Wolfgang Schwarz

Analysing Content

Suppose we want to know whether some thing A has the property of representing B. The first thing to do is to ask what exactly is meant by "representing" in this context. That is, we must inquire into the general conditions under which it would be true that some x represents some y. Then, in a second step, we have to find out whether these conditions are satisfied by A and B.

When I say that semantic properties aren't primitive I mean that there must be an informative answer to the first question for semantic terms. That is, it must be possible to spell out general conditions under which something represents or means or denotes y. And the answer must be specifiable in non-semantic vocabulary. We can do better than saying that x represents y iff it represents y. The answer needn't be simple, nor immediately obvious. As usual, the best approach might be to use thought experiments: if such-and-such were the case, would x represent y? If yes, "such-and-such" can be added as a disjunct to the conditions under which x represents y.

Now "represents", and "means", "expresses", "stands for", "denotes", "is about", etc. are rather vague and ambiguous notions. For instance, the same expression can represent different things in different languages. In general, I'm quite liberal as to assignments of semantic properties. If you say that your comfy chair represents the Spanish Inquisition I don't mind as long as you can give some explanation of why it does. For example, it might do so in virtue of reminding you of the Spanish Inquisition, or in virtue of standing for the Spanish Inquisition by the rules of some strange game or language you've just invented. These are all acceptable senses of "represents". By contrast, it's not acceptable to say that the comfy chair represents the Spanish Inquisition in virtue of coexisting with it. "represents" may be vague and ambiguous, but it definitely doesn't mean "coexists with".

In my view, descriptivism (causal or not) is an analysis of "denotes" and its cognates. In one version, it suggests that your concept of "whale" stands for whales in virtue of the latter satisfying the relevant bits of your beliefs involving that concept. In another version it says that the English word "whale" stands for whales in virtue of whales satisfying the 'folk theory of whales', where in principle this may consist in nothing but the common knowledge that whales are whatever kind stands in the right causal relation to our usage of "whale". In so far as descriptivism is a substantial claim it is that this conception of "denotes" matches our intuitions about what concepts/terms really denote.

At any rate, descriptivism analyses meaning in terms of other meanings (the content of individual or common beliefs), so it can't be the whole story unless we turn to Global Descriptivism and say that meaning is exhausted by a concept's or term's place in the total belief system (or folk theory). That might be an acceptable usage of "meaning", but it's not the most interesting and intuitive one. For it is too easy to satisfy a total theory not anchored by any non-logical vocabulary: while on one interpretation, whales satisfy your "whale" theory, on another prime numbers do. But intuitively it is clear that you don't mean prime numbers by "whale".

So we need another notion of meaning besides the one delivered by Global Descriptivism. Since otherwise descriptivism works so well, it would be nice to find something compatible with it. That's why causal or counterfactual or teleosemantic accounts of content, if they are meant to apply in general, are implausible. Or rather, while they define a perfectly acceptable notion of "represents" (or "denotes" etc.), the result is not the most intuitive and useful notion.

One strategy is phenomenalism: to anchor total theory by saying that certain concepts, namely those representing experiences, do not have their meaning in virtue of their place in theory. Instead they represent experiences in virtue of standing in some more 'direct' relation to them, perhaps a causal or counterfactual or teleosemantic relation, or even a relation of 'constitution'. I don't find this strategy particularly attractive. For one, ruling that descriptivism is false for a certain class of concepts is obviously inconsistent with descriptivism. Moreover, the reasons for singling out this special class look rather suspicious to me. I also worry whether the clause for experiential concepts can be spelled out satisfactorily, without generating all the problems causal and counterfactual and teleosemantic analyses are usually confronted with. Even if these worries can be overcome, I find the resulting analysis rather disjunctive and inelegant: why does "represent" mean something completely different for experiential terms?

Fortunately there is another strategy. Recall that the main problem with descriptivism was that it left meanings underdetermined. So what we need is simply further constraints. As long as these constraints select meanings among the candidate meanings allowed by Global Descriptivism, the resulting theory will be compatible with descriptivism. What could these further constraints be? Mostly constraints of rationality. For example, if you acquire suitable new "whale"-beliefs by watching whales on the TV, your "whale"-beliefs are more likely about whales than about prime numbers. There are probably further, more broadly rational constraints, like principles of charity and constraints on naturalness that prefer quadding over adding and meaning Blue over meaning Grue. Note how neatly descriptivism and the rationality constraints go together: rationality demands that if possible we should not ascribe to you widely false beliefs. But if in violation of descriptivism we assigned to your term "whale" something that does not satisfy your "whale"-beliefs to any substantial degree, those beliefs would come out widely false.

Well, I actually wanted to talk more specificly about the intentionality of phenomenal states, in response to the comments on this earlier posting, but the state of my arms represents that this has already grown too long and that I should rather do that tomorrow.