Some Reflections on Language Games by Wilfrid SellarsReview by: Noam ChomskyThe Journal of Symbolic Logic, Vol. 22, No. 4 (Dec., 1957), pp. 402-403Published by: Association for Symbolic LogicStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2963994 .

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402 REVIEWS

discourse that remains prior to any formalism, and then it is not clear in what sense a formal system (Curry's or any other) can be a "formal representation" of tran- scendental logic. Moreover, such a system has its axioms and rules, hence would require, like any other, an extra-formal justification. JOHN VAN HEIJENOORT

WILFRID SELLARS. Is there a synthetic a priori? Philosophy of science, vol. 20 (1953), pp. 121-138.

The central thesis of this paper is that the conceptual meaning of descriptive predi- cates in ordinary language is constituted by syntactical rules including material rules of inference (which permit the unconditional assertion of propositions of the form "all A is B," where A and B do not occur vacuously) as well as logical ones. If by an "analytic proposition" we mean one which becomes a substitution instance of a logical truth when terms are replaced by their definientia, and by an "a priori proposition," one which is true by virtue of the meaning of its terms, it follows that there are synthetic a priori propositions in any such language. But since any such "conceptual frame" is just one among many competing ones, there is no synthetic a priori knowledge in the sense of synthetic knowledge to which there is no significant alternative.

The crucial element in this argument is that in natural languages there are embedded rules permitting the substitution of one expression for another (explicit definitions) and rules permitting the unconditional assertion of primitive sentences containing descriptive terms essentially (implicit definitions). This gives a three-way distinction between (1) analytic, (2) synthetic unconditionally assertable, and (3) universally true, but not unconditionally assertable propositions. (2) are the synthetic a priori propositions. The difficulty of distinguishing (1) from (2) and (3) in natural languages has repeatedly been pointed out. The basis for distinguishing (1) and (2) (the a priori's) from (3) seems even more obscure.

Underlying the whole approach is the explicit assumption that familiar artificial languages provide an interesting and revealing model for natural language. Sellars maintains that the fact that rules have not been clearly enunciated does not indicate that they are not embedded in ordinary usage. Surely no one would deny that ordinary language has highly systematic features that can presumably be exhibited through empirical study, but this is a rather weak support for the elaborate analogy drawn between natural and artificial languages. The assertion that certain artificial languages provide an illuminating model for natural language requires the same sort of justifi- cation, in terms of explanatory or predictive power, as do models proposed in any empirical science. Short of this, there seems to be little reason to believe that natural language can be said in any interesting sense to contain primitive predicates and propositions, unique chains of definitions, etc. In the absence of any such justification, the difficulty of determining how to assign such sentences as "Every novelist is a writer," " . . . is human," " . . . is a living organism," " . . . is alive in the post-pleistocene period," etc. to such categories as (1), (2), and (3), strongly suggests that such categories may not be at all appropriate to the description of natural language.

NOAM CHOMSKY

WILFRID SELLARS. Some reflections on language games. Philosophy of science, vol. 21 (1954), PP. 204-228.

This paper develops an analogy between language and such games as chess. A "position" in a language game is a thought, judgment, or assertion that so-and-so. Inference is a move from one position to another. A language game, as distinct from chess, contains three types of transition: moves (inference), language entry transitions (from observations to observation sentences), and language departure transitions (e.g., from normatives to actions). In each case, the transition is held to be from stimulus to response. A language also contains "auxiliary positions," namely, assertions

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REVIEWS 403

such as "All A is B" adopted to permit the move from "This is A" to "This is B.' These are signalized by the word "necessarily." They may clearly be dropped at the cost of multiplying moves. Inferences and auxiliary positions may be "formal" (logical truths) or "material" (those that account for our backing up an assertion that something is of kind B by giving as a reason that it is of kind A). The conceptual meaning of an expression is constituted by its role in a network of material and formal moves.

A distinction is drawn between "pattern governed" behavior such as language, which obviously does not require knowledge of the rules or even awareness of their existence, and "'rule obeying" behavior, which does. The analogy is extended to include meta-languages.

The simple S-R model seems somewhat overworked in this analogy. Surely only a minute fraction of the "positions that one occupies" can be considered responses to external non-linguistic stimuli or stimuli for actions. Nor does the actual process of inference (or, for that matter, chess moves) seem to be in any sense a simple matter of stimulus and response. More troublesome still is the category of auxiliary positions (equivalently, permitted moves). This would include, for a given person, not only what he considers to be laws of nature, but even, it would seem, any assertion that he believes true, since any such assertion can support an inference. E.g., if we are always in fact willing to "move" from "He is John's friend" to "He is an artist" or from "That person is John" to "He is tall," we are presumably entitled to assign to the sentences "All John's friends are artists" and "John is tall" (which can, of course, be put in universal form, if this is required) the status of auxiliary positions. They would thus be necessary and would constitute part of the conceptual meaning of the terms involved.

The author holds that if we are users of L, we can paraphrase "S is unconditionally assertable (i.e., is an auxiliary position) in L" as "S is true ex vi terminorum in L." It follows that if a speaker of L is always willing to infer "this is B" from "this is A," then it must be true that all A's are B. Hence no one can be mistaken in maintaining the truth of a given law of nature, for example. It is also argued that correct use of the expression "they know S" presupposes that the people referred to use the same language as the speaker or "another embodiment of the same game." But two games will differ if they have different "auxiliary positions." This imposes an overly severe limitation on use of indirect discourse. For example, if at least one person thinks that S is a law of nature, then the statement "everyone knows that S" is meaningless if someone thinks S false and its denial is impermissible if (in the ordinary sense) true.

NOAM CHOMSKY

E. W. BETH. De betekenis van de wijsbegeerte der exacte wetenschapperr. als universitair studievak en als terrein van wetenschappelljk onderzoek (The significance of the philosophy of the exact sciences as a university subject and, as a field of scientific research). North-Holland Publishing Company, Amsterdam 1953, 20 pp.

In 1903 G. Mannoury delivered a public lecture on the significance of mathematical logic for philosophy. It was the beginning of a tradition in Amsterdam to teach the philosophy of the exact sciences. Out of it grew regular courses enabling students of the departments of mathematics and physics to specialize during the second half of their university studies in a principal subject called "philosophy," comprising general philosophy and its history, general methodology and the special methodologies of the branches of mathematics and physics (which the student was taking as minor subjects), philosophy of the exact sciences, and mathematical logic. Under the Dutch laws regulating university examinations a student could go into this "philosophy" specialization if he had a certificate either of the gymnasium (the section of the Dutch secondary school system with ancient and modern languages as main subjects) or of

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