ct’ we can use variables ranging over locations and stretches of time ‘l’ and ‘t’, and state the rules governing ‘here’ and ‘now’ as follows: (3) s (‘here’ is permissibly usable by s iff there is some location l such that s is at some part of l and s thinks of l in an appropriate way) (4) s (‘now’ is permissibly usable by s iff there is some stretch of time t such that s uses ‘now’ over the course of some part of t and s thinks of t in an appropriate way)

It should be obvious that these rules of use state the same classic Kaplanian view about the semantics of indexicals that Kaplan stated in terms of characters. Now, if to be meaningful is to be governed by a rule of use and at least some rules of use can be represented as characters then we can get an explanation of why doing descriptive semantics in terms of characters works if we can explain what happens when we take a rule of use and represent it as a character. Here’s how this works. First, we look at all the rules with variables in them and bring all those variables together into an n-tuple which is a context-schema like or, in standard notation, . Second, we assign values to the variables to get a context like . Finally, we take the rule governing an expression and combine it with a context by assigning the variables in it the values from the context and look what we get. For example, the rule for ‘I’ combined with the above context gives us David Kaplan. Similarly, the rule for ‘here’ combined with that context gives us Los Angeles. The rule for ‘now’ combined with that context gives us 1977. And the rule for ‘I am here now’ combined with that context gives us the proposition that David Kaplan is in LA in 1977. This, then, is what happens when we take a rule of use and represent it as a character.

6. Rules of Use and Descriptive Semantics: Going Beyond Characters

In the previous section I argued that the Rules view is promising because it can explain why doing descriptive semantics in terms of characters works. However, there are expressions that we can’t give a descriptive semantics for in terms of characters. In this section I will argue that the

22

second reason why the view is promising is that it is possible to provide a descriptive semantics for these expressions in terms of rules of use. Consider demonstratives like ‘this’ and ‘that’. A lot of people have thought that they differ from indexicals in that unlike the former, they can be used to talk about different things by different users at the speaker’s discretion, or about different things by using the expression more than once in a sentence (Braun 1996: 145-146, Kaplan 1989a: 490-491). This entails that any theory of demonstratives that can be stated in terms of just characters has a problem with multiple occurrences of demonstratives. Here’s the problem as presented by David Braun:

Consider (1).

(1) That is bigger than that.

The two occurrences of 'that' in (1) have the same linguistic meaning. So if linguistic meaning is the same as character, then the two occurrences of 'that' in (1) have the same character. Now if two expressions (or two occurrences of an expression) have the same character, then they have the same content in every context. So if linguistic meaning is character, then the two occurrences of 'that' in (1) have the same content in every context. But the content of (1) in a context is determined by the contents of its constituents in that same context. So in every context, (1) expresses the proposition that x is bigger than x, where x is the content of 'that' in that context. But no object is bigger than itself. So if linguistic meaning is the same as character, then (1) expresses a false proposition in every context. Thus it should be impossible to utter (1) truly. But this is clearly wrong: there can be true utterances of (1) in which the two utterances of 'that' refer to different objects. (Braun 1996: 147-148)

The basic problem is that characters are functions from contexts to something else such that for each context they give you a single thing. However, if you consider a sentence like ‘This is bigger than this’, then it’s clear that the meaning of the sentence allows us to use it to talk about two different things. This means that the meaning of this sentence and the meanings of all expressions can’t be formally represented by just a character because for some contexts we need two different things, but characters can only give you one.

23

One reaction to the problem with multiple occurrences is to say that the expression ‘this’ itself doesn’t have a character, but its occurrences have characters. However, this gets close to conceding that the meanings of demonstratives can’t be described in terms of just characters.25 In the light of the fact that theories of demonstratives that can be described in terms of just characters have a problem with multiple occurrences, Francois Recanati, Jim Higginbotham, Scott Soames and others have proposed the outlines of a new promising theory (Higginbotham 2002, Recanati 2001, Soames 2010a). On this view the idea is roughly that demonstratives like ‘this’ are semantically for referring to something or, better, signifying the fact that you are thinking of something. Complex demonstratives like ‘this F’ are just for referring to something that meets the restrictions set by the restrictor ‘F’. For example, ‘this’ is perhaps for referring to things that are proximal relative to some speaker-related perspective, ‘that’ is for referring to things that are distal relative to the same perspective, ‘this F’ is for referring to things that are proximal and are F, ‘you’ is for referring to things that are addressed, ‘he’ is for referring to male persons, ‘she’ is for referring to female persons etc. This theory doesn’t have a problem with multiple occurrences, but it also can’t be described in terms of just characters. Whereas Recanati and Soames have therefore just given the outlines in informal terms by telling us what these expressions are semantically for, Higginbotham has gone a step further and actually stated it in terms of rules of use of sorts. Here’s a telling quote:

25

There are two views which have been offered to supplement the above thought which I won’t discuss in the main text. On one view, proposed, but not endorsed by David Braun, and later endorsed by Ben Caplan, we have to think of contexts as including not a single demonstratum (or demonstration), but sequences of them with a focal demonstratum so that a character from such a context yields the focal demonstratum. To deal with multiple occurrences we then claim that the context shifts after each occurrence of the demonstrative from the original one to one where the focal demonstratum is the next demonstratum in the sequence. (Braun 1996: 152-154, Caplan 2003: 209, fn.7). This view allows for the meaning of the demonstrative itself to be formally represented by a character. However, it entails that the meaning of a sentence containing multiple occurrences like ‘This is bigger than this’ can’t be formally represented by a character because it can’t be a function from any particular context, but must be evaluated relative to different contexts. On another view, proposed and endorsed by David Braun, we have to think of contexts as including a sequence of demonstrata with a focal demonstratum, however, we don’t formally represent the linguistic meanings of demonstratives as characters, but as functions from a sequence of characters with a focal character < c1, c2, …cn > to the focal character. On this view the meaning of a demonstrative can be represented as a function that takes a sequence of characters with a focal character and yields the focal character which in turn takes the context’s sequence of demonstrata, and gives us the focal demonstratum. To deal with multiple occurrences we then claim that the sequence of characters shifts after each occurrence of the demonstrative from the original one to one where the focal character is the next character in the sequence (Braun 1996: 155-164). It should be clear that on this view we’re not describing the meanings of demonstratives in terms of just characters.

24

I shall suppose that rules of use for words, like rules of use for tools and home appliances, are stated in imperatival form, as for example in (9)-(10):

(9)

‘this N’ is to be used to refer to proximate salient objects satisfying N

(10)

The periphrastic future ‘will’ is to be used to restrict times to those of some interval following the time of u.

(Higginbotham 2002: 5)

Given how we’ve developed the Rules view we can state the theory in terms of rules of use as follows:

(10)

s (‘this’ is permissibly usable by s iff there is some y such that it is proximal

relative to perspective z that is R-related to s and s thinks of y)26

(11)

s (‘that’ is permissibly usable by s iff there is some y such that it is distal

relative to perspective z that is R-related to s and s thinks of y)

(12)

s (‘this F’ is permissibly usable by s iff there is some y such that y is an F and it

is proximal relative to perspective z that is R-related to s and s thinks of y)27

(13)

s (‘you’ is permissibly usable by s iff there is some y such that s addresses y and

s thinks of y)

This captures perfectly the idea that demonstratives are semantically for referring to something or signifying the fact that you’re thinking of something that meets certain restrictions. Now, there are other expressions that can’t be given a descriptive semantics in terms of characters or there are at least hypotheses about the meanings of some expressions that can’t be 26

z is some perspective that is related in some way R to the speaker. Specific versions of this view can be arrived at by setting restrictions or specifying which way it is. For example, a natural view is that it’s the perspective occupied by the speaker. 27

An alternative view is that y doesn’t have to be an F, but just that the speaker has to believe that it is. I actually find it more plausible, but I won’t argue for it here.

25

captured with characters, but can in terms of rules of use. For example, consider the Force View of mood on which different moods semantically encode different sorts of force (Dummett 1973, 1993, Searle 1969, Segal 1990/1991, Stenius 1967). For another example, consider the Suppositional view of conditionals on which they’re semantically for performing conditional speech acts like conditional assertions (DeRose & Grandy 1999, Edgington 1995). Finally, consider expressives like interjections and racial slurs (Kaplan MS). Although the space won’t permit me to fill in the details it is not hard to see how to think of those things in terms of useconditions that feature forceful mental states like belief/knowledge, wondering, and desire, conditional mental states like conditional belief/knowledge etc., and non-cognitive mental states like pain and contempt.28

Conclusion

We started with the once common idea that meaningfulness is a matter of being governed by a rule of use, an idea that had been presented to us only in the form of general remarks and was therefore viewed as vague and mysterious. Even worse, it was thought to be subject to two old problems and not really worth thinking further about. In this paper I’ve gone past the general remarks of Strawson, Kaplan, Perry, and Soames in discussing the idea, defended it against misunderstandings, and argued that it is promising. Of course, I’ve only scratched the surface. For example, space didn’t permit me to go into how to provide a fully satisfying compositional semantics in terms of use-conditions that would match the scope of what we have in terms of truth-conditions (Heim & Kratzer 1998). Similarly, it didn’t permit me to fill in the details of some of the more exciting applications of the view to the semantics of mood, conditionals, and expressives and other similar phenomena. Nevertheless, I hope to have succeeded in showing that talk of rules of use doesn’t have to be vague or mysterious, and that thinking of meanings in terms of use-conditions can not only be conservative and unproblematic, but can actually explain why our existing semantic frameworks work and can help us further when they let us down.29 28

For further discussion, see Reiland 2014.

29

I would like to thank Wayne Davis, Kenny Easwaran, Peter Hanks, Robin Jeshion, Uriah Kriegel, Ben Lennertz, Janet Levin, Karen Lewis, Shyam Nair, Kathrin Glüer-Pagin, Kenny Pearce, Francois Recanati, Justin Snedegar,

26

References Alston, W. 1963. “Meaning and Use”. Philosophical Quarterly, 13, pp. 107-124 Alston, W. 1999. Illocutionary Acts and Sentence Meaning. Ithaca: Cornell University Press Austin, J. L. 1962. How To Do Things With Words. Cambridge: Harvard University Press Bierman, A. K. 1972. “Chessing Around”. Philosophical Studies, 23, pp. 141-142 Braun, D. 1996. “Demonstratives and Their Linguistic Meanings”. Nous, 30, pp. 145-173 Burge, 1974. “Demonstrative Constructions, Reference, and Truth”. Journal of Philosophy, 71, pp. 205-223 Caplan, B. 2003. “Putting Things in Contexts”. Philosophical Review, 112, pp. 191-214 Cohen, J. 2013. “Indexicality and the Puzzle of the Answering Machine”. Journal of Philosophy, 110, pp. 5-32 Cohen, J. & Michaelson, E. 2013. “Indexicality and the Answering Machine Paradox”. Philosophy Compass, 8, 580-592 Davidson, D. 1967. “Truth and Meaning”. Synthese 17, pp. 304-323 Davis, W. 2003. Meaning, Expression, and Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Dummett, M. 1973. Frege: Philosophy of Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press Dummett, M. 1978. Truth and Other Enigmas. London: Duckworth Dummett, M. 1991. The Logical Basis for Metaphysics. Cambridge: Harvard University Press Dummett, M. 1993. The Seas of Language. Oxford: Clarendon Press Forguson, L. 1973. “Locutionary and Illocutionary Acts”. Essays on J. L. Austin. Ed. I. Berlin. Oxford: Clarendon Press, pp. 160-185 Grice, P. 1989. “Utterer’s Meaning, Sentence-Meaning, Word-Meaning”. Studies in the Way of Words. Harvard: Harvard University Press, pp. 117-137

Scott Soames, Jeff Speaks, Julia Staffel, and Gabriel Uzquiano for helpful comments and/or discussion. Special thanks to Mark Schroeder for extensively working with me on this project and for encouragement at every stage of it.

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