domain of discourse (gauker)

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Domain of Discourse Author(s): Christopher Gauker Source: Mind, New Series, Vol. 106, No. 421 (Jan., 1997), pp. 1-32Published by: on behalf of the Oxford University Press Mind AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2254768Accessed: 06-09-2015 06:29 UTC

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Domain of Discourse

CHRISTOPHER GAUKER

The proposition expressed by an utterance of a quantified sentence depends on a domain of discourse somehow determined by the context. How does the context of utterance determine the content of the domain of discourse? Many philosophers would approach this question from the point of view of an expressive theory of linguistic communication, according to which the primary function of language is to enable speakers to convey the propositional contents of their thoughts to hearers. This paper argues that from this point of view there is no persuasive treatment of the determinants of the domain of discourse. The argument focuses on an abnormal case in which the domain the speaker has in mind is not evident to the hearer. In this way the question concerning the determinants of the domain of discourse is used to challenge the expressive theory of communication.

1. "Everything is gone!"

A woman walks into her apartment, which has just been burglarized. She looks around and exclaims "Oh no, everything is gone!". Is what she says true? That depends on the domain of discourse. The walls are still there. The radiators are still there. Most of the dust is still there. So if the domain of discourse includes absolutely everything, then what she said is false. But the TV is gone, the microwave is gone, her jewelry is gone. If the domain of discourse is portable objects of non-negligible value that had been in the apartment earlier in the day, then what she said is true.

In this example, the truth value is easy to decide. Presumably, the things that the burglary victim had in mind as she glanced around her apartment were, roughly, the portable objects of non-negligible value that had been in the apartment earlier in the day, although that may not be how she thought of them. Those are roughly the things that any speaker of English acquainted with contemporary urban practices would expect her to be commenting on in declaring "Everything is gone!". So the domain of discourse relative to which we should evaluate the utterance is surely the portable objects of non-negligible value that had been in the apartment earlier in the day. So her utterance was true.

In other cases, the verdict may not be so clear. Consider a case of miscommunication. Suzy is sitting on the floor in her bedroom playing with glass marbles. All of the marbles in Suzy's room belong to Suzy, and some

Mind, Vol. 106 . 421 . January 1997 X) Oxford University Press 1997



2 Christopher Gauker

of them are red. Suddenly Tommy comes into Suzy's room and declares in a loud voice "All of the red ones are mine!". As a matter of fact, when Tommy says "All of the red ones are mine!" he is thinking, of the marbles in his own room, and it is the thought that all of the red marbles in his room are his that leads him to speak as he does. Tommy is very proud of his possessions and on this occasion is exulting in his possession of red marbles. But there is no way Suzy could know that. She would naturally expect that he was talking about the marbles there on the floor in plain view of both of them. So of course she retorts "No, they're not!".

In this case, should we say that the domain of discourse governing Tommy's utterance is the class of marbles in his own room, which are the marbles he had in mind, or should we say that it is the class of marbles in Suzy's room, which lie in plain sight on the floor in front of them? Should we say that Tommy's utterance is true because it is about the things he had in mind, or should we say it is false because it is about the marbles on the floor in front of them? Perhaps we have to distinguish between what Tommy meant, which is true, and what he literally said, which is false. Or perhaps we should say that, strictly speaking, Tommy's utterance was true, although Suzy was justified in thinking it false. Or perhaps, since Tommy has an obligation to make himself understandable, an obligation that he did not adequately try to meet, we should count his utterance false. Or maybe in a case of miscommunication such as this, there is no unique domain of discourse; the most we can say is that relative to the domain that Tommy had in mind his utterance was true and relative to the domain that Suzy had in mind it was false.

The broader question is: what determines the content of the domain of discourse for an utterance? I think most philosophers will approach this question via the assumption that linguistic communication is basically a matter of a speaker's choosing words that will convey the propositional content of his or her thought to hearers. Call this assumption the expressive theory of communication.1 I will show that any attempt to answer the question about Tommy and Suzy within the framework of the expressive theory faces some difficult questions. In this way I intend to cast doubt on some basic assumptions about language.

After a brief clarification of what I mean by a domain of discourse, I will try to define a reasonable form of expressivism. Then I will consider

1I think the expressive theory is in the background in various forms in Stalnaker (1972), Lewis (1979), Sperber and Wilson (1986), Bach (1987), Davidson (1990) and Recanati (1993), to name but a few. However, explicit discussion of domain of discourse per se is rare. However explicit discussion of domain of discourse per se is rare. In one place it is explicitly mentioned by Stalnaker (1972, p. 384), who characterizes the domain of discourse pertinent to a statement as what the speaker "meant".



Domain of Discourse 3

the ways in which the expressivist might respond to the case of Tommy and Suzy. Since my question concerning the determinants of domains of discourse has not received much attention, it should not be surprising if the "reasonable form of expressivism" that I arrive at is not recognizably as common as the basic conception of expressivism that I start with. Nor should I be criticized for attacking a straw man when it emerges that this "reasonable form of expressivism" faces embarrassing questions about Tommy and Suzy. My objective is precisely to argue that when we arrive at a form of expressivism that seems reasonable in one way, then it proves to be, if not unreasonable, then at least unpersuasive, in another. I will not attempt to develop any alternative to the expressive theory or any adequate account of domains of discourse of my own.

2. What is a domain of discourse?

Throughout this paper, I will characterize utterances as expressing propositions and as governed by domains of discourse. Likewise I will characterize mental representations as bearing propositions and as governed by domains. Where an utterance or mental representation is governed by a domain of discourse, the proposition that it expresses or bears is determined in part by that domain of discourse. So, for instance, the burglary victim's utterance of "Everything is gone!" expresses the proposition that every portable object of non-negligible value that had been in the apartment earlier in the day is gone only because her utterance is governed by the domain consisting of portable objects of non-negligible value that had been in the apartment earlier in the day. Normally, there will be some fact of the matter as to which class of things forms the pertinent domain of discourse, as there is normally some fact of the matter as to which proposition an utterance expresses or a mental representation bears. So interpretation is not essentially relative to a variable domain of discourse. When I refer to the truth value of an utterance, that will be the truth value of the proposition that the utterance expresses.

The binary relation of expression between utterances and propositions must be distinguished from the ternary relation of expression between a speaker, a proposition and an utterance that obtains when a speaker expresses a proposition by means of an utterance. The term expressive theory takes its name from this ternary relation, but to avoid confusing this ternary relation with the binary relation I will write of a speaker's intending to convey a proposition by means of an utterance instead of a speaker's expressing a proposition by means of an utterance. (The nature of this conveying will be discussed in the next section.) The two concepts of




expression must be distinguished because an utterance, by virtue of the meanings of the words from which it is composed, may have a meaning quite apart from what any particular speaker intends to accomplish by means of it, and this meaning may even depend on the context of utterance. Perhaps the proposition that an utterance expresses depends in various ways on what proposition the speaker intends to convey, but no simple account of this relation can be given here at the start. This relation is largely what is in question.

Although I suppose that the proposition that an utterance expresses depends on the domain of discourse governing that utterance, I cannot be very precise about how the proposition depends on the domain, because in this paper I will not consider how best to incorporate domains of discourse into a formal semantics. Basically, we need to structure our formal models so that they contain sets of contexts such that each context in the set assigns to the quantifier some subset of the universe, and then formu- late the truth conditions for quantified sentences somehow in terms of these context-relative subsets. But there are various questions of detail. Perhaps we should introduce sequences of context-relative domains so that we can allow that the several quantifiers in a single sentence may range over different domains. Should we set things up so that the infer- ence rule of universal instantiation is logically valid? How about the rule of existential generalization? How should the truth values of sentences containing proper names, or indexicals, or predicates such as "exist" depend on what is in the domain? I am raising such questions only to show that I am aware of them, even though I am going to ignore them. I acknowledge that such questions are not entirely independent of my question concerning the determinants of the content of domain of discourse.

So far, I have been assuming that the way to allow that "everything" does not always mean absolutely everything is to introduce contextually determined domains of discourse into our semantics. When, speaking loosely, I say that an utterance of "Everything is F" expresses the proposition that every G is F, that means that it expresses a proposition that is true in a world w if and only if every member of the set of things that are G in the actual world is F in w, not that it expresses the proposition that is true in a world w if and only if everything that is G in w is F in w. An alternative would be to say that in general the right way to accommodate the fact that "everything" does not always mean absolutely everything is to allow that quantified sentences may be elliptical stand-ins for more complete expressions. For instance, in my example, we might evaluate the utterance of "Everything is gone" by assigning it the truth value that an utterance of the sentence "Everything of value that was here earlier is gone" would have had in that same context. I think that all of my main




points in this paper could be reformulated to suit this alternative "elliptical" approach, but for the sake of definiteness I will continue to orient the discussion around the approach involving contextually determined domains of discourse.

Context-relative domains of discourse sometimes come up in connection with definite descriptions (and hardly anywhere else). The introduc- tion of context-relative domains of discourse sometimes serves to rescue Russell's theory of descriptions in the face of so-called incomplete descriptions such as "the table" in "The table is covered with books". It is unreasonable to interpret this sentence as implying, as it might seem to do on Russell's theory, that there is exactly one table in the whole universe. It is not unreasonable to interpret it as implying that there is exactly one table in some context-relative domain of discourse.2 But one cannot assume that domains of discourse in my sense, which I think of as affect- ing the propositions expressed by sentences containing explicit quantifiers such as "every" and "some", can immediately be brought to bear on such questions, since descriptions present so many additional difficulties (see, for instance, Westerstahl (1985), Heim (1988), Chierchia (1995, esp. ? 1.7.3)).

3. Expressivism

By the expressive theory of communication I mean any conception of language according to which the primary function of language is to enable speakers to convey propositions to hearers. This definition immediately raises two questions. First, what is a proposition? Second, what is it to convey a proposition?

One source of the pertinent notion of proposition is Frege's notion of thoughts. Frege (1956 [1918], 1960 [1892]) conceived of these thoughts in at least three ways. First, a thought is a cognitive value, which means, roughly, that it is what distinguishes two sentences, such as "a = a" and "a = b", when both are true but a person might have reason to assert the one but not the other. Second, thoughts are indirect referents, which means that they serve as the referents of that-clauses in an account of the truth conditions of sentences of such forms as "S believes that p." Third, thoughts are what are shared in verbal communication. It has emerged in the contemporary literature that Frege's three conceptions of thought do not really coincide. It has become commonplace to distinguish proposi-

2In this way Grice appears to countenance context-relative domains of discourse in his 1981 (p. 193).




tions, considered as what are conveyed in communication, from various other sorts of content, such as mode of presentation (Evans 1982), narrow content (Fodor 1987) or character (Perry forthcoming). I will not have occasion to discuss these more "internal" varieties of content in this paper. My concern will be exclusively the conception of a thought, or proposition, as that which is shared in communication.

Different approaches to formal semantics yield different conceptions of the propositions shared in communication. One approach treats propositions as sets of possible worlds. Another approach treats them as struc- tures of universals and particulars. It is even possible to adopt an essentially expressivist conception of communication while eschewing propositions as special entities altogether, by speaking instead of the truth conditions a speaker intends his or her utterance to be interpreted as having.3 I will suspend judgment on this issue too (although I will distinguish between propositions in terms of the worlds they are true in).

Our second question was: what is it to convey a proposition? This question has two parts. First, what is the end result of conveying a proposition? Second, what is the process by which a proposition is conveyed? Regard- ing the end result, there are basically two approaches. One approach is to say that the end result is that the hearer takes the same attitude toward the proposition to be conveyed as the speaker takes. Thus, if the speaker believes the proposition to be conveyed, then the end result of successfully conveying the proposition will be that the hearer believes it too. The other approach is to say thatithe end result is merely that the hearer recognizes the speaker's attitude (belief, for instance) toward the proposition to be conveyed.

Regarding the process, one simple idea is that mental representations in the speaker are automatically translated into spoken words and that these are automatically translated back into mental representations in the hearer (Jackendoff 1994, pp. 162-3). But the most popular conceptions of the process have been Gricean. Speakers are supposed to intend their hearers to take some attitude toward a proposition and to do so on the basis of their recognition of the speaker's intention, and hearers are supposed to be able to recognize these intentions on the basis of the semantics of the speaker's choice of words and the external context of utterance. Let us say that a speaker intends to convey a proposition in uttering a sentence if and only if the speaker intends to bring about the privileged sort of end result by uttering that sentence and intends that result to be achieved in part on the basis of the hearer's understanding of the words spoken. and the external context of utterance. (This is really only the

'This is the way Davidson (1990) captured an expressive theory of communication.




schema of a definition. A complete definition would specify how the hearer's understanding of the words and context are supposed to figure in the achievement of the privileged sort of end result.) This conception of the process is Gricean because it stems from Grice's analysis of the concept of meaning something by something and from his theory of conversational implicature.4

Expressivism, as I am defining that position, allows that the hearer will rely on external context in inferring the speaker's intention and that the speaker may intend the hearer to do so. In saying this I am presupposing a distinction between the context simpliciter and the external context. The context simpliciter may include the speaker's intention. When I say that the domain of discourse depends on the context, I mean to allow that what it depends on in the context may be precisely the speaker's intention. When I want to refer to elements of the context excluding the very state of mind that the speaker intends to convey by his or her words, I will refer to the external context. (So the external context, in a broad sense, may include states of mind of the speaker, provided they are independently accessible to the hearer.) It is the external context in this sense that, on the expressive theory, speakers may intend their hearers to take into account in working out the speaker's intention.

Many contemporary theorists suppose that the grasp of a proposition is mediated by a mental representation. These mental representations are supposed to be physical particulars in the brain having a structure that in part determines which propositions they bear. They are often character- ized as sentences in a language of thought. The language of thought theory has seemed to many to be the only possible way of modelling in the brain the relations among a person's propositional thoughts. For the sake of definiteness, I will confine my attention to versions of the expressive theory according to which the grasp of propositions must be mediated by

4See Grice (1957, 1969, 1975). Although expressivism owes a lot to Grice, an expressivist in my sense need not share all of Grice's commitments. In particular, the expressivist need not hold that the semantic properties of words in tum derive from the intentions with which speakers normally use them. This is an issue that divides Grice (1968), early Schiffer (1972) and Bennett (1976), on the one side, from Davidson (1990), Lewis (1969) and Bach (1987), on the other. The former but not the latter believe in intention-based semantics, which would explain sentence meaning in terms of speaker's meaning. Further, the expressivist need not be committed to any analysis of the concept of meaning something by something. Thus the expressivist can adopt a certain explanation of conveying a proposition without having to make sure that a speaker means something by something only when a speaker conveys a proposition in the sense explained. On the other side, it would be incorrect to claim that Grice himself intended only a conceptual analysis of the concept of speaker's meaning and not also an account of the process of communication. Grice's expressivism becomes quite evident in a later essay (1982).




particular mental representations, although I think I could equally well conduct the discussion on the assumption that they were non-localizable states of whole organisms.' More fully, the expressivist in my sense assumes that when a speaker, intends to convey a proposition there is a mental representation that underlies this intention and that bears the proposition to be conveyed. That is, the process of thought that, described mentalistically, leads from the speaker's intention to convey a proposition to the speaker's speaking is underwritten at the physical level by an'etiology involving a mental representation that is interpretable as bearing the proposition to be conveyed. Beware, however, that I am not yet taking anything for granted about the relation between mental representations and propositions. In particular, I am not presupposing that mental representations are in any sense complete expressions of propositions. On that question I will shortly distinguish between two different varieties of expressivism.

The expressive theory, as I have defined it, holds that the primary function of language is to enable speakers to convey propositions, but the expressivist can certainly allow that many linguistic acts aim at no such thing. In asking a question, in issuing a command, in telling a joke, or in grunting in solidarity with other grunters, one may be doing no such thing. We might call the uses of language to which the theory is supposed to apply the informative uses of language, although one should not expect to identify the type in an entirely theory-neutral way. An expressivist might maintain that these informative uses are primary simply in the sense that they are the most frequent type. Alternatively, the expressivist might maintain that the informative uses somehow sus- tain the other uses, in which case they need not even be the most frequent.

4. Some specious solutions

Before going any further, I need to show that the problem of interpreting Tommy's utterance cannot be solved simply by drawing certain simple distinctions, such as the distinction between what is said and what is meant. No one should think that we can simply say that what Tommy said was that the red marbles there on the floor in front of them are his but what he meant was that the red marbles in his own room were his, and leave it

5 The now classic statement of the language of thought theory is by Fodor (1975). Not all theorists in whom I find a basically expressive theory of communication accept it. For instance, Stalnaker (1984) explicitly rejects it.




at that. The distinction between saying and meaning is frequently used as a talisman in this way to ward off all challenges to the expressive framework. It is supposed to be an axiom of common sense that mere philosophy cannot touch. But in fact it is not cut out for serious theoretical work.

Suppose Jones says "I am sick", and Smith says to Jones "You are sick". Is what is said by Jones the same as what is said by Smith? Perry (forthcoming) looks at such examples and answers that, intuitively, what Jones said is the same as what Smith said and concludes that what is said is a singular state of affairs. In this case, it would be a singular state of affairs consisting of Jones and his sickness. But suppose Jones says, "I am sick", and Brown says "I am sick". Bach (1994) looks at such examples and answers that, intuitively, what Jones said is the same as what Brown said and concludes that what is said is the meaning that can be read directly off the words in light of the semantics of the language apart from context of utterance.6 In my opinion, we can use the phrase "what is said" to classify utterances in either of these ways and in many other ways as well, and whether one way is more appropriate than another depends on what we are trying to do. Rather than try to isolate a unique intuitively correct conception of what is said, one might appropriate the expression into one's theoretical framework and stipulate that it has a certain invariant technical sense. But then the proffered solution to the question about Tommy's utterance can no longer be regarded as mere common sense.

The fluidity of the ordinary distinction between what is said and what is meant may be illustrated as follows. Suppose that Jane is a waitress in a restaurant and she observes that a man and a woman whom she has been serving are squabbling at their table. The man is a eating a pastrami sandwich. The woman is eating a cobb salad. Speaking ironically and metonymically, Jane may make the following remark to her co- worker:

(1) The pastrami sandwich and the cobb salad are in love.

Jane's utterance is subject to several sorts of clarifications:

(2) (Discharge of metonymy) The man who ordered a pastrami sandwich and the woman who ordered a cobb salad are in love.

(3) (Object completion) The man who ordered a pastrami sandwich and the woman who ordered a cobb salad are in love with each other.

6I do not claim that Bach is entirely unaware of the vagaries of the phrase "what is said". At one point (1994, p. 160) he seems to acknowledge that this phrase has no stable sense. But for the most part (in his dispute with Recanati (1993), he seems to make an issue of what is properly referred to as "what is said".




(4) (Domain specification) The man in my section who ordered a pastrami sandwich and the woman in my section who ordered a cobb salad are in love with each other.

(5) (Discharge of irony) The man in my section who ordered a pastrami sandwich and the woman in my section who ordered a cobb salad are squabbling with each other.

(6) (Naming of referent) Woody Allen and Mia Farrow are squabbling with each other.

The ordinary distinction between saying and meaning can be used to draw several of these distinctions. We might say that (1) is what Jane said while (2) is what she meant, or that (2) is what she said while (3) is what she meant, and so on. In general, in characterizing other people's assertions, we speak of that much of their meaning as is already clear to our interlocutor as what is said and introduce further specifications of the speaker's meaning as what is meant.

There is another distinction that is also liable to be abused although it is more explicitly theoretical. I will use the terms semantics and pragmatics to draw this distinction, but I do not mean to imply that my use of these terms is standard. On the one hand, there is a kind of interpretation that relies wholly on the more or less constant meanings of words, or, more generally, semantic rules. Call this semantic interpretation. On the other hand, there is a kind of interpretation that seeks the propositions that the speaker intended to convey on the basis of the hearer's grasp of the semantic properties of the words to be used. Call this pragmatic interpretation. Context may play a role even in semantic interpretation in so far as there may be semantic rules for interpreting on the basis of the context. For instance, the rule that tells us that "me" always refers to the speaker may qualify as semantic. And semantics will play a role in pragmatics in as much as the speaker intends the hearer to employ semantics. None the less, the correct pragmatic interpretation may on occasion diverge from the correct semantic interpretation.

The pragmatic/semantic distinction, so defined, affords another pat answer to the question about Tommy's utterance. The proposition that Tommy intended to convey in speaking was the proposition that the red marbles in his own room were his, which is true. This, it may be said, is the correct pragmatic interpretation of his utterance. But it is the domain consisting of the marbles plainly there on the floor in front of them that we should look to in semantic interpretation. In light of that, semantics assigns to his utterance the proposition that all of the red marbles there on the floor in front of them are his, which is false. This is the correct semantic interpretation. So the story of Tommy and Suzy does not present us with conflicting interpretations, but is merely a case in which two different,kinds of interpretation happen not to yield the same result.




The trouble is that this assumes that semantic interpretation alone can actually get as far as assigning a proposition to an utterance.7 On the contrary, even if we acquiesce in the basic expressivist framework, it is not obvious that we can always assign a proposition to an utterance wholly on the basis of semantic rules. Imagine that someone has to attend a wedding and declares "I have nothing to wear". If we had to interpret that utterance without paying attention to the context, about the best we could do would be to interpret it as expressing the proposition that the speaker is at that moment stark naked and has no means of obtaining any clothing whatsoever. I submit that a kind of interpretation that yields such an interpretation of "I have nothing to wear" has no role whatsoever to play in the theory of language.8 It is not an interpretation that would normally occur to anyone, and there is no reason why it should occur to anyone in cases where that is not what the utterance means.

There may be a role to be played by a kind of interpretation that assigns to each utterance, where possible, a default interpretation. The default interpretation would be that which one would best give knowing only a little about the context. But the interpretation of "I have nothing to wear" just considered is not so much as a default interpretation in this sense. If we found this sentence written in the snow, this interpretation would not be acceptable even as a default. Without knowing more precisely how to interpret that inscription in the snow, we would know that the interpretation of it as meaning that the inscriber was naked was very unlikely to be correct. What we could say about the meaning of such an utterance apart from context is only that it means that no item in a certain yet-to-be-determined set of items of clothing possesses a certain yet-to-be-determined property, which is not a definite proposition at all.

So if we wish to maintain that semantics alone always assigns a proposition to an utterance, we will have to maintain that there are semantic rules specifying a definite domain of discourse in light of the context, just as there are (or seem to be) rules that govern the reference of"me" in light of the context. The claim cannot be simply that there is a many-to-one mapping of contexts into domains of discourse. Such a mapping might be something we might appeal to in formulating a formal semantics incorpo- rating context-dependent domains of discourse. But in my terminology,

'This trouble has been thematized by Recanati (1989, 1993, Ch. 13), and by Bach (1994).

8Bach (1987, 1994) clearly disagrees with this (the example is his, 1987, p. 80), but his only argument, as far as I can see, is answered by what I say about default interpretations (see 1987, p. 70) in the next paragraph. I find it hard to understand why Bach takes this position since he himself claims that apart from context some sentences, such as "Al is finished" and "Tipper is ready", do not express any proposition at all (1994).




such a mapping could be either semantic or pragmatic, depending on what generates the function. It will be semantic only if there is some semantic rule that determines the domain of discourse on the basis of specific features of the context.

The point of distinguishing between semantics and pragmatics and then allowing that semantic interpretation may depend on context is to allow that the semantic interpretation of an utterance may diverge from the pragmatic interpretation of that utterance even when we take the context into account. In order to get this divergence it is important that at least sometimes the pertinent features of the context are features of the external context, that is, features excluding the speaker's intention in speaking. But that is not to say that the speaker's intention does not enter into any of the semantic rules. In the extreme, an expressivist might wish to maintain that there is a semantic rule according to which the domain that governs a speaker's utterance is just the domain the speaker has in mind in speaking. But at that extreme we will find that the semantic interpretation and the pragmatic interpretation of Tommy's utterance yield the same proposition. This is not how semantic rules governing domains of discourse will be conceived when the semantics/pragmatics distinction is supposed to yield the pat answer described above. So although we must eventually confront the idea that the domain of discourse is always just what the speaker has in mind (?8), I will avoid calling that a semantic rule.

Thus the question is whether domains of discourse might be dictated by semantic rules defined in terms of external context. Toward answering this, consider the variety of factors that appear to play a role in determining the domain of discourse. What we are talking about, what we say about it, what we are trying to accomplish, what we take for granted about one another's beliefs, and the things that stand out saliently in the perceiv- able environment all make a difference, sometimes in subtle ways. If I am standing in front of my class and say "Everyone is present today", it might be understood that the pertinent domain is everyone who has been attending class recently; whereas if instead I say "Not everyone is present today", it might be understood that the pertinent domain is everyone who is still officially enrolled. Certainly the relevant factors cannot all be reduced to salience in any ordinary sense of the term. We can talk in general terms about pets of the past while pets of the present wrestle before our eyes. One might try to produce a general theory explaining how, in light of all relevant factors, a user of the language ought to assign a domain of discourse, and then one might define "the most salient" domain as whatever this process yields; but then the claim that the domain is salient has to be backed up with a complicated, or at least unobvious, theory that no one actually has.




In view of the variety and subtlety of the factors that play a role in our identification of the domain of discourse pertinent to an utterance, I think we should conclude that domains are not determined by semantic rules. I do not doubt that there are various semantic constraints on domains of discourse. For instance, in "Every file was checked, and some were checked twice", semantics may dictate that the domain governing the second conjunct is (or is normally) restricted to files. But it is doubtful whether such constraints suffice to determine a unique domain. I -also do not doubt that in many cases there are ways offiguring out what the domain of discourse must be, but it is doubtful whether the way to do it is to apply semantic rules.

5. Some related questions

To highlight the special problems posed by Tommy's utterance, I want to contrast the case of Tommy and Suzy with some other examples of miscommunication. Suppose that Julie is holding a book that belongs to Jim and says to Jim "The book in my hand belongs to me". But she has mis- poken. What she intends to communicate is that the book in her hand belongs to Jim. In this case, we can simply use our distinction between semantics and pragmatics, as defined above, to explain what is going on: The correct pragmatic interpretation of Julie's words is that the book in her hand belongs to Jim. The correct semantic interpretation is that the book in her hand belongs to her. The reason the two interpretations differ is that Julie did not actually speak the words whose semantics she intended Jim to rely on in interpreting her words. Still, semantics and external context do determine a unique proposition for Julie's utterance, although not the one she intended. The story of Tommy and Suzy is different in that semantics and external context alone do not determine a proposition for Tommy's utterance.

Consider next the following example, deriving from Kaplan (1979, p. 396). Without turning and looking, Richard points to the wall behind him, where he supposes there to be a picture of Rudolph Carnap, and he says, "That is a picture of one of the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century". But unbeknownst to Richard, someone has replaced the picture of Camap with a picture of (let's update the example) Newt Gingrich. The proposition Richard's utterance expresses is the proposition that the picture on the wall behind him is a picture of one of the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century, which is false. But the proposition that Richard has in mind in speaking is the proposition that a certain picture of Carnap is a picture of one of the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century,




which is true. So, it appears, the proposition Richard's utterance expresses is not the proposition Richard has in mind in speaking. This case is closer to the case of Tommy and Suzy than is the case of Julie and Jim, in that the reference of "that", like the domain of discourse, does not appear to be bound by semantic rules in the way that the reference of the indexical "me"9 might seem to be.

This example forces us to be clearer about pragmatic interpretation. When a speaker speaks, there may be several propositions that the speaker would like the hearer to believe, but not all of these can be considered what the speaker intends to convey. The one that the speaker intends to convey is the one that the speaker intends the hearer to recognize on the basis of the semantics of the words chosen. But the speaker may also intend to cause the hearer to believe certain other propositions through the hearer's drawing certain inferences from the one that the speaker intends to convey. The proposition that Richard intends to convey is the proposition that the picture hanging on the wall behind him is a picture of one of the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century, which is false. But from this proposition together with another proposition that Richard believes, namely, that the picture on the wall is a picture of Carnap, it follows that the picture of Carnap is a picture of one of the greatest twentieth century philosophers, which is true. That may be something that Richard also intends his hearer to believe, but it is not the proposition he intended to convey by his words. So we cannot say that the proposition Richard "has in mind" in the relevant sense, i.e., intends to convey by his words, is true, while the proposition that his utterance expresses is false. The false proposition is both what he intends to convey and the proposition that his utterance expresses.9 The story of Tommy and Suzy cannot be sorted out in just this way. We have two competing interpretations of Tommy's utterance, but it is not the case that one of these follows from the other given other things that Tommy believes, so that we might treat this one merely as what Tommy intends Suzy to infer rather than as what Tommy intended to convey by his words.

One might, however, think up Tommy/Suzy-type cases involving demonstratives such as "it" or "that" rather than domains of discourse, for it is also doubtful whether there are semantic rules that determine the reference of such demonstratives in light of the external context. The reason I have chosen to focus on domains of discourse in this meditation on the powers of expressivism is that I think I can use a peculiarity about the

9This is basically the kind of answer that Bach (1987, p. 185) gives to Kaplan's example and that he gives (1992a, 1992b) to some examples of Reimer (199 la, 199 i b).




interpretation of the universal quantifier in arguing for a certain variety of expressivism that I will call contextualism.

6. Eternalism vs. contextualism

Expressivism is not in itself a theory of mental representation. However, as we will see, whether the expressivist can offer a plausible treatment of Tommy's utterance will depend on what an expressivist can say about the contentfulness of mental representations. In particular, whether Tommy's utterance is plausibly interpreted in light of what Tommy has in mind in speaking will depend on this. For this reason, I now want to distinguish between two conceptions of the contentfulness of mental representations and then, in the next section, argue that one of them ought to be preferred over the other.

In anticipation of the distinction I am about to draw, I defined expressivism as holding that for each proposition that a speaker intends to convey by means of words, there is an underlying mental representation that bears it. In order to consider what is involved in a mental representation's bearing a proposition, it is convenient to think of the relation of bearing a proposition as determined by an interpretation function for a given speaker. The input to the interpretation function will include a structured set of mental representations and possibly certain other factors as well. The set of mental representations is structured in as much as the input may include a specification of certain structural relations (temporal, spatial, causal or neurological) between the mental representations and of certain syntactic relations (anaphoric, logical) between the mental sentences that these mental representations token. The output of an interpretation function is a pairing of the mental representations in the set with propositions. An interpretation function is valid for a given thinker if and only if, for any structure of mental representations that might occur in that thinker's brain, the interpretation function pairs each mental representation in that structure with the proposition that that mental representation really would bear in the context of the other factors specified in the input.

The expressivist can certainly allow that the proposition borne by a given mental representation in a given thinker depends on the meaning of other mental representations in the mind of that thinker and that to this extent the proposition borne by a mental representation is relative to a context external to that very mental representation. This relativity is reflected in the definition of an interpretation function as taking as input an entire structured set of mental representations. But beyond this there are two ways in which the expressivist might allow external context, in




even a narrower sense, to play a role in determining which proposition a mental representation bears. An external context in this narrower sense is the state of the world outside of the speaker's mind (not only outside of the mental representation in question). First, the expressivist might allow that external context in this narrower sense plays a role in determining which interpretation function is valid for a given thinker. The validity of an interpretation function may depend on the character of the world the thinker resides in. For instance, an expressivist might allow that a certain mental name refers to a certain historical figure only because that mental name derives from a certain public language name that in turn has a his- tory originating in that historical figure. Second, features of the external context may themselves be among the inputs to the interpretation function in addition to a structured set of mental representations. In other words, the interpretation function might be sensitive to external context. For instance, an expressivist might think that mental representations contain demonstrative expressions the reference of which is not spelled out else- where among the mental representations. Or the quantifiers in mental representations might range over domains of discourse that are determined only by the external context.

Thus we can distinguish between two kinds of expressive theory. The first kind holds that the inputs to an interpretation function do not include features of the external context. So the interpretation of mental representations depends on external context in at most the first of the two ways just described. Call this the eternalist version of the expressive theory. I choose the term "eternalist" to allude to Quine's notion of eternal sentences (1960), but I should emphasize that eternal mental representations in my sense are not truly eternal sentences in Quine's sense, since the eternalist in my sense will allow that the interpretation of a given mental representation may be sensitive to the surrounding mental representations. For instance, interpretation may depend on a kind of mental anaphora. The other kind of expressivist allows that the input to interpretation functions may include features of the external context. So interpretation functions may depend on external context in the second of the two ways described in the previous paragraph as well as the first. The interpretation of a given mental representation might be sensitive to features of the external context in which it occurs and not only to neighboring mental representations. Call this the contextualist version of the expressive theory.Io

'0 Evans's conception of singular thought (1982, esp. chapters 6 and 8) illus- trates a contextualist version of the expressive theory. The distinction between contextualism and eternalism parallels Perry's (1993 [1986], p. 218) distinction between indexical beliefs, which are "about" the place they refer to, and "more primitive" beliefs that merely "concern" the place they refer to.




The distinction between eternalist and contextualist conceptions of mental representation ought not to be confused with the distinction between internalist and externalist conceptions of mental content. The intemalist holds that there is. some useful notion of mental content such that if any two subjects have exactly the same physical structure, then regardless of the differences between their environments, the thoughts of those two subjects must have exactly the same content. The extemalist denies this. Extemalism does not imply contextualism; neither does eternalism imply intemalism. Someone could be an extemalist, in holding that context determines which interpretation function is valid for a given thinker, and at the same time be an etemalist, in holding that interpretation functions do not take contextual factors as part of their input. For instance, the interpretation function for a subject on Earth might interpret a certain mental word as meaning H20 while the interpretation function for a microstructurally identical subject on Twin Earth might interpret the par- allel mental word as meaning XYZ, and yet neither interpretation function might interpret that mental word as varying in meaning from one context to another. None the less, extemalism without contextualism may be an improbable philosophy of mind.

7. An argumentfor contextualism

The contextualist variety of expressivism, I will now argue, is more plausible than the etemalist variety. This concession to contextualism will play a role in the doubts I will raise about expressivism in the next section.

Imagine a goatherd in the Peruvian Andes whose community has long been isolated from the rest of the world. The goatherd possesses normal intelligence and plays a normal part in his society. But he is not very curi- ous or imaginative and it has never occurred to him to wonder whether there might be other people beyond the farthest mountains he can see. One evening all the people of the village are gathered together for a traditional celebration and there appears in the sky a remarkably bright falling star. Everyone looks up into the sky and sees it. Over the next few days, the falling star and its possible meaning are a favorite topic of discussion. As a result, our goatherd forms a belief that he attempts to convey in words that translate thus: "Everyone saw the falling star". Call this the goatherd'sfirst utterance.

Some time later, our goatherd is out in the hills accompanied by a philosophical friend. Bored with tending goats, the philosopher asks the goatherd "Do you think there might be people like us on the other side of those distant mountain tops?". For the first time our goatherd contemplates the




question and forms the opinion that, yes, very probably there are other people over there, people whom he has never met and can barely imagine. To convey this thought, he chooses words that translate thus: "Not everyone in the universe is a member of our community". Call this the goatherd's second utterance.

So the goatherd's first utterance (in translation) is "Everyone saw the falling star". The goatherd's second utterance (in translation) is "Not everyone in the universe is a member of our community". A charitable interpretation would say that by means of his first utterance the goatherd intended to convey the proposition that everyone in the goatherd s community saw the falling star and that by means of his second utterance the goatherd intended to convey the proposition that not everyone in the universe is a member of the goatherd's community. So on the charitable interpretation, the domain of discourse pertinent to the proposition borne by the mental representation underlying the first utterance is everyone in the goatherd s community and the domain of discourse pertinent to the proposition borne by the mental representation underlying second utterance is everyone in the universe. The expressivist who is a contextualist can accept these charitable interpretations without problem. The pertinent domain can vary in this way because the interpretation function is sensitive to the external context. In particular, the external context determines that the domain pertinent to the proposition borne by the mental representation underlying the first utterance consists of the members of the goatherd's community, for exactly these people were present at the celebration, and the external context determines that the domain pertinent to the proposition borne by the mental representation underlying the goatherd's second utterance cannot be only the members of the goatherd's community, for these people are all plainly members of the goatherd's community.

In contrast, the expressivist who is an eternalist cannot cite the variation in external context as inducing variation in the domain. So if we follow the eternalist but interpret only on the basis of the words spoken, we will have to suppose either that the domain for both mental representations is everyone in the goatherd s community or that the domain for both mental representations is everyone in the universe. If we take the domain to be everyone in the universe, then the proposition borne by the mental representation underlying the goatherd's first utterance is the proposition that everyone in the universe saw the falling star. But it is unreasonable to interpret the goatherd as intending to convey something so patently false and so patently unsupported by the evidence that the goatherd would cite in support of whatever he intended to convey. If we take the domain to be everyone in the goatherd's community, then the proposition borne by the




mental representation underlying the goatherd's second utterance is the proposition that not everyone in the universe who is a member of his community is a member of his community, which is a patent falsehood. (It is not quite so much as a contradiction since, by the account I gave in ?2, the proposition in question is the proposition that is true in a world w if and only if not everyone who is a member of the goatherd's community in the actual world is a member of the goatherd's community in w. But even without being a contradiction this is an implausibly uncharitable interpretation, for in the actual world that proposition is patently false.)

The eternalist might reply that when the goatherd says "Everyone saw the falling star", the underlying mental representation has additional structure that determines that the proposition expressed is that everyone in the goatherd's community saw the falling star. The underlying mental representation might contain a mental predicate meaning in my community, and this predicate may be attached in the right way to the mental quantifier so as to restrict the domain. This strategy is implausible. There is no reason why the goatherd's mental representation should contain any such restriction given that at that point it has never even occurred to him to wonder whether there might be people outside his community. Likewise it is not plausible that there is somewhere stored in his brain a mental representation meaning The only people who exist are the people in my community. We could perhaps get the restriction indirectly if the goatherd possessed a mental representation meaning The people who exist are my brother, my neighbor, my neighbor s children ... , for in fact this list may exhaust the members of his community. But just as we supposed that the goatherd has never considered whether there might be people outside his community, we may suppose that he has never in this way itemized the people who exist. To justify our restriction of the goatherd's domain of discourse to people in his community, it might be enough to point out that the only people with whom the goatherd is en rapport in such a way that we can maintain that he thinks of them are people in the goatherd's community; but in that case we will have to impose the same restriction on the domain in the interpretation of his second utterance.

One step in this argument might seem especially dubious. That is where I assumed that we cannot plausibly suppose that the proposition borne by the mental representation underlying the goatherd's first utterance is the proposition that everyone in the universe saw the falling star. Someone might object that that is precisely the proposition he has in mind, and if it seems not to be, then that is only because the goatherd has different views from us about who is comprised in everyone. But on the contrary, one cannot say that the goatherd has any view at all about who is comprised in everyone, for, by hypothesis, he has never so much as considered the




question. Alternatively, one might object thatfor the goatherd everyone in the goatherd's community is everyone in the universe, and therefore that for the goatherd the proposition that everyone in his community saw the falling star is identical to the proposition that everyone in the universe saw thefalling star. But this is a confusion. When I choose words to try to convey a proposition, I choose words that will express that proposition when I say them. When I say "Everyone in the universe saw the falling star" my words express a very different proposition from the one my words express when I say "Everyone in the goatherd's community saw the falling star". The objection offers no reason for thinking that the goatherd has in mind the proposition expressed by the first string of words when I say them.

I have appealed to a principle of charity in interpretation to argue that in different circumstances we are forced to interpret the mental representations underlying the goatherd's utterances as governed by different domains. I am not assuming that the charitable interpretation must be correct just by virtue of being the charitable one, but only that in the case of the goatherd, in light of the particulars of the case, we should find the uncharitable interpretations implausible because they are so uncharitable. It would not make sense to try to rescue eternalism from this argument by combining it with a principle of charity in interpretation. The thought might be that charity amounts to interpreting a person as reasonable in some sense and whether a thought is reasonable in the relevant way is not relative to external context. Perhaps the requisite reasonableness would not be relative to external context if it amounted to merely a kind of logical consistency among the thinker's mental representations interpreted relative to a given domain. But that is not all it amounts to, as the case of the goatherd demonstrates. It is implausibly uncharitable to interpret the goatherd as thinking the proposition that is true in a world w if and only if not everyone who is a member of the goatherd's community in the actual world is a member of the goatherd's community in w, and this is so even if we do not suppose that for each member of that group the goatherd explicitly represents that person as a member of his community.

So the contextualist version of the expressive theory ought to be preferred over the eternalist version. Still, various doubts may be raised about contextualism too. One that I will come back to in the next section con- cerns the speaker's choice of words. Part of the idea behind expressivism is that a speaker's intention to convey a proposition is what determines the speaker's choice of words. I am supposing that for the expressivist, this determination of a speaker's choice of words by an intention to convey a proposition is underwritten at the physical level by an etiology involving the mental representation that bears the proposition. So if there are features of the proposition that a speaker intends to convey that are not borne




by features of the speaker's mental representations but determined directly by external context, then it may seem that these features will not be features that can make a difference in the speaker's choice of words. The hearer might make up for this inexplicitness in the speaker's choice of words by taking account of the context, but presumably if it is unreasonable to expect the speaker's mental representation to bear the proposition in a context-independent manner, then it is equally unreasonable always to expect the hearer to explicitly represent those features of the proposition to be conveyed that are not reflected in the speaker's choice of words. So a speaker's choice of words will not always be able to do the work it has to do in conveying a proposition to the hearer.

This doubt about the speaker's words may perhaps be answered in light of facts about the hearer. As features of the external context may determine the proposition borne by the mental representation that underlies the speaker's choice of words, so too features of the external context may determine the proposition borne by the mental representation resulting in the hearer. To ensure that the hearer receives the intended proposition, the speaker need only choose his or her words in such a way that the mental representation that results in the hearer will bear the intended proposition in light of the external context. Since the external context for the speaker will normally be the same as the external context for the hearer, the speaker's choice of words need not normally be guided by those features of the proposition to be conveyed that are determined only by the external context, and those features need not be reflected among the underlying mental representations in the speaker. Coincidence of external context will not always ensure understanding in this way, even when words are rightly chosen, but misunderstandings do occur, and a theory of communication need not entail that there is always a way to avoid them.

8. The straight solutions

Finally we are in a position to confront the question: what is the domain of discourse governing Tommy's utterance? There are four answers worth considering. First, there is the straight defense of Tommy. This says that the domain of discourse is the class of marbles Tommy had in mind, namely, the marbles in his own room. So Tommy's utterance expresses the proposition that all of the red marbles in his own room are his, which is true.. Second, there is the straight defense of Suzy. This says that the domain of discourse governing Tommy's utterance is the marbles there on the floor in front of them. So Tommy's utterance expresses the proposition that all of the red marbles there on the floor in front of them are his, which




is false. In addition, there are two neutral solutions: first, to maintain that in the conversation between Tommy and Suzy there are really two domains of discourse, and, second, to deny that there is any domain of discourse at all.

The straight defense of Tommy has considerable plausibility. From the expressivist's point of view, words function as a vehicle for the sharing of thought. The shared understanding of the semantic properties of words is what makes them suitable for this purpose. When semantics and external context alone determine an interpretation for an utterance, there may be a sense in which that is what the utterance means, whether or not that is what the speaker intended to convey (as in the case of Julie in ?5). But as we have seen (in ?4), the semantics of the words used, even when com- bined with the external context of utterance, will not always determine a proposition. It is very plausible that where semantics and external context do not combine to determine a definite proposition, the proposition expressed is the proposition that we get when we add to the mix certain features of the speaker's intention. In particular, when we need to identify a domain of discourse in order to assign a proposition to an utterance, it is plausible that we should take the domain of discourse to be that domain relative to which the speaker intends his or her hearers to interpret the utterance. In the case of Tommy, this will mean that the domain is the class of marbles in his room.

By contrast, the straight defense of Suzy has little plausibility from the expressivist standpoint. Certainly we can defend Suzy's interpretation of Tommy's utterance in the sense that we can show that she is justified in interpreting his utterance as she does. Suzy is not a mind reader, so Tommy should have chosen his words in such a way that Suzy, judging by external context, would interpret his utterance as he intended it to be interpreted. So, ifjudging by external context in the normal way (whatever that is) Suzy arrives at some other interpretation, it is Tommy's fault, not Suzy's. Presumably the normal way is such that in the present case, interpreting in the normal way means that Suzy will take the domain to be the marbles in plain view to both of them. So Suzy really is justified in taking the domain of discourse for Tommy's utterance to be the domain consisting of the marbles on the floor in front of them. But it does not follow that that really is the domain of discourse on the basis of which Tommy's utterance ought to be evaluated by us outside observers who, by hypothesis, know what Tommy is thinking. To think so would be to confuse truth with justification.

I do not wish to maintain that in fact the straight defense of Suzy is mistaken, but from the expressivist's point of view it must be mistaken because it misunderstands the point of linguistic communication. The




hearer may need to think about the external context in order to infer what proposition the speaker intends to convey, or, as I explained in the previous section, the hearer may understand the speaker without doing this at all, for the external content may determine that the hearer's thought has those same features even if the hearer does not explicitly think about them. For this reason the speaker needs to speak in a manner suited to the hearer's point of view on the external context. But the hearer's point of view cannot be constitutive because the hearer's objective ought to be to identify the proposition that the speaker intends the hearer to recognize as the proposition toward which the speaker intends the hearer to take a certain attitude on the basis of his or her choice of words and the context.

Yet the straight defense of Tommy is not entirely persuasive either. This is where I bring to bear the earlier discussion of approaches to mental representation (?6) and the concession to contextualism (?7). The straight defense of Tommy stems from the idea that to the extent that the semantic rules pertaining to a speaker's utterance do not determine a proposition expressed, we should fill in the gaps by appealing to features of the speaker's intention in speaking. But, for the expressivist, the content of the speaker's intention is the proposition borne by an underlying mental representation, and, in light of the concession to contextualism, we see that the proposition borne by that mental representation depends on the external context (external to the mind of the speaker). So while the proposition expressed by an utterance does depend on external context in a way that is not explicable in terms of semantic rules, this dependence is only indirect. What directly depends on the external context is the proposition borne by the underlying mental representation. In particular, the external context bears on the domain of discourse governing Tommy's utterance only indirectly, in as much as it bears on the domain of discourse pertinent to the proposition borne by the underlying mental representation.

The critical question we must put to the expressivist in this case is: why does the relevance of the external context to the proposition expressed by an utterance always have to go through the relevance of the external context to the proposition borne by an underlying mental representation in this way? More precisely, why does the relevance of external context to those features of the proposition expressed by an utterance that are not explicable in terms of semantic rules always have to reduce to the relevance of the external context to the proposition borne by the underlying mental representation? Why cannot t-he external context have a bearing on the proposition expressed by an utterance directly, quite apart from the proposition borne by an underlying mental representation, even when there is no semantic rule according to which the external context is rele-




vant? If the external context were directly relevant in this way, then, in light of the external context in which Tommy spoke, we might have to conclude that the proposition his utterance expressed was the false proposition that all of the red marbles there on the floor in front of him were his.

In a complete theory, the contextualist would have to explain exactly how the interpretation function valid for a given thinker is sensitive to the external context. Perhaps such a theory would explain how mentalfrepre- sentation and external context combine to determine a propositional content in view of the cognitive role that such a mental representation would play in an agent embedded in such a context. Or perhaps it would explain how mental representation and external context determine a proposition in light of the way an agent possessing such a mental representation in such a context ought to be regarded by other members of the community. But overt utterances too have a cognitive role. Overt utterances too are regarded in certain ways by other members of the community. So perhaps it will turn out that utterance and external context equally determine a proposition quite independently of the content of the intention with which the speaker speaks. (But I am still assuming, as I explained in ?4, that domains are not fully determined by semantic rules.) Until we have a definite account that shows this not to be the case, we ought to be somewhat doubtful about the straight defense of Tommy in the framework of expressivism.

This doubt can be amplified by means of the so-called doubt about the speaker's words raised at the end of the previous section. There we saw that in the contextualist framework, the efficacy of a speaker's words in conveying a thought can sometimes be understood only in light of the fact that a speaker and hearer share an environment. Contextualism pertains to the interpretation function valid for the hearer as well as to the interpretation function valid for the speaker; so we cannot require any more explic- itness in the hearer's representation of the proposition expressed by the speaker than we can require in the speaker's representation that bears that proposition. None the less, by virtue of sharing an environment a hearer may qualify as grasping the proposition that the speaker intended to convey although the hearer does not explicitly represent that proposition, for the mental representation resulting in the hearer may bear that same proposition in virtue of the external context. Often even the hearer's mere recognition of the speaker's words may qualify as his or her grasping the proposition that the speaker intended to convey without the hearer's having to interpret them any further in light of the context. A fortiori the hearer's interpretation of the speaker's utterance will often qualify as his or her grasping the proposition that the speaker's utterance expressed




without the hearer's having to represent the content of the speaker's intention. But according to the straight defense of Tommy, Suzy's interpretation of Tommy's utterance does not have this privilege. It does not qualify as a grasp of the proposition his utterance expressed. Why not? In view of the fact that a hearer's interpretation of a speaker's utterance may qualify as a grasp of the proposition that the speaker's utterance expressed even when the hearer does not explicitly represent the proposition that the speaker intended to convey, it seems ad hoc to insist that whenever there is a mismatch between the hearer's interpretation and the proposition the speaker intended to convey, the hearer's interpretation is false.

At this point it might be recalled that the argument for contextualism took for granted that our interpretation of the goatherd ought to be charitable. This observation might inspire the idea that a straight defense of Tommy might be based on a principle of charity in interpretation. The charitable interpretation would interpret Tommy's utterance as expressing the true proposition that all of the red marbles in his own room are his rather than the false proposition that all of the red marbles there on the floor in front of them are his. The problem is that it is only an accidental feature of this particular case that charity and the straight defense of the speaker coincide in this way. Other cases could be described in which the more charitable interpretation would not take the domain of discourse pertinent to the speaker's utterance to be that which the speaker had in mind. We might be persuaded on grounds of charity that a certain interpretation of the goatherd is implausible without concluding that the more charitable interpretation is always correct. I have chosen to examine the case of Tommy, in which what the speaker has in mind happens to be true, because such a case serves my purposes in connection with the neutral solutions in the next section.

9. The neutral solutions

One way of being neutral would be to maintain that there is actually never one uniquely correct domain of discourse relative to which we ought to evaluate an utterance, that there is really no such thing as truth simpliciter for utterances, but only truth relative to this or that domain of discourse. So there is never just one correct interpretation of an utterance, but always many, one for each possible domain of discourse.

This general relativization of truth to domains might seem plausible since in general the truth of a sentence is relative to various parameters such as possible world and time of utterance. For instance, the sentence "I am hungry" may be true relative to now but false relative to after dinner.




But the comparison is mistaken. The present suggestion is not that the truth of sentences is relative to a domain of discourse. That much has been clear all along. It is that there is no such thing as truth simpliciter for particular utterances but only truth relative to a domain of discourse. One cannot likewise maintain that there is no such thing as truth simpliciter for utterances but only truth relative to a time. An utterance of a sentence will be true simpliciter if the sentence uttered is true at the time of utterance.

Moreover, most domains we might consider will be of no interest whatsoever. The domains of interest will be the speaker's domain, the hearer's domain and what we might call the cooperative domain. The speaker's domain will be the domain pertinent to the proposition the speaker intended to convey, the hearer's domain will be the domain pertinent to the proposition that the hearer took it that the speaker intended to convey, and the cooperative domain will be the domain pertinent to the proposition that a speaker could reasonably expect a hearer reasonably to expect the speaker to intend to convey in light of the semantics of the speaker's words and the external context. When communication proceeds smoothly, there will be a perfect coincidence of the speaker's domain, the hearer's domain and the cooperative domain. Since any other domain will be just irrelevant in such a case, we might as well say that in such a case truth relative to that domain is truth simpliciter for the speaker's utterance.

So let us abandon the idea that the truth of an utterance is always relative to a domain. We might still want to maintain that there is no unique domain of discourse in cases of miscommunication like that of Tommy and Suzy. In such cases, we might say, either there are two domains of discourse or there are none. Imagine two people talking to different people in separate rooms. In such a case, there may certainly be two different domains of discourse. The case of Tommy and Suzy, it might be said, is like that. They may think there is only one domain of discourse, but actually, since they are not communicating, there are two. Tommy's utterance expresses a true proposition relative to the domain Tommy has in mind and a false one relative to the domain Suzy has in mind. Alternatively, we might reserve the term domain of discourse for cases of successful communication. Tommy takes the domain of discourse to be one thing, and Suzy takes it to be something else, but they are both wrong. Since there is no coincidence in what they take the domain to be, there is actually no domain of discourse. Accordingly, Tommy's utterance does not express any proposition at all.

The neutral solutions might seem especially plausible if we consider how the conversation between Tommy and Suzy might proceed from where we left off. At first Tommy and Suzy might argue back and forth as if there were some genuine issue of fact. After Suzy says "No, they're




not!", Tommy, still thinking of his own marbles, may insist "Yes they are, Mom gave them to me". Suzy may reply "Dad got me those marbles and Mom doesn't even know I have them". And so on. After carrying on in this way for a while, it may become apparent to them that they are getting nowhere, and each may realize that the other is displaying uncharacteris- tic obstinacy. At this point, it might occur to them that the problem between them lies not in the facts but in their language. Pointing to the marbles on the floor, Tommy might say "I'm not talking about those marbles; I'm talking about the marbles in my room", or Suzy might ask "Which marbles are you talking about?".

What this makes plain is that the disagreement between Tommy and Suzy is merely verbal and not factual. It is resolved not by uncovering facts about the marbles but by examining one another's words. In general, we might conclude, where a conflict in assertions proves to be merely verbal and not factual, there is no need to find some one domain of discourse with respect to which both assertions may be interpreted. If we want to say that there are two different domains of discourse, the one Tommy has in mind and the one Suzy has in mind, then we can say that there is no factual conflict between them because they are both right in their own way. If we want to say that there is no domain of discourse, then we can say that there is no factual conflict between them because their assertions are not interpretable as expressing propositions at all.

It is important to bear in mind that our aim in theorizing about the determinants of domains of discourse is not merely to explain linguistic behavior. In order to explain linguistic behavior perhaps we never need to know what the domain of discourse governing a conversation really is but only what each interlocutor takes it to be. So the reason to adopt a neutral solution cannot be just that we do not need to pick out a unique domain of discourse to understand why Tommy and Suzy argue as they do. The suggested rationale for the neutral solutions is rather that there is no factual issue between them but only a verbal issue.

However, we cannot readily infer a neutral solution from the merely verbal character of their conflict, because it is doubtful whether the neutral solutions are compatible with an understanding of the verbal process by which Tommy and Suzy resolve their conflict in assertions. The discourse between Tommy and Suzy is productive at least in that it leads to a resolution of their initial conflict. In general, we might expect discourse that is productive in leading to conflict resolution to be interpretable in the sense that definite propositions are expressed by means of the constituent utterances, which is not to say that those propositions need be true. So even if Tommy's initial utterance fails to express a unique proposition, that failure ought not to undermine the capacity of Tommy and Suzy's




subsequent utterances in response to it to express propositions. But as I will now explain, it seems to do just that.

Tommy and Suzy's evaluations of one another's utterances play a role in the process by which they discover that their disagreement is merely verbal, that is, that it is the sort of disagreement that should be resolved by attending to meanings. It is not that each seeks from the start to explain the other's verbal behavior and discovers that the best explanation is one that posits no disagreement in facts but only a difference in what they take the domain of discourse to be. Rather, each assumes that he or she under- stands what the other is saying and concludes that the other's utterance is inexplicably false. At this point, each has cause to inquire into the other's state of mind, whereupon they discover that the disagreement between them is merely verbal and not factual.

Suppose, for concreteness, that Suzy explicitly accuses Tommy of falsehood by declaring "What you said is false!". How are we to understand this utterance? We could simply interpret it as meaning whatever proposition Suzy had in mind in speaking. But if that is our tactic here, then by the same token we should not have allowed ourselves to be driven to the neutral interpretations of Tommy's utterance in the first place and should return to the straight defense of Tommy by interpreting his utterance as meaning what Tommy had in mind. Since our topic is now the neutral interpretations of Tommy's utterance, we must, for consistency, seek an interpretation of Suzy's utterance that is impartial between the point of view of Suzy and the point of view of Tommy (which does not all by itself imply that our interpretation cannot coincide with what Suzy had in mind). If in interpreting Tommy's utterance we suppose that there are really two domains, such that relative to the one Tommy's utterance expresses a true proposition and relative to the other it expresses a false proposition, then likewise we might say that relative to the first domain Suzy's declaration expresses a false proposition and relative to the second a true one. Or if the dualism of domains does not carry over to Suzy's utterances, we might say that her phrase "what you said" simply fails to refer. If in interpreting Tommy's utterance we suppose that there is no domain and that Tommy's utterance does not express any proposition at all, then again we must suppose that Suzy's phrase fails to refer. On any of these approaches, it turns out that there is no unique proposition that her words express. For this reason, if there is no unique domain of discourse governing Tommy's utterance, then I do not think we can say we understand the utterance Suzy makes in response to him or, more generally, the process by which they resolve their disagreement.

Perhaps we can interpret Suzy as merely asserting that Tommy's utterance is false simpliciter. If she is referring only to his utterance, there is




no risk of failure to refer. If she is saying only that it is false simpliciter, there need be no question about the domain relative to which her attribu- tion of falsehood ought to be interpreted. Thus we might interpret her as rejecting Tommy's utterance but not referring to any unique proposition. The problem with this interpretation, from the point of view of the expressivist, is that in this case Suzy is interpreted as committing a category error. She is interpreted as claiming that Tommy's utterance is false as such and not only in as much as it is interpreted as expressing some proposition or other. Thus this interpretation too fails to render Suzy's utterance understandable by the lights of the expressivist.

Rather than attempt to deny that there is a unique domain of discourse governing Tommy's utterance, we might conclude that while, yes, the issue between them is merely verbal, and when they discover that it is they will no longer concern themselves with the truth value of Tommy's utterance, still his utterance has a truth value and that shows up in the fact that they productively accuse one another of uttering falsehoods. Certainly the issue over the truth simpliciter of Tommy's utterance need not remain a contentious one for Tommy and Suzy once they discover that their conflict had been merely verbal and not factual. But we as theorists might still need to resolve it in order to understand the possibility of productive discourse in the first place.

My concern is not that we cannot explain in any way the course of events that results in Tommy and Suzy's ceasing to argue. No doubt we would be able to explain it, and would even be able to explain it in terms of each party's thoughts and intentions. What we cannot do if we adopt a neutral solution is explain it as a process in which a sequence of utterances each expresses a unique proposition. Nor am I suggesting that we ought always to be able to do this. Certainly there are cases in which people come into a discussion with such very different presuppositions and talk so completely past one another that we must fail to find some one context on the basis of which we ought to interpret their utterances. The concern is, rather, that since Tommy and Suzy's discourse subsequent to Tommy's initial utterance is productive, perhaps the utterances that make up their discourse ought to be interpretable as expressing propositions. Theirs is not a case of total incommensurability. There is a method for setting their communication back on track, namely, to accuse one another of falsehoods and then talk about their conversation itself. Accordingly their discourse invites interpretation. But interpretation is precluded on the neutral solutions. So I think we ought to be doubtful about the neutral solutions.




J0. Conclusion

This paper has been a search for a reasonable account of the determinants of domains of discourse within the context of the expressive theory of communication. After explaining my terms and disposing of some specious solutions, I argued, using the example of the goatherd, that the most reasonable form of expressivism would allow that the very content of mental representations depends on the external context in which they occur. In the context of this contextualist variety of expressivism, however, the supposition that the domain of discourse is just what the speaker has in mind in speaking requires a somewhat too delicate account of the relevance of external context to the interpretation of a speaker's utterance. On the other hand, defining the domain of-discourse from the hearer's point of view is incompatible with the basic expressivist conception of communication. As for the suggestion that in cases of miscommunication there is simply no unique domain of discourse, this made it difficult to understand the verbal process by which interlocutors resolve their con- flicts in assertions. I conclude that the fault lies with the expressive theory of communication."

Department of Philosophy CHRISTOPHER GAUKER University of Cincinnati Cincinnati, OH 45221-0374 USA christophergauker@uc. edu

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