professor sellars on meaning and aboutness

Professor Sellars on Meaning and AboutnessAuthor(s): Sid ThomasSource: Philosophical Studies: An International Journal for Philosophy in the AnalyticTradition, Vol. 13, No. 5 (Oct., 1962), pp. 68-74Published by: SpringerStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4318420 .

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68 PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES

know what is being shown. In any case it sounds like an opening for the for- bidden metaphysical reasoning. Having become aware of this Mr. Hanson rushes up to patch the original dictum. "Insofar as Hume's dictum is construed as ruling out inferences from what is epistemically necessary to what is contingent, it may require revision" (p. 93). A method of persistent revision will always keep Mr. Hanson from being wrong long. But what assur- ance has he that if he keeps on revising he will not end with a denial of what he started with? Every revision is a negation of a part. Eventually revi- sions can add up to one long negation sign.

21. Mr. Hanson illustrates "metaphysics" by a set of assertions in physics or the philosophy of nature: "there are no perpetual motion machines," "nothing travels faster than light" (p. 93). What kind of proof could such irrelevant illustrations provide? It would have been interesting to have seen what he could have done with propositions which all metaphysicians, I suppose, would assume to be metaphysical (though some would claim they were false and others that they were true). "Non-being altogether is not." "Being altogether is not." "Becoming altogether is not." "There are four modes of being." "Time has neither beginning nor end." "The good cannot be fully realized by men." "There are substances." "Motion presupposes potentiality and potentiality presupposes substance."

22. Mr. Hanson supposes that his inductive argument can end in the ne- cessity of non-metaphysics (p. 96). But is this not exactly what he set out to prove could not possibly be done-move from what is contingent to what is necessary? We are back full circle (see above, no. 1 ) .

Excuse me-I think I'll leave now to engage in some speculations in metaphysics.

Received January 20, 1961

NOTE :'Philosophical Studies, 11: 86-96 (December 1960).

Professor Sellars on Meaning and A boutness

by SID THOMAS

UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN

IN THIS paper I wish to examine the kind of "aboutness" or "intentionality"' possessed by facts which are expressed by the following sort of sentences:



MEANING AND ABOUTNESS 69

(1) Karl (Karl's body) tends to utter 'es regnet,' where 'es regnet' means it is raining.

Professor Wilfred Sellars has held1 that (1) is the crucial part of a longer sentence which as a whole is logically (i.e., conceptually) equivalent to:

(2) Karl (Karl's mind) believes (has the thought that) it is raining. (P. 61.)

He also holds that (the sentence containing) (1) is "causally," though not logically (i.e., conceptually), reducible to an explicitly non-mentalistic statement about Karl's bodily state. A description of the bodily state in question would mention certain habits of Karl's body that relate its utterances of 'es regnet' to other utterances, to other habits, and to sensory stimuli. (P. 62.) Thus, on the left-hand side of the equivalence

(3) Karl's mind believes it is raining = Karl's body is in state 4

(where state p is described in explicitly non-mentalistic terms), Sellars pro- poses to substitute the longer sentence of which (1) is the crucial part. The logical equivalence of (1) and (2) denies epiphenomenalism, while their material equivalence to the right-hand side of (3) both asserts what is essential to scientific behaviorism and denies a conceptual reduction of the mental to the physical. The possibility of this last denial is based upon the view that "intentionality" or "aboutness" is the defining feature of mental facts.2 The plausibility of his position thus clearly depends upon whether the facts expressed by (1) and (2) possess the same sort of "intentionality" or "aboutness." For, as has been said, (1) is the crucial part of the longer sentence containing it, which means to say that it is that part of the longer sentence which is alleged to preserve those features that are essential to a mental fact. I wish to argue that the facts expressed by (1) and (2) do not possess the same sort of "intentionality" or "aboutness." To accomplish this, it will be necessary to begin by saying something about (2).

It is difficult to know exactly what is meant by saying that the fact expressed by (2) has the features mentioned. It is surely significant that English sentences which would be identified as "psychological" by virtue of their "content" (i.e., by virtue of containing mentalistic terms such as "believes," "thinks that," "looks for") coincide with sentences containing either sub- sentences or sentence fragments, such that the truth of the longer sentence does not guarantee either the truth of the sub-sentence or the existence of what is referred to by the sentence fragment. But surely it is the nature of the facts expressed by psychological sentences which determines this coinci- dence, not vice versa. Hence, in order to "get behind" the form of psychological sentences to that which determines this form, it seems desirable to attempt to speak more directly about the facts they express.3 Specifically, my




suggestion is that the fact expressed by (2) has "intentionality" or "aboutness" in at least the minimal sense that (a) it could not be adequately expressed without mentioning the weather in a certain way; (b) in mentioning the weather in this way, something is said about Karl, and no one else. But I am not sure what this special way of mentioning the weather is, or what connection between Karl and the weather is asserted by (2). Fortunately, my argument does not require precision on these points. Notice that (a) does not say that an adequate expression will mention the fact of its raining; but an adequate expression will surely mention rain. I wish to add, also, that I do not construe (b) in such a way that it commits me to the view that "Karl" is the name of an enduring substance.

In what sense does the fact expressed by (1) have "intentionality" or "aboutness"? Before considering this question directly, some points of clarifi- cation need to be made.

Professor Sellars sometimes uses what are apparently intended to be alternative formulations of (1), hence, alternative formulations of sentences that are conceptually equivalent to (2). He uses:

(1.1) (body) b's utterance of 'es regnet' means it is raining. (P. 62.) (1.2) 'Es regnet,' uttered by b, means it is raining. (Pp. 62, 63.)

In an earlier statement, we find: (1.3) b tends to make utterances meaning it is raining.4

These four formulations, however, compress together two quite different kinds of assertions. These two kinds are made explicit by:

(1.4) Karl tends to utter 'es regnet' and Karl's utterance of 'es regnet' means it is raining. (Compare 1.2.)

(1.5) Karl tends to utter 'es regnet' and 'es regnet' means it is raining. (Compare 1.)

Formulation (1.3) is clearly ambiguous as regards these two assertions. For- mulation (1.2), which he seems to prefer in his later statements, is ambiguous as regards the second conjunct of (1.4) and (1.5).

I shall argue that even though what is expressed by (1.4) is a fact concern- ing Karl's body, it does not have "intentionality" or "aboutness" in any radical sense; while what is expressed by (1.5), if it is the same as what is expressed by (2), is intentional and has aboutness in a radical sense, but is not just a fact about Karl's body.

The quotation marks are not essential to what is expressed by the first conjuncts of (1.4) and (1.5). In fact, they are misleading; for when used as they are in these statements, they have the special phonetic function of referring to the sound that would occur if the words 'es regnet' were pronounced. Tak- ing the quotes in this way, both of the first conjuncts can be construed as




referring to a purely bodily tendency. But it should be clear that we would not be merely giving a description of Karl's present bodily state if we said it included a tendency to utter the sentence 'es regnet.' For a sound is a sentence only if it is used, either by the utterer or by some other people, to make assertions (or to ask questions, or give a command, etc.). A description of just what Karl tends to utter would not mention that such sounds are used to make assertions (or to ask questions, etc.). To put the matter differently, "X uttered DAS IST ROT" states a fact exactly on par with "The cannon went BA-ROOM. "BA-ROOM" tells how the cannon sounded; "DAS IST ROT" tells how X uttered. Just as it would be going beyond a description of how the cannon sounded to say "The cannon boomed the sentence 'Das ist rot,'" so it would be going beyond a description of how X uttered to say that he uttered the sentence 'Das ist rot.' Hence it would be going beyond a description of how Karl tends to utter to say that he tends to utter such and such a sentence. In the following, I shall use the device of writing words in small capital letters to indicate that the sound of pronouncing them is being referred to. Single quotes will be retained for referring to the type of inscription (or its phonetic equivalent) occurring within them, when it is under- stood that tokens of that type of inscription (or its phonetic equivalent) are used to make assertions. Thus our sentences will become:

(1.41) Karl tends to utter ES REGNET and Karl's utterance of ES REGNET

means it is raining. (1.51) Karl tends to utter ES REGNET and 'es regnet' means it is raining.

We need now only consider the second conjunct of each sentence. It should be clear that the removal of the single quotes from the second

conjunct of (1.4) opens the way for saying that the fact expressed does not have "aboutness" or "intentionality" in any sense except the relatively trivial one that the grammatical elements of (1.4) could not be correlated one to one with the elements of an "extensional" syntax. What sense does it make to say that Karl's behavior is (or would be) about the rains falling? Con- sider the analogous sentence "The guns going BA-ROOM means the war has started." Is the guns' booming about the start of the war? A pragmatist, I suppose, might give some meaning to the word "about" in this context, and claim that it stands for an unanalyzable notion. He might say: Certainly, facts may be about other facts. It happens all the time. That object's being a window is about the fresh air you get if you open it. Its being characteriz- able as a window suggests (means, signifies, indicates, implies) many things, and it is not misleading to say it is about them.

So far as I can tell such a reply would rest upon the mistake of failing to distinguish the psychological act of characterizing something as 'a so-and-so'




from the assertion of certain formal or material implications about a so-and- so. In any case, it obviously gives us no way of distinguishing the aboutness of mental facts from a general type of 'aboutness' applicable to physical facts. Thus I conclude that the second conjunct of (1.4) reduces to

If Karl utters ES REGNET, it is raining.

Putting this together with the equivalence (3), we get When Karl's body is in state p, it is raining.

If belief sentences are logically equivalent to (1.41) we have hopes of a new way of predicting the weather.

Turning to (1.51), the question arises: what is the function of " 'es regnet'" in the sentence " 'Es regnet' means it is raining"? We are plainly not referring to a type of sound, so that when we hear a sound of that type we can predict the weather. But if this is not the case. then how is the expression "'es regnet' " related to the sentence "Karl tends to utter ES REGNET"? The "intentionality" or "aboutness" expressed by the use of these semantical quotes is what we must explore. My argument is this: if the type of aboutness expressed by (1.51) is the same as that expressed by (2), then (1.51) does not express a fact about Karl's body. I shall attempt to show this by making four related comments.

(a) Chisholm writes what must be true, if we could only understand exactly what it is that is involved. He says: "For we know . . . 'that meaning does not inhere in a sentence where it might be discovered'; meaning 'must be bestowed upon' the sentence . . . A word or sentence designates so-and-so only if people use it to designate so-and-so." 5 This amounts to saying that " 'Es regnet' means it is raining" is really elliptical. But for what? Chisholm seems to suggest it is elliptical for "X (our Karl) uses 'es regnet' to mean it is raining." Let us accept this answer. What can we say about this new sentence?

(b) It will be granted, I believe, that the schema . . . uses - - - to mean * * * expresses a "triadic" mental concept exactly on par with . . . be-

lieves * * *., except that in order to complete a sentence containing it, one must mention a person, the name of a sentence-type, and something else which is not a sentence-type (we cannot say a "fact"). To complete a "believes" sentence, one must mention only a person and something else which is not a sentence-type (again, we cannot say a "fact"). The facts expressed by filling in each schema will have the same kind of "aboutness" in the minimal sense given above. That is, the sentence or sentence fragment which will replace the asterisks will mention something, in connection with the person mentioned when the dots are filled in, and in the same special way. The connection between Karl, the sounds or inscriptions he uses, and what they




are used to mean, seems as strong and "intimate" as the connection between Karl and what he believes. Although I am not fully confident as to the nature of this "intimacy," I believe that (1.51) surely does not preserve it.

(c) When we say "Karl tends to utter ES REGNET, and 'es regnet' means it is raining," we still have not yet said that Karl uses tokens of "ES REGNET"

to make assertions about the weather. The truth of ( 1.51 ) is compatible with saying that Karl uses some other sounds for this purpose.

The sentence 'It is raining,' uttered by me, conveys information about my- self, to someone who understands what I have said, and knows that I have made an assertion. It conveys the information that I use the sounds "it is raining" to make meteorological assertions. But while it may be true that, when I use "it is raining" to make a meteorological assertion, my body is in a certain unique kind of state (this I have not questioned), it is by no means the case that the assertion I make is given by a description of that state. There is nothing about the state that is meteorological, except, possibly, in the sense in which there is something "rainy" about a low barometer. The same, of course, holds for Karl. This is perfectly obvious, and seems to be granted by Sellars. For he says that an extensional ("PM") sentence de- scribing a bodily state is only materially, not logically, equivalent to a sentence asserting that a body is in a state which means something. This, however, does not affect the fact that he holds that a statement mentioning a bodily state is logically equivalent to (2). But the fact that we must mention the weather in order to describe what Karl is asserting seems to me to prove conclusively that, when we talk about what Karl's utterances mean, for Karl, we are not talking about his body at all. For no present or future examination of his body will yield anything "rainy."

(d) To say that we are talking about Karl, when we assert that he is in a certain bodily state, but that we suddenly begin to convey information about ourselves, when we say what that state means, is simply a dodge. This, however, seems to be what Sellars holds. If I understand him, he claims that when we say what a bodily state of Karl's means, we are conveying information about ourselves, namely (for example), the information that our bodily habits with respect to utterances of 'it is raining' are generally the same as Karl's habits with respect to utterances of 'es regnet.' (Pp. 69, 70.) But if we could divide the sentence (1.51) in this way, i.e., into a part which says something about Karl, and a part which conveys something about ourselves, then the sentence as a whole would not be equivalent to (2). For in order to express what Karl believes, we must mention the weather; but (1.51), so divided, will neither mention nor convey anything about the weather at all, except in so far as a description of how we acquired our linguistic habits is "conveyed." This, however, "externalizes" the connection between Karl and




rain in a way that (2) does not. We therefore have the following dilemma, with respect to (1.51): either the sentence as a whole expresses a fact about Karl, in which case it does not express a fact about his body, since it men- tions the weather; or else the first conjunct expresses a fact about Karl's body, and the second conjunct "conveys" information about ourselves, in which case the sentence as a whole is not conceptually equivalent to (2).

Received September 14, 1960

NOTES 1 Professor Sellars' views on the mind-body problem which are dealt with here were first

presented, as far as I know, in a paper read before the American Philosophical Society at Ann Arbor, Michigan, May 1952. The title of that paper was "Intentionality and the Mind-Body Problem." A slightly altered version of it was published in Philosophical Studies, 3:83-94 (1952), under the title "Mind, Meaning, and Behavior." A still later version, expanded and revised, appeared in Methodos, 5:48-82 (1953), and was titled "A Semantical Solution to the Mind-Body Problem." Parenthetical numbers in the present paper refer to the pages of the Methodos article.

2 Sellars indicates agreement with the "classical thesis" that "the distinguishing feature of mental facts is intentionality or aboutness." (P. 46.) Later on, (p. 68) he suggests that the single term "about" can be taken as expressing the one fundamental mental concept, so that to say of an event that it is mental is just to say that it has aboutness. This leaves the way open for him to say that it is bodily events that are mental, when they have aboutness; for " . . . to say of an event that it is 'about * * *' is not to describe its nature." (P. 72.) Now a distinguishing feature of something is not necessarily a defining feature of that thing. So Sellars actually goes a step beyond the classical thesis, as he states it, for he holds that the mental is not merely distinguished, but defined in terms of 'that which has aboutness.' Notice also that his way of stating the classical thesis rules out the possibility that there are other distinguishing (or defining) features of mental facts, such as the presence in them of some special mental character. In this, too, he may have gone beyond the classical thesis as held, for example, by Brentano and Meinong; but I am not sure.

3 In my opinion, in order to make sure we do not take mental facts for something they are not, we should, at the outset, attempt to go beyond the notions of "form" that relate to sentences of either colloquial or artificial languages. If not, we may be too quick to link together such disparate things as mental facts and non-Humean analyses of causation. Sellars does not link these two things together, but he does seem to suggest that "means" and the modal operators share a generic feature which is indicated by saying that they are non-PM expressions. (Cf. pp. 52-54.) Thus "means"' is apparently assimilated to the syntactical or logical apparatus. Now is "means" capable of carrying the burden of the mental simply because it is a non-PM expression? or because it is a special kind of non-PM expression? If the former, then a philosopher like Sellars (p. 53) who admitted undefined modal operators would be bound to say that sentences containing them expressed mental facts, a view that is surely problematical. But if the latter, then it would seem that a symbol interpreted to read "means" could not be introduced in a purely formal way, i.e., inde- pendently of its interpretation. This raises doubt as to whether "means" is a purely logical notion. "Intentional" mental facts may require "intensional" operators for their adequate expression; but the homonymous similarity may mislead one to neglect what may be really a unique feature of these facts.

'Roderick Chisholm, Perceiving (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1957), pp. 174-75. He quotes M. Schlick. The italics are the author's.

5 Ibid.



professor sellars on meaning and aboutness

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