The method of Conceptual Analysis makes use of natural language speaker intuitions about the meanings of expressions, and relies on an externalist assumption about meanings—namely, that they can be given in terms of referential relations and truth. This article argues that this widely used methodology in metaphysics is troubled, because the assumed externalist hypothesis about natural language meanings is beset with trenchant obstacles in explaining linguistic phenomena. It argues that the use of Conceptual Analysis in metaphysical investigation inherits the difficulties (...) for the externalist hypothesis generally assumed by metaphysical inquiry. It explores two cases of such investigation that serve to exemplify the breadth of topics susceptible to troubles with the externalist hypothesis regarding natural language meanings: the extended mind hypothesis and the metaphysics of causation. (shrink)

Philosophers are often beholden to a picture of language as a largely static, well-defined structure which is handed over from generation to generation by an arduous process of learning: language, on this view, is something that we are given, and that we can make use of, but which we play no significant role in creating ourselves. This picture is often maintained in conjunction with the idea that several distinctively human cognitive capacities could only develop via the language acquisition process, as (...) thus understood. This paper argues that the phenomenon of homesign, i.e., spontaneous gesture systems devised by deaf children for the purpose of communicating with their non-signing peers, can shed valuable empirical light on these convictions. Contrary to grounding assumptions of Wittgensteinian, Gricean, and Peircean approaches to language, homesign shows how core properties of language—including semantic properties—can be built from the ground up in idiosyncratic ways to serve the communicative needs of individuals. (shrink)

Common knowledge is usually defined as a state in which everyone knows that p, everyone knows that everyone knows that p, and so on, ad infinitum. This definition is usually attributed to David Lewis, despite the fact that his own formulation bears no resemblance to common knowledge as it is usually understood. In this paper, I argue that this concept of common knowledge requires revision. Contrary to usual practice, it turns out to be difficult to model formally because existing models (...) fail to distinguish between full-blown common knowledge and merely finite levels of interactive knowledge. Conceptually, the concept is incompatible with Lewis's intended purpose and obscures the explanatory role played by rational choice models. I propose that the concept of common knowledge be brought better into alignment with Lewis's actual formulation. This reconceptualization of common knowledge suggests a greater focus on explanations that make recourse to the cognitive constraints of real-world agents. (shrink)

The study proposes a new approach towards a social phenomenon called convention and submits a minimalistic definition of convention, which provides a promising basis for future analysis unburdened by contra-Lewisian objections. The definition itself, based on the insights of Ruth Millikan in the study Language Conventions Made Simple, represents a simple and efficient means of delimiting essential components of conventional behaviour (stripped of most of the controversial issues from previous debates on Lewis’s notion) solely by means of the role of (...) precedent and its ability to reproduce. Yet, it is argued that a few additional conditions are required for a valid and distinct notion of conventionality: namely, the inclusion of a coordination aspect and an extension of the concept of precedent. The final version of the definition, thereafter, meets intuitive requirements of conventionality (e.g., arbitrariness) and has the generality to embrace different types of conventions. (shrink)

To the extent that language is conventional, non-verbal individuals, including human infants, must participate in conventions in order to learn to use even simple utterances of words. This raises the question of which varieties of learning could make this possible. In this paper I defend Tomasello’s (The cultural origins of human cognition. Harvard UP, Cambridge, 1999, Origins of human communication. MIT, Cambridge, 2008) claim that knowledge of linguistic conventions could be learned through imitation. This is possible because Lewisian accounts of (...) convention have overstated what one must know to participate in conventions; and because the required knowledge could be learned imitatively. The imitation claim that I defend is consistent with what we know about both the proliferation of conventional behaviours in human children, who are skilful imitators, and the comparative absence of such behaviours in non-human great apes, who are poor at imitative learning. (shrink)

The paper focuses on the issue of compatibility of social institution and convention. At first, it introduces the modest account of conventionality building on five distinctive features – interdependence, arbitrariness, mind-independence, spontaneity, and normative-neutrality – which constitute conventional behaviour, then it presents the two major theories of social institutions that explain them in terms of rules, or equilibria. The argument is that conventions cover a wide-ranging area and cannot be identified with the category of institutions because it would be too (...) restrictive and contradictory to the initial modest account. (shrink)

Humpty-Dumpty affirmait que les mots signifiaient exactement ce qu'il lui plaisait qu'ils signifient, «ni plus, ni moins». Il a parfois des défenseurs chez les chercheurs qui se sont penchés sur le problème de la non-littéralité. On peut cependant affirmer qu'ur locuteur, s'il utilise non littéralement des expressions qui ont ure signification conventionnelle, ne peut en changer à volonté la signification pour leur faire signifier exactement ce qu'il a l'intention de signifier. Par exemple, quelqu'un qui fait une métaphore ne peut changer (...) la signification des expressions qu'il utilise. C'est la thèse que je défendrai au cours des prochaines pages. On verra aussi quelles intentions devrait avoir un locuteur qui signifierait non littéralement quelque chose. (shrink)

According to a well-established tradition in the philosophy of language, we can understand what makes an arbitrary sound, gesture, or marking into a meaningful linguistic expression only by appealing to mental states, such as beliefs and intentions. In this paper, I explore the contrasting possibility of understanding the meaningfulness of linguistic expressions just in terms of observable linguistic behavior. Specifically, I explore the view that a type of sound becomes a meaningful linguistic expression within a group in virtue of the (...) production of that type of item becoming that group’s widespread, copied way of getting others to involve an object or relation in their activity. After discussing a preliminary version of the view, I develop it in response to some key concerns about whether it really does, as a matter of fact, eschew mental states, and about its adequacy as an account of linguistic meaning. (shrink)

This dissertation is a contribution to the philosophy of language. Its central question is: In virtue of which facts do linguistic expressions mean what they do? E.g. why does “apple” mean apple in English? The question receives a systematic answer; in short: Linguistic expressions mean what they do because among their users, there are linguistic conventions and social norms to use and understand them in certain ways. The answer is clarified and defended as a central thesis. For in this form, (...) it is at best a slogan: What is meaning? What is it to use and understand expressions? What are conventions and social norms anyway? How does the use and understanding determine meaning? The goal of the dissertation consists in answering these questions. (shrink)

Collective intentionality is one of the most fundamental notions in social ontology. However, it is often thought to refer to a capacity which does not presuppose the existence of any other social facts. This chapter critically examines this view from the perspective of one specific theory of collective intentionality, the theory of Margaret Gilbert. On the basis of Gilbert’s arguments, the chapter claims that collective intentionality is a highly contingent achievement of complex social practices and, thus, not a basic social (...) phenomenon. The argument proceeds in three steps. First, Gilbert’s thesis that certain kinds of collective intentionality presuppose joint normative commitments is introduced. Second, it is argued that, on this view, individual commitments can only constitute the relevant kinds of collective intentional states if there are socially shared “principles of membership” that connect the force of individual commitments to a shared content. Third, it is shown that strong collective intentionality depends on the practical acceptance of shared norms and on the establishment of authority relations through mutual recognition. (shrink)

Inspired by my reading of the conclusions of Plato’s Cratylus, in which I suggest that Socrates endorses the claim that speaker’s intentions determine meaning of their utterances, this thesis investigates a modern parallel. Drawing on observations that people who produce an utterances that do not accord with the conventions of their linguistic community can often nevertheless communicate successfully, Donald Davidson concludes that it is the legitimate intentions of speakers to be interpreted in a particular way that determine the meanings of (...) their utterances. This thesis investigates how we might interpret the non-standard utterances of another from the perspective of Davidson’s anticonventionalist picture of language. It proceeds by investigating the possible roles for radical interpretation and triangulation in explaining successful day-to-day communication, where non-standard language use abounds, and argues that - even from a Davidsonian perspective - a full account of the linguistic skills and knowledge that a language user requires to interpret utterances must ultimately appeal at least to regularities word use and expressions, if not full-blown conventions. (shrink)

This article focuses on the conventions that sustain social interaction and argues that they are central to Simon's decision-making theory. Simon clearly identifies two kinds of coordination by convention: behavioral mores that shape human actions, and shared mental models that govern human perceptions. This article argues that Poincaré–Carnap's conventionalism provides powerful support for Simon's theory; it contends that this theory offers a more convincing account of decision and coordination than Lewis' concept of convention. Simon's approach to applying conventionalist logic to (...) social interaction emphasizes the normative role played by mental models in solving coordination problems and considers rationality in terms of both cognitive and moral considerations. By connecting conventional phenomena to social identifications, Simon stresses the resulting complexity of coordination problems. (shrink)

The Concept of the whole utterance, we are inclined to to believe, is basic in meaning-theory. But any theory which locates a conceptual base must show how items in the super-structure relate to that base, and so for theories of meaning. There are units of meaning both larger and smaller than whole utterances: narrative, in which several whole utterances follow one another in some organized fashion, seems relatively unproblematic, but the relations of meaningful parts of utterances to the utterances themselves (...) remains unclear. Grice's theory of meaning secures the logical priority of whole utterances, and in addition, lends itself to an attractive and theoretically fruitful view of the relations between whole utterances and their meaningful parts; or so I shall try to demonstrate. (shrink)

The essay which follows is about the relationship between mind and language. Most recent thought about intentionality has it that (i) mental states of individuals are largely, or in the most fundamental cases, independent of social facts about public languages, and (ii) these social facts are derived from, or constituted by, the mental states of individuals. The purpose of this essay is to challenge this individualist orthodoxy (as well as the view of the relationship between mind and action which often (...) accompanies it), and suggest in its place a communitarian picture of intentionality which gives public languages a role to play in the constitution of thought. (shrink)

RésuméCet article vise à préciser la nature et le contenu des conventions qui lient les membres d'une communauté linguistique et par ce biais à caractériser les relations entre le sens intentionnel et le sens conventionnel d'une énonciation. Je formule, à l'aide d'une version modifiée de la définition de la notion de convention proposée par Lewis , une hypothèse concernant les conditions dans lesquelles on peut dire qu'une langue comprenant des expressions déictiques, des phrases ambiguës et des indicateurs de force illocutoire (...) est effectivement utilisée par une population donnée. Il s'avère cependant impossible de formuler une condition nécessaire et suffisante pour qu'une langue soit la langue d'une population sans presupposer que les membres de cette population ont intériorisé une théorie sémantique pour cette langue.SummaryThe aim of this paper is to specify the nature and content of the conventions linking the members of a linguistic community, and thereby characterize the relations between speaker's meaning and utterance‐type meaning. Using a modified version of Lewis' definition of convention, I put forward an hypothesis concerning the conditions under which one could say that a language containing indexical expressions, ambiguous sentences and illocutionary force indicating devices is effectively used by a given population. However it turns out to be impossible to state a necessary and sufficient condition for a language to be the language of a given population without presupposing that the members of this population have internalized a semantic theory for that language.ZusammenfassungIn der vorliegenden Arbeit wird die Natur und der Gehalt der Konventionen untersucht, die die Mitglieder einer Sprachgemeinschaft verbinden, um dadurch die Beziehungen zwischen der intentionalen und der konventionellen Bedeutung eines Ausdrucks zu charakterisieren. Mit Hilfe einer gegenüber D. Lewis' veränderten Definition des Begriffes der Konvention, formuliere ich eine Hypothese, die die Bedingungen betrifft, unter welchen man sagen kann, dass eine mit deiktischen Ausdrücken, ambigen Sätzen und Indikatoren für illokutionäre Kraft ausgestattete Sprache tatsächlich durch eine gegebene Population verwendet wird. Es erweist sich allerdings als unmöglich, eine notwendige und hinreichende Bedingung dafür zu formulieren, dass eine Sprache die Sprache einer Population sei, ohne vorauszusetzen, dass die Mitglieder der Sprachgemeinschaft eine semantische Theorie dieser Sprache verinnerlicht haben. (shrink)

Comment on Joseph Raz, From Normativity to Responsibility.

After briefly laying out a cultural-evolutionary approach to speech acts (Sects. 1–2), I argue that the notion of commitment at play in assertion and related speech acts comprises multiple dimensions (Sect. 3). Distinguishing such dimensions enables us to hypothesize evolutionary precursors to the modern practice of assertion, and facilitates a new way of posing the question whether, and if so to what extent, speech acts are conventional (Sect. 4). Our perspective also equips us to consider how a modern speaker might (...) employ an illocutionary analogue of A.N. Prior’s “runabout-inference ticket”, in which the pragmatic “introduction rules” for utterances correspond to evolutionary precursors of modern speech acts, but in which the “elimination rules” correspond to their modern descendants (Sect. 5). Such behavior would be abusive, though not in a way readily discernible without an evolutionary perspective on speech acts that attends to the dimensions of commitment that they encompass. Such behavior also raises the question how we may safeguard against it in public discourse, and I close (Sect. 6) with some suggestions for doing so. (shrink)