ACTA PHILOSOPHICA FENNICA

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Acta Philosophica Fennica is published by the Philosophical Society of Finland. Since the inception of the series in 1935 it has been the forum for much of the best philosophical work in Finland. In 1968-1981 it was distributed by the North­Holland Publishing Company (Amsterdam), and since 1981 by the Academic ·

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ACTA PHILOSOPHICA FENNICA

Vol. 69

COMMUNICATION AND INTELLIGIBILITY

Edited by

L. LUNDSTEN, A. SIITONEN and B. OSTERMAN

HELSINKI 2001

FRANK KANNETZKY

The Principle of Expressibility and Private Language*

Searle's principle of expressibility states: "Whatever can be meant can be

said." (Searle 1969, p. 20) The aim of this paper is to show in what sense the

principle of expressibility might be reasonable rather than to interpret what

Searle 'really' meant by it. The principle articulates a foundation of phi­

losophy after the linguistic turn. It contradicts the assumption of a private

language. It should be related to an" open language" that has space for what

Searle calls "inexact language use".

The problem of meaning and saying and the principle of expressibili ty

Philosophy of language distinguishes between the meaning of a sentence

and of an utterance, between what is said and what a speaker means or

intends to say by uttering a sentence or expression. 'Linguistic or literal

meaning', respectively 'utterance meaning' refers - as "contextually

adapted" literal meaning- to the first case. In the second case we speak of

'speaker's meaning'. In the following considerations, the terms 'to say' and

'to mean' are used in the sense of this general differentiation.

The differentiation would be pointless if there were no differences

between saying something and meaning it. Generally, one could say that 'to

mean sorp.ething' is only used when something has gone wrong with what

was said or when the expressions have not been used in the normal way.

The general form of such cases is: "You said that" - "But I meant this".

These cases can be subdivided into two main groups: The first group consists

of "accidental" differences between saying and meaning. They are "acci­

dental" because they are not cases of systematic misunderstanding (as it is

in the case when speaker and hearer speak different languages).

There may be mistakes, slips of the tongue or incompetence on the side

of a speaker. A speaker may miss the literal meaning of an expression or he

may confuse an expression with another.

192 Frank Kannetzky

Speaker and hearer can also associate 'different meanings' with the utterance, that is, they differ with respect to the possible inferences and/ or the fulfillment conditions of the utterance. This is a frequent case, as indi­cated by common formulas that are used in order to clarify misunder­standings. We often say things like "I meant x withy" in order to give the meaning of the initial utterance. What has been said by uttering y? The answer is normally: That what competent hearers are able to understand. This claim becomes clearer if we consider indirect speech. What a (com­petent) hearer reproduces as meaning of y, i.e. what was said by uttering y in a given context depends on how he has understood the utterance y. This dependence points to the following fact: 'saying something' is tied to a common language and is not a matter of 'lonely monologues'. It depends on the cooperation of speaker and hearer. Thus, 'to say something' and 'to mean something' can coincide only if the corresponding utterance is com­prehensible for (potential) hearers. Uttering something that cannot be understood by anybody is to say nothing. I will return later to this point.

Accidental differences can also be caused by an apparently improbable content of the utterance. The hearer believes, for example, that he has under­stood the utterance but not the intentions of the speaker. Consequently, he regards the apparent meaning of the utterance as improbable. Common formulas for clearing up such differences are questions like: "Are you serious?" or "Did you really mean this?"

The second group of differences between meaning and saying consists of only one type of systematic differences: The literal meaning of the uttered expression must not match what was meant, even if the speaker is com­petent and does not make any mistake.

There is a familiar distinction in the philosophy of language between what a sentence or an expression means and what a speaker means when he utters that sentence or expression. The interest of the distinction derives not from the relatively trivial fact that the speaker may be ignorant of the meaning of the sentence or expression, but from the fact that even where the speaker has perfect linguistic competence the literal sentence or expression meaning may not coin­cide with the speaker's utterance meaning. (Searle 1979, p. 143)

Well-known standard examples are metaphors, indirect speech acts, and irony (Ibid.)

The distinction between accidental and systematic differences of meaning and saying corresponds to a semantic approach that considers the literal meaning as the core of linguistic meaning. From this point of view, mis­understandings that occur notwithstanding the fact that the expressions have an unproblematic literal meaning and are literally uttered are not a

The Principle of Expressibility and Private Language 193

theoretical problem - they are to be attributed to language-external influ­ences, e.g. a lack of speaker's competence. Therefore, such misunder­standings are considered rather as a psychological problem than as an object of meaning-theoretical considerations. It seems that Searle has just this in mind when he says that the differentiation between meaning and saying is of importance because the literal meaning of an utterance does not necessarily correspond to the intention of the speaker, even if the speaker is linguistically perfect. Thus for Searle only the second group of "systematic" differences is of interest.

However, this view is one-sided. It takes the point of view of a speaker who already knows his intentions. The hearer has no direct access to the intentions of the speaker. His understanding is mediated by the speaker's expressions and behavior.1 How can the hearer distinguish whether the literal meaning coincides with the speaker's meaning or not, i.e. between literal and nonliteral language use? How can he distinguish between a mistaken and an intended use of the expressions? (For instance: "Do you really mean Smith or do you actually mean Miller?" "Do you indeed think of me as a swindler or are you impressed by my shrewdness?")

The gaps between 'to mean something' and 'to say it' show that the meanings assigned to the utterance by speakers and hearers can differ from one another, even if the words are used literally. Speaker and hearer can each relate the spoken words to different meanings (or to classes of equivalent meanings). That is, they can 'associate' different contextually adequate paraphrases with the utterance in question, and they may acknowledge different inferences, normative references, and (practical) consequences following from the utterance, like commitments, entitlements, claims etc. The hearer can also attribute 'wrong' intentions (speaker's meaning) to the speaker, that is, intentions that the speaker would not accept and/ or that do not fit into the context of the (speech-)action performed by the speaker. Hence, the literal meaning of an expression is not enough for determining the utterance meaning in concrete speech contexts. It is not sufficient for communicative understanding because speaker and hearer can err or deviate from each other in evaluating the context and the adequacy of the possible substitutions. This is the systematic place of the difference between meaning something and saying it. What a speaker means with an utterance is not directly accessible. The uttered expressions must not meet the intentions of the speaker. We can use an expression in different ways, i.e. we can do quite different things using the same words. Moreover, we also have different linguistic ways of doing the same thing. Thus, the skeptical

194 Frank Kannetzky

question arises: How is communicative understanding possible at all? What could be a starting point or a foundation for a theory of meaning and under­standing that does not simply presuppose meanings as somehow given objects the speakers refer to? How are 'meaning something' and 'saying something' related?

Searle answers this problem by introducing the principle of express-ibility: Whatever can be meant can be said.

. . . it is always possible for him [the speaker] to say exactly what he means. Therefore, it is in principle possible for every speech act one performs or could perform to be uniquely determined by a given sentence (or set of sentencest given the assumptions that the speaker is speaking literally and that the context is appropriate. (Searle 1969, p. 18)

The gap between saying and meaning is a systematic problem for every theory that aims at an explication of the concept of meaning and at an explanation of the possibility of understanding. Several questions arise here: In which way are 'what is meant' and 'what is said"' related? How can what a speaker means by uttering an expression be elucidated (especially the illocutionary role of an utterance)? Can that what linguistic expressions mean, be made accessible starting from speaker's actions and how? Here every theory faces a dilemma: If there were no regular connections between what is meant and what is said, between speaker's intentions and the meaning of utterances, then one could not perform speech acts by uttering linguistic expressions. However, the appeal to the intentions of the speaker alone does not help here. On the contrary, we have to understand speech acts and their contexts in order to attribute a speaker the proper intentions. On the other hand, the starting point 'speaker's actions' seems to presuppose a knowl­edge of the intentions of the speaker - otherwise his behavior could not be identified as an action (of a certain type) . Speech act theory tries to solve this problem by expanding the concept of speaker's competence from a pure semantic to a pragmatic aspect by introducing rules for producing speech acts in a given context. This pragmatic competence can be explicated, for instance, not only in speech act theory (and a supplementary taxonomy of speech acts), but also in concrete communication: We can not only do things with words, we can also say what we do with words.

The expansion of the concept of speaker's competence could explain how the illocutionary rule of utterances, and- given the "propositional content"­the utterance meaning at all, can be understood without having direct access to the speaker's intentions? I say "could explain", because Searle draws another consequence: He explicitly includes the speaker's intentions in the

The Principle of Expressibility and Private Language 195

explanation of speech act rules. This is shown, for example, by the intro­duction ofthe sincerity condition and the "Grice-condition" for speech acts . (See Searle 1969, chapter 3.)

The most important methodological consequence of the principle of expressibility is the 'identification' of rules for the (successful) performance of speech acts with rules for the use of certain, especially performative linguistic expressions. The sincere utterance of such expressions stands, then, for the execution or performance of the corresponding speech act.3 Described with reference to a set of criteria that includes certain kinds of speaker intentions, speech acts are hard to identify because of the intentions involved. Expressions are easier to catch. Thus the principle of expressibility secures the framework of speech act theory, that is, the theory can be restricted to the consideration of explicit linguistic actions. It acts as a type of reduction principle that allows us to reduce the investigation of linguistic actions to the investigation of explicit forms, i .e. to the quasi-syntactic aspects . That means that all presuppositions concerning context and back­ground that are made for understanding a speech act can be explicated and reduced to the understanding of a linguistic expression. One could say that the principle of expressibility has been introduced just because of this methodological consequence.

The principle as an analytical truth

According to Searle, the principle of expressibility is a conceptual truth.4 It is certainly not an empirical generalization. We miss words occasionally and we are often unable to express properly what we mean. If, however, 'meaning something' and 'saying it' sometimes fall apart, and if analytic sentences in the usual sense do not permit any exceptions5, we face the following question: Why is the principle an analytical truth? This is so not because it is true independently of what is the case, but because it is a precondition for a meaningful way of speaking about saying, meaning, and their relation. The principle is not a descriptive statement, hence it is not subjected to the usual truth-valuations. Although there is a difference between saying and meaning, such cases are not of great interest for a speech-act-theoretical approach to linguistic communication. This is so because, according to the principle of expressibility, all what is meant (and also all what is said in a mistaken or non-literal way) can in principle be paraphrased by an unambiguous, explicit, literal and completely equivalent expression, which is the real object of the theory. Thus, the principle of

196 Frank Kannetzky

expressibility sets the standard case or the paradigm that is relevant for the theory: One says what one means and one means what one says. The principle of expressibility is an analytical truth because it confines the scope of the theory to cases that comply with the principle or that can be reduced to such cases. It is not a direct answer to the skeptical question mentioned above. It does not state that there are no cases of divergence between meaning something and saying it, but it claims that we cannot start with such cases in order to understand understanding.

Hence, cases of improper language use, for example strategic language use with the intent to deceive, cannot give structure and direction to the

'

theory. Such cases are rather deviations from the normal case and cannot be paradigmatic patterns for the theory. This circumstance equals the articu­lation of a condition of adequacy: A theory of linguistic communication should not be founded on irregular, abnormal or pathological examples of com­munication, in which speakers meaning and literal meaning fall apart. These cases are declared as deviant. In contrast, such a theory should begin with properly functioning ways of using language, which are declared as normal or standard cases.6 In this sense, the principle of expressibility is a normative principle. It is constitutive for speech act theory.

Speaking about a principle generally indicates that it is the basis or the precondition of a thing depending on it. In a sense it is a first fundamental sentence. As such it is neither capable nor in need of a proof (a proof should not be confused with an explanation or a justification!), since it is the basis of every further argumentation. It should also not be confused with an axiom that represents an unprovable but according to all evidences true statement. Principles are of transcendental validity because they do not form a starting point for chains of arguments, but formulate the conditions for the meaning­fulness of such arguments. In this sense, the principle of expressibility is a constraint on the philosophy of language. It states an adequacy condition for theories of communication and meaning. In order to be captured by theory, linguistic communication has to meet the requirements of the principle, at least in the paradigmatic cases.

Whatever can be meant can be said. That is: One cannot reduce linguistic meaning to speaker's meaning, to speaker's intentions. One cannot define the former by the latter. This would be circular because, according to the principle, we can identify only such 'intentional matters' that can be lin­guistically expressed. Moreover, we do not have any access to 'mental states' or similar things independently of a linguistic way to articulate them. Thus, in the light of the principle of expressibility, the reverse order of explanation

The Principle of Expressibility and Private Language 197

seems to be corretf. Mind, intentions and similar phenomena are to be explained in a basically linguistic or semantic vocabulary. They cannot be the basis of an explanation of language and meaning. The principle shows that apparently uncomplicated basic concepts like the concept of intention are far from being si:dtple: 'to mean something' requires the complete symbolic apparatus of language and of corresponding (implicit or tacit) practices. Nothing can be said about the status of pre-linguistic opinions, intentions and similar "states" that are impossible to be articulated in any language. Any assertion of this kind is nothing else than a myth, similar to the myth of the mind that needs language only for achieving expression and communication, but is in principle a pre-linguistic and immediate "entity" .8 Therefore, the principle of expressibility is a challenge to any Griceian theory.

The principle of expressibility concerns not only the foundations of speech act theory. It is essentially a categorical answer to the traditional problem of the relation between speaking and thinking, or generally be­tween language and thought. It can be read as an articulation of the paradigm of the philosophy of language after the linguistic turn. This becomes clearer when one considers the contrapositive of the principle: What cannot be said cannot be meant.

Searle's symbolization of the principle of expressibility and

private language

Searle makes a more modest application of the principle. Namely he deduces from it that some types of language use are theoretically un­important for linguistic communication. This applies in particular to the following cases of what he calls "inexact" language use: insincerity, vague­ness, ambiguity, incompleteness and metaphorical language use. Such utterances cannot be understood literally. We shall see that this is an overdrawn conclusion.

We begin with Searle's symbolic representation of the principle of expressibility:

... for any meaning X and any speaker S whenever S means (intends to convey, wishes to communicate in an utterance etc.) X then it is possible that there is some expression E such that E is an exact expression of or formulation of X. Symbolically: (S) (X) (S means X� P (:3 E) (E is an exact expression of X)). (Searle 1969, p. 20, P stands for the possibility-operator.)

198 Frank Kannetzky

There are three difficulties with this symbolization. A first and general one concerns the quantification over meanings. I will refrain from discussing this point. It is a heritage of the traditional representational semantics.9 A second and more specific difficulty concerns the double quantification over lan­guages. A third and closely related difficulty concerns the notion of exact­ness.

The symbolization appears strange because it is only possible that there is a linguistic expression for what is meant by a speaker. Then it is possible, i.e. it does not contradict the symbolization, 10 that there is no exact expression of X as well. However, precisely this possibility should be ruled out according to the colloquial version of the principle. "Whatever can be meant can be said" means that there is always a linguistic expression. This holds for all possible cases. Hence, we would expect 'necessary' not mere 'possible' existence.11 For this reason, Searle's symbolic representation of the principle is not only inadequate, it is false because it contradicts the proposition that is supposed to be represented symbolically. If whatever can be meant can be said, then there must be an expression for it. Otherwise, it cannot be meant. This is nothing else than the contraposititive of the principle of expressibility. The possibility to mean something presupposes that there is a linguistic ex­pression of it. Generally, the possibility to intend something presupposes common forms of that content that are shared by the speaker's community.

How can this error be explained? Why did Searle prefer 'possibility' instead of 'necessity'? Are there any systematic reasons? Searle gives the following two reasons that both result in the same difficulties. First, there might be no exact expression at the moment. This does not affect the principle of expressibility. The possibility-operator does not refer to the standard modality of modal logic, but to our ability to enlarge the language if needed. The possibility of an exact expression is then the possibility to invent new expressions or to introduce them into language. However, introducing new expressions presupposes having an idea of the object or of the fact the new expression is needed for. Could this be a pre-linguistic mental content? This immediately leads to the question of private language. Second, Searle thinks that the principle of expressibility "does not imply that whatever can be said can be understood by others". Such an interpretation "would exclude the possibility of a private language, a language that it was logically impossible for anyone but the speaker to understand" (Searle 1969, p. 20). It is, according to Searle, a misunderstanding.

To accept the possibility of a private language is to accept that a speaker can mean something and that there is no possibility of communicating it in

The Principle of Expressibility and Private Language 199

any language to someone. It means that no public or common language contains the resources to express what is meant. Private languages, by definition, do not fulfill the principle of expressibility, they are cases of non­expressibility. However, if 'to mean something' should make a difference, this difference has to be expressible in a common language according to the principle of expressibility. In "Speech acts" (p. 19f.), Searle distinguishes three cases in which the speaker cannot express what he means:

First, a speaker may sometimes mean more than he says. This is not a problem: He can explicate what he means by saying it completely.

Second, the speaker is unable to say exactly what he means because of poor language competence. This is no problem either: Searle claims that the speaker can increase his knowledge of the language in order to find an adequate expression. This case can be dealt with by applying the principle of expressibility not to each particular speaker, but to the possibilities of a whole language community. An individual might not be able to articulate something appropriately. Nevertheless, this does not say anything about the general possibilities offered by the language. This is the point of Putnam's linguistic division of labor. Somebody can be a competent speaker even if he does not fully master all the distinctions provided by his language. The principle of expressibility is already fulfilled if there is a possibility of expression in the language (or the language community). It would be too restrictive if we demand its validity for every individual speaker - some­body who simply can't find the right words would then mean nothing at allY

The real difficulties originate from the third case: There is a general lack of linguistic resources for saying what is meant. The language (not the speaker!) lacks the expressive power that is needed. Searle does not see any problem in this third case either, because the language can be enriched by introducing new terms or other linguistic devices, at least in principle. Nevertheless, what might be true of the language competence of a particular speaker, is not necessarily true of the language as a whole. Hence, the question under scrutiny is if there is anything that can be meant, without being able to be articulated in any particular language in principleY How, then, could what a speaker means be identified? How could it be under­stood by others? (Try to mean something without using common words!) To claim that in such cases something can be meant at all contradicts the principle of expressibility. The following consideration shall shed more light:

1. Something can be meant that cannot be said. (Assumption of the differ­ence of meaning and saying due to a general lack of expressiveness of

200 Frank Kannetzky

language, that is the assumption of non-expressibility or private language.)

2. Nothing can be meant that cannot be said. (Contrapositive of the prin-ciple of expressibility.)14

A key to resolve this contradiction is to consider the double quantification over languages. If one reads the possibility operator as existence quantifi­cation over languages, then the symbolization reads as follows:

(S) (X) (S means X� (::JL) (::JE) (E is an exact L-expression of X)) (L takes languages).

However, the term 'language' is ambiguous. What is the field of possible languages? On the one hand, it can mean a "fixed language", that is a system of a given lexicon, grammar, and a set of logico-semantic rules of inference and interpretation, and the expressions definable by these re­sources. Examples are the formal languages, the official German or English spoken at the end of the 19th century, or any artificial language like Esperanto and the languages of science. Fixed languages are limited in their vocabulary and their syntax. Many modern philosophers tend to speak of natural languages as fixed languages centered on a logic (mostly first order predicate logic) that is enriched by conventional expressions. Fixed lan­guages tend to produce the illusion of context invariant meanings, even due to their limitations. In the framework of a closed set of syntactic and seman­tic rules, there is no space for flexible interpretations. On the other hand, the term 'language' can mean an 'open language' .15 This is a short title for an entire family of the possible extensions of given languages. Open languages are also 'regulated', but not completely and not by a closed set of rules. Not only is the vocabulary flexible, but the rules can change too. In particular, in open languages there are no constant, definitive interpretations of the expressions. Again, this does not mean that there are no stabilized or es

.tablis�ed meanings at all. They are, however, not established by a kind of

shpulahon or definition in accordance with a set of given (semantic) rules. They are established pragmatically in a series of language games, in ordi­nary language use and its tradition. Natural languages are examples of open languages.

There are differences between fixed and open languages that may cause ambiguities. The application of the corresponding differentiations dissolves the mentioned contradiction by showing ambiguities in its premises.

There is a first ambiguity in the term 'to say something'. On the one hand, it is used in the sense that something can be said only in the framework of a

The Principle of Expressibility and Private Language 201

fixed language. Correspondingly, 'to say something' is then to translate it into this fixed language. Such a 'translation' succeeds if the language has sufficient expressive power. If the fixed language does not include the tools needed, then what is meant cannot be said. Therefore, if our usual language is interpreted as a fixed language, we are to assume the mere possibility of an exact expression. Thus, we have to assume the possibility of non­expressibility and with it also the possibility of a private language of intentions .

On the other hand, 'saying something' can be understood as 'making it understandable'. One can mean only something that can, at least in prin­ciple, be made intelligible to others. Maybe one still cannot say something exactly, but it can be determined in a discourse by means of an open language and its possibilities of extension. Hence, if one assumes an open language, the mentioned possibility of non-expressibility does not exist, according to the colloquial principle of expressibility.

The ambiguity of 'to say something' corresponds to the following solu­tion of the contradiction: Something can be meant that cannot be translated into a fixed language. However: Nothing can be meant that cannot be made understandable to others by means of an open language.

Second, there is an ambiguity in the term 'exactness of expression': In a fixed language, exactness is the use of given context-invariant expressions that are determined by the rules of the fixed language. Either there is an exact expression or there is not one. If not, one cannot say what one means. In contrast, in open languages there is not an already given or "absolute" measure of exactness, but only one relative to the context, the background and the hearers. The measure of exactness here is the degree of under­standability and the agreement of speaker and hearer on what is to be understood, or the agreement to understand what was meant.

The resolution corresponding to the ambiguity of 'exactness' is then: Something can be meant, even if there is no exact expression of it in a fixed language. However: Nothing can be meant that cannot be made sufficiently understandable by means of an open language and in the presence of a shared back­ground.

A third point is the question of possible extensions or enlargements of a given language. A fixed language needs external extensions. If one considers the language quantified over in the principle of expressibility as a fixed language, then the suitable counterpart (or equivalent on the side of the resources that are needed to enlarge the language) is a strong private language. The reason is this: Because of its limitations, even a fixed language

202 Frank Kannetzky

offers the possibility of meaning something without being able to express it in this fixed language. If our normal language is regarded as a fixed lan­guage, for example a language that is centered around a logic and that is enlarged by conventional expressions, then there are a lot of things that are initially not expressible in it. (You cannot write lyric poetry in the language of first order predicate logic.) The speaker means something, but he cannot say it. Therefore, he invents the necessary linguistic tools and introduces them into the language. The assumption that a language can always be enlarged if necessary is presumably the reason why Searle did not see a contradiction between the principle of expressibility and the implicit assumption of possible cases of non-expressibility in his symbolization.

Searle makes things too easy. We should distinguish the increase of speaker's competence from the extension of a fixed language. The speaker has the resources of a given language at his disposal. What are the resources of a fixed language? If the semantic rules of interpretation are fixed, we cannot apply the expressions to new cases or use them in an other way than prescribed. Important linguistic methods to say new things like saying it in metaphors or by analogies are ruled out. Hence, the assumption that a fixed language could be enlarged, presupposes the assumption of some resources for doing it, namely what speakers mean but (still) cannot say. Such an assumption is, in consequence, the assumption of a private language. A private language is not affected by the limitations of the given fixed language. Thus, it offers the resources that are required for the enlargement of a fixed language.

Of course, I do not want to claim that we could not enlarge a language. Nevertheless, it is wrong to think that the enlargement of a language takes place by posing speechless meaning followed by the invention of new words. This is not so in open languages: A way to enrich a language without leaving its frame is the projection of concepts and of differentiations that are already understood on fields where they are not used before. Examples are metaphors and analogies, which are often used for saying something we still have no matching expressions for. In such cases the metaphor is the adequate expression for what is meant. If new distinctions are introduced in this way then we can connect new words to them, in spite of the fact that metaphors and analogies are often used repeatedly and can become the preferred form of representation. Here we do not introduce fundamentally new expressions, but we use already available ones in a new way. The new expressions can be explained, i.e. 'reduced' to the older ones in a certain manner. However, and this is the point this explanation or reduction is not

The Principle of Expressibility and Private Language 203

done by formal definitions, but by applying a new point of view. Here we have a kind of private language too, but a harmless, tamed one. With other words, each one of us is able to propose new forms of speech and new words in an open language together with the means to explain them and some hope of being understood.16

The resolution of the contradiction that corresponds to the ambiguity of 'expressibility within a language and the enlargement of a language' is then: Something that is still not expressible can be meant because it can be made understandable by means of new ways of using well-known concepts. How­ever, if our language is considered as a fixed language and something cannot be articulated by means of this fixed language, then it cannot be meant.

Why save the possibility of a private language? Why use double quan­tification? A good explanation is that Searle introduced the possibility­operator in his symbolization in order to avoid the limitations of ex­pressibility in a given, 'ready made' or fixed language. To acknowledge a private language is - at least within a theoretical framework that regards language to some degree as a fixed language- to acknowledge the necessity (and the possibility) for enlarging given languages in order to adapt them to current needs. This is, however, possible only if one can make a private language in the mentioned weak sense public. This can be understood in terms of Searle's distinction between institutional practices, which are constituted by communities, and institutional facts, which can be produced also by individualsY Therefore, private languages should be regarded as institutional facts: We can privately mean something; nevertheless, this must fit into the framework of institutional practices that are connected with a public language. This frame cannot be private. If a private language can be made public, then it is tamed. This is nothing else than Wittgenstein' s claim that a language that cannot be made public is not a language at all.) The common institutional practice of language sets the frame of possible, and maybe private, languages.

Explicability, Exactness and Background

Searle uses the notion of ' exactness' in formulating the principle of express­ibility. His symbolization of the principle states that for everything meant by a speaker there is (possibly) an exact expression (or it is possible to establish one). What does 'exactness of an expression' mean? A first possibility could be its transformation or translation into a context invariant standard notion

204 Frank Kannetzky

or a fixed language that uses expressions only literally. However, this cannot help us understanding 'understanding', because there is no such stand­ardization of natural language. What is more, if there were one, it would be impossible for a natural language to be translated into such a "standard form" as a whole and fo� all communicative purposes.18

Searle points out a general problem of meaning-theories at several places19: The literal meaning of an utterance cannot be determined in a "vacuum". It is settled only in the presence of a "background" of various collectively shared practices, common linguistic knowledge and common knowledge of the world, rituals, rules, conventions and abilities that are practically (and to a high degree implicitly) mastered by the speakers and hearers . Searle's example "The cat is on the mat" reminds us that we normally assume that the cat sits or lies on the mat. However, the sentence itself does not contain this information and it does not follow logically. The sentence could also say, for example, that the mat stands vertical and the stiff-made cat is glued on the upper edge. Hence, a theory of meaning is incomplete without considering this background.

If a speech act (even contextually) determines its meaning only in the presence of the background, then, according to the principle of express­ibility, it must also be possible to explicate this background in a set of sentences. If a speaker means that the cat is on the mat, there must be an exact linguistic expression of it. What the speaker means is without doubt "The cat is on the mat" in the usual, normal sense. How can this normal sense be explicated? Is it necessary to state explicitly that the cat is not glued on the upper edge of a vertical standing mat? Is it necessary to explicate the whole background of the sentence for capturing its usual meaning? Can this be done by uttering further sentences in order to explain the conditions of the applicability of the first one? This would lead to an infinite regress of explication. No speech act could be explicated- the principle of express­ibility would be empty and meaningless, because it would require some­thing impossible. In contrast, we know that we do not need an infinite number of sentences for expressing something exactly. The recourse ends practically after few steps. We tacitly refer to this common background of orientations and practical abilities that do not leave space for persistent doubts . At least we can eliminate such doubts by realizing parts of this background (especially the real or possible uses of the expressions in question) .

Such a common background is also needed for the principle of expressibility to work. With regard to the background, the situational

The Principle of Expressibility and Private Language 205

meaning of a speech act (that is the utterance meaning, the resulting commitments and entitlements) can be captured by the hearer. Only such a shared background offers the possibility for using "old" linguistic means in a new manner and being understood, because it restricts the possible uses and projections of the expressions. Therefore, analogies and metaphors can be exact expressions as well as literally used expressions and are not to be regarded as cases of "inexact language use". The embedding in a certain background also specifies the meaning of vague expressions and secures the usability of the same expression for various purposes, that is it secures the "flexibility of language".2° For this reason the 'exactness of an expression' cannot be the mere translation in a fixed standard notion that determines the meanings in question by a system of explicit definitions. If the concept of background is properly understood then it means the embedding of every definition or explanation of words or expressions and the corresponding rules of use in a whole system of practical abilities . Definitions come to an end beyond which there is no more to explain, but only the participation in a common practice.

For being meaningful, the principle of expressibility must be connected with the concept of understanding. It must be possible to explicate what is meant until the hearer can understand it, for example by paraphrasing or by giving analogies and metaphors (given an appropriate background) . This means that there is not a fixed and preceding line of possible explications that marks a border between understandability and non-understandability. In this sense, the most exact expression is the expression that is most under­standable with respect to the hearers and the situational background, independently of a certain linguistic form. Moreover, this also means that there is no "inexact language use" per se. Which expression counts as either inexact or exact depends completely on its appropriateness for the respective communicative purpose, the situation and the hearer. The exactness of the principle of expressibility is a 'pragmatic' one. The speaker does not mean a 'ready given' content or meaning beforehand, and he has not a 'fixed' intention that only awaits being expressed. By saying, what he means the speaker opens an entire field of equivalent meanings to the audience. This field of possibilities becomes increasingly restricted if the speaker says some­thing more . Now it is possible that the equivalence classes of speaker and hearer diverge from one another and that the hearer relates other classes of possible meanings to the utterance than the speaker has meant. That is not necessarily a mistake of the speaker, he must not know all possible equi­valence relations between contextually replaceable expressions (the 'mean-

206 Frank Kannetzky

ings'), and he cannot know them because of the context- and background variance of this equivalence classes. In addition, he cannot know the particular equivalences of the hearer, although he can expect a high degree of agreement due to shared practices and common language.

If the equivalences concerning the meaning of the utterance that are settled by speaker and hearer deviate from each other, then (under normal circumstances, especially hearer's competence and speaker's sincerity) the speaker initially has meant something other than he said. Nevertheless, an exact expression can always be found, especially by further restricting the possible meanings of the utterance, for instance by paraphrasing it. Of course, this is not an absolute exactness of the expression, but a relative one with respect to the initial expression. Saying what one means is, in this sense, nothing else than restricting the equivalence relations between possible meanings of the utterance until the speaker believes himself to be understood. Then he has chosen a linguistic representation of what he means that satisfies him and is intelligible to his audience. Speaker and hearer come tq an agreement, they have bargained a joint understanding of the utterance or expression in question. In doing so, the initially vague inten­tions of the speaker become more determined. Explaining what is meant is not only finding a better expression of a given content but its closer speci­fication in case of (possible) misunderstandings21•

In view of a corresponding interpretation of the principle of express­ibility, Searle's symbolization can be now regarded as correct: If a more exact expression is always possible, then the modality 'possibility' concerning the existence of an exact expression is meaningful. Searle's symbolization for­mulates another principle than the principle of expressibility, though a closely related one. It could be named the principle of contextually exact expressibility. It concerns concrete contexts, intentions, expressions and understandings in contrast to the general version that articulates a concep­tual statement about the relation between meaning something and saying it.

If we interpret the ' dialogical convergence' (between speaker and hearer) of the equivalence classes of possible consequences, inferences, commit­ments, entitlements that the communicants assign to a concrete utterance as an abstraction procedure, then this procedure determines the 'true' meaning of expressions in concrete speech situations. This answers the question of how understanding could be possible. Understanding is not simply stating (or perceiving) the 'true meaning', but producing it dialogically or col­lectively, i.e. it is a question of collective action and common practice rather than a question of cognition. Moreover, we can describe the relation between

The Principle of Expressibility and Private Language 207

'to mean something' and 'to say it' as well as explaining why we are able to make different uses of the same linguistic means without postulating private intentions or private speaker's meanings, without postulating 'meaning­entities', and without assuming a closed set of fixed rules for the use of language. This is so because the equivalence classes are not determined or settled before communication, because speaker and hearer are still not in agreement.

Summary and Conclusions

A central question connected with the principle of expressibility is this: What does it mean to enlarge a language? Here we are confronted with a funda­mental dilemma of the philosophy of language: If we think a private lan­guage to be impossible, then development and enlargement of language seems mysterious. If we deny the impossibility of private language in order to solve this problem and hence take speaker's intentions for granted, then mutual understanding is puzzling. It was argued that the differentiation between fixed and open languages is helpful to treat the dilemma.

Cases that contradict the principle of expressibility are cases in which the concept of language is restricted to that of a fixed language. As shown above, the suitable counterpart of a fixed language is a private language, that is a language impossible to be understood for others. In order to rescue the possibility of private language one is forced fo trivialize the principle of expressibility by extending it in a way such that not only the normal use of common linguistic expressions counts as 'saying something', but also each possibility a speaker might use to express non-linguistically (respectively pre-linguistically) his private intentions and that cannot be evaluated according to common criteria and practices. In this case the concept of 'saying something' would not make any sense. It could not distinguish between linguistic and non-linguistic behavior, between speaking and making {verbal) noise. In contrast, the usual concept of 'saying' refers to a collectively shared language. This concept entails that what can be said is intelligible due to its articulation in a public language that both follows rules and can be taught and learnt. 'To say something' is not 'meaning something privately and utter it, regardless of whether this utterance can be under­stood by the hearer'.

In order to avoid the contradiction we should read the principle of expressibility as linked to open languages. The notion of ' saying something' is then conceptually connected with the notion of understanding. Otherwise,

208 Frank Kannetzky

the principle of expressibility would not make a difference and could not serve as a methodological principle of the philosophy of language at all.22 Therefore, Searle's claim that some types of inexact language use are theoretically not important for linguistic communication should be rejected. Even the types he lists are of great importance for expressing and under­standing.

If 'understanding' is a central notion for an adequate comprehension of the principle of expressibility, than there is a possibility to generalize the speech act theory that places the hearer and the context in a more important position than in Searle's theory, which is centered around the speaker. Expressibility, exactness and so on could thus be considered as a matter of bargaining. With the hearer in a more important place, one could introduce a third party, a jury which evaluates the success of certain speech acts and the corresponding commitments and entitlements of speakers and hearers.

A corresponding reformulation of the principle of expressibility could be the following:

Whatever can be meant can be made understandable to others by means of an open (or natural) language.

A reformulation and also a generally important consequence for the phi­losophy of language as well as the philosophy of mind is the following:

What cannot be made understandable by means of an open language cannot be meant.

The space of possible intentions is determined by the expressive power of our open language which is shared by the language community.

Of course: The concept of open languages is vague. Although this dif­ferentiation is not sufficient for resolving the mentioned problems of a theory of meaning and communication, it marks, nevertheless, an important difference for handling semantic problems. It names the problems (e.g. of enlargement of language, of exactness etc.) more precisely than the un­specific general reference to language, and it shows some conceptual con­nections (e.g. between intending, saying and understanding) that are con­cealed if our language is considered as a fixed one.

Univ. Leipzig, Inst. f Philosophy fkannet@gmx.de

The Principle of Expressibility and Private Language 209

Notes

This work was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG). It can be argued that the speaker's access to his intentions is not as immediate as

stated here: There is not a pre-linguistically given and fixed intention that is only in need of (verbal) expression. Without a possible linguistic expression there is not an intention at all, but at best a quasi-physiological disposition or "directedness". Therefore, the speaker's intentions are not " things" immediate to its bearer. They are mediated in another way than the hearer's access to it. Both ways depend on common practices and language. A way to grasp this "mediatedness of intentions" is articulated by the principle of expressibility. 2 A concept of understanding that does not depend on the knowledge about speaker intentions is E. v. Savigny's: What an utterance means is indicated by changes of the " conventional set-up" of the situation. (See Savigny 1983) If we focus on understanding speech acts rather than producing them, the principle of expressibility and the reference to speaker intentions obtains another position in the theory. We will see why. 3 This is a way to extend the well-known Frege-principle of compositionality from semantics to pragmatics. According to Searle, a speech act consists in a propositional content and the illocutionary force. 4 "I take it to be an analytic truth about language that whatever can be meant can be said." (Searle 1969, p. 17) This could lead to a misinterpretation of the principle: If we think of "to mean something" as 'to mean something conventionally' with 'conventional' as "there exists a conventional expression in the public language", then the principle would be trivial or circular, because to mean something would be the same as to say something in a conventional way internally. Then the interesting cases of difference would be ruled out and the raised question remains unanswered, the principle of expressibility could not do its work. 5 One could claim that the principle of expressibility is about possibilities, hence its truth is independent from its factual fulfillment. However, that is an uninter­esting reading that would trivialize the principle. 6 This differentiation is, cum grano salis, synchronous to a difference between cases that are in need of (explicit) interpretation to be understood and cases that do not require an act of interpretation for understanding, i.e. cases of immediate under­standing. Consequently, the standard case is the case of immediate understanding. This becomes plausible if one considers the question of when interpretation becomes relevant to communicative understanding. The answer is: We need to interpret utteranc�s only if there are misunderstandings, that is in case of differences between meaning something and saying it as mentioned above. However, in real com­munication such cases are exceptions rather than the norm. Moreover, for inter­preting an utterance, i.e. translating it into a standardized language or into one's own "language of mind", the "target language" has to be already understood, otherwise there would be an infinite recourse of interpretation. Hence expressibility within a theoretical framework or a fixed language or an implicit (Davidsionian) meaning theory must not be confused with understandability, though what is understandable is always expressible within open languages. 7 In view of this considerations the principle of expressibility can be regarded as a claim about mind and intentionality rather than a claim about language and meaning.

210 Frank Kannetzky

An example is John Locke's approach to language ("Essay concerning human understanding", Book III), one of the ancestors and a paradigm of an intentionalist theory of language, communication and mind. 9 In Searle's symbolization, 'to mean something' is represented as a relation between speakers and meanings that are quantified over. But quantification pre­supposes an area of well-distinguished objects. That is, one assumes a possibility to identify and to differentiate meanings. Otherwise, the sentence " S means p" does not have a determined meaning; at least we cannot determine its truth-value. In order to do this the decision of all identity-sentences of the following form is demanded: "X is, concerning its meaning, identical/not identical to Y". (This is also true if we consider a substitutional instead of a referential quantification. In both cases, however, we have to explain such equivalences, although the substitutional inter­pretation offers a better connection to pragmatic ways to stipulate and/ or state such equivalences.) The explanation of such equalities is a shortcoming of almost every newer theory of meaning, communication, and understanding: The meaning of sentences, singular terms and predicates is, in principle, taken for granted. Only the contextual change of a given meaning is explained, but not the meaning itself. One can only find the claim that meaning and situational use are related, but not how (maybe in detail for some groups of words, but not generally for types of expressions). Perhaps Brandom's normative and inferential account to semantics explains these equalities. 10 P(q) contradicts •P(q), but it does not contradict P(•q). Both P(q) and P(•q) can be simultaneously true, but not false at the same time. The situation that I have in mind and that is possible with respect of Searle's symbolization is, again sym­bolically, this: P(•(3E)(E is an exact expression of X) and P(3E)(E is an exact expres­sion of X)) . Of course, the first occurrence of P here means another modality than the second one. lt should be read in an 'ontological' way, whereas the second occurrence of P is to be read rather as 'makeability' or 'feasibility', and that is presumably Searle's interpretation of P. However, that is not the usual interpretation of P in modal logic, and it leaves space for the problem that is discussed in this papeL 11 In this case, the modality 'necessity' is, strictly speaking, superfluous because of the generalization. 12 Of course: In real dialogues, we often use the principle in just this sense. If some­one is not able to say what he means (in his mother tongue), we tend to attribute him unclarity and confusion or that he means nothing at all. 13 "Grammatical metaphors" may mislead us in such cases, because grammar requires a 'subject-term' even if there is not an 'object' the term stands for. In case of non-expressibility such grammatical metaphors pretend a content that is meant, even if that content cannot be identified. This may induce the idea that there is something that can be meant (pre-linguistically, in a kind of a language of mind), but not expressed or said. Without further reasoning, I will only recall Quine's dictum: "No entity without identity". In view of Searle's symbolization, we can also articu­late the problem with respect to the speaker:

(S)(X) (S means X -7 P(3 E)(E is an exact expression of X)) can be transformed into (X) ((3S)(S means X) -7 P(3 E)(E is an exact expression of X)), and further into ­(X) (•P(3 E) (E is an exact expression of X) -7 •(3S)(S means X)).

The Principle ofExpressibility and Private Language 211

That means: If there is no possibility to express X, then there is no speaker to mean X.

14 Another variant to realize that contradiction is the following: (1) Something can be meant, what cannot be said. (Assumption of non-expressibility or private language); (2) What cannot be said, cannot be meant. (Contra positive of the principle of expressibility); Therefore, (3) Something can be meant, what cannot be meant. (Chain, 1,2) 15 The differentiation between fixed and open languages as proposed here must not be confused with Tarski's differentiation of semantically open and semantically closed languages, although there are some- similarities. My open languages are, to some extent, semantically closed languages in Tarski's sense, but they are open to various kinds of changes and enlargements. Tarski's concern is the concept of truth and its formal representation in a model-theoretical semantics. His differentiations therefore refer to formal languages. On the contrary, the differentiation between fixed and open languages rather concerns a difference of approaches to (Tarskian) closed, i.e. natural languages. 16 What is the difference between a 'weak' and a 'strong' private language? Is there, in case of a 'harmless' or 'tamed' private language, not even something that is meant privately? Of course, but what is, in this sense, privately meant is already embedded into a joint practice and a joint framework of concepts and language that is neces­sary to come to the problem of missing expressions at all. In a pre-communicative and pre-linguistic practice as presupposed in case of a 'strong' private language there are no problems of expression at all. 17 Searle: The construction of social reality. 18 A closer consideration of Davidsons truth condition theory of meaning, for example, shows that it is not even possible both consistently to assign a correct logical form to the expressions and, at the same time, to preserve their inferential relations. (See an unpublished manuscript by Claudia Henning (Leipzig).) 19 For instance in "Intentionality", "Literal meaning" and "The construction of social reality". The'following example is from this writings. 2° For this reason the need of the concept of a common background for explanatory purposes concerning understanding is a strong argument against (methodically) individualistic theories of meaning and communication, because participating in this background is not a quality that can be described without reference to a community the individual in question is part of. 21 Although to speak about intentions is essentially 'defensive' and reflective, we need to do so in order to explain and justify actions (and especially speech acts) that have gone wrong in this or that way. Therefore, although we need them to explain actions afterwards, the logical order is confused or inverted if intentions are thought to be a preceding condition (or cause) of every action. 22 Of course: The principle of expressibility is trivial, if one confuses 'to say some­thing' that is strongly connected with being understandable to others, with 'to utter something' in the sense of 'making (verbal) noise' .

212 Frank Kannetzky

References

Austin, J. L. (1975), How to do things with words, Second edition, Oxford, New York, Oxford University Press.

Savigny, E. v. (1983), Zum Begriff der Sprache. Konvention, Bedeutung, Zeichen, Stuttgart, Reclam.

Kannetzky, F. (2000), "Expressibility, Explicability, and Taxonomy", in G. Grewen­dorf and G. Meggle (eds.), Speech Acts, Mind, and Social Reality. Discussions with John R. Searle, Dordrecht, Kluwer (forthcoming).

Searle, J. R. (1969), Speech acts, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Searle, J. R. (1979), "Referential and Attributive", in Searle, J. R., Expression and

meaning, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, pp. 137- 161 . Searle, J. R. (1995), The construction of social reality, New York, The Free Press.

RALF WADENSTROM

Innocent Metaphors and Less Innocent Ones

Metaphors make speech and text enjoyable . A text can become terribly dry and prosy, if the metaphors are removed. However, metaphors not only have an aesthetic value but they are often necessary in order to grasp phenomena that still lack established concepts, or which are too complicated or abstract (for a particular purpose or a particular audience) to be explained in literal words. However, when a phenomenon is simplified by using a metaphor, it usually means emphasising one aspect and obscuring others . A metaphor may help the observer to see a phenomenon from one perspective, which means not seeing it from another perspective. Isn't it true that life is a theatre! Used in the wrong context, though, the metaphor might hurt. In

times of pain and sorrow, life is no theatre . In order to understand or grasp something new, unknown, complicated

or abstract, we borrow models from things that are already known or which are more concrete . When the spaceship was new, it was perceived as a ship for journeys in space, like the air ship had been a ship for journeys by air. Today computer viruses are imagined as viruses that infect. Perhaps in the future, organic viruses will be imagined as software, from which one should protect oneself with the help of (organic) anti-virus programs.

If we consider the notion of 'ship', we may say that this notion has acquired a wider sense. However, as for the notion of 'virus', it is obvious that, in spite of the common term, we are dealing with two entirely different notions, which are coupled with each other by an analogy.

Sometimes a distinction is made between metaphor and simile as well as between proper metaphor and metonymy, synecdoche and irony. It is, however, not always clear whether a metaphor is a metaphor proper or not. I use the notion 'metaphor' here in an inclusive sense. Still, it might be needed to give these concepts definitions. With synecdoche I understand the replacement of a word with the name of a thing nearly associated: we say that we read Kafka, when we actually read some literature written by Kafka; we talk about the White House, when we refer to the President of the United States. With metonymy, which sometimes is interpreted as a kind of